She felt glum, wondering if she’d become just like them.
Flipping shut the weekly, Kanako took up another magazine with the same release date. It devoted more pages but still only described the details of the case and the process up to the final ruling. It barely said anything about Kanako.
“Was the daughter, currently attending college in Tokyo, truly comforted by this ruling?”
Another question mark. They could imagine whatever they wanted, and then forget about her. There had to be plenty more interesting cases lying around for them to pick up.
Those were the only two weeklies released that day. This week was the peak to release an article, and Kanako predicted that henceforth she would have peace until the death sentence was enforced in four to five years.
When she was about to leave the bookstore, she saw the storeowner laying out a thick monthly. It was Critique, out that day. The venerable magazine was the poster child of a large publisher and gave the vibe of being packed full of important issues that faced Japan today.
The cover only had the vague headline, “Pointers to the 21st Century.” The table of contents folded out horizontally and included items like pages from the former prime minister’s journal objecting to the coalition government, a report exposing the backstory of major banks’ massive bad loans, and a variety of other topics that Japan would no doubt continue to drag into the twenty-first century.
Kanako took the magazine in hand because she had a feeling about it.
Five years ago, Shiina had published a report in this magazine. Apparently, at first he had planned on recording Kanako’s perspective and true feelings in order to examine whether “time” was truly the best cure for the bereaved. However, after re-reading the statement by Norio Tsuzuki himself after Kanako had requested it, he had chosen a different angle.
His ten-page reportage followed the process of Norio Tsuzuki’s family’s dispersal, from their hometown in Ichinomiya to Fukui where his elder brother resided and Gifu where his parents managed their bar.
Shiina had used Norio Tsuzuki’s father as an example to illustrate how a wave of development had left farming families vulnerable. Dreaming of ascending to the middle class, they sold their land and ended up ruining themselves. In words that Kanako, then in her last year of middle school, could just understand, he told the chilling reality: in the end, the construction of the university town had been abandoned due to setbacks, and the area turned into a slum.
He’d closed the report thus: “The life Norio Tsuzuki had finally attained after bidding farewell to his hometown may have seemed peaceful, but he was never able to forget a past bewitched by the demons of land and money. Fighting the fear that a similar calamity would occur, was he tiptoeing over a tightrope called urban life?”
Kanako hadn’t met with Shiina since. To the extent that he’d scrapped the catchy “true voice of the bereaved” angle and instead explored Norio Tsuzuki’s past, she’d felt in him a passion that other reporters lacked.
Shiina published pieces on crime now and then, in monthlies like Critique. Although all she did was skim them at a bookstore, Kanako checked out his work whenever she came across it.
His name was in the table of contents. Her hunch had been right, and Shiina had written for this issue. “A new truth regarding the family massacre eight years ago: the ex-police officer who found the bodies speaks out.”
Each word seemed to jump off the surface. Her hands shook as she flipped the pages.
What “new truth” had Shiina discovered? She prayed that “the family massacre eight years ago” wasn’t her case. No, she hoped that it was. She wanted to know what new truth had been uncovered. No, she didn’t want to know, she’d had enough.
Kanako kept changing her mind as she looked for the page with the report.
It was long.
“Mr. A, a former policeman with the Asagaya patrol section, raced to the house that night after receiving a report from the neighbors. They claimed that they had heard the sound of a chainsaw coming from next door. Mr. A, the only officer at the police box at that moment, set off alone on a bicycle towards the Akiba residence. When he arrived in approximately five minutes, a middle-aged couple who were waiting outside the house complained, ‘You can’t hear it now, but it’d been going on forever.’ It had apparently sounded like a lumber factory in there until a few minutes prior.”
From there, the piece moved on to Mr. A’s profile. He had graduated from a private university in Tokyo, taken the Metropolitan Police Department’s employment exam, and started his rigorous training at the police academy. The article recounted his memories from his rookie days to his assignment to the Asagaya station.
“The police academy required students to live in the dorms for six months, and during that time we woke at six, then had roll-call and hoisted the national flag. Lights went out at ten thirty. I hadn’t endured such a well-regulated lifestyle since my middle-school school trip.”
Partly because they were the police of the capital, the MPD boot camp was tougher than that of other prefectural forces. The trainees were reborn as resilient corporate warriors for the firm called the police and scattered to various stations in Tokyo. Not all stations were equal, and the graduates’ grades and personalities determined their assignments.
In the MPD’s case, rookies with good grades and promising futures were posted to areas like Kojimachi, Tsukiji, and Marunouchi. Those who were assigned to Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, and other districts known for their nightlife tended to be smart and competent but also a little too offbeat to be promotion material. The piece included such gossip as well.
“Asagaya, a middle-class residential district, didn’t see bloody disputes all that often compared to Shinjuku or Shibuya. It was a good place for rookie cops to warm up, and the whole place felt rather mild. I learned my patrolling work and how best to spend my time in the three-shift system. It was when night duty at the police box didn’t bother me anymore that it happened. The case drastically influenced my police career thereafter.”
The piece then rewound to its opening scene.
First, he pressed the Akibas’ intercom. He called three times but there was no response. The lights at the gate and front door were off, but the heavy window curtains were dyed with orange fluorescent illumination. Standing alone by the front entrance, Mr. A called, “Mr. Akiba,” and knocked on the door. Although he was just a recently appointed rookie, he heard warning bells ringing in him.
Kanako turned the page, following the details of that night as painted by Shiina’s words.
The storeowner unpacking boxes beside her gave her a look that said, If you’re going to read it, buy it. “I’d like this,” Kanako said, handing him a thousand-yen bill. While the storeowner brought her change from the register, she stuck her finger in the page and took a deep breath.
She stuffed the change and receipt into her skirt pocket, started walking down the street to the station, and dove back into reading.
“After that, to be honest, my memories remained muddled for a long time. The report I wrote up right after the incident only required a superficial account so it didn’t matter very much if I had a few memory lapses.”
The hour and minute he discovered the bodies; contacted the precinct; brought the suspect into custody. The time of arrival of cruisers and other police vehicles and the initial investigation by the mobile unit. His report had been revealed at the trial.
“Even when I returned to the station to write my report, I couldn’t help but feel that parts of my memory were missing. I couldn’t find it in me to think about it at the time and just followed the advice of my seniors and organized my thoughts on the twenty minutes between my discovery of the bodies and the mobile unit’s arrival. The feeling that I had forgotten something but couldn’t remember what came back whenever I saw reports on the case on TV or in the papers…”
The train station building was directly in front of her. Her legs had instinctively chosen a path for he
r. Kanako put off buying her ticket, sat down in the square where people passed to and fro, and turned to the next page.
“I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen or heard something important during my twenty minutes at the scene of the crime. It wasn’t anything dramatic like a glimpse of the true culprit or the presence of an accomplice, but something about Norio Tsuzuki’s back as he sat curled in on himself…The sense that I had a gap in my memories never left the back of my mind for seven years, until I quit the force.”
Mr. A touched upon the details of his resignation. He had passed the exam to become a sergeant at twenty-seven. As a plainclothes detective for the community safety section, he earned points uncovering clubs with illegal gambling machines. Internal Affairs accused him of getting too cozy with a contractor, and he was relocated to Hino, Tokyo. Mr. A insisted that he never engaged in any corrupt behavior.
“…I suppose my main motive for resigning was that I grew tired of the politics. There was this beautiful female officer at our station, and I fought over her with a detective who was my senior. It got pretty nasty. Anyway, my senior who was my love rival set me up and had me sent to a rural station. After that, I no longer had the will to do anything and turned in my resignation within a year. Former cops are treated well at security companies. It wasn’t a bad reemployment. I’m keeping busy acting as security at pachinko parlor prize exchanges, concerts, and such.”
And then one day, his lost memories suddenly returned.
“I had just watched over a cash transfer at the prize exchange counter and was taking a short break outside the pachinko parlor. A scruffy-looking fellow in a worn jacket who looked like a laid-off salaryman frantically wandered to and fro in my visual field. He was calling out a name in a weak voice. It seemed like he’d lost sight of his young daughter while he’d been gambling. Feeling sorry for him, I decided to help him look. That name…I suddenly recalled that Norio Tsuzuki’s daughter had the same name. I started pondering why I knew his daughter’s name. Even as an officer, I hadn’t been in a position to look at the deposition or personal statement freely, and I shouldn’t have known his daughter’s name.”
Kanako’s heart started beating faster. At the time, Norio Tsuzuki’s daughter had been twelve—the same age as her. The article withheld the name, but Kanako had read the statement and knew it.
Miho Tsuzuki.
“As though a thick fog clouding my vision had suddenly cleared, everything I had forgotten came back in a rush. I’d seen four bodies. Due to all the blood that had poured out of them, I saw the four as though they were floating in a red lake. I couldn’t recognize any faces. I learned later that Tsuzuki had smashed them in with a hammer. I immediately called in a report to the station with my radio. I next had to restrain the man kneeling in the sea of blood. I later noticed that my handcuffs were missing, so I must have followed the manual and taken both of Norio Tsuzuki’s hands to shackle them, conducting an arrest without warrant. My memories before and after that moment had been lost in the fog. They’ve finally returned to me. His face muddled with tears, Norio Tsuzuki was calling his child’s name.”
Miho, Miho, Miho…
Norio Tsuzuki had endlessly rasped his daughter’s name as he let Officer A shackle his hands. His voice thin, cracked, and trailing, Tsuzuki had sounded like a lost mountain climber calling for his family.
“I understood right away. He was calling to his daughter, who wasn’t there. Heedless of staining my uniform, I knelt in the blood and grasped Norio Tsuzuki’s right shoulder with my right hand and his shackled wrists with my left hand, restraining him so he couldn’t escape, until station personnel arrived. A sea of blood with the bodies of the four family members stretched before my eyes. I wanted to avert my gaze, but there was something about the sight that prevented me from tearing my eyes away. Norio Tsuzuki didn’t just call his daughter’s name, but told her many things. Now, I can clearly remember every single word. This is what he said.”
Kanako’s eyes started to hurt, and she blinked several times. She’d been reading with her eyes wide open and they had dried.
“XX…How will you live from now on? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for having done this. Your father doesn’t know. He doesn’t know why he did this. You just became the daughter of a murderer. I, your father, turned you into the daughter of a murderer. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The words on the page beat at Kanako’s ears like a real voice. A scratched, barely-there voice. A lonely voice.
“Mr. Akiba’s daughter survived. I heard that she overcame the loss of her family and is currently leading a peaceful life as a college student.”
A peaceful life. Kanako supposed you could call it that. She lived with her true face, her cruel face, locked up in the hideaway.
“But the culprit also had a daughter. If Norio Tsuzuki is put to death, she too will become an orphan. I realized anew that the case has yet another victim, in addition to Mr. Akiba’s daughter.”
Then Mr. A went to work. He asked a former colleague who was still at the Asagaya station for the incident report. He needed to know how Norio Tsuzuki’s daughter was faring.
“She had grandparents on her mother’s side living in Utsunomiya. The daughter lived with them until she graduated high school. Did her classmates point at her behind her back and call her a ‘murderer’s daughter’ for six years? I was worried for her sake. I resolutely set off to Utsunomiya to inquire about her. Do you know why I was so fixated on Tsuzuki’s daughter?”
His memories had broken off because he had seen such a shocking crime scene. As a result, he hadn’t been able to share his missing memories with Tsuzuki’s lawyer. Mr. A believed that his testimony could have confirmed that Norio Tsuzuki hadn’t planned the murder; he had acted impulsively and was suffering mental instability or a psychological breakdown.
Mr. A claimed that at the time, Norio Tsuzuki had said in his ramblings, “Your father doesn’t know. He doesn’t know why he did this.”
“The verdict is in, but at least I could share this with his daughter. I felt that it was my duty as the first witness to the crime and something left over from my life as a police officer. That was why I went asking to Norio Tsuzuki’s deceased wife’s hometown. His wife’s parents were both alive and well. I inquired whether they could tell me their granddaughter’s whereabouts. Apparently she hadn’t ever visited Utsunomiya since graduating high school and heading to Tokyo. All she does is send them a New Year’s greeting card, and they showed it to me.”
The card only had a stamp with an image of the year’s zodiac animal and didn’t have an ounce of warmth to it. But it did have a return address. Officer A returned to Tokyo and went to speak directly to Miho Tsuzuki.
The article respected Miho Tsuzuki’s privacy and did not include the address.
“The tiny single-room apartment had no bath, and the toilet was communal…The building, made of wood, looked dilapidated, which is quite rare nowadays. She was there. I was surprised to see a tattoo on her arm stretching out from under her tank top. She seemed suspicious as she looked at me with sleepy eyes. I first told her who I was and then said, ‘I’ve come to tell you something I’d forgotten for the longest time.’ I related to her everything that her father had said upon being arrested.”
As though carefully considering what she had been told, Miho Tsuzuki remained silent for a while before opening her mouth.
Kanako closed her eyes. They were dry. After moistening them well, she read with her eyes wide open.
“ ‘I’ve heard those excuses plenty of times,’ she replied, sneering. These eight years, she had gone to visit her father in jail many times, and on each occasion, Norio Tsuzuki had treated her to the same words from across a glass partition. So there hadn’t really been any reason for me to seek her out and convey those words. Realizing that, I was able to relax a bit.”
Before he left, the ex-cop Mr. A asked one thing. The Supreme Court’s final ruling would soon be announced. Would she b
e attending the hearing?
After shaking her head no, Tsuzuki’s daughter threw the following words at him, bitter ones that would torment him for some time:
They should just kill me too.
“That’s what she said. I was unable to immediately grasp her meaning. ‘Isn’t the law trying to kill my father? In that case they should just kill me too,’ she probably meant to say. I tried to step closer but she spurned me, closing the door. I was left standing there in the dark hallway and had no choice but to drag my feet and make myself scarce. That was what happened when I, the first witness to the case, came into contact with the murderer’s family.”
The law was trying to kill her father.
The report emphasized these words one more time at the end. Now that the Supreme Court ruling had been made, it would be exactly as Tsuzuki’s daughter said. The law would take its time and eventually end the life of the imprisoned Norio Tsuzuki.
“And the offender’s family murmurs heavily: In that case, why don’t they just kill me too…”
Instead of a full-throated protest against capital punishment, the simple concluding words made a silent appeal to its readers. As usual, Shiina wrote pretty darn well, Kanako thought.
She closed the magazine. She stood up from the station-front square’s stone tiling and walked towards the ticketing area. She meant to buy a ticket to the next stop, Higashi-Kitazawa, but changed her mind.
It was a twenty-minute walk to the campus. She wanted to think while taking monotonous steps.
Tsuzuki’s daughter hating the law for sending her father to the gallows, Shiina accommodating her words and opposing the death penalty—these things didn’t particularly interest Kanako either way.
“They should just kill me too.”
The words that Tsuzuki’s daughter supposedly uttered sank into Kanako’s heart like a hook and made itself felt. Former Officer A, who had heard the words in person, and Shiina, who had then heard them from him, seemed to think that her remark was a protest against the law, which was trying to kill her father. But Kanako couldn’t accept their interpretation.
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