Soul Cage--A Mystery

by Tetsuya Honda

  “That shouldn’t be a problem. Now, I have a little favor of my own I’d like to ask from you gentlemen in return.”

  Makihara just scowled, but Kubota’s response was more encouraging.

  “Fire away. What can we do for you?”

  “I want to apply for a search warrant for Tobe’s apartment. Can you give me probable cause?”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “Anything—firearms, drugs, whatever. I just need the warrant to be issued for something I can be a hundred percent sure will be on the premises.”

  “I don’t get it. Why not get a warrant for documents connected to Tobe’s insurance scams? That’s a safe bet.”

  Kusaka shook his head.

  Tobe didn’t seem like the kind to keep well-organized records. Searching his apartment for documents and finding none could set the case back seriously. Kusaka was most interested in random bits of miscellaneous information—photographs, fingerprints—that might end up being useful but couldn’t be listed on the warrant. He needed a rock-solid probable cause to minimize the risk to the case.

  “You guys tell me something I can be sure of finding in there, and I’ll play ball. That’s my one condition.”

  “Understood,” grunted Kubota.

  Makihara gave a surly nod.

  Kusaka got to his feet.

  “Thanks for your help. Oh, and thanks for the coffee too.”

  Outside a light rain was falling.

  * * *

  Kusaka’s cell phone buzzed as he was walking down the street. The caller ID said “home.” Noriko, his wife, was under strict instructions not to disturb him at work, and she normally had the good sense not to. It had to be something important.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, can you talk?”

  “Provided you keep it short.”

  There was a sigh at the other end of the phone.

  “It’s Yoshihide. He came back from school early today. He’s asleep upstairs in his room.”

  Kusaka looked at his watch. Twenty past three. Yoshihide must’ve skipped sports.

  “Is he feeling okay?”

  “He says he’s got a tummy ache. I don’t think it’s anything worth leaving early for.”

  “Whatever it is, why not let him sleep it off?”

  Kusaka did a quick mental review of his schedule.

  “Chances are I won’t be able to make it home at all this week. I want to talk to you about this, but you’re going to have to be patient. I’m sorry.”

  “Ah.”

  Yoshihide was highly-strung—timid, even. He’d been slipping out of school early more and more often lately. Kusaka knew that bullying must have something to do with it.

  “Yoshihide didn’t say anything else?”

  “He said everything was fine except for his tummy ache.”

  “Did you ask him if the other kids were bullying him?”

  “Yes, well … sort of.”

  “Bullying’s an issue you’ve got to tackle head on. The worst thing a parent can do is to look the other way.”

  “I don’t see you looking out for your son at all.”

  Kusaka had no comeback to that.

  “Look, it may be late at night, but I promise, I’ll do my best to come home tomorrow, or, failing that, on the weekend.”

  “Please do.”

  “Don’t make Yoshihide go to school if he really doesn’t want to. He can do his coursework without going to school. Studying’s something you can do anywhere.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling him too.”

  “Great. Make sure he eats properly, once he feels a bit better. Oh, and don’t let him hole up in his room. Get him to come downstairs and eat in the kitchen with you. You can watch TV together. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m depending on you.”

  “You promise you’ll come back soon?”

  “Promise. I’m going to hang up now.”

  “Okay, see you soon.”

  Kusaka ended the call and put his phone back in his pocket.

  He always ended up hating himself after conversations like that with his wife. God, he was such a coldhearted bastard!

  For the most part, he loved his job. That wasn’t how he presented things to his family, though. With them, he always moaned about being forced to take on all sorts of burdensome tasks against his will.

  The train trip from his home in suburban Saitama to the TMPD headquarters in central Tokyo was already long enough. Now that he was on a task force out in Kamata, commuting home on a daily basis was outright impossible.

  But he could certainly make it home for a single night. His son was stressed and worried. He had to go back, talk to the boy, cheer him up.

  So why didn’t he? Why had he started out by coldly informing his wife he wasn’t able to go back? There was no “able” about it; he simply didn’t want to go back home.

  The thought that something terrible might happen to his son before he made it back made him physically flinch. He also knew that as soon as he was back amongst his colleagues on the force, he’d forget about his family in five minutes.

  I’m a coldhearted bastard.

  The words went round and round in Kusaka’s head as he headed back to the Ogawa Mansion stakeout.

  4

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18

  10:30 A.M.

  GLORIA YUTENJI APARTMENTS, APT. 302

  YUTENJI, MEGURO WARD

  Sergeant Kikuta was on the team assigned to search Makio Tobe’s apartment. The brass had announced the search at the meeting the night before, just before announcing that the surveillance on the Tajima-gumi and Nakabayashi Group was going to be withdrawn. Kikuta, who’d been keeping an eye on the offices of Nakabayashi Real Estate, was sent to Yutenji instead.

  Reiko guessed that pressure had been brought to bear.

  “You take on the Tajima-gumi and you expect to get pushback,” she explained to Kikuta the next morning. “Someone complained. Someone pulled a few strings. And the string-puller got something in return. That’s how it works. I don’t think money’s involved. My guess is that they got a tip that they could use as probable cause for the search. The higher-ups claimed that ‘someone on the task force’ told them about Tobe’s woman being an amphetamine junkie. I hadn’t heard anything about that until just then.”

  The search warrant came with an accompanying document that permitted the police to dust for fingerprints and to confiscate firearms and knives, as well as any insurance-related paperwork they thought relevant to the case. Illegal drugs also featured on the list, with a note to the effect that the search team had the right to examine articles linked to the suspect’s girlfriend as much as those connected to the suspect himself.

  They’re probably after something else entirely.

  “What good will it do us going after Tobe’s girlfriend? I guess they went for a scattershot approach to avoid legal complications. The drugs and firearms are a respectable pretext to search the apartment, and if they stumble onto anything else interesting while they’re there, that’s covered under the warrant. I think that that ‘anything else interesting’ is what they’re really after. Good luck, Kikuta. Do a good job. While you’re busy with that, I’m going to conduct a second interview with Michiko Nakagawa.”

  * * *

  Tobe’s apartment consisted of a large kitchen, living room, a couple of bedrooms, and a separate bathroom. Tobe’s hostess girlfriend, Mikako Kobayashi, was sitting at the dining table with a female officer watching the officers at work when she noticed Kikuta kneeling in front of a dresser in a bedroom.

  “Hey, there’s only my things in there,” the woman objected. “It’s nothing to do with Tobe.”

  Mikako started getting to her feet. One of the investigators pushed her gently back into her chair. She might as well have issued a press release that she kept her stash in there.

  Sure enough, Kikuta came across a nylon pencil case in the middle drawer of the dresser. Unzippi
ng it, he discovered five sachets of white powder inside.

  “I’ve got some suspicious packages here.”

  Kusaka, who was examining the bathroom, walked over to the bedroom where Kikuta was, shooting a sidelong glance at Mikako as he passed by.

  “Ijizu, could you come with me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lieutenant Ijizu of Forensics brought a camera over. After first photographing Kikuta holding the case, he got Kikuta to return the package back to the drawer where he had found it. He got him to point at it, pick it up, unzip it, and take out and display the sachets as well as a syringe that was in the bottom of the case, and he carefully photographed every stage of the process.

  “Okay. I’ve got what I need.”

  “Thanks, Kikuta,” said Kusaka. “I’ll take that.”

  Kusaka stuck out his hand and Kikuta passed him the case and its contents. Kusaka went back into the living area.

  “Ms. Kobayashi, can you tell me who this belongs to?”

  The woman said nothing.

  “That’s how it is? Okay, we can conduct a test right here. What we do is dissolve this white powder here in water and then stick a piece of litmus paper in it. If the paper turns blue, that tells us we’ve got a psychoactive drug. In that case, we’ll be asking you to do a urine test for us. That won’t be a problem, will it?”

  She still said nothing.

  “Lieutenant Ijizu, would you do the honors?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kusaka was relieved when the paper turned blue.

  “Lieutenant, I think we’ve got a firearm up here. Looks like a .32-caliber.”

  Officer Shinjo had climbed onto the upper level of the closet. One of the forensics staff came and took photographs.

  Back in the bedroom, Kikuta doggedly went on with his own search, when he came across an unopened tube of Dior lipstick.

  The memory of Reiko’s lips came rushing back. The soft lips that had in an instant wiped out the childish jealousy he was feeling toward Ioka; the weight of her hands on his shoulders; the springiness of her breasts as they pressed against him; the smell of her hair; the smell of her skin; the long lashes of her closed eyes; the ears, so delicate when seen up close; the white nape of her neck.

  What did that kiss of hers mean?

  Had she just felt sorry for him when she saw how angry Ioka was making him and kissed him out of pity? Or was she giving him a signal about the direction she wanted their relationship to go? Which was it?

  It had happened twelve days ago. Reiko hadn’t mentioned it since. Nor had Kikuta.

  They saw each other at the morning meeting. After that, everyone dispersed and headed to their different tasks. Since Reiko was keeping an eye on Michiko Nakagawa and Kikuta was trying to track down Tobe, they never crossed paths during the day. They were both back at the station for the evening meeting. They always got back to the station just before the meeting kicked off at eight o’clock, so they didn’t have time to chat beforehand.

  Besides, Ioka was always tagging along after her. How could Kikuta discuss anything personal with him there? He knew he’d probably back off as soon as Ioka butted in, with some muttered excuse about it not being anything urgent.

  It was pathetic, but Kikuta knew how he was likely to behave.

  Back in high school, he’d only managed to come out and declare his feelings to one of the girls he had a crush on. It was at the school festival at the end of his third year. He’d been in a group of five boys and five girls who were playing a sort of Valentine’s game. He’d summoned up the courage to pin his rosette on the object of his secret love. She hadn’t responded well.

  Straight after finishing high school, he did his stint at the Police Academy. His first posting was the Senju Precinct. He seemed to spend a great deal of time going to hostess bars and soapy massage parlors, largely because his senior colleagues liked to go and he was expected to tag obediently along.

  There’d been this young officer in Traffic who told him straight out that she fancied him, but he’d sent out mixed signals, and it had gone nowhere. When a high school pal had asked him along on a group date, he’d hit it off with one of the girls there and promised to call her the next day—but he never did.

  It was after his transfer to the Omori Precinct that he finally had his first relationship at the age of twenty-four. The girl was the daughter of the landlady at a local bar he liked. Everything about her—her looks, her figure, her character—was average, normal.

  It was the mother who got the ball rolling.

  “Hey, Officer Kikuta, why don’t you take my daughter on a date? Seems like she’s got zero interest in men.”

  At first he thought the woman was joking, but he took the daughter for a date, and the two of them ended up going out. It lasted for about a year, until the bar shut down and the mother moved back to her hometown up north in Hokkaido, taking the daughter with her. He never saw the girl again. She wrote him for about a year. He only replied to her once, and the letters eventually stopped coming.

  That was the full and complete story of Kazuo Kikuta’s love life.

  “Is there something particularly suspicious about that lipstick?”

  Kikuta started at the sound of Kusaka’s voice. He must have been daydreaming. Looking over his shoulder, he saw all the investigators standing in a semicircle around him.

  “This? Uh, no.”

  In a panic, he tried to put the lipstick back in the drawer, but he was all thumbs. The tube shot out of his hand, hit the wall, rebounded, and hit Sergeant Toyama on the forehead.

  “Ouch.”

  “Sorry.

  “Get a grip, Kikuta.”

  It looked as though the search was well and truly over.

  * * *

  After the litmus test, Mikako Kobayashi was made to take a urine test in the apartment. When that also gave a positive result, she was arrested for possession and use of controlled substances.

  Lieutenant Kusaka watched the unmarked patrol car that was taking her to the station drive away. The forensics van soon followed. He ordered all the investigators to head back to the precinct.

  All except one, that is.

  “Want to grab a coffee with me, Sergeant Kikuta?”

  Kusaka clapped Kikuta on the shoulder and set off toward the main road.

  Kikuta was surprised. Kusaka had never spoken to him before. What the heck was going on?

  The two men walked side by side. Kusaka didn’t say anything. From the corner of his eye, Kikuta tried to read the other man’s face. Was Kusaka going to tear a well-deserved strip off him for daydreaming on the job? It didn’t look like it.

  “What is it, Lieutenant?”

  “What, can’t I invite a subordinate out for a cup of tea without having an agenda?”

  A subordinate?

  Kikuta was a sergeant in Homicide Unit 10. Kusaka was a lieutenant in the same unit. Technically, that made Kikuta his subordinate, even if he was part of a different squad. It was standard operating procedure—but Kikuta didn’t like it.

  In his mind, Lieutenant Reiko Himekawa was his only real boss. He had a good idea that his colleagues Yuda and Hayama felt the same way, though he wasn’t sure about Ishikura, who was older than the rest of them.

  Reiko and Kusaka were like oil and vinegar. Over the last few months, they’d conducted their investigations independently of one another. Since both squads produced good results, the higher-ups weren’t interested in knocking their heads together and forcing them to collaborate. If anything, they seemed to like the flexibility of the current arrangement. Kikuta knew that Reiko certainly liked it that way.

  Did Kusaka see things differently? If that was what Kusaka wanted to talk to him about, then Kikuta had some opinions of his own.

  “No, sir. Of course you can, sir,” mumbled Kikuta. He’d got off on the wrong foot and decided to try another tack. “By the way, Lieutenant, what exactly were you after in that search?”

  “Oh, nothing to
o specific,” said Kusaka, pressing his lips together. “I suppose I wanted to find some of Tobe’s fingerprints, although they’re not that important either.”

  “They’re not?”

  The vagueness of the reply took Kikuta by surprise. It was very much out of character. Kusaka’s was legendary for his hatred of woolly thinking.

  “What’s wrong, Sergeant? You can’t cope with the idea of going after something nonspecific?”

  “It’s not that, sir. It just seems … not very you.”

  Kusaka gave wry grin. That was out of character too.

  “You want to know exactly what I was after in there? I don’t know. Twist my arm, and my answer would probably be that I was looking for a motive—for why Tobe killed Takaoka. Finding that handgun is a kind of result, I guess. We know that Tobe had a gun, but the fact that he didn’t take it with him when he left his apartment suggests that the murder was unplanned, a spur-of-the-moment thing—which doesn’t really help us get any closer to his motives.”

  Kikuta broke into a smile.

  Kusaka gave him a jaundiced look.

  “Did I say something funny?”

  “Yes, sir … a bit.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just that I never thought of you as the kind of person who did anything ‘on the off chance.’”

  Kusaka grinned back at him.

  “A cop needs to have a sixth sense or intuition or whatever you want to call it. I accept that. I just think that it’s dangerous to follow your gut slavishly and narrow the focus of an investigation too far and too fast. Frankly, that’s what I worry about with Himekawa. I’m wondering when she’ll make some terrible mistake.”

  Kikuta was full of surprises today.

  “I’d no idea you felt that way about Lieutenant Himekawa.”

  “That’s probably because I’ve never verbalized it before. Maybe I’d never even thought it through properly until today. Believe me, having Himekawa steal a march on me is the last thing I’m worried about. I’m worried that someone might get hurt if her instincts take her in the wrong direction. That someone could be the suspect or the family of the victim; it could be Himekawa herself, or Hashizume or Imaizumi. If her instincts mislead her, she could end up wrecking people’s lives. Doesn’t that bother you?”