The Gate of Sorrows (42 page)

But then why were so many of her words about him?

It was all in her head. He didn’t even know.

He heard a sigh. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” A member of Drug Island, a woman Kotaro had been working with a lot recently, was standing next to him.

“He’s finally calling her ‘Ayuko.’ I wish he hadn’t waited until she died. I just hope they find who did it.” She never wore makeup; the skin around her eyes was raw from rubbing away the tears.

“But then there’ll be a trial, and the killer will have lots of excuses. And a lawyer to defend him. They’ll do a psychiatric evaluation. The lawyer will challenge the psychologists, and they’ll do another evaluation, maybe more than one. Different doctors will have different opinions. It’s practically guaranteed.”

Kotaro could only nod, but he had an unspoken answer:
Don’t worry. It’s not gonna work out that way.

Keiko Tashiro wouldn’t get a chance to make excuses. She wouldn’t have the strength after her craving—a craving strong enough to drive her to murder—was sucked out of her. She’d never again be the person she was. No, she would confess willingly. And be sentenced to death.

When he got home, just before midnight, Asako was waiting. She dragged him into the kitchen and hit him with a nonstop lecture as she heated his dinner. He stared at the tabletop and accepted the criticism meekly as he ate.

“Kotaro! Are you listening?”

She pounded the table. He couldn’t remember when his mother had last scolded him this way. Was it in middle school? He’d been too well-behaved to need much monitoring.

“You keep saying ‘uh-huh’ but your brain is somewhere else. Everyone’s worried about you. We’re mad because we’re worried!”

She leaned across the table until her face was inches away. Blood-red threads dangled from her mouth. One of her elbows was on the table. Kotaro could see something wriggling in the shadow it cast on the tabletop.

He could read it.

“You had a fight with Aunt Hanako today, didn’t you?”

Asako’s eyes opened wide with surprise.

“She doesn’t mean any harm. She just thought you could put that stuff out with the regular garbage. She didn’t think you needed to call the city to come take it away. She doesn’t like being corrected, that’s all. She always thinks she’s right.”

Asako sat down with a thump, her eyes fixed on Kotaro. “Did Kazumi tell you that?”

He didn’t answer. He just looked away and munched on the last of his tea over rice.

“No, that’s impossible. She went to bed before you got home,” Asako said. She sounded like she was talking to herself.

“Thanks for dinner.” Kotaro piled his empty dishes and stood up. “Don’t worry about classes, Mom. Now that the funeral’s over, my schedule will go back to normal. I’ve got everything covered. Just relax, okay?”

He carried the dishes to the sink and put them in the water. When he turned around, she was standing right in front of him.

“Hey, don’t sneak up on me,” he joked.

She was still peering at him, eyes wide, watching him.

“Do you know what’s happening?” Her voice was faint. Kotaro could smell coffee on her breath. “Sometimes your left eye has this strange glitter, like molten metal.” She put a hand on his arm cautiously, as if she thought it might burn her. “Do you feel all right?”

He looked into her eyes, smiled slowly and put a hand over hers.

She snatched it away reflexively, as if in self-defense. Kotaro was her child, but Asako Mishima instinctively recoiled at his touch.

The touch of her son, who was mixed up with something not of this world.

“I feel fine, Mom.”

A single drop of water fell from the faucet into the water. The sound seemed to bring Asako back to reality. She took a step back.

“Gotta hit the sack,” Kotaro said.

He climbed the stairs, shut the door to his room, and stood there in the dark with eyes closed, waiting.

A blob of light swept across his left eye. He looked up. Where was she?

He crossed the room to the window and opened it. The street outside was wrapped in stillness. The streetlights glowed sleepily. A few stars twinkled overhead. It was the nicest season of the year, just before the early-summer rains.

Are you resolved to do this?
asked the voice in his head.

“Yes,” he murmured. “I’m ready. I’ll make my move tomorrow.”

Then I am with you. Do not seek me out.

Silvery granules of light. Galla’s voice. The sound of words in light. Light from the heart, the energy of the will.

I am your shadow. I am with you.

He would be helped by an entity that was real but did not exist. A region that was real but did not exist would extend itself into his reality.

“I understand.” Then,
Thanks for helping me
, he thought at her.

Silence. He waited.

Lure your prey into darkness.

“Is that all I have to do?”

Again, silence. Kotaro nodded.

Finally the voice came again, but not as particles of light. It was like an inky mist, condensed from darkness.

You will regret this.

Vendôme Adachi Castle II was too grand a name for such a tawdry-looking collection of apartments. It just made the building seem cheaper. Keiko lived in apartment 201.

The glass doors to the lobby needed a security code. The building manager was not on duty round the clock, which suited Kotaro. The little office windows that opened on the lobby were curtained. There was a sign on the wall with the manager’s number.

Kotaro could make out
TASHIRO
on one of the mailboxes. He tried her apartment from the intercom. There was no answer.

He had started the day with classes followed by lunch on campus. He then went straight to Keiko’s apartment. It was twenty minutes on foot from the nearest subway station. The area was mixed residential and commercial, with houses, apartments, and the occasional convenience store. It seemed heavily populated, yet there were few people on the streets. The neighborhood was somehow lifeless.

He left his backpack in a locker at the station and stuffed what he needed in his pockets. He donned a pair of gaudy glasses picked up at a hundred-yen store, and a black cap from a big-box outlet near campus. Then he went for a stroll, scouting out public phones for the call he would make later and checking the route for security cameras.

He would make his move after nightfall and lure his prey into darkness, just as Galla had said. He would get her to leave her apartment and lead her to a spot that was shielded from the lights of the neighborhood. That would be no mean feat in the middle of Tokyo, but it was his mission.

Once she’s in darkness, Galla will do the rest.

Had this been an ordinary crime, the entire plan would’ve been laughably slipshod. But there was nothing ordinary about Kotaro’s backup.

Luckily there was a construction site just fifty yards from Vendôme Adachi Castle II. A placard announced plans to build another condominium. The site was still being prepared; the piles of construction materials would come later. A prefab operations shack stood ready at the edge of the site with two portable toilets alongside. The area was enclosed by a rope on stakes. Most of it was exposed to anyone passing by, but someone in the darkness beyond the shack would be invisible to people on the street just a few yards away. Better still, there was a big metalworking shop in the next lot, close to the shack, with an old zinc-plated roof that cast deeper shadows onto the site. A workshop like that in a residential area would be deserted in the evening.

This was the place, then. His decision made, Kotaro walked back to the station and retrieved his backpack. He found a coffee shop, took a seat inside and opened his laptop. Maybe his target had posted something new on her blog.

Security on the social network site she used was hard to punch through; he didn’t know how to use his web-crawling software to get inside. Even if he did, he’d have to explain to Maeda why he was monitoring a site that Kumar had never targeted before.

But he had an idea. He opened the official memorial homepage for Ayuko—he’d helped set it up during his shift the day before—and entered the following message in the condolences area.

I am a Kumar employee. At the memorial service, I encountered a few members of our late president’s university cycling club. I’d like to thank you for attending the funeral and giving me a glimpse of Ayuko Yamashina before she became president. I feel her loss even more keenly now.

M

His ruse elicited an immediate response—from Keiko Tashiro herself.

I am a former member of the cycling club. Thank you for your message. If you visit my page, you can read more memories of Ayuko. I’ve also posted some photos from back in the day. Please enter KUMAR to get access.

I welcome everyone at Kumar to take a look.

Kei

He couldn’t have hoped for more. He sent mails to his Drug Island colleagues, including Kaname. She and Makoto were on shift together and instantly started reading the blog.

“Ayuko was very cute back then, but she turned into a beautiful woman.” Makoto was choking up as he texted Kotaro. “The older she got, the more beautiful she became. It shows what an upstanding life she led.”

Kotaro played along with their messages as he sniffed out Keiko’s lies and embellishments. Her memories of Ayuko were so full of false sentiment, it ought to have been clear to anyone.
I’m not as naïve as Makoto, that’s for sure.

Kotaro’s message had drawn an instant response because it offered Keiko a chance to get closer to Kumar, and that meant Seigo. At the same time, she was afraid.

No matter how shameless she was, Keiko had murdered someone. She had to be under stress. She’d probably be sensitive to anything strange or out of the ordinary, any sign that she was under suspicion. Criminals are always looking over their shoulders to see if they’re being followed, even when they are alone.

If Kotaro dangled some kind of bait in front of her—something that pandered to her need to feel safe, to be confident that everyone saw her as just another friend and mourner of Ayuko—she’d be sure to swallow it.

He didn’t stay more than an hour in any one place. He even got back on the subway and went a few stations down the line, hanging out in coffee shops and getting gradually fed up with the self-absorption that ran through Keiko’s sentimental entries. He killed time until past five, then headed for the public phone he’d picked out near the station.

A sensible woman living alone would be certain to ignore a
PUBLIC PHONE
caller ID, especially if the caller was persistent. But Keiko was not in a sensible state of mind. She would be no more sensible than Kotaro’s strategy to snare her was sensible.

She had succeeded in erasing her rival. She would be drunk with victory, but afraid as well. What if she’d overlooked something important?

Her vigilance and suspicion would make it hard for her to ignore an anonymous call. In fact, an anonymous caller ID would only make her more likely to answer.

Kotaro heard the ringtone.

If Keiko was as busy with her career as Ayuko had been, she’d be sure to check her phone at least once this late in the day. If she got off work every day at the same time, she’d be even more likely to keep an eye on her phone. It’s the evening that makes the day worthwhile.

She picked up after three rings. Kotaro held his breath.

“Hello?” The voice was quiet, wary. She’d taken the bait. Kotaro gritted his teeth and steadied himself.

“I’m sorry to call so suddenly. My name is Mishima. From Kumar’s Tokyo office.”

Kotaro was waiting for her near the corner of the construction site. He bowed deeply. “I apologize for disturbing you this late.”

It was 10:20 p.m. The stars and moon were invisible. Kotaro could feel the chill north wind through his thin jacket.

Keiko wore a boldly patterned monochrome one-piece dress and black enamel high heels. If she’d worked that day, this wasn’t what she’d worn to the office. Her pearl earrings matched her pearl necklace. Perhaps her restrained outfit was meant to suggest that she was still in mourning for Ayuko. Her makeup was a mask, skillfully applied. She wore more than a little perfume.

“It’s this way. Please.” Kotaro gestured lightly toward the operations shack. “We’re sorry to put you out like this.” He stepped forward to meet her as her heels clicked on the sidewalk. With the three inches they added to her height, she was a bit taller than Kotaro.

“It’s quite all right. If Sei-chan—Seigo—was kind enough to drive all the way out here …”

“He feels it would be rude to ask you to let him in at this hour.”

“Why not? He’s a friend.”

Her loose sleeves cast shadows around her waist. When she said “friend,” the shadows writhed.

“That’s very kind of you,” Kotaro said and turned toward the shack.

“Why did he park in such a dark spot?” she asked, calling him to wait.

“We’re sorry.”