Soul Cage--A Mystery

by Tetsuya Honda

  2

  Reiko was still in her room at her parents’ house when her cell phone rang early the next morning. It was her pal Kunioku, from the medical examiner’s office.

  “Hiya, sweetie. That thing you asked me to take a look at? I’ve got one or two ideas. How’s about you take me out to lunch?”

  “Sure. What are you in the mood for?”

  “Eel and rice at Owada’s would hit the spot.”

  Typical, choosing the most expensive seasonal delicacy. Still, needs must.…

  “Great. I’ll head your way straight after the morning meeting.”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  Reiko crammed a few articles of clothing into her bag, strapped on a new watch, and set out for Kamata.

  The task force meeting got under way. She told Officer Yuda that she had something to take care of and would need him to handle surveillance on Michiko Nakagawa for her, then left the station with Ioka in her wake.

  Ioka asked if what they were doing had anything to do with the case file Reiko had mailed out the day before.

  “That’s right,” said Reiko. “We’re going to the Tokyo Medical Examiner’s Office in Otsuka. I hope Kunioku’s got something good for us.”

  She had a hunch that things were about to get interesting.

  * * *

  At reception, Reiko was informed that Kunioku was waiting for them in the meeting room on the second floor.

  “Morning?”

  Reiko peered into the room and saw Kunioku: he was catching forty winks in a seat over by the window.

  “Good morning, Doctor,” she repeated, rapping her knuckles briskly on the door a couple of times. Looking rather bilious, Kunioku opened his eyes.

  “Oh, it’s you.”

  “Sleeping on the job?”

  “Outrageous!” Kunioku growled, his voice congested with phlegm. “I’ve just come off the night shift and was sitting by the window awaiting a glimpse of my girlfriend.”

  Kunioku’s glasses had slid down his nose. He pushed them back into place.

  “Who’s the anthropoid with the funky bone structure?”

  Reiko had to stifle a laugh. Ioka replied as if Kunioku had said nothing out of the ordinary.

  “I am Hiromitsu Ioka, Major Crime Squad, Kamata Precinct CID. Lieutenant Reiko and I—”

  “Forget about him,” interrupted Reiko. “He’s a nobody.”

  Ioka winced.

  “Why, my dear, do you insist on surrounding yourself with underevolved specimens of the male of the species?”

  Kunioku referred to Kikuta as Reiko’s “pet gorilla,” a nickname that grated, given Reiko’s feelings for the man.

  What species are you then, doc?

  With his unruly tufts of gray hair and his sunken face like a wizened sweet potato, Kunioku looked fairly prehistoric himself. He hadn’t yet hit retirement age, so he had to be less than sixty-five—but he looked well past seventy.

  Kunioku insisted on telling everyone he met that Reiko was his “girlfriend.” No one seemed to take him seriously. It nonetheless made things awkward for Reiko: she couldn’t very well humiliate him and make a scene by contradicting him in public. Still, being cast in that role was humiliating for her too. The only solution was to plaster a forced smile on her face.

  “Since you’re making me take you for eel at Owada’s, you must have something important to tell me.”

  Kunioku was sitting at one corner of the table. Reiko sat opposite him, and Ioka pulled out a chair to sit beside her.

  “Hey, chimp, don’t crowd my girlfriend! I need two empty seats between you and her.”

  Ioka wasn’t going to be a pushover.

  “Can’t you compromise on one, Mr. Director?”

  “I’m not the director here. I’m just chief medical examiner.”

  “And a man of great modesty, obviously.”

  Kunioku snorted and lapsed into silence. Reiko, who knew the doctor well, had the impression he’d taken a shine to Ioka.

  “That’s enough monkey business, Doctor. Tell us what you learned from the file.”

  “Being ordered around by a beautiful woman is one of life’s greatest pleasures,” he chuckled, leafing through his papers with his wrinkled hands.

  “Let’s see what we’ve got here … ah, yes. Now, while I have, of course, nothing but the greatest respect for the talents of Dr. Umehara, the pathologist at Tomei University Hospital’s forensic medicine department—”

  “Can we skip all the niceties, Doctor?”

  “Very well,” Kunioku said. “I read the report and looked at the photographs. I found nothing to disagree with in my colleague’s findings. There are no visible external wounds on the torso or any damage to the internal organs such as could have caused death. The report is accurate … so far as it goes.”

  This sort of pussyfooting around must be part of doctors’ professional etiquette.…

  “It is regrettable, however, that the report fails to offer any explanation of this gouged-out semicircle of epidermis on the left of the pharynx.”

  Exactly!

  “I was wondering about that too,” she said.

  “You’re very observant, my dear. So much so that I’m prepared to use my influence to help you on the path to promotion. You’d make a wonderful Special Assistant to the Director of the Ministry of Justice.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. Staring at dead bodies day in, day out, isn’t really my bag. What I like is working cases out in the field. Anyway, now’s not the time. What’s your theory about that gouged-out patch?”

  Kunioku ran his finger thoughtfully over the neck in the photograph.

  “Take a good look. It’s a semicircle, a perfect arc. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “Absolutely. It’s like it was drawn with a compass.”

  “Nicely put. I believe that this semicircle here was actually part of a complete circle, which was sliced in half when the head was cut off.”

  “You mean that if we could locate the head, we’d find a matching semicircle of missing flesh on the upper part of the neck too?”

  “Precisely. I believe that a circular stimulus was applied to the neck. Like to hazard a guess what it was, sweetheart?”

  A circular stimulus? A stimulus that gouges out a circular hole in the skin?

  “The body’s been in the river for over ten days. That’s why the actual damaged skin has dissolved. Still, we’re looking for an external stimulus that causes circular blistering of the skin. I believe this stimulus was also the direct cause of death. Got any ideas?”

  Gouging of the epidermis was a fairly standard physiological reaction. All sorts of external stimuli could cause it. Something as straightforward as a blow from a blunt object or a gash from a sharp one could tear the skin off in a similar way. It was the fact that the wound was a perfect circle that was so extraordinary.

  “Ready to give up, sweetheart?”

  “What do I forfeit if I admit defeat?”

  “I get to upgrade from the second-most expensive eel dish to the most expensive one.”

  “Give me a couple more minutes then.”

  A gouged-out patch of skin … a stimulus that causes circular epidermal exfoliation …

  Heating a small saucepan—a milk pan, say—and pressing it to the skin would probably cause a burn that would peel off in a neat circle. It was hardly enough to kill anyone, though.

  “What about my lunch?” blurted out Ioka.

  Reiko’s mind was on other things, and the question didn’t register immediately.

  “Huh? You?” she retorted eventually. “You damn well pay for yourself.”

  Circular epidermal exfoliation …

  “Need a clue?”

  “Not if I have to fork out for the most expensive lunch to get it.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m a nice guy, so just this once, I’ll accept the second-best lunch.”

  “Don’t know why you think the standard menu isn’t good enough for you
.”

  “Don’t try to nickel-and-dime me! The standard menu comes with miso soup; I prefer clear suimono soup.”

  “Oh, all right. Give me my first clue.”

  Kunioku adjusted his glasses on his nose.

  “The circular epidermal exfoliation is not the direct result of an external stimulus. What do I mean by that? I mean that the actual weapon used wasn’t circular in shape. Something was done to the victim; the circular lesion was a secondary effect of that.”

  So I’m looking for an external stimulus that causes circular epidermal exfoliation as a secondary effect.…

  The burn idea seemed like a good one. Kunioku, though, had been very specific about the weapon itself not being circular. Reiko needed to get that shape out of her mind.

  An external stimulus—a weapon—whose effect on the body has no relation to its own shape.…

  “I’ve got it,” she exclaimed. “Electrocution.”

  “Is that your best guess?”

  “Yes. With electrocution victims, there’s no internal damage, just like this case. The circular epidermal exfoliation is what’s left of an electric mark.”

  “Bravo, my dear,” said Kunioku.

  “Hang on a minute,” interrupted Ioka. “Was there a high enough current at the crime scene to cause actual death?”

  Kunioku gave Reiko a look: “Go on, justify your theory.”

  “All right, Ioka. The standard domestic voltage here in Japan is one hundred volts. That’s quite enough to kill someone—provided the conditions are right. In this case, the point of entry for the electricity was the pharynx, close to the carotid artery. Skin resistance to electric current in this part of the body is extremely low. The circular burn on the neck is what is called an electric mark or a Joule burn. In most cases of electric shock, electric marks are often the only visible sign of injury.

  “The next thing is the current,” she went on. “Now, your typical household electric current is certainly not high. Paradoxically, though, that can be more dangerous. The heart is a tangled mass of muscle fibers called myocardial fibers. As with any other muscle, not all the fibers in the heart are aligned in the same direction. When you apply a standard household electrical current to the body, it flows down the myocardial fibers pointing in one direction, but not down those pointing in the other. What do you think the result is?”

  Ioka meekly shook his head.

  “Ventricular fibrillation. Unable to beat at a fixed rhythm, the heart muscles start to twitch erratically rather than pump blood. When the current is high, the heart gets a single, massive shock, but it can recover—provided the shock doesn’t last long. That’s why plenty of people who get electrocuted live to tell the tale. If ventricular fibrillation takes place—remember, that’s what an ordinary household current causes—it’s almost impossible for the heart to resume normal function. Some parts of the heart are moving and other parts are paralyzed, so the heart stops working as a pump. When the blood’s no longer being pumped around the body, death happens in a matter of minutes.”

  “Superb. Ten out of ten.”

  “Thank you. You’ve been a wonderful audience.”

  But speechifying had made Reiko aware of something. It was that vague sense of unease that the sight of the torso had given her. She realized now that it had nothing to do with the riddle of how the man had been killed. She had successfully pinpointed the cause of death, but the gray fog shrouding her mind showed no sign of lifting.

  What’s bugging me?

  “Help me with something, Doctor. I’m not sure how to put this … Killing someone by pressing into them an electrode that would cause such a large electric mark is hardly an easy way to commit murder. In physical and technical terms, I mean.”

  Kunioku’s brow wrinkled in thought.

  “I think there’s only one commonsense explanation possible. The murderer straddled the victim; he was holding an exposed electrode that was plugged into a power source in his right hand; he pressed this electrode for thirty seconds, maybe more, to the victim’s throat. Depending on whether the skin was wet or dry, the effect varies. When the skin’s wet, death occurs faster.”

  No, that’s not what’s bugging me, dammit.

  Beside her, Ioka groaned. Was he a psychic, feeling her pain?

  “So you think the murder took place in the garage?” Ioka said.

  That’s another issue we need to sort out.

  “I think the flow of events justify our making that assumption,” Reiko replied.

  “There was a power outlet in there.”

  “What about an exposed electrode?”

  Hang on a moment!

  “Now that you mention it.…”

  Reiko pulled the investigation file out of her bag and started flipping through it.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Be patient.”

  It was something they’d found in the garage.

  “There was an exposed electrode. See this electric saw here? See how the cord’s been repaired halfway along? What if it was still broken when the crime took place, with no insulation tape on it?”

  Kunioku peered at the photograph.

  “Then we’d have our exposed electrode.”

  No, that’s not it. That’s not what’s bugging me either. It’s something about the torso itself.

  Turning her attention back to the photograph of the body, Reiko stared at it intently.

  This is what’s left of the body of Kenichi Takaoka—electrocuted, chopped up, and thrown into the river. The body of Kenichi Takaoka—cut into pieces and dumped in the river, with one hand left in the van. This is his torso. Kenichi Takaoka’s torso.

  The three words went round and round in her head like a mantra.

  “Lieutenant Reiko, are you all right?”

  Kenichi Takaoka’s torso.

  Kenichi Takaoka’s torso.

  Kenichi Takaoka’s torso.

  “Sweetheart!”

  “Lieutenant, hello? Can you hear me?”

  That’s it! There, on the right of the abdomen, just below the chest, a scar. Looks like it could be from gallbladder surgery.

  “Lieutenant? Hello?”

  “Hey, sweetheart, we’re talking to you.”

  He’s got a surgical scar. A surgical scar.

  “Are you listening to us?”

  “Lieutenant, I love you,” crowed Ioka.

  A surgical scar on Takaoka’s torso? That doesn’t make sense.

  “It’s hopeless. She’s not hearing a word we’re saying.”

  “Lieutenant, do you mind if I touch your titties … like so?”

  Ioka, you filthy worm!

  There was a crunch as Reiko’s hand plowed into Ioka’s nose.

  Bizarrely, that was also the moment she found what she’d been groping after all this time. She felt as though a gust of fresh air had blown through her mind.

  That’s it! I remember now. The autopsy report mentioned scarring from surgery. But it doesn’t make sense.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Ioka was whimpering. “That really hurt.”

  “The old backhand chop,” said Kunioku, chortling merrily. “You got the good old backhand chop. Serves you right.”

  That’s what’s been bugging me all this time. It was weird how the report mentioned the cholecystitis—but absolutely nothing else.

  The gray mist evaporated. Her mind was clear now.

  “Hey, monkey man, your nose is bleeding.”

  “Funny thing is, doc, I’m kind of enjoying it.”

  She now knew exactly what mystery she needed to solve: the torso in the river wasn’t Kenichi Takaoka’s after all.

  Reiko snatched her cell phone out of her pocket.

  “Ah,” Kunioku exclaimed. “She’s back in the land of the living.”

  “Sure looks like it,” said Ioka.

  Reiko was calling Hayama.

  “Hi, Nori. It’s me.”

  “Hi, boss. What’s up?”

 
Out of the corner of her eye, Reiko noticed that Ioka was clutching his nose and that his eyes were wet with tears. What was wrong with him now?

  “Which precinct was it that handled Kazutoshi Naito’s car crash?”

  “Kawaguchi in Saitama.”

  “Who went there to collect Naito’s fingerprints from the accident report? Was it you?”

  “It was Sergeant Ishikura.”

  Of course it was. Of course. Of course.

  “Oh, right. What are you up to right now, Nori?”

  “Same old, same old. Keeping an eye on Kimie Naito.”

  “Ask your precinct partner to handle that by himself, or call the case coordinator and get them to send out a replacement team. I want you to find Ishikura and go with him to Kawaguchi Precinct. The fact is…”

  Hayama seemed to grasp the meaning of what Reiko was asking him to do almost before the words were out of her mouth.

  3

  Kusaka paid another visit to the offices of Kinoshita Construction.

  “Do you know anything about the sort of places Tobe hangs out in?”

  Kinoshita, the CEO, tilted his head to one side, a puzzled expression on his face.

  “I think Tobe has a live-in girlfriend. She might know.”

  “Yes he does. We arrested her yesterday for the possession and use of amphetamines.”

  Kinoshita looked shocked.

  “Amphetamines? That’s not good.”

  “What about women apart from Tobe’s girlfriend? Can you think of any?”

  “Other women?” repeated Kinoshita in a pensive voice. After a brief pause, he gave Kusaka the names of several insurance saleswomen, but none of them were new to Kusaka.

  “What I’m after are women who work in bars and hostess clubs—those sorts of places.”

  “Tobe once took me to a club in Shinjuku called Rose, if that’s any help.”

  Kusaka had already been there.

  “How about other people—friends, business associates? Or how about a lawyer? Tobe may not have a criminal record, but he must have been on the verge of criminality from time to time.”

  “A lawyer? I’m afraid I don’t know of one.”

  In the end, Kusaka got no new information from his visit to Kinoshita Construction that morning.