Nightshade

by Jonelle Patrick

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Delivery receipts. Bills of lading. Anything to do with shipments received from a Chinese supplier.”

  “Yes, sir.” He disappeared down the hall, and when he returned, Kenji was seated in the receptionist’s chair, scanning the receptionist’s computer in case deliveries were logged at the front desk.

  Fifteen minutes later, it was clear they weren’t; the only shipments she received were office supplies. Meanwhile, the uniformed officer had begun looking for a hard copy of the Chinese bill of lading the ex-purchasing manager had described. Kenji didn’t really believe they’d find something so damning filed with the regular paperwork, but it would have been negligent not to make sure.

  He decided to search the late Mr. Hamada’s office first. That was where the offending document had last been seen.

  The president’s office was slightly bigger than General Manager Fukuda’s. The original of the “Purity. Quality. Value.” calligraphy, mounted on a scroll, hung behind the desk. His two whiteboards had been wiped clean, as if it were somehow wrong for Mr. Hamada’s handwriting to survive him. Already a film of dust had settled on the polished desk, empty except for a blotter, a Montblanc pen, and an engraved, brass nameplate. A laptop sat to the side, as dusty as the desk.

  Kenji pressed its power button and looked through Hamada’s drawers while it started up. He found no papers or files, though he did come across a Polaroid of a stiff-looking Tatsuo Hamada at the Big Sight convention center, posing with Miss Sugar and Spice 1998. He shut the drawer, replacing the photo, and turned his attention to the computer.

  At 9:10, his phone rang. Suzuki.

  “We didn’t find anything in the storeroom, sir. All the milk powder is from the Hokkaido Dairy Company, their usual supplier. The bags are still sealed.”

  “Have you checked the manufacturing lines?”

  “We’ll do it now.”

  “Anyone assigned to the back door?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Put someone outside. The foreman and the plant manager should be arriving soon. Let’s intercept them before they have a chance to wander around.”

  “Of course, sir. I’ll do that right away.”

  Kenji returned his attention to Hamada’s computer, but half an hour later hadn’t found anything to do with shipments.

  As he got up and stretched, a distraught female voice was raised in the lobby.

  “Sumimasen! What are you doing? You can’t be back there!”

  He found the receptionist confronting Constable Kimura across her desk, two red spots flaming on her cheeks as she glared at the constable. She whirled to face Kenji. Recognition, then confusion. “What’s going on?”

  He explained about the search, and gently suggested she join Mr. Fukuda in the conference room. Her eyes widened and she covered her mouth with her hand, then scurried down the hall.

  Back in Hamada’s office, Kenji turned off the computer, shutting the door behind him before crossing the hall to the purchasing office. He’d just started a general overview of Hiro Hamada’s computer when his phone rang. Suzuki again.

  “I’m here in the manufacturing kitchens with the production manager and the foreman. We’ve checked the open bags of milk powder on the lines, but they all came from the usual suppliers.”

  “Did you ask if they were aware of Chinese milk powder being used in the past month?”

  “I did, and they said not.” Suzuki paused. “They seemed genuinely shocked at the suggestion. I believe both of them are second-generation Hamada employees.”

  “What about the test engineer? Ask him if he had any unusual-tasting batches recently. And find out if there’s anywhere else someone could have stashed that shipment. How much room would you need to store a hundred kilos of milk powder, anyway?”

  “I’ll find out, sir.”

  “Thanks, Suzuki.”

  “Oh, and the production workers have started to arrive. I’m having them wait outside on the loading dock with one of the constables, but they’re asking if the plant is going to open today.”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t found anything over here yet, either. But don’t let any of them go home. We may need to talk to them.”

  Kenji clicked on the SHIPMENT TRACKING folder and started examining the contents. March 4: 525 kilos of cocoa shipped from Nippon Trading Company. March 15: 300 kilos of cornflakes from JapanBrands LLP. March 26: 50 rolls of SureSeal thermal packaging film from Dai-Ichi Plastics, with rush charges.

  By 10:30, Kenji had searched every document in the likely folders. He sat back in Hiro’s chair, frustrated. As a long shot, he opened the one entitled PERSONAL.

  jh_party_map.pdf

  kyoto_itinerary.doc

  tournament_roster.xlsx

  document.ai

  What kind of file ended in “.ai”? When he opened it, the banner for Adobe Illustrator flashed onto the screen as the application started up. A graphics program? Why did a purchasing manager need a graphics program? An expensive foreign graphics program, at that.

  A toolbar appeared to the left, followed by a document that looked like a bill of lading. The letterhead looked Chinese but he couldn’t read the company name—many Japanese and Chinese words used the same characters but had totally different pronunciations. He could, however, read the characters below: 250 kilos of sweetener. 100 kilos of powdered milk.

  Now he was really confused. Who would send a bill of lading in the form of a document that could only be opened in a graphics application used by professional designers?

  He heard raised voices in the lobby.

  “Excuse me, sir, but the company is closed for the day. Perhaps—”

  “Are you the policeman in charge?”

  “No, sir. Are you an employee?”

  Kenji heard a laugh with an edge of hysteria. “Yeah. I’m an employee. I need to talk to the guy in charge. Where is he?”

  “Sir, if you’d please just follow me to the conference room where the other managers are gathered, Detective Nakamura will speak with you as soon as—hey!”

  Kenji looked up as Hiro Hamada appeared in his doorway.

  “That’s my computer!”

  Kenji stood. “Yes, Mr. Hamada. Fukuda-san gave us permission to search it. I’m glad you’re here because I just found something I’d like you to explain to me.”

  Swaying slightly, Hamada Jr. took a step into the room and Kenji caught a faint whiff of whiskey. Crossing swiftly to the desk, Hiro swiveled the monitor to see what was on the screen. All color drained from his face. He slowly crumpled into the visitor’s chair and buried his head in his hands with an agonized sob. Then the dam burst.

  Kenji stood, not knowing what to do. He cleared his throat. “Uh, Hamada-san?”

  Hiro shook his head helplessly and the wrenching sounds continued. Kenji went to the door and asked someone to fetch a cup of tea, or at least some water. Kimura dashed to the staff room and returned with a company mug.

  Hiro drank, the cup chattering against his teeth. Tears continued to leak down his cheeks as he raised his ravaged face and croaked, “It’s all my fault. I killed them.”

  Chapter 26

  Wednesday, April 10

  12:30 P.M.

  Kenji

  Hiro Hamada stared, unseeing, at the untouched bowl of ramen before him. His clothing looked clean, but his hair hadn’t been washed recently. A few lank strands hung into his eyes but he didn’t bother to brush them away. He sat across from Kenji at a narrow white table in the third floor interview room at Komagome Police Station with a uniformed constable outside the door. Since his outburst at the Hamada Sweets headquarters, he hadn’t said a word.

  Kenji’s phone vibrated. Suzuki reported that they’d found no trace of Chinese milk powder at the factory, a
nd there was nothing out of the ordinary in the test results for the past ninety days. If tainted milk powder had been used, the products had gone out undetected. Kenji told him to wait at the plant until they’d had a chance to talk to Hiro.

  Oki joined them and seated himself behind the note-taking computer in the corner. The suspect moved his now-tepid noodles aside and winced. “Do you have any aspirin?”

  Kenji cracked open the door and spoke to the constable outside the room. A tall glass of water and a sealed packet of Bayer appeared. After Hiro swallowed the painkillers, Kenji asked, “Are you ready, Hamada-san?”

  “Yes,” he said, sighing.

  Kenji stated the date, time, and names of the participants for the recording that was automatically made of any interview. Then he took a deep breath and said, “Earlier, in your office, what did you mean when you said, ‘It’s all my fault. I killed them’?”

  For a moment he was afraid Hiro would break down again, but the Hamada heir pressed his lips together, shaking it off.

  “My parents. I killed my parents.”

  “Can you describe how you did that?”

  Hiro’s expression was bleak. “All I wanted was to get Purchasing Manager Arita off my back. I thought if I could make it look like he’d gone off the rails and ordered cheap ingredients, my father would finally let me bring my ideas to him directly, maybe even fire Arita-san and move me into management.” He frowned, playing with the paper-wrapped chopsticks that had come with the ramen. “Arita-san was the most backward manager in the whole company. I think my father would have been willing to consider new ideas, but I don’t think Arita-san even asked him before he shot them down. I couldn’t get around him because my father trusted him. He trusted all those old geezers who were hired by my grandfather.”

  Hiro put down the chopsticks. “So I talked a friend of mine who does video production into loaning me a copy of the graphics program he uses. I spent a couple of Sundays learning how to use it, then I searched the web for Chinese companies that sold the kind of ingredients that go into our candy. I found one and copied their letterhead.”

  He closed his eyes as if in pain. “I can’t read Chinese, so I didn’t know it was one of the companies involved in the melamine scandal. I just picked it because it was foreign and from a country my father would be prejudiced against. I thought that would be enough to shock him into thinking Arita-san had betrayed his trust.

  “I waited until after work one day, then I brought the dummied-up order in and showed him. My father is . . . my father was . . .” He blinked rapidly a few times, then swallowed and continued. “My father was so old-fashioned. He ran the company like everybody was family. It never occurred to him that anyone but Arita could have stamped his name with that hanko. Once he saw the red seal with Arita’s name in the authorization box, I could see he believed Arita-san had placed the order. He was really upset, but for once, he was upset with Arita, not with me.

  “He . . . he thanked me for bringing it in.” Hiro’s face became a battleground of pain and disbelief. “Two days later, he called Arita-san in and fired him. I was promoted to purchasing manager. My father never explained to me or anyone at the company why Arita-san was gone. I thought things had worked out even better than I’d hoped.”

  He looked at Yamato, pleading. “I know I got ahead by getting him fired, but my father couldn’t see that it would be good for the company to get rid of deadwood like Arita. Without guys like him, we could review all those suppliers who never bid competitively for their contracts, all those old relationships that were no longer in the company’s best interests. I wanted to change all that, bring us into the twenty-first century.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Nothing,” said Hiro in an anguished voice, “until you knocked on my door that night and brought me a copy of their suicide note. I didn’t realize how hard my father was looking for that shipment in the week after Arita-san was fired. He asked me about it, but of course I told him I didn’t know anything. I suggested he ask on the production floor, knowing nobody had seen it, because it didn’t exist. I didn’t realize he thought it had been used without being detected.”

  Hiro hid his face in his hands. “I should have noticed how worried my parents were. But I didn’t. I didn’t see any of the signs.” His chest heaved a few times. “I just went to work and played golf and stayed out late at hostess clubs and all the while it was killing them. Thinking that children might die from eating Hamada Sweets candy . . .”

  “Your mother, too?”

  “She would never have let my father die alone and take all the blame.” Hiro’s face crumpled and he buried his head in his arms, his shoulders shaking, gasping between sobs.

  Kenji looked at Oki, who shook his head slowly. Hiro Hamada had killed his parents, but not in a way any court in the land would convict.

  He fetched the tissues from the window ledge and set the Kleenex in front of Hiro, who ignored them, awash in grief and remorse. Kenji beckoned Oki out and closed the door behind them.

  “So much for our slam-dunk murder conviction,” he said with a sigh.

  “Yeah, but do you think a court could hand out any punishment worse than what he’s going to suffer for the rest of his life?”

  “I suppose you’re right. Thanks for your help, Oki-san. I guess I’ll call off Suzuki and start on the paperwork.”

  Chapter 27

  Wednesday, April 10

  12:30 P.M.

  Yumi

  Yumi stood on one foot, waiting for the train at Waseda Station. Yesterday’s red spot had turned into a full-fledged blister. Her comfortable shoes were still at Mr. Minit.

  She’d done a dreadful job of interpreting the visiting Oxford historian’s lecture on barge transportation in Elizabethan England. Fortunately, the doddering professor who was her client knew no English whatever, so it didn’t seem strange to him that her translations were considerably shorter than the speaker’s meanderings. She’d missed whole swaths of the lecture because her mind kept veering off, trying to come to terms with her new future.

  She was getting married. She was going to marry Ichiro Mitsuyama. It astonished her. Had she really said yes? It didn’t seem quite real. Her parents had been thrilled when she woke them up to tell them. It wouldn’t be official until Ichiro formally asked her parents for permission, but Ichiro had already texted to say the Mitsuyamas would be pleased if the Hata family would be their guests on Friday night at the Tokyo City Club for a formal engagement ceremony.

  She took out her phone and checked for missed calls. One from Rika’s friend Midori. She returned it.

  “Moshi-moshi? Yumi-san? Thanks for letting me know you got your phone back. How are you feeling? Anything new about Rika?”

  Yumi told her that the police had finally decided there was enough evidence to do a post-mortem.

  Midori was pleased to hear they were finally questioning the suicide theory. “Is it all right to let the rest of our Circle know?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Or maybe you can tell them yourself. There’s an event Friday night at Club Nyx and the girls and I were wondering if you can come? We’re going to set up a little tribute table for Rika, and I’ve got an extra ticket.”

  “I . . . sure. Where’s Club Nyx?”

  “It’s a little hard to find. Why don’t you meet me at my house? Doors open at six—come around five and we can go together.”

  A Lolita Circle tribute. Yumi couldn’t even imagine what that would be like. By Friday she hoped she could put her disillusionment aside and mourn Rika without reservation.

  The train arrived and she took a seat near the door, clicking through the stored pictures on her phone. The first one: Delete. Ichiro’s eyes were half closed. The next one: good, though they both looked more than a little drunk. They’d tipped their heads tog
ether and held their phones at arm’s length in the taxi on the way home, the brightly lit street glittering behind them through the rear window. Ichiro had wanted to e-mail everybody immediately with the photo and the news, but she’d talked him into waiting at least until after they’d told their families.

  She hadn’t told anybody except her parents, hadn’t even whispered the secret to Coco. Why was she so reluctant? She looked at the picture again. Everyone would tell her they looked cute together, would congratulate her on making such a good match. And it was a good match. Remembering how she’d reacted in that split second she’d feared Ichiro wanted to stop seeing her, it was clear she just hadn’t been aware of her true feelings. Her mind needed time to catch up with her heart, that’s all. There would be plenty of time after the engagement ceremony to let everybody know.

  Chapter 28

  Wednesday, April 10

  4:00 P.M.

  Kenji

  Late-afternoon sun was slanting into the squad room through the big glass window over the section chief’s desk as Kenji started on the last page of paperwork closing their investigation of Hiro Hamada. The landline on his desk buzzed. It was the front desk, calling to say that Kenji had a visitor in the lobby, a Miss Hata.

  Grateful for the interruption, he found her in front of the bulletin board, studying the wanted posters. “Yu-chan?”

  She turned.

  “See anybody you know?” He grinned.

  She gave him a half-smile. “No, I was just thinking that this pair of criminals have the same last name, but they don’t look like brother and sister. Do you think they’re married? I wonder if their friends told them they looked cute together, once upon a time.”

  “Uh . . . ?”

  She must have mistaken his confusion for irritation because she quickly apologized, “Sorry, how rude of me. I’m interrupting you in the middle of work. I stopped by because Rika’s mother asked me to call people to tell them when the funeral will be. I already have most of her friends’ numbers, but I wanted to check the phone you have, in case there are some contacts that aren’t on her old phone. Would it be all right if I took a look at it?” She added, “I’ll be quick. You must be busy.”