The Hunter

by Asa Nonami

  He took the key from her and lost no time jumping in the driver's seat. She climbed into the passenger seat uncomplainingly. Hunger and tension had combined to drive away her drowsiness, but she was so cold she couldn't stop shivering.

  "Damn, it's freezing in here," Takizawa said as he punched on the heater and switched on the wireless radio. Out of the radio came a stream of police messages transmitting back and forth in the area; out of the fan came a stream of warm air.

  "Now, if only we were done for the day." Waiting for the engine to heat up, Takizawa let this thought escape. Takako smiled wanly and looked out the window without comment. Finally Takizawa pulled out of the space, but once out the hospital gate, they were stuck in a traffic jam. On all sides were drivers who had set out despite the morning's snow, never thinking it would pile up to this extent.

  "Guys in the Traffic Division will have their hands full today," Takizawa said with a wry smile, looking out at the cars. He didn't seem in much of a hurry, inching the car along. As if remembering something, he looked over at her. "You've got dark circles under your eyes."

  "I do?"

  He twisted one side of his mouth in a wry grin and said, "Don't knock yourself out. I won't attack you or anything; get some sleep until we get back to the station. Lack of sleep is bad for your looks, I hear."

  "I'll be fine."

  "I knew you'd say that." This time he laughed out loud. "You ladies can't lie down and catnap anytime you want, the way we can. Go ahead and be stubborn if you want, but if you collapse when the crunch comes, others will catch the fallout. I'll tell you something: A woman who's always got something to prove isn't exactly adorable."

  "Adorable is not my style."

  "I noticed." Takizawa turned his gaze back to the road.

  I may have circles and bags under my eyes but what about you, face covered in bruises? Hah! We're like a couple of panda bears.

  Still, he meant well. He was trying to look out for her. But she'd resolved she wasn't going to let her guard down. Besides, she couldn't let go of what she'd witnessed in the ICU just now. That was the most pitiful suspect she had ever encountered in her entire career.

  Come to think of it, Kasahara was younger than her father, who would be sixty next year; yet Kasahara seemed far older, like a very old man. No peaceful, golden years for him. He faced arrest, indictment, trial, sentencing—and a long time in jail. Even if he was sentenced to death, it would take years before the sentence was upheld, the Minister of Justice affixed his seal to the papers, and the execution took place.

  Gale.

  Just as Kasahara would never see his daughter again, he'd never see his wolf-dog again. Even if they managed to capture the animal, the two of them would never live together again.

  "Sergeant Takizawa."

  Hearing his name, Takizawa looked at her in surprise. "What, you're not asleep?" he said.

  "You think Kasahara has any other family?"

  "I dunno. Probably somebody's checking it out."

  "What will become of Gale—the wolf-dog—after he's captured?"

  Takizawa folded his hands on the steering wheel and rested his chin on them. "Hmm," he said. "If we ever catch the dog, I suppose it'll be destroyed. The thing's killed two people."

  She was silent.

  "The wolf-dog is important evidence, so they'll probably keep it alive till the trial's over, at least."

  Then let the trial be a long one, she thought hazily. In killing two people, all Gale did was follow his master's orders. He was innocent. If there was anyone willing to take him in, let him live.

  "Ogawa.... Damn. Who's this Ogawa?" This slipped out from Takizawa.

  As she looked out the window at the snow-blanketed scenery, Takako slowly relaxed into drowsiness. On the verge of sleep, her eyes popped open. "Does the name mean something to you?"

  "I'm tryna think," Takizawa said. His swollen profile facing her, he still rested his chin on the steering wheel. Ahead, a flashing red light came into view. As their car slowly approached the scene, they could see that it was a police car. At the side of the road were three cars involved in a collision. Takizawa leaned over toward Takako's side of the car, checking out the accident and clucking his tongue in vague amusement.

  "There's always a joker who causes an accident like this. You can bet on it."

  Takako looked out at the uniformed officers walking around in leather coats and snow-covered caps. She didn't recognize either the officer with a measuring tape, his breath coming out in white puffs, or the officer talking to a driver. Small wonder. The MPD alone had 45,000 police officers. They were divided among eight different divisions—the Traffic Division, the Daily Life Safety Division, the Public Security Division, the Criminal Investigation Division, ... as well as adjunct institutions like the police academy. There had to be five thousand officers in each division. Nobody could remember that many faces.

  "It's not an uncommon name. I just have this nagging feeling like I've run into it recently." His interest in the accident quickly waning, Takizawa went back to muttering: "Ogawa, Ogawa ..."

  Please, let it not be another cop, thought Takako. Listening to Takizawa repeat the name over and over like a Buddhist chant, she grew sleepy again. A heavy, clinging drowsiness that made it hard to breathe. It wasn't supposed to be like this, she thought hazily. Once they identified the suspect and started to close in on the wolf-dog, her spirits were supposed to rise. She had been waiting for this moment. She had endured this emperor penguin of a partner for this moment. But now that they had come this far—and learned the name of the wolf-dog—her spirits were sinking.

  10

  The identity of the man named Ogawa was cleared up at the 4:00 meeting. One of the detectives who had been working on the background check of Teruo Hara said, "I wonder if that isn't Masanori Ogawa. He ran a company that manufactured and sold health equipment in the same building. He's the tenant that's been hounding the maintenance company for compensation for forced eviction."

  Takizawa slapped his thigh. That was it. Right after the investigation headquarters was set up, when they'd gone to the building maintenance company to check on the other tenants, he'd seen the name. It was one of the building tenants with no contact information posted on the door. Son of a bitch. I shoulda gone to see him. I mighta smelled something.

  "Do you know where this guy is now?"

  "The last time we talked to him was, let's see, two weeks ago."

  "What was your impression of him then?" Chief Wakita's voice was even, devoid of emotion.

  "There was nothing that struck me. He didn't talk too much or too little, and he acted calm. He said he thought he might have seen Teruo Hara before, but he had no idea there was a date club in the building. A skinny guy, kind of high-strung."

  "Masanori Ogawa ...," muttered Wakita, and looked at Takizawa. He had already heard the report that the burn patient in ICU identified himself as Kasahara, admitted to releasing the wolf-dog named Gale, and claimed his house was burned down by somebody named Ogawa. Naturally, the chief also knew that they didn't have a first name.

  Before Takizawa could say anything, Otomichi spoke up: "We'll go back to see Kasahara tonight." Looking at her erect posture, the profile gazing straight ahead, Takizawa quickly nodded in agreement.

  "We'll find out all we can about Ogawa," he said.

  "Do that," Wakita decreed matter-of-factly. Then he looked over at the Teruo Hara unit, standing dejectedly with their shoulders slumped as if responsibility for the time it took to come up with a suspect's name fell on them. Gently, he told them, "Go back over Ogawa. Find out the financial condition of his health equipment company, his history, his friends and family, anything you can. And of course, I want you to zero in on any connection he might have with benzoyl peroxide. I'm counting on you."

  Those four words—"I'm counting on you"—were a lifeline to the demoralized team members, as Wakita well knew they would be. The leader of the unit, a sociable, friendly guy named Matsus
hima, who kept the drinks poured at parties, now stood tensely and said, "Yes, sir!"

  Just then the door flew open and two detectives who were on the wolf-dog unit entered the meeting room. The train had been delayed by snow, they explained, still wearing their coats, bowing to the investigation leaders.

  "Katsuhiro Kasahara was adopted into his wife's family to carry on the wife's family name." With that one statement, it was clear that they had successfully traced Kasahara's identity. As they took off their coats, Takizawa realized that they had just gotten back from Kofu. Even if they were only doing their job, to go that far on a day like this was no simple jaunt. From all around came murmurs of appreciation.

  Without a chance to catch his breath, the team leader launched into his report: "Besides checking the police records, we were able to talk with several of Kasahara's former coworkers in the Identification Division, as well as with his ex-wife. It's a depressing story."

  This Sergeant Tada, who was good at karaoke, was a man like himself, thought Takizawa, with one difference. Where Takizawa was a bumbling speaker, self-conscious in front of others at meetings like this, Tada loved to speak in public; he had a lively style, like a storyteller. Having thus prefaced his remarks, Tada pulled his jacket down in a show of smartening his appearance. Then he began to relate Kasahara's history.

  Katsuhiro Kasahara, formerly Takagi, was from Akishima, Tokyo Prefecture, and the house that burned down was his family home. He was the youngest of four siblings, two brothers and a sister; the two brothers were deceased and the sister was in a hospital, in the final stages of terminal cancer. On graduating from high school he had taken the qualifying test for the MPD and failed; the following year he passed the test to join the Yamanashi Prefectural Police Department. At age twenty-three he had a formal meeting with his boss's daughter, as her prospective groom. Because she was an only child, and Kasahara was the third son, it was agreed that he would be adopted into the Takagi family, thereby taking their surname as his own. Any children born to the couple would thus carry the wife's family name.

  "We spoke to many people, and we got the distinct impression there was nothing remarkable about him, that he had a very unassuming disposition. People were surprised he wanted to be a cop in the first place. They described him as relatively bland, not hot-blooded at all, even kind of a weakling, although they said when you got to know him he had a good heart. Overall he was the type who liked to plug away at things by himself. Not a ruffian. In short, a very serious type. Some called him eccentric. Everyone who knew him was in shock. They said, to the one, they couldn't believe he would do something like this."

  Tada looked down at his notebook with a small sigh. Even with small gestures such as this, the man's timing was perfect, thought Takizawa. As he listened, he thought he might try to imitate Tada's style the next time he had to speak in front of a group. Next to him, Otomichi was scribbling notes assiduously. For almost an hour before the meeting started, she had disappeared. When she came back, the circles under her eyes were gone. Aware he was looking at her, she had moved her prim, cold mouth in the shadow of a smile, as if to say, Well? Nothing about me to betray weakness now, is there? Yeah, whatever. That's what makes dames so scary, he thought. They disguise themselves expertly. He had shrugged his shoulders at her.

  "Taking all this into consideration, it seems almost inevitable that Kasahara would request a job in the Identification Division. He was diligent and something of a perfectionist, someone who could be relied on to do his job. When he was twenty-nine he was put in charge of the canine unit, and he kept that position until he quit the force."

  He quit for personal reasons; that was all anyone knew. But finally one of his coworkers spoke up and said it was because of Kasahara's daughter. When she was in middle school, she developed a rebellious streak and went off the rails, turned delinquent.

  "I have to say that it was not at all easy interviewing members of our own profession. They understood what we have to do, of course, but they weren't willing to open up. Even though it was more than ten years ago when they knew him, they still felt a brotherly bond with him, and I'm sure they hated to drag the Yamanashi Prefectural Police Department through the mud, too...."

  Whether from an excess of self-confidence or self-awareness, Tada's report contained a lot of such unnecessary comments. Get to the point, Takizawa was thinking, when beside him he heard a little sigh. He looked over surreptitiously and saw Otomichi's long-lashed profile, her eyes staring down at the notebook in front of her. That alone was enough to make him feel uncomfortable. He remembered stealing looks at her sleeping face in the car a short while ago, as he drove through the snowy streets. Asleep, the stubborn lady cop had looked like any ordinary girl.

  Her long neck, wrapped in a light-colored scarf, had seemed uncannily white, as if lit by the glow of the snow. Her exhausted, colorless face was turned away from Takizawa, her eyes closed as if she was dead. Even though he had done nothing wrong, Takizawa began to feel like he was imposing a terrible burden on her, asking impossible things; for no reason he felt guilty, disgusted with himself. When you came down to it, however you looked at her, Otomichi was a woman. He could only think that before she was his partner, or a cop, or an investigator, or anything else, she was a creature utterly unlike him: a woman.

  What can you do?

  Muttering the words to himself, Takizawa had gripped the wheel with a pang of peculiar sadness. This was why he didn't want a woman for a partner in the first place, damn it all.

  Now her lone sigh had revived all the awkwardness of that moment.

  ". . . Kasahara had three children, of whom the youngest, a girl named Emiko is—as I think you all know now—a key figure in this case, it's fair to say. Emiko's name is written with Chinese characters that can be read 'laughing child,' a meaning that has turned out to be ironic."

  As Tada promised, this was getting depressing. For Takizawa and everyone else, too overworked to spend time with their families, the topic hit uncomfortably close to home. It was especially hard for Takizawa to sit through this, given that his face still bore the marks of his son's punch the previous night.

  It's because you're like that—that's why Mom left!

  The kid didn't know what the hell he was talking about, shooting off his mouth like that. Anyway, don't call her Mom, he thought. Whatever made her do it, that woman walked out on her three children to be with another man. A real mother would give her life to protect her children, but she leaves them with me, like I don't have enough to do already, and whines, I want to be happy, too. The reason I bawled out my kid in the first place was—hold it, you're at work now.

  Takizawa hastily banished his son's voice from his thoughts and tuned back in to the report.

  ".. . and so she followed what you might call the typical path, first dropping out of school, then getting high on paint thinner, followed by shoplifting and then acting out physically at home. Time and time again she ran away from home, and in the end she was taken into police custody. She was also seen with the local gang of hot-rodders. Kasahara may have thought that these difficulties at home made it impossible for him to go on with his career as an officer of the law, and so he made the decision to request early retirement. That's the impression we received, at any rate. Now—"

  "Okay," interrupted the chief, "another unit will be reporting on Emiko Takagi, so skip the rest about her. Anyway, there's no doubt that Kasahara is Katsuhiro Takagi, is that right?"

  Looking somewhat disappointed, Tada was forced to nod, and then rustled the pages of his notebook as if to reestablish his self-importance. "Yes, there's no question. Katsuhiro Kasahara, a.k.a. Katsuhiro Takagi, took the surname Takagi through marriage, becoming the adopted son of his wife's father, and then got divorced, thereby reverting to his original name of Kasahara."

  Takizawa had thought this Tada guy was similar to him, but he'd been wrong. Nobody this pompous and theatrical could resemble him in the least.

  "Takagi rever
ted to the surname Kasahara three years ago, which was after his purchase of the wolf-dog. But it was only one year after leaving the police force that he separated from his wife and children."

  According to Kasahara's ex-wife, Akiko, after retiring from the police force, her husband became a different person. He couldn't settle into a new job, quitting time and again in a matter of months; nothing he put his hand to lasted; he started drinking; and, in the end, he had bouts of violence with greater and greater frequency. His father-in-law, who was also his former boss, spoke to him more than once; but even if Kasahara bowed his head at the time and apologized, afterward he went right back to drinking and being physically abusive. While this was happening, his youngest daughter, who had calmed down for a while, ran away from home again, and this time they didn't find her right away. Kasahara had scolded his wife viciously, blaming her for everything—even for his having to quit his job.

  "He was out of control, his ex-wife said. So she took the other two children with her back to her parents' home. Emiko was found after that—but more on that later. Anyway, one day about nine years ago, without so much as a word to his ex-wife, Kasahara moved off somewhere by himself. She never heard from him again until suddenly one day, this would be three years ago, divorce papers arrived in the mail."