Tattoo Murder Case

by Akimitsu Takagi

  “All right, Mr. Yoshioka, I think I’ve got the picture. Thank you very much for all your help.” Daiyu Matsushita wrapped up his questioning and immediately began conferring with the public prosecutor, who had just arrived.

  30

  Kenzo, meanwhile, was rambling aimlessly around the overgrown jungle of a garden, thinking about this latest death. The main question, of course, was whether the death of Takezo Mogami was suicide. At first glance, there didn’t appear to be any reason to think it might have been murder.

  But what could have driven Takezo to commit suicide? Had he destroyed his beloved Kinue Nomura, and then decided to take his own life in despair? Or was he simply unwilling to face the almost inevitable consequences of arrest, trial, and lifelong incarceration—even death? Kenzo had problems with both hypotheses.

  If Takezo wanted to commit suicide, why did he choose this godforsaken place? Kenzo found that impossible to comprehend. If I were going to commit suicide, he thought, I would choose the place with care. Kenzo wasn’t merely theorizing. He had given considerable thought to the matter during the worst of his “black dog” depressions.

  As far as he could tell, suicidal people were often in a strangely romantic mood. It was part of the reason why people still flocked to famous suicide spots as Mount Mihara and Kegon Waterfall—the lure of tradition, and the desire to decorate one’s last moments with a bit of beautiful scenery. Why would Takezo deliberately choose such a gloomy place? His own home or Kinue’s place in Kitazawa would have been much more comfortable and convenient.

  “Why was the gun loaded with six live bullets? People who are about to commit suicide are sometimes oddly frugal, just as those who went to Mount Mihara, intending to fling themselves into the volcano, were always terribly careful to buy a one-way ticket. Perhaps Takezo had kept the gun fully loaded at all times; after all, saving money was the least of his worries.

  And, if Takezo did kill Kinue, why did he dismember the body and cart off just the torso, leaving the bathroom locked from the inside? If Kinue’s missing torso had been discovered along with Takezo’s body, everything would have made sense, but that hadn’t happened.

  In spite of his reservations, Kenzo found himself leaning toward the theory that Takezo had committed suicide. The gun was Takezo’s, and it was hard to understand how someone could have been killed so easily with his own gun. After all, if he brought a gun for purposes other than suicide, he must have been expecting some sort of trouble. Yet there were no signs of a struggle, and it was difficult to imagine that a conscious person would docilely sit down and allow a foe to place a gun in his hand and fire a bullet into his brain.

  If you embraced the murder theory, however, it was conceivable that Takezo had come to the house with someone he trusted, and had been attacked by his companion. Surely Takezo wouldn’t have come to such a remote place to meet a stranger, or an enemy. But if he were with a trusted friend or colleague, why would he bring a gun in the first place?

  Or maybe Takezo was killed somewhere else, then brought here? No sooner had that thought crossed Kenzo’s mind than he ruled it out, for there would have been no way to place a body already stiffening with rigor mortis in such a natural-looking position. And there wouldn’t have been so much blood. It was truly maddening. Every possible hypothesis had an undeniable counterargument.

  “You’re concentrating awfully hard on something.” A hearty voice suddenly boomed and Kenzo jumped. The voice belonged to the heroic-looking Officer Ishikawa, master of the martial arts.

  Kenzo laughed weakly. “I was just thinking about this latest case,” he said. “What do you think, Officer Ishikawa? Did Takezo commit suicide, or could he have been murdered?”

  “It’s really too soon to make that determination. I’m just an old-fashioned, by-the-book, physical-evidence sort of cop. You’ll have to rely on your brother for the more cerebral stuff.” Pointing a large-knuckled forefinger at his own oversize cranium, the policeman gave a self-deprecating smile.

  “But you must have some idea,” Kenzo persisted. “Even if you don’t fully understand the case, don’t you have some sort of intuition about it?”

  “Oh, if you just want a hunch, here’s one. It may look like suicide, but I think this was a perfect murder.”

  “What makes you think so?” Kenzo asked excitedly.

  “The dust inside the storeroom.”

  “The dust? What about it?”

  “Well, this storehouse hasn’t been used for many months, right? So you would expect to see a much greater accumulation of dust on the floor. But instead it appears as if a great many people have trampled over this floor, so that any individual footprints have been obliterated. It wasn’t the police who stomped around in here; it was like this when we found the body. So even if we wanted to compare Takezo’s footprints with these, we wouldn’t be able to lift a single clear footprint from the entire plac.”

  “I see. I never even noticed.” A true expert really is a thing apart, Kenzo thought, looking at Officer Ishikawa with renewed respect and admiration. “So you’re saying that the murderer deliberately trampled all over the dust, to erase his own footprints?”

  “That’s how it looks to me. Oh, excuse me. Duty calls.” Someone was shouting Officer Ishikawa’s name, and he ran off toward the main house.

  Looking around for someone else to talk to, Kenzo spotted the young employee of the Mogami Group, who was loitering about nearby, evidently wondering whether to stay or go. “It’s really terrible that you’ve lost your boss now, on top of everything,” Kenzo said in a sympathetic tone. “That must be disheartening.”

  “Oh, thank you very much. I’m deeply grateful for your concern.” Ichiro Yoshioka looked a bit startled when Kenzo addressed him, but he answered in a very polite way. Maybe he thinks I’m a police officer, Kenzo thought, suppressing a smile. He did nothing to dispel that erroneous impression.

  The young man went on in an agitated manner: “I just wish I knew what really happened. Was my boss murdered, or did he kill himself? Do you suppose the same person who killed Miss Nomura might have committed this crime as well?”

  “It’s too soon to make that determination,” Kenzo began, shamelessly recycling the words of Officer Ishikawa. “Right now we’re wondering about the state of the dust in the storeroom, as it relates to potential evidence, footprints and so on.”

  Ichiro Yoshioka looked bewildered. “There’s no significance about the dust,” he said. “Until recently, we were using that building for storage, so there’s been a lot of traffic in and out.”

  “What?” Kenzo was dumfounded.

  “We had put some building supplies in there—sheets of galvanized iron, barrels of nails, bags of cement, stuff like that—but recently we began moving them elsewhere. So there would be no reason to expect the dust to have piled up undisturbed.”

  “What are you saying!” Kenzo felt as if he had been hit on the head with a nightstick. So much for the perfect-murder theory, he thought. Ichiro Yoshioka excused himself and Kenzo was left staring up at the brilliant summer sky, shaking his head in confusion.

  ***

  All that day, officers combed the property and poked around the surrounding neighborhood. They didn’t find a single thing that would qualify as a direct clue. Takezo’s body was taken away to the forensic medicine lab of a university, where an autopsy was performed. The results of the autopsy merely served to reconfirm what had already been deduced: (1) The time of death was either the twenty-seventh or the twenty-eighth of the month; (2) the bullet removed from Takezo’s brain was a perfect match for his gun, and (3) the sole cause of death was the bullet, which had penetrated the skull of the victim.

  Meanwhile, at Metropolitan Police Headquarters in Setagaya, detectives were choosing sides on the theoretical question of murder versus suicide. The most popular theory was that Takezo had killed Kinue in a fit of jealous anger and then decided to flee. Holing up temporarily in the abandoned storehouse, he had gradually been o
vercome by feelings of guilt and finally, unable to stand the qualms of conscience, he had turned his pistol upon himself.

  Daiyu Matsushita kept up a bluff, cheerful front, but his heart was filled with cold despair. Whether Takezo was the murderer or not, Chief Matsushita had been clinging to the belief that the mystery of Kinue Nomura’s death would be solved once. Takezo was found. Now he felt as though his main line of hope had been severed.

  The following day, Counselor Sayama opened the seal on Takezo Mogami’s will. Like the autopsy, the contents of the will did not produce any great surprises. Takezo had left half his property to his younger brother Hisashi, and one third to Kinue Nomura. If either of those two parties should die before Kinue bore children, that person’s share would go to the surviving party. The remaining one-sixth of Takezo’s fortune went to his uncle, Professor Hayakawa, earmarked for research funds.

  With those simple lines, Hisashi Mogami became the possessor of an enormous fortune. If finding Kinue’s killer had been a matter of motive alone, Hisashi would most certainly have been a person of interest. However, Hisashi had an unshakable alibi, and Daiyu Matsushita had no choice but to cross him off the list of possible suspects. Unfortunately, Takezo Mogami had died before the police could question him about Kinue’s murder. Too bad there’s no way to deliver a subpoena to the afterworld, Daiyu thought ruefully.

  There appeared to be ample reason to suspect both Gifu Inazawa and Professor Hayakawa, but the police couldn’t hold them without concrete evidence. Reluctantly, Daiyu Matsushita placed his signature and stamp on the forms that would secure the release of both. Of the possible threads, four had been cut along the way. Not a single clue had turned up as to the whereabouts of the two remaining threads—Ryokichi Usui and the unidentified woman whose fingerprints were found at Kinue’s house.

  Short of having the mystery woman waltz into his office, the elusive yakuza seemed like his last, best hope. “Where the devil is Ryokichi Usui?” Daiyu muttered.

  31

  Three doors away from the Matsushita house lived a firefighter who was extremely colorful, in every sense of the word. He was a young man in his late thirties, a true Edoite, Tokyo born and bred. As was customary for men in his outdoor, dangerous type of work—firemen, roofers, high-altitude construction workers—he had a splendid tattoo on his back. The tattoo was a portrayal of Benten Kozo, a tattooed transvestite robber celebrated in Kabuki drama, who had such a beautiful face that he was able to masquerade convincingly as a woman. The fireman himself had a rough, manly, rather squashed-looking face. His name was Katsuo Goto, but he was known around the neighborhood as Chokatsu, “Tattooed Katsu,” or Katsu for short.

  On a bright Sunday morning Chokatsu stopped Kenzo on the street. They exchanged bows, and Chokatsu immediately began chattering away. “Hey, what’s the deal with that mutilation murder case in Kitazawa? Have they caught the killer yet?”

  “Not yet,” Kenzo replied.

  “It must be hard on your brother, having such a tough case to solve. And it’s really nasty the way the murderer cut up the body and then ran off with the trunk. That gives me nightmares.” Chokatsu stuck his hand inside his kimono as if to make sure his own tattoos were still intact.

  “That’s right, Katsu, you’d better be careful! The next time you break some poor woman’s heart she might cut you up, too, and cart your tattooed torso away.” Kenzo was in his manic mode, but he was glad to hear himself making a joke about something that had caused him so much misery.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Chokatsu replied. “I’m not that much of a ladykiller… oops, pardon the pun. But seriously, what’s the story? Why would anyone dismember a body and carry away the tattoo like that?”

  “Ah, that is the question.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad I ran into you. I’ve been thinking about stopping by your place to say that I might have some information about the case. Why don’t you come inside?”

  Feeling as if he were boarding a ferryboat, Kenzo stepped across the raised threshold of Chokatsu’s quaint little house. The entry hall was adorned with a large matoi—a sort of tubular banner carried aloft by firemen on parade. Inside the cozy, well-built cottage was a Shinto-style altar, replete with zigzag paper streamers and porcelain statues of foxes, which dominated the main room. The overall effect was like something out of a folk tale.

  Kenzo mumbled the customary courtesies and Chokatsu replied in ritualistic kind, saying, “The place is a foul sty, but please make yourself at home.”

  Kenzo took a seat on the proffered cushion in front of an oblong hibachi brazier. Without wasting any more time on small talk, he said lightly, “I’ve seen your Benten Kozo tattoo plenty of times at the public bath, but I was wondering, when did you get it?”

  “Let me see,” mused Chokatsu. “I think it must have been fifteen or sixteen years ago when I got this tattoo from Horiuno the Second, over in Kanda.”

  “I’ve noticed that your tattoo doesn’t have the artist’s signature on it.”

  “Yeah, unfortunately, I ran out of funds shortly before the work was completed. After that my body forgot the taste of the needle, and the longer I waited the harder it was to go back.”

  “So you’re saying you couldn’t stand the pain?”

  “Oh, sure, I won’t pretend that wasn’t part of it. I mean, you’re letting someone poke your flesh with sharp needles, and shove pigments under the raw skin. No anaesthetics are used, so it isn’t exactly a day at the beach. And during the entire process you’re about half sick all the time, feeling nauseated and weak and running a fever for months at a time. I was still young in those days, and when I did get hold of some more money, instead of spending it inflicting pain on myself, I decided it would be a lot more enjoyable to use it to have some fun, if you know what I mean.” Chokatsu held up his little finger in a gesture denoting romantic liaisons, then added, “The truth is, it wouldn’t have taken that much more money or suffering to add the artist’s signature, when I had come so far already, but in those days the authorities were being really strict about busting tattoo parlors. After a while it was just too much trouble to go back.”

  The fireman gave a carefree laugh, and Kenzo chose that moment to cast his line into the waters. “Say, Katsu, what is the information you mentioned?”

  “Well, as you may know, Horiyasu, the father of the murdered Kinue Nomura, had two other children, and they were all tattooed. The eldest was a boy, Tsunetaro, and he had Jiraiya tattooed on his back. He became a tattoo artist himself, but he was fighting in the south and is listed as missing in action. Right?”

  “Yes, I’d heard that,” Kenzo said.

  “Wait a minute,” Chokatsu said. “Hey, O-Kané, come here’”

  Wiping her hands on her apron, Chokatsu’s wife O-Kané emerged from the kitchen. She was a plump-cheeked, white-skinned beauty in her late twenties who looked as if she might have been a geisha at one time. Given the whimsical folk-tale atmosphere of the Goto household, Kenzo wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that Chokatsu’s wife had turned into a talking fox. He stole a surreptitious peek at her kimono hem, but there was no sign of the bushy russet tail that was the hallmark of fox-possession.

  “Why, Mr. Matsushita, welcome,” O-Kané said in a soft voice. “Please forgive me, I haven’t even served you tea.”

  “Forget the tea, that can wait till later,” Chokatsu snapped, in the time-honored manner of Japanese husbands. “Hey, listen, it’s about the tattoo artist you’ve been going to in Shibuya.”

  O-Kané looked embarrassed by this sudden question. “Why, dear, what on earth are you thinking of, bringing up such a thing out of the blue, in front of Mr. Matsushita?”

  “Hey, relax, all right? This is no time to be putting on airs. Remember that dismemberment murder in Kitazawa? Mr. Matsushita’s brother is a police inspector, and he’s having a lot of trouble trying to solve it.”

  “Is that so?” Looking first at Chokatsu, then at Kenzo, O-Kané pulled up a green z
abuton cushion and sat down at the end of the low table. “Well, the tattoo artist I’ve been going to is called Tsune. I don’t know his last name. He was in combat in the Philippines or somewhere, and he was recently repatriated. I believe he’s only been back in Tokyo for about a month. He has a spectacular tattoo on his back of Jiraiya, the sorcerer.”

  When he heard those words, Kenzo felt like leaping to his feet and dancing around the room. He couldn’t be absolutely certain that it was the same person, but the name fit, the tattoos matched, and tattoo artist wasn’t exactly a run-of-the-mill occupation.

  “Where is that tattoo artist now?” Kenzo asked eagerly. “Won’t you please introduce me to him? If I could talk to him for a few minutes he might provide a clue to this case.” He was so excited about the possibility of talking to Tsunetaro Nomura that he was practically shouting.

  Chokatsu exchanged a worried look with his wife. “Well,” he said slowly, “the thing is, from his point of view, business is business. I have a hunch that if you stage a frontal attack like that, he might simply refuse to talk.”

  “But why would he? I mean, his sister’s been murdered!”

  “That may be so, but that sort of fellow tends to be a bit paranoid about anything having to do with the police. Tattooing is still illegal, as you know. To tell the truth, that’s why I’ve been hesitating about giving you this information. Look, how about this? How would it be if you went to see this guy as a private citizen, secretly, without saying anything to your brother at all?”

  “Fine,” Kenzo said, “let’s do it that way. I’ll just go on my own and see what happens. But I’ll need the address.”

  “If you promise not to tell your brother, I’ll be glad to take you there myself,” O-Kané said, but Kenzo could hear the reluctance in her voice.

  “I promise,” Kenzo said. “Are you getting a tattoo as well, O-Kané?”