Soul Cage--A Mystery

by Tetsuya Honda

  “He went out about ten minutes ago.”

  “Did someone come in to fetch him?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  As Reiko and Ishikura were talking, Kusaka and Toyama reappeared in the doorway. They seemed to be relaying information to the other three members of their squad, deliberately keeping their voices low.

  Were they planning to keep whatever they had found out to themselves so they could be a step ahead when the task force was set up?

  Come on, Reiko! Why must you always think the worst of other people?

  Reiko walked over to the group. She could hear Kikuta’s footsteps right behind her.

  “Hey, Lieutenant Kusaka, any interesting scuttlebutt come your way today?”

  Kusaka stared blankly back at her with his small black reptilian eyes. As usual, his thin lips were clamped together in a straight line.

  “Scuttlebutt? What’s that?”

  That voice—deep, heavy, joyless.

  “I know you’ve been gathering info. What did you find out?”

  “You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I just went to the bathroom.”

  “Oh, and you’re so pally with your squad mates that you always take them with you for a communal piss?”

  “Watch it, Himekawa. Dirty talk like that’s not going to help you find yourself a husband.”

  Reiko caught the hint of a smirk on his face.

  “Thanks for the marital counseling, but I’d prefer if you stayed off that topic in the workplace.”

  “Sorry. I misspoke.”

  Officer Itoi, who was standing in front of Kusaka, sniggered. Reiko ignored him.

  “So what’s going on? In the crime lab, I mean?”

  “Like I said, I just went to the bathroom—”

  “A man of your caliber, Lieutenant Kusaka—I’m sure you can retrieve useful information even when it’s just floating around in the toilet bowl.”

  Kusaka flinched and snorted with disgust. Reiko simply kept staring at him.

  “Listen, Himekawa, if you’re so keen to get some information, how about finding it out for yourself? Being on standby level A isn’t supposed to mean getting all lovey-dovey with your subordinates and taking them out for coffee and a nice view.”

  The bastard! He must have seen me and Kikuta!

  “Which just proves I was right. You weren’t in the bathroom.”

  “Did I say it was me who saw you? I’ve had enough of this chitchat. It’s a waste of time.”

  Tapping Toyama on the shoulder, Kusaka headed over to his desk.

  “Hey, just a minute. Are you trying to give me the slip?”

  Kusaka glared at Reiko.

  “You shouldn’t try and copy Stubby, Himekawa. You’re way too young to be able to browbeat information out of me. Try again in ten years’ time.”

  Kusaka spun on his heel and marched off, his subordinates in tow.

  Me? Trying to copy Stubby?

  Stubby was the nickname of Lieutenant Kensaku Katsumata, a squad leader in Unit 5. He was ex–Public Security Bureau and a classic old-school cop in the worst possible sense. His method of investigation was a combination of foul language, violence, and bribes—and he excelled at all three.

  Stubby’s the last person on Earth I want to be compared to!

  Reiko heard footsteps in the corridor and turned to see Director Hashizume and Captain Imaizumi in the doorway.

  “Listen up, everyone,” announced Imaizumi. “We’re going to be setting up a task force for a murder over in Kamata. Everyone needs to get over to that precinct right now.”

  Director Hashizume looked like the cat who ate the canary and was clearly desperate for a chance to sound off.

  “What’s going on, Director?” Reiko asked.

  Hashizume cleared his throat rather theatrically, then announced: “It’s because I kicked their asses and told them get a move on. They insisted that they needed a minimum of nine hours. I knew that if they got it together, they could do it in seven.”

  “Do what, sir?”

  “DNA analysis. On some bloodstains and a hand. Sure enough, the DNA was a match.”

  Now it was all starting to make sense. The “something” that Director Hashizume had brought back in the cooler was a human hand.

  “You’ll get a proper briefing over in Kamata. I need you all to get a move on,” said Captain Imaizumi. “It’s already 3:20. If it gets dark, we’ll have lost a whole day.”

  2

  Kamata Police Station was about five minutes’ walk from Kamata train station.

  When they arrived, Reiko and her squad took the elevator to the sixth floor, walked past the cafeteria, and to a large conference room. Reiko slipped off her coat and had a look around.

  It all looks well prepared.

  The desks had all been arranged in long rows facing the front of the room. Around twenty investigators—from Kamata and neighboring precincts, Reiko guessed—were already there.

  “Hi there, Lieutenant Reiko.”

  I just can’t believe it! Of all people: Hiromitsu Ioka!

  “What the hell are you doing here?” growled Kikuta.

  Reiko had to slide between the two men and physically restrain Kikuta from grabbing Ioka by his jacket lapels.

  “Just cool it, Kikuta. Ioka, what are you doing here in Kamata? Last I heard, you were over in Kameari.”

  Ioka gave a bucktoothed smile, flushed up to his jug ears, and stared at Reiko with his round bug eyes.

  “I got transferred again. I’ve been based here since October.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. It’s just too weird. Three times in one year, you’ve transferred to precincts my team gets sent to. That’s not natural.”

  Ioka squirmed in his chair and rubbed his hands. Reiko shuddered at the all-too-familiar sight.

  “You know why, Lieutenant Reiko? It’s because our destinies are intertwined. That’s an incontestable fact, isn’t it?”

  “I damn well hope not. Anyway, like I told you before, don’t call me by my first name.”

  “You’re so cute when you’re bashful.”

  “Ioka!” bellowed Kikuta, his face purple with rage. “How come you’re always in the right place whenever a murder’s committed? Are you committing these crimes yourself just to have an excuse to see the lieutenant?”

  Oh please. Get real, thought Reiko to herself. Ioka himself seemed quite unflustered.

  “My old pal Kaz Kikuta.”

  Kaz?

  “You creep, you can’t talk to me like that—”

  Reiko guessed that Kikuta had been about to say that a lowly officer like Ioka had no business being so familiar with a sergeant like him when Ioka lifted a hand and cut Kikuta off. Ioka reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out his badge wallet, then flapped it ostentatiously open and shoved it into Kikuta’s face.

  “I’m happy to report that I just made sergeant. In other words, Brother Kaz, you and I are now the same rank.”

  Kikuta scowled ferociously, spluttered, and sank into silence.

  That explained Ioka’s move to this precinct. Any detective who passed the promotional exam was rewarded with an automatic transfer.

  “Maybe you finally made sergeant, but you’ve still got two years’ less on the force than me,” Kikuta barked at Ioka.

  “You lot, shut the fuck up,” bellowed Captain Imaizumi, drowning out the tail end of Kikuta’s outburst.

  The group exchanged looks and shrugged.

  Reiko’s head slumped forward. She knew nothing about the case yet, but she already had a bad feeling about it.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, the truck arrived from the TMPD HQ, and all their equipment—everything from phones, computers, and radios to basic office supplies—was brought up to the sixth floor.

  There were now over forty investigators in the room, waiting to be briefed. In addition to the two squads from Homicide Unit 10, there was the Mobile Unit and the detectives from Kamata and the nei
ghboring precincts. The top brass sat facing them at table along the front of the room.

  “Good afternoon, everybody. I’m Director Hashizume from the Homicide Division. Captain Imaizumi here is going to brief us on the case, so I want everyone to listen carefully. Captain?”

  “Thank you, Director,” Imaizumi began. “This morning, what appears to be the left hand of an adult male was found in the back of a white minivan. The vehicle was a Subaru Sambar, license number Shinagawa 480-Hi-2956. It was illegally parked on the street in the West Rokugo neighborhood of Ota Ward.”

  Why only a hand? Reiko wondered idly, as she picked up her notebook and dutifully jotted down the details.

  “Based on fingerprint evidence and the testimony of the individual who led us to the hand, we have been able to confirm that it belongs to a Mr. Kenichi Takaoka, forty-three years old, living at Hope Mansions, Middle Rokugo, here in this precinct. Takaoka is unmarried and lives alone. The hand was in a tightly sealed plastic bag. The plastic bag was from a convenience store. From the large quantity of blood in the minivan, we can assume that the blood loss was fatal. The forensic team is currently examining the van and running tests on it. We will let you know the results when we can.

  “Now I want to tell you how the case came to our attention.” Imaizumi turned to the next page of the file in his hand. “Just after six a.m., Sergeant Toshimitsu Iwata from Kamata Precinct received a verbal report about the discovery of a large pool of blood in a rented garage in Middle Rokugo. The person who reported the blood was Kosuke Mishima, a twenty-year-old male. The garage in question is rented by Kenichi Takaoka. Takaoka has his own business, Takaoka Construction, which does subcontract work on big construction projects. Kosuke Mishima is employed by Takaoka Construction.

  “Mishima arrived at work early this morning. As soon as he opened the garage door, he noticed that the minivan they use for work was missing and that the concrete floor of the garage was wet. He also noticed a peculiar odor. Not recognizing it as the smell of blood, he walked straight into the crime scene. As soon as he realized he was standing in a pool of blood, he called Takaoka’s cell phone, but no one picked up. He then went to Takaoka’s apartment; no one was in. He made a beeline for Zoshiki Police Station. Sergeant Iwata, after hearing what he had to say, called the Kamata Precinct. He also put out an alert on the missing vehicle.”

  Damn! Realizing that she’d forgotten to write down the address of Takaoka’s apartment, Reiko snuck a look at Ioka’s notes and cribbed it from there.

  “An officer from the West Rokugo station had noted the presence of an illegally parked vehicle on the Tama River embankment at 2:00 a.m. that morning. Since no one had actually called in to complain about the van, the officers waited until 5:00 a.m. to draw warning chalk lines in the asphalt around the tires. At 6:17 a.m., Lieutenant Hideo Tanaka, who was monitoring the radio in the West Rokugo police station, heard the bulletin about the license number and called Kamata Police Station to inform them of the location of the van. At 6:52 a.m., Lieutenant Tanaka went with Kosuke Mishima, who had a spare key for the minivan, to examine it. That is when the lieutenant discovered the shopping bag containing Kenichi Takaoka’s hand at the far end of the bed of the truck. I should add that the electric saw believed to have been used to sever the hand was later found in the garage.”

  Reiko skimmed through her notes and composed a simplified timeline for herself. Early that morning, twenty-year-old Kosuke Mishima informed a local police officer that his firm’s minivan wasn’t in its garage and that the garage itself was awash with blood. The van had been illegally parked at the Tama River embankment at 2:00 a.m. or earlier. When the police opened up the van in the morning, they found a plastic bag containing Kenichi Takaoka’s severed hand.

  “We’ve taken samples from the blood in the garage and in the vehicle, as well as from the severed left hand. All the blood samples were type A, and the DNA was also a match in every case. From the sheer quantity of blood that was spilled, we have to accept that Kenichi Takaoka is dead. What we’re dealing with in this case is the disposal of the body of someone who probably met an unnatural death, likely as not murder. That’s why we’ve set up a task force HQ to investigate the case.”

  At the end of the day, it was a murder investigation with no corpse. From studying similar cases in the past, Reiko knew they tended to be tricky.

  “Now we’ll explain how we’re going to tackle the investigation.”

  At this point, Director Hashizume took back the microphone. “Thank you, Captain. For today, we need you to split into two groups: one group will do a house-to-house canvass near the river where the van was found; the other will make inquiries in the vicinity of the garage and the victim’s home. Lieutenant Himekawa of Homicide will head up the team at the riverside, and Lieutenant Kusaka, also of Homicide, will lead the garage team.”

  The standard practice on task forces was to pair up one TMPD detective with one detective from the local precinct.

  “I’ll deal with the riverside canvass first. I want Lieutenant Himekawa of Homicide and Sergeant Ioka from the Kamata Station to handle Sector One. Sector One is the area immediately around where the vehicle was found.”

  “What!” she burst out.

  Why do I get landed with Ioka, of all people?

  Ioka, who was sitting one row in front of her, cleared his throat meaningfully.

  “Did you hear me, Himekawa?” said Hashizume. “I need verbal confirmation.”

  “Ah, yes, sir,” she stuttered. “Of course, sir. Excuse me, sir.”

  “Hiromitsu Ioka, sir. Understood, sir. I’m your man, sir.”

  Under the table Ioka had both fists clenched tight in a gesture of determination.

  “It’s love bringing us together again,” he whispered with a little cackle.

  “Oh, shut it.”

  Reiko suppressed the urge to smack Ioka and listened to the rest of the assignments being doled out instead.

  “Sergeant Kikuta of Homicide and Sergeant Ato of Kamata Station will handle Sector Two, which is block two, numbers thirty to thirty-three.”

  There was a long pause before Kikuta replied.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  This wasn’t good. Kikuta was behaving oddly. His voice was like the whining of a beaten dog.

  Hashizume wasn’t the sort of man to pick up on details like that; he plowed right on.

  “Sector Three is Sergeant Ishikura from Homicide and Officer Yoshino from Kamata Precinct. You’ll handle block two, numbers thirty-four to thirty-seven.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When Hashizume had finished assigning the sectors for the riverbank canvass, Reiko left the other investigators in their huddle and hurried over to Imaizumi at the front of the room. He was busily sorting through some files.

  “Captain?”

  Imaizumi turned and looked at her over his shoulder with an arch smile.

  “Yes? Got something to say to me?”

  She went and stood next to him and pretended to help him with the files.

  “You bet I do. Do I really have to team up with that clown Ioka again?”

  Imaizumi’s shoulders were quivering with suppressed laughter. She should have known. The whole thing was just a joke to him!

  “You’re just going to have to suck it up. Director Hashizume’s the one who makes the decisions here.”

  “And how does he do that? How does he assign teams?”

  “He draws up a seniority-based list of everyone from the TMPD and the local precinct, then he flips it to pair off the most senior investigators with the most junior ones. It’s quite an art, you know. For the investigators from the other local precincts and the Mobile Unit, he went by alphabetical order.”

  Goddamn! She’d always known Hashizume was a hopeless ditherer, but that really took the cake.

  “I see,” she said, with a resigned gulp. “I’ll just have to run with it for today, but can you
pair me up with someone better tomorrow?”

  “Huh? What do you mean, ‘better’? Ioka’s a hardworking detective who’s solved plenty of smaller cases. They tell me he’s seen as a topflight cop around here.… At least, that’s what their chief of detectives told me.”

  Reiko had her doubts about any department that seriously regarded Ioka as a “topflight cop.”

  “Anyway, enough of that. Let me deal with these files here.”

  Reiko, who wasn’t in the mood to finish this conversation, started leafing through a file she’d taken from Imaizumi’s pile.

  It was a report on the scene where the severed hand had been discovered. As far as Reiko could see from the sketch diagram, the Tama River embankment was a normal road, accessible to ordinary traffic. You needed to climb down a mound to get to the riverbank, and from there it was a further twenty or thirty meters to the water’s edge.

  “Only the left hand was found in the vehicle, Captain. With the river being so close, doesn’t it make sense that the rest of the body was dumped in the water?”

  “Maybe. The forensics team is going over everything within a fifty-meter radius of the van, right up to the river’s edge where it’s quite overgrown. I’ve told them to look out for shoe prints and bloodstains that might have been left when the body was moved. Look, this is the interior of the minivan where the hand was found.”

  Imaizumi flipped open another file. There were photographs of the vehicle from every conceivable angle.

  The minivan contained a single row of seats, at the front. Everything behind them was used for storage. A separate platform had been fitted above the bed of the van to create two long, deep shelves. On the upper shelf there was a looped length of electric cable; what looked like a tool case; a number of small, unmarked cardboard boxes of unknown contents; and a portable light inside a protective wire cage.

  According to the report, the bag containing the hand had been found at the back of the bottom level. Reiko peered at the picture, but with the upper shelf blocking out the light, it was hard to see anything on the lower shelf, let alone right at the back of it.

  “You think the perp simply forgot one of the hands when he was disposing of the body?” she asked.