The Gate of Sorrows (50 page)

Galla didn’t seem to be listening. She closed the distance to Shigenori in a few great strides.

Kotaro had had enough of quarrels between friends for one night. Friends? Maybe that wasn’t the right word, but he wished everyone would chill out.

“Come on Galla, calm—” He reached out reflexively with both palms up. The warrior passed through him as if wasn’t there.

She’s real, but she doesn’t exist
 …

Kotaro felt his heart leap into his throat. Shigenori didn’t move a muscle. Galla stopped and looked down at him. To Kotaro’s relief, her tone was gentle.

“Listen, old gatherer of sins. I understand very well what you wish to say. But this is not a question of mastery. We see the world in different ways.”

“Different how?”

“Human beings see truth and falsehood in the meanings of words. But for a guardian of the Tower, all words are truth, once spoken.”

“But you just said the words on the web are a mix of truth and lies,” Kotaro said.

“Yes—for you. For me, all words are truth. There is no other way to see them.”

“Sorry, I don’t get it. Everything anybody says is the truth, to you?”

“It is.”

“Doesn’t matter what words they use? Even if it’s nonsense?”

“Yes. Once words are uttered, they exist, and they are truth.”

“Well that’s just great.” Shigenori cocked his head in puzzlement. “It sounds scary, Galla.”

She smiled. “Yes. You would do well to fear words. And to respect them.”

Kotaro was about to give up trying to understand, when something Ayuko told him in the restaurant echoed in his memory.
No matter how carefully people choose their words, those words stay inside them. They don’t disappear, and in the end their weight will change the person who said them.

“Ayuko told me one time that words never disappear, they just accumulate,” Kotaro said.

“Indeed. The person who said that saw with clear eyes,” Galla said. “When I harvested her killer’s cravings, you saw me as I truly am. You must have thought me a monster.”

“Ah … Well, I mean, you did look, you know …”

“Yes. And in my eyes, human beings seem strange as well. But not only strange in appearance. Your world overflows with monsters that surpass me. You made them yourselves. Monsters of words. Your stored-up words of hatred, lust, and jealousy have birthed myriads of monsters. They await you wherever you turn. Monsters that do not exist but are real, like jealous ghosts and vengeful spirits.”

“Will I be able to see them?” Kotaro asked.

“You will. You have learned much about the eye. But take care not to seek them out.”

“Why?”

“Because you may lose your faith in people completely.”

Shigenori clapped his hands suddenly. “Let’s put this to bed—punk.”

He rose slowly to his feet. He had the look of a man resigned to battle, buckling on his armor.

“We’ve got work to do.”

Shigenori sat down at his laptop. For the first time since he began pursuing the gargoyle—the origin of everything—he threw himself into the search for clues with a vengeance.

“You seem quite recovered,” Toshiko said. “What are you getting up to now?”

“I think I’m going on a trip.” Shigenori almost said “assignment.”

Toshiko had been married to a patrolman, then a detective, for too many years to be surprised. “Is there something you’ve got to find out that you can’t with that computer of yours?”

“Um-hm.”

She didn’t say more. The silence began to feel awkward. Shigenori looked up from his laptop.

“It’s nothing important.”

“Oh? Is that so?” Toshiko was wearing an apron and holding a strainer full of broad beans.
Is it that season already?
Shigenori thought.

“Just don’t push yourself too hard. I don’t want you in the hospital again.” She disappeared through the half curtain that hung in the kitchen door. “I never dreamed you’d have a woman somewhere,” she called out.

What!

“It’s not anything like that, is it?”

“No. It’s not.”

“Are you on a case?”

“You could say that.”

“You’re not a detective anymore.”

“I’m an ex-detective, and I’ll be one till I die.”

You’re right, Toshiko. I
have
recovered. I got my stolen mojo back. Detective Tsuzuki is on the case!

He was surprised to hear a lighthearted laugh from the kitchen. “So? Where are you going?”

“Tomakomai.”

The first murder. Visit the crime scenes in chronological order. Standard police procedure.

Shiro Nakanome was the first victim. He’d been discovered the year before, on June 1, stuffed into a discarded refrigerator, his left big toe severed. Nakanome ran a local izakaya named after himself—Naka-chan—in a building near Tomakomai Station. Since he was forty-one at the time of his death, he likely had a wife, maybe children.

Shigenori’s point of departure would be the people and places closely connected to the victim. While scouring the net for information, he reserved a plane ticket and a room. Then he asked Toshiko to get out his Boston bag.

Every day was Sunday for Shigenori, but university students don’t have that luxury. Kotaro would have to do some serious schedule juggling to free up time from school and work if he hoped to investigate the murder of victim number four, Saeko Komiya.

You don’t have the time or the money to look into more than one murder. Take care of Totsuka and leave the rest to me.

Kotaro had argued for an even split, but Shigenori hadn’t given him the choice. It burned him to admit it, but the old man was right.

Cutting class was straightforward, but rejiggering his Kumar schedule had been a major pain. If Makoto had been helping out, that would’ve pretty much solved the problem. Unfortunately, once things settled down after Ayuko’s funeral, he’d been drafted over to Black Box Island. Kotaro and Kaname were buddies again, which was a major complication.

Still, she’d been generous enough to accommodate his request. “If it’s for school, it can’t be helped, I guess. We’re students. We’ve got to put our studies first.” Her kindness pricked at his conscience.

He had another reason for wanting time away from Kumar, one that would’ve been unthinkable a month ago: Seigo Maki. Kotaro was constantly tempted to look up from his monitor and focus the Eye on his boss.

Galla had warned him.
You may lose your faith in people completely.

Perhaps. But Seigo was different.
She’s not infallible
, Kotaro kept telling himself. Yet because Seigo
was
different, Kotaro kept the Eye in check. He didn’t have to prove to himself that Seigo could be trusted.

Still, his resolve sometimes wavered. He needed to get away for a while. His head told him that, but in his heart, the ex-detective’s words—
Maybe he and Tashiro really were in a relationship
—echoed.

Was Seigo hiding something after all?

As if to reinforce the doubts Shigenori had planted in his mind, the police were still a presence at Kumar. Detectives kept dropping by. Sometimes Seigo had to leave the office to meet with the special investigation unit.

Because Keiko Tashiro was officially missing, the case remained open. Even if the police ignored everything else, the fact remained that a member of a university club had been murdered, and another had gone missing shortly afterward. Naturally the remaining club members would become persons of interest—not just Seigo, but all the people Kotaro had met at the wake.

But was that the only reason the police were spending so much time with Seigo? Could he be their prime suspect? Had they discovered that his relationship with Keiko went much further than he’d been willing to admit to Kotaro?

Was that why they were paying so much attention to him? Kotaro was ashamed to even think it.

He finally persuaded Maeda, his boss on Drug Island, to get someone to fill in for him. Tomorrow, July 1, would be the start of a ten-day vacation.

“When summer break comes, the net will get busy. Be sure to make it back before then,” Maeda said.

“I will. I promise.”

“And go tell Seigo yourself. Apologize, okay?”

Kotaro was anxious to avoid just that, but he went to Seigo’s desk and told him what was happening. Seigo pulled up a shift schedule and peered at it, beetle-browed.

“There’s this seminar I want to take. If I don’t get in now, I’ll miss my chance.”

Seigo only looked more dubious at this extra bit of window dressing, but after a beat he said simply, “Okay. Fine.”

That’s all? No lecture? No questions about the seminar or why it’s so important? Maybe he’s shutting me out? Is it because I asked him out of the blue about Keiko, even though I’m not supposed to know the first thing about his college days?

Stop right there, Kotaro
, he told himself.
Remember what Galla said.

He went away from there in a hurry, not even waiting for the elevator. In the stairwell he ran into Makoto, weighed down by a bulging shoulder bag.

“Just getting off?” Kotaro asked.

“Yeah. You too?”

“Yep. I’ll walk you to the station. Is BB Island getting to you?” Kotaro said as they walked down. Makoto looked tired and pale.

“Depends on the day, I guess.”

“Is there more to deal with some days than others?”

“No, it’s always the same. There’s a ton of it. Sometimes it’s just harder to handle. It can be a bit much.”

I guess today is one of those days.

“I’m off for ten days, starting tomorrow. I feel bad that Kaname’s gonna be by herself. If you could wrangle a transfer back to the island, you’d get a red-carpet welcome, squared.”

“Mmm, I’ll think about it.”

Makoto said little during the walk to the station. If something was bothering him, he usually worked hard to act cheerful. That was how he chased away the blues. Makoto was the kind of guy that even guys thought of as a “good kid.” He was unfailingly honest, open, and optimistic, the ideal young man.

Makoto should be okay, squared. Galla’s not infallible.

And Makoto would be the perfect way to prove it. The station was three stoplights away. There was more than enough time.

Kotaro dropped back a few steps, dragging the heels of his beat-up sneakers to seem natural. Makoto’s steps were heavy, not at all like his usual cheery self.

Kotaro closed his right eye and opened his left eye wide.

He stopped, stunned. Makoto drew away from him. Two steps. Three steps.

Kotaro was looking up at a giant.

Everything was close to pitch-black, but the giant was faintly illuminated by light coming somewhere from behind. The sky had been cloudy since morning, with the kind of humidity that seemed to drown you. The sun on this last day of June shone sluggishly through a thick wall of clouds and water vapor. That was where the light was coming from.

The giant looked like a mass of soot. No—it was full of something black, swirling in eddies. It was as though a huge inflatable doll had been pumped full of black smoke until it was close to bursting. That was the only way Kotaro could picture it.

The giant was a step or two ahead. It walked like Makoto. It was Makoto Miyama’s Shadow, the aggregation of all the words he’d ever used. It was his story.

The Shadow didn’t swirl around his feet the way Keiko’s did. It didn’t have the lifeless feel of a body bag. It walked under its own power, leaning forward slightly as if sheltering its owner, caring for him when he was tired and dispirited.

Kotaro felt the ground shake under the giant’s steps. As though it sensed his gaze, it turned to look at him. It had no face, yet Kotaro had a feeling that their eyes met. It could see him.

The black smoke that was the giant’s body swirled and pooled in constant motion. Kotaro heard a low buzzing sound.

Suddenly it hit him. The “smoke” was something else. What filled the giant were swarms of tiny black insects, flies or wasps, maybe horseflies. Kotaro tasted something sour rising in his throat.

“Kotaro?”

Makoto stopped and turned around. “Are you okay?” Kotaro saw the giant turn slowly away.

“Uhm, yeah, no problem.” He hurried to catch up, but he stayed just behind Makoto. The giant was too strange. Like Galla, it probably wasn’t a solid entity—if he touched it, his hand would pass right through—but he still didn’t want to get near it. His knees were shaking.

You were warned.

A few short threads of silver crossed his sight and disappeared.

Kotaro hunkered down at his PC. He had to gather every scrap of information he could find before tomorrow’s sleuthing. Not surprisingly, he found a lot of information about Saeko Komiya. It was useful, but the fact that it was there troubled him.

Personal data about the Serial Amputator’s victims—five, since everyone was still convinced that Ayuko was one of them—was easy to find. Job history, family makeup, personality. Customer opinions, if the victim had run a business. Even in the Akita case, where the murdered woman was unidentified, there was information on the condition of the body and about people who thought she might have been a relative or friend. The details were scattered, but they were there.

There was a blog post from a woman who thought the victim might have been her grandmother, missing for two years. She had traveled to Akita all the way from Kyushu, only to discover that the victim was someone else. She included lots of details, like the name of the supervising detective and how the body had looked in cold storage.

Every crime is surrounded by people with some relationship to the perpetrator or the victim. Even if they don’t see the whole picture, they have pieces of it. If they, or the people they’ve spoken to—from journalists to the kid next door—put those pieces on the web, an aggregator can assemble them into a bigger picture and repackage them for others to consume.

Your world overflows with monsters that surpass me
, Galla had said.

Not all those monsters are evil. They often have good intentions, even a kind of sincerity. They don’t “leak,” they “disclose.” In a free-market, capitalist world, information wants to be free. Citizens have the right to know everything. Knowledge should be freely available. These are rights, not obligations.

But there are monsters waiting along the information highway.

A hideous monster may not necessarily have hideous intentions. A monster may look hideous because it comes bearing information that is horrible in itself. Information monsters are most often neutral, neither good nor bad. But among them are some that truly are evil. How do you tell them apart?

Right and wrong are not my concern.
Galla didn’t distinguish one from the other. That left Kotaro unable to judge whether Galla herself was good or evil. In that sense she was no different from the monsters on the Internet. They were all words personified.

All this concentrating left Kotaro nearly mute during dinner. For the first time in months, all four family members shared the table, but Kotaro hardly spoke even when spoken to. For the last few months, the only words he’d exchanged with his father were “Good morning.” Now it seemed Takayuki had been transferred to a better position within the bank. Asako was in a very good mood. Kazumi, who typically had little friendly to say, always switched on the charm when both parents were around. Very calculating, in a teenage girl sort of way.