“I won’t get caught, I’m not like my father.” Miho had only looked down by chance. The corner of her mouth was curled up in an impudent smile.
“I don’t know how much care you put into this alibi, Miho, but the police will definitely see through it.”
“As long as you cooperate, Kako, it’ll work out.”
Kanako was at a dead end. Did she no longer have any choice but to share Miho’s fate?
“There’s something I wanted to ask you, Miho.” It might have been an unnatural way to change the topic, but Kanako needed to know. If she could rid herself of just one doubt, maybe she’d be able to push Miho’s back without uncertainty or fear. “I checked out an old newspaper at the college library. The case eight years ago. There was one thing I didn’t get. I wasn’t sure if it was okay to ask you…”
“It’s fine. Ask me anything.”
“Your father readily admitted to the crime when he was interrogated. He could have avoided punishment if he’d claimed mental instability or a breakdown, but didn’t. He was prepared for the death penalty.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Despite that, he appealed to a higher court after the first ruling. When he received the same verdict, he appealed again. In the end, he fought all the way to the Supreme Court. Why?”
“I thought it was because the people supporting my father were a group of anti-death penalty activists, and he wanted to respond to their passion by fighting to the end.”
“Is that all?”
“Once he got sentenced to death, he must have become scared.”
“Do you really think that’s all there is to it?”
“What are you trying to say?”
The air between them had grown tense, and Miho was staring intently.
“Do you think maybe your father is still angry at the family he killed?” It was something that had been in the back of Kanako’s mind for years. “He couldn’t forgive this man called Akiba for tricking him out of his late wife’s life insurance money. He still believes that it was the family’s fault that he became a murderer…Am I wrong?”
Miho’s unblinking gaze pierced Kanako. Perhaps she’d gone too far. Miho might well be getting suspicious wondering who this girl was.
“I asked him the same question several times when I saw him in the visitation room.”
Kanako was going to hear his reply. She sat absolutely still, waiting for Miho to continue.
“My father agonized over how he’d even killed young children. You could say that he didn’t care about anything else and was only suffering from that.”
Miho wet her throat with beer. Kanako wanted to beg her not to waste time and to let her hear the answer.
“My father really didn’t remember swinging the hammer down on the children. He wrote that in his statement too, but the courts thought that it was just an act to shore up the mental instability angle. He actually had no memory of what happened right before and after that part, though. Still, he probably did bludgeon those kids to death, and he thought he deserved the death penalty for that alone.”
“But he appealed and took his case to a higher court.”
“It’s because he just couldn’t accept the prosecution’s argument or the reasoning behind the ruling. He thought he should be granted extenuating circumstances for murdering the two adults.”
So Norio Tsuzuki had wanted to say the following. He’d been mentally unstable and had suffered a breakdown in harming the two children. The courts hadn’t recognized this, yet it was the truth. If they had recognized it as the truth but still sentenced him to death, he would have consented—because for killing the two children, and only for killing the children, he was prepared to accept any punishment. The presiding judge, however, rejected the likelihood of any partial mental instability or breakdown, concluded that Norio Tsuzuki had been fully accountable for all four murders, and ruled out any extenuating circumstances. Norio Tsuzuki couldn’t swallow that.
He accepted the verdict itself. He wanted, however, to object to the reasoning behind putting him to death. He didn’t deserve to be executed for murdering Mr. and Mrs. Akiba.
“That couple and the law’s sketchiness…That’s what my father couldn’t stand. He said he’d die angry, and I wanted to die with him. Or else I might have to go on inheriting his regrets. Not just his crime and punishment, but his rage, too. My father committed murder, so he, himself, might no longer have the right to be pissed at that Akiba person. But I have the right. I have the right because the law’s gonna kill my father!”
Just then, a droplet bounced deep in Kanako.
One, two, three drops. The vessel that she’d filled with darkness tilted beyond her control, and it was all spilling out over the edge.
Kanako decided to push this girl’s back with all her might. She would thrash the culprit and his daughter who continued to hate her family after killing them. To guide the daughter along the same path of crime as her father—that was what Kanako could do for her family whose lives were stolen one day without warning.
She no longer felt any hesitation.
“Okay, then how do I do it?”
“Huh?” Miho, who’d been trying to calm herself down, asked back startled.
“Become this imaginary girl.”
The liquid sound within her. Kanako strained her ears. The droplets pouring out of her hideaway were on their way to becoming a torrent.
CHAPTER FIVE
1
If he was at the Shibuya station east exit, he would be at the front entryway to Seibu Department Store Building A, and if at Central Street, between Art Coffee and Sakuraya. Miho told her that these were Akira Nakagaki’s territories when he was out scouting on the streets.
Midnight TV show reporters were catching middle schoolers and high schoolers on their way back from school. The young boys and girls acted like celebrities when the microphones were turned toward them. It was a common sight at four in the afternoon.
Kanako had Miho show her a photo of Akira Nakagaki and burned his face into her memory. Previously, she’d only ever seen him late at night in front of a convenience store or far away at a park.
When Kanako went to Shibuya Central Street, he was wearing the casual clothes from the photo that Miho had snapped at Tokyo Disneyland. The glossy black shirt was opened down to the first button and proudly showed off the gold chain at his chest.
The jacket that he wore emphasized his broad shoulders and matched his carnivorous face as his sharp eyes scoured the passing girls. His sharp cheekbones moved with the rhythm of his gum chewing, and a red tongue peeked out from a mouth ringed by a short beard. He stood out, and Kanako supposed he needed to have at least that much presence to draw in women.
Kanako had been overcome by a sudden need to speak with this man, Akira Nakagaki. But she couldn’t have Miho introduce them.
“Then you should just have him scout you,” Miho had suggested unceremoniously.
Akira Nakagaki had seen her that night from in front of the convenience store, but Miho insisted, “He won’t remember you, so it’ll be fine.”
Apparently, he was going through one of those periods where he cherished Miho. When he had found out that she’d been hospitalized from losing her child, he’d tearfully said, “I didn’t think you really had a kid.” Miho was still weak from having just been released, and Akira Nakagaki diligently made her dinner.
In his teens, he’d worked in a restaurant kitchen, and calf cutlets and Spanish omelets were supposedly his specialties. These were among his precious few charms, and Miho had fallen in love with them.
Even as she ate the dinner he cooked and slept beside him, Miho continued to hone her murderous intent.
Please believe me when I say that, she emphasized to Kanako. It was a declaration that she was long past the stage where she could comfort and tell herself that she could start over with him.
She said Kanako’s words, “Just kill him,” had woken her up. Miho realized that his viol
ence against her hadn’t just hurt her body on each occasion but that the pain had accumulated over time. On top of that, whenever she remembered how he’d beaten a three-month-old fetus, she knew he needed to die and couldn’t stop thinking of the fact.
Watching Akira Nakagaki’s movements from a Matsumoto Kiyoshi drug store, Kanako noticed that he wasn’t just calling out to anyone. He had his own standards, and he seemed to rank the girls the moment he called on them.
According to Miho, after scouting a girl he’d invite her to a nearby cafe and chat for around thirty minutes. He would never insist she take the modeling job. He told the girl his own cell phone number but never asked for hers. The majority of them called him back in the next couple of days.
He and five of his colleagues had an office they managed in Daikanyama where they invited the girls they’d netted. The girls were offered jobs as hostesses at cabaret clubs, as adult video actresses, as amateur models whose nudes actually ended up in lurid magazines, and so on. The men were shady enough to pocket half the pay.
Returning a shampoo bottle to the store shelf, Kanako hardened her resolve and started down Central Street towards Akira Nakagaki.
He had his back turned against the middle-school girls flocking around in front of Art Coffee; he seemed to have no interest in children. Kanako had dressed as a twenty year old would. She had a thin cardigan draped over her camisole and a long white skirt with tropical flowers arranged along it. Hopefully, she looked like a college student who’d just returned from a vacation to Okinawa.
Her eyes met his for an instant. Kanako immediately averted her gaze but could feel his as it appraised her. She passed by several feet to his side. He didn’t call out to her. So she didn’t meet Akira Nakagaki’s standards? That actually pissed her off.
“Hey, lady in the hibiscus.”
Footsteps and a voice, chasing after her—Kanako pretended not to notice. He lightly tapped on her shoulder. When she turned around, Akira Nakagaki stood there with a smile plastered across his face.
“Do you have any time to spare?”
“I do, but…if you’re going to try to sell me something, I—”
“It’s not like that.”
He stood in her way. She almost collided into his thick chest.
Miho had assured her that all he’d do at first was talk at a cafe close by and that there’d be no danger. Kanako faced him calmly.
“I bet you’re interested in modeling, right?”
“Not really…”
“Hear me out, this is my agency, we’re not suspicious.”
He handed her his business card. It said “Chief - Girls Ambitious” on high-quality paper. It was plenty suspicious. According to Miho, the scouts who shared the office in Daikanyama all had different company names on their business cards.
“Just a while ago, one of our girls passed an audition for a show that airs at 9 p.m. on Mondays.”
Liar, Kanako thought.
“Just listen to me for a bit, yeah? Let’s go to a cafe. All I need is ten minutes of your time.”
“I’m in a hurry.”
“But you just said you had time. Are you scared of a big guy like me? I’m not scary at all, not scary, I know my face looks a bit gruff but I’m actually really sensitive and can get hurt easily, so be nice to me, yeah?”
What kind of an invitation was that? Kanako wanted to cock her head.
It wasn’t as though he’d grabbed her shoulder or arm, but she felt as though her body was gravitating towards him.
Miho had said that the cafe he chose depended on the girl.
Doutour, where one cup of coffee was 180 yen, and the slightly more refined but also self-service Starbucks were for C-rank girls. Those he took to the salesman favorite Renoir were B-rank. The ones who ranked the highest found themselves in Cafe La Mille.
They entered Cafe La Mille, located on the second floor of a building beside a takoyaki chain store. The cafe was famous for its 800-yen coffee. They sat down on fluffy sofa seats facing each other and gave their drink orders to the waiter. Akira Nakagaki started off by asking, “Are you a high school student?”
She thought she’d done well in choosing her outfit, so Kanako was disappointed that her fashion sense was childish.
“I get that a lot. I’m twenty.” It wasn’t anything she needed to announce, but she went ahead and made that clear.
“College student.”
“Right.”
“Where?”
“Pretty close to Shibuya.” She was loath to divulge her real whereabouts.
“Aoyama Gakuin, I bet.”
“Something like that.”
“I bet you’re from out of town. Isn’t it hard to get by with just your allowance?”
“I don’t spend much money.”
“I can see that. I bet your hobby is to watch artsy movies, or something.”
Kanako decided to go along and nod.
“Do you have any experience modeling?”
“A bit, back home.” A blatant lie.
“I bet I can guess. An advertisement for a supermarket? Thirty yen off for two chapsticks.”
She had to laugh with him there. His industry’s technique was to use words to tickle and tease, to get the target immersed in conversation. “You’re wrong, but not by much,” Kanako countered lightheartedly.
The sense of intimacy that Akira Nakagaki was aiming for did build up as they continued talking.
When he took a break to sip at his drink, Kanako went on the offense. “Is it fun, scouting?”
“Well, it’s a job.”
“I bet you have freebies. Like ‘I’ll toss in a free chapstick.’ ”
“Do you mean a kiss from a girl?”
Ah, so that was how he took it. An unexpected result of idle chatter. Well, then she was pressing on. “Working this kind of job, you must have a good eye for women.”
“Nope. In my personal life, I keep on stumbling.”
He didn’t seem to mind his privacy being picked at. Kanako stepped right in at the invitation. “Uh, is that a marriage ring?”
“Nope, it’s on my right hand.”
“Oh, I see…But you give off this scent of family life.”
“What scent?” Akira Nakagaki seemed to be chuckling at his own success, certain that she was into him if she was pursuing the matter. “To tell you the truth, I was raped by a woman,” he mugged for pity.
“What? Raped?”
“She pushed me down, took me, put me to sleep, and before I knew what was going on, she’d taken my seal and stamped it on a marriage contract. Isn’t that awful?”
“Huh, what’s she like?”
“She’s the same age as you, twenty. She slaps on this tattoo sticker and works as a bartender.”
He was talking about Miho. It was the first Kanako had heard of her filing their marriage contract without his permission. She finally understood why they had different last names on the post box. Fooling him into thinking that they were just cohabiting, Miho had secretly turned it into a done deal.
She’d only joined their family registries by stealth, and her pride as a woman had kept her from telling Kanako.
“Even so, she’s pretty useful so I play along with her married couple farce.”
She even serves as a sparring partner, he probably wanted to say. A couple whose idea of intimacy was to strike and torment each other’s bodies.
“I bet your wife hates that her husband’s doing this sort of job with women.”
She was mouthing a general opinion, but Akira Nakagaki seemed to think that selling out his private life was a fine way to endear himself to women.
“Let me tell you something interesting,” he said, bringing their faces close as though to share a secret. “I’ve come to think too, lately, that I’m living with a really scary woman.”
“A scary woman?”
“I mean her background.”
Kanako could guess what he was going to say next. For an instant, she th
ought she didn’t want to hear.
“My wife’s actually the daughter of a criminal on death row.”
“What the hell?” Kanako asked, her voice cracking in mock fear even as her heartbeat took on an ominous rhythm.
“Her dad butchered a family of four ten years ago because of some debt. Oh yeah, it was on TV. He even killed little kids, smashed their faces in with a hammer. You’ve never heard of it?”
“Nah.”
It became more difficult to school her expression. She felt like the muscles in her cheeks were being pulled by wires.
“He got sentenced to death for good just the other day, and in a few years he’ll be executed. My father-in-law, a criminal who’s gonna get executed. Isn’t that amazing?”
How was it “amazing”? Perhaps this topic was like a medal of honor that he showed off to his buddies.
“If you want to see what she looks like, I can take you to the bar where she works, in Gotanda.”
He must have used Miho as an attraction countless times in the past. She’s going to be working out of our agency, he’d bring the girl to the bar and introduce her to Miho. So this is who he’ll be bedding next, Miho would think, looking at the girl beside him. And the girl would think, So she’s the daughter of the criminal on death row, and sneer behind her back.
Imagining how the scene went down in Ice Storm, Kanako’s disgust for Akira Nakagaki grew. Miho wasn’t the only one who was being used as an attraction. Kanako’s deceased family and herself, the survivor, were being mocked by this man.
Done with selling his private life piecemeal, Akira Nakagaki started explaining the modeling gig. Kanako randomly interjected responses to pretend she was listening, all the while studying his handsomely shaped head. Where on it was that vital spot?
Her reservations were dissipating one by one. He was someone who deserved to be killed.
“Just in case, I’ll tell you my cell phone number, all right?” He pulled close the business card he’d given Kanako and wrote on it with a ballpoint pen.
“Hm, I don’t know if I’ll call.”
“Well, just think about it, ’kay?”
His face said that he was sure that she was another one of those girls who’d call within a couple of days. Kanako wanted to spit on him, but considering how he only had a few more days left to live, she almost pitied him.
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