Deadly Anniversaries

by Marcia Muller

  Once in the building, Mas saw the living room had been transformed into an intimate sanctuary. Since they were early, the three rows of padded chairs, maybe five in each row, were all empty. A Butsudan, the Buddhist altar, was up front. It was encased in a black lacquer box, its doors open to reveal an ornate gold interior. In the middle was a screen with the image of the Buddha. In front of the Butsudan was a long covered table, which held the familiar Hiroshima Peace Flame lantern, a small container of black incense ash, and an incense burner encased in a gold urn.

  Mas was wheeled to the front row, where one of the chairs was promptly removed to make room for him. He grimaced. His place was usually in the back row, but with his recent disabled status he often found his broken body on full display. As the minister and Dr. Fujii engaged in some nonsensical small talk, Mas took in the small room. A light blue floor rug had been laid over the hardwood floor. Thick curtains covered the long wood-framed windows. The white walls remained unadorned, giving Mas the impression that he could as well be in an insane asylum instead of a makeshift house of worship.

  There was one doorway to the right-hand side that led to a darkened hallway. He then noticed the small handwritten sign in both Japanese and English, TOILET, and an arrow pointing down the hall.

  What a peculiar space, Mas thought. This sanctuary must have once been the dining and living room. Usually in old bungalows like this, there would have been access to a kitchen. He assumed that there was a kitchen someplace, perhaps connected to the hallway to the right.

  More people entered the room. Mas recognized the photographer of the local Japanese American newspaper, a burly Mexican man named Mario. He entered with a young Asian woman wearing a T-shirt with the message, No More Nukes. Two other chairs in the front row had been taken away to make room for two more wheelchairs.

  “Arai-san, it is so good to see you again.” An elderly Japanese woman with an unruly bush of hair stood in front of Mas. Her cheeks were sunken and gray. She did not look well.

  He couldn’t remember the woman’s name, but he recalled her story. She had been in her mother’s belly when the bomb fell. She was Dr. Fujii’s longtime patient—perhaps a distant relative.

  “Miiki,” she said, her surname, and Mas appreciated the reminder.

  He lowered his head and managed the best bow he could sitting down.

  “Mom.” A woman who might have been his daughter’s age, in her fifties, addressed Miiki-san. This woman, however, didn’t have a middle-aged paunch. She was all skin and bones. A walking skeleton. Mas didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but there was something about her that he’d seen before.

  Mas had known addicts in his day. Those who were strung out on hiropon, heroin, during the Occupation, and also more recently the children of his close friends, who had succumbed to the easy relief from psychic pain. Mas himself was not into relief. If he chased after relief, that would be admitting that he was in pain.

  Miiki-san didn’t seem happy to see her daughter, but she still managed to introduce her to Mas. “Arai-san, this is my daughter, Stacie.”

  He again bowed toward the woman, but Stacie didn’t seem interested in making Mas’s acquaintance. Instead, her attention was focused on getting her mother situated in a chair in between two others in wheelchairs in the front row.

  “Stacie.” Dr. Fujii approached, and Mas couldn’t help but notice that the daughter’s jaw immediately tightened.

  “Hello, Obasan,” she said. Obasan was an honorific that could mean aunt, but as far as Mas knew, the two were not closely related. Dr. Fujii was originally from Hiroshima before making her home and practice in Los Angeles. She might be in her early sixties, barely that much older than the emaciated Stacie. Dr. Fujii was obviously a respected figure in Miiki-san’s family circle.

  The priest sat on a stool next to the open Butsudan, a sign that the ceremony would start. Stacie took the seat next to Mas. Another man in a wheelchair sat on her other side.

  The chanting commenced. Because of Genessee, Mas had converted to Christianity, but Buddhism and a bit of what he referred to as Mother Nature were still in his blood. The smell of incense transported him to a lonely space in his mind, where he ran barefoot on the tatami floors of his childhood home in Hiroshima.

  An usher directed people, starting with those in the back row, to offer incense. They went up, one after another, bowing in front of the altar, taking a pinch of incense from a round container, dropping it into the burner, and bowing again.

  Finally it was Mas’s row. The first one was a woman in a fancy motorized wheelchair that she operated with controls on the machine’s arm. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and gloves, which was unusual for a Japanese woman inside of a Buddhist temple, but to each her own. Mas could not see her well enough to judge her age, but he wondered if she might be a fellow hibakusha. Going up with a large pocketbook in her lap, she clutched at a large handkerchief as big as a napkin. In Mas’s opinion, these kinds of memorials attracted the most dramatic individuals.

  Miiki-san was next. She bowed deeply in front of the altar and the Peace Flame lantern. She brought her ojuzu, her Buddhist rosary, with her. She seemed especially touched by today’s proceedings, the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Was that a tear running down her wrinkled face? Mas could have sworn that he saw her gnarled hands trembling as she pinched a large dab of the incense and then released it into the urn.

  Next was the man in a wheelchair. He wore a newsboy cap and also gloves, in spite of the August heat. He even had a blanket on his lap. Miiki-san’s daughter, Stacie, got up to wheel the man to the table, and Mas wondered how they knew each other. After they exchanged words and readjusted his blanket a number of times, they offered incense together.

  Dr. Fujii got up from the second row to push Mas to the Peace Flame. The lantern itself was a single gold cylinder with a scalloped top reminiscent of the petals of the lotus blossom. It was extraordinary that it still flickered light after all these decades. It wasn’t from 1945, but the 1960s, when the Peace Park in Hiroshima had been constructed. That was still something. Mas went to pinch some incense, but the container had been pushed back—it was almost hidden behind the Peace Lantern—and he could not reach it. Dr. Fujii, without expression again, calmly pulled the bowl closer to Mas. He pinched and then threw the powder into the burner. That’s where such memories of horror should go—into the incinerator.

  After they returned to their places, the minister began to speak. He spoke in both English and Japanese, and Mas, who usually tuned out when moments became too somber, could barely follow what he was saying in either language. Something about they must pray for peace and never forget.

  While the minister continued, a strange wind blew into that tiny room and Mas, his eyes on the eternal flame, watched it as it flickered in and out. He pointed at it with his grizzled index finger, shaped like a dying branch, attempting to alert the others about the dying light.

  There was a commotion at his side, and a scream.

  “Please, someone help my mother!”

  Mrs. Miiki had collapsed onto the floor.

  Dr. Fujii quickly came to her assistance with her black medical bag. “Call 911!” she called out. As the minister pulled a cell phone from his robe and began tapping on the screen, she added, “And please give me a little privacy with my patient.”

  Those in the front, aside from Mas, moved quickly away. He watched as Dr. Fujii removed a stethoscope from her black bag and began to check her patient’s heartbeat. She put on a pair of gloves, then seemed to hold something underneath Mrs. Miiki’s nose. Did Mrs. Miiki’s body heave slightly? Mas couldn’t trust what he was seeing.

  Finally Dr. Fujii rose. “Miiki-san is dead. No one leave!” She said it with such authority that no one dared disobey.

  The crowd was in a state of disbelief and a murmur circled the small room, escalating into actual words:
“What?”

  “Nani?”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “She was standing right in front of us a few seconds ago.”

  Dr. Fujii quickly peeled off her gloves and put them in a plastic bag that was returned into her black bag. She seemed surprised to find Mas beside her, and she quickly wheeled him away toward the back row, where everyone else had congregated.

  “Mr. Mario, please photograph the body.”

  The photographer first hesitated; he obviously did not come here to record a corpse, but he reluctantly snapped the shutter of his camera, barely looking at his subject.

  “We will wait until the police come,” Dr. Fujii said.

  The small crowd was too traumatized to make a fuss. The daughter’s reaction was odd. She seemed shocked, as she well should. But she didn’t seem bereaved. She sneaked a glance at the man in the newsboy cap; he responded by awkwardly turning his head toward the other direction. Mas watched the other stranger in her motorized wheelchair. She hadn’t snapped her purse shut, and it had come open to reveal that it was completely empty. How curious, thought Mas.

  The man wearing the cap was becoming extremely agitated. “I need to get out of here,” he murmured. Stacie bent down, whispered in his ear and rolled him toward the TOILET sign.

  “I needsu to go to bathroom,” Mas announced in English, loud enough for Mario to hear. He gestured toward the hallway.

  The photographer responded accordingly and pushed Mas to the closed bathroom door.

  Loud voices began to sound from the bathroom. Were the couple fighting?

  Mario frowned and bent his head toward the door. Obviously his busybody journalistic instincts were kicking in.

  The door swung open. The man was the first to run out, abandoning his wheelchair, followed by Stacie, who was spitting out a string of obscenities.

  Mas saw the blanket on the tile floor covered in some kind of dusty ash, which looked like incense. In fact, the incense container lay in the corner. But hadn’t Mas himself offered incense from that same container, the one beside the Peace Flame lantern? The photographer was now in full paparazzi mode and furiously snapping pictures.

  “You two get out of there.” Dr. Fujii chased Mario away and swung Mas’s wheelchair away from the bathroom door.

  When they reentered the sanctuary, the paramedics and police had arrived. A woman and man in blue jumpsuits and white masks were checking Mrs. Miiki’s prostrate body, while Stacie and her male companion were yelling and were being subdued by police officers. The crowd was told to evacuate the building and wait in the front yard.

  Eventually Stacie and the man, their wrists secured in plastic ties, were taken out of the building by police escorts and placed in black-and-white squad cars. By this time three fire trucks, a hazardous waste unit vehicle, and coroner’s van were parked outside the humble temple, while a couple of bicycle cops stood by the jizo statues. This anniversary had turned into an Armageddon.

  “Do you think it’s sarin?” Mas overheard the no-nukes girl ask Mario.

  “You got me.” Mario looked sick to his stomach as he told her he’d called in the story to his editor, who was attempting to get more details from the LAPD watch commander.

  Mas himself wasn’t feeling too good. Had the daughter intentionally killed her mother, with some kind of toxin? For what purpose? It probably involved money, and perhaps money to feed her drug habit.

  How did they get the poison into Miiki-san’s body? Mas pictured the incense container on the floor of the bathroom. Stacie had been the one who had strategically placed her mother in a seat in between the two in wheelchairs. That had been no accident.

  The woman in the wide-brimmed hat had steered her wheelchair to the far end of the walkway, near the sidewalk. As Mas watched, she seemed farther and father down, as if she was making a very slow and discreet getaway.

  “Police!” Mas was surprised at the volume of his voice. He didn’t think that he could yell that loud. “Watch her.” He again pointed, the second time today.

  A female bicycle cop pedaled toward the woman in the wheelchair, who, in response, activated the control’s acceleration mode. The broken sidewalk barred her fast exit and in fact the wheels skipped and bounced, leaving her literally stuck in a concrete hole. She must have really been disabled as she didn’t get up to run like Stacie’s male partner. She was soon surrounded by a handful of uniformed officers.

  Mas waited in the walkway underneath the shade of the porch roof by the stone jizo for what seemed like hours. He did a stare-down with one jizo that was dressed not only in an apron and knit cap, but also a scarf. Staring was futile, of course, as the jizo’s eyes were already closed.

  During the course of the afternoon, he overheard a number of theories of how the murder had been committed. Mas had a good idea which one was correct. The woman in the big hat had carried the drug in an identical incense pot—standard issue among Buddhist temples—inside her large pocketbook and set it down when she was supposed to be offering incense. She pushed the other pot farther in back of the lantern. After Mrs. Miiki exposed her skin to the drug in the poisoned incense, her daughter and coconspirator went up and hid the incense pot underneath his blanket in the wheelchair. It was indeed a ridiculous plan that only individuals with clouded and warped thinking could come up with.

  The crowd thinned out as the afternoon wore on. The coroner’s staff carried Mrs. Miiki’s covered body on a gurney into their van. Trudging in rubber boots, the masked firefighters and hazmat specialists left the premises with covered containers. Mario, the photographer, eventually went to make his deadline.

  Soon it was indeed just Mas and the jizo out front of the temple. He felt like a fool, but there was no one breathing to hear his complaint.

  Finally the minister and Dr. Fujii appeared from the back through the driveway. The minister offered a bottle of water to Mas, which he accepted even though it was room temperature.

  “Miiki-san recently kicked Stacie out of the house,” the doctor was telling the minister. “She staged this so she could have access to her mother’s estate as soon as possible.”

  “What a complicated scheme.” The minister dabbed at some beads of sweat on his forehead.

  Finally it was time for Dr. Fujii and Mas to clear the crime scene. The minister helped the doctor fold Mas’s wheelchair and place it and the medical bag in the truck.

  Mas sat quietly in the passenger seat. Once Dr. Fujii had gotten into the car and closed the door, he told her, “I knowsu you killed her. I saw you take sumptin’ out from your black bag and put it in Miiki-san’s nose.”

  Dr. Fujii stared out the front windshield. “Miiki-san found some notes in her daughter’s room about this convoluted plot to kill her and get the house before she gave it all away. The man in the wheelchair is Stacie’s boyfriend. Both very troubled.”

  “And the lady in the hat?”

  “I don’t know where they found her, but I’m sure that she was well compensated. Miiki-san didn’t think that they would be able to successfully carry it off.”

  Mas didn’t understand.

  “She was dying of pancreatic cancer. It was only a matter of weeks. She was regularly giving large donations to medical research on radiation exposure, but her daughter was contesting the gifts, saying that Miiki-san had temporarily lost her mind. Miiki-san was in such distress and so much pain. She wanted her assets to go to charity and not be in limbo in probate courts. This morning she transferred the deed to her house to UCLA Medical Center. She was ready to go, and I didn’t want Stacie and her partner to abuse her in any way once they found out.” Dr. Fujii took out a pair of sunglasses and replaced her regular glasses with them. “So I brought some carfentanil with me just in case they didn’t get the dosage right. It’s the same substance that they brought over in the incense holder.”

  “Maybe police could
a have done sumptin’.”

  “What? I’m sure that they would have just laughed at me if I told Miiki-san’s story. I told her not to come. She’s been a recluse, anyway. But she was insistent.

  “She was tired. She wanted to let go of life. And she wanted to do it on the 75th anniversary of the Bomb. In honor of what her mother had gone through. How could I put a stop to it? This was Miiki-san’s desire.”

  “Why’zu did you bring me?”

  “Because I knew that you would figure it out. You would be the one who would have suspected the daughter and solved the case. And I guess you did more than I expected.”

  Dr. Fujii turned the key in the ignition. “Ready to visit with Genessee, Arai-san? I can drop you off at the care facility.”

  Mas nodded. The doctor knew that he wouldn’t say anything. Because what would happen if he did? She would be arrested and Genessee would be panicked without her trusted medical counsel. There was no doubt in Mas’s mind that his wife would become even more paranoid than she already was.

  As Dr. Fujii pulled away from the curb, Mas realized that he had forgotten to check on the peace flame. Did it indeed go out, or had that been just his imagination? Just like for Genessee, how many fragments from their past could he collect, like scooping out seaweed from the sea with a net? And how much would remain on the bottom, in the darkness, never to be retrieved again.

  * * *

  30 AND OUT

  BY DOUG ALLYN

  The sign on the door read Sergeant Charles Marx, Major Crimes. I raised my fist to knock, then realized the guy at the desk wasn’t just resting his eyes. He was totally out, slouched in his chair, his grubby Nikes up on his desk, baseball cap tipped down over his eyes, snoring softly. Looked like a class C wrestling coach after a losing season. Edging in quietly, I eased down into the chair facing his desk. When I glanced up, his eyes were locked on mine like lasers.