“Then I’ll just have her call when she comes back.”
“If it’s just a message, I can tell her.”
So far, the exchange was going as planned.
“It’s fine, you’d have to jot down a lot of things.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Well, if you don’t? Once band practice starts, I won’t be able to free myself.”
“Please go ahead.”
Goro gave the band members’ birthdates and blood types. Kanako wrote them all on the memo pad next to the phone stand. They were all born in 1979. Three of them were Type O and two were A.
“This is all I need to tell her, right?”
“I’m so sorry, asking a customer to help out like this.”
The call ended.
It had been so easy. Would it really serve as Miho’s alibi?
Kanako took that one sheet from the memo pad. The next step after locking up the bar would be to drop it into the postbox at Miho’s apartment along with the key.
Kanako no longer needed to be there. She started to feel hopeful that somehow it might turn out all right. She hit the switch to turn off the lights and was about to leave.
“What? And I came all the way here.”
Hearing a dissatisfied man’s voice at the entrance, Kanako let out a hoarse scream and stood petrified.
The shadow of a man with a bent back. He opened the door slowly and entered.
Kanako backed up and searched for the light switch with trembling hands. The indirect lighting turned on once again, dimly illuminating the man who’d been just a shadow.
It was a businessman in his mid-forties. Kanako had seen him before. It was the drunk interested in Miho who intentionally came at closing time every Monday night.
“And who might you be?” His bloodshot, drunk eyes gazed at Kanako.
“I…was asked to take care of the bar in Miho’s place and, uh, close up…” Her trembling tongue refused to articulate the words properly.
“Miho went home?”
“Yes.”
Kanako had no choice but to respond with that. The lie that Miho had gone out to buy cigarettes wouldn’t work. The man would no doubt wait until she returned.
“Oh, I see. She said she wanted to go to a Phil Collins concert so I went to the operations department and had them get tickets for her…”
The two of them stood there, facing each other on the floor in front of the counter. Kanako didn’t know how to deal with the distance and could only wait for the man’s next move.
“Are you Miho’s friend?”
“Yes.”
“Then, I might have you hand them to her. Tell her the tickets are from Koike.”
He placed an envelope on the counter.
Kanako felt as though it were all over. They’d somehow managed to make it this far despite their stumbles, but now their plan was worth nothing.
Koike would eventually learn that Miho’s husband had been assaulted and that she was in police custody as a suspect. Because he had a crush on Miho, Koike might step up of his own volition to testify for her.
“That night, I was unable to meet Miho, but I met her friend who was watching the bar for her. That friend might be able to testify and confirm her alibi.”
In the interrogation room, they would demand to know about the woman Miho had left behind to watch over the bar that night. Asked if it was the aspiring model she was supposed to introduce to Akira Nakagaki, Miho would become flustered. As the intense questioning continued, she might tell them, “A friend named Yukako Fuyuki who goes to Eiwa Gakuin University.”
It wouldn’t take much time for the police to discover that the woman was in fact Kanako Akiba.
How would the police interpret an attempted murder case connecting the lone survivor and the murderer’s daughter of an eight-year-old family massacre?
Miho would find out, and after her initial shock, what sorts of conclusions would she reach? Would she see it as a kind of revenge by a surviving Akiba?
“It’s probably fine if I get myself a round of draft, right?”
Koike went behind the counter without permission and picked a convenient glass.
Kanako flopped into a chair at a table seat. No longer caring what happened, she leaned back.
“You want some too?”
“Why not…”
Koike poured two draft beers and came out of the counter. He placed one at Kanako’s table before sitting at a counter stool. He turned around and gestured cheers.
Two customers were imbibing the bar’s wares unbidden.
“Make sure to hand her the tickets.”
“I will.”
Kanako decided to drink. She’d realized that her throat was completely dry. Koike was bad at pouring and she got nothing but foam in her mouth.
“I wonder who Miho’ll invite to the concert.”
“Probably a friend?”
“Not you?”
“I’m sure she has friends other than me.”
“I dunno, I’m not sure she has many friends.”
It was an accurate observation, Kanako thought.
“He has a nice voice, doesn’t he?” the man said.
“He?”
“Phil Collins. I’ve been listening to him since he was in the band Genesis.”
The man clearly wanted to be the one to go with Miho.
After an awkward silence, Koike turned around again.
“If you see her, there’s something I want you to tell her because I’m going on a business trip next week and can’t drop by.”
“What is it?”
She guessed he had a lot to tell her. Kanako didn’t care if she had to give Miho an extra message or two.
“My father’s getting better. That’s all you need to say, she’ll understand.”
“Getting better…Was he ill?” Kanako couldn’t stop herself from asking though it was hardly the time to be worrying about a stranger’s health.
“It’s terminal cancer, but apparently what the doctors told us was just the worst-case scenario. He seems to be enjoying a pretty long life.”
“That’s great, I’m glad for you.”
Kanako thought she might as well nod along until he was finished with this topic. Either way, she couldn’t leave until Koike was done with his beer.
“Give Miho my thanks. I tried what she told me to do. On my last visit, I played chess with my father in the hospital room. He was as strong as ever and I didn’t stand a chance. Man, that was fun. Once he was able to go outside, I put him on a wheel chair and handed him a glove and we played catch. That was fun too.”
“Is that so?”
Kanako wondered if she was responding appropriately.
“I did as Miho told me and played all the games my father taught me when I was a kid. Sevens with cards. Lucky shogi. Spinning tops. My father was even happier than I was.”
“I bet.”
Kanako was being turned into a good listener.
“It really felt like I’d come from him. Well, since he’s my father, rather than giving birth to me it was more like he just sowed his seed and I got made, but.”
“I’m glad he’s feeling better.”
“I wonder how it’s been for Miho. I wonder if she’s gone to see him.”
“Who?”
“Her father. I bet he’s lonely, what with her going home only once a year.”
For Miho, “going home” meant seeing her father in prison. She must have acted the role of the prodigal daughter who rarely visited her parents with Koike.
“I mean, the one who told me not to be embarrassed and to do whatever I’d done with him as a kid was Miho. So she has to go see her own dad. As her friend, you should give her at least that much advice.”
“Oh, of course.”
“What about you?”
Was he going to lecture her next?
“You must have some memory involving your father, too.”
Though she didn’t see how she cam
e into this, Kanako fished for a serious answer. She was stuck, and she’d play along until the end.
“Sitting on his shoulders, I think.”
“Well, that’s a tough one. If you made him do it now, he’ll hurt his hip.”
Ahaha, Koike laughed.
Kanako recalled how drastically the scenery changed when she sat on her father’s shoulders. Hoisted up, and putting both her hands on his head, she’d find his hair warm from soaking in sunlight. She vividly remembered even that.
Miho no doubt had her own proud memories of her father, too.
“I was so happy that Miho had tears in her eyes.”
“Tears…”
“Yup. Even though she tried to hide them, I could tell. When the doctor told me he only had around a year left, I drank whiskey with water and whined at her, and she told me then that I should remember as much as I could from my childhood. Then, not just me, but my father would be brought back in time too. Miho said that, and she had tears in her eyes.”
Norio Tsuzuki had four to five years left. Did Miho also yearn to return to her childhood when she visited him in prison? Would the guards ever let her sit on his shoulders in such a place?
“She needs to make up with her dad soon.”
“Yeah.”
“Her father will surely understand. Miho’s a girl with a very beautiful heart.”
There was no mistaking that Koike had a crush on Miho. The naive affections of a man in his forties—Kanako found the version of Miho as reflected by Koike’s naive affections quite dazzling.
“I know that about her.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“You don’t need to tell her that. It’s embarrassing.”
Why was Kanako feeling so happy? Was it because someone had said Miho’s heart was beautiful?
“You take care of your dad, too.”
He seemed the type to lecture young women whenever he got the chance.
Kanako thought about how Miho might treat her father well.
They said criminals sentenced to death weren’t told when their day would come. Kanako had always wanted Norio Tsuzuki to repent for his sins through the fear he felt every morning behind bars.
Perhaps Miho feared mornings, too. Did her father make it to breakfast today? Would he live until their next meeting? Kanako was beginning to understand Miho’s view that the law was killing her father slowly.
Moisture seeped from her tear glands until they covered her pupils. She wondered what the tears were for. Kanako couldn’t interpret her own emotions. Koike needed to go home before he saw her tears.
“Well then, I need to close up soon.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think you need to pay.”
“Then, thanks for the treat.”
Koike heaved himself off his stool.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
“Me?” There were several ways she could answer his question, but she gave a certain name without any hint of hesitation. “I’m Kanako Akiba.”
“I see…Well then, Kanako, goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Koike waved his hand with his back turned and disappeared out the door. Eventually, the sound of his trudging footsteps on the stairs also vanished.
Silence returned. Everything was over. No, she still had some work to do. Even if nothing but the worst-case scenario awaited her, she still needed to clean up.
After washing the glasses that she and Koike had drunk out of, Kanako exited the bar and locked it.
She would drop the key into the postbox at Miho’s apartment.
Passing under the several strands of neon lights that hoped to form a rainbow, Kanako exposed herself to the night air once more.
She passed through a darkness thick enough to seem tangible and finally got there.
The lights were on in Miho’s apartment.
She bet Miho was spending a sleepless night waiting and wondering when the police would call. Perhaps, at that very moment, she was being told of the wound her husband had sustained.
Kanako put the key to the bar, the memo she took from Goro, and the envelope with tickets into the post box.
It would be dangerous to visit the apartment now. If the police came knocking, they would see another girl that resembled her.
Kanako needed to make herself scarce as soon as possible, but remained staring up for a while at the room where Miho was no doubt near bursting with worry.
“Goodnight.”
In the end she chose to leave quietly.
She sensed that her parting with Miho was imminent. Whatever form it took, it was approaching for certain.
Given the distance, she may have been walking for close to two hours. She looked at the signs and chose her streets by guesswork to get from Gotanda to Higashi-Kitazawa. No matter where she walked, the late night bustle followed her around. She felt as though the city was a living thing that never ceased pulsing.
She walked. Walked endlessly.
She was already past exhausted. She could no longer feel her knees nor her legs. If she collapsed when she finally arrived at her room, all the joints in her body might simply fall apart.
A familiar shopping district came into view, and she heard the sound of shutters being pulled somewhere—probably the tofu or milk store.
There was a drunk businessman sprawled across the pavement. A stray cat was gnawing at a bag of combustible garbage. She saw people on bicycles scattering from a store that had its lights on, and guessed it was a newspaper delivery outlet.
As she walked, Kanako didn’t stop thinking. Would her existence come up during the police investigation?
If it did, the thin membrane that had somehow protected her all these years as the victims’ family would be torn from her, revealing the woman called Kanako Akiba. What the case eight years ago had nurtured in her—the black core that held back the dam of her emotions, the container that stored her darkness—might be exposed to the gaze of society at large.
How would they disassemble and autopsy Kanako Akiba? It was frightening, but she also wanted to hear the results of their analysis.
She’d read something once in a book. A crime could function as a periscope to peer into a person’s soul. Kanako’s crime, her involvement in planning a murder, might illuminate the entirety of her soul. In that case, perhaps she should override her fear, let herself go, and beckon people’s judgments.
May I continue to live after all of this?
At last her apartment building came into view, rearing up into the night.
As she turned from the alley and stepped onto the street in front of her home, she noticed a shadow lying in wait for her and stopped.
Confirming that Kanako had arrived, the figure that was leaning against the fence and smoking a cigarette slowly peeled its back from the wall.
Kanako’s resolve was still uncertain as she faced the unidentified shadow. She couldn’t back away. She mustn’t fear. Her first disassembler had arrived.
She focused on the approaching figure and waited solemnly.
5
Kanako and Miho stood on Tokyo station’s Tohoku bullet train platform.
“Do you like frozen clementines?”
Kanako, who held an entry ticket to the platform, offered to go buy Miho something she liked from the stores.
“They come in packs of five. I can’t eat them all by myself.”
“Fine then, mousse Pocky.”
“Oh, those are great, I want.”
Kanako bought them and passed them to Miho.
“Thanks. I’ll be there in an hour, so it’ll be over in a blink.”
Looking back over the past week, Miho said it had been like a storm. Kanako had heard over the phone in great detail what had occurred to Miho during the past week.
That night, Akira Nakagaki had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. They hadn’t contacted Miho, who’d been waiting in the apartment, until near dawn. The police had apparently figured out his
contact info from the American Express card in his wallet.
When she’d rushed to the hospital where the ambulance had taken him, Akira Nakagaki had finished his CT scan and was sleeping in the intensive care unit. From the door’s glass window, she had seen him lying on his side with his head wrapped in bandages.
There had been police in the hallway, and they’d wanted to speak to Miho, of course. Confirming that she was Akira Nakagaki’s wife though they had different last names, she’d told them that he worked as a recruiter in the sex industry and that he had an office he shared with his colleagues in an apartment building in Daikanyama.
“Ma’am, where were you between 1:30 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. last night?”
She’d been able to calmly explain that she’d been bartending in Gotanda and that after seeing off her last customer, she’d returned to her apartment at past two.
“While I was out buying cigarettes for a customer, Goro called, and the customer took the call for me.”
“Do you know the name of the customer?”
“All I know is that she’s a woman who goes by Yoko. She said she wanted to become a model so I was going to introduce her to Akira. Then she changed her mind at the last minute…”
She had meant to take the woman to the office in Daikanyama; instead, she’d called Akira using her cell phone to ask him to come to the bar. The call was recorded in the memory of Miho’s device. It had been made at 1:46 a.m. and to the office in Daikanyama.
Miho had made the call from the shadows of the parking lot as she stared up at the room on the fifth floor.
“Do you know how to contact this Yoko person?”
They were all questions Miho had predicted.
“I asked for her cell phone number but she wouldn’t tell me.”
The explanation wouldn’t have stood up if the police had dug deeper, but they didn’t pay much concern and didn’t question her further.
Miho and Kanako had prepared explanations for the situations before and after the incident over the phone.
At 1:46, Miho called Akira Nakagaki from the bar to ask him to drop by. She convinced the aspiring model Yoko to “meet with him at least.” Yoko ran out of cigarettes before long, and Miho left the bar, saying, “The vending machine is hard to find so I’ll go buy them for you.” Yoko might run away in the meantime, but that would have been that.
Deep Red Page 31