The Last Train (Detective Hiroshi Series Book 1)

by Michael Pronko

  After the train stopped, the rush of exiting passengers turned the platform into a blur, and then the waiting passengers plunged onto the train. Four cars down, a head of long hair, Michiko’s, or one just like hers, ducked inside the door. The departure signal sounded. Was it her? He stood with one foot on the train, desperate for another glimpse. When the departure signal stopped and the conductor’s announcement finished, Hiroshi followed his instincts and hopped back on just before the doors shut and the train heaved into motion.

  He turned sideways to squeeze past the commuters holding the overhead straps, absorbed in their own little worlds of cell phone surfing and text-messaging. He glanced at each person worrying that Michiko had given him the slip once again. He sidled to the end of the car, wearily checking each face he passed, grabbing the overhead bar above their heads for balance and murmuring, “Sumimasen, excuse me,” as he twisted past.

  He pulled the door and passed through the inter-car space, the metal plates grating and screeching below. Inside the next car, he looked for her up and down the rows of sitting and standing passengers. It was too crowded to get very far, even with louder apologies and gentle pushes. He worried he wouldn’t even recognize her, but took a breath and told himself to let his gut do some work for a change. There was no Excel spread sheet to help him here.

  He thought of Takamatsu in the hospital and kept going, but more warily than before. The next stop came soon. He stepped out onto the platform to move a few doors closer to where he thought she must be. When the inhale-exhale of humans finished, he scrambled on just as the doors closed.

  At the end of the next car, the door handle between the cars pushed uselessly up and down, locked. Through the glass, Hiroshi saw her sitting calmly, her long hair falling around her face. That was her, he felt sure. Her hair was the same length, but he could only see her from the side, so he stopped looking and tried to think things through.

  The next stop was Shinjuku Station. Thanks to Linda, he knew that the 3.6 million passengers that used the station every day had a choice of over two hundred possible exits and over fifty platforms. Hiroshi knew this because Linda had recited the numbers to him—repeatedly, out of amazement. Hiroshi joked and laughed with her about that being almost as many people as in the Boston metropolitan area—through just one station—but as the train pulled to a stop he realized that Shinjuku Station was probably the easiest place in the world to lose someone.

  If Michiko got a step ahead, he couldn’t keep up and she would escape through one of the many permutations of possible escape routes. Hiroshi knew he had to grab her as soon as she got off the train. But he wasn’t sure he could take her alone after seeing what she did to Sakaguchi.

  The train pulled to a stop. When the doors opened, Michiko raced off the train and up the escalator and Hiroshi hurried after her. She climbed steadily up all three flights of escalators and two half-flights of stairs without slowing. At the top, Hiroshi was breathing hard, his ears buzzing. He pulled his cell phone out, still trailing her, but moving, and called Sugamo.

  “Shinjuku Station. Heading for the south exit.”

  “I’ll be there. Fifteen minutes.”

  “Where’s Ueno and Osaki?”

  “They’re coming, too.”

  “And—”

  “Sakaguchi’s on the way to the hospital. Be careful.”

  Hiroshi spun around like some foolish human toy, before he saw her duck down a passageway to a brightly lit underground shopping mall. The shutters were pulled down over most of the shops, and last-minute shoppers milled around the still-open stores and sale baskets out front. He could see her easily in the underground passageway, and followed her until it spilled into a wide concourse with shiny pillars.

  They had circled around to the east entrance, Hiroshi realized, so she must be heading back to the trains. He saw her move quickly across the open area in front of the gates and hurry inside.

  Hiroshi ran after her, flipped his badge to the attendant at the gate and saw her going up the stairs to the Yamanote Line, the circular heart of Tokyo’s train system.

  The platform was packed. He couldn’t see her anywhere. The departure signal finished and he slipped onto a train whose doors banged shut as everything leapt forward. He was either completely right or completely wrong. As they passed the end of the platform, he pushed toward the back of the train looking at every person. There were plenty of women with long hair, but most were shorter than Michiko, or stood slumped in dreamy fatigue.

  In the third car, he found her, so he stopped a car length away. She stood tall and relaxed, her hair down her back and her eyes looking out the windows. She did not hold the overhead strap, but balanced herself masterfully, staying upright in place through the swaying rhythm and sporadic jolts of the train.

  He stopped. Between them was a full carload of people.

  She did not look his way.

  Hiroshi texted Sugamo: “Heading south from Shinjuku on the Yamanote line.” He did not move any closer, and she stayed where she was. Hiroshi wondered if she had seen him, but she gave not the smallest sign that she had. That made him all the more cautious. At the next stop, Yoyogi, she stayed on the train. At the next stop, Harajuku, she glided off with the crowd. Hiroshi texted Sugamo: “Harajuku Station.”

  Instead of hurrying to the stairs like before, though, Michiko stood stock still on the platform, staring at the steep slope of overgrown vegetation leading up to the grounds of Meiji Jingu Shrine, the largest, most sacred Shinto shrine in Tokyo. On the platform, a cool breeze flowed down from the thick woods that surrounded the shrine.

  After departing passengers got on, the train pulled away, leaving only a few people to trundle up the stairs toward the exit. Michiko turned away from the shrine and looked at the large billboards for designer brand clothing lining the fence across the tracks. The trapped-in-time faces of the models looked down on the platform, showing off the latest styles and designs and trendy views, their surface appeal both beckoning and ignoring whoever looked their way while waiting on the platform.

  Hiroshi walked toward Michiko and stopped. She turned to him. They stood facing each other. The overhead sign for the next train’s arrival started blinking.

  Chapter 48

  Michiko’s long black hair appeared glimmering brown under the harsh overhead lighting of the platform. She stood calmly in the middle of the platform, her tall, muscular body resting and ready, her only movement a quick tug on her black shawl.

  “Leave me alone,” she hissed.

  “I know what happened.” Hiroshi said.

  She pushed her black leather travel bag behind her and took a step, then another, toward him. Hiroshi could hear the wind through the trees and the rumble of the next train. Her eyes locked on his.

  “I know what happened to you. In Kobe,” he said over the heightening sound of the train. “Tell me about them, about Bentley, about—”

  “You don’t have any idea what happened.”

  “Yes, I do. I know what happened. And why.”

  “Here’s what happened,” she said. With a quick jump and spin, she landed a kick into his already-bruised ribs, his tucked-in elbow little defense.

  Unprepared for the blow, Hiroshi buckled and dropped to his knees. He pushed up on one knee, clutching his side.

  She balanced her weight, tying her shawl tight around her waist.

  “I can help you get those guys,” Hiroshi gasped. “Even in Paris. We get their cash flow and—”

  She spun her leg toward his head. Hiroshi threw up his arms to break her kick. Her leg glanced off his arms, so she leaned down to punch his solar plexus. Hiroshi snatched at his diaphragm, coughing and sucking for air. He felt her snatch his wrist, twist the joint, and his body spun around, totally at her command. He worried she would snap his hands into useless appendages with one more twist as he felt himself being dragged to the edge of the platform.

  “How would you like a year of this?” she asked. She looked over her sho
ulder at the train rocketing toward the platform. Hiroshi pushed backwards, scraping the platform with his shoes for traction, but felt her knee in his back and his hands levered over his head. He flinched at the pain.

  The train pulled closer.

  He understood just how easy it would have been for her to throw someone drugged into incapacity—she was dragging him against all the sober force he had left. Hearing the sound of the train, he dug his foot into the concrete. As the train approached, he twisted one leg underneath himself and leaned back as hard as he could. The pain in his wrists was excruciating. He made one last effort to pull his center of gravity away from the edge, but she kneed him and pulled back. It was too late.

  The train shot past.

  Hiroshi managed to splutter, “I can help you get those guys,” before she wrapped her arms around his throat and locked them tight at the elbows, cutting off his air. Hiroshi tried to get his fingers inside the vise of her arms, but found no opening. He tried to elbow her, but she easily dodged aside.

  He clawed at her arm, desperate for air. “You…get them…you know…invest…”

  She whispered in his ear, “When I get them, on my own, I want to see their eyes up close. Not across some courtroom. Even Takamatsu understood that.”

  She pulled him toward the end of the platform and when her arms loosened for a moment, Hiroshi wheezed and coughed out, “Takamatsu wanted to help you, too.”

  “He didn’t know how.” She squeezed tighter. “Neither do you.”

  Michiko cranked her forearms and dragged Hiroshi along the platform. As he gasped and sucked for air, concentrating to be sure he didn’t lose consciousness, he could see a bevy of station attendants talking into their microphone-earphones and passengers being blocked from the platform.

  Hiroshi’s eyes were watering too much to see any more as he blanked out for a moment when Michiko twisted his neck again, hard, and whispered, “You don’t look in shape to help.”

  The commotion of passengers and station attendants grew more frantic. Police pushed through the crowd and started down the stairs to the platform. Hiroshi blearily tried to focus on them, but they seemed to be receding as he lost breath and awareness of what was happening.

  Suddenly, he felt a flood of air into his lungs and blood rushed to his head. Michiko had let him go. He rubbed his neck, then his ribs, but as he pushed himself up, he nearly screamed, his wrists hurt so badly. He looked up just as she leapt off the end of the platform onto the tracks.

  Struggling to his feet, Hiroshi saw the police coming down the platform, looking at him. Hiroshi put up a hand to let them know he was all right, held up his badge and called Sugamo. He took a painful breath and saw Michiko’s figure far down the tracks. She darted up a steep, grassy slope leading from the train line to the shrine grounds. Michiko pulled herself over a security gate and disappeared into the dark forest encircling the shrine.

  Hiroshi’s breath came back enough to tell Sugamo, “Meiji Jingu Shrine.”

  “Inside?” Sugamo asked.

  “Yes,” Hiroshi said, trying to breathe and focus. “I’ll follow her, meet me inside.”

  Hiroshi told the police to block the main shrine entrance and the smaller entrance that led to Yoyogi Station, and that he would go inside after her.

  Hiroshi stumbled to the edge of the platform and eased himself down. He tried to run, but lost his balance on the tracks, ties and gravel underfoot. A fine mist, nearly fog, made him blink. He pulled himself up the wall from the level of the tracks, climbed over a fence, and then headed up the slope into the forested grounds of the shrine.

  At the top of the slope, a dirt trail snaked down to the central processional path. The reflected glow from the surrounding city cast a faint light over the forest. Hiroshi moved from tree to tree, steadying himself below the rice-stalk ropes tied around the sacred trunks. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and his lungs gulped in the cool, oxygen-rich air. His hair and shoulders became wet from the tall, dripping trees.

  He passed under a wooden, copper-topped torii whose gentle curves were strung with leg-thick ropes dangling white paper lightning bolts. Above was a ribbon of sky. All else was shadows and the muffled stirrings from the thick undergrowth and overhead canopy.

  He heard far-off steps along the wide gravel path. He followed the sound and stepped onto the mossy earth alongside the path.

  The sound of her footfalls stopped, but Hiroshi kept on to a weathered rack of white-painted sake barrels stacked six-high. He paused there, listening, trying not to huff so loudly, under the subtle glow of the white paint on the barrels. He peered into the darkness of the cedar trees and bamboo thickets and shouted into the silence. “At least, tell me what you know, so I can get them.”

  The ripping and creaking of splintering wood was the only warning before the huge white casks of sake cascaded over him, burying him completely. As the barrels started to smother him, he realized they were empty. Shouldering the wet casks aside, Hiroshi stood, disoriented, barely able to pull his legs out.

  In the immense silence of the surrounding shrine, between the thumping in his head, he heard her footfalls move toward the main shrine. She was moving quickly.

  He got himself back into motion, following the sound to the sprawling inner courtyard, a vast area paved with tightly fitted flat stone that stretched to the walls in all directions. It glimmered, wet from the mist.

  He felt in his pocket for his cell phone, but it was not there. It must have slipped out when the sake barrels buried him. Sugamo should have arrived by now, with Ueno and Osaki. Hiroshi was counting on them coming in to the shrine from the path that led to the entrance, but there was no sound and no sign, only the main shrine roof lifting like wings in flight against the dark sky.

  He worked his way along the outer wall and climbed the stairs to the balustrades blocking the shrine’s forbidden interior. The floorboards were designed to creak, an old warning system, so his every step made them sing out.

  He stopped and listened, his back to the bamboo screen veiling the innermost altar. A faint clack of wood came from an ancient tree, its outstretched branches held up by struts and its broad trunk circled by a rack of wooden ema plaques.

  He could feel her on the other side of the massive tree, hidden behind the torrent of prayers, hopes, and desires hung up for the Shinto gods. He cautiously circled the rack of ema, sure that she was watching him.

  “Just listen for a minute,” he whispered but when he got to the other side of the rack, he saw her jump and pull herself over the top of a high wooden wall at the edge of the courtyard. He couldn’t figure out how she got there so fast. She slipped over and disappeared.

  Hiroshi ran as best he could to the gate and stepped on a shishi lion-dog statue to get over the top. His ribs dragged painfully over the top beam and he fell onto his hands on the other side. He steadied himself from the pain by leaning back against the wall. The crunch of gravel receding in the distance refocused him and he pushed to a run, wheezing and dizzy. Thick drops of rain fell from the overhead tree branches.

  The gravel turned to a moss-covered incline. When Hiroshi got to the top of the rise, sweating and breathless, he realized that Michiko had led him in a circle back to the tracks. She was already over the same fence separating the shrine grounds from the train tracks. It was a long drop from the concrete wall to the tracks below.

  Dim light from the station a train’s length away fell across the tracks, catching the rain slanting sideways by the wind. Michiko picked her way across the tracks below. Her figure looked small against the two-story billboards covered with smiling models in the latest fashions.

  Hiroshi put his fingers and toes into the fence and climbed up. He let himself down from the wall as far as he could. Looking both ways for oncoming trains before letting go, he landed with a thud that shuddered through his body.

  He heard the ping-ping-ping warning for an oncoming express train, then the wheeze and grind of a local train from the other dire
ction. Wobbling from fatigue, he ran after Michiko, who was neatly sprinting along the tracks, heading for a low fence that dropped down to the busy streets of Harajuku beyond. The sound of the trains startled him into stopping. He turned and wiped the rain from his eyes.

  From the opposite side of the tracks, he could see that the tracks narrowed sharply ahead of her, the wide station distance cut in half by a tall row of large electric circuit boxes and a concrete sluice for electric cables. The oncoming train’s headlight temporarily blinded him and he reeled back, unable to cross or to see. The driver blasted the horn long and loud. He didn’t hear the second train coming from the other direction until it was almost next to him. Because of its speed, it could only be an express.

  When the horn blared again, Hiroshi glimpsed Michiko’s head whip around, noticing the express for the first time.

  Then, for some reason—Hiroshi could never piece it together no matter how many times he went over it in his mind later—she bolted straight across the tracks right in front of the trains.

  The entire track heaved and shook as the express train braked, too late to lessen the force of the speeding wall of metal. From the other direction, the local train bucked and jolted, throwing passengers to the floor inside.

  The express train slowed to a crawl, and the local train stopped halfway out of the station. The clunking and screeching of the engine and the brakes fell to a quiet hum. The loud, steady clang of emergency signals blasted through the air.

  Hiroshi limped around the back of the express and the front of the local. He found Michiko’s body crumpled across the tracks. Her limbs were thrown at odd angles, her neck twisted sideways.

  Blood oozed out over the concrete ties wetting her long, thick hair and the gravel below. One of her sandals was torn from her leg, wedged tight into the V of a track switch, her foot still in it, severed.