The Hunter

by Asa Nonami

  "On the victim's body, fairly recent scars were found on the right thigh and left ankle. These scars were detectable because of the lesser degree of burns on the lower half of the body, and may be key clues to the victim's identity. They appear to be bites made by a fairly large breed of dog."

  Nothing about dog bites had been mentioned before.

  Bitten twice, and then burned to death.

  Poor guy. Talk about lousy luck. Takako mused: Did he think to himself, why me? Or did he maybe think, I reap what I sow?

  What kind of man was he to make someone want to light him afire like that? What could he have done to incur that much enmity? What about the dog bites? Were they accidental, or some part of the plot, too? Was it a wild dog? In Tokyo that'd be bizarre.

  "After this, we'll announce partners and the tasks each team is assigned. When your name is called, stand up and see who your partner is, and then get moving. Wrap up by 10:00. We'll meet back here again at 11:00. This meeting is adjourned."

  The newly designated desk sergeant began to call out names, the room echoing with the sounds of men getting to their feet. It was 6:00 and day had turned to night. Since they were getting this late a start, they weren't likely to come up with much tonight.

  "Officer Otomichi, Third Mobile Investigative Unit," the sergeant called out, and Takako stood up. When the next name was called, she found a short, stout, middle-aged man standing and looking at her. His mouth was twisted, as if he were out of sorts. Would he come on hot or cold? He didn't seem the in-between type.

  Giving him a tentative smile, Takako made her way to the exit. In the corner of her eye, she saw the short figure heading the same way. In the corridor, she and her partner would meet and confirm their assignment, along with everyone else; then they would all fan out into the night.

  "I'm Otomichi," Takako said to him. "Pleased to meet you." She offered him her name card and bowed politely.

  He accepted the card without a word and stared at her, unblinking. "You're huge," he finally said.

  It was his only comment. The short, heavyset man proceeded to walk ahead of her, a black leather coat thrown over his shoulders.

  5

  As soon as she got back to her apartment that night, Takako rushed to the John. It was just rounding 1:30 a.m. When the meeting ended, it was already past 12:30. Now she was sleepy and tired, and even colder and hungrier than she'd been the day before—but worse than that, after going so long without peeing, she was putting herself at risk for a bladder infection. Already there were signs.

  Just what I need.

  When she was twenty-three or so, just getting started as a police officer, Takako had come down with a bladder infection. After that, whenever she got chilled or her resistance was low, the infection would come back. It wasn't worth staying in bed over, and the discomfort was nothing she could complain about out loud; yet if she ignored the prickly, dreary symptoms, they wouldn't go away. She had suffered quite a bit over this. A friend told her of an effective Chinese herbal medicine, and she kept taking it for more than six months until, she thought, she was cured. To have the condition recur at a time like this would be a nightmare.

  Be that as it may.

  Rubbing her cold lower back, Takako let out a small sigh. What a guy to get stuck with! That old veteran Takizawa seemed to think she was the enemy. After mumbling "You're huge," he managed to go all evening without addressing another word to her. She had given him her name card, but he never bothered to give her his. Typical male behavior in this male-dominant society; rare to find someone so blatant about it, though. Thanks to him, from the time they left headquarters at 6:00 p.m. till they stopped four hours later, she had not been able to say she needed a toilet break. If she came down with a bladder infection now, it was his fault.

  Try saying a thing like that. Moth to a flame. That's just what he'd love to hear.

  Coming out of the John, Takako stepped right into the tub. As her body warmed, she was able to breathe more deeply, and then she succumbed to a great big yawn. Takizawa had called her "huge," but at five feet five inches she was certainly not a towering figure, not nowadays. Her body shimmered palely in the silken hot water. She ran her palms over her body, from her breasts to her belly, and then grasped her feet by the toes, stretching her legs, saying out loud, "It's because you're a shrimp, isn't that it?"

  This weariness she felt was due less to the investigation than to mental exhaustion. Tonight, all their poking around in the vicinity of the fire had yielded nothing important; didn't look like anybody else had any success either. What would tomorrow bring? The desk personnel would be sleeping over at headquarters tonight, no doubt, reviewing all the reports and yanking their hair out. Anyway, before things really got hectic, she needed to get a grip on this incipient bladder infection.

  I’ll be damned if I let that old fart get the better of me.

  The short, dumpy Takizawa had to be in his mid-forties. He was just about the same height as she, but when he stood in front of her, she got an eyeful of his thinning hair plastered to the top of his head. He might not be taken with her, but she for her part felt a visceral aversion to types like him.

  His skin was rough and oily, his teeth stained yellow with nicotine, and over a bulbous nose, his eyes looked sneaky. He gave off an air of suspicion and an annoying doggedness; you could just tell he was one of those crusty cops who worked his way up the hard way. His style of walking, hurling himself along with his coat open at the front and his paunch sticking out, made him look like an emperor penguin. The short legs only added to the effect. Or maybe he looked more like a seal standing erect? Not, in any case, somebody she would ever want to be caught dead with, if she had the choice.

  Why did they pick him for my partner? No way we can be any good together.

  Takako did have a policy of doing what she could to establish a bond with the detectives she was teamed with. Sometimes she even allowed herself to form a quasi-romantic attachment. That way, she felt a renewed vigor in her attitude toward work and was able to tolerate the strain more easily. This time, liking the guy was not going to be so simple. Besides, if she tried too hard to act friendly toward him, it would backfire. A man like that was incapable of seeing a woman as anything but not a man. He would never see her as a partner, only as a freak.

  I have to make sure I don't let him get anything on me.

  Resting her head on the edge of the tub, Takako sighed. Starting tomorrow, she would put on thick long Johns and take a disposable pocket warmer with her. Good grief, men and women were made differently, so what was the big deal if a woman took longer in the restroom? And yet she dreaded being told, "That's the trouble with a woman."

  She was going to have to come up with some way to communicate with this emperor penguin. Find a way he would accept her as a true partner, not as a woman but as a colleague.

  How can I wear him down? His family? A hobby? Don't fawn, but don't come off as stubborn.

  What a bore, hammering out a strategy just to get along with a man like that.

  If she had to think about men, why did it have to be about one who was burned to a crisp and another who was a little emperor penguin? Why not somebody normal? Yet she couldn't afford the luxury of girlish daydreams. New cases were always cropping up, she couldn't lose her edge. Her friends from junior college seemed to assume that, surrounded by men all day every day as she was, she had her pick of the lot, but she had neither the time nor the inclination for any entanglements. Having once been betrayed by someone she loved, even if Takako did come into daily contact with responsible men with a strong sense of justice who did their jobs faithfully and had firm physiques—very models of masculinity—she was rarely moved by them. Her ex had been the classic athlete type who traded on his charm.

  They're all the same under their skin.

  The next day, at 9:00 a.m., there was a half-hour meeting, after which everyone took off in teams. For the most part, investigators were continuing to work on learning t
he victim's identity, or searching for previous offenders with a similar MO, or trying to trace the manufacturer of the explosive device. It fell to Takako and Takizawa—who wore the same scowl on his face, same cigarette dangling from his mouth—to compile the eyewitness reports. Once again, Takizawa started to scurry off by himself; today, in rumpled clothes not changed from yesterday, he seemed soiled, even oilier in appearance; maybe he'd been out drinking last night. He offered no response to Takako's "Good morning."

  Bet he was out complaining to his buddies about getting stuck with me.

  As she walked alongside him, hurrying her stride to match his pace, Takako completely forgot that the night before, she had spent time trying to figure out how to start a conversation with this man, how to draw him out. He was beyond her; he was someone she could never learn to like.

  They were on the way to the two hospitals where restaurant workers and customers injured in the fire were undergoing treatment. Of the twenty-two originally hospitalized, three had been released the previous day. Takizawa and Takako had traveled to interview each of them at home last night. All three had been customers at the restaurant, and because all three lived far from Tachikawa, the pair had been unable to accomplish anything else.

  The two hospitals were near the scene of the fire. By noon, Takizawa and Takako had to file an interim report with the desk. At that point, depending on what new information came in from other teams, the investigation might take a new tack, so questioning of the remaining patients needed to be finished this morning; she assumed Takizawa understood the urgency.

  But who knows—since he won't say a word to me.

  Takizawa, the senior partner of their team, had been proceeding according to his own judgment, and all Takako could do was follow along. She had made up her mind that when he did speak to her—whenever that might be— she would be prepared to give a clear, concise answer. Until then, she would silently go wherever he did.

  Six customers—four male and two female—and two male restaurant workers, all with relatively mild injuries, were staying in the first hospital. After introducing themselves to the attending physician, Takizawa and Takako visited each of the six. All said pretty much the same thing:

  "What did he look like? I don't know. Just a man."

  "By the time I saw him, he was already in flames. All I could think about was trying to escape."

  "The first thing I heard was—I think it was a young waitress screaming. I thought, what's going on, and I tried to see. Stuff was beginning to catch fire."

  A college student who had broken his arm escaping the fire kept glancing at Takako as he answered Takizawa's questions. "I was in the no-smoking section, you know, way across the room? So I couldn't really tell what the hell was going on. I never thought it would turn into such a big deal—then before I know it, somebody's on fire, jumpin' around, and I'm like, wow! It was like a TV show or somethin', know what I mean?"

  Everyone, whatever the level of language used, was of the mind that the fire had indeed erupted from the person of the victim himself. Interestingly, when they spoke of their surprise and terror, all of the witnesses, not just the student, seemed oblivious to the physical pain they themselves had suffered.

  "So, yeah, I almost lost it," the student went on. "I mean, it got really wild in there. Pretty soon there's all this screaming, and black smoke coming out of everywhere. It stunk to high heaven, and my eyes were, like, all scratchy."

  "Did he say anything, the man who was on fire?" asked Takizawa.

  "I already told all this to somebody yesterday."

  "Run it by me again, will ya? I'm hearing it for the first time."

  "He kept shouting 'I'm on fire! Help!' Over and over. But there was nothing anybody could do."

  "I’m on fire! Help!' Got it. Anything else?"

  "Um—he made a sound like a wild animal. A kind of bellow, like Uaaugh."

  "Uaaugh."

  "You're writing that down, too?"

  "Yep. Now tell me this—how was it you happened to be out getting something to eat at that time of night? "

  Takizawa conducted the entire interview by himself, without the least regard for Takako's presence. She took her own notes and stood behind Takizawa, observing the student's demeanor as he talked. It was better if she kept her mouth shut and her eyes open. By standing at a distance and watching, she might pick up something from an expression or a gesture.

  When he finished answering Takizawa's questions, the student looked over at Takako. "What about her? Is she a cop, too?"

  Takako crinkled her eyes in a smile, but Takizawa didn't turn around. "Yeah, you could say so," he mumbled.

  "Wow. A woman cop." The student stared at her with frank fascination.

  Then Takizawa closed his notebook loudly and said, "See, it's like this. John Q. Citizen is such an old goat, he won't talk unless it's to a pretty girl."

  The student absorbed this absurd explanation with great seriousness. Takizawa, checking the gold watch on his thick, hairy arm, added, "The police department has to offer good customer service."

  "That makes sense," the student said.

  "Even if she is just an ornament, it's better having her around than not, am I right?"

  As they left the hospital, Takizawa again took off at top speed. Takako thought she heard him mutter something under his breath about a "smartass kid," but she didn't ask him to repeat it. He kept up such a fast pace, it was as if he wanted to wear her out.

  Ignoring me wasn't enough, now he has to harass me? I know, as far as he's concerned, I'm not even a shadow. I'm an ornament.

  Takako was determined to keep pace with Takizawa. Along the cold back streets, the only sound was the echo of their quickened footsteps. This was his turf, he knew all the shortcuts. Of course, he didn't bother to tell her whether they were turning right or left. This stubborn cop would just as soon lose her along the way.

  There were still remnants of New Year's in the stores and in front of the prefab apartment buildings. As Takako noticed their shadows on the walls, for some reason her family came suddenly to mind. After her marriage, her parents and younger sisters moved from the overcrowded, older area of Tokyo where they used to live to a new housing development in Saitama Prefecture, where lately Takako had made herself a stranger. That town, that neighborhood, would never feel like home to her.

  She and Takizawa went down several alleys and across a trunk road to the second hospital, where among the remaining casualties from the fire, four were being treated for serious injuries. Among them was the part-time waitress who'd taken the victim to his seat. She might well be his last human contact before he died. So it was especially important to see her today. And the other three, too, because they might have been close to the action.

  Before knocking on any doors, Takizawa again sought out the attending physician, but the reception they were accorded was much less cordial here than at the previous hospital.

  "I cannot have this," said the doctor testily, showing signs of strain. "It was bad enough yesterday with you people demanding answers from casualties who were still in shock."

  "Come on, Doc, don't be mad, okay? This is hard on us, too. Please. Let's work together, all right?"

  With an ingratiating smile, the likes of which he had never favored Takako with, Takizawa attempted to clap the slender physician—a good four inches taller than him—on the shoulder. But the white-coated physician, who looked to be under thirty, dodged his hand as if it were filthy.

  "You people want the answers you want, but our job here is to look after the patients. Now, listen. Of the four patients from the fire in this wing, two are severely burned. If we're not careful, they could go into secondary shock any time."

  "Yes, sir, I understand. Secondary shock"

  "It could easily be fatal. And Masayo Kizaki, in particular, is suffering great emotional shock."

  "I understand. You mean that on top of her emotional shock, she could now go into secondary shock."

&n
bsp; "Of course, we'll do everything in our power to keep that from happening. Which is exactly why I cannot have you prowling around at a time like this."

  "Absolutely. Of course not. All I need is ten minutes—five—with each person. It'd be really helpful if I could see Kizaki. Please, Doc. She is conscious, isn't she?"

  "I'm saying, wait—until—her—condition—stabilizes." The young physician punched his words out.

  Takizawa, although he kept his eyes down respectfully and repeated, "I understand," was not about to admit defeat. "Nobody wants to see her go into shock, that'd be terrible," he said. "By all means, Doc, take good care of her. But you gotta understand—we have a job to do, too. We gotta get her statement as soon as we can, so we can go out and nail the guy who did this to her."

  Ignoring the young doctor's undisguised scorn, Takizawa looked up at him and plowed right on. Was this insensitivity, Takako wondered, or sheer audacity? "Down the road, there's no telling how crucial Masayo Kizaki's testimony could be. You read the papers, don't you, Doc? That fire was no accident. It was a homicide, and there could have been a lot more victims than one. We won't take long, I promise. Five minutes—ten, tops—that's all I ask. From each of the four under your care."