The Last Train (Detective Hiroshi Series Book 1)

by Michael Pronko

  “Takamatsu almost got killed.”

  “He’s the one who did things that way.”

  “Did you know what he was doing?”

  “No,” Sakaguchi said. “I wouldn’t have let him if I did.”

  Hiroshi stared at the floor, angry, but no longer sure about why or at whom. “What was he thinking?”

  “Making up for before.”

  “Wrong way to do it.”

  “He makes fewer mistakes than most.”

  “That was almost his last one.”

  “Almost.” Sakaguchi moved toward the door. “The monks are waiting.”

  ***

  At Yushima Tenjin Shrine, Sakaguchi explained to the young detectives what needed to be done. Akiko followed Hiroshi to the rack of wooden ema, the prayers swaying on the wire frames. Hiroshi started examining the wood plaques, which clicked as they swung side to side.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Akiko.

  Hiroshi looked where he thought the ema had been. “Ah!” He said and pulled it off the rack.

  Akiko leaned over to read it.

  Kamisama, Kigan. I had a moment of weakness and I felt human again. Thank you for that. Let me leave this city of pain, this city of men. I’ll let you punish those who deserve it, save those who need saving. Please, transport me safely, away, from this, from here, never to return.

  Sakaguchi and the young detectives came over. “Don’t touch them. Fingerprints. The ones surrounding hers may have dates. Keep them in order. And bag them carefully.” Sakaguchi was starting to sound like Takamatsu. “You two look for the same handwriting. You two take photos of everything. And wear your gloves.”

  Hiroshi noticed an old monk with a bald head and a long, wispy beard and mustache walking beside a young, thin monk near the side halls. Hiroshi pulled out his ID and flashed it at the older monk, who, he assumed was the abbot of the temple.

  “I am Detective Shimizu. Thank you for your cooperation. These may be very important. We won’t disturb you, but we need to take all that could be evidence.”

  “Where will you take them?” asked the older monk—the abbot—his only self-introduction a piercing gaze that made Hiroshi look away.

  “We need fingerprints, photos, and time to decode the messages.”

  “Will you return them?”

  “We’ll return the ones we don’t need.”

  “We have an obligation to protect the sanctity of the temple space and purify the prayers with fire,” the monk said, catching Hiroshi’s eyes again.

  “You burn them?”

  The monk nodded.

  “I understand. But Tokyo is a sacred space, too, that should be rid of murder and crime.”

  The abbot hmm’ed and spoke quietly to the younger monk, who hurried off. “We burn them according to the lunar calendar. I will give you the exact dates so you can find when these were written.”

  “That’s important,” Hiroshi answered, and then bowed and set to work. The young detectives looked through the racks with white-gloved hands.

  Akiko said, “We only have two hours. We’ll never finish.”

  Hiroshi looked over the hundreds, maybe thousands, of ema and sighed. He walked to where the abbot was standing calmly counting his thick, wooden prayer beads.

  “If we don’t finish today,” Hiroshi said to the abbot, “can we come back? And are there other shrines close by? We need to check them also.”

  The abbot’s eyes were milky, his eyebrows long and white. He spoke calmly. “My assistant is already calling the ones close by.”

  “You’re one step ahead of me.”

  “Maybe more steps than that,” said the abbot, the skin around his eyes crinkling, as if smiling inwardly at a joke Hiroshi wouldn’t understand.

  A group of four young monks came around the side of the main shrine in single file. They stopped in front of the older monk. They all had white gloves that stood out against their brown robes. Another monk hurried over to a locked door, fiddled with the chain, and pulled open a large wooden door on its wooden hinges. A couple of monks busied themselves inside the dark room. A light bulb came on inside.

  The young monks came over to the rack of ema and began to reach up for them.

  Sakaguchi hurried over, shouting, “No, don’t touch them!”

  The younger monk with the abbot stepped over, “You want photos of all of them, in order, and you want to take the ones that may be evidence, so we are helping.”

  Sakaguchi and Hiroshi hesitated, but the force of his words, and his tone of voice, made them give in.

  With a wave of the abbot’s hand the monks proceeded to take the rows of ema off the racks, holding them by their strings. Inside the room, the monks placed the ema in order from top to bottom. Akiko and the two detectives took close-up photos of each, the camera flashes lighting up the room.

  “Here’s another one!” Hiroshi shouted and everyone stopped to read it:

  Kamisama, Kigan. My supplication, Lord. Please let his soul go free and not wander. Protect me from others and from myself. Purify my actions with your wisdom and power. Nature takes its course and only the half-living follow unnatural paths. The rest has yet to be done. Take care of their souls.

  Sakaguchi put the suspected ema in a special bag and set it to the side. He felt out of place—ponderous while they scurried—and yet, he was one with their care and focus.

  After they finished each row, the abbot wordlessly signaled the young monks to place the ema back on the racks in the same order as before.

  Two racks later, Hiroshi waved Akiko over. “Here’s another one!” Akiko took several shots then stooped down with the detectives and monks to read:

  Kamisama, Kigan. Protect me and grant me justice in this life. The material world ensnares us with desire for justice, but without justice we cannot move toward the spiritual. The time is always now, the action is always direct, the result is always right.

  Within an hour, all of the ema had been photographed and the evidence bagged. The young monks closed up the room and stood patiently counting the prayer beads encircling their wrists.

  The young detectives looked around waiting for Hiroshi’s or Sakaguchi’s orders. Akiko wrote notes on everything, as the detectives with the cameras packed them in carrying cases.

  Akiko said, “We have more evidence now.”

  Sakaguchi said, “But we don’t have the connections among them.”

  “And we don’t have her,” Hiroshi said. “We better get to that photographer who took the shots of Takamatsu before she does.”

  While the young detectives carried everything to the vans, Hiroshi said, “I’ll be along in a minute, I just want to thank the abbot for his help.”

  Hiroshi bowed when he approached the venerable old man, who stood impassively by the racks of ema, reading them as if for the first time.

  The abbot said, “These ema help people handle the anguish of everyday life.”

  “There’s a lot of anguish, judging by the numbers.”

  “Anguish rules most people’s lives. With their troubles as their main focus, they live off-balance and disordered.”

  Hiroshi looked down at the gravel. “I guess that’s why people become detectives. They want balance and order.”

  “That’s why people become monks, too!” The abbot smiled. “Only here, we know that balance and order often arise from our desiring mind. And when it comes from there, it’s an illusion.”

  Being an accountant was putting things in order, but where did order lead? When she killed those men, did she think she was putting things in order, rebalancing the world?

  Looking across the courtyard, the abbot continued, “I instructed the young monks today to contemplate death as they worked.”

  “You wanted them to learn about death?”

  “I wanted them to learn from death.” The abbot looked at Hiroshi with an intensity that made him turn away. “Death is a strict teacher, but the lessons are crucial.”

  Hiro
shi managed to look up at him again and replied, “It’s hard to learn about death, about desire.”

  “It’s harder not to,” the abbot said, and turned and walked away.

  Hiroshi bowed to the abbot’s receding figure. He stood there and felt the wind—moist with impending rain—blow across the temple grounds. He stood listening to the rustle of tree leaves and the clack of the ema swinging into place, wondering if his senses—the feel and sound and look of the world—were all an illusion, too.

  Chapter 39

  Ryo Shibata, Michiko’s photographer accomplice, came down the outside stairwell of his concrete and glass studio and stopped to light a cigarette, cupping it with his head down. He reset his two camera bags like crisscross bandoliers, pulled on his gray ponytail, and looked both ways, up and down the lane of shops.

  He headed uphill on a small side street of Harajuku. The area was crowded with young fashionistas and intense hipsters loaded with subculture brands and outlandish accessories, prowling the latest, coolest shops for more. The side streets offered a calmer, slower pace, with studios—like Shibata’s—and coffee shops, upscale boutiques and private homes.

  Sakaguchi stood at the corner of the tree-lined Omotesando Dori and the small lane up to Shibata’s studio. Hiroshi waited uphill, on the other side of his studio, pretending to look into the window of an imported hat store. Ueno sat at the wheel of the car parked downhill, with Osaki, in the other seat, ready to get out.

  Hiroshi watched Shibata’s reflection pass behind him in the window and then turned casually to follow. Seeing Hiroshi turn, Sakaguchi, too big to hide, lumbered uphill after them. Once they went over the crest of the hill out of sight, Osaki got out of the car and followed.

  At the top end of the lane, far from the wide street, Shibata stopped by a tall rack of vacation pamphlets outside a travel agency and crushed out his unfinished cigarette. The pretense of not noticing he was being followed lasted only a few seconds.

  As Hiroshi stepped closer, Shibata grabbed the top of the pamphlet rack and yanked it down, the metal edge just missing Hiroshi’s head. The vacation pamphlets flew over the street like big, bright-colored confetti.

  Hiroshi lunged forward and snagged one of Shibata’s camera bag straps, but Shibata grabbed Hiroshi’s wrist and shouted, “Hahhh!” before twisting and toppling him.

  Hiroshi landed on the edge of the metal rack and Shibata took off running. Standing up clutching his ribs, Hiroshi could hardly breathe. “Shit, shit, shit—,” he cursed in English as he stood up and got himself going after a few painful steps.

  Osaki and Sakaguchi came running. Sakaguchi skirted the thousands of slick adverts, stepping nimbly, and then heaving into a run, but Osaki ran right over the scattered pamphlets, lost his balance and tumbled forward.

  The lane was too narrow for even a sidewalk and had few shoppers, but seeing the men race by, those few shoppers quickly dodged to the side, their backs against the shopfronts, watching Shibata and then the detectives disappear into the maze of small lanes.

  Osaki and Sakaguchi were ahead of him, but Hiroshi saw Shibata disappear down a narrow set of stairs between two rows of small hair salons, antique stores and one-counter restaurants. There was nowhere to hide, but many places to turn.

  Shibata turned as often as he could, each lane only a short sprint, and then finally headed out of the maze of small streets toward the heavy traffic of the large Aoyama Dori.

  Sakaguchi dropped down the stairs to Aoyama, losing the pace. Hiroshi lost sight of Sakaguchi, but hoped he could cut Shibata off up ahead. The crowds on Aoyama Dori would slow him down.

  Hiroshi saw Shibata ahead where the street curved before he disappeared down a small side lane. He didn’t know where Sakaguchi was, but when he turned down the small line, he saw Sakaguchi had cut through a small side street ahead of him.

  At the dead-end of the side street, Hiroshi saw Sakaguchi several steps away from Shibata, both of them contemplating a chest-high stack of paving stones, a back hoe and temporary metal dividers, on which hung a large banner apologizing for the construction. The stairs leading out of the narrow street were blocked.

  Penned in by construction ahead and housing on both sides—Sakaguchi and Hiroshi behind—Shibata got ready to fight.

  Osaki ambled up behind Hiroshi, and everyone paused, breathing hard. Shibata set down his camera bag and positioned himself, as Hiroshi held out his badge, trying to catch his breath. “We just want to talk,” he finally wheezed.

  Shibata’s stance—balanced, yet as tight as if spring-loaded—indicated he knew just how to defend himself.

  Hiroshi walked closer, his ribs aching with every breath, wary after being so neatly flipped onto the pamphlet rack a few minutes earlier. “We want to know about some photos you took,” he said.

  Osaki and Sakaguchi stepped to the side to block any possible way past them.

  “You took these, right?” Hiroshi continued, trying not to clutch at his ribs. “All we need to know is where we can find her. Can we talk back at your office?”

  “Let’s talk here,” Shibata said. “It’s safer.”

  “It’s safe for us either place.”

  “You should have identified yourself,” Shibata said, pushing his gray hair behind his ears and smoothing his ponytail. “Men in divorce cases get angry. They take it out on me.”

  “You know her?” Hiroshi asked. Shibata nodded his head once, quickly, in acknowledgement. “And you’re Ryo Shibata?”

  Shibata nodded again and looked off in the distance, saying, “What do you want with her?”

  “We just want to talk with her.”

  Shibata sighed and held up his cigarettes, wiggling them as a question. Hiroshi nodded, okay, and Sakaguchi and Osaki stepped closer.

  Shibata lit up and took a drag, looking past the detectives. “I can guess what you know, so let’s skip the dance.” He inhaled deeply and exhaled. “It was an accident.”

  “You were close enough to see?”

  “Through the camera, you see things better.”

  “What did your camera see?”

  “He was drunk. She was helping him. He slipped.”

  “Why were you even there?”

  “I’m a photographer.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “We had an arrangement. I took photos for her.”

  “Your arrangement could get you a murder charge.”

  Shibata fidgeted.

  “We need to find her,” Hiroshi said again.

  “We could make the next twenty days go by very slowly at the station,” Sakaguchi interjected.

  Shibata said, “I have a license to investigate. I do divorces mainly. Pays the bills.”

  “But, don’t tell me, you’re really an artistic photographer?”

  “You saw my work online before you came.”

  “She hired you before? Michiko Suzuki?”

  “You know her name?” Shibata looked surprised. “You know everything then.”

  “But tell me again.”

  “The plan was to double the take. Investigate one side, blackmail the other. All I did was document it all.” Shibata crushed out his cigarette under his running shoes and looked at the detectives with resignation.

  Osaki waved to Ueno, who pulled the car down the narrow street, maneuvering it into a spot that entirely blocked traffic.

  “She met men and set them up. Not hard to do if you look like her. All I had to do was get one shot. You ever see your loved one with someone else? Naked or not, it’s a shock.”

  “That’s not all of it, though, is it?”

  “No, that’s pretty much it.”

  “You know what happened to the men?” Hiroshi asked.

  “Which men?”

  “They’re dead.”

  Shibata fixed his gaze at the horizon, above their heads.

  “Those who get close to her don’t seem to last long,” Hiroshi said. “Take a look at these.” He held up a photo of Takamatsu.

 
Shibata focused on the photo and then Hiroshi’s eyes.

  “I guess you’re immune,” Hiroshi said. “So, you must know where she is.”

  “She’s gone. Or will be.”

  “Where is she going?”

  “Paris, she said.”

  “Paris?”

  “She saved enough money, she told me.”

  Hiroshi let that sink in for a second, trying to decide if Shibata was telling the truth. “So, how did she set up the photo sessions?”

  “She blackmailed the husband, and I charged the wife for investigating. She got hush money from the men. The wives paid in advance.”

  “But that’s not all she did.”

  Shibata sighed, looked away. “The businessmen told her about investments, real estate deals, new products, company plans. It was info she could sell. And for a lot more money.”

  “Where did you meet Michiko?”

  “We met at an aikido dojo, in Shinjuku, years ago. I needed self-defense because so many angry husbands came after me. She was the highest-ranked woman in the dojo, won competitions. She was beautiful. One thing led to another.”

  “What led to what?”

  “We talked every night after training. When she found out I was an investigator, she asked me to help.”

  “And you didn’t hesitate?”

  “She’s hard to refuse,” Shibata said. “Look, these guys,” Shibata added, “these wheeler-dealers are not good people, any of them.”

  “This guy was,” Hiroshi said, holding up Takamatsu’s photo.

  “Michiko told me different. She worked with him before, to steal information. He was a dirty cop.” Sakaguchi stepped forward and Shibata stepped back. “The corporate world is even dirtier. Photographs are simple. I just document what happens.”

  “If he dies,” Hiroshi said, “it might not be so simple.”

  Shibata lit another cigarette. “It was all pretty simple, until she changed.”

  “Changed?”

  ***

  Shibata had never been as terrified as when he pulled up to the massive gate of the compound in the hills above Kobe to get Michiko back. He had enlisted Sono, the accountant, to help locate Michiko’s whereabouts through his many crime world connections. It took almost a year to find someone who would help him, and then, only with a large cash payment of Michiko’s money that Sono kept in his safe. Sono refused to go to Kobe, so Shibata went alone.