Puppet Master vol.1

by Miyuki Miyabe

  　The program started with a simple explanation of what a voice changer device was, where they were sold, how much they cost, and how to use them. Then it went on to detail the total reported number of nuisance calls made in the metropolitan area last year, and the proportion of these that had been made with a voice changer. There were surprisingly few. “I guess there is a certain psychology to making nuisance calls in a natural voice,” the presenter said. Shinozaki noted it all down.

  　After a short commercial break, the program went on to discuss how using a voice changer couldn't disguise a voiceprint. This was true─the voice changer only altered the sound of the voice, but it couldn't change its characteristics. Fortunately for the investigation, the technology wasn't yet that developed. This fact was surprisingly little known. Takegami wondered whether the killer was aware of this─if not, and if he happened to have been watching this program, he might well be panicking.

  　The program ended with interviews of two women who had been victims of this type of call. One was a housewife from Saitama, the other an office worker in Tokyo who lived alone, and both appeared on the program with their faces and voices disguised. The housewife complained of having had over one hundred fifty calls a day, and that it had affected her health, while the office worker said the calls had gone into details of her private life, so she thought it must be a colleague and ended up having to leave her job. The police were investigating both cases, but so far to no avail.

  　Toward the end of her interview, the housewife confessed tearfully that it hadn't just been the harm done by the nuisance calls, there was something worse: somehow her neighbors had got wind of the calls and rumors had started flying. “Maybe I was having an affair and my lover was trying to make trouble for me, or maybe it was my husband's lover that was doing it, or even worse, that I was involved in prostitution or telephone clubs and that's how my phone number got around─all really nasty lies, but I couldn't prove anything and it was just so upsetting.”

  　When the program ended, Takegami stopped the tape and turned to Shinozaki. “I don't suppose anyone's checked whether or not any nuisance calls have been made using a voice changer in the Okawa Park vicinity, have they?”

  　“We haven't received any reports to that effect,” he answered immediately.

  　“Perhaps we should look into it.”

  　“But wouldn't they have come to light in the door-to-door questioning?”

  　“Well, victims will probably find it difficult to bring the subject up. Letting slip that you've been getting prank calls can lead to nasty rumors─you heard that housewife, didn't you? That sort of thing does happen.”

  　Shinozaki blinked a few times then stood up. “I'll check the record for reports in our jurisdiction.”

  　Takegami wasn't placing too much importance on the matter of the voice changer, but he thought it was worth checking just in case. At that point the investigation was already focused on suspects 6 and 11. The next day, the twenty-seventh, though, there were a few dramatic changes.

  　One was that number 11's alibi for June 7 was verified. This was when Mariko Furukawa disappeared, so it was quite a setback. When Chiaki Hidaka had disappeared, he'd been at home all morning then at work all afternoon. He'd come home at 6 PM, but had gone out again later and it wasn't known where he had been, which had strengthened suspicions against him. For June 7, however, all they'd known was that he'd taken four days vacation from work from June 6 through 9. Where had he been and what had he been doing?

  　They eventually got their answer when they questioned one of his old high-school friends. Apparently he and number 11 had attended a personal development seminar during those four days. This friend was another young job-hopping man dependent on his parents who had never had a permanent job and dreamed of managing his own business, and to that end had been to countless management training seminars and personal development seminars. He had remained in touch off and on with number 11 ever since high school and knew about his criminal record, but was generally sympathetic. He had invited him several times to attend seminars with him, thinking it might help with his rehabilitation, but this was the first time number 11 had accepted.

  　His testimony was immediately corroborated by the firm that had organized the seminar. Not only did they have a record of both men's attendance, but confirmed that given the intensive nature of the seminar, participants had not been allowed to leave or have any communication with the outside during those four days. The seminar had been held in the firm's exclusive facilities in Tateyama, Chiba Prefecture, and participants were not allowed to come in their own cars, but were picked up from and dropped off at the station in the firm's own bus. Local taxi records showed no fares from the venue to Tateyama Station or Tokyo, or vice versa, during those four days. Other participants had also given statements confirming that it would have been impossible to go out, let alone go back to Tokyo, during the period of the seminar.

  　All of a sudden number 11 was looking unrealistic, to Torii's evident disappointment. It was unthinkable, given the nature of the case, that he would have relied on an accomplice to abduct Mariko Furukawa alone, so it looked as though the investigating team was back to square one. However, it was then that number 13, Kazuyoshi Tagawa, suddenly came to the team's attention once again. The detectives investigating suspicious cars in the vicinity of Okawa Park found that three of the cars considered suspect were rentals from the same company, contracted by the same person. A twenty-five-year-old company employee from Osaki in Shinagawa Ward had rented them on September 4, 11, and 12. The type of car was different each time, but each had been seen parked in the vicinity of the park, and appeared in the shots taken by the amateur photographer. When they paid him a visit, he told them he'd rented the cars at the request of an acquaintance. That acquaintance was Kazuyoshi Tagawa.

  　“He's been in trouble with the police before, hasn't he?” the guy had said. They had both worked in the same office-equipment leasing firm when, two years previously, at the age of twenty-three, Kazuyoshi Tagawa had been convicted for making a hole in the wall of the women's changing room, fitting it with a hidden camera, and sending the photos anonymously to the women subjects. “What he did was really bad, but he did show remorse, and he lost his job. I felt sorry for him. We weren't all that close or anything, but we'd been out drinking together now and then and we kept in touch.”

  　Since his conviction, Tagawa had apparently developed a kind of interpersonal relations phobia. “He felt that everyone knew what he'd done and looked down on him. He knew it was a kind of neurosis, but he just couldn't rid himself of it and it got so bad that he couldn't even go out shopping alone. I felt I had to do something to help.”

  　Tagawa had always loved photography, ever since he was a boy, and would often go away alone on photography trips. “If you're scared of being with people, you can't get a job, right? He was wrong to take those photos of women, but it wouldn't do him any good to stop him from taking photos altogether. If he stuck to mountains and nature, that sort of thing, he'd be fine and it would help with his rehabilitation, too. Even his mother agreed.”

  　Going away on photography trips was easier with a car─he could take all the equipment he needed, and could sleep in the car, too. But he didn't have one. “And so I made arrangements to rent one for him. Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do, but I didn't really give it much thought─and he paid for it, anyway.” When he'd rented those three cars in September, Tagawa had told him he was going to take photographs at a bird-watching sanctuary at dawn. As it happened, though, they'd been spotted in the vicinity of Okawa Park.

  　At almost the same time, the survey of nuisance calls that Takegami had proposed also had a breakthrough. Over the past year there had been three cases of nuisance calls made with a voice changer in the jurisdiction of the Bokuto Police Station. One of the victims had been a housewife living in the same housing project as Kazuyoshi Tagawa. The incident hadn't been reported, but came t
o light as detectives went around questioning people in the area. The housewife concerned had received two calls, and on both occasions the caller had used obscenities but hadn't mentioned her private life at all. It hadn't occurred to her that the call to the TV station about the Okawa Park case might have been the same guy. The fact that she lived in the same housing project as Tagawa was enough for the investigation team to launch a detailed investigation into him.

  　And so September came to an end, and October opened with Takegami consolidating the profile for Kazuyoshi Tagawa. His parents had divorced early, and he had lived together with his mother from the age of ten up to the present. His fifty-year-old mother was an assistant at an apparel shop in Ningyocho, which was her only income. Tagawa had graduated from a technical high school near his home, after which he'd gone from job to job. He had only been working at the office-equipment leasing firm for six months when he committed the offense and lost his job. He was twenty-three at the time.

  　According to his probation officer, Tagawa's social phobia was definitely not feigned. It was something that came up repeatedly in their conversations, and the officer thought Tagawa was doing his best to mend his ways. He didn't believe he was involved in the Okawa Park case.

  　Meanwhile, the killer was silent. When, where, and how would he speak again? What would his next move be? Was it, or wasn't it, Tagawa?

  Chapter 13

  “Hey Gramps, how you been?”

  　It was him again, the guy with the voice changer. Yoshio hastily looked around the shop. A customer had just come in; Kida was there. Yoshio pressed the record button on the machine next to the phone, and adjusted his grip on the receiver. His palm felt sweaty and he wiped it on the thigh of his trousers.

  　“Gramps, can't you hear me?”

  　“Yes, I can hear you,” Yoshio said hurriedly. “It's you again, isn't it?”

  　A screechy laugh. “Who do you mean, ‘you’?”

  　“The one who left the message for me at the Plaza Hotel, right?”

  　“Right. But let's not beat about the bush. I'm the one who snatched your granddaughter, Mariko.”

  　Kida was still dealing with the customer. Yoshio leaned forward and flung open the small window by the office desk. Next door to his shop, across the small parking lot, was a two-story apartment building. Through the open first-floor window he could see the detective sitting inside, looking bored. Yoshio waved at him.

  　Having noticed the detective's face tense, Yoshio swallowed and said into the phone, “Hello?”

  　The caller was silent. Had he hung up?

  　“Hello?”

  　“Gramps,” the voice said abruptly, his tone amused. “You're up to something, aren't you?”

  　“Up to something?”

  　“I can tell. You've got the police there with you, haven't you? Well, I figured you would. Don't worry, you won't be able to trace the call─I'm using a cell phone.”

  　Having finished with the customer, Kida came over to his side. Yoshio tore off a page from a notebook and jotted down “cell phone.” Kida grabbed it and ran out of the shop to the apartment building next door.

  　Ever since the Plaza Hotel incident, the police had stuck close to Yoshio. They had fitted a recorder to the shop phone, and had rented out an apartment that had just become available in the building next door, set up a call tracer, and used it as a base for their security operation. Yoshio lived alone and had several spare rooms, so would have liked them to move in with him, but the police thought there was a possibility that the killer would approach Yoshio directly, not just over the phone─as he'd done when he delivered Mariko's wristwatch to the Higashi-Nakano house─and felt they would be less obtrusive next door.

  　Yoshio had been warned that that the killer might well use a cell phone, which would be difficult to trace, so he wasn't all that dismayed. But he thought it was rather quiet for a cell phone, since he couldn't hear any background noise. Maybe he was calling from his room. He stared at the cassette recorder turning silently, and wondered how he could drag the conversation out for as long as possible, something else the police had told him to do.

  　“The caller somehow seems to have taken a liking to you,” Captain Kanzaki at Bokuto Police Station had told him. “It's quite possible that he will make some kind of approach to you again. It's also possible he was serious about getting you to prostrate yourself on TV. In any case, try to get as much as you can out of him─keep him talking.”

  　“What makes you think he's taken a liking to me?”

  　“I don't know,” Captain Kanzaki had replied, his dark eyes glittering hard as steel. “It's just the feeling I get from the way he talks to you, his attitude.”

  　“It's because I'm a feeble old man, isn't it? An easy target,” Yoshio had said.

  　“Are you?” the Captain said, fixing him in his gaze. “Personally, I think he's underestimating you. But we can use that to our advantage. Let him think that you're a feeble old man, and then use it. But you need to be strong to do that.”

  　Recalling the captain's words, Yoshio now straightened his back and planted both feet firmly. “Have you forgotten what you told me last time?”

  　“What was that?”

  　“You said that if I prostrated myself on TV, you'd give Mariko back.”

  　“I did, didn't I?”

  　“I've been waiting. Wondering when you'd get in touch.”

  　“Gramps, do you really think you can─” the caller started, but was interrupted by a fit of coughing. The sound grew distant, as if he was holding the receiver away from his mouth. The coughing came as a burst of static through the voice changer, but also had an oddly human feel to it. Yoshio felt a chill run down his back. He waited for the coughing to subside.

  　“Did you catch a cold?”

  　The caller cleared his throat a few times, then answered, “Yeah.”

  　“You should give up smoking, you know.”

  　“How come you know that I smoke? Tell me why you know that!” the voice demanded.

  　Yoshio was taken aback by the sharpness of his reaction. “The first time you called, I heard the sound of a lighter.” He'd wanted to squeeze himself down the line and give the guy a good thrashing. There they were discussing the life of his granddaughter and the bastard was lighting up a cigarette! That's why he remembered.

  　“Gramps, your hearing is pretty good.”

  　“I smoke too, so it was a familiar sound.”

  　“Don't worry about me, it's you who should give up, Gramps,” the caller said, then had a short fit of laughing. “But then, you've already got one foot in the grave, eh?”

  　Yoshio listened in silence to the screechy laugh. Kida came back from next door. He was looking at Yoshio, his face tense.

  　“So what were you calling about today? You seem to have forgotten about the TV thing anyway.”

  　“I just wanted to hear your voice, Gramps.”

  　“My voice?”

  　“Yep. I wanted to hear you ask if Mariko is safe.”

  　Yoshio blinked. After seeing Captain Kanzaki, he'd been taken to see another middle-aged detective who seemed to do mostly documentation work, and had had to go through the whole thing with him all over again. He recalled what that detective had told him─what was his name? Takegami, wasn't it? “I know it's hard, but next time he calls try not to ask him about your granddaughter until he brings the subject up─and he's bound to at some point. He really wants to talk about her, so if you don't say anything he'll feel cheated. He'll have to mention her himself, and might just let something slip.”

  　“She's constantly in my thoughts,” Yoshio said cautiously.

  　“Is she now? How come you don't ask after her then?”

  　“Even if I ask, you won't tell me.”

  　“So you ask the police instead? Bad move. They're all idiots.”

  　“Maybe so.”

  　“Definitely so. They'll n
ever find anything.”

  　“You're pretty smart, aren't you?”

  　“Gramps, are you trying to wind me up?”

  　“No, not at all.”

  　“So apologize.”

  　“Apologize?”

  　“For what you just said. ‘You're pretty smart’─sounds like you're taking me for a fool.”

  　“That's not what I meant─”

  　“Stop making excuses and say you're sorry!” interrupted the caller querulously, like a child arguing with a parent. “Stupid old fool.”

  　Yoshio blinked slowly again. Then, enunciating each word clearly one by one as if savoring them, he said, “I beg your pardon. I'm sorry.”

  　“Say, ‘I apologize’!”

  　“I apologize.”

  　“Don't get too full of yourself, old man.”

  　Still holding the receiver to his ear, Yoshio looked at Kida. He was hunched over gripping a pillar with his fingers, looking anxious.

  　“Gramps, I can see right through you, you know. I know your every move. So stop trying to get the better of me and listen to what I have to say. All right?”

  　“I know that─I know it all too well. I have just one request. If Mariko's alive, at least let me hear her voice.”

  　“No!” the caller turned him down flat without a moment's hesitation.

  　“Isn't she there with you?”

  　“When I say no, I mean no!” The caller had another fit of coughing. It sounded painful, the persistent sort of cough that lingered after a bout of flu. “Gramps, you're pushing your luck.” Another paroxysm.