“Where are you? Still in Shinjuku?”
“No, Kuramae.”
“What are you doing out there? You get something from the woman with the volunteer group?”
“I did. Ms. Yamamoto—that’s her name—told me that Senba used to come by their soup kitchen every week until last winter or so. She said she remembered him in particular because he carried himself with a little more composure than their usual customers.”
“Until last winter … so she hasn’t seen him this year?”
“That’s right. She thought he might have passed away.”
“Why’d she think that?”
“He wasn’t doing so well the last time she saw him. She said she referred him to a doctor that gave the homeless checkups for free.”
“Did he go?”
“I had Ms. Yamamoto call the clinic, but they never saw anyone by the name of Senba. He might’ve gone under an alias, so I thought I’d pay them a visit tomorrow and show the doctor his photo.”
“Right. So, why Kuramae?”
“Apparently, there was one other person who knew Senba—he used to work with Ms. Yamamoto, but he transferred to a different volunteer group this year. Their office is in Kuramae. They run a soup kitchen on Sundays in Ueno Park.”
“And you think Senba might’ve switched from Shinjuku to Ueno?”
“I did, so I had Ms. Yamamoto call him, but unfortunately he hadn’t seen Senba in Ueno Park either.”
“Okay. So wait, why are you in Kuramae?”
“Well, he hadn’t seen Senba, but he did meet someone looking for him.”
“What? When?” Kusanagi gripped the phone tighter in his hand.
“Back in March.”
Kusanagi took out his notepad and pen and crouched on the ground. Holding his phone to his ear with his shoulder, he spread the notebook out across his knee. “Tell me where the office is. I’m coming too.”
He hung up and hailed a taxi. The ride to Kuramae took about half an hour. The office was on the second floor of a small, brown building just off Edo Street, near the Sumida River.
He pressed the buzzer outside the door and heard someone moving inside. The door opened, and a short man in his forties peeked out. “You the police?”
Kusanagi nodded and looked into the room. Utsumi was sitting in front of the desk, buried in files.
The man introduced himself as Tanaka. “Please, come in.”
Kusanagi made his way in between the cardboard boxes on the floor, and asked Utsumi, “Did you go over everything?”
“Most of it, yes. Mr. Tanaka identified Tsukahara as the man who came looking after Senba.”
“Did he say anything about why he was looking for Senba?” Kusanagi asked Tanaka.
“No. I figured he was with a collection agency. We get a few of those. A lot of the homeless are people running from debt.”
“Mr. Tanaka tells me that Mr. Tsukahara came here at the end of March, and then again two or three times after that. He would always stand a little ways away from the soup line, just watching. But he never saw him after May—is that right?” She turned to Tanaka, who nodded.
“Nobody much liked the look of him. We were happy when he stopped coming. Did something happen? What’s this investigation about, anyway?”
Kusanagi chuckled and waved his hand. “It’s nothing big,” he said, watching Utsumi stand up out of the corner of his eye. “We may have some more questions for you later on, but I think we’re good for now. Thank you for your time,” he said, heading for the door.
The left the building together and walked down the street a little way until they found another coffee shop—the same chain as the one in Ekota Station.
The two exchanged reports, and Kusanagi mentioned his conversation with Tatara.
“Did you tell him what Yukawa said about being careful how we solved the case?”
“No. I don’t think there are many other people in the department who would appreciate the subtleties involved there. And I think Tatara understands what we’re up against. If Yukawa’s getting involved on his own accord, we don’t want to do anything to hold him back. So, what’s your next step? I was going to look into where Mrs. Kawahata and Narumi were living those last few years in Tokyo,” Kusanagi said, taking an unenthusiastic sip of his coffee.
“Well, something occurred to me when I was talking to Mr. Tanaka.”
“And that is?”
“Well, I’d say it’s certain that Tsukahara was searching for Senba—we have sightings of him from two places at two different times now. But I’m thinking a detective like Tsukahara wouldn’t have stopped there. He was probably making the rounds of several places.” Utsumi turned almond-shaped eyes toward Kusanagi. “But then he stopped coming in May. What if he stopped coming because he found Senba?”
Kusanagi set his coffee cup down and shot her a penetrating look. “What if he did? Is there something there that we can work with?”
“When Senba was spotted in Shinjuku, he was emaciated. It was clear at a glance that he was sick. If Mr. Tsukahara found him in April, I doubt he looked any better.”
“He might even have been dead.”
“Last night, I went through the database of unidentified bodies found in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area this year. There wasn’t anyone who matched Senba’s description, but I’ll check again. It gets more difficult if he wasn’t dead. What if Tsukahara had found him at death’s door? What you think he would’ve done in that situation?”
Kusanagi leaned back in his chair and let his eyes wander as he thought. “I suppose he’d have taken him to a hospital first. He’d get him checked out, and if he needed it, hospitalized. There are hospitals that specialize in the homeless.”
“Offering free or very low-cost services, yes.”
“Right. There’s about forty or so just in Tokyo.”
“Yes, except it’s doubtful he would have been able to get care, even at one of those hospitals. They require a residence card, and Senba didn’t have one of those after he got out of prison. I checked his records. If they went to the hospital, Tsukahara must have paid the fees.”
“Possibly. It sounded like he was pretty bad off.”
“He might’ve required hospitalization.”
“Which would mean paperwork.”
“That’s right. Except, when a homeless person with no registered address needs hospitalization, the hospital typically tries to register them for public assistance to defray costs. In order to do that, they need to issue a residence card under the hospital’s address. But his records showed no sign of that having happened, either.”
“So what did happen?”
“Well,” Utsumi said. “I’m thinking it was either a hospital that didn’t require public assistance, or”—she leaned forward, a gleam in her eye—“someplace that owed Tsukahara a favor.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
At the Hari police station, the overall mood of the investigative task force was dark, and with every successive report, the mood in the conference room darkened further. Everyone could see that the proceedings lacked one important element: results. Hozumi from prefectural homicide stared glumly at the reports on the desk in front of him. They were essentially a detailed and objective account of how little the task force had achieved after days of questioning. They included Nishiguchi’s report on the restaurant in East Hari where Masatsugu Tsukahara had eaten seaweed udon the day he died—more information that offered no hope of resulting in a lead.
Nishiguchi sat toward the back, keeping one eye on the proceedings while he ruminated on his exchange with Yukawa in East Hari. Nishiguchi had checked the blog My Crystal Sea, where Yukawa claimed he’d seen Narumi extolling the virtues of the view, but there was nothing in there about the view from East Hari. In fact, East Hari wasn’t mentioned at all.
Did that mean the physicist had intentionally lied? And if so, why?
The meeting dragged on. Now they were getting into the reports on the method of the k
illing and possible murder scenes. They still hadn’t found the place where the victim was poisoned. If the murderer had somehow lured the victim into a car, drugged him with sleeping pills, then arranged to kill him by carbon monoxide poisoning inside the vehicle, he or she could have done the deed anywhere. Afterward, they could have dropped him off the seawall when no one was looking—an easy feat to pull off after sundown, in the countryside, where there would be no witnesses.
Just in case a car hadn’t been used, they looked into unused storerooms, cottages, and empty homes in the area as well. Yet they had found nothing with any connection to the case. There was a room in one hotel, closed now for several years, with scorch marks on the floor. However, given the accumulation of dust, it was unlikely anyone had been there within the last month, if not longer. The marks were probably something left by vandals.
“How about the victim’s background. Anything on that?” Hozumi asked, his voice thick with fatigue.
“I have a report from our Tokyo task force,” Isobe said, standing with some papers in his hand. The Tokyo task force was a small squad that had been sent to look into Masatsugu Tsukahara’s personal life and connections.
Isobe cleared his throat and began. “The victim, Masatsugu Tsukahara, retired from the Tokyo Police Department last year. Before he retired, he was part of the Department of Regional Guidance, and we spoke with three of his colleagues there.…”
Isobe delivered his report with uncustomary vigor, but the news clearly wasn’t what Hozumi had been hoping for. Tsukahara had been devoted to his work, committed to crime prevention with impressive determination, and displayed an uncommon attention to detail. He wasn’t very social, but once he got to know someone, he would do anything for them. In other words, he wasn’t the type who made many enemies.
He was never at the center of any drama in the workplace, and his transition to retirement had gone smoothly. All his former colleagues agreed that no one had been rubbed the wrong way, and nothing critical had been left undone.
Hozumi frowned and stretched, putting his hands behind his head as he leaned back in his chair. “Doesn’t look like much is going to come from that direction, then. How about this other guy. Senba, was it? Anyone seen him?”
“We were thinking of expanding our questioning in East Hari a little further east,” Isobe offered, though it didn’t sound like he had much hope that would result in much.
“And we still don’t know if this guy’s even alive?”
Isobe winced. “Tokyo said they’d let us know if anything turns up.”
“What about the connection between the victim and Hari Cove? Anything other than Senba we can go on?” Hozumi asked the room, irritation creeping into his voice.
“Tokyo says that no one remembers hearing the victim talking about Hari Cove. Which means the only thing we have that might have brought him here was the hearing on the undersea development project. I think we have a report on that—hey, Nonogaki,” Isobe called out, looking around. Nonogaki stood from one of the tables toward the front of the room.
So that’s where he got to after we finished, thought Nishiguchi. He hoped Nonogaki had more to show for the day than he did.
“Right, so, attendance vouchers were required to get into the hearing, and we confirmed that the voucher in the victim’s possession was genuine. In order to get a voucher, it was necessary to send an application to DESMEC by mail, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope. Also, not everyone who applied actually got in. They received about twice as many applications as they had spots for, so the winners were decided by lottery. I talked to DESMEC, and they confirmed that the victim was one of the winners.”
“And?” Hozumi prompted, a look in his eyes that said there had better be more.
“The dates for the hearing were set in June, and they started accepting applications to attend in July. Announcements were posted in the Yomiuri, Asahi, and Mainichi papers, as well as on DESMEC’s Web site. The victim sent in his application on July 15, which we determined by checking the postmark on the envelope he’d used to send it in. Interestingly, the watermark showed that he’d mailed it from the Chofu Station Post Office.”
“Chofu?” Hozumi raised an eyebrow. “That’s in Tokyo, right? Er, out on the west side, was it?”
“Someone get a map of Tokyo,” Isobe barked.
One of the young detectives on Isobe’s team dashed up to the front table with a Tokyo-area road map in his hand and opened it for Hozumi. In the back, Nishiguchi looked up Chofu Station on his phone. It was to the west, about fifteen kilometers out from Shinjuku.
“The victim’s residence is in Hatogaya, Saitama, which as we know is north of Tokyo,” Nonogaki continued. “That address was written on the back of the envelope, and matches the address that DESMEC had on file from their application lottery. But we’re still not sure why the envelope was posted from Chofu.” Nonogaki took a seat.
Hozumi looked at the road map a bit more, then he frowned. “Could be there was no particular reason. He probably had something to do in Chofu and threw the letter in a mailbox along the way.”
“That’s a possibility,” Isobe said. “But we spoke to the widow on the phone, and she said she couldn’t think of any reason why her husband would have gone to Chofu. They had no friends or relations out there, and it’s also quite a haul from their home in Hatogaya. The victim didn’t own a car, so he must’ve gone by train. That means he would’ve had several chances along the way to post a letter much closer to home.”
Hozumi’s silence seemed to indicate that he didn’t think Isobe was full of it, for a change. Eventually, he lifted his eyes from his desk and looked around the room. “Anyone else have any opinions on this?”
After several seconds of silence, a deep voice said, “Sir,” and Motoyama raised his hand. “We might not know why the victim went to Chofu, but isn’t it possible that he was in Chofu when he found out about the DESMEC hearing? What if someone he met there told him about the hearing, and he decided he had to go, filling out an application on the spot? Then he could’ve put the application in the mail when he got back to the station on his way home.”
Hozumi nodded. “That works. That just leaves us with the question of why he went to Chofu.”
“I can get the Tokyo task force on that,” Isobe offered.
“Do that. Probably best to have someone meet with the widow directly and ask her again, too.”
THIRTY-NINE
Kusanagi whistled as his eyes followed the polished curves of the navy-blue hybrid. It was a two-wheel drive, got 15.8 kilometers to the liter, and cost a cool six million yen.
If I had that kind of money to drop on a car, I’d think about moving first.
He tried opening the driver’s-side door. It had a good weight to it and shut with a nice, solid sound.
“Feel free to get in,” said a voice from behind him. He turned to see a woman in a light gray suit with short-cut hair smiling at him.
“That’s okay, I didn’t come to see the car, actually,” Kusanagi said. He looked down at the badge on the woman’s lapel. “Ms. Ozeki?”
“Yes,” she said, still smiling. “And you are Detective…?”
“Kusanagi,” he said, quickly flashing his badge.
Her eyes widened for just a moment, and she said, “Right this way,” leading to him to a table with some chairs.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“No, that’s fine. Save it for the customers.”
“It’s quite all right,” she said. “Some coffee? Or iced tea?”
“Iced tea, then.”
“Great,” she said, bowing curtly before walking off.
At least she seems cooperative, Kusanagi thought, sighing a little as he checked out the catalogs featuring the latest models on the table.
It was a little after one in the afternoon. Kusanagi had come to a car dealership in Tokyo’s Koto Ward to talk to one Reiko Ozeki, Narumi’s former classmate.
Earlier
that morning he’d visited Narumi’s old middle school and taken a look at the yearbooks. Kusanagi then tracked down three of the girls who’d been in tennis club with Narumi and set out to pay each of them a visit. The first was out when he dropped by. At the second house, the girl’s parents told him she’d gotten married and moved up north to Sendai. At the third house, he had found Ozeki’s parents. Her mom had been kind enough to call her at the car dealership so she would know he was coming.
Reiko returned with a tray and a glass of iced tea, which she placed in front of him before sitting down with her own glass.
“Sorry to bother you at work like this,” Kusanagi apologized.
“My mom called back after you left, you know,” Reiko said. “She wanted me to find out what kind of investigation it was. She loves those mystery shows on television.”
“Can’t say I watch them.”
“She was very excited about meeting a real detective. Which, I guess I am too, a little.” She smiled and drank some of her tea. “So, what kind of investigation is this?”
“Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to talk much about it.”
“I was afraid of that. Too bad,” she said, still smiling.
“Actually, I came to talk to you about your middle school. You were in tennis club, correct?”
“Oh, wow, that was a long time ago. Yes, I was.”
“Do you remember a Ms. Narumi Kawahata?”
Reiko’s smile grew brighter and her eyes sparkled. “Narumi? Of course I remember her. Boy, it’s been ages since we talked.”
“Were you in touch after graduation?”
“Oh sure. She didn’t go to my high school, though. Her family had to move away. But we talked on the phone now and then. It’s been about ten years, I think.” Reiko looked off, reminiscing, before quickly turning back to Kusanagi, her mouth open. “Wait, was Narumi involved in something?”
“Not at all,” Kusanagi said, remembering to smile. “My case doesn’t directly involve her, actually. I had a few questions about the place where she was living.”
“You mean her house?”
“Yes. At the time the Kawahatas’ address was in Oji, but I understand that Ms. Kawahata commuted to school from a different house. Were you familiar with her living arrangements?”
A Midsummer's Equation: A Detective Galileo Mystery Page 20
