“Maybe we should add that Hiro Hamada then took over Arita’s job,” suggested Suzuki.
“Good point. Probably right, ne? Let’s say March fifteenth.” Kenji squeezed it in. He resumed his narrative.
“A week later, the Hamadas changed their wills, leaving money to the manager they just fired and making it easier for their son to raid his trust fund.” Kenji looked at Suzuki. “Why did they do that?”
“Which do you mean, sir?”
“Both.”
Suzuki consulted his notebook. “It says here they left Arita a year’s pay. But if it was severance, wouldn’t the company pay that?”
“Not if he was forced to resign. Clearly Hamada didn’t give him much choice, but if he wasn’t actually fired, the company would owe him nothing.” Kenji tapped his lips with the pen. “So why would the Hamadas leave him a bequest?”
He looked up to see Oki passing by outside the interview room windows and called him in. The big man looked over the timeline as Kenji outlined the puzzling will changes. Oki swung a chair around to face the board and dropped into it, rubbing his jaw as he considered the question.
“Okay, here’s what I think,” he finally said. “Two possibilities. One, they felt sorry for Arita’s family. This guy worked at the company for years, right? He was probably hired by Mrs. Hamada’s dad. Hamada-san’s decision may have been made in a fit of anger, but when he cooled off, he realized he was punishing Arita’s whole family by forcing his resignation. Perhaps Hamada felt he ought to have handled it differently, so the family had something to live on while Arita looked for another job. It was too late to make a legal severance payment through the company, so he decided to do it out of his own pocket.”
“If that’s true, then he knew Arita would be getting that money soon enough to make a difference during his job search,” Kenji said slowly. “That means they decided to commit jisatsu before they changed their wills.”
Oki nodded. “The other possibility is that Hamada found out after firing Arita that he’d made a mistake. That somebody else was responsible for placing that order.” He frowned. “But if they fired him by mistake, why didn’t they just apologize and give him his job back?”
“And we’re back to asking: If not Arita, who ordered the cut-rate products? And why do you think the Hamadas eased up on their son’s trust?”
“Well, the first thing I’d ask is why they made it so tough for him to get at the money in the first place. Then I’d want to know what changed. What kind of kid is Hamada Jr.?”
Kenji reported that both Fukuda and Arita had described him as smart, ambitious, and impatient with his slow advancement. And, if they believed the ex-purchasing manager, Hiro was also willing to profit from cutting corners and let others pay for his misdemeanors.
“Huh,” said Oki when he’d finished. “Sounds like a typical, spoiled rich kid. If that’s the improved version, I wonder what he was like before.”
“Sir?” said Suzuki, who’d been paging through his notebook while Kenji talked. “There’s something I’ve been wondering about. Mr. Hamada knew his son was getting tired of working his way up from the bottom, and according to Arita, he’d already vetoed several sketchy suggestions from his son. So why didn’t Mr. Hamada suspect Hiro was involved in that order for cut-rate ingredients? Why did he blame Arita?”
“It was Arita’s name on the paperwork.”
“His hanko,” Suzuki corrected. “Surely Hamada-san realized that someone besides Arita could have put it there.”
“Parents can be awfully blind when it comes to their children,” said Oki.
“Yes, but when Mr. Hamada met with his lawyer, he seemed to believe that his son had grown up recently and proved that his values were in the right place. That sounds like Hiro did something specific to change his father’s opinion.”
“What happened on that date there, right before the purchasing manager was fired?” asked Oki, nodding toward the timeline.
“We don’t know exactly,” Kenji admitted. “Father and son met behind closed doors after work and afterward the father was very upset.”
“The timing is right for discovering that bill of lading,” mused Oki. “I wonder who delivered it to Hamada. If it was the son, that might be what convinced his dad that he’d changed.”
“But wouldn’t he want to wait until the cheap ingredients had been successfully used before telling his father?” objected Suzuki. “If he wanted to prove a point?”
Kenji sighed in frustration. “I wonder if any of this matters. I’m not seeing any threat to innocent victims. So far, nothing about this little soap opera seems to warrant the kind of apology made in their suicide note.”
They all sat for a few minutes, turning the evidence over in their minds.
Oki heaved himself up out of his chair. “Well, I’ve got to get back to the Fujimoto burglary. Hope you figure it out. Good luck.”
Kenji thanked him. He looked over the whiteboard again; it still wasn’t providing any answers. “Shall we take a break, Suzuki-san?”
“Yes, sir,” replied his assistant, neatly aligning his pen on top of his closed notebook. He picked up his empty teacup. “Would you like a refill, sir?”
“Yes, thanks.”
On his way back from the men’s room, Kenji realized he was hungry. The two rice balls he’d wolfed down outside the Ueno Station convenience store hadn’t been enough. He stopped at the vending machine, disappointed to see a sign taped to the glass asking him to please excuse the inconvenience, the repairman had been called.
Running out to the Lawson down the street would take too long. Maybe he’d find something in his desk.
Aha. At the back of his bottom drawer, a single packet of Koala biscuits. Munching the chocolate-filled snacks he’d loved since childhood, he returned to the interview room to find Suzuki poring over his notes.
His assistant looked up, then leaped to his feet, crying, “Stop, sir! Where did you get those?” He was staring at the Koala packet. The assistant detective was well known for his earnest dedication to healthy eating.
“Suzuki-san, not all of us think we’ll drop dead if we occasionally eat junk food.”
“No, really sir, those are poison!” He snatched the half-eaten packet from Kenji’s hand.
“Suzuki-san!”
“These were recalled over six months ago,” Suzuki chided. He shook the bag at Kenji. “They’re made with tainted milk. Melamine. It causes kidney failure. Didn’t you see the news?”
Kenji frowned. “I thought that was in China. Babies died from drinking counterfeit infant formula or something.”
“That was the first case. But then they discovered that the same company sold tainted milk to manufacturers all over the world, who used it in all kinds of products: cookies, candy, soft drinks . . .”
“Wait. Candy?”
They stared at each other.
“That’s it,” Kenji said. “The Hamadas were afraid someone had ordered tainted Chinese milk products and put that in their candy. When you checked their company website, was there any mention of recalls?”
“None.”
“Or . . . deaths?”
“No.”
Kenji looked back at the timeline and circled the section between Arita’s firing and the visit to the lawyer. “Mr. and Mrs. Hamada must have spent this week trying to find out what happened to that powdered milk.”
“And whatever they found—or didn’t find—made them decide to commit jisatsu.”
Kenji stood up. “I’ll talk to Section Chief Tanaka. I hope it’s enough for a warrant.”
Chapter 22
Tuesday, April 9
2:30 P.M.
Yumi
The subway car was packed with students. Yumi had been lucky to beat a miniskirted coed to the last seat a
s the train pulled away from Waseda Station. She eased her heel out of her too-tight shoe, sneaking a look at an angry red patch rapidly turning into a blister. Yesterday she’d forgotten to go to Mr. Minit to retrieve the pumps she usually wore with her translating uniform and had to dust off the only other heels that met the strict guidelines of the International Interpreting Company.
She’d been stuck in a stuffy English department classroom since 10:00 that morning with a visiting professor who couldn’t understand why she needed to consult her dictionary so frequently. At first she’d been apologetic, guilty because she’d spent yesterday investigating Rika’s death instead of prepping to interpret a panel discussion called “Innocence, Shame, Ambiguity, and Desire in the Work of Henry James.” But as the day wore on, she began to take a perverse pride in the fact that she wasn’t the kind of person who used words like “indubitably.”
It didn’t help that her thoughts kept straying to last night’s revelation that she could walk away from pompous professors forever just by saying “yes” when Ichiro got around to proposing.
Ichiro. She was confused by the increasing intimacy she wanted to push away and embrace at the same time. His father’s driver had diplomatically excused himself to buy cigarettes at the convenience store last night when they pulled up outside Yumi’s house at 2:00 A.M. She’d been nearly as reluctant as Ichiro to see the evening end, and had returned his affections with more enthusiasm than before. If she hadn’t been trussed up securely in a kimono, the driver might have been exiled out on the street corner for quite some time. Later, alone on her futon, she’d fallen asleep holding her cell phone, Ichiro’s good-night text message still glowing on the screen.
That reminded her. She pulled out her phone, remembering she’d felt it vibrate during the professor’s Q & A. One missed call from Ichiro, a voicemail from Kenji, and three new e-mail messages. The train slowed as it approached Takadanobaba Station. Wincing as she shoved her foot back into her shoe, she limped to the door.
As soon as she cleared the exiting crowd, aiming herself toward the Yamanote Line, she returned Ichiro’s call. He picked up on the first ring, as if he’d been waiting. Would she meet him for dinner tonight? 8:00, at Tofu-ya Ukai, near Shiba-koen.
She wondered how he’d gotten a reservation on such short notice. The legendary yudofu restaurant was booked weeks in advance. Yumi promptly decided she needed a new dress. A train arrived, bound for Shibuya, the opposite direction from home. She ran, angling between the doors just as they closed. Halfway to the next station, she remembered she hadn’t listened to Kenji’s message yet.
“Yu-chan, this is Kenji Nakamura. I wanted you to know that we’ve received permission to do a post-mortem on Rika Ozawa. I’ll call you after the forensic specialist’s examination. I didn’t find anything on that computer you left with me last night, but I still like the idea that she met the other victims while researching a story. How carefully did you check her computer at work? Maybe she saved her story to an online archive. We don’t have enough for a warrant, but do you think her boss would let me take a look anyway? I’ll be out of the office most of today, but I might have time to do it tomorrow. Thanks.”
Harajuku Station was on the way to Shibuya. She could stop at the GothXLoli offices and let them know that Kenji wanted to come in to look at Rika’s computer. Or she’d have a look herself—she might spot something Rika’s co-workers had missed. Mei and Kei would be pleased to hear the police were finally giving Rika’s case the attention it deserved.
She was about to close her phone when she remembered the e-mails and checked her Inbox. She frowned. They were from someone she didn’t know. Someone called
Then she remembered—last night at the police station, waiting for Kenji to run up and fetch her phone, she’d forwarded
She should tell Kenji. And she’d let him know she was searching Rika’s computer for the article. She left a voicemail.
Chapter 23
Tuesday, April 9
3:00 P.M.
Yumi
As Yumi waited for Rika’s computer to boot, she strolled slowly around the office where her best friend had spent every workday for the past two years. The staff room was strangely quiet; Mei and Kei had left early to review an XtaSea concert at Zepp Tokyo, and the art director was upstairs in the photo studio. The J-pop that gave the room its usual heartbeat was silent.
Shoulder-to-shoulder framed covers of past GothXLoli issues covered the walls. Yumi found the first one on which the fifteen-year-old Rika had appeared as a pouting Bo Peep waif. She studied the old picture sadly, remembering the day it had appeared on the newsstands. By then, the magazine had published Rika’s photo half a dozen times in its editorial pages—candid street shots, snapped by the staff photographers who roamed the trendy neighborhoods of Tokyo with spotters, looking for new, newer, newest. The cover shot had boosted Rika to a whole new level of visibility and access. She’d been allowed to roam freely through the wardrobe room at the magazine offices, grabbing a pink gingham pinafore from one fashion house’s advance samples, and a pair of white leather lace-up boots from another. The writers had followed behind her, taking notes.
After that cover, wherever she and Yumi went, they’d been approached by Lolita wannabes, asking Rika to sign their autograph books. She began to sign her name “Rika-chan” in romaji letters with a heart instead of a hyphen. At first she reveled in the challenge of staying ahead of the pack, devising ever more inventive combinations of accessories, hungrily snatching each new issue of GothXLoli off the convenience store shelf to see how many of her innovations from the previous month had been copied. If she’d glued lace to her old Hello Kitty lunchbox and used it as a purse one month, the next issue would be filled with street shots of girls carrying lacy lunchbox handbags. When she wrapped the sprained ankle she got in gym class with pink satin ribbon, every fifth girl walking down Omotesando Boulevard sported a ribbon-bandaged leg.
By the time Yumi returned to Japan during college vacation, though, Rika had tired of being adored by thirteen-year-olds. She began to hang out at backstreet cafes where she could mix with a darker crowd, and the Mad Hatter.
Moi dix Mois wallpaper finally appeared on Rika’s computer screen. Yumi perched on her desk chair and wondered where to begin looking. She checked Rika’s downloads. Nothing recent, nothing that might be research for a story. What about e-mail? Nope, all from clothing companies.
A dozen folders littered the electronic desktop. She opened them one by one, scanned the contents, moved on. DRAFTS contained revisions of an interview with girl band Lolita23. Another article followed pop star Miku around a ¥100 store as he bestowed instant coolness on cheap belts and hats. BEAUTY held a step-by-step piece on achieving perfect rhinestone-edged fingernails. SOURCES was stuffed with nearly a hundred subfolders, labeled with the brands featured in the magazine: Algonquin, Alice and the Pirates, Angelic Pretty . . .
And then she saw it. Between Moi-même-Moitie and Peace Now was a folder labeled Nightshade. Mei and Kei had probably missed it because it sounded so much like one of the little-known Goth brands that popped up overnight, hoping to be the next Hellcatpunks.
It contained one file: nightshade_draft.docx. She opened it, and a sea of unreadable kanji characters appeared. Even the morning newspaper required knowing at least two thousand basic words; it would take Yumi forever to look up the five hundred she didn’t know.
But all was not lost. This was a job for her favorite electronic dictionary. Copying unfamiliar characters into it as she translated th
e headline, her heart sank.
“The Dark Side of the Net: Inside the World of Suicide Websites.”
This was the piece of investigative journalism Rika had been so secretive about? It wasn’t an exposé of corporate greed or dangerous practices, it was about . . . jisatsu.
As Yumi made her way down the page, her hope that she’d made a translation error dimmed with every word. Japan apparently had one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world, with over thirty thousand a year. Unlike in Western countries, it carried no moral or religious stigma—in fact, the most beloved tale in Japanese history told of the forty-seven ronin, who avenged their lord and then, one by one, committed seppuku, ritual suicide.
In the past few years, Rika had written, the number of suicide networking sites had skyrocketed. While many tried to talk people out of killing themselves, a growing number offered practical information, legal advice, and encouragement. “Suicide Shopping Lists” had become a common feature and some even offered ready-made “suicide packs” by mail, containing everything needed to do the job right. Nearly all had forums in which members could seek company for their final exit. Many provided e-mail services so the suicidal could make arrangements offline without putting the website operator in danger of being charged with encouraging people to kill themselves.
What was so earth-shattering about this article? Everybody knew suicide websites existed; it was old news. But as she read on, with increasing horror she began to understand. The piece became personal. Rika had written about her own experiences, had posed as a suicidal girl online.
Though the tone was sympathetic, there was no getting around it: Rika had obtained every example in her story by deceiving the desperate people who turned to strangers for advice and support. She hadn’t identified herself as a reporter. She hadn’t told them she intended to write an article and publish what they confided in her.
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