A Dog in Water (17 page)

“Detective! If you want the kid then come out alone!” Kanemitsu hollered again.

The detective drew his revolver and started walking. Two bullets left. None to spare, but enough to kill Kanemitsu. He heard footsteps chasing after him.

“You don’t need to die anymore!”

It was Yano.

“I talked to the old man. You got a stay of execution!” Yano cut in front of the detective, who stopped in his tracks. “They got a cleaner. Katsuya’s body will vanish from this world. That’s the old man’s apology. The cops won’t be coming after you on Katsuya’s account.”

“Come here alone right now, or I’ll kill the kid!” Kanemitsu yelled yet again. The detective started walking, slipping past Yano.

Yano grasped his shoulder. “Stop! You can quit being a daredevil!”

“…”

“I … don’t wanna see you die,” Yano said, very nearly pleading.

“I made a promise to that boy,” the detective stated softly. “That I’d save him no matter what.”

He shook off Yano’s arm and started walking again. All of a sudden there was a gunshot; orange light flared from Kanemitsu’s hand. He must have caught sight of the detective, but the bullet did nothing more than shake a random tree branch.

“Hey, Detective,” Yano called out behind him. “If you die, I’ll take over for you.” There was strength in his words.

The detective kept on walking. A smile slowly crept across his lips. He was happy. It felt great to have someone who’d pick up where he left off. This was the first time he’d ever thought so. He still hadn’t figured out the other thing he needed to do before he died, but maybe now he could go down satisfied.

Another shot rang out. An abrasive noise skidded past and lingered on the detective’s left. He was less than a hundred feet from Kanemitsu.

“Hurry the fuck up or the brat will die!” shouted Kanemitsu. He fired again. This bullet bore a hole into the wall on the left side. The detective walked on, never stopping. His thoughts were on lethally wounding Kanemitsu with one shot. If he fired and only managed to graze the guy, he would shield himself behind the car. There was nothing near the detective that would serve as cover. He was also afraid Kanemitsu would use the boy as a shield. The barrel of the detective’s
revolver was just two inches long, so he needed to get as close as he could. He felt confident that he could bring the guy down at ten—no, fifteen yards. As long as he lived to get that close.

Less than twenty yards remained between them. Just a little more. The detective aimed his gun at Kanemitsu. Kanemitsu fired. The bullet screamed right past his left ear this time. It was then that he realized that while Kanemitsu seemed to aim carefully for each shot, the bullets kept banking to the detective’s left. He stared intently at Kanemitsu’s right hand. It was too dark to make out the details, but the dome light was some help. While Kanemitsu had his right arm stretched straight out with the gun aiming in the detective’s direction, his arm and the gun were not aligned. His finger was set too deeply on the trigger. It was a common mistake among gun novices who didn’t know how to aim one. He probably wasn’t holding the grip right, either. Bullets rarely found their target that way. Guns with large magazines like the one Kanemitsu was using sported pretty thick grips. Japanese, their hands smaller on average, required training to properly cradle such grips.

When bullets banked too far left or right, the shooter could only hit the target close to point-blank range. Even then, the wound wouldn’t always be fatal. If the bullets banked up or down, the shots were lethal as long as one aimed along the center line of the body.

“Hey, Dick! Go to hell!” Kanemitsu cackled and fired.

Another bullet whizzed left of the detective. He aimed at the guy’s throat and fired. As expected, the bullet struck him square in the face. Kanemitsu fell straight backwards. The detective started to run. He leapt over Kanemitsu’s body, opened the back door of the Benz and froze. A sea of blood flooded the car. The boy soaked in the sea. The scent of blood made the detective choke. When he heard Yano’s hurried footsteps draw near, he spun around and screamed:

“Ambulance!”

But he knew it was pointless. The boy’s face was pallid. The detective slipped off his coat and gently raised up the boy. There was still a hint of warmth in his body. He pressed his coat to the exit wound on
the boy’s back. Blood was only barely flowing from the entry wound on his chest. His heart was giving out. The detective pressed his left hand, wrapped in a handkerchief, against the gash. The boy’s eyes fluttered half-open, his pupils unfocused. His lips moved as if he were trying to speak. The detective brought his ear to them.

“Where’s … mom?”

His voice was faint. The boy seemed to be confused. Maybe he thought his father had come for him.

The detective held him close and said, “Can you count to a hundred? By the time you finish, your mother will be here, I’m sure of it.” His voice had trembled.

The boy nodded slightly. He began counting in a tiny, tiny voice.

After sixteen, the detective took up the count. For no reason.

“Is this your first time?” asked the man seated in front of me.

“First time? If you are referring to psychiatric counseling, the answer is no,” I said.

“Please don’t be so stuffy about it.” The doctor gave a gentle smile. He was around fifty and emanated calmness. “For today, you know, I’d like us to talk as if we’d just been introduced by a mutual friend and are chatting to pass the time.”

“My memories do not match reality,” I said, circumventing idle chatter.

“That happens to people all the time. Human memory isn’t very reliable,” said the doctor, his smile never faltering. “So how do your memories mismatch reality?”

“Don’t you remember me? I was your patient eight years ago.”

The smile vanished from the doctor’s face as he looked at me with new eyes. “Ah,” he muttered, restoring his smile. “So it’s you. Yes, I felt like I’d seen your name before, but you seem so different now that I hardly recognized you.” His expression shifted, as though he’d unexpectedly run into an old friend on the street, and as though he felt genuinely pleased to see me again. I didn’t understand this behavior. Perhaps this was just another habit of psychiatrists.

“That was right after you had retired from the police force, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I heard you were starting up your own private detective agency.”

“I still work as a detective.”

“So I wasn’t mistaken.” The doctor nodded, satisfied.

I belatedly realized that he was interested in what had happened to me afterwards, but I wasn’t interested in what had happened to me afterwards. I decided to move the discussion along. “It’s unnatural.”

“What is?”

“The way my memories have been rearranged.”

“I see …” The doctor paused. “Are you saying you’ve managed to recall what happened eight years ago?”

“Not everything, but the important parts, I think …”

“And the incorrect memories you used to hold to now feel like they were artificially formed, so you’ve come to question me. Is that correct?”

“I just want to know the truth.”

“Understood. I will explain what happened. Let me go get your chart from eight years ago.”

The doctor was no longer smiling. He stood up and left the room.

When he returned, he sat back down in his chair and pored over the chart in silence for a while, then began speaking in a deliberate tone. “At the time, you were in an extremely dangerous state, vis-à-vis yourself and others.”

“…”

“You were intensely angry, tormented by unbearable guilt. Clear symptoms of PTSD, psychological damage due to emotional trauma. Most people with PTSD present with panic disorder, but in your case you manifested a marked inclination toward violence and aggression. You tried your best to suppress the worst of it. It was my judgment as a psychiatrist that we had to take action quickly to avoid disastrous consequences.”

“And so you chose to erase the memories that had triggered my PTSD?”

The doctor gave an enigmatic smile. “There’s a drug called
Propranolol hydrochloride. It was originally used to treat angina and high blood pressure, but another function is to disarticulate the hippocampus, where memories are stored, from the amygdala, which governs emotions. When administered to people who develop PTSD due to some terrible experience, the drug weakens the memory of the terrifying experience. Basically, it uncouples emotions from memory, thereby erasing those specific memories.”

“And then you made me believe the lies the police published.”

“It was the best option available to restore balance to your mind.”

“…”

“Let me say this. As a physician I have done nothing wrong.”

“I agree with you. But there’s something you don’t understand.”

“Oh. And that is?”

“What do you think happened to those uncoupled emotions after my memories were erased?”

“Huh?”

“They stayed. For eight years I have lived with anger and guilt, the cause of which I could not place.”

“…”

“Lately I’ve killed two people.”

I heard him swallow at that.

“Doctor, am I normal?”

He didn’t have an answer.

Those memories had come flooding back at dawn yesterday. The boy who’d died in my arms visited me in my dreams to die once again in my embrace.

I tried to apologize to the boy for breaking my promise, but no words came out. It was then that that scene unfurled before my eyes. That abominable scene from eight years ago … I screamed myself awake. The scene from my dream was still vivid in my mind. I heard a strange noise from my abdomen. I flew out of the room and vomited into the sink in the office’s kitchenette.

A week had passed since the boy died. I had held him until the ambulance arrived. I got into the ambulance with him and left the spot. Yano had already made himself scarce.

At the hospital, they operated on my left hand, which Kanemitsu had shot through. I was told that the staff had spent hours carefully reconnecting each nerve and tendon, but also that the degree of functionality I’d regain in my fingers depended on how my recovery went.

After that, the police came to interview me about the incident. Overall I answered the investigators’ questions honestly but didn’t mention anything about Yano. Not that I was protecting Yano—rather, if I told them about him I’d have to bring up Sasagawa and then discuss my involvement with Junko Tajima. I decided to explain away the gun that had slain Kanemitsu as having come from Kanemitsu’s own hideout. They were sure to notice discrepancies if they compared my testimony to that of Yoichi Yoshino, whom they had already arrested, but apparently the police weren’t interested in poking around closed cases.

In the end, I wasn’t charged with any crime, and my name was not released to the press. Although various media had a field day, days in fact, over the shocking incident of a kidnapped and killed grade school boy, the official story was that Kanemitsu had been shot dead by a policeman who’d stormed to the scene after getting tipped off. The force must not have been thrilled that a civilian had killed the culprit, and with a gun. It was comforting to know that I wasn’t going to be talk-show fodder.

Several days passed peacefully. I couldn’t move my left hand at all, but they removed the wires supporting the bridge of my nose and the bruising there had mostly vanished. My broken ribs no longer hurt every time I coughed. While I was aghast when my informant pestered me about every last detail, I did notice feeling more affection for him than before.

My client, Miyuki Yoshino, also visited. She wanted to pay for my services, but I refused. I’d only worked for her for half a day, and I
didn’t think I’d been of much use to her.

Aside from that, I passed the time staring idly at the TV. There was no news report that Katsuya Yamamoto had been discovered dead.

Had the cleaners totally disposed of the corpse as Yano said they would? It didn’t feel like my problem.

The plastic model of the battleship
Yamato
still sat unfinished on my desk. I hadn’t used morphine for an entire week. I felt at odds as my days slowly shifted back into tranquility.

Then yesterday, I had that dream.

I got off the train at Nakano station and walked the familiar path to my office. Seeing hastily prepared Christmas decorations in the windows of a pastry shop, I realized it was already December. Thanks to a recent trend of increasingly warm winters there was yet to be a day with weather that could be considered cold. It felt more like we were having an extended autumn.

“Good evening,” a voice suddenly called out. A female voice. I looked to its source. A young woman stood there smiling at me.

For a brief instant I didn’t know who it was, perhaps because she had the hood of her parka up. By the time I recognized her, she was standing right in front of me. She glanced at my left hand, which was still in a cast, and said, “Good to see your nose is healed, but with your hand like that you can’t wash your hair properly yet, can you? It’s not a good idea to just suffer with an itchy scalp.”

It was the girl from the salon, the one who washed my hair before. I nodded at her in greeting. She bowed politely in return, the charming smile never leaving her face, then walked away.

Back in my office, I sat on the sofa and took some morphine. I started to feel a little better. I had purchased a new vial in the wee hours of the morning, having used up the contents of the previous one yesterday.

Morphine was my only crutch. Without it, I knew I would descend into the dangerous state I’d been in when I’d visited that psychiatrist eight years ago.

The scene from my dream still clung to my whole body. The scene sprang loose memories that had been sealed deep within my brain. All the events leading up to it, the circumstances, the emotions, even the smells were graphically resurrected.

The memories I’d thought I had for eight years were nothing more than information with no attendant emotions. They resembled decades-old infantile memories. I knew what had happened. But as far as what I felt then, I could only imagine. I couldn’t even be sure whether what I remembered was accurate or not.