The Silent Dead (6 page)

What are you trying to tell me?

Reiko wasn't a child and she wasn't a fool. She could tell what a clumsy, down-to-earth fellow like Kikuta was feeling, even if he didn't say it out loud. Still, she didn't want him using her ability to intuit his feelings as an excuse for not putting them into words. Some women might be okay with that; Reiko definitely was not. She wanted him to make the effort to articulate what he felt. The way he projected a vague sense of
wanting
to say something only to take refuge in food, beer, and, finally, shoptalk, drove her crazy.

What do you really want?

Reiko had no problem with people being uncommunicative at work. God knows, she could be uncommunicative herself! But for Kikuta to invite her for a drink
after
work only to wolf down everything on the table without even trying to tell her that he liked her—it was unforgivable! Well, maybe “unforgivable” was a bit on the arrogant side. She could see why he was behaving the way he was, but it still raised the question of why he'd arranged for them to go out alone together in the first place.

This wasn't the first time, but it was always the same. Kikuta would invite her out right after she'd been on one of those meet-a-potential-husband dates. If he didn't like her going on them, why didn't he come out and say so? If he liked her, he should damn well show her that he liked her. If he'd just say the word, then …

Reiko waggled her empty beer tankard at a passing waiter. As if responding to a signal, Kikuta muttered, “The guy must have been tortured.”

There it was: the same old pattern. Maybe she was partly to blame: she knew what he was doing but still played along. The instant Kikuta began talking about work, her irritation at his lack of candor slipped away like sand through her fingers. In her mind's eye, she'd already summoned up a full diagram of the corpse. The new data from the evening meeting floated alongside it like the annotations on a slide.

“I wonder…” she replied thoughtfully, her brow furrowed and her lips moving without her willing them to do so. “Until we've identified the victim, there's no point in debating the whole torture-or-not question. The thing that really bothers me is that thirty-centimeter-long cut in the abdomen. I can't figure out what it means.”

“Yeah. You brought that up in the meeting.”

Kikuta polished off his fourth mug of beer.

“The phrase you used was so gross. What was it? ‘Rooting around in the wound'?”

“Not true. I said ‘rummaging around.'”

Reiko finished her third beer.

“Pretty graphic either way. That kid who almost puked—you know who he is?”

“The kid who's partnered up with Otsuka? Uh-uh. No idea.”

“Heard his dad's the director of Tokyo's Third District.”

The Third District Headquarters administered three wards—Shibuya, Meguro, and Setagaya. A district director had the rank of chief superintendent, which placed him close to the top of the police bureaucracy. His son would have all sorts of advantages.

“Kid's on the management fast track then?”

“You betcha. Graduated from the National Police Academy. Must be doing his on-the-job training here.”

Kikuta broke into one of his trademark wry grins. Reiko tilted her head thoughtfully. “It's a bit weird, though. I mean, why drop a fast-track glory boy right into the thick of it? He's only going to stick around here for three months or so. All trainees have to do is to rotate through a certain number of departments.”

“I know the answer to that one. Kid was babbling about it being ‘valuable experience.'”

“What crap! Anyway, if dry heaving in meetings is the best he can do, he's a no-hoper.”

“Yeah! I hear you.”

Reiko suddenly realized that Kikuta was looking straight at her. Typical! The man had no trouble making eye contact when they were talking about work. His eyes had been swimming all over the place when he asked her about her recent date, but now he was staring at Reiko intently enough to knock her backward. That was the look she wanted him to have when he came out and told her he liked her. With that level of intensity, she'd have no trouble telling him that she liked him too.…

Unfortunately, the chances of Kikuta picking up on how she felt were less than zero.

“That fast-track program's really something, y'know. A young kid like that, and he's already a lieutenant.”

Reiko was so frustrated that she wanted to sweep all the dishes Kikuta had eaten his way through onto the floor.

Look at how much you've eaten! Don't tell me you expect me to go halves on this!

The night was getting late. Outside all was quiet in Kanamachi.

 

4

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13

After having the overall thrust of the investigation laid out at the morning meeting, Reiko caught a taxi in front of the Kameari police station. She reached the crime scene at 9:30. She was just getting ready to resume the house-to-house inquiries when her cell phone buzzed. The order was short and sweet: get back to task force HQ urgently.

She smiled sardonically as she returned her phone to her pocket. “We've got to turn round and go straight back.”

“Don't know why we bothered coming in the first place!” Ioka snorted.

“They've identified the body. Amazing what you can do with dental work.”

Ioka pumped his fist in triumph. “Amen to that. Not sorry to kiss this neighborhood canvass good-bye. It's going nowhere.”

“Come on. You know this sort of legwork can generate valuable leads.”

Despite her chiding of Ioka, Reiko felt like punching the air too.

She was fairly sure in this particular case that canvassing the neighborhood was a waste of time. The careful planning of the crime hinted at more than the usual complexity. Wada, the chief of Homicide, had described it as “bizarre,” but Reiko detected an intensity of purpose that went well beyond bizarre. She could see it in the meticulous way the body was wrapped in the plastic sheeting and in the fact that no one who lived nearby had heard or seen anything suspicious. Reiko was certain that they could keep canvassing the neighborhood till the cows came home, but ultimately they weren't going to make any discoveries here. Reiko had no qualms about throwing in the towel. It was round one to the perpetrator.

Interviewing people who knew the victim and the results of the forensic tests seemed more likely to generate meaningful results. She was happy to have a new angle from which to approach the case.

There is one thing I can't figure out.…

They were walking down the lane beside the pond to get back to the main thoroughfare when Reiko abruptly swung around for a second look at the spot where the body had been dumped. A narrow patch of green right by the pond and a hedge with small, dark, and densely packed leaves. Why had the perpetrator put the body there specifically?

The sky was cloudy. The surface of the pond was a thick inky black.

*   *   *

“I've called this meeting because a call just came in from a dentist in Nakano. He has a patient whose dental work is a match. The patient is Taiichi Kanebara, thirty-one years old. Works at an outfit called Okura Trading, an office equipment leasing company. His current address is Apartment 707, Grand Heights Heiwadai, Nerima ward. He's married with no children. His wife filed a missing persons report at the local station last night.… Himekawa and Otsuka, I want you to get to Nakano to double check our X-rays against the dentist's records. After that, go to the office of Okura Trading and start asking some questions. Ishikura and Kikuta, you go and check out the victim's apartment. And take the crime scene techs with you. Yuda, you stay here on standby. The Mobile Unit can take over the neighborhood canvass. Ikegami, you take sectors one and two. Hagio, you do three and four. Sectors five and six can be handled by…”

Although the meeting was not yet over, Reiko got up and made a beeline to the front left corner of the room, where the desk sergeant was handling the case documentation. She was handed a brown folder containing the dental X-rays of the corpse, a printout of Taiichi Kanebara's personal data, and a handwritten note with the addresses of the dentist and Kanebara's company.

Reiko headed for the door. Ioka and Otsuka were right behind her, followed by Lieutenant Kitami, the “fast-track glory boy” Kikuta had spoken about the night before. Reiko was under no obligation to pay him any special attention, and she wasn't interested in making a good impression. All she wanted was for him to stay out of their way. She hadn't reckoned on having an extra investigator on her team and had to suppress the urge to tell him not to slow them down.

“How was last night, Lieutenant?” asked Otsuka as they hurried down the stairs. He lowered his voice to be discreet.

“How was
what
?”

“Oh … er, nothing. Sorry.”

Reiko hadn't meant to be quite so sharp, but it had the desired effect. Otsuka slowed down and fell in step with Kitami at the back.

Damn Kikuta! Making me go halves with him like that.
Reiko blew air impatiently through her nose.

Ioka slipped in beside her.

“Should start getting busy now.”

“As long as we're making progress, I'm happy.”

“We'll need to change trains twice to get to Nakano.”

“Thanks for telling me. I was planning on taking a taxi, but with the traffic I guess it could take a long time.”

They took the Joban line to Kitasenju, then switched to the Chiyoda line as far as Otemachi, then transferred again, to the Tozai line to Nakano. Reiko checked her watch as they passed through the turnstile at Nakano. It was exactly 11:00 a.m.

Their first port of call was the victim's dentist. The Nakano Dental Clinic was three minutes' walk from the station on the fourth floor of a slightly dilapidated building. The clinic itself was bright and clean inside.

Someone at the task force HQ had called ahead to say they would swing by, so all the relevant documentation was waiting for them.

They talked to the clinic director's son, who looked after the bulk of the patients.

“I knew who it was when your fax arrived first thing this morning. There's something unusual about the alignment of Mr. Kanebara's wisdom teeth. Plus he's got cavities, as you can see. I told him that he should take the plunge and have them out, but he was too frightened. Your X-rays show that the cavities have grown much bigger since I last examined him.”

Comparing the X-rays of the corpse with those on file in the clinic proved beyond a doubt that Kanebara was their man. They got word to the task force HQ, and Captain Imaizumi immediately ordered the forensics team, who were on standby near Kanebara's apartment, to go in and dust for fingerprints.

The investigation was finally developing some momentum.

*   *   *

The task force HQ had also contacted Okura Trading to let them know a couple of detectives were on their way. Like the dental clinic, the company was based in Nakano, in its own ten-story office building. The woman at reception was well briefed. Reiko only had to flash her badge for her to spring to her feet.

“Mr. Asada from Sales is waiting for you in meeting room three on the sixth floor. Please go down this hall and take the left-hand elevator.”

A man in a suit was waiting for them as the elevator doors slid open.

“Good morning.”

He was tall, around forty years old, with thinning hair.

“Hi, I'm Reiko Himekawa from the Metropolitan Police.”

“Hello,” replied the man gruffly. “My name's Asada. I'm head of Sales. I was Kanebara's boss. Why don't you come in here so we can talk?”

They must have heard he was murdered. All the higher-ups—seven or eight of them, from the CEO on down—were assembled in one room with anxious expressions plastered on their faces. Asada started to introduce them one by one with their fancy job titles. Reiko refused to go down that road. She interrupted him midflow.

“Sorry, but due to the nature of the case, there are limits on what we can tell you. At the moment, all I'm at liberty to say is that someone we believe to be Taiichi Kanebara was murdered. It's a little inconvenient, but we're going to have to talk to all of you one at a time. Either you can vacate this room for us, or we can move to another, smaller room. Which shall it be?”

The man who had been introduced as the CEO instructed Asada to get another room ready, then turned to face Reiko.

“You said your name's Himekawa?”

“That's right. Himekawa from Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, Homicide Division.”

“Would I be correct in assuming that you're the person in charge of this investigation?”

“That's correct.”

Asada returned to let her know that the new room was ready. Reiko told Otsuka and Kitami to keep an eye on the executives and stop them from talking to each other about the victim. Reiko would call whomever she needed into the other room for a one-on-one. She didn't expect the top managers to be of much use; the people she wanted to talk to were the ones who'd worked with Kanebara every day.

Reiko could feel someone's eyes on her.
Which of them is it?
Glancing around the room with feigned casualness, she realized it was the CEO.
That guy creeps me out
, she thought to herself.

As she left the room, she treated him to a curt little bow.

*   *   *

The new room was a meeting room big enough to accommodate ten people. It felt hot and humid. The air conditioning must have just been switched on.

The first person Reiko interviewed was Asada, Kanebara's direct boss. Asada said he'd been at home the Sunday night Kanebara was thought to have been murdered. His family were the only people who could back up his alibi, but he didn't strike Reiko as suspicious.