Lonely Deaths Lie Thick as Snow

A routine call regarding a burglary at an empty mansion leads cocky young police detective Jin Saeki to a gruesome and shocking discovery. The corpses of 13 children, along with the presence of a strange symbol, spur a manhunt for Juzo Haikawa, the mysterious absentee owner of the house. So begins an investigation (and an obsession) that will take Jin all over Japan and into the darkest recesses of both the past and the human soul.

Detective Jin Saeki is determined to find the truth behind the Haikawa estate murders—13 children found locked in a basement and starved to death. Juzo Haikawa, the prime suspect, is nowhere to be found, but six young survivors who also lived with him are adamant that he must be innocent. Then, out of nowhere, the police find Haikawa and bring him in…but why would a man who so meticulously hid his activities for years let himself be arrested so easily?!

With Juzo Haikawa’s sudden arrest and confession, it seems the Mansion Murders have been solved just like that. But Kanon Hasumi, one of the Haikawa’s surviving “children,” insists that someone else was actually behind the gruesome crime. Persuaded by her conviction, detective Jin Saeki continues the investigation, which stalls until suddenly Haikawa himself is murdered outside his prison cell…!

In search of the truth behind the mansion murders, Jin and Kanon fly to Hokkaido to seek out Juzo Haikawa’s hometown. There they learn about a mysterious scar-faced man named Shuji Inuyama, who many years ago massacred an entire village of 33, then killed himself, leaving behind only a cryptic poem as his epitaph… But this raises more questions than it answers, the trail leading them ever deeper into darkness. And what awaits them there is…!

The Scar-Faced Man who attacked Jin and Kanon in Hokkaido remains a mystery, but is he connected to Shuji Inuyama, perpetrator of the massacre in Kuratsuchi all those years ago? Is he connected to Juzo Haikawa…? In the search for answers, Kanon goes to visit her "brother" Takeru in prison, where he’s serving time for his role in a counterfeit art scam-and he reveals the shocking truth: that Haikawa had a real son. Now this man is on the warpath, seeking revenge on the “fake” children who stole his father’s love…but the cheap copy of a Goya painting on the wall of Haikawa’s mansion may just prove his undoing…