Nightshade

by Jonelle Patrick

  He squinted as the sun began to break through the trees. It was a good thing Shinto priests started work early—one of them had noticed the lone Lexus shortly after 7:30 A.M. and had called the police as soon as he saw what was inside.

  Kenji had been a detective for nearly a year, but these were the first suspicious deaths he’d been called to investigate. Crime in Tokyo tended toward burglary and assault; murder was rare, usually the work of drunken family members who dutifully turned themselves in afterward and confessed.

  Not that these deaths would require much investigation—it looked like a garden-variety suicide pact, the kind that had become all too common. Now that the Internet made it so convenient, the despairing could plan their final deadly get-togethers as easily as cherry blossom viewing picnics. A flurry of spent petals whirled past him like a small blizzard, the classic Japanese reminder that life is fleeting.

  Kenji sighed and pulled on his police-issue white cotton gloves.

  He bent to peer through the window at the three bodies inside. A middle-aged man and woman in front, a young woman in back.

  The twenty-something girl was obviously a Goth-Lolita, one of the doll-like eccentrics who dressed exclusively in black and white, right down to the Buddhist rosary she’d chosen to clasp while saying her final prayers. She wore thigh-high, black stockings and platform Mary Janes under lace-edged, white petticoats and a short, ruffled, black dress. A tiny top hat, jauntily canted over one ear, tied under her chin with ribbons that trailed to her waist. In her fingerless, black velvet gloves and studded-leather choker with dangling crucifixes, she must have made an arresting mixture of innocence and decay. Her heavy makeup gave her an artificial appearance, yet there was something familiar about her.

  Kenji frowned. What was a twenty-something Goth-Lolita doing in a car with a couple old enough to be her parents?

  He opened the front door on the passenger side and unlatched the glove box. Inside, registration papers listed the owner’s name: Mr. Tatsuo Hamada, with a Shirogane address.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  Suzuki stood at attention on the other side of the car, having secured the shrine entrance with multiple barriers against incursion by worshippers, tourists, and passing imperial armies. Kenji wasn’t quite used to having a kohai to mentor yet. Being called “sir”—as all kohais properly called their sempais—still made him look around to see whom Suzuki was addressing.

  His new assistant’s attention to the finer points of the regulations was impeccable, if a little hard to take first thing in the morning. Suzuki had graduated from university two years behind Kenji and was on the same National Public Servant Career Group fast track, but he was so new to the Komagome detective detail that his suit hadn’t even been to the cleaners yet. And his haircut would have to grow out for months to even slightly threaten the dress code.

  “What shall I tell the priests, sir? There’s apparently a wedding scheduled later and they’re becoming anxious.”

  Kenji glanced at the knot of men muttering to each other under the cherry trees. Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples divided the business of life and death neatly down the middle: Everything to do with life and the living fell to the Shinto priests, while the Buddhists took care of death and the afterlife. It was such bad luck to have a death at a Shinto shrine that the priests would have to do some serious parking-lot purifying before the wedding party arrived.

  “I’ll talk to them in a minute. I doubt this is anything but suicide, but we should cover ourselves. Could you give the crime tech unit a call? And arrange transport for the bodies?”

  “Which hospital, sir?”

  Kenji thought for a moment. Komagome Hospital was closest, but if it turned out there was anything suspicious about the deaths, the bodies would be transferred to the Tokyo University School of Legal Medicine.

  “Let’s decide after the tech team finishes. Call them first.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

  Suzuki walked away, pulling out his phone. Kenji called after him, “Suzuki-san? Could you fetch some tea? If the priests don’t have any, try the Family Mart across the street.” Being a sempai did have its advantages.

  He returned his attention to the bodies.

  The man in the driver’s seat had died holding hands with the woman next to him. Two unlabeled prescription bottles sat near the gearshift, and a half-empty bottle of good sake lay on its side by the driver’s foot. Matching cups sat on the dashboard, the one on the passenger side stained with pale pink lipstick.

  They were conservatively—but expensively—dressed. The woman’s hair was glossy black, but would have been peppered with gray if she hadn’t colored it. Lines on her face were beginning to show through her careful makeup. She was close enough to the man in age that Kenji suspected she was his wife, not his mistress.

  A thick, business-size envelope sat propped behind the steering wheel. Given the empty pill bottles and the old-fashioned charcoal burner he’d spied squatting on the floor in the back seat, Kenji bet he’d find a suicide note inside. He’d read it after photos were taken.

  He pulled open the back door. The girl still puzzled him. How did she fit in? The small handbag on her lap most likely contained her ID, but he didn’t want to disturb anything until the tech team was finished examining the scene.

  Unfolding himself from the Lexus, Kenji turned in a circle, surveying the surroundings.

  What a beautiful place to die. Kenji had grown up in the neighborhood, but had seldom stopped to appreciate the serenity of the shrine while cutting through it on his way home from school. The sugi trees lining the parking lot cast long shadows over the asphalt. Their subtle cedar fragrance perfumed the breeze, a scent evoking the very soul of Japan. A red lacquer torii gate stood solemnly over the entrance to the shrine path, which passed beneath it into a frothy pink tunnel of blooming cherry trees. Beyond, the shrine stretched its red and gold wings above the awakening gardens. It would have been a fine day for a wedding.

  “The crime technicians are here, sir,” said Suzuki, appearing at his elbow with a steaming cup of hot green tea. He leaned in to whisper, “Just to warn you, we got the foreigner.”

  Kenji accepted the tea and information with thanks and watched as his assistant jogged over to move the roadblock. He’d never met Crime Technician Tommy Loud, but that name had frequently been the subject of Australian stereotype jokes in both English and Japanese, as had his employment in the notoriously clubby National Police Administration. According to the gossip, Loud’s appointment had nothing to do with his degree in Legal Sciences from Jikei University. Everybody knew he’d been hired because of his wife.

  The daughter of the Superintendent General of the Metropolitan Police had inexplicably and defiantly eloped with this gangly red-haired foreigner who shared her passion for the novels of Yasunari Kawabata. Only the news of an imminent grandchild and a job offer in Sydney had finally convinced the Superintendent General to abandon his hopes for a speedy divorce and pull strings instead.

  A van rolled to a stop just inside the entrance and the Australian jumped out, toting a digital camera. He jogged toward them, stopping a few feet away to bow at the proper angle for greeting a Detective-grade officer.

  “Good morning, I’m Tommy Loud, from the crime lab. Sorry it took me so long to get here,” he said in impeccable Japanese.

  Kenji’s mouth dropped open. It was like hearing a dog speak. He stammered his own name in reply.

  “Ah, Nakamura-san, a pleasure to meet you. Nice day for some suspicious deaths, ne?”

  “Not so suspicious, Rowdy-san,” Kenji replied, recovering from his shock but mispronouncing Loud’s name in the typical Japanese fashion. “Group suicide. Looks pretty open and shut.”

  Suicide wasn’t a crime, but they had to go through the motions, just in case. Unless compelling evidence emerged to
the contrary, the file would be inscribed “jisatsu,” the case closed, and the bodies released for cremation within a day or two.

  Loud nodded, already fiddling with his camera. “Shall we start with the car?”

  Kenji nodded. “I’ll be over there, talking to the priests if you need me. If we need a wider perimeter, I’ll let you know.”

  Loud directed his three blue-jumpsuited assistants to fetch evidence bags and begin searching a grid around the Lexus while he photographed the victims.

  Grabbing his cooling tea and still marveling at hearing fluent Japanese from such an unlikely source, Kenji approached the priests. Bowing respectfully, he said, “Good morning, kannushi-san. I’m Detective Kenji Nakamura. Who discovered the bodies?”

  A thin, nervous man in white robes and the traditional, black, oven-mitt-like headdress stepped forward. “I was the one who called 110. When I came out shortly after sunrise to make sure there was nothing inappropriate in the parking lot before the wedding today, I found . . . this.” His eyes flicked unwillingly to the silver car, then back to Kenji.

  “What do you mean by ‘inappropriate,’ kannushi-san?”

  The priest exchanged glances with an elderly priest, robed in green, with a long, thin beard.

  “The parking lot is surrounded by trees,” he explained. “It’s one of the few places in Tokyo that can’t be seen from neighboring buildings. Sometimes young people come here for . . . privacy.”

  “Ah. Couples that can’t afford a love hotel?”

  “Sometimes. And sometimes it’s kids, raiding the Suntory vending machine behind the pachinko parlor and bringing their cans of chu-hai here to get drunk.”

  “Foreign kids,” interrupted the older priest.

  “Well, not always,” said the young one. “But when I saw the mess by the path, I was pretty sure it was just young people sleeping it off in their parents’ car before driving home. I was hoping they spoke some Japanese because my English isn’t so good. I went over to roust them, but when I looked in the window . . .” He shuddered.

  “Where is this ‘mess by the path’ you mentioned?”

  The priest stood aside and pointed to a splat of vomit in the bushes next to a sign pointing the way to the shrine. Kenji stepped over to look, then bent down to peer into the thicket of azaleas surrounding the cherry trees.

  “When can we start cleaning up?” asked the old priest. “I don’t know if your colleague mentioned it, but . . .”

  “Yes, I know, the wedding.” Kenji looked back at the car. Loud was bent awkwardly into the back seat, his camera flash bouncing around inside like caged lightning. “Let me get our crime scene specialists over here to collect any evidence that might relate to our investigation, then we’ll let you do whatever you need to do.”

  Kenji began to walk back toward the Lexus, then turned and asked, “What will you tell the wedding party?”

  “Nothing they’ll be happy to hear.” The young priest sighed.

  Kenji returned to the car as Loud was putting away his camera. “Okay if I look in her purse now?” he asked.

  “Go ahead,” said the tech. “But put everything back when you’re done. Let me know when you’re finished so I can bag it up properly.”

  “While you’re waiting, there’s a white mobile phone in the bushes over by the path to the shrine. Collect that and anything else that looks like it was dropped since the last rain, including a sample of the vomit by the phone.”

  “Will do.” Loud grabbed two of his assistants and steered them toward the torii gate.

  Kenji leaned into the car and gently pulled the handbag from the girl’s hands. He unsnapped it and peered inside. Cheap gel pen, a piece of paper smeared with something that was the same color as the vomit by the path, and a thin, spiral-bound notebook. No phone, no ID. A ¥5,000 note was tucked into a side pocket. As he replaced the bag on the girl’s lap, he noticed the corner of a rumpled, white envelope poking from her skirt pocket. Kenji teased it out and read the front. Clearly it wasn’t intended for the “Mother and Father” in the front seat, who wouldn’t be around to read it. Maybe there was a name on the note inside. Careful not to tear the envelope, Kenji lifted the flap and drew out a sheet of folded stationery.

  It was blank.

  Chapter 4

  Saturday, April 6

  3:10 P.M.

  Yumi

  Yumi’s session with Ito-san was a distant memory by the time she was forking up a bite of cream puff and steeling herself for Coco’s reaction to the juicy information she’d been unforgivably tardy in sharing.

  “You’re going out with Ichiro Mitsuyama?” her best friend gasped, leaning across the table at the Tea Four Two café. “As in Mitsuyama department stores? Mitsuyama Bank? The Mitsuyama subway line? That Mitsuyama?”

  Yumi nodded, amazed that her best friend’s eyes could get any rounder than they usually were. Every morning Coco used eyelid glue to give her the “Western” look dictated by the Princess Gal style she’d adopted in middle school. Her father was a respectable post office bureaucrat, but Coco bleached her luxurious curled hair to the color of milk tea, wore short babydoll-style dresses, and had fingernails so long and embellished they required workarounds just to dial her phone.

  Back in seventh grade, they’d been drawn to each other by a shared love of red bean buns and a stubborn refusal to kowtow to the popular girls. Even though Yumi had been back in Tokyo since third grade, she would always be “the foreigner” and Coco’s Princess Gal look had made her far too popular with the boys for most girls to have anything nice to say about her.

  “Sorry I didn’t tell you before,” Yumi apologized, poking at her cream puff. “It’s just—”

  “How’d you meet him?” her friend persisted, lighting one of the cigarettes that were the reason they were sitting out in the chilly courtyard instead of in one of the Tea Four Two’s cushy booths. Coco took a puff and held it out to the side so smoke wouldn’t drift onto the uniform she was required to wear at the Akebono tea ceremony sweets store. She’d already been cautioned once.

  “He went to graduate school at Boston College,” Yumi said.

  “So . . . you met him when you were at BC?”

  “Sort of. His quartet performed at an event I helped organize my senior year.”

  Not that Yumi had noticed him back then. When they met again at the o-miai lunch and their parents finally began chatting amongst themselves about the lateness of cherry blossom season, Ichiro had gazed at Yumi through his trendy glasses and said in English, “I don’t know if you remember me, but . . .”

  She’d remembered the occasion, but everyone there had been forgettable except her then-boyfriend Andrew, who’d spent the evening sulking near the drinks table, punishing her for dragging him to yet another Japanese cultural event.

  “I guess Ichiro remembered meeting me,” she continued, “so when he turned thirty and his parents began pressuring him to get married, he asked them to put me on the o-miai list.”

  “You met through an o-miai?” Coco shrieked. “You’re having an arranged marriage?” A pair of Goth-Lolitas at the neighboring table turned to stare.

  “Shh! No!” Yumi yelped, embarrassed. “It’s only our fourth date. My mother filled out the questionnaire they sent, so when the invitation came, we sort of had to go.”

  “She did it without asking you?”

  “No, it was right after I broke up with Ben. The third time.” Ben Samuels was her high school boyfriend, the first (and third and sixth) relationship to be doomed from the start. Like all her other boyfriends, Ben was boyishly handsome, thoroughly American, and incapable of understanding that the girl with one foot in America and one foot in Japan often had to bow to family obligation instead of putting her relationship with him first. She’d met him when they were fifteen, both of them earning pocket money
tutoring English at the Number One Elite Cram School.

  “I didn’t think the Mitsuyamas would actually call,” Yumi said. “I mean, my father’s a lecturer at a perfectly respectable university, but the Mitsuyamas are kind of out of our league.”

  “I’ll say. What’s he like? A guy from that kind of family—isn’t he hopelessly Japanese?”

  “Well, yeah . . .” Yumi admitted. She and Coco had spent many hours dissecting the failings of Japanese boyfriends. Never opened the door for you, never helped you with your coat. Always said, “I like you,” never “I love you.” Ichiro was 100 percent Nippon danshi in public, but Yumi felt he’d demonstrated some potential in private. Clearly, he hadn’t been studying business on Saturday nights at BC.

  “He’s nice,” Yumi admitted. “I kind of like him.”

  Coco narrowed her eyes thoughtfully and stubbed out her cigarette. “So tonight’s Date Number Four. Where are you going?”

  “Roppongi Hills Club. To his Toda University class reunion.”

  “Yow. He must be serious about you if he’s planning to introduce you to all his friends. I can’t believe you met him through an o-miai,” Coco said, shaking her head. “It’s so . . . medieval.”

  “Come on, it’s no different than if we met at a party. Just because our parents pre-approve doesn’t mean we have to get married.”

  “But that’s the idea, isn’t it? To get married? How many times can you go out before you have to decide?”

  Yumi shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Oh I don’t know, five? Maybe six?”

  “Is he cute?”

  Yumi thought a moment. “Sort of. I mean, he’s nice-looking, but you wouldn’t pick him out of a crowd. Short hair. Glasses. He has good taste in clothes, though.” She smiled. “Really good taste in clothes.”