Yumi clicked Send. Then she keyed in her cell phone mail address, instructing the website to forward any messages.
Chapter 40
Friday, April 12
12:30 P.M.
Kenji
Kenji set the Styrofoam container of noodles on his desk as Detective Oki emerged from the elevator. “Nobody home at Boshi-san’s residence,” he said to Kenji.
Section Chief Tanaka appeared and said, “The big boys will be here at two. What have you got?”
Kenji outlined what they’d found out and Tanaka asked him to write it up so he could present it to Inspector Mori, who would be taking over as lead investigator.
Kenji sighed and took out his half-finished report. He’d described the scene, mentioned the charcoal burner and incense, the dropped cell phone and vomit, and outlined the lab evidence that showed Rika Ozawa had been murdered. The hard part was going to be dancing around how they’d identified the three suspects. They didn’t officially know
Well, sho ga nai, it couldn’t be helped. He was sure the Special Investigations Unit could get expedited warrants for phone company records—probably even over the weekend. They could be up to speed—legally—by the end of the day Monday. He’d pull Inspector Mori aside, suggest they get a warrant, then they could re-interview the building manager.
Kenji put on his jacket and straightened his tie, hoping it would help his career to be the regional detective who steered the elite team in the right direction.
Chapter 41
Friday, April 12
2:00 P.M.
Kenji
The largest fifth-floor incident room, reserved for occasions when the Komagome Police Station was invaded by downtown teams of crime specialists, was packed with investigators. Detective inspectors from the central office—all graduates of the imperial universities and climbing the ladder on the fast track—took the first row. Behind them sat Tommy Loud and his colleagues from the crime lab. The Komagome squad had been pressed into service, setting up extra copiers, computers, phones, and tea stations. Now they found places for themselves at the tables near the back, behind their more exalted colleagues from National Police Headquarters.
Superintendent Noguchi arrived, seating himself next to Section Chief Tanaka at a table facing the expanded team. Noguchi was a stocky man with already-silver hair who carried himself with the powerful air of a well-launched civil servant, even though his unlined face suggested he wasn’t much past forty. To his right, Inspector Mori frowned as he checked the connections between his laptop and the projection system. Mori was a few years ahead of Kenji on the elite career track and had the sleek, fox-like look of a man who expected to sprint to the very top.
Section Chief Tanaka stood and welcomed the downtown squad, his formal plea for assistance from headquarters disguising the fact that there were few things he liked less than to have his station invaded by higher-ups.
Noguchi turned on the microphone before him and graciously acknowledged the welcome, then turned the floor over to Inspector Mori, who would be the tactical leader of the operation. Mori called on Kenji to walk them through the investigation to date.
After presenting what they’d found at the scene, Kenji was just beginning to describe how they’d identified Boshi-san’s brother,
“Thank you, Detective Nakamura. While there’s a remote possibility that one of your local criminals is responsible for this crime, I think we need to bring everybody up to speed on the findings of our task force before we decide who warrants further investigation.”
Task force? How could there already be a task force? Confused, Kenji bowed and sat down.
Mori called on Tommy Loud to describe the physical evidence indicating that the Hamadas were presumed to have committed suicide, but that Rika Ozawa had been asphyxiated with a plastic bag. As Loud resumed his seat, the inspector stood. He waited, his silence focusing everyone’s attention on what he was about to say.
“Before we begin, I want to make it clear that everything about this investigation must be kept in strictest confidence.” He paused, meeting the eyes of the locals in the back of the room before continuing. “In order to prevent public panic, we’ve kept the information you’re about to hear from the media. If there are any leaks, we’ll know they came from someone sitting in this room. I promise you, the smallest slip will earn you reassignment to a northern Hokkaido town so remote it snows in July. Do I make myself clear?”
“Hai!” the room chorused in unison.
Mori made a few keystrokes on his computer and a map was projected on the screen at the front of the room.
“For the past six months, my team of investigators has been working a series of crimes we’re calling the Shrine Murders. We believe that the Ozawa case is the fourth killing in the greater Kanto region.”
Kenji and Oki looked at each other, eyebrows raised. Papers rustled as investigators hearing this for the first time began to take notes. Mori switched on a laser pointer and indicated the four red dots that had been marked on a map of the Tokyo-Yokohama area.
“These are the four shrines where a single murderer has targeted his victims to date. The killings have taken place at roughly three-month intervals, starting last year on July third. All the victims have been unmarried females, ranging in age from twenty-four to thirty-six. They were all attacked after going to shrines alone at night. We don’t know if he chose them at random or if they met by arrangement. It’s possible that the killer first stalked his victims over the Internet: The first and third were members of the same online dating service, the last two belonged to the online fan club for the same rock band, and all of them were active on the Mixi social networking site.”
He clicked to the next slide, a shot of two small, round burn marks on a woman’s naked back.
“The killer’s pattern is to first stun his victims with a Taser, then asphyxiate them. The first victim was strangled with her own scarf.” A length of leaf-printed chiffon next to a measuring tape appeared on the screen. “The second was choked with something thin, and had traces of binding twine snagged in the muffler around her neck.” The scarf picture was replaced by a spool of the common yellow cord used to bundle newspapers for recyclable trash collection. “The third victim was asphyxiated with something that left no traces, like a plastic dry-cleaning bag. The fourth victim, Rika Ozawa, was also suffocated with a plastic bag.”
Mori surveyed the room. “The killer took advantage of what the first woman was wearing and killed her with a weapon she provided herself. But perhaps that limited his choice of victims too much, so the next time he began his search for a victim, he brought along binding twine to do the job. He may have realized that the binding twine left trace evidence, though, so with the third and fourth victims, he used plastic dry-cleaning bags instead.”
Kenji’s hand was in the air.
“Yes, Detective Nakumura?”
Kenji stood. “We didn’t find any Taser burns on Rika Ozawa, sir.”
“That’s why we’re so eager to pull out all the stops on her case,” Mori said, with a trace of irritation at being interrupted. “She didn’t have a Taser burn, but she had scrapes on her hands and knees. We think it indicates that something didn’t go according to plan during the attack and he wasn’t able to stun her first. In his panic, it’s highly possible he left behind more evidence than usual. He may even have injuries himself, which will be damning when we catch him. Now, if
I can continue?”
Kenji apologized and sat.
Mori clicked to the next slide. It showed a woman with chin-length hair lying on her back behind the jumbo-sized offering box common at major shrines. Her hands were clasped over her chest and encircled by a Buddhist rosary made of pink quartz beads.
“All four victims were posed with rosaries,” he continued, clicking to a slide of a woman in a short plaid skirt and boots, lying on her back behind a shrine altar. The salt offering that usually sat in front of the god’s house had been dumped on the floor, the emptied dish used to burn the kind of incense bundle commonly sold at Buddhist temples. There was a murmur of shock at the desecration.
Mori continued, “Although they were all killed at Shinto shrines, we found Buddhist funeral incense burned at each site.” Two more photos blinked across the screen: women sitting or lying in various dim shrine buildings, rosaries wrapped around their hands. The last was Tommy Loud’s shot of Rika sitting in the back seat of the silver Lexus, the black rosary beads in her hands, a bundle of burnt incense on the hibachi by her feet.
“Another detail connecting these four crimes is that the Shrine Killer took cell phones and IDs from every victim’s purse. We don’t know if he took them as trophies or in order to delay identification of the victims.” Mori saw Kenji’s hand in the air again. “Detective Nakamura?”
Paging through his file, Kenji clambered to his feet. “Actually, sir, he didn’t take Rika Ozawa’s phone. We found it—”
“I read your report, Detective,” Mori said. His voice was icy as he continued, “After the killer made the mistake of dropping it, it’s a pity you released it from evidence before our specialists had a chance to examine it for information your initial investigation may have missed.”
“Sumimasen.” Bowing deeply, his face burning, he slid back into his seat.
Mori moved on to the next slide, which bore the logo of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Psychological Profiling Unit and a six-item list. “The Shrine Killer is smart. Organized. He’s left almost no evidence giving us a clue to his physical appearance, but the use of the stun gun tells us it’s possible he’s not much bigger and stronger than his victims or he’s got some sort of disability that makes it dangerous for him to count on overpowering them without help. This is an important point, since all his victims were physically small, shorter than one hundred fifty-five centimeters and weighing less than forty-five kilos. The profilers tell us he’s probably between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, it’s likely he works at a job that’s far beneath his ability level, and is almost certainly unmarried, with few or no supportive relationships.”
He shut off the computer and scanned the room. “Any questions?”
There were none.
Superintendent Noguchi took over. “Thank you, Inspector Mori.”
Noguchi leaned into his microphone. “Judging by his previous pattern, we don’t expect the killer to be active again for another three months. Starting today, we’ll begin integrating the evidence from this new case into what we know from the previous crimes. The fact that he didn’t use the Taser on Rika Ozawa suggests that it malfunctioned or he was interrupted in some way, so he had to chase her down before killing her. We’re hoping this rattled him enough to make other mistakes that a thorough re-examining of the evidence will uncover. Over the weekend we’ll be checking and rechecking the findings, trying to match them to persons of interest Inspector Mori’s team has previously identified. Investigators will be deployed to the field starting Monday morning, to re-interview witnesses and go over the crime scene with a fine-tooth comb.”
He surveyed the room. “I’ll be meeting with Section Chief Tanaka this afternoon to assign roles to Komagome Station personnel in order to integrate local knowledge with our central resources. Thank you all for your attention. We look forward to working together to solve these crimes. Issho ni gambaro.”
As notes were gathered and chairs pushed back, Oki leaned over to Kenji and snorted. “Yeah, ‘let’s all try hard together.’ How much do you want to bet that we’ll be trying hard at fetching tea and running to the electronics store for extension cords?”
Kenji shook his head and gloomily detoured to the tea station with his empty cup, the reprimand from Mori still stinging. Not only had he failed to impress the higher-ups with his running of the investigation to date, he’d actually damaged their chances of finding the killer.
Watching the steaming brew trickle into his cup, he regretted the time he’d wasted chasing after suicide website lurkers and petty burglars. No wonder the inspector wasn’t interested in any of their suspects.
A voice boomed, “Nakamura-san!”
Kenji turned. Superintendent Noguchi was approaching with his own empty mug.
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t mind Inspector Mori. He came down hard on you because he’s frustrated his team hasn’t made more progress. Even though the suspects you identified don’t fit the profile of our murderer, you did some solid detective work on the initial investigation.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kenji said, hope for his career slightly rekindling. Maybe his slip with Rika’s phone wasn’t as bad as Mori made it sound.
“You’re a Tokyo University graduate, aren’t you?” the superintendent continued, filling his cup. “I just attended my twentieth reunion last year.”
Oh. Kenji’s hopes dimmed. Noguchi had only singled him out because he was a member of the Todai old-boy network.
“Are you studying hard for this year’s inspector exam?” the superintendent asked.
“Yes, sir,” Kenji lied. He’d actually been too busy to even crack the prep materials for months.
“Good. We need smart young investigators like you at the head office.” He leaned toward Kenji and added in a confidential tone, “You’re lucky that this Ozawa murder has become part of such a significant investigation. Work hard and show Inspector Mori you’re a team player. It could be very good for your career to be associated with solving the Shrine Murders.”
“Yes, sir,” Kenji said, bowing.
If he helped make Mori look good, his blunder would be forgotten. He’d have to work extra hard to prove to the inspector that his skills would be a valuable asset to the First Investigative Division. Kenji pictured himself working side by side with Mori, slipping him the crucial lead that would break the case, then modestly refusing to share the spotlight. Maybe if he spent the weekend going over his files, looking for details that were significant in light of the new evidence . . .
“I’m going to assign you to be Inspector Mori’s driver,” Noguchi was saying, “so you can benefit from observing his techniques first hand.”
His driver? Kenji’s heart sank. He’d hoped Oki was joking.
“Thank you, sir,” he stammered, bowing to hide his dismay. He swallowed and made himself add, “Thank you for the opportunity, sir. I look forward to working with Mori-san.”
Back in the squad room, he tossed the folder containing his notes on his desk and sat down dejectedly. Oki swiveled toward him and raised his eyebrows.
“I get to be Inspector Mori’s driver.”
Oki snorted. “Welcome to the real world.”
Kenji’s phone rang. He pulled it out. Yumi.
“I found out who Rika was working for,” she said, telling him what she’d learned at FlashMob. “And that’s not all. There was a fourth person who was supposed to meet them at the Komagome Shrine, but you only found three people in that car the next morning. Maybe he didn’t show, but if he did, maybe he saw who killed Rika. Online he was using the name
o talk to him, find out if he knows anything.”
Kenji started to tell her that he already knew about
Yumi persisted. “Give me the name of the guy in charge, then. I’ll call him and tell him what I know.”
“No, that’s all right. I’ll . . . pass along your information.”
Yumi was silent. “You’re not going to, are you?” She waited. “Ken-kun, you’re not the only one who can tell when someone’s lying.”
He sighed. “The guy in charge has a totally different theory about the crime.”
“A different theory? What kind of theory?”
“I can’t tell you. Police business.”
“You mean they’re going to ignore everything we’ve learned so far?”
Kenji was silent.
“They’re wrong. You have to tell them they’re wrong.”
“Yu-chan, I can’t.”
“I can’t believe you’re giving up.” Click. She hung up.
Kenji slowly put away his phone, defeated. He sighed and looked at Oki. “Inspector Mori has no intention of following up on
“Sho ga nai,” the big detective said. It can’t be helped. “You heard the man—our suspects don’t fit his profile.”
They didn’t. And now that Kenji had seen the bigger picture, he didn’t blame Inspector Mori for ignoring their work to date. But now Yumi was mad at him, and he wasn’t allowed explain to her why it was a waste of time following up on the “leads” she’d uncovered. The girl who’d stubbornly refused to concede she was wrong about the construction date of the Ise Shrine until he’d lugged an old encyclopedia to school and showed her, wasn’t going to give up chasing that weirdo for information about her best friend’s death unless he gave her a good reason.
Nightshade Page 19
