EQMM, February 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Keiko left the tatami-mat room and went to the kitchen. After warming the mapo tofu in the microwave, she also placed a can of beer on a tray and sat down facing Natsuki. Then she took from her handbag the postcard she had received the day before.

  Natsuki was moving her thumb and index finger rapidly on the table.

  Keiko slid the postcard toward the fingers.

  "Will you stop doing this?"

  Natsuki looked up at her, fingers still moving.

  "If you have something you want to complain about, just tell me. If you can't do that, at least write me a note and give it to me right then. When you do this, I worry so much, not knowing what you're angry about until your note gets delivered."

  "Don't want to.” Natsuki grinned. “That's what my aim is, time-lag offensive."

  "Now listen ... You know that the mail deliverer sometimes makes mistakes between our address and Auntie Fusano's address."

  "I know."

  "Then, you remember that one of your postcards was delivered to her place by mistake, don't you? I was so embarrassed by that."

  "That's the fault of the delivery person."

  "It's your writing that's at fault. You write our house number, 9, like a 7."

  "Yes, Mom. I'll be careful about that."

  Accentuating her sigh this time, Keiko changed topics. “Speaking of Auntie Fusano, did you hear?"

  Natsuki's questioning expression said that she had not. The commotion seemed not to have reached this far.

  "Just awhile ago, her house was burglarized."

  Natsuki's fingers slowed down a bit. “A burglar?"

  "Normally a burglar goes after a house when no one's there. But this was the opposite. The burglar went in knowing someone was at home."

  "Really?"

  "'Really?’ ... Is that all you have to say? You're being awfully cold-hearted. Who was the one who helped you get so good at calculations?” Keiko said as she imitated Natsuki's finger motions.

  Had she forgotten about those days when she was in lower elementary school? Fusano had been a big help. She had sat with Natsuki until late into the evening and even taught her how to calculate on the abacus. Shouldn't Natsuki show some concern?

  Of course, if she, Natsuki's mother, could have come home earlier, her young daughter wouldn't have had to be alone at night, or have the old neighbor woman take pity on her.

  As she wrote down the calculation answers in her notebook, Natsuki said, “Don't you have a much more important case you should be working on?"

  She had jabbed at her mother's weak point. “Well, yes. And I'm working hard on it."

  "Will you catch him quickly, please? A random attacker on the street isn't cool at all. It's a pain for me. I can't even go to the convenience store after dark."

  "I know."

  "Maybe you don't have any talent as a detective, Mom."

  "That might be true. Maybe a murder case is too difficult for a middle-aged female detective who commutes on the train."

  "On second thought, it may be better for you to be a lousy detective.” Natsuki closed her notebook. “If you can't catch him, at least no one will come around here to pay their respects in revenge. If I lose you too, it'll be a big mess for me."

  "'Pay their respects,’ you say?” Where did this child learn such an expression?

  The man who had run over her husband was an arsonist he had arrested, who was acting out of spite. Her husband's life had been lost to this revenge, a detective's occupational hazard.

  She had told Natsuki the facts, but she didn't recall having used such slang.

  Even so...

  The random street killing had occurred on November eighteenth. Two weeks had already gone by since then. What had she accomplished during that time? Without talent ... maybe Natsuki was right.

  Her chopsticks suddenly felt heavy. As she placed the mapo tofu into her mouth, she thought of something, and said in a loud voice, “Wow, Natsuki. This is good. You should open up a Chinese restaurant here."

  "Hey,” Natsuki coolly squinted her eyes, “you're just saying that because it doesn't taste good."

  Keiko leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Right. Truth is, the flavoring could use some help."

  "See, what did I tell you? It sounded so fake when you said it."

  "Actually, it wasn't you I was talking to, Natsuki,” Keiko said in even more hushed tones, and continued after glancing toward the tatami room. “I wanted your father to hear it."

  "Then you should go in there and tell him in front of the altar.” Pulled along, Natsuki's voice also quieted to a whisper.

  "That wouldn't work. Natsuki, don't you know about the effect of overhearing something that is leaked?"

  Natsuki shook her head.

  "Then you wouldn't have heard the phrase ‘heard at one remove,’ either. Listen. Let's say there's a made-up story."

  "Okay."

  "If you heard it directly from someone, you'd doubt if it was true, wouldn't you?"

  "Of course."

  "But how about if that same story was being told by that person to someone else, and you overheard that exchange? Then how would you take it? You might very well believe it, mightn't you?"

  "Maybe so."

  "That's the effect of overhearing something. When you want someone to believe a certain piece of information, the trick is to tell it to another person and have it be overheard. So your dad should be happy in heaven now. ‘So, Natsuki has become a good cook,’ he's thinking."

  "Hmm. So you call that way of telling someone ‘heard at one remove'?"

  "Yes. See, you've learned something new, haven't you?"

  Keiko put down her chopsticks. She pulled the tab on the can of beer. Just then, the telephone rang, as if that were a sign.

  "Is this Hazumi?” It was her section chief. His tone seemed normal, but it contained some irritation. “There's been another murder, a second victim."

  Keiko had stood up even before she heard those words.

  * * * *

  3.

  The meeting, which started at five p.m., ended exactly two hours later.

  Keiko was the first to dash out of the meeting room. Running into the restroom, she gargled over and over. It felt as if a needle was stuck deep inside her throat. She always felt this way when she was exposed to secondhand smoke. The man who had sat next to her was the problem. She knew his face. It was the deputy chief of the burglary section, who had questioned Fusano at her house on the night of December second, four days ago. Perhaps feeling important because he had been upped in rank to help pursue a murderer, he had smoked incessantly through the entire meeting.

  Next time I'll take the seat farthest away from him. So vowing to herself, Keiko returned to the squad room and opened the morning paper, which she had yet to read. The article on the random street killer was in the middle of the city page. It was in three columns. Though several days had passed since the second victim was killed, the case was still foremost in the news.

  With no progress toward its solution, there was insufficient information for the article. In such cases, reporters resorted to desperate measures. The article treated as a scoop the fact that investigators from the white-collar crime, burglary, organized crime, weapons, and drugs sections had been temporarily assigned to the violent-crimes section to support the investigation.

  "Detective Hazumi."

  Hearing her name called, Keiko lifted her eyes from the newspaper. The junior detective at the next desk extended the telephone receiver.

  "Call for you. From lockup administration."

  What could they want? she wondered as she took the receiver.

  "This is Itami."

  At the sound of his voice, Keiko pictured Itami's square-jawed face.

  "Can you come over here?"

  "What's wrong?"

  "One of the guests staying with us insists on seeing you."

  "Who is it?"

  "Number Fifteen."

  "I can't tell f
rom that.” She meant to tone down her voice, but couldn't avoid sounding prickly.

  "I can't help it, it's Number Fifteen. The rules say we have to call our guests by number."

  Keiko hung up the telephone and pressed her temples. Separation of investigation and detention: that was the entrenched principle that caused this inevitable conflict between the Criminal Investigation Department and the Detention Administration Department. It wasn't something any of them could do anything about. Still, this kind of exchange was tiresome.

  Is there a problem? her junior colleague asked with his glance.

  "Give me some time,” she told him.

  "Yes, but what about our interviews? When are we leaving?"

  "Wait for me here. I'll be right back."

  Keiko left the room and ran down one flight of stairs, to the third floor.

  Among the “guests” in the detention lockup there were occasionally some who had information about crimes other than those they had committed. It was possible that “Number 15” had some information about the random street killer.

  When she opened the heavy door leading to the holding cell, Keiko clasped her arms around herself. The heating should be the same here as on other floors, but this was a place full of steel bars, and no warmth could be felt.

  At the guard desk was an unusually handsome-featured young police officer. His name was Saito. He lived in the same district as Keiko, west of the train station, and Keiko recognized him. His lifestyle seemed extravagant to her, as he bought new-model cars quite often. It was rumored that he was in debt to the agency's savings cooperative.

  "Where is Mr. Itami?” Keiko asked him as these thoughts passed through her mind.

  "Please wait,” Saito responded, unexpectedly politely. He got up and went into the office behind her.

  Shortly, in place of the handsome officer, the square-jawed chief emerged.

  Saying only, “This way,” Itami began walking quickly along the hallway lined with cells.

  Keiko followed him.

  The bars on the cells were covered on the bottom half, but the top half was left open. This meant that the detainees could look out onto the hallway if they stood up. Seven p.m. With supper over, they were stuck with nothing to do. They stared out from their cells with curiosity.

  As he walked ahead of her, Itami half turned and said, “Normally I wouldn't listen to particular requests from our guests. But Number Fifteen was insistent on seeing you. I'm making a special exception."

  Tell that to Number 15, or whoever. But Keiko kept quiet and nodded at his patronizing words.

  The cell where Itami stopped was at the farthest point from the guard desk.

  "Hey, Number Fifteen."

  When Itami called out, a man near them turned around. It was a forty-year-old man wearing a soiled jacket. When she saw his face, Keiko swallowed her breath.

  Nekozaki. A long scar under his right eye. There was no mistake. It was Soichi Yokozaki.

  Yokozaki soundlessly approached the bars. From his narrow eyes an expressionless gaze was directed at her.

  "When were you released?” Keiko said.

  Yokozaki didn't reply.

  "Just ten days ago,” Itami answered in his stead. “He was finally let out, but then he stole some money from an old woman's house, so now he's back in here."

  It was the burglary at Fusano's house. So it had been Yokozaki after all.

  Wait, though. He might also be involved in the street killings. She wondered about this, but she immediately stopped short. The first killing was about twenty days ago. Yokozaki was still in prison then.

  "Was that case really your doing?"

  Yokozaki didn't bother to answer this either.

  "Must have been.” Again, Itami spoke for him. “It was just decided today that his prison sentence will be extended ten days."

  Even though the court had decided upon a ten-day extension of his sentence while the burglary was investigated, she still couldn't believe that Yokozaki had committed the burglary.

  "Where are you living now? What's your address?"

  She didn't expect that Yokozaki would answer. She kept her eyes on the man inside the cell, but her voice was aimed at Itami.

  "The station. That night he was digging in the trash bins in the area west of the station. He must have been tempted to go into the old woman's house."

  "Wait a minute. You mean Kinesaka station?"

  "Sure."

  "What do you mean, he lives there?"

  "You know, there are four or five cardboard shelters on the concourse there."

  "Yes."

  "It's one of those that is Number Fifteen's address."

  "...Really?"

  The new arrival had been Yokozaki.

  "And,” her voice went high. This was because a certain phrase crossed her mind. Clearing her throat, Keiko continued, “What do you want from me?"

  At this, finally, Yokozaki's face moved. Showing his tongue, he slowly licked his lips and spoke in a hoarse voice.

  * * * *

  4.

  "Thanks. It's been a help.” Quickly saying so, Keiko alighted from the car.

  "Boss,” her junior colleague leaned across the passenger seat and said, “you should take a rest."

  "Why?"

  "You don't look so well. The chief is worried, too."

  "If I take a rest, will the killer also rest?” she answered in a joking fashion, pushing aside the headache that had set in.

  Her colleague closed his mouth and pulled back to sit up straight in the driver's seat.

  Before she slid the key into her front door lock, she tested its strength by jiggling the doorknob. With staff being shifted to the violent-crimes section, the burglary section was now short-handed, so it was best to be cautious.

  As soon as she stepped into the house, she called out, “Natsu!"

  There was no answer. She could hear water splashing in the bathroom. Natsuki must be taking a bath.

  On the dining table was a newspaper. It was opened to the same page she had seen just four hours before in the squad room. Was her daughter looking at the city page every day in order to find out more about her mother's work?

  Keiko searched in her tool box and brought out a small penlight and sat down in a chair. What occupied her mind was Yokozaki's face.

  What is he cooking up?

  After a while, Natsuki came out of the bathroom. As her hair wasn't wet, Keiko decided she must not have been soaking in the tub but rather washing the tub out.

  "Could you sit here for a second?” Pointing to the chair across from her with one hand, with the other she pulled out a photograph from her bag. It was a mug shot of Yokozaki. When she had returned from the lockup, Keiko had rushed to the records room and opened up his case file. She had made a copy of his photograph.

  "Look at this,” she said, putting the photograph on the table in front of Natsuki. “Take a good look at this face and remember it."

  Natsuki took the photo in her hand.

  "His name is Yokozaki. He's a stalker, a word we've heard a lot lately. That's what he is. He's a bad character who pursues his target to the end. He's persistent, like a cat, so his nickname is Nekozaki, Cat-zaki. Some time ago, he stalked his ex-wife and ended up slashing her with a box cutter."

  Her eyes glued to the photo, Natsuki nodded.

  "And I caught him and sent him to prison. So he must hate me for it."

  Natsuki blinked several times.

  "Yokozaki's been released from prison and has started living at the train station. He's one of the homeless at Kinesaka station. That means he's moved close to our house. So I'm a little worried."

  Natsuki lifted her eyes from the photo.

  "Remember what you said the other day? Paying their respects? It just may be that he's targeting me. This is only a possibility, but you may be in danger as well."

  Natsuki returned the photo to Keiko.

  "Keep it,” Keiko continued, staying her daughter's hand. “As l
uck would have it, Yokozaki's in jail right now. But he'll probably be released in ten days."

  From what the burglary-section officer had said, the only reason for Yokozaki's arrest was eyewitness testimony from a nearby resident who had stated, “I saw a man with a scar beneath his eye.” If no other physical evidence was discovered, it was likely that he would be released when his lockup sentence was up.

  "It's all right. Don't worry. I'll fight him off and protect you. But, to be safe, just remember this face. And if you see him somewhere, run away. Understand?"

  Not uttering a sound, Natsuki nodded her head. Keiko was perplexed. Even in this emergency, Natsuki was refusing to speak.

  "Can't you answer me? What are you angry about this time? Can't you give me a reason?"

  Still, Natsuki would not speak.

  Keiko slapped the table with her hands, letting her frustration out. “I'm going out,” she said, and headed toward the front door. Outside, she first peered into the mailbox. Just as she thought, there was a postcard inside. The addressee, “Ms. Hazumi Keiko,” and the sender, “Natsuki,” were both written with penmanship that slanted up toward the right. The writing was familiar. But the postcard this time wasn't the type sold at the post office, it was a picture postcard. This differed from the usual pattern. Below the address was written: “How long are you planning to pursue the burglar?” The other side was a photograph of some wildflowers of no particular distinction.

  She turned it over to look at the writing again. She guessed, from the question, that Natsuki was annoyed that her mother was late coming home again. Was this why she was refusing to speak? It was true that she had been coming home after midnight the past few days. Last night she had stayed overnight at the police station.

  But still...

  Keiko felt fatigue weighing her down. Natsuki shouldn't be behaving so childishly, throwing a tantrum over something like that. Besides, “It's not a burglar. I'm chasing after a killer.” She caught herself talking aloud. When she thought about how hard she had worked to rise from the burglary section to the violent-crimes section, this misunderstanding was irritating.

  "You have a more important case. Hurry up and find the street killer,” Natsuki had said the other day. So Keiko had thought Natsuki had come to appreciate her mother's work. But it seemed she had overestimated her daughter.