Deshi (25 page)

The killings, the documents, the people. I was sure they all fit together somehow. But the more I reached out to connect them all, the more the elements scattered away, as if the effort at imposing order only created more chaos. I turned to the familiar world of written things in the hope that I would find a clue.

Copies of the inka that had been found in Georgia had been added to the growing pile of documents from Kim’s computer files. I had worked through his research on the persecution of Tibetan monks, but came up with nothing more than an overwhelming sense of depression. The official documents in Chinese I left to one side, assuming they were source material for some of Kim’s observations. I turned eagerly instead to the inka, figuring that its translation was something that I might actually have some success with. I’d fiddled with it on and off last night, but I wasn’t very focused after the shooting. I hoped that the morning would bring more clarity.

The inka was a long document—a series of scrolls. I had flipped through the file quickly the night before, and today I had a growing feeling that there was a clue for me here. Someone had hunted for the inka with growing fury and urgency. Everywhere it went, people died. Surely, buried within the flowing lines of calligraphy, there was something important.

The inka was not only a certificate, but one connected with the martial arts. The carefully brushed characters sprawled down the page in the traditional format—top to bottom, columns reading from right to left. When you first start to read this stuff, it makes your head hurt because you want to scan it like an English-language document. But I had been at this long enough to know that the wisest course was to surrender to the dictates of the masters—Yamashita had taught me that, if nothing else.

I began with the premise that whatever was in the scroll was fairly convoluted, and that only someone with a certain expertise would be able to recognize it. Someone like Sakura could judge the quality of the calligrapher’s hand, the authenticity of the ink and parchment, and all the technical dimensions of the inka. But he had sent it to another expert. Why?

Hoddington had probably read his share of scrolls, but he wasn’t an expert in issues of provenance. He was a historian. I thought back to the book he was working on—a treatise on the war tales of the samurai. He was someone who knew that history backwards and forwards. Which made me suspect, as always, that the devil in this particular inka was in the details.

It was a long slog. A scroll of this type is not only a testimonial to the skill of its owner, but also a chronicle of transmission, listing names and dates of masters, each of whom forms a link in the chain. There are formulaic pronouncements inter-spersed, but they tend to be carbon copies of each other.

So I ignored the formula and concentrated on the names. In a few hours, I had a basic chronological listing with the associated details and dates. I stood up to stretch and decided to take a break.

I thought, for some reason, of Yamashita. Maybe he had never really been out of my mind. I was floundering around here, trying to make sense of things. Which was not very different from what I had done with Sensei. He had worked with me for years on methods for seeing clearly, for cutting through the fog of emotion and dealing with life. I thought about Changpa telling me of illusion and the challenges we faced along life’s way. And what was my life? I’d been calling in sick to the university to spend more time on the investigation. Dorian was part of my life but, increasingly I realized it was not the important part. Yamashita and Changpa called me, it seemed, to a world where issues were both more vivid and more vital: where honor or disgrace, life and death, victory and defeat, ignorance and enlightenment were matters of paramount significance. And the difference between one or the other of these things was a matter not only of inches or split seconds, but of your fundamental response to crisis.

I thought of Sakura and Hoddington and Kim. About a sensei and a lama. I didn’t come to any real conclusion, so I dismissed it with a favorite Japanese expression.

“
Shigata ga nai
,” I muttered. It can’t be helped. Then I took some deep breaths and focused once more on the inka.

The historical story the scroll told was a complex one. The transmission of traditional arts is done through lineages within the systems, so the identification of the people in that lineage is important. But it gets convoluted. The Japanese are big believers in family succession, but suitable heirs are not always produced. So individuals are adopted into lineages. This makes for a confusing mix of family names and titles. In addition, during the feudal period it was not unusual for samurai to change their names at different points in their lives. They could adopt a portion of a name bestowed on them by a lord as a token of esteem. Older swordsmen sometimes retired to a life of contemplation in their golden years, and often adopted Buddhist names in place of their former ones.

Then there’s the dating method. Historical eras are dated by something called the
gengo
system. So years are expressed as “year 12 of a reign year X,” named for the emperor who held office during that time.

The inka before me was the succession document for a martial ryu. It alleged to be an offshoot of the Yagyu Shinkage Ryu, one of Japan’s most famous schools of swordsmanship. This was a surprise: there are two formally recognized branches to Yagyu, the Owari and the Edo schools, but I had never seen reference to this third variant. The more recent details of lineal transmission were a mystery to me: there are literally hundreds of these old ryu in Japan, even today. But I was interested in how this ryu, with such famous antecedents, had escaped most people’s notice.

It told the tale of Yagyu Mitsuyoshi, the founding elder of the Yagyu Ryu, and how he invested a certificate of mastery on a promising warrior. I read it with interest, sure that there had to be an inconsistency somewhere. I had high hopes that it would be the name. Yagyu Mitsuyoshi is a well-known historical figure. But in his later years he adopted the Buddhist name Sekishusai. If the inka I was reading was somehow a fraud, it might show up in an inconsistency of naming. Depending on the date when the founding of the new ryu was supposed to have happened, the old master could have been using the name Mitsuyoshi or Sekishusai. But I knew most historical documents in the Yagyu tradition use both when speaking of him: he is identified as Yagyu Sekishusai Mitsuyoshi. Anything else would suggest a writer unfamiliar with the ryu’s tradition.

My hopes were dashed. The scroll clearly stated that a certificate of mastery had been bestowed by Yagyu Sekishusai Mitsuyoshi in the twenty-third year of the reign of Emperor Go-Yozei. The era name checked out and I went on.

I worked through the lineage, but I realized after a time that this was way beyond my expertise. You would need access to records in Japan to go through it all I began to think it was a blind alley. Yet there had to be something here.

I took a walk around the block to clear my head. After the air-conditioned cool of the reading room, the stifling heat almost felt good. I glanced about for any sign of someone watching the building, of Han’s hulking presence, but came up empty. Changpa was away with Yamashita and Sarah at a mountain retreat. I don’t imagine that the place held much interest for Han now. The streets were fairly deserted, so I wandered without interruption, not thinking about anything in particular, just letting my brain rest.

The world danced in the summer heat, shimmering like an illusion, as if everything were flimsy and somehow not real. Like the sheets, I realized, that waited for me back in the Dharma Center. Documents lie.

And when I got back to my inka research, I looked again at the dates. The line of succession it detailed had a provenance that stretched back into the seventeenth century and connected to one of Japan’s most famous swordsmen. All the way back to the twenty-third year of the reign of Go- Yozei. I did the mental arithmetic. It was 1609.

I rolled that idea around in my head and then it hit me. It was a very impressive pedigree. Except for the fact that Yagyu Mitsuyoshi died in 1606 and could not have bestowed the inka.

I ran for a phone. Because the person who was presenting this inka as a certificate of mastery was a fraud. And that person was identified at the very end of the document.

It was Kita Takenobu.

“That guy Kita’s a fraud,” I told Micky with a jet of venom in my voice. I thought with grim satisfaction about Stark’s enthusiasm for Kita. His denigration of Yamashita. “I knew it all along. And Stark is probably involved somehow, too.”

My brother seemed unconvinced. “How so?”

“C’mon,” I urged him. “Think about the connections. He’s Kita’s student. He shows up in New York about the same time that Sakura gets killed. Then you’ve got him weaseling around Yamashita. And keeping tabs on Changpa.” It all seemed obvious to me.

“Maybe,” Micky said. “But your man Stark got shot at that night, didn’t he? How’s that fit?”

I thought about it for a minute. “Well,” I stalled, “he didn’t actually get shot, did he?”

“No,” Micky admitted, “but he probably got the thrill of his life.”

“How about this,” I started, my brain jumping into high gear. “What if the shooting was just something staged to throw suspicion off Stark? Huh?” I was pretty proud of myself.

“I dunno, Connor,” Micky replied, “it seems a bit elaborate, ya know?”

“I like him for it,” I said.

“I know you do. Wait a sec.” Micky cupped his hand over the phone and you could hear a muffled conversation take place. Then he was back. “OK, your instincts are good…”

“But…” I said, sensing what was coming.

“But there are a coupla things…” I waited and Micky continued. “We got no evidence that puts him at the murder scenes. Stark’s shoe size doesn’t match those found at either the Sakura or Hoddington killings. And we know he can be accounted for during the periods when Hoddington and Kim were murdered.”

“How’dya know?” I asked, feeling a bit deflated.

“We checked, you dope,” Micky said. “Whattaya think, our heads are made of wood?”

“Well,” I said grudgingly, “I still think he’s involved.”

Art came on the line. “Connor, you gotta clear your head a bit about this one.”

“How so?”

“There’s something that bugs you about Stark. Maybe he’s a creep. I dunno. But that doesn’t make him a part of this. Trust me: the city’s full of creeps. Some of them are murderers. Most are just pains in the ass.” He said it wearily, as if it were a fact learned through hard personal experience.

“OK, Art. I hear you.” I tried not to sound too skeptical.

“On the other hand,” Art said brightly, “we have been making some major headway in getting Han tied to things.”

“Like what?”

Micky broke in from the other extension. “We matched Han’s prints to the partials we lifted from the Honda…”

“It’s a partial match,” Art noted.

“Not good enough for court…” my brother said.

“… but good enough for us to pull him in for questioning,” Art finished.

“I still don’t get the motive,” I said.

My brother grunted. “Doesn’t have to be one. Han’s a psycho for hire from what I can see…”

“So who’s doing the hiring?” I persisted. “You get any more on the Chinese connection?”

Micky snickered. “I called Charlie Wilcox. He says if he talks to me anymore, he’ll end up reassigned to the Juneau office.”

“We’re getting close to having enough circumstantial stuff to pin the murders on Han,” Art said thoughtfully. “Once we start questioning him the motivation will emerge.”

“We know he flew to Atlanta the day before Hoddington was killed,” Micky told me. “The word on the street locally is that he was the one who tortured Kim. Someone’ll squeal.”

“What about Sakura?” I asked.

Art recited the facts point by point. In my mind, I could see him holding up fingers one by one. “We got Han at Sakura’s office looking for the inka. We got a shoe print at the murder scene that’s consistent with the one found at Hoddington’s cabin as well. And everywhere Kim’s research material goes, Han shows up.” He paused, then said, “And get this…”

“Sakura knew him,” Micky blurted out.

“What!”

“Ran into him years ago,” Art confirmed, sounding a bit annoyed that someone had stolen his thunder. “Some sort of community association for wayward youth.”

“You know the drill,” Micky continued. “Rich people donating their time so they don’t feel so guilty about being rich.”

“I wouldn’t feel guilty,” Art said.

“Me neither,” Micky answered.

“That’s because you’re both so pure,” I said sarcastically. It was lost on them.

“Anyway, as we know, Han was something of a bad boy early on, then got involved in martial arts. And he’s kept up the interest.”

Something went click in my head.

“He’s about the size of a refrigerator,” Micky added. “They nicknamed him ‘the Mongol.’”

Another click.

I started to say something, then paused a minute, mentally lining up all the things I had found out and integrating them with the facts they were throwing at me. It’s always hard for me to do this kind of thing, especially over the phone. But eventually I got it. Except for one thing.

“The thing I really wish we had is the motivation,” Micky said. “For all of it. It’d be nice to have something a little more solid for the D.A. Something that gives us a reason for all the killing. That ties Han definitively into it.”

Then it all started to come together and the answer flashed into my brain with a certainty that was startling. “I think you have that,” I said.

They both answered together. One said “Huh?” The other said “What?”

“Something solid,” I told them. It was my turn to stump them.

“Connor,” Micky complained, “what the hell are you talking about?”

“A few things.” And I told them about what I had learned from the files they had given me. The forged inka. And the clue in Sakura’s last bit of calligraphy.

“I should have seen it sooner…” I told them.

My brother took a deep breath and pronounced his words slowly and separately. “Connor,” he said. “What. Do. You. Mean?”