I tried to keep my voice level. I failed.
"No. I don't understand. You have information that you feel is so potentially helpful that you invited me all the way to California to hear it-and yet, you forbid me to use it? I don't pretend to understand. I don't."
She reacted physically to my words. Her neck tightened; her kneecaps came together. She composed herself-allowing her shoulders to sag back down half an inch-before she replied.
"Neither of us-neither you nor I-knows the value of what I'm about to tell you. If I knew with any certainty that this information would help you find the person who killed Mariko, I would have told this story to someone long ago. I'm willing to divulge it now only because my father is convinced that the organization you work for is sincere in attempting to find my sisters killer."
(t-t-v-r)1 We are.
"Good. Unfortunately, my story is not an answer for you in that quest.
It is not proof of anything. I don't know who killed Mariko and Tami. With my story, I am able to do nothing more than to point my finger at a trail the killer might have walked. No more than that, I'm afraid."
She was examining me as closely as I was examining her. I knew she could feel my reticence to accept her proposal.
She said, "If you don't agree I will try to understand your rationale for refusing my request. Then I will thank you for your journey and for your efforts and I will show you back to your car."
I weighed my alternatives and concluded I had little to lose. Any direction she could provide would be welcome. I contemplated how to respond to her for a moment before I said, "I could give you my word, Satoshi. But I would be misleading you by pretending to have authority that I don't really have. I don't have control of the information once I report it to Locard. To provide you with the guarantees you are requesting I need to run your request by someone much higher up in the organization than myself."
She tilted her head slightly, tucking her chin closer to her shoulder.
"Thank you for your honesty. You can do that by phone? Get that permission? You could do that now?"
"Yes"
"This way," she said. Before standing, she looked behind her, scanning the courtyard for something or someone whom she didn't appear to find. Finally she led me back to her office and sat me at her desk. I used my phone card to call A. J. Simes in Washington.
A. J. insisted on speaking with Satoshi before she reluctantly assented to Satoshi's demand for discretion. During the negotiation Satoshi was diplomatic but determined in pressing her case. After she was convinced she had the promise she needed from Simes she left her things in the office and removed the beret. I followed her from the classroom building to something like a student union. She bought a container of vanilla yogurt and carried it to a quiet table in a deserted corner of the cafeteria. She chose a seat that placed her back against a wall and began eating by lifting a tiny amount of yogurt on the tip of the spoon and placing it between her lips.
She repeated the act mechanically, taking baby bites over and over for a minute or two. I waited.
The table between us was laminated. The chairs we sat on were molded plastic.
My stomach growled and I considered getting up and buying myself something to eat, but I didn't want to fracture her mood.
Before she finally spoke Satoshi stood her spoon in the half-eaten yogurt and brushed a flurry of crumbs to the floor from the edge of the table. She arranged the salt and pepper shakers behind a grimy bottle of French's mustard.
A thick golden yoke had hardened around the squeeze top of the mustard bottle.
The three containers, once aligned, stood like soldiers at attention behind the chrome napkin holder.
Satoshi crossed her arms across her body, the fingertips of her hands gripping the big tendons between her neck and shoulders. The setting was so antiseptic that I found myself totally unprepared for what she had to say. Finally, she spoke.
"Joey Franklin. You know about Joey? Well, this is about Joey Franklin, Tami's younger brother. Do you know what became of him? He's become a big-shot golfer." The words "bigshot" sounded especially foreign coming from her mouth.
I said, "I know who he is."
She'd apparently worked through her hesitation. Her words began pouring forth in a strong voice.
"Joey… forced me to have sex with him one day shortly after school started in 1988. He was fifteen I think, maybe fourteen. I was thirteen."
She took a deep breath before she continued.
"The only person I ever told what happened that day… was Mariko. No one else. I told her what Joey did to me three days before she disappeared. Three days before… she was murdered.
"That is my story."
I was stunned but, for some reason, not surprised. I wanted to comfort her, but she appeared composed and tranquil. I forced myself to refrain from reaching out to touch her hand. I said, "I'm so sorry."
She shook her head.
"Don't. Don't misunderstand. I'm not seeking your compassion. This isn't about me. This is about Mariko. And about whoever killed her. Obviously, I have reason to fear it might have been Joey." "You said that Joey forced you to have sex with him. You didn't say he raped you." My reply seemed to please her. She said, "A curious distinction, right? This vantage that I have now, today-that of a grown woman-provides perspectives I didn't have when I was thirteen. At thirteen, I felt I had done something wrong.
That I had failed, somehow. That perhaps I had lured him into assaulting me. Or that I should have been more, I don't know, aggressive in repelling his advances. At thirteen, I was ashamed of what happened. You can appreciate that, I hope."
I hoped my face reflected the fact that I could appreciate it.
"Now? Now I'm older, maybe wiser. I feel that Joey took advantage of me. Was I raped? I'm not sure. Did he threaten me? No. Did he overpower me? Yes. Was I terrified? Absolutely."
"It sounds to me as though you were raped."
She lowered her chin and placed her hands on the table, her fingers spread, her eyes locked to her fingertips.
"Is it that easy for you? To listen to a few words someone says about something painful in her past and proceed to cast judgments about the motives and lives of others? People you have never met? Is it really that easy for you? I've lived with the consequences of what happened that day for almost half my life now and still it seems that the judgments I make about what occurred are no more constant than the clouds."
I considered my words for half a minute before I spoke.
"I don't mean to trivialize that struggle, Satoshi. I'm only reflecting back the reality of what you're saying Joey did to you."
She wasn't mollified.
"You and your organization are out looking for villains, Dr. Gregory. I've handed you one. Joey Franklin may indeed be an evil man. I know he did an evil thing to me when we were both children. Be careful with that knowledge. For you, Joey Franklin may be a villain and he may be the right villain. But he may also be the wrong villain."
Her anger was so tempered, so measured, that I didn't quite know how to understand it.
"Why now, Satoshi? Why bring this to light now?"
"Because you, and Locard, seem to care about what happened to my sister. That's why. I can offer you no proof of anything. If pressed, I couldn't even prove that Joey did to me what I am accusing him of doing. The only person I ever told about the…" She shook her head.
"The only person I ever told was Mariko.
She's not here. All I can do now is say, "Look over there." So that's what I'm saying. Go and look over there. I don't know what you'll find."
The line she was drawing may have connected two points, but it didn't feel straight. It was bent, as a beam of light is refracted by water.
"You've obviously given this a lot of thought, Satoshi. How do you figure it?
Why would Joey kill your sister and his own sister?"
She crossed her arms across her chest.
"I don't know the answer to that. I wonder, o
f course, if Mariko confronted him after I told her what he did to me.
Perhaps Mariko told Tami first and they confronted Joey together. The reality is that I'm as lost in the dark as you are." She paused and examined the fingers on her hands as though they were foreign objects.
"What happens… in the darkest places… what happens in the black space between confrontation and rage… is something I don't profess to be familiar with." "You never told your parents what you suspected?"
She looked up and almost smiled.
"I spoke once… of what happened… and my sister and her friend died within days. Why would I speak of it again?" Somehow her question was void of sarcasm.
"You feared for your parents' safety?"
"I was a child. I was in a strange country. I was in a new town. I'd been molested by a boy twice my size. My sister had disappeared. You wonder if I feared for my parents' safety? I feared everything-I feared that the sky would fall to the earth, that the oxygen would disappear from the air."
"Do you still fear for their safety? Is that why you insist on not telling anyone what you've told me?"
She looked around the room, her eyes jumping.
"Just as there are many kinds of safety, there are many ways to inflict pain.
For my parents, this would be a novel one. I have no desire to hurt them any more. I have lived too many years with the lingering suspicion that they already suffer the consequences of what happened to me, even though they don't even know it occurred. I don't wish to impale them on that sword and draw fresh blood." She shook her head.
"No. My parents won't learn of this."
A group of four students took a table across the room. They were loud as they settled. I watched Satoshi watch them. Within moments three of them were reading. The fourth was busy constructing a perfect cheeseburger. I leaned forward and whispered, "You seem to have already come to the conclusion that Joey was capable of killing your sister and Tami Franklin."
"Capable?" She shrugged and momentarily appeared puzzled by the word.
"The question isn't one that I've ever struggled with. He forced himself on me.
What I know is that he was capable of that."
I lowered my voice again.
"But whoever murdered your sister and f.ua
Tami also mutilated their bodies. If you are indirectly accusing Joey, then he has to be capable of that as well."
She nodded slowly. " Is that the larger sin, Dr. Gregory? The mutilation? Is that where everyone is still getting lost? Give me back my sister absent her toes-I'll take her gladly. Gladly. Tami with only one hand? I would welcome her in a second and every day I would caress her stump with lotion. And what about me, losing my virginity at thirteen? Rather irrelevant now, don't you think? The mutilations were distractions back then. And apparently the mutilations are distractions now. It's your responsibility not to be distracted"
"You said 'everyone is still getting lost." What did you mean?"
"The amputations. Tami's hand and Mariko's toes. It distracted everyone back then. It convinced them that a stranger was at work. Someone more evil than any of us could ever be. The mutilations cracked the mirror that they needed. The mutilations blackened the glass so the town couldn't look at itself, at its own reflection. Instead, they began sweeping back the brush, searching for psychopathic strangers and… we took comfort there. All of us."
I thought about the meaning of her words and the truth that was so near that surface.
I pushed my chair back from the table, maybe six inches, just to stretch my legs. Without reflecting long enough, I asked, "What about now, Satoshi? Have you been able to move on, too?"
Her eyes narrowed before they softened. Her chin rose a centimeter or so. She shook her head.
I didn't know how to interpret her expression or her refusal. Had she told me no, she wasn't able to move on, that perhaps she still wasn't able to trust or to love? Or was she telling me that no, she wasn't going to visit that territory with a stranger? I guessed the former, then in the next second, the latter.
Before I left Stanford to return to the airport, I asked Satoshi if she was frightened about something.
She touched her hair with her left hand, looked at me quickly, then away. She replied, "Is it that obvious?"
"While I've been here, you've seemed… I don't know… spooked. I'm not sure how obvious it is." She smiled at me and said, "Spooked? Is that a polite way of saying paranoid?"
I smiled back at her.
"I've been edgy since my father called and told me about you and what you were doing. I've been imagining all kinds of things. Phone calls with no one on the line. Strangers I think are following me around campus. Cars I don't recognize parked outside our apartment. Things like that. What I know-about Joey-it must be dangerous to someone, right?" I said, "Yes," and recalled what Sam had told me about sleeping dogs.
As we spoke we were walking in a circuitous route that would lead back to my car. For a few steps she even held my arm. I suspected that despite her reluctance, she needed to tell me the story about Joey.
She'd only met Joey Franklin twice before he raped her. Both times he had been with Tami and Mariko. Once in town at a store. Once at the Hamamoto residence.
Each contact had lasted only moments. Satoshi admitted that she found Joey to be attractive and charming.
The third time she saw Joey he had gone out of his way to find her. He'd been waiting for Satoshi after school, had offered to walk her home. When she explained that her mother would be waiting in the car, Joey had quickly said good-bye, said he'd see her around.
Joey Franklin was the first boy in Steamboat Springs who had shown any interest in the new Japanese girl in town. Satoshi thought he was handsome. She thought his attention was flattering. She not only wasn't alarmed when he joined her on her almost daily run later that afternoon, she welcomed his company.
"The first time we'd met I was just coming back from a run. He must have learned that I ran frequently. He must have known that I ran alone," she said.
"Joey was not a runner. He soon grew tired running with me. I slowed down but he couldn't keep up. He asked if we could stop to rest. We did. After a moment or two-it was awkward-he took my hand-gently-and he led me down a trail into the woods.
I thought it was a pretty place where we stopped. It reminded me of the hills in Japan where my grandparents live. Finally, we stopped to rest."
They sat on the ground, side by side, leaning back against a rounded boulder.
Above her, through the trees, the sky was beginning to lose its luster.
Satoshi was frightened-not of Joey Franklin, but in the way that a young girl is frightened the first time she is alone with a boy whom she likes. She felt that she was violating her parents' admonitions. She promised herself that she would sit with him for only a moment.
He told her she was pretty. She remembered that clearly. He told her that she was prettier than her sister. She remembered that, too. She'd never felt better than her big sister at anything.
Joey kissed her then. He was gentle with her. She remembered finding it difficult to breathe afterward, her excitement at the contact was so intense.
And she allowed him to kiss her again.
He touched her bare leg, her thigh, his fingers edging below her running shorts.
She was horrified and pulled away from him. She stood. He stood, too, towering over her. He took her by the hands and told her again how pretty she was. His voice was not so kind.
Joey Franklin leaned down and, once more, kissed her. As soon as their lips touched this time, she felt his tongue prodding into her mouth, and she turned her head away, surprised. He clamped down on her wrists with his strong hands.
She thought that she said, "No." He said, "Shhhh." The sound hissed.
"Five minutes later," Satoshi Hamamoto said, "I was no longer a little girl."
I didn't recall the drive north from Palo Alto to the San Francisco airport and didn't know how I had
managed to go through the machinations of turning in my rental car without remembering a single step of the process. But I had returned the car. I had a receipt to prove it.
At least fifty people were lined up at the podium in the terminal to check in for their nights. I shuffled my feet along patiently until my turn came, hardly noticing the delay. I didn't get upset when the apologetic agent began a laborious explanation that concluded with the punch line that my electronically ticketed reservation had disappeared into some hard-drive version of hell. Not only that, but the agent also informed me that the flight I had been scheduled on was now full. The agent plucked away at the keyboard in front of him for what seemed like an eternity before he smiled at me and said, "Good." I shrugged my shoulders, thanked him, and accepted the offer he made of a front-row window seat on the next departure.
All I had in my carry-on was a book, a magazine, Lauren's laptop, and a bottle of water. Spotting an electrical outlet on the wall near my departure gate, I lowered myself to the carpet, leaned against the wall, and plugged in the laptop. I had a lot I wanted to write about my interview with Satoshi Hamamoto and needed to conserve the battery for the flight back to Denver.
Once I'd booted up the computer and rested my fingers on the keys I was almost surprised when they didn't start flying across the keyboard on their own. But they didn't. I didn't write anything at first.
Where I was initially lost was in understanding Satoshi's adaptation to her own trauma. I wanted to go back and sit with her for many more hours. I wanted to be quiet and perch beside her until she was ready to descend into whatever cavern held her fears, and I wanted to guide her fingertips as she explored the contours of the fissures in her defenses. I wanted to perceive for myself the psychological accommodations she'd had to make to deal with the back-to-back blows of being raped and having her sister murdered.
I wouldn't have that chance, though.
I was left with what I had observed that afternoon. What was it that I had seen?
Satoshi was a smart, savvy, disarmingly honest young woman who was functioning at a high level at a university that demanded exemplary performance.
Freud said mental health was the capacity to love and the ability to work.
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