A Dog in Water (20 page)

“What you’re doing to your wife is a crime.”

“That’s not for you to decide. Don’t make me laugh. The hell can a cop like you do? This woman is my slave for life until she dies,” her husband cackled.

Toshikawa gently laid Yuko on the floor. “With a man like him around, your child won’t ever find happiness,” he said sadly, then pounced on her husband. All of his hold techniques were utterly useless. He fought back desperately but was soon immobile, his neck twisted into an impossible angle.

“I’m going to turn myself in to the police,” Toshikawa said. “Please take care of my son.”

“I will say I did it,” she replied. “Please, go home to your son.”

“No, I have no intention of escaping what I’ve done.”

“You don’t deserve to be punished for his sake!”

The police arrived while they argued. Toshikawa was arrested on the spot on suspicion of murder.

Unable to diminish his guilt by turning himself in, Toshikawa was also suspected of carrying on an illicit affair with Yuko and conspiring with her to murder her husband. Due to this, Yuko’s testimony was largely inadmissible. Besides, there was no proof to back up her claims of daily abuse at her husband’s hands. Nor could they find an attorney willing to mount a passionate defense on behalf of two people accused of murdering a fellow lawyer.

In the end Yuko was not charged with anything, but Toshikawa was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison. He didn’t appeal, accepting life behind bars. Yuko took in his son, Yuta.

Thanks to her husband’s job there was money in the bank, but not enough to cover the mortgage on the apartment. Selling it to pay off
the loan seemed a long shot given that she’d have to find a buyer for an apartment where a murder had taken place. She had no choice but to renounce her right to inherit the apartment.

The life insurance company that held her husband’s policy refused to pay out. Yuko couldn’t bring herself to fight the case. She rented a cheap apartment with the money she’d saved up before her marriage and began her life with Yuta. Thankfully, the child took to her.

Compared to her previous life, her days were like a dream. Yuko was happy to simply pass her days without fear of violence from her husband. She was happy to hear stories of Toshikawa from Yuta. They wrote letters to Toshikawa nearly every day. Yuta would touch her ever-expanding belly and say, “I prefer a little sister,” and Yuko would laugh.

Yet they soon fell upon harder times. Heavily pregnant, Yuko was unable to work. Her family had disowned her. She applied for welfare but was told to “Go ask your parents for help.” Still she persevered. She had a responsibility to raise Yuta properly until Toshikawa was released from prison. That thought kept her going. She did humiliating work on the internet that capitalized on her pregnancy. Her physical condition worsened as she passed the eight-month mark. Yuko despaired when she considered her impending delivery and raising an infant. Even so, she kept pushing herself to the breaking point. Then broke.

Dropping Yuta off at Toshikawa’s deceased wife’s family home, she spent all night writing a long suicide note to Toshikawa. At some point she’d fallen asleep and woke up to the sound of someone knocking at the door. She opened it to find Yuta.

“I don’t wanna go anywhere!” he yelled at her through tears.

She hugged him close. “We’ll go together then.”

Yuko rented a car with the last of her money and let Yuta eat his fill of Chinese food, his favorite. After that, they went for a long drive. Yuta was in high spirits from start to finish. They reached a wharf at midnight. Yuta was fast asleep in the front passenger’s seat. Yuko gently patted his head. Then she drove off into the sea.

A couple on a date called the coast guard, and a rescue team managed to save Yuko. Her unborn child survived too. By the time they found Yuta, however, he’d been on the ocean floor for three hours.

It was an unbearably sad story. Assuming her story could be taken at face value, that is.

“What do you wish me to do?”

“I want you to find him, Mr. Toshikawa,” she answered, her eyes red from weeping. No matter how much she cried her tears never seemed to run dry.

“And what do you plan on doing once you’ve located Mr. Toshikawa?”

“I don’t know.” She covered her face with her hands and her shoulders shook.

From her tale, Toshikawa indeed seemed like the sender of the letter from Johannes. He’d killed in order to save her, sacrificing his career as a policeman, and resigned himself to a prolonged prison sentence. And yet she’d taken the life of his only son whom he had entrusted to her.

It was easy to imagine Toshikawa’s grief, anger and despair upon receiving the news in prison. Then, the child of the man he’d killed was born, and was growing up fine. Of course that would seem immensely unfair. No one could blame Toshikawa for having such thoughts.

Unfairness must be righted. I will wait ten days. If you cannot do it, I will. - Johannes

The letter seemed to say that if Yuko didn’t kill her daughter within ten days, Johannes would come and do it for her. Well, not “seemed.” There was no other way to read it. So long as Yuko wasn’t hiding anything major.

Having received such a letter, it was only natural that Yuko would seek the services of a detective in finding Toshikawa. The police wouldn’t act without further cause, but she couldn’t just sit by idly and do nothing. It was also easy to understand that she was at a loss for what to do when she found him. This wasn’t a case where a simple
apology would suffice. Yuko was obliged to fulfill any request Toshikawa might have. I understood that she felt this obligation more keenly than anyone else.

I took another look at the envelope. It was postmarked December 4th. If the ten days started then, that meant she had until the fourteenth. Today was the seventh. Just one week left.

“Understood. I’ll do what I can,” I said. She looked up at me. “However, as a general rule I can’t search for missing persons unless I’m hired by an immediate family member. For this case, may we agree that I’m searching for the sender of this letter, Johannes?”

Yuko nodded. Then, silently, she bowed her head deeply.

But I didn’t care about finding Johannes. What I needed to do was to save a girl named Shiori.

“Is your daughter aware of what you just told me about your past?”

“No, I’ve never told her.”

“So she is unaware that her life may be in danger?”

“Correct.”

I asked a few more questions about what I needed to know and wrote the answers in my pocketbook.

The man was reading the sports section of a newspaper, legs sprawled wide as he sat on a sofa in the back of a quiet, underground coffee shop in a building near Takanawadai station on the Asakusa Line.

I sat down in a seat next to him. There were no other customers around. I ordered a cup of the house blend from the waiter, then turned to the man. “Are you Mitsuaki Kamata?”

The man looked up from his newspaper and glanced at me. “You’re a cop?”

“No, private detective.”

“Detective? What’s a detective want with me?” He was wearing a rather expensive-looking gray suit, a blue-tinged light gray dress shirt and no necktie. His hair was cropped, but his sideburns were grown out. He looked to be around forty. Although he’d never be mistaken for any sort of businessman, he was a cut above the general riffraff on the streets.

“I’m searching for Akikumo Toshikawa. Would you have any information?”

“Toshikawa? Oh, that fallen pig? I thought he was still in the slammer.”

“No, he was released the beginning of last month. He stopped by his younger brother’s place in Hachioji, but now he’s gone missing.”

Three days had passed since I’d agreed to take on the case.
Toshikawa had been released from Maebashi Prison on November 3rd having served his full sentence. Generally, after about two-thirds of a prison term the inmate was eligible for parole, but Toshikawa hadn’t been, either due to exceptionally poor behavior or some serious transgression.

“Hunh. Well, he hasn’t called me, not once,” Kamata said evenly.

I caught the scent of a lie. “According to his brother, an acquaintance he’d met in prison was going to help find him work.”

“You think that’s me?”

“Until your release in February of this year, you shared a cell with him, and according to Mr. Nishijima, who was also a cellmate, no one else was close to him.”

“I wonder …”

“What was he like?”

“Dark sonovabitch. Never talked about himself, couldn’t tell if he ever paid attention when other people talked … Seemed like he was livin’ like it was just some afterthought. But then, once in a while, he’d go berserk like he’d had a fit …” he said lazily and lifted his newspaper as if to indicate the discussion was over.

“Would you happen to know anything of his activities after his release?”

“I just told you, he never talked ’bout himself.”

I figured it was pointless to keep pushing. Kamata was showing signs of irritation.

“Could you contact me if he gets in touch with you?” I placed a business card on the edge of his table.

“What a bother,” Kamata grumbled without looking at me.

“Then I’ll just stop by to chat occasionally.” I stood up.

Kamata looked at me with a fed-up expression. “That’s even worse. Fine, I’ll let you know if I hear anything, so don’t come ’round anymore.” He picked up my card without reading it and stuffed it into his shirt pocket.

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

“But I gotta warn ya … You should just forget about him.”

“Why is that?”

“He’s a murderer, and a little nuts. No good’ll come of chasin’ after a guy like him.”

“Thanks for the warning.” I turned away from Kamata. Then a thought struck me and I stopped in my tracks. “Does the name Johannes ring any bells?”

Unexpectedly, a smile stretched across Kamata’s face. “Faithful Johannes? Yeah, read it in prison.”

“What is it?”

“Huh? You don’t know? It’s a Grimms’ fairy tale. Pretty popular among yakuza types. It describes the yakuza ideal.”

I gave a bow and turned away once again.

I left the coffee shop and climbed into my car, which I’d parked at a meter. I drove along Sakurada Street towards Takanawa Library, located near an intersection in Shirogane.

What does “Johannes” mean? Why has the sender of the letter assumed the name?

Right after taking on the case I’d called up several former colleagues from my time with the MPD who I thought might be able to assist. I’d also used my laptop to search the keyword “Johannes” on the internet. The search engine came up with approximately 197,000 hits.

Johannes Vermeer, seventeenth-century Dutch painter. Johannes Kepler, sixteenth-century German mathematician, natural philosopher and astrologer. Johannes Brahms, nineteenth-century German composer and neoclassical maestro. Johannes Itten, Swiss sculptor. Johannis de Rikje, Dutch technician who did much to engineer the separation of the Kiso Three Rivers in Meiji-era Japan. Bach’s oratorio Johannes-Passion, or St. John Passion (originally, “The Suffering According to John”). Saint John of Capistrano, who was only a young boy when war broke out in Kosovo against the Ottoman Turks …

I soon gave up. I had neither the patience to plow through 197,000 hits nor the feeling I would glean anything useful. But I felt that Kamata’s words had given me a thread to follow at last.

I was mildly surprised to find multiple editions of the brothers’ fairy tales, intended not for kids but for adults, lined up on the shelves. I picked up a paperback version titled
Grimms’ Fairy Tales, 1812 first edition (Vol. 1)
. I skimmed the table of contents, which supposedly listed 45 stories, but found nothing with the name “Johannes.” I tried the second volume, but had no luck there either. I picked up a different edition. There it was, tale number four. “Faithful Johannes.” I sat down in a nearby chair and read the twenty-page folktale.

Johannes, the king’s servant, hears three ravens talking and learns that death will befall the king. However, if any man were to speak of the secret, he would turn to stone. Johannes, more faithful than any other servant, risks his own life for the king’s by killing the king’s horse, burning the king’s wedding singlet and sucking blood from the breast of the king’s bride. The ignorant king becomes enraged and orders Johannes to be executed. Johannes, standing on the gallows, tells the king everything since he is about to die anyways and turns into a stone statue. The king, now aware that Johannes’s faithfulness has saved his life, rants and raves and regrets ordering his execution. Time passes and the king has two princes who grow up healthy. One day the king goes to the stone statue and asks if there is any way to save Johannes. The statute opens its mouth and says, “There is, so long as you are able to cast aside that which is dearest to you.” The stone statue of Johannes orders the king to kill the two princes with his own hands. The king trembles with fear at having to kill his own beloved children, but to answer to Johannes’s loyalty, he draws his sword and cuts off their heads.

Johannes and Toshikawa’s stories overlapped perfectly. The thought made my chest feel tight.

The yakuza ideal that Kamata had mentioned most likely referred to serving the king even at the expense of one’s life and the king honoring the servant in turn over and above family love—in other words to yakuza society as it should be, where bonds formed over the ceremonial shared sake trumped blood ties. But how did Toshikawa, who
wasn’t a yakuza, interpret the story when he read it in prison like Kamata?

A man who sacrificed himself to save another suffers a cruel blow from the very one he saved. The man, who might as well be dead, urges the other to sacrifice what is dearest to him.

Perhaps Toshikawa felt like he had been told what he should do once he was released when he read this folktale.

I recalled Shiori, my client Yuko Kuroki’s daughter. Goosebumps crept along my skin. At the end of “Faithful Johannes,” the revived Johannes places the children’s severed heads on their necks and brings them back to life and everyone lives happily ever after. But in reality, restoring a child’s severed head was an absolute impossibility.