Malice (6 page)

What I was talking about, of course, was Hidaka and the cat.

“I understand. I know that happens.” Detective Kaga thanked me profusely, and the two detectives headed out.

Well now.

I began writing today's entry right after Kaga and his companion left. The continuation of what I handed to them, that is. I know he might want to read this, too, but I will try not to dwell on that as I write. Otherwise, what's the point?

*   *   *

Two days have passed since Hidaka's murder. The funeral took place at a Buddhist temple several kilometers from the house. A throng of publishing-industry people were in attendance, and the line to offer incense was long.

The TV crews were there as well. While the reporters were wearing their serious faces, they were, like snakes hunting, looking around for any dramatic scenes. If any of the mourners even looked as if they might be in danger of tearing up, the cameras would be on them in a flash.

After I had offered my incense, I stood by the reception tent, watching the mourners as they arrived. There were a few celebrities. I recognized some actors who had played some of Hidaka's characters in the movies made from his novels.

A reading of scriptures and a brief talk by the head priest followed the offering of incense. Rie was wearing a black suit, prayer beads clutched in her hand. When the priest was done, she stepped forward and thanked the others for coming, then spoke about her enduring affection for her husband. I heard some sniffling in the otherwise quiet crowd.

Not once in Rie's talk did she mention or express any hatred toward the killer. To me, that was a surer sign of her wrath and sadness than any other.

The coffin was carried out, and as the mourners began to shuffle home, I noticed someone I'd been expecting to see. She was walking alone.

I called out as she left the temple, “Miss Fujio?”

Miyako Fujio stopped and turned, her long hair whipping around. “You are…?”

“We met in Hidaka's office the other day.”

“I remember.”

“My name is Nonoguchi, I'm Hidaka's friend. And I was a classmate of your brother's.”

“So I heard. Hidaka told me after you left.”

“I was wondering if we could talk? Do you have time?”

She looked down at her watch, then off into the distance. “Someone's waiting for me.”

I followed her eyes. A light green van was parked along the side of the road. The young man sitting in the driver's seat was looking in our direction.

“Your husband?”

“No, not that.”

Then, her lover, I assumed.

“We can just talk here. There's a few things I wanted to ask you.”

“Like what?”

“I wanted to know what you talked about with Hidaka that day.”

“What we always talked about. Recalling as many of the books as possible, admitting his wrongdoing in public, and rewriting the story so it had nothing to do with my brother. I had heard he was leaving for Canada and wanted to know exactly how he was going to show his sincere apologies once he'd left.”

“And what did Hidaka say to that?”

“He said he would still respond in good faith, but he had no intentions of compromising his own beliefs to do so.”

“So he wasn't going to go along with your requests?”

“Apparently he felt that as long as the intent was not an exposé, but the attainment of art, that some intrusion on his subjects' privacy was unavoidable.”

“But you didn't agree.”

“Of course not.” Her face softened slightly, but nothing you could remotely call a smile appeared.

“So you didn't get what you wanted that day.”

“He said that as soon as he was settled in Canada, he would contact me, and we could continue where we left off. He promised. He did look like he was busy getting ready to relocate, and I didn't see any use pushing it, so I agreed and left.”

I myself couldn't imagine anything else Hidaka could've said.

“And you went straight home?”

“Me? Yes.”

“You didn't stop anywhere along the way?”

“No.” She shook her head. Then Miyako Fujio's eyes opened a little wider and she stared hard at me. “Are you checking my alibi?”

“No, of course not.” I dropped my eyes. If I wasn't checking her alibi, what was I doing? I started to wonder myself.

She sighed. “A detective visited me the other day and asked the same questions you're asking me now. Except he was a little more obvious about it. He wanted to know if I bore any malice toward Mr. Hidaka.”

“Right.” I looked up at her. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him I bore him no ill will at all. I just wanted him to respect the dead.”

“So it's safe to say that you didn't like
Forbidden Hunting Grounds
? You feel it offends the memory of your brother?”

“Everyone has secrets. And everyone has the right to keep them. Even if they're dead.”

“What if somebody felt those secrets were moving? Do you think it's such a bad thing to share that emotion with the world?”

“Emotion?” She stared at me curiously. Then she slowly shook her head. “What about a middle-school student who rapes a girl could possibly be moving?”

“Some things have to be said as the backdrop to a moving story.”

She sighed again. For my benefit. “You're a writer, too, aren't you, Mr. Nonoguchi?”

“Yes, well, I write children's books.”

“And are you so eager to defend Hidaka because you're an author yourself?”

I thought a moment before answering, “Maybe so.”

“What a terrible profession.” She looked back at her watch. “I'm sorry, I have to go.” She turned and walked toward the waiting van.

*   *   *

I went back to my apartment building, where I found a piece of paper in my mailbox.

“I'm at the restaurant where we ate the other day. Give me a call. Kaga.”

A phone number I assumed was the restaurant's was written at the bottom.

I changed out of my mourning clothes and went straight to the restaurant without calling. He was sitting by the window reading a book. I couldn't see what the title was.

He noticed me and started to stand. I waved him back down into his seat. “Don't bother.”

“Sorry to call you out here like this.” He lowered his head. He was aware that today was Hidaka's funeral.

I ordered another hot milk from the waitress and sat down.

“I know what you're after. This, right?” I pulled some folded sheets of paper out of my jacket pocket and set them down in front of him. These were the most recent notes, which I'd printed out before leaving home.

“Thanks so much.” He reached out and unfolded the pages.

“Actually, could you not read it here? If you read the earlier notes, you know that I wrote about you, too. It would be embarrassing for you to read it in front of me.”

He grinned. “Of course. I'll just put these away for now then.” He refolded the pages and put them in his own jacket pocket.

“So,” I asked after a sip of water, “I hope my notes are a little bit of help?”

“Oh, they are,” Kaga said immediately. “There are things you can't pick up about the atmosphere of the case just by listening to stories, but when you see it all written down, it's easier to grasp. I wish the witnesses in my other cases would write down everything like this.”

“Well, I'm glad.”

The waitress brought my hot milk. It came with a spoon to scoop off the layer of froth on the top.

“What did you think about the cat?” I asked.

“I was surprised. You hear about cats causing trouble, but I don't think I'd ever heard about somebody taking it quite so far in dealing with one.”

“Are you investigating the owner?”

“I made the reports to my boss, and someone else is on it.”

“I see.” I drank my milk. I didn't feel great about casting blame on someone else like that. “Well, other than that, I think everything in my notes is exactly as I told it to you.”

“It was.” He nodded. “But it's the details that have really helped.”

“What kind of details?”

“Well, like the part where you were talking to Mr. Hidaka in his office. You wrote that Hidaka smoked one cigarette during that time. If we hadn't read your notes, we never would've known that.”

“Yes … but just so you know, I'm not really sure it was only one. It could've been two. I just remember that he was smoking, so I wrote it like that.”

“No, it was one cigarette,” he said with finality. “No mistake.”

“Okay.”

I had no idea what that had to do with anything. Maybe it was just another example of the odd way that detectives saw the world.

I told Detective Kaga about speaking to Miyako Fujio after the funeral. He seemed intrigued by this.

“I never did get it out of her,” I said, “but did she have an alibi?”

“Someone else is looking into that, but it looks like she does.”

“I see. So I guess there's no point worrying about her too much then.”

“Did you suspect her?”

“I wouldn't call it suspicion, but she did have a motive.”

“You mean the intrusion into her brother's privacy? But killing Mr. Hidaka wouldn't fix that.”

“What if she realized he wasn't going to be sincere about his apology, got mad, and killed him in the heat of the moment?”

“But Mr. Hidaka was still alive when she left the house.”

“She could've come back later?”

“Intending to kill him?”

“Sure.” I nodded. “Intending to kill him.”

“But Rie was still in the house.”

“She could've waited for her to leave, then sneaked in.”

“So Miyako Fujio knew that Rie would be leaving the house before her husband did?”

“It might have come up in conversation.”

Detective Kaga interlaced his fingers on the tabletop. He tapped the tips of his thumbs together repeatedly as he thought. After a while he said, “Did she come in through the front door?”

“How about the window?”

“So a woman in a suit came in through the window?” He grinned. “And Mr. Hidaka just sat there, watching her?”

“She could've just waited until he'd gone to the bathroom. Then waited behind the door for him to come back.”

“The paperweight in her hand?” Detective Kaga swung his right fist up and down.

“I suppose so. Then Hidaka walks in”—I made a fist of my right hand, too—“and she smacks him in the back of the head.”

“I see. And after that?”

I thought back on what Detective Kaga had told me the other day. “Then I guess she strangled him. With the telephone cord, right? Then she fled the scene.”

“How did she leave?”

“Out the window. If she'd gone out the front door, it would've been unlocked when we got there later.”

“That's true.” He reached out for his coffee cup, noticed it was empty, and left the empty cup sitting there. “But why didn't she go out the front door?”

“I don't know. Maybe she didn't want people to see her? Perhaps it was a psychological thing. Of course, if she has an alibi anyway, this is all just fanciful conjecture.”

“True enough. She does have an alibi, which would indeed make the story you just told entirely fanciful conjecture.”

Something about the deliberate way he repeated my own words struck me as odd. “You can go ahead and forget it then.”

“Still, it was an interesting scenario. I was wondering if you could make another guess for me.”

“I'm not terribly good at this, but sure. Fire away.”

“Why did the killer turn off the lights in the room before leaving?”

“Isn't it obvious?” I said after a moment's thought. “She wanted people to think no one was home. That way, even if anyone happened by, they would just leave. It would delay the discovery of the body. Which is, in fact, what did happen.”

“So the killer wanted to delay the discovery of the body?”

“Don't all killers want to do that?”

“Maybe,” he said. “If that was the plan, then why was the computer left on?”

“The computer?”

“Yes. When you came into the room, the screen was on. It was in your account.”

“That's true. Maybe she didn't care whether the computer was on or not.”

“I tried a simple experiment after leaving you the other day. We turned off all the lights in the room and left on the computer monitor. It turns out it's quite bright. You can see it dimly through the curtains even standing outside the room. If she really wanted to make it look like no one was home, she would've turned off the computer.”

“Maybe she couldn't find the switch. People who aren't familiar with computers don't know about those kinds of things.”

“She could've at least turned off the monitor. The switch is right there on the front. And if she didn't understand that, she could've pulled the cord.”

“I guess she forgot.”

Detective Kaga stared at me for a moment, then nodded. “That's probably it. She probably forgot.”

Having nothing else to say to that, I remained silent.

He stood, thanking me again for my time. “Will you be writing about today in your account as well?”

“I expect I will.”

“Then I'll be able to read it?”

“Fine by me.”

He headed toward the cash register, then stopped midway. “Did you really think I wasn't cut out to be a teacher?”

I remembered writing something along those lines in my account. “That's just my opinion.”

He looked down again, gave a brief sigh, and walked out.

I wondered what Kaga was thinking.

If he'd already figured out something about the case, I wondered why he didn't just tell me.