Nocturne of Remembrance

by Shichiri Nakayama

  Misaki took a quick glance at Akiko, but she simply sat there with her head drooping.

  “Be it an erroneous impression or a delusion, it is reality for the person who feels it. The point is whether it was sufficient motivation to murder Shingo. Listening to the defense’s argument, it seems that he wants to prove that the accused had no intent to kill, but he does so on weak grounds.”

  The prosecutor’s style of rebuttal floored Mikoshiba. He knew very well that his assertions were farfetched, but the prosecution was meticulously swatting each one with stinging counterarguments. Misaki was not only taking guerilla tactics in stride but also managing to blunt every arrow tip. Based on his hard-won lesson from their first round, he had replaced his whole strategy. Even though he was an old hand at this, he was still learning and diversifying his weapons and tactics and further polishing his veteran smarts, which made him the most formidable kind of enemy.

  Indeed, the judges’ and gallery’s reactions indicated that they were buying Misaki’s point. Their facial expressions were those of people listening to music rather than to someone’s reasoning; his words were reaching not just their ears but their hearts, too.

  “As the accused’s father-in-law testified earlier, she entered the bathroom with a knife in hand in order to kill the victim. In the bathroom, the victim was totally unarmed and had no means of putting up any resistance. She had him turn the other way and then stabbed him in the neck three times from the rear. Mind you, not once but three times. It is hard to believe that such careful calculation and persistence was impulsive. Moreover, the accused bothered to go to the shed to get a blue tarp. When the father-in-law witnessed the scene, the body had already been placed on it, and its purpose is obvious. It would have been one thing if she had reported the murder right after the crime, but given that she was seen trying to dispose of the body, we cannot help but infer that she committed a willful murder. Treating a spouse, her companion of many years, as garbage once he became a hindrance is a selfish, unforgivable act. Frankly speaking, the prosecution is not satisfied with the sixteen-year sentence she received in the first trial. Honorable presiding judge, I ask you to please conduct a strictly impartial trial that is impervious to the defense’s chicanery.”

  Misaki finished and took his seat. It was such a brilliant speech that the gallery might have applauded if such a thing were permitted.

  Credit was due to his character that he’d acted like some embodiment of social justice and not come across as a jerk. What’s more, the trend was toward stricter sentences. Perhaps Misaki was the perfect guide for bringing it to fruition.

  But, Mikoshiba thought scornfully. These stricter sentences weren’t the outcome of appropriate legal debates but merely the public’s confused reaction to the frequency of heinous crimes. The legislature had forgone a thorough discussion including on whether to eliminate capital punishment; successive ministers of justice had wavered; and the quasi-jury system, introduced without adequate preparation and before public opinion could mature on the topic, had accelerated the trend. What the system channeled into the nation’s courts wasn’t the citizenry’s views but its raw emotions. Stricter sentences were becoming prevalent not as a deterrent to heinous crimes but as a retributive measure.

  But if ordinary people’s emotions could govern the outcome of a trial, it also meant that the defense had a chance.

  “Your honor, I would like to question the defendant.”

  “Proceed.”

  Akiko stood up sluggishly. The impression that her glacial pace was making on the judges worried Mikoshiba, but he could hardly expect acting skills from her at this late date.

  “First, I would like the defendant to confirm something. Were you and your husband still having sexual relations at the time of the incident?”

  “We were.”

  “Was it unilateral, that is to say, was it akin to rape?”

  “No, it was consensual.”

  “In other words, even though your husband was violent sometimes, as a couple you were also trying to mend your marital relationship?”

  “That is so.”

  Mikoshiba displayed a nod. So far, Akiko’s replies were in line with what they had discussed.

  “However,” she continued, “he was always secluded in his room, and we didn’t have regular conversations.”

  “When you talked to your husband about your coworker, Mr. Yoshiwaki, what did you say?”

  “I told him that there was a CPA at the office who was the same age as him but that he was a decent man with a promising future.”

  “And at that moment you were hit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without bringing up romantic feelings and such?”

  “Right. I think it was male jealousy.”

  “Jealousy?” Mikoshiba suddenly felt anxious. The word hadn’t come up in her prep.

  “Men get jealous, too. Not over looks, but over alma maters and incomes. My unemployed husband had it especially bad. He despised people with regular jobs and stable salaries. I think he was worried that he’d be labeled a failure if he didn’t.”

  Seeing how she was getting weird, Mikoshiba changed his approach. “On the day of the incident, you came home tired from work. Your two daughters had eaten dinner by themselves and were back in their own rooms, but you still needed to prepare your husband’s because he had become a shut-in. You heated up the frozen food that you had purchased, but he verbally abused you and hit you … Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “However, according to the testimony of Yozo and the police who arrived at the scene right after the incident, there were no bruises on your face. Why was that?”

  “My testimony was incorrect. I was kicked in the stomach. As I lay curled up on the floor, I was kicked repeatedly.”

  “What was going through your mind at the time?”

  “I was afraid I was going to get killed.”

  “Where was the knife? In your testimony you said that it was in the tool box in the closet.”

  “Thinking back over it, I’d remembered wrong. The knife was in the kitchen. Most likely, one of the girls used it to slice fruit or open a package of frozen food.”

  Good. This part was going according to plan. Impulsively grabbing a knife on hand without realizing it seemed more like spur-of-the-moment behavior than walking to a closet to arm herself.

  “I don’t remember what happened after that because I wasn’t myself. I was just so scared of him … And the next thing, he was on the floor in front of me all bloody.”

  “Then what?”

  “He wasn’t breathing. When I looked around the bathroom, I saw that blood had spurted all over. And it was plastered on me, too. The girls seemed to be already asleep. I rinsed off my body in the shower, and since I couldn’t leave him like that, I went to the shed to see if there wasn’t something I could lay under him.”

  “Why did you think that you couldn’t leave him as is?”

  “I couldn’t clean up like that.”

  Again, murmurs came from the gallery. Misaki alone, however, seemed to sense where Akiko was going. He cast a surprised look at Mikoshiba.

  “So you are saying that you were not trying to dispose of the body.”

  “Yes. Perhaps because I was so flustered, my only thought was that at any rate I needed to clean the bathroom, which was covered in blood. That’s why I needed to move his body onto a tarp. Then I began washing the blood off the walls for all I was worth. That’s when the door opened, and my father-in-law was standing there …”

  “Thereupon, you came back to your senses.”

  “Yes.”

  “That will be all. Your honor, it was exactly as you have just heard. It wasn’t to cover up her crime that she cleaned the bathroom and fetched the blue tarp. Stunned by what she had done, the accused tried to maintain her mental balance by performing an everyday task, namely cleaning. Such a reaction seems eminently possible in a law-abiding citizen with no connections to
crime. The accused had no intention whatsoever to murder her husband or to hide his body.”

  Judge Sanjo, who had been addressed, looked rather perplexed. Was this sophistry or common sense? In either case, this was a matter involving human psychology, so most likely it would be difficult to rule on.

  But that was precisely Mikoshiba’s aim. To overturn the fixed negative impressions of Akiko, he had to dismantle the crime’s very landscape once and for all. For that purpose, a bit of sophistry was necessary.

  “Defense, do you have any other questions for the defendant?”

  “I am done.”

  “Does the prosecution want to cross-examine the defendant?”

  “Yes,” Misaki said as he stood up a third time.

  He looked all over Akiko, who was standing stock-still. It was not a threatening gaze, but the gesture alone seemed to make her shrink uncomfortably.

  “Regarding your latest testimony … It seems that your daughters are two very well-raised children.”

  “Yes …”

  “They even had dinner on their own when you weren’t there?”

  “Yes. The younger one is still six, but she can prepare instant and frozen foods by herself.”

  “Ah, how impressive. There is a report from the crime lab that substantiates that, too. As the defense just enumerated, in the garbage bin there were instant noodle containers as well as frozen-food packaging and bags that your daughters had used and that bore their fingerprints. They must be both very skillful. They didn’t use scissors or a knife to open the packages, but instead carefully opened them at their ends to extract the contents. In other words … the girls did not have an opportunity to use the knife in the kitchen area. It’s very unnatural for an unused tool to have been near at hand.”

  So that’s his angle, huh … Even as Mikoshiba ground his teeth, he was surprised by the prosecutor’s thoroughness. Such a retort wasn’t possible unless Misaki had pored through the forensic report.

  “Returning to the circumstances when the victim was murdered … I would like to ask the accused. Just now there was not a clear reference, but assaulted by the victim, you became scared, and after that you weren’t yourself and don’t remember but had picked up the knife without realizing it … Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you said to the victim, who was in the bath, that you would wash his back, and removed your clothes and entered the bathroom. Is this also as stated?”

  “Yes.”

  “With the knife in your hand?”

  “Yes.”

  “On May 5th, the day of the incident, the accused was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Is this, too, not my misunderstanding?”

  “In May … I think that’s likely.”

  “Hmm. That corresponds with the testimony of the policemen who first arrived at the scene. However, if that is so, there is one part that just doesn’t seem to make sense. Upset, you had the knife in hand, conversed with the victim in the bathroom, and undressed and entered yourself. Now, while you were removing your clothes, what did you do with the knife?”

  And now this.

  Mikoshiba couldn’t help but click his tongue.

  “In the case of a T-shirt or jeans, either one is difficult to take off with one hand. If you were holding something in one hand, it would be hard to undress without first letting go of it. In other words, if that part of your testimony is to be believed, you entered the dressing area in a lost state, tricked the victim in a lost state, undressed in a lost state—letting the knife you were holding go out of your hand temporarily—and, once undressed, picked up the knife, in a lost state all over again, before entering the bathroom. No matter how I try to think about this sequence, it’s incoherent.”

  Misaki peered into Akiko’s face. She looked downward to avoid his gaze.

  “Furthermore, the facts surrounding the abuse that the accused supposedly received prior to the incident are also disputable. This was not included in the investigation report submitted earlier, but when the precinct personnel reached the scene of the crime, the accused’s speech and conduct were unstable, so a female police officer performed her body check. Although the accused was not totally stripped, her stomach and back were examined to ascertain whether or not she had been DV-ed. However, nowhere on her body was there any evidence of physical abuse.”

  Crap, Mikoshiba cursed from the bottom of his heart, they hid this until now?

  Both the police and Akiko.

  “The testimony prepared by the precinct in charge of the case therefore errs on one point. There was no evidence of the accused having been physically abused by the victim just prior to the incident. Based on this, the accused, not having been abused by the victim, took the knife from where it and other tools were appropriately kept, deceived the victim, and slipped into the bathroom with the murder weapon in hand. She removed her clothes because from the start she expected to get splattered with blood.”

  Misaki’s speech flowed without any hesitation like a rich and full song. He had clearly hammered out and marshaled evidence for his argument beforehand.

  “In other words, this was not a case where legitimate self-defense occurred impulsively, but premeditated murder, pure and simple. Even taking into account the fact that the victim was by no means a hard-working citizen, it was a selfish crime that cannot possibly be forgiven. This ends my cross-examination.”

  With this brief conclusion, Misaki took his seat. Sanjo nodded slightly as if he was satisfied, and an air of relief seemed to drift through the visitors’ gallery as well.

  “Does the defense have any other statement to make?”

  “I do, but I am not sufficiently prepared at this time.”

  “Then, the next hearing will be held two weeks from today at ten. Will that be satisfactory?”

  While agreeing along with Misaki, in his guts Mikoshiba cursed everyone in the courtroom. This, of course, included Akiko.

  Thus the first round of the appeal trial ended in an overwhelming victory for Misaki.

  — 4 —

  A tiny tyrant was waiting in his office when Mikoshiba returned from the courthouse.

  “Welcome back, sensei!”

  Mikoshiba wilted the moment he saw Rinko. He’d been dealt a staggering blow in court by Misaki, and this was adding insult to injury.

  “I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

  “Sorry. She came again anyway.” Behind Rinko was Yoko, who was standing smaller than usual at least.

  “Tee-hee! Impressed? I came all the way here without asking anyone today.”

  “Since when has this place become a day nursery?”

  “Sensei, you were in court and I was here by myself, so I couldn’t just drop everything and take her home …”

  “You can do so right now.”

  “I have to work overtime tonight. You see, I need to prepare detailed invoices for your consulting fees and send them all out tomorrow.”

  “You’re here again. Why?”

  Mikoshiba looked Rinko right in the eyes, but she just pouted and didn’t seem to be one bit frightened. Perhaps letting her stay the night had gotten her accustomed to him. A little yelling probably wouldn’t even make her cry anymore.

  “Mommy’s trial is over, right? So I was waiting for you.”

  “It’s not over. Today was just the first round.”

  “Are we winning?”

  He didn’t feel like answering. “I’ll take the kid home,” he said to Yoko.

  “Is that … okay, sir?”

  “It’s not okay, but how can I get any work done with this in my office? I planned to go look at the crime scene once anyway. Good opportunity.”

  Leaving the still apologizing Yoko behind, Mikoshiba took Rinko to the parking lot. When he unlocked the door, she jumped right into the passenger seat as if it was reserved for her.

  “Dammit, wait ’til I tell you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Although she commendably bowed h
er head, she had a smile on her face. He might as well have howled into the wind.

  He’d learned something from the trial. Without a doubt, Rinko’s sassiness was the result of her home environment.

  In households where parents spewed bile at each other, or where one was absent and there was a scarcity of time and money, usually the children became strong. Feckless parents necessitated independence, and Rinko exemplified this.

  “Are you and your sister living alone even now?”

  “Now auntie comes to stay over sometimes.”

  “The two of you don’t go stay at her house?”

  “My sister is always in bed, and auntie’s is a bit too small for all of us.”

  For now, the sisters were young and making do, but it was hardly a lasting arrangement. Unless their mother, Akiko, won a release, they’d have to be taken in by their grandfather, Yozo. Mikoshiba wondered if Rinko had used the word “small” in terms of actually living instead of just staying there.

  “Did Mommy look okay?”

  “No change.”

  He’d never seen Akiko at her best, so there was nothing else he could say. Rinko sat facing forward for a while, then looked at Mikoshiba as if she had just remembered something.

  “Sensei, can you win?”

  “Not without you and your Mommy’s cooperation.”

  “Co-ope-ra-tion?”

  “It means telling the truth to me, if no one else.”

  “But Rinko hasn’t lied to sensei.”

  “You haven’t. The problem is your mom.”

  “Mommy is lying?”

  “I don’t know if she is. But she’s hiding something from me.”

  That was the problem that had flitted across his mind several times during the court debate. Even after reading her testimony and interviewing her, he was coming up short.