A moment later, his phone buzzed with a reply. See you at the Jaunty. 7:30.
Chapter 57
Monday, April 15
7:30 P.M.
Kenji
A salaryman who was about three beers past drunk pushed ahead of Kenji at Akihabara Station, pursuing an office lady through the train ticket gate, begging her to join him at his next izakaya. He was carrying a bag from the store where
Kenji realized that in his excitement about
It was still too early for most denizens of the cyberworld to emerge from their lairs and make their way to their favorite watering holes, so five idle maids were clustered behind the Maid Café Jaunty cashier counter comparing manicures when Kenji stepped from the elevator. They turned to chime in unison, “Welcome, Master of the House!”
This time Ghost was waiting when Kenji arrived, a half-finished game of Jenga teetering on his table. The maid who’d served him the other night was concentrating on pulling out a block near the bottom of the stack, her tongue poking from the corner of her mouth.
“Oh no!” she squealed as the tower toppled.
Ghost grinned and said, “Pay up.” She gave him a pretend pout, then scooted her chair around next to him, making peace signs with both hands and tipping her head toward his with a practiced smile as one of the other maids snapped a picture of them with a Polaroid camera. The snapshot whirred from the slot and Ghost’s maid took a fluorescent marker from her pocket to draw hearts all around the edges, enshrining the score 13-22 in a cloud over their heads. She handed it to Ghost with a, “Dozo, Master of the House,” and looked up to find Kenji waiting for her chair.
“Oh! My humblest apologies, Honored Master!” She jumped up and fetched menus.
When they’d ordered, Ghost opened his laptop and asked Kenji why he’d been so anxious to meet. After filling him in on his suspicions about
The hacker navigated to the other three websites and backtracked the ones that might belong to
“What about the women Shimada befriended on these other websites? Would it be hard to find out their names and addresses?”
The hacker’s fingers blurred over his keyboard; he didn’t even look up when their maid returned with Kenji’s curry rice and stirred three sugars into Ghost’s coffee, leaving it at his elbow. Then he stopped and peered at his screen, frowning.
“Gone,” he muttered. “Gone, gone, and gone.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked at Kenji. “Their e-mail addresses. There are no forwarding addresses for these users, so I can’t trace them back to their phone records.”
“Erased?”
“Not exactly,” Ghost said, his face grim. “More likely they disappeared when the users’ phone service was . . . discontinued.”
“Discontinued?” Then Kenji realized what he was saying. “You mean . . . They’re dead?” Jisatsu? Or strangled by the Shrine Killer? “Can you check the dates of the last posts they made?”
Ghost clicked through the site. “June thirtieth. October sixth. January fifth.”
Kenji’s heart pounded. He was pretty sure that the Shrine Killer’s victims had died at the beginning of July, the beginning of October, and the beginning of February. He’d have to double check the dates, but even Inspector Mori would have to agree it was suspicious that these three women had disappeared around the same time as the Shrine Killer’s victims.
He thanked Ghost and headed back toward the train station. If the dates checked out, he’d have something to revive his career with after all. If the dates didn’t jibe, he’d be back to chasing Shimada on his own time, trying to find out if he’d seen anything the night Rika was killed.
His phone rang in his hand, startling him. Blocked ID.
“Moshi-moshi?”
“It’s me.” Ghost. “Are you still in the neighborhood?”
“Waiting for the train. Why?”
“Remember that other guy you asked about when we first met?
“Yes, actually I was thinking about him earlier tonight. Was wondering if any of the women he pursued on those websites agreed to meet him face to face.”
“Want to ask him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m on my way to meet him.”
“What?”
“It turns out I kind of know him.”
“You know him?”
“Online. He uses
Chapter 58
Monday, April 15
8:30 P.M.
Kenji
Kenji and Ghost looked up at
“Looks like [email protected] has twenty-four-hour access to games and suicide websites, doesn’t it?” Ghost said, eyeing the cables.
They knocked. From inside the house, a voice called, “It’s okay, Mom, I’ll get it.”
The door opened a crack, revealing the wary face of a boy just stumbling into adolescence. Acne peppered his cheeks, but his mouth was still full and soft like a child’s. Under tousled hair that could have used a cut and a comb, his face lit up when he spotted the Laox bag Ghost carried.
“Hi!” he said. “I’m Daiki.”
Kenji introduced himself and Ghost. “We’re here to see your dad.”
“My . . . dad?” Confused, he looked from Ghost to Kenji and back to Ghost, his eyes widening as he registered the white hair, white skin, and eyes that were an impossible violet today. “Aren’t you . . .
Now it was Ghost’s turn to stare. “You’re
“Daiki?” called his mother’s voice, approaching. “Who’s at the door?”
She appeared, regarding them curiously. “Oh! Are these friends of yours?”
“Yeah,” the boy said quickly. “We, uh, play computer games together.”
Ghost bowed, introducing himself and Kenji.
She turned to her son and chided, “Don’t make them stand out there in the dark—invite them in.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Ghost said. As he stepped into the lighted entry and began to take off his shoes, Mrs. Takahara’s eyes widened. She bustled around finding the right size slippers, looking anywhere but at the strange pale visitor.
“This way,” she said, scurrying down the hall and
scooping up an empty soup bowl from outside a closed door. “Would you like something to drink? Tea? Calpis?”
As Kenji and Ghost politely declined, Daiki opened the door and loped through the messy landscape to his computer. He hastily cleared the windows on his desktop with a keystroke, but not before Kenji recognized Whitelight’s telltale gothic lettering on one of them. The boy swept a pile of clothes onto the floor so they could perch on his bed, nudging a stack of textbooks out of the way with his foot.
“Dozo,” he said, dropping into his desk chair. Then he looked around, suddenly seeing his room through visitors’ eyes. “Sorry it’s kind of messy.”
“Here’s the controller I brought you,” Ghost said, handing Daiki the Laox bag.
The boy peered inside and pulled out the device with a big grin, wiggling the joystick and trying out the buttons. “Wow, thanks! I’ll be able to totally kick some zombie butt with this!”
“There’s something I want in return, though.”
The boy looked at him, wary again.
“I want to know why
“Huh?” Daiki’s mouth dropped open. “How did you . . . ?”
“I’m good at picking the locks on back doors,” Ghost replied. He tipped his head to read the title of the math book on top of the textbook stack. “Looks to me like you’re supposed to be in eighth grade, Daiki. When was the last time you went to school?”
The boy’s shoulders hunched defensively. “I study at home,” he muttered, looking away.
“Because kids were giving you a hard time?”
The boy shrugged angrily.
“Look at me,” Ghost said. “You think I don’t know about getting the shit beat out of you by bullies?”
Daiki flicked him a glance, then returned to staring at the controller in his hands.
“How did it start? Three or four of them following you home, talking a little too loud? Then maybe they swiped your books and wrote all over them with a big black pen?” He contemplated the unhappy fourteen-year-old. “Do your parents know?”
Daiki picked at an old Call of Duty sticker on arm of his chair. “One of my teachers called them the third time I came to class without my book. I told them I lost it. My dad made me buy a new one with my own money, but it happened again. Then one day my mom walked in while I was in the bath and saw the bruises. She and my dad talked to the school and the teacher gave the kids who were following me a lecture, but that just made it worse. Pretty soon, just thinking about going to school made me throw up, so my mom called me in sick. Finally . . . she just let me stay home.”
“Well, that’s one way to deal with bullies. The only problem is, they don’t go away. They finish school, they graduate, they get jobs. You can’t stay in your room forever, and when you come out, they’ll be waiting for you.”
Daiki’s mouth twitched into a little smirk of bravado. “Yeah, well, I guess that’s why I’ve been hanging out on Whitelight. If things get too bad: sayonara, jerks! I’ll meet a few friends in a car with a charcoal burner in back and end it all, quick and painless.”
“Painless? Painless?” Ghost leaped to his feet, fists clenched at his side. “Maybe for you. Those websites, they don’t have any forums where people can post about what it’s like to be left behind, do they? They don’t mention that the ones who’ll get a double helping of pain are your mom and dad, your brother, your sister, your friends. Did you ever think of that? They’ll blame themselves for the rest of their lives. They’ll think they should have done something, said something, seen it coming, and stopped you. They’ll forgive you, but they’ll never forgive themselves.” He fell silent and took a deep breath. He looked at the boy. “I think someone better let your mom and dad know now, before it’s too late. Maybe a little pointer to what you’ve been posting on Whitelight will do the trick.”
“What? No!” Daiki yelped. “They’ll cut off my Internet! I won’t even be able to play games!”
“Then let’s make a deal. If you quit visiting suicide websites and—” He dug in his pocket and pulled out a card. “—start coming to the self-defense judo class my sensei teaches at this gym on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, I won’t tell your parents or your school what you’ve been up to online.” Ghost handed him the card. “The class is run by the Ward Office, so it only costs a hundred yen each time. There’s a map on the back and the schedule is on the website. In three months, I guarantee any kid who crosses you will discover he doesn’t have unlimited lives. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”
Daiki flipped the card over to study the map, then searched Ghost’s face for any sign he was bullshitting. Then he hung his head and nodded.
“Good. See you Tuesday.” Ghost stopped with his hand on the doorknob and said, “By the way, I’ve got a phone app I’m going to set up to alert me if your computer lands on the homepage of a suicide site for even a nanosecond, and I promise you I’ll be on the phone to your parents faster than that.”
Out on the street, Ghost closed his eyes and breathed a cloud of relief into the chilly night air, then started walking back toward the train station.
Kenji laughed as he caught up with him. “There’s an app that’ll alert you if he visits a suicide website?”
Ghost’s lips quirked into a smile. “I wish.”
Kenji stared at him, then burst out laughing. He shook his head in amazement. “You had me fooled.”
“Yeah, well, I hope I fooled him. Let’s see if he turns up at judo class on Tuesday.”
They walked together in companionable silence until they got to the corner where they parted ways.
“I guess we can cross
The hacker nodded. “Anytime.” He turned to go.
“Uh, Ghost?” Kenji hesitated. “Can I ask you something? Did you . . . have a friend who committed jisatsu?”
The pale figure stopped and shoved his hands in his pockets, his back to Kenji. “No. But until I was fifteen, I had a twin brother.”
Chapter 59
Tuesday, April 16
5:30 P.M.
Kenji
After another long day of tea-fetching and bag-carrying, Kenji trudged back to his desk at Komagome Station and checked his messages.
Shimada was still missing. His apartment manager had left a voicemail, saying he hadn’t seen his tenant since Saturday. Maybe someone on that Whitelight website knew where
Then his hands froze above the keyboard. Someone had beat him to it.
#631 of 631
I’ve deleted post #626 as inappropriate. May I remind our users that Whitelight is not to be used as a bulletin board for soliciting information about
Scrolling backward, he found the one that had been deleted.
#627 of 630
(Deleted by admin1)
#628 of 630
Poor
#629 of 630
Why can’t you understand that suicide is a perfectly honorable choice? You should accept
#630 of 630
y.
But who was this
Riffling through his file, he found the list of users he’d given to Ghost. Bingo.
The hair stood up on the back of his neck.
Kenji frowned. He didn’t believe in ghosts. This
Ten minutes later, Kenji’s phone rang. Blocked call. Ghost. “Did you get that name I asked you about?” Kenji asked.
“Yep. Jun Shimada.”
“No, not
“That’s what I said.
Kenji nearly dropped his phone. “Are you sure?”
“Phone records don’t lie.”
Why was
“Are you at your computer? Is there any way you can do a global search of the site to find out if
There was a clickety-click of keys, then Ghost said, “Nope.” There was a coffee slurp, then he asked, “Want me to check the e-mail archive again?”
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