“Dōzo,” he said, handing Kenji a bottle of hot green tea.
Kenji accepted it with thanks. Encouraged by his sempai’s civilized response, Suzuki ventured, “Looks like we finally have a real case to investigate, sir!”
“Looks like an accident,” Kenji corrected him, cracking open the seal on the tea bottle and downing a big slug.
Suzuki’s cheerfulness evaporated. It had been a slow month for crime, and everyone on the squad was being given tedious busywork or loaned out to other divisions. Suzuki had been absent more than most, assigned to some project in Traffic Section, not exactly an elite career detective’s dream job.
Noting his kohai’s glum face, Kenji said, “Even accidents need to be investigated. Do you think Traffic Section can get along without you today?”
“Just today? You don’t think…?”
“Let’s see what Rowdy-san says after he examines the body.”
Kenji introduced Suzuki to the apartment manager, directing him to get contact information for the victim’s next of kin, then take the young officer who’d reported the body to canvass the other buildings on the block, to find out if anybody had witnessed Sakura Endo’s fall. Suzuki followed the manager toward her apartment, nodding politely as the old woman advised him how to run the investigation.
“Nakamura-san?” Tommy Loud appeared at his side.
Kenji capped his tea and followed the crime tech behind the screens, looking over Loud’s shoulder as he crouched next to the victim. He was relieved to see that the girl’s panties were no longer on view.
“She hasn’t been dead more than a few hours. Last night it got down to fourteen degrees Centigrade, so I’d say she died sometime between one and three A.M.” He pointed to the faint dark splotches ringing her upper arm. “Judging by the development of these bruises, I’d guess she got them not too long before she died.” He gently brushed the milk-tea-colored ringlets away from her right cheek so Kenji could see the faint discoloration where he’d swabbed away her makeup. “This too. Looks to me like somebody slapped her around last night.”
The crime tech stood and folded his arms, considering the body. Then he looked up toward the second floor and squeezed past the sprawled figure. Slowly making his way up the stairs, he peered at each of the concrete steps.
“There’s blood here.” He pointed to a dark blotch on the scarred metal edge. “And here,” indicating another smear farther up, leaving numbered tags to mark them for his assistants. He paused to look at the railing near the top, left another tag, then climbed the last few steps. The stairs ended at an outdoor hallway with three faded turquoise doors spaced along its length. Outside each apartment hung plastic frames fitted with miniature clothespins, the far one still festooned with an assortment of socks, T-shirts, and uniform pants, forgotten overnight and now damp with dew.
Loud stopped to examine something near the first apartment door. His camera flashed twice. He said something that was drowned out by the passing of a Yamanote Line train.
“Say again?” Kenji requested, when it was quiet.
“Fresh scuffs on the carpet up here,” Loud called down over the flaking metal railing. The camera flashed once more.
Kenji climbed the stairs and squatted down to look at the scrapes outside the door to apartment 201. A fight? He rang the bell at 202. No answer. He rang again. Nothing.
He moved on to 203. He was about to push the bell a second time when a bleary-eyed man with an unshaven face cracked open the door. Kenji identified himself and asked if he’d heard any noise last night, but wasn’t surprised when the man removed his earplugs and said no, he hadn’t heard a thing.
Kenji was making his way back to the stairs when a shriek from below pulled him to the railing. A schoolgirl had pushed past the police screens and stood, swaying, over the victim.
“No!” she wailed. Suzuki arrived one step behind and gently backed her away. She stood, weeping in earnest now, mascara-stained tears streaming down her plump cheeks. Kenji trotted down the stairs, carefully skirting the crime tech’s tags.
“Sorry, sir,” said Suzuki, letting go of her and stepping back. “I didn’t expect her to bolt like that. This is the victim’s roommate, Kiku Kimura.”
The hostess lived with a high school student? Then Kenji saw that although Kiku’s white sailor blouse resembled the uniforms worn by private school coeds, it was cropped short to expose a strip of smooth belly above a plaid, pleated skirt far too skimpy to pass any headmaster’s beady eye. Once-curled pigtails drooped alongside her round cheeks, tied with ribbons that matched her skirt. She was slightly pigeon-toed, a look accentuated by white knee socks that did nothing to slim her sturdy ankles. She must be in her late twenties, and there was only one reason she’d be dressed like that at her age. Fūzoku-jō. Sex worker.
“I’m sorry, Miss Kimura. This must be a shock for you,” Kenji said, steering her away from the body toward the crime scene van.
She climbed in and slumped in the passenger seat, hugging herself in the chilly morning air. Her weeping had subsided to sniffs and she wiped her face, leaving faint dark smears across her cheeks.
“Have you and Miss Endo known each other long?” Kenji asked.
The girl nodded, taking a shaky breath. “Since middle school. We grew up together in Chiba.”
“How long have you lived in Tokyo?”
“She came right after high school. Nine years ago. She wanted to sing in a band, but after a few months she got a job at Club Heaven to pay the rent. Pretty soon she was sending me pictures of the beautiful dresses she wore every night, telling me about the rich men who bought her drinks. I came a year later.”
“If she worked in Kabuki-chō, how did she end up living in Komagome?”
“It’s only a twenty-minute train ride. A lot of hostesses live around here, because it’s cheaper and safer than the neighborhoods closer to work.”
“Do you work at Club Heaven, too?”
“No.” She hung her head. “Love Train.”
Ah. Several rungs down from the hostess clubs, it was the most famous of the “train groping” bars. He’d never been to one, but he knew this particular niche of the sex trade catered to men who fantasized about molesting fellow commuters. For a price, customers could enter a room outfitted like a subway car—right down to the recorded station announcements and realistically vibrating floor—and fondle the women “passengers” to their hearts’ content. Schoolgirls were a popular fantasy.
“When was the last time you saw your roommate?”
“Last night before we both left for work. Around six.”
“And you haven’t been home since?”
“No. My shift ended at two but I went out for a drink with someone afterward.” She glanced at Kenji nervously. He wasn’t in the Public Morals Section, so he ignored the fact that “drink” probably meant something kinkier and less legal.
“Your roommate, did she ever bring dates home after work? Any chance she wasn’t alone last night when she fell?”
“No. We never brought anyone from work to our apartment.” Fresh tears spilled down Kiku’s cheeks. “How can she be dead? Last night she said she might have some good news to tell me this weekend. She was wearing her lucky earrings!”
“Lucky earrings?” Kenji pictured the victim, a bunch of red fruit tangled in her hair.
“She bought them the day she got her job at Club Heaven. Her real name was Sakura,” Kiku explained, “but everyone called her Cherry.”
Chapter 3
Friday, November 8
4:00 P.M.
Kenji
Afternoon sun streamed through the window above Section Chief Tanaka’s desk as Kenji tossed Cherry Endo’s administrative autopsy report onto his Inbox. He shrugged off his jacket, then reconsidered and put it back on. The “eco-policy” temperature setting didn’t cool the building nearly enough in summer or heat it quite enough in winter. Autumn had arrived with a vengeance in the Komagome Police Station squad room, and
even criminals were avoiding being questioned in the too-chilly atmosphere; all three interview rooms on the squad room periphery were dark, the doors standing open.
Kenji was now into his third year as an elite career officer. Sent to Komagome Station last November after being promoted to detective, he’d been assigned a spot halfway between the elevators and Section Chief Tanaka’s desk, which overlooked the room from beneath the only window. The golf trophy Tanaka had won last spring as one of the Superintendent General’s foursome gleamed in the late-afternoon sun, its dust-free condition attesting to his success at climbing the ladder, both on and off duty. Next to Kenji, Detective Oki’s desk was cluttered with photos of his family and his judo students, including one of his teenage son bowing as he received his first-degree black belt.
Kenji’s desk was almost bare. The only personal item joining his standard-issue phone, computer, and Inbox was a worn Daruma saint that the girl he’d had a crush on since third grade had pressed into his hand last spring, at the conclusion of the case that brought them together again. It stared at him from the far edge of his desk with one black eye, the other still white because his wish hadn’t been granted yet. In Next month, Yumi was planning to tie the knot with the son of one of the richest and oldest families in Japan. Kenji sighed, wondering what she was doing right now.
Detective Oki took his seat, finishing up a phone call. “Thanks, Rowdy-san, he just walked in. I’ll have him call you.”
Oki ended the call, set his phone on his desk, and cracked his neck left and right, looking every inch the fifth-degree judo black belt he was. Even taller than Kenji and twice as broad, Oki’s good-natured face often tricked suspects into making admissions they later regretted, never guessing that the big detective had been one year away from a degree in psychology before transferring to the police academy.
“Heard you caught an early one today,” he said. “Suspicious death?”
“Yeah. But the examining doctor at the morgue said it looked like an accident.”
“Rowdy-san doesn’t agree. That was him on the phone just now. He asked me to have you call when you got in.”
“Will do. Thanks, Oki-san.”
The doctor on morgue rotation at Komagome Hospital had performed a perfunctory administrative autopsy on Cherry Endo’s body. Because facilities and trained forensic specialists were scarce, fewer than ten percent of the 150,000 annual unexplained deaths in Japan received even that much attention. Suspicion of a crime was required to obtain a full judicial autopsy, and the examining doctor told Kenji he saw no reason to recommend one.
“Rowdy-san? It’s Nakamura.”
“That was fast. What did the doc say?”
“Accident.”
Silence.
“You don’t agree. Why?”
Kenji heard the rapid patter of computer keys. “I’m e-mailing you some photos,” said the tech.
Kenji woke up the laptop sitting on his desk. The first shot was a close-up of the victim’s right hand. Rows of white rhinestones winked atop long nails lacquered a glossy pink, but her index and middle fingers looked oddly maimed, the nails broken off short.
“See those two fingernail breaks?” Loud said. “The one on her index finger is ragged, looks freshly torn. She got that during her fall. But look at her middle finger. The nail is broken, but it’s been filed. That girl took a lot of care with her clothes and makeup; her manicure alone probably cost her ten thousand yen. Ask her roommate, but she didn’t look like the type to go to work with a broken nail. She’d have put a temporary fake on the middle finger if she broke it before she went to the club last night.”
“How do you know so much about manicures?”
“Wife. I’m unfortunately also an expert on Louis Vuitton handbags.”
“So you think she broke that nail at work?”
“Or after work. Do you know if she came straight home?”
“No. I’ll have to get the section chief’s permission if we’re going to investigate further. And you can imagine how pleased Tanaka-san will be if this doesn’t turn out to be an accident.”
Loud laughed sympathetically. They both knew that if a death was ruled a homicide, the elite murder squad from the downtown Chiyoda Ward office would descend on the Komagome Police Station, taking over the facilities and using the local detectives as gofers and guide dogs. If the killer were caught, the elite squad would take the credit; if not, the local station’s initial investigation would be blamed. Section Chief Tanaka hated both scenarios, so convincing him to authorize an investigation into a death that even the morgue doctor thought was an accident would be a tough sell.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. Her shoes were a mess. Both were scuffed and one heel was worn down to the nail. It looks to me like she did more than serve drinks in those Jimmy Choos last night. She put some miles on them.”
“Huh. Maybe that explains why the doc found fresh blisters on both feet.”
“One more thing. After you left with the body, we examined the blood on the stairs and calculated her trajectory. She must have fallen backward with some force and hit her head on the railing, then tumbled down, cracking her head once more before she came to rest at the bottom. The important thing is, she didn’t trip on her way up. She had to have fallen from the top in order to hit the railing the way she did.”
Kenji closed his eyes and pictured the scene. He remembered Loud’s camera flashing twice outside apartment 201. Fresh scuffs on the carpet. A fight?
“You think someone was waiting for her and pushed her.”
“You tell me.”
Kenji sighed. “I’ll talk to Tanaka.”
Chapter 4
Friday, November 8
6:30 P.M.
Yumi
“It is deeply regrettable that the train will be delayed for a few more minutes…” Yumi Hata checked her phone and groaned. They’d been sitting at the platform one stop from her destination for over five minutes now. There went the time she’d planned to use to change out of her brown and orange International Interpreting Company suit in the Ningyōchō Station bathroom before meeting Ichiro and his friends for dinner. Tonight was the fifth—or was it the sixth?—in the whirlwind of invitations that suddenly materialized when a prominent family’s eldest son got engaged.
Yumi squinted into her purse mirror and used the delay to top up her mascara without fearing a bump in the tracks would turn her into a cyclops. She tried on a smile, hoping that Ichiro’s friends would think that the girl whose mouth turned up at the corners and whose eyes crinkled when she laughed looked like a suitable match for the heir to Japan’s biggest department store conglomerate. She wasn’t a classic Japanese beauty, but Ichiro Mitsuyama had chosen her over the fifty-three other eligible women his parents had approved as potential matches.
The train pulled away from the platform. Finally! She wouldn’t have time to change her clothes, but at least she could change her shoes. Rummaging in the shopping bag that held the dress she’d intended to wear, she pulled out her new flats and eased her feet into them, wincing. They were cute, but she’d had to buy a 24.5—the largest size most stores carried—and they were a half centimeter too short. Finding shoes that fit and pants that were long enough was a perpetual challenge in Japan. Her 170-centimeter height hadn’t been anything remarkable in America, but here she was not only a giant among women, she towered over her fiancé if she wore even the lowest heels.
The train slowed to a stop at Ningyōchō and she leaped from the car, pulling out her phone. 6:56. Oh no, she was already late. In America she’d have been on time, but in Japan when an event was scheduled for 7:00, that really meant five minutes before.
She beeped her pass through the turnstile and dashed up the steps, taking the next two blocks at a run. Rounding the corner, she spotted her fiancé waiting for her outside the restaurant, checking his messages.
“Sorry I’m late,” she gasped. “There was a delay on the Hibiya Line and…” He was
staring at her suit, clearly wondering why she’d chosen something so hideous. “…I didn’t have time to change out of my work uniform.” She held up the shopping bag apologetically.
Ichiro let go of his irritation and replaced it with a smile. “It doesn’t matter. There won’t be anybody here tonight you don’t know.”
Relief. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been dreading trying to guess whether the person sitting next to her looked familiar because she’d met him before and forgotten his name, or because she’d seen him on TV last week.
Outlook improved, she followed Ichiro across the courtyard garden toward a glowing entry that promised traditional-style opulence inside. Her fiancé looked good tonight. He’d recently gotten new glasses, and although his hair was conservatively black, he’d let her cajole him into a slightly edgier cut. Not that it mattered if he was fashionable or not—he was so confident of his place in the world, nobody ever noticed that he wasn’t tall or especially good-looking.
It still didn’t seem quite real that next month she’d be putting on the three-layered kimono that had been worn by six generations of Mitsuyama brides. Her future husband was a perfect example of modern-day samurai manhood: Ichiro decided what he wanted and charged straight for it, including the business of finding a wife. She barely remembered meeting him when they were both studying overseas, but apparently he remembered her when he hit thirty and his parents began pressuring him to marry. He’d put her on the list of potential matches, and since she’d just broken up for the fourth time with her on-again, off-again foreign boyfriend, she’d allowed her mother to answer the preliminary questionnaire when it arrived. She never dreamed the Mitsuyamas would actually call. Her family was respectable enough, but Ichiro’s family had been wealthy and powerful since his ancestors opened their first store in the 1750s. He’d taken her out on four intense dates after their official o-miai introduction, then surprised her by proposing on the fifth. She’d surprised herself by accepting.
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