The Silent Dead (19 page)

“That's not a problem.… But is Namekawa really dead?”

The man came across as an archetypal “salaryman,” earnest and rather dull.

“I'm afraid he is. We contacted you because we heard from Yuzuru Takeuchi that you and Namekawa were good friends.”

“That's right. About once every three months—six at the most—we got together for a drink. It's a ritual we've kept up since graduation. There's no business relationship between our two companies; it was a purely personal thing. Namekawa always used to tease me, ‘You guys should hire me to make a TV spot for that new product of yours.'” He sighed. “I can't believe he's dead. If you don't mind, how was he killed?”

“He was stabbed,” Otsuka said. It wasn't the whole truth, but it kept things simple. There was no need to let Tashiro know that his friend's body had spent a month rotting at the bottom of a pond.

“When was the last time you two met?”

“Let's see. The end of April, I think. Yes. The Golden Week holiday was about to start, and I remember Namekawa saying he had a backlog of work to get through.”

“Did you notice anything strange about him?”

“Strange? I don't think so.” Tashiro tilted his head to one side. “Wait, let me rephrase that. There was something strange about him, but that was just how Namekawa was. I mean, he had multiple women on the go and was working his ass off, which was business as usual for him. There was one thing, though. Last year he told me he'd been in a creative slump.”

Himekawa had mentioned Namekawa's creative loss of form at the meeting yesterday evening.

“You see, the year before last, the guy won a grand prix for this TV commercial he made. It was a really big deal, apparently. But when all the fuss died down, he lost all interest in his job and couldn't seem to get it back. When we met up this April, he was firing on all cylinders again. I thought, ‘Great, he's back on track.…' I still can't believe he was murdered.…”

Tashiro's statement lined up with what they'd previously learned.

“Do you have any idea how Namekawa pulled himself out of his slump?”

“What snapped him out it? Not really. I didn't know much about the slump in the first place, let alone what got him out of it.” Tashiro sank into silent thought for a moment or two. “No, it's no good. I don't recall anything.”

As a matter of routine, they asked Tashiro where he'd been on July 13, the day they believed Namekawa was killed. He told them that he was in Osaka on business, which they later verified with his firm.

As they were wrapping up the interview, Tashiro asked Otsuka, “Was Namekawa murdered last month, then?”

“Uhm, well,” Otsuka mumbled halfheartedly, “I guess he was, yes. Anyway, we need to be getting going.”

They left Tashiro in the café, sitting at the table alone.

*   *   *

It was eleven thirty when the evening meeting ended and they emerged from Kameari police station. Tonight followed the usual pattern. Rather than going out for dinner, Himekawa's squad headed straight to a bar near the railway station for a drink. The relationship between Himekawa, Kikuta, and Ioka had started getting interesting over the last few days. After a few drinks, of course.

Ioka was always pushy with her at the pub. Every second word was, “Lieutenant Reiko, I love you,” and he frequently tried to sneak a kiss. Sometimes she would shove him away with a “No, thank you very much,” other times she would give him a mighty slap in the face. She did her best to look angry, but she usually had the ghost of a smile.

All this provoked extravagant reactions from Kikuta. Yesterday he had seized Ioka by the lapels and bellowed at him, “No way in hell am I going to let you take Reiko away from me, you creep.”

It was the booze speaking, of course, but for Kikuta, shouting about his feelings and referring to Reiko by her first name was quite a showy performance. The man was almost giving Ioka a run for his money.

Reiko's response was interesting in its own way too. With a face flushed scarlet from drink, she sat quite still, slumped forward over the table with her hands clamped tight around her napkin.

“Did you hear what I said, you jerk?” yelled Kikuta, pushing Ioka out of the way as he sat down heavily next to Reiko. Still clasping her napkin, Reiko gave a convulsive nod of her head, then another and another and another. It wasn't clear if Kikuta was responding to Reiko's nodding when he put an arm around her shoulders and dragged her forcefully toward him. Far from resisting, she leaned into him and kept right on nodding. With one arm wrapped around her and a tankard clutched in his other hand, Kikuta sat there and slowly drank his beer. Off to the side, Ioka sniveled about what an unfair place the world was, before falling asleep and starting to snore.

“God, what a bunch of misfits,” said Yuda with a rueful grin. “Things could get interesting if any of them remember this tomorrow.”

Never was a truer word spoken.

*   *   *

Today had been all too similar to yesterday. There'd been nothing worth calling a breakthrough in the investigation. They'd all completed their assigned interviews and dumped their not very helpful reports with the desk sergeant. Despite last night, Kikuta didn't seem to be any more intimate with Himekawa. Nor did Ioka, for his part, look ready to give up.

I'm looking forward to the sequel down the pub tonight,
thought Otsuka. But he was in for a disappointment. His cell phone buzzed as they were about to board the bus to the railroad station. Pulling it out, he didn't recognize the caller's number.

“I'll catch up with you later,” he said to the other four. (Unusually, Ishikura had agreed to come out tonight.) He knew he'd find them at the usual place. He moved away from the bus stop to take the call.

“Otsuka here.”

“Hello, this is Tomohiko Tashiro. We met earlier. Sorry to call so late.”

Otsuka had handed Tashiro a card with his cell phone number scribbled on it and told him to get in touch if he remembered anything.

“No problem. Did you remember something?”

Tashiro seemed to hesitate.

“It doesn't matter what it is. Trivial things can sometimes be important.”

“Well, I was thinking about Namekawa.… I doubt it's important, though.”

“You never know. Go ahead and tell me.”

“Okay. When we met in April, Namekawa kept going on and on about how he was feeling truly and fully alive. At the time I just thought he'd gone and got himself another hot girlfriend or work was going well, but…”

“But what?”

“Detective Otsuka, do you spend a lot of time online?”

“Some, not a lot. I mean, I've got a PC like everybody else.”

“Have you heard of something called Strawberry Night?”

“Strawberry what?”

“Strawberry Night.”

Just at that moment, Otsuka glanced back at the front door of the police station. Kitami, his partner, was just coming out, flanked by the station commander and the local chief of detectives. Otsuka slipped behind a police car for cover.

He had a feeling that the fewer people who knew about this phone call, the better.

 

6

The “Mizumoto Park Multiple Dumped Bodies Case” investigation had hit a wall.

Things had gotten off to a promising start when Reiko spotted the link between Taiichi Kanebara's sliced-open abdomen and Yasuyuki Fukazawa's death by
Naegleria fowleri
, and, as a result, they'd retrieved the body of a second victim, Yukio Namekawa, from the pond. Now, despite all their efforts, they couldn't find anything to connect the two victims. They had also failed to establish a link between Fukazawa, the man Reiko believed to be responsible for dumping the bodies in the water, and Kanebara or Namekawa.

It's weird. I expected smoother sailing than this
.

The sum total of their knowledge could be expressed with a couple of bullet points. One: both Kanebara and Namekawa habitually went to an unknown destination on the evening of the second Sunday of the month. Two: both men had been throwing themselves into their work over the last few months.

Even then, there were inconsistencies in the chronology. With Kanebara the change had occurred in spring, whereas with Namekawa it was the start of the year. Why the discrepancy?

The neighborhood canvass produced no results. The victims' personal effects yielded no clues
.
Interviews with the families, friends, and colleagues produced nothing to connect the two victims, either to each other or to the person allegedly responsible for disposing of them. Fatigue was starting to show in the faces of the task force members, and the initial energy of the investigation was almost dissipated.

Thursday, August 21, was the tenth day since the discovery of Kanebara's body on the hedge. An announcement was made that the task force would get a day off on the twenty-second.

“The way things stand, we are still in the dark about many aspects of this case, including motive, method, and the original location where the crimes were committed. On the plus side, we now have a good idea of where we need to focus our efforts. Both victims had the same numerous small cuts on the torso, the same severed carotid artery, and the same deep incision in the abdomen. Both victims exhibited a similar pattern of behavior on the second Sunday of the month. We know where the blue plastic sheeting and the string used for bagging the bodies came from. There's no shortage of clues that could lead us back to the perpetrator. If we are methodical, there's no reason why we can't crack this case.

“You've all worked incredibly hard for the last ten days, and you're worn out. I can't tell you if we're eighty percent there, or if the solution to this case is quite literally around the corner. None of us knows how this is going to play out. At times like this, it's easy to start feeling edgy and lose focus. I want you all to take tomorrow off. Use the time to recharge, mentally and physically. I want to see you back here the day after tomorrow, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and totally committed to wrapping this thing up.”

The more passionately Chief of Homicide Wada spoke, the more convinced Reiko became that what he really wanted to say was that they didn't deserve any time off.

His “take a day off the case” speeches are all the same anyway.

In fact, though, Reiko was emotionally worn out. In addition to the slow progress of the case, the stress of dealing with Katsumata in the office and in the field was getting to her. Their relationship had gone from bad to worse after the Kasumi Shiratori episode. She badly needed a break from the man, even if it was only a short one.

Why don't I spend my day off at home?

Unusually for her, Reiko didn't go out drinking that night. Instead she went directly back to her parents' house.

*   *   *

The journey home took just under an hour, about the same time as the commute from home to the Metropolitan Police Department headquarters in central Tokyo. The distance was quite doable, had she wanted to travel to Kameari police station from her parents' place on a daily basis.

When Reiko was working on a case, she always stayed in a hotel. It had nothing to do with distance or convenience; she simply didn't want to go home. Any excuses she made about the investigation being in trouble were lies she told herself as much as her parents.

It's the walk from the station I can't bear.

The fastest way home was through a residential district with a park, but Reiko had avoided that route for years. Although it took longer, she always walked along the main road and took care to drop by the video rental place and the convenience store on the way. It had nothing to do with getting a movie, something for dinner, or a magazine. She wanted to make sure that she was picked up on the shops' CCTV to prove that she was still alive and kicking at a specific time. She'd kept up the habit for years now, despite her doubts about its usefulness.

The family had moved into their house in Minami Urawa in Reiko's first year at junior high. She was thrilled to have her own room for the first time in her life and had fantasized about walking her dog in the nearby park. (Unfortunately, she'd never gotten around to getting a dog.)

She got home in twenty minutes. The place was unusually quiet. She looked at her watch. It was still only twenty past ten. Her father was probably still slaving away at the office. Her mother, who was a night owl, never went to bed before he got home. Strange. It was way too early for the porch light to be off like that. What was going on?

The best thing for me would be if Mom's out.

Reiko took the key from her handbag and opened the wooden front door with its coat of peeling paint.

There was something funny about the interior of the house too. The living room to the left of the passage was in darkness, and a light was on in her sister's room upstairs. Her sister had moved out a couple of years ago when she got married, and her room was no longer in use.

As Reiko locked the door behind her, a voice came from the top of the stairs. “Reiko?”

It was Tamaki, her baby sister.

“I didn't know you were visiting.”

Reiko put her handbag, which was swollen with a change of clothes for tomorrow, down on the hallway step.

Tamaki came down the stairs. She had her sleeping newborn baby daughter in her arms. Reiko's first-ever niece, Haruka.

“I'm not
visiting
.”

Tamaki's face was contorted with rage.

“What's with the death-ray stare?”

Reiko went into the living room, switched on the lights, and began hunting for the remote control for the air conditioning. The house was unusually humid and stuffy. She was barely moving and the sweat was pouring off her.

“Remote, remote, where are you hiding?” she murmured, pulling up the sofa cushions.