The Hunter

by Asa Nonami

  And that wasn't all: she couldn't imagine he was any good in bed.

  I bet he goes through the motions, managed to knock his wife up a time or three. God, I wonder what she looks like.

  Unless she focused on inane thoughts like these, Takako was liable to let out a huge yawn at any moment. But just then the meeting that would end their long day began, and all thought of sleep was instantly swept aside. A photograph of the victim was passed out.

  "The photograph you have in your hands was shown to Sadako Kitayama, a person of interest in the case, yesterday, and she confirmed that it was Takuma Sugawara beyond a doubt."

  Two days before, when someone had contacted investigation headquarters saying she had an idea who the victim might be, and the name Takuma Sugawara first surfaced, everyone expected the hunt for the killer to take on new life. By the end of the day, the photograph of Sugawara had been obtained, and yesterday morning an in-depth probe of his background and situation was ready to be launched. What held things up was the discovery that Sugawara was not his actual name.

  "Kitayama had no knowledge of the name Teruo Hara. She claims she had no idea he was using an alias, but didn't seem surprised to hear about it. All she said when confronted with that information was, T see.'"

  Sadako Kitayama was a forty-four-year-old housewife who had arranged to meet Sugawara at the restaurant on the night of the fire. She had managed to avoid the conflagration by arriving a half hour late, but when the next day came and went without word from him, she grew worried and on a hunch went to the police. She insisted that the victim was a "mere acquaintance," and that all she really knew about him was his cellphone number. Why didn't she check on him right away? Why wait till two days after the fire to report him missing? What was there to hesitate about? Her answer was, "We didn't have a close relationship."

  "She's meeting a younger guy at that time of night. What for, if not to fuck him?" whispered a detective.

  The comment was met with muffled laughter. Takako thought the detective was probably right, but she pretended not to hear. Suppose she turned around to express her agreement, what then? They would only stiffen with awkwardness and clam up. After all she'd been through, words like "fuck" were hardly enough to throw her off balance, but male detectives had a tendency to worry about her tender sensibility.

  "Our person of interest also said she never knew that the one means of contact she had with Sugawara, his cellphone, was actually registered in the name of another woman."

  Because of the extensive damage to the corpse, Kitayama was not asked to identify the body. Instead, she was asked to describe the man she was supposed to meet, noting any distinctive physical characteristics. Kitayama testified that she believed Sugawara had two gold lower left molars, and she added that about ten days earlier, he had been bitten on the leg by a stray dog. These descriptions matched the body in the morgue. Nothing about either the bite marks on the victim's thigh and ankle or about the false teeth had been released to the media. And so it was concluded that the man whom Kitayama was to meet that night was in fact the victim. Thanks to her testimony, the previously nameless corpse was identified as Takuma Sugawara, age around thirty, employed as manager of a model agency.

  Yes, it all fits.

  Staring at the photograph of the victim when he was alive, Takako surmised that he was just the kind of person to set up a rendezvous in an all-night restaurant with a frustrated housewife dreaming of an amorous fling. He had the looks, for one thing. And if he was juggling two names like that, and carrying around the old charge of assault with intent, he probably was up to no good. But what had he done to get himself killed in such a bizarre and cruel way?

  Watanuki continued his report: "Sugawara, or rather Hara, came from Shioya-gun, in Tochigi Prefecture, a little mountain village near the Fuku-shima border. His parents and a married older brother still reside there. They are farmers who do forestry work on the side. Police in Shioya-gun report that Teruo Hara ran away from home at age sixteen; he never returned or bothered to contact his parents. That might explain why no family member has come forward to claim the body."

  That Takuma Sugawara was the alias for Teruo Hara was discovered in this way: Sugawara's cellphone number, obtained from Sadako Kitayama, was found to belong not to Sugawara but to a woman owner of a bar. Said bar owner confirmed that Takuma Sugawara was a friend who was borrowing her phone. Since she had gone so far as to lend him her cellphone (naturally, she was questioned about the terms of her friendship), she had apparently known Sugawara rather well, perhaps more intimately than did Sadako Kitayama. The bar owner provided Sugawara's home phone number. That number was registered in Sugawara's name, and it also yielded his home address.

  The lease for the apartment at this address was made out in the name of Takuma Sugawara, but through the woman who had signed the lease as his guarantor—a manager of a beauty salon with several branches—the name Teruo Hara came to light. His certificate of ward residence also turned up the name Teruo Hara, at the same time revealing his place of birth.

  "Hara lived about an eight-minute walk from the JR Kunitachi station. His apartment was expensive, with a monthly rent of ¥260,000. He lived alone, and judging from the furnishings and decor, he maintained a rather extravagant lifestyle. The apartment, however, gave no clues as to his life history or his private life; in that way, it was like a hotel room. There was no date book, no photos, or anything of the kind. No driver's license, no passport, no health insurance card."

  Even getting this one photograph of him had not been easy. After questioning, a woman who had had dealings with him found a photo of the two of them together—her image was cropped to maintain her privacy. But there was nothing else to go on.

  People, in the course of going about normal life, left traces of their lives behind wherever they went—a daily flow of rubbish that could be used as clues to the life they lived. But the search of the victim's apartment failed to produce any clues to his identity, leading one to think that either he had reason to be careful about leaving such information lying around, or he had a hideout somewhere else.

  Hearing all this, Takako felt a pang of jealousy; while the team tracking down the victim's identity had been running around and discovering all these details, she and Takizawa had been mired in taking down statements from injured witnesses. But fruitless effort was part of every investigation. Even if you finally came across a loose end in the big ball of yarn that constituted a case, and tugged on it for all you were worth, it hardly ever led anywhere. In order to reel in the one thread they were after, the investigators had to unravel numberless threads to no avail.

  ". . . and when the photograph of Hara was shown to residents of his apartment building, barely one or two could make a positive identification. Further, the building has electronic security at its entrance, so there is no superintendent who could speak about his comings and goings."

  After running away from home at sixteen, why had Teruo Hara changed his name, and what sort of life had he led thereafter? How could he afford to live in an apartment costing ¥260,000 in rent? What kind of man was he that he was surrounded by so many different women?

  You really had something going for yourself, didn't you? I bet a whole bunch of people had it in for you.

  That night, as soon as she got home, Takako flopped down on her bed and lay there, face down, without thinking. Her legs felt heavy, and her toes throbbed with pain. Her lower back ached. This morning before setting out, she had stuck a disposable pocket warmer under her clothes to fend off the cold, so she shouldn't have gotten chilled; still, it felt as if her pelvis were out of joint. They had walked around all day long, so it was only natural—and yet at such times Takako couldn't help thinking ruefully how she was growing older. She could tell she didn't have the resilience she'd had in her twenties. Back then, even if she came home tired, she would never have fallen into her bed right away like this. As the years wore on, it would only get harder to maintain her stamina. What
a gloomy thought.

  It's partly mental, too, that's for sure. Who wouldn't be a wreck after spending all day with that guy?

  She felt so tired it was like her body was made of cotton; and yet as she relaxed a bit, thoughts of the victim, Hara, whom she had spent all day thinking about, to the point of exhaustion, began gnawing at her again.

  Stupid man. Who would give you a belt booby-trapped like that?

  Takako turned over, emitting a sound that was somewhere between a cough and a sigh, almost a groan; lying on her back, she looked up at the ceiling. Once again the muscles in her shoulders all the way down to her loins were taut, like a drum. She worried that one big yawn might send her back muscles into a cramp.

  Was it a woman? I bet a woman gave it to you.

  He seemed like a man used to receiving gifts. The owner of his cellphone, for starters, plus the guarantor for his apartment and the person he went to meet on the day of his death—older women, all of them. That isn't entirely normal.

  What had until today been only a pathetic, charred victim now had a name and, thanks to the photograph, a face, and the secrets of that man's life were now starting to be laid bare. Whether he wanted them to be or not. The investigation would pool all the team efforts together, and he would be stripped naked, his hidden life revealed. How strange it was, she thought. The first time she learned his name, his life was already over. And from now on, however familiar she might become with the minutiae of his life, she could never come in actual contact with him.

  Imagine spending all this time thinking so hard about a dead man!

  It was a wretched business. It would be different if she were consumed with worry on his behalf, but the man was a charred crisp. Mentally she addressed him: "I've got to get serious and find out who did this to you— because until I do, I'm stuck with that awful old man."

  Takizawa was maddening. He hardly ever opened his mouth unless it was to be snide. It was always "Bully for you" or "Thanks for caring"; he had no idea how to treat a person decently. If he'd only let her have even one happy memory of being his partner, she would be satisfied, and her opinion of him would soar; but he was too short-sighted, or just too set in his ways, to think of such a thing. He was an ass, a tight ass, that's what he was.

  There's a man for you. What did I expect?

  Sighing, she pulled herself out of bed. The suit she had on didn't need cleaning yet. Then she spoke the words out loud: "It's for your sake, Teruo Hara, that I stay well groomed and walk around with that penguin!" How many women friends Hara may have had, there was no telling; but it made her feel funny to think that she, more than any of them, would probably come closest to understanding his true self.

  It was not until Takako was about to turn off the lights that she noted the blinking light on her answering machine. In her exhaustion she'd forgotten to check.

  "Hello, Takako?" It was a familiar voice. "This is your mother. New Year's came and went without any word from you, so I got worried. Why don't you come home to visit us once in a while? Your father and Koko would love to see you, and Tomoko is. . . well, call me back, all right? I'll tell you about it then. Anyway, how are things? Are you OK? I know you won't listen to me, but you're not doing anything dangerous, are you? You know, really, I just wish that when you first said you wanted to be a policewoman I had put my foot down, because lately I—"

  The tape ran out while she was still talking. Her mother's messages were always like this, but she never called back to finish what she'd been saying. Her mother no doubt found it frustrating, too, but for Takako, listening to such half-finished messages was unsettling, like a bout of indigestion. That was her mother's way.

  Takako arranged a cushion at the foot of the bed to prop up her legs. This was the best way to get rid of the heaviness and swelling in her feet. What could be going on with her youngest sister, she wondered. She and Tomoko, who was five years her junior, had always gotten along well.

  Call home. I have to remember to call home.

  When Takako first suggested becoming a policewoman to her family, her mother opposed the idea violently. It was quite common for members of the family to work as civil servants or in the medical or teaching profession; that's what almost all of them did. Apart from the stability of such careers, it was part of the tradition of not overtly chasing after profit, not living for monetary gain. Takako's father was a government employee, and her parents had met at work.

  From the time she was a little girl, Takako had assumed that she, too, would be a civil servant one day; only later did she make up her mind to become a policewoman. Not because she had it in for bad guys, or because she wanted to fight for justice. Nothing like that. Rather, she liked the idea of doing something with her aikido, which she had taken up as a way of steeling herself against asthma; in addition, the uniform appealed to her. Sitting all day at a desk didn't. If she could, she wanted to be active, lead a life filled with variety. Such had been her motivation in the beginning.

  When Takako graduated from junior college and entered the police training academy, her mother was half hysterical in opposition, standing beside her as she packed to move to the dormitory and weeping bitterly. Her father had no problem with her decision. Although for all she knew, he may have thought that as long as she was a civil servant, anything would do.

  Women who sought to become policewomen generally were strong-willed and had a mean streak, Takako soon discovered. Even though the academy was an all-female environment, it was worlds away from the peaceful, fun-filled, and easygoing atmosphere of junior college. These women lacked a shred of any kind of fellowship. Beneath the protective armor of a strong sense of justice or mission, they were startlingly feminine. They traded on an integrity rooted in a deep inferiority; they put on high-minded airs that were filled with vulgarity and greed; they used filthy words without the least embarrassment. Full of swagger and self-consciousness, they acted with the conviction that they alone were right. They were a jealous bunch of bullies. What on earth made them want to enter the police force, Takako wondered. During her six months in the dormitory, it was made abundantly clear to Takako, more times than she could count, that the enemy was not the opposite sex; it was her own gender.

  What kept Takako going, besides her own stubbornness, was the merciful presence of a few inspiring friends and seniors. One in particular had continually displayed qualities of single-minded purpose, seriousness, and purity, teaching Takako by example that it was possible to be a first-rate policewoman without ceasing to be ladylike. If not for her, Takako would probably have given up long ago.

  On graduating from the police academy, she was transferred to a new dormitory near the police station where she was assigned. After further training, she had gone out on patrol in a squad car, as a member of the Traffic Division. While other young women her age were continuing their studies, or dressing in pastel suits and learning to apply natural makeup, Takako was starting out at the bottom of a rigidly disciplinarian and hierarchical world.

  "So now you're a cop! Actually, it kind of suits you."

  That's what her junior college friends would say, with a mischievous smile, when they got together. And then they would reveal how they used to be surprised by her obstinacy, or how inflexible they always thought she was. Aghast to hear this, and saddened to discover the gap between them—after all this time, they were still like fluttering butterflies—Takako was at the same time reassured that her becoming a policewoman was not a mistake. As a fledgling, dewy-eyed officer, she was full of ideals; she was on fire with a sense of mission, determined to uphold the law—even if that meant being somewhat inflexible—and to maintain social order.

  But as she patrolled the streets in her Traffic Division vehicle, certain things that she had been blind to as an ordinary citizen now became clear. She discovered that simply riding in a black-and-white car, and wearing her uniform, caused men's attitudes toward her to undergo a drastic change. They would either assume a very low profile, or come ri
ght out and tell her that since so-and-so in such-and-such a division was a pal of theirs, she'd better back off. Or when she preparing to have a car towed, they'd protest that they were just trying to make a living, sister, and what was the big deal.

  Really, it took all kinds. Back when she was enforcing no-parking laws, she experienced all sorts of horrors that she could laugh about now. True, her senior officers had often been spiteful; one had been the perfect picture of an ogress. Yet overall, her first experience on the police force had been enjoyable. She and her like-minded colleagues would get together and talk about the pitiful cases they came across each day, always finding something to laugh about. They had talked about the normal things that interest young women, too: which male officer was especially good-looking and whom he was going out with, or which spinster officer was having an affair with a younger patrolman. Even if they wore police uniforms, inside they were scarcely different from your average young O.L., what they called "office ladies."

  We were embarrassingly, scandalously young.