Without warning, Goda sneezed, and Officer Sawaguchi let out a short groan. The characters, written meticulously with a ruler and each measuring two centimeters square, conveyed a clear message: we have your president.
Goda looked beneath the shrub where he had just found the paper and, surveying the dense shroud of trees over the shrubs in the yard, as well as the wall and the front gate, he concluded that there was virtually no chance that it could have been thrown in from outside. Then, he felt another little snag in his consciousness, but his mind failed to process the thought any further.
“All right, you go back to the police box, and please relay by landline that we’ve found a note. If they have any messages for us, come here to let me know. Try to make as little noise as possible when coming and going.”
Officer Sawaguchi gave a brief assent, and then opened the front gate and rushed off. Goda held his hand against the gate so that it would not make another loud clang as it automatically closed, but the cast iron still shuddered heavily. With the exception of the branches above his head rustling in the cold wind, there was not a single sound coming from the surrounding alleys and houses.
Now alone, Goda took out his tape measure and quickly determined the distance from the spot where he had retrieved the note to the front gate, then wrote it down in his notebook. He would not be the one to write up the investigative report; he was merely doing what any detective first to arrive at the scene would do. However, as he went through these motions, he had the feeling—one that he hadn’t experienced in a long while—of scrambling around in the cold depths on his own, and he was forced to recognize that a terrible incident had occurred.
The time was 11:21 p.m. Seventy-six minutes had passed since the incident was assumed to have taken place. It was too late to issue an emergency deployment.
With the note in hand, Goda went back in through the front door. He held up the crumpled paper to show the president’s wife and son, who had planted themselves on the wooden ledge of the raised entranceway platform. “I found this out in the yard. I’m sorry, but please refrain from touching it.”
They both blinked vacantly and then, unable to utter a word, they each looked away quickly.
“Mom, we don’t know anything yet so don’t worry. I’m going to call Shoko.”
Mitsuaki reached for the cell phone, and Goda called out to him, “Please make sure this stays within your family.”
“I know,” Mitsuaki replied with irritation. Then he started to dial his sister.
The president’s wife drooped her shoulders forlornly. Seeming not to know what kind of expression she should be wearing at a time like this, she put on the faintest smile and began to murmur, almost to herself, “My husband, he always says that if something were to happen to him it would cause trouble for other people, so he is rather vigilant about his own safety and yet . . . He’s so concerned with everyone around him, he didn’t want to alarm the neighbors, so since the beginning of the year he has refused the bodyguard that his company had hired for him. I have no idea what we should do . . . And next week is the shareholders’ meeting, too. I’m sure he is out there somewhere now, worrying about the company. He’d been in such a good mood lately, what with orders for the new product coming in so well. Just this morning, as he went off to work, he was telling me that as long as the shareholders’ meeting goes well, he would finally be able to take a break.”
“Does your husband have any chronic illnesses?” Goda asked.
“No, not really.”
“So he is in good health?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t say he’s particularly energetic, but he’s fine.”
No chronic illness. Good health. Goda wrote in his notebook.
11:30 p.m. The intercom buzzed, and when Goda stuck his head out the front door, he saw two men wearing jeans and sneakers outside the front gate. Goda stepped out and opened the gate, letting the two of them in.
Both were young police officers in their twenties; their names were Izawa and Konno. It had been barely six months since they were transferred from Community Police Affairs to CID, so for these rookie detectives, no doubt this situation made their heads spin, and both of them appeared tense. Goda intended to teach them everything from scratch, and he looked the two young men squarely in the eyes.
“Now listen. No matter the circumstances, always put the safety of the victim first. This requires strict confidentiality. Unless instructed from the top, no matter what anyone asks, play dumb and say you’ve got nothing, haven’t heard anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Until the Mobile CI Unit gets here, you guys control traffic. Izawa, you’re in charge of the corner of that T-intersection. Konno, you get the corner of the other T-intersection. Confirm the name and address of any passerby and don’t let anyone through other than residents returning home. Same for cars. Be especially on the lookout for newspaper journalists and TV reporters. All right, get to it.”
Goda watched the two men dart out on either side to the T-intersections about seventy meters apart, and he gently closed the gate so as not to make a sound. 11:32 p.m.
He went back inside and confirmed with the wife and son, who were still sitting by the front door, that they had not received any suspicious calls to the house. “It’s getting cold, please wait in the living room,” Goda told them.
Goda had barely finished his sentence when Mitsuaki cried out, “It’s already been an hour and a half! Hurry up and find my father!” and buried his head in his hands.
Goda surmised that by now the perpetrators who had abducted the victim would have already fled to a neighboring prefecture, rather than staying within the city limits where the police hunt could easily reach them. What was more, it was customary for the police to wait until the victim was safely in protective custody before launching a formal investigation, which may have seemed contrary to the family’s wish for a speedy implementation. The victim being who he was, Goda predicted that the heads of MPD would be even more cautious than usual going forward.
Contemplating his own lack of agency both in the present and the future, Goda’s gaze dropped to his feet. As a precinct detective, he did not have the authority to move things from the right to the left. Once the investigation started, he would be lucky if he could gain access to even a nugget of information, and by this time tomorrow, he would no longer have any knowledge of the situation. These thoughts made him feel as if he were as useless as a twig.
When the intercom buzzed at 11:35 p.m., it signaled the arrival of the Mobile CI Unit at last. As soon as he heard the buzzer Goda raced outside and opened the front gate from the inside.
Four officers from the Kamata sub-unit had arrived, as well as the leader of the First Mobile CI Unit’s main squad and another four officers from the Crime Scene Unit. Each of them wore wireless earpieces connected to the investigation radio; some held bulging paper bags, while others carried toolboxes as they slipped stealthily onto the property. Perhaps there had been trouble deciding how to handle the case or securing a wireless vehicle—either way, it was unclear why it had taken them half an hour to get here.
The first man through the gate looked at Goda and demanded, “Has the NTT arrived?”
“Not yet,” Goda responded. As he spoke, he realized that he recognized the sergeant from the sub-unit, but the man with the fierce expression paid him no notice.
The squad leader, who walked in next, shouted instructions to the officers from the sub-unit: “Get them to sign the consent form first, then ask for a photo of the vic!” He quickly turned his attention to Goda. “Where was the note found?”
“Over there.” Goda pointed with his flashlight to the spot on path. The squad leader glared at the circle of light on the paving stone, then summoned the Crime Scene Unit officers behind him, “Go to it.” Two of them immediately spread out a tarp and began the task of collecting and preserving any evide
nce from the scene.
“And the note itself?” The squad leader stuck out his hand. Goda handed him the piece of paper.
The squad leader looked at the paper without saying a word, while behind him, the Crime Scene Unit swiftly set up another tarp inside the front gate to block the view from outside. The squad leader lifted his gaze and verified, “There’s been no call from the perpetrator, correct?”
“Correct,” Goda answered.
“You’ve spoke with the family?”
“Yes.” Goda ripped about five pages out of his notebook and handed them over. The squad leader quickly scanned the notes with his flashlight.
“No chronic illness, in good health. Good,” he murmured. Then, “We’ll take it from here. Those two men controlling traffic outside, leave them where they are until we say so. I want everyone at the department on stand by.” The squad leader spoke brusquely, as if he were loath to waste a minute, before hastening inside the front door.
One of the officers from the sub-unit called out to Goda. “Hey, this gate—how do you open it from inside?”
“Like this.” Goda showed him how the inner switch worked.
“I see. If it can be opened that easily from inside, then this has gotta be their ‘out.’ They must have had a car . . .” the officer mumbled to himself. He called out to a fellow officer, “Omura!”
They spread open a map, and shined the beam of a flashlight on it. “First, see if anyone heard any noise or the sound of a car ignition right around 10:05. Then, check if anyone saw any suspicious vehicles—”
“Many of the streets around here dead-end in a cul-de-sac, so pay attention,” Goda said and marked the map with his own ballpoint pen.
“Got it. Omura, you go right. I’ll take the left. We’ll circle back here in half an hour. We’ll communicate via radio over 100A.”
The two sub-unit officers quickly went off down their respective streets and were soon replaced by two new faces that ducked through the tarp covering the front gate. It was a lieutenant and a sergeant from the second unit of MPD’s First Special Investigation Team whose names and faces Goda knew, but for the moment neither of them gave Goda even a nod in greeting.
The two men glanced over to where the Crime Scene Unit was working, then took in the entire view of the mansion before the lieutenant, whose name was Satoru Hirase, spoke up.
“Goda-san? Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Where’s the squad?”
“They’re here.”
“Sure is cold tonight . . . was the vic wearing a coat?”
“No.”
“I see—”
The proficient engine of the Special Investigation Team had taken over the situation in which the president of a major corporation had been abducted, and was only just getting revved up. After repeatedly surveying the premises of the estate, which was now a crime scene, the lieutenant and the sergeant also disappeared behind the front door. The four officers from the Crime Scene Unit were crawling around on the path, having already placed five markers. Taking a last look at it all, Goda ducked under the tarp and went out the front gate.
Mounting the bike he had left on the street, Goda looked up again at the mansion enveloped by the pitch-black shadows of the trees and let his imagination run free, just for the sake of it. Bet there are at least three perps. Two of them must have jumped the wall and waited by the shrubs along the path for the victim to come home, and after capturing the victim, they whisked him out the gate, where someone else had a car by the roadside that they forced him into, and then drove away. Goda was easily able to imagine the details of such a crime from beginning to end, but the profiles of those who might have actually executed it were obscured by a thick haze.
Even if the perps had closely examined the area in advance, how could they have pulled off a crime that exploited the exact gap in time when there was no policeman on patrol nearby? They could not have done so by sheer chance—how on earth could they have been confident that the patrol would not return during those few minutes that they needed? The question that had flickered in his thoughts while speaking with Officer Sawaguchi still pulsed in a corner of his mind.
But in reality, as Goda peddled away on his bicycle, he wondered where he would be and what he would be doing come tomorrow. He might be canvassing this neighborhood on foot or investigating suspicious vehicles; on the other hand, he might not even be recruited to Special Investigation headquarters, and he’d find himself back with the rank and file at the precinct, writing up cases as usual. No matter what, he had no doubt that he would be somewhere far away whenever any developments occurred.
11:42 p.m. The alley was as silent as it had been half an hour earlier. It would still be a while before the MPD held a press conference, but for the time being, it seemed as if nothing had been leaked to the public. After telling the two young officers who were controlling traffic to stay put until instructed otherwise, Goda set off toward the police box by Omori Station only a short distance away. As he traveled back through the maze of alleys, he spotted three unmarked cars of the Crime Scene Unit and the Special Investigation Team parked in the darkness.
根来史彰 Fumiaki Negoro
On the copy desk of Toho News’s Metro section, Kei’ichi Tabe, the slot editor, tore off a sheet from his page-a-day calendar. His arm inscribed a large arc in the air and the ripped-out piece of paper sailed away from his hand.
Tabe had a habit of doing this when the date changed at midnight. The slot editor’s desk had a conspicuously large desktop computer on it, so that Fumiaki Negoro, sitting a little distance away in the section for reserve reporters who floated wherever they were needed among the various hard news sections, could only see Tabe’s arm and the flyaway paper behind the massive monitor.
The clock showed the time as one minute after midnight. It was Saturday, March 25.
Ripping off and throwing away the page from his own small daily calendar with one hand, Negoro resumed working on his unfinished draft. It was the next day’s installment of a six-part series, “Waste or Resource?” and he had taken this brief moment of free time to begin writing it. The thirteenth edition of the morning paper had gone to press half an hour ago, and there was an hour and a half until the final deadline for the fourteenth edition. The crowd in the news room could best be compared to that in the lobby of a theater running a play that boasted a relatively good turnout, if not a full house. Directions to confirm or finesse articles before press time bounced from one corner of the office to another, and phone calls came in now and then from reporters in the field. However, since everyone spoke in low tones and with few words, their voices didn’t travel far.
In addition to Tabe, the slot editor, there was a rim editor on duty and four overnight reporters on the Metro desk. In the Reserve section, the only one left was the chief, Negoro. Until half an hour ago, there had been at least three other reporters getting their research materials together, but after Tabe asked them to do some additional reporting for the final edition, they had gone off somewhere, leaving behind an ashtray with a mountain of cigarette butts.
During the Great Hanshin Earthquake that struck in January, the reserve reporters—eighteen in total—were for the most part allocated to the earthquake and disaster news crew, but just when they thought the confusion in the aftermath of the disaster had subsided, March brought a succession of major incidents beginning four days ago with the unprecedented crimes of a poison gas terror attack and random killings by a religious sect, followed by the bankruptcy of two credit unions within the metropolitan area. Added to this were suicides of children being bullied, a spate of gun-related crime, city expos, waste issues, urban disaster prevention, a resolution to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the war—the reserve reporters were hardly at their desks long enough to warm their seats. It was rare to have such a bustling year, and Negoro did n
ot have to wait until spring to complete his annual transformation into “the solitary reserve,” the lone reporter rooted to his desk, churning out article after article.
Always watching the clock, all year long Negoro assembled the drafts filed from all over by the other reserve reporters into a coherent whole, revising and rewriting to create feature articles to fill the Metro page and sending them off to the slot editor. In between all this he would touch up articles for his own column and pre-write advance articles on occasion. As it came down to the wire before press time he would check headlines, and in the event of an exclusive he would immediately swap around, punch up, or correct articles as per the slot editor’s specs. For the most part the work felt automatic, and after twenty-three years on the job his body had grown accustomed to it, but when the clock ticked past midnight, his lumbago, the result of a car accident four years ago, would start to trouble him. To make matters worse, yesterday he had stayed up reading a book—knowing all along that he should get some sleep—and he was paying for it now, his eyes hurting a little as he looked at the computer screen.
“Hey, Yoshida, this piece on the Product Liability Act—I think the consumers come out too strong,” Tabe was saying on the other side of the desktop computer. “Which do you prefer, add in some corporate voices, or shorten the opinions of the consumer group?”
With the phone in one hand, Tsutomu Yoshida, the overnight reporter covering the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, responded, “Please shorten it.” The rim editor, Takano, sat in front of another desktop computer next to Tabe, and he turned to him, putting a hand over the receiver he had tucked between his ear and shoulder. “That fire in Itabashi, apparently it’s arson. What do you want to do?”
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 30