by Unknown
“I see. You have our thanks. If this information is correct, we’ll arrange for a reward.”
“I look forward to working with you.”
Hashimoto exited Johnson’s dwelling, and shortly thereafter Muraki left, as well. They didn’t exchange a word until they had retraced their steps to the car.
“Muraki, you’re using a vampire as an informant?”
Muraki had anticipated this reaction.
“There’s no better source of information about vampiric crimes than a vampire. You must have seen that. When humans become vampires, most lose touch with their emotions, but some undergo the change without entirely losing their connection to humanity. Are you familiar with the theory that if the vampire factor is highly concentrated at the time the blood is drunk, the vampire retains more of his base human personality? Only those vampires possess the ability to hold direct conversations with human beings.”
“If that’s the case,” Hashimoto said, “no matter how much a vampire works at it, only those that excel at communication could adapt to society and follow in the footsteps of Europe’s elder vampires. An individual with a poor ability to communicate would soon find himself unable to adapt to society and be weeded out.”
“The vampires in the metropolitan area are granted legal protection. Natural selection doesn’t apply—vampires with whom it is difficult to come to a mutual understanding haven’t killed themselves off yet. Still, it’s a pain to correspond only with fellows like Jonathan. He has a pliant demeanor, but he’s obstinate. If what he says is true, there is a problem with VLC’s ability to keep things in check,” Muraki said. “To conclude that a murder is a suicide—we’ll be heaped with criticism asking what the hell the Vampire Squad was doing. This has to be resolved peacefully. With the police secure, and the vampires happy.”
“But something doesn’t make sense.”
“In what regard?”
“Rossmo’s formula. Kijima’s an uneducated vampire, so he wouldn’t know about Rossmo’s formula. So, he established a pattern. Proceeded in a logical manner.”
Muraki got the feeling that Hashimoto was holding something back, some sort of grave hint. But he wasn’t able to adeptly put it into words.
“When we get back shall we try to meet with the doctor?”
6.
The Amachi home was in the residential district of Azabu. It was a sizable three-story dwelling, but the building-to-land ratio was significant, and ensuring that there was space for visitor parking meant there was practically nothing in the way of a garden.
Yatsuyanagi parked his car in a visitor spot. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing in the first-floor garage. Had Rieko already come home? The outdoor electric unit was running, and the wattage meter near the garage was rotating smoothly.
Yatsuyanagi stood at the door unsure how to greet her, but in the end called out officially, “It’s Yatsuyanagi.” As though it had read his ID tag, the door unlocked. When he opened it the coolness that Yatsuyanagi had anticipated encountering was absent.
“Prop the door open to let in some fresh air and come upstairs,” came Rieko’s voice from the floor above him.
“Sorry to disturb you.” Yatsuyanagi reached down for the doorstop, and after cracking the door he humbly removed his shoes, changed into a pair of slippers, and headed toward the second-floor living room. The air was pregnant with heat. Rieko was wearing a suit, and a large tote bag had been carelessly placed on a chair.
“Sorry, my meeting ran late, so I just got home.”
Saying this, Rieko opened the window all the way. It was a south-facing window, which meant that the temperature in the approximately twenty-mat living room had soared above body temperature. The breeze flowed through the open window.
“You have a giant air conditioner over there—why not use it?”
“I hate the cold air from the A/C. Natural breeze is the best—that’s why I opened the window.”
As Rieko climbed to the third floor to change her clothes, Yatsuyanagi, with her permission, entered the kitchen and helped himself to some water. The kitchen was spacious. An island had been installed, as though to enable husband and wife to prepare food together. Yatsuyanagi firmly believed that his hunch was correct.
Rieko returned, having changed into jeans and a T-shirt. The married woman standing before him was not the girl Yatsuyanagi remembered. When Rieko offered him coffee, Yatsuyanagi lifted his glass of water. The two got down to business.
“So, what’s the news on Amachi? Something bad?”
“Amachi’s car has been found. It was among the items confiscated from a theft ring specializing in luxury automobiles. They say they nabbed it in the middle of the night from a parking lot in Azabu. They’re professionals—they dismantle electric cars and sell the parts overseas. So what we more accurately found was not the car, but rather some of its parts.”
“What do the police think?”
“It’s destruction of evidence! Ken’ichi’s blood was detected on the confiscated parts. But there’s nothing strange about finding the owner’s blood. As for how much blood he lost, we can’t tell, but it is still evidence.
“It may be true that had some novice disposed of the car, sooner or later it would have been discovered. Especially because it’s a luxury automobile. But when pros dismantle a car, they get rid of it securely. In fact, if we were just a little too late Amachi’s car could have ended up in Vietnam.”
“What are you saying—that Amachi’s been involved in some sort of crime?!”
“Before I answer your question, I want to confirm something.”
While Rieko was upstairs, Yatsuyanagi had gathered the remote controls to her household electronics and arranged them in a line nearby. Before Rieko could stop him, he switched on the LCD television.
“Just in time for the news. I’m guessing you knew that, too. The Inokashira Park incident was a grotesque affair—someone was stabbed in the chest with a stake. I expect that’s what they’ll be reporting on.”
After hearing that the news would address the vampire incident, Rieko made no move to stop him. Several of the station’s automated program advertisements played on the fifty-inch screen, and then the report began. “Today at 1 p.m. an undocumented vampire was discovered in an apartment on Mitaka’s Renjaku Street, and was dealt with by the police. This undocumented vampire appears to be the suspect in a series of vampiric crimes, and the police department is in the midst of an investigation.”
Rieko appeared shocked upon hearing that the undocumented vampire had been dealt with.
“What do they mean when they say the vampire has been dealt with?”
“While resisting arrest the vampire injured the officer who was attempting to apprehend him, allowing the officer to use deadly force. The vampire’s name is Satoshi Kijima, and going only on what the Vampire Squad knows he is responsible for eight criminal incidents. On that basis alone he was a dangerous vampire.
“In the first five incidents he used a knife in an attempt to conceal that he had drunk the blood of his victims. But there was something different about the most recent three incidents. Why had he staked his victims?”
“I hear humans can’t comprehend vampire psychology because of our different brain structures. We can’t understand their behavior, but it doesn’t seem all that mysterious,” Rieko said.
“Incomprehensible behavior and irrational behavior are two different things. This is the rational explanation: The rogue vampire committed eight crimes, each time using a knife to wound his victims before drinking their blood. And in the most recent three incidents only, a second party appeared at the crime scenes after the vampire was finished and drove stakes through the hearts of the victims.”
“That seems improbable,” Rieko argued, staring into Yatsuyanagi’s eyes. The woman hadn’t changed, he thought. Though she was on the defensive, she remained poised for attack.<
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“You say that after the rogue vampire carried out his crimes another party drove the stakes through their hearts,” Rieko said. “But how would this person have known about the vampiric crimes? Do you mean that they knew where the vampire lived and followed him around? Ordinarily anyone who did this would themselves fall victim to a vampire attack.”
“This person wouldn’t need to know the vampire’s address or anything like that. They would just have to know where the victims reside.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rossmo’s formula—that is, regional profiling—is a technique used in criminal investigations to compute where a repeat offender resides. It isn’t that complex a formula. A university-educated person could do it. When it’s reliable, the real criminal’s address falls within the area determined by Rossmo’s formula.”
“And?”
“Now, let’s assume there was a human who took notice of the undocumented vampire’s crimes. Perhaps they zeroed in on the serial murders because of the unresolved matter of the knife. Based on the location of the crime scenes, this person deduced the general area where the perpetrator resides—that is, the hot zone. Accordingly, this person sought out humans that looked to be prime vampire bait and lured them into the hot zone. They served each one a delicious meal, gave them a small sum of money, perhaps. Then, they had them walk to a location in the hot zone where it would be easy to trigger a crime. There were probably misses. But there were hits, as well.
“There is one consistency about this person’s behavior. An important part of committing a crime is that you don’t dirty your own hands. They didn’t dispose of the evidence—the automobile—on their own; rather, they allowed it to be dismantled by a professional theft ring. Like tossing food at the feet of a hungry animal. In the same way, the victims that had been lured into the hot zone were attacked by the vampire. And after that, this person showed up and drove stakes through their hearts.”
“Hold on—why the stakes? To prevent them from becoming vampires? But if that were the case, it defeats the purpose of having the vampire attack them.”
“The stakes were used to give the impression that the motive was vampire extermination. But the real reason was to stop the still-living victims’ hearts, thereby halting their blood circulation. At the site of the vampire bite, the concentration of Factor X, which transforms humans into vampires, is high. And if you stop the heart, it remains in the periphery of the bite mark. And just like that, it becomes possible to extract blood from the puncture site and collect the vampire factor.”
“What does this have to do with Amachi’s disappearance?”
“That’s what I’ve come here to verify. Ken’ichi’s blood type is B. And on the night of Ken’ichi’s disappearance, he was walking in the hot zone. Alone.”
The sound of the electric range came from the kitchen. For the first time, Rieko let her feelings show.
“I set the timer while I was in the kitchen,” Yatsuyanagi said.
“Why are you doing this!?”
“Like I said, there’s something I wanted to check.”
Yatsuyanagi took the air-conditioner remote in his hand and hit the switch. The breaker flipped, and all of the electronics in the room ceased to function. Rieko let out a wail, and hearing this Muraki and Hashimoto burst into the Amachi residence.
“You tricked me!” Rieko said as they were about to place her in the patrol car.
“And before that, you deceived me.”
Rieko cursed at Yatsuyanagi’s reply, then climbed into the car. Muraki returned from her home.
“I sealed it off as per the doctor’s instructions. But what the hell is all of that on the bed? A factory? A household ICU? Intravenous tubes are hanging from his body, and he’s as cold as ice. I’m guessing the utility costs are no joke.”
“That’s the life-support device she constructed. It looks like she pilfered some hospital equipment. Keeping him at a low body temperature served to slow his metabolism. Over there is a body suspended in the process of transforming from human to vampire. Ken’ichi Amachi—an old friend of mine—is really the sixth known victim of the undocumented vampire’s attacks.”
“But he lived,” Muraki said.
“Because Rieko, like her husband, is an excellent surgeon. After the Mitaka conference we discussed earlier, Ken’ichi was attacked by a vampire. But his wife Rieko showed up to meet him. This is only conjecture, but it’s possible that even though there weren’t a lot of people on the streets that night, he chose the shortest route home. Or maybe he intended to meet up with his wife for a quickie.”
“But instead of his wife, he encountered a vampire.”
“Probably when Rieko appeared the vampire was already in the process of drinking his blood. Ken’ichi survived. Rieko understood what had gone down and single-handedly stopped her husband’s blood flow—damage control.”
“Why not go to the hospital?”
“He was attacked by a vampire. If they had gone to the hospital, by law he would have been treated as a vampire. For Rieko, this would have meant losing her husband. In order to save her beloved husband, Rieko made use of our uneducated vampire. She slowed her husband’s metabolism by lowering his body temperature, and while staving off his transformation gave him transfusions using the blood she extracted from the victims. By increasing the concentration of the vampire factor in his blood, she hoped to retain his personality to the greatest extent possible.”
“But if that’s the case, she could have procured a vampire from VLC and more easily obtained the vampire factor, right?”
“Had she done that, the vampire attack on Ken’ichi would have come to light. Rieko was afraid of this. VLC’s documented vampires were no good. She needed a rogue.”
“That’s quite a story. To create a vampire with her husband’s personality she drove a stake through the hearts of the cadavers, collected their blood, and transfused it … but is this even possible?”
“I don’t know. But given that she was able to stabilize him at such a low temperature, Ken’ichi is no longer human. That’s the only thing that’s certain.”
In place of the patrol car in which Rieko was riding there arrived two vehicles from the Metropolitan Police Department and the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. They had come to transport Ken’ichi Amachi to an appropriate facility.
“Doctor, why do you find this woman so alluring?”
Never backing down from her attack stance, even when on the defensive—that was Rieko. When she had come to Yatsuyanagi with the claim that the security system had been manipulated and their car had vanished, somewhere in his heart he had been suspicious of her story.
She had wanted to know what information the police had concerning her own crimes, and had contacted Yatsuyanagi in order to distance herself and her husband from the Kichijōji incident. He could understand this. But he wasn’t in the mood to discuss it with Muraki.
“Leaving that aside, I wonder what Rieko will be charged with?”
“Surprisingly, probably something trivial. She didn’t commission Kijima, so instigating a crime and compulsion don’t apply. Probably she’ll just be charged with luring people to a dangerous location. And though there’s the matter of the car, she is the victim of grand theft auto.
“In the end, this woman probabilistically took advantage of the fact that someone else’s actions were in accordance with her own desires. She took a series of gambles, and she kept winning. Whether we can call that a crime—that’s above my pay grade. We could charge her with the destruction of a cadaver, but since this was done in order to save her husband’s life … well, what would come of it?”
“At any rate, Rieko grew unable to keep up with this foolish behavior. That’s for certain.”
“Well, our rogue vampire has been disposed of, the mystery has unraveled, and these incidents are resolved.
But still, collecting blood from cadavers for the sake of her husband—she’s insane,” said Muraki.
Yatsuyanagi turned to him and spoke.
“Is there any such thing as a sane vampiric crime?”
His son’s death should have occurred shortly after his own, but Hideyoshi Osumi remained alone in his box for what seemed like hours. Days or even weeks could have transpired for all he knew. Time in Hell was funny that way.
Back on earth, when he was alive and at home, Hideyoshi could measure time by the growling of his stomach. Breakfast was usually salad with Kewpie mayonnaise; his wife insisted on vegetables for their son’s health. (What good that did him.) Lunch, teishoku at a local eatery. And finally dinner, something traditional like oden with fat slices of konnyaku and soft balls of satoimo, shed of all its hairy skin.
In contrast, in Hell, Hideyoshi had completely lost his appetite. A good thing, considering there was no food there, at least in his box. Before, when he was killing the women, he never thought about an afterlife, either for his victims or himself. Reincarnation always seemed ridiculous to him. How could he be repackaged in the form of an insect or, even more ridiculous, a woman? His body—the heavy, strong hands and fingers, the rectangular face with the open forehead, his awkward toes with black and gray hair sprouting below his toenails—these were all part of his identity. To lose these physical markers would mean that he didn’t exist. As it turned out, he was right. Even in Hell he still looked the same.
“Hey, are you still alone?” a voice on the other side of the cardboard box hissed.
It was a next-door neighbor, who also was an Osumi. According to this Osumi, they were all arranged alphabetically; as a result, all the Hideyoshi Osumis were to be filed together in the same box. Hideyoshi wanted to inquire to see how this Osumi may be possibly related to his family in Okayama. But the next-door neighbor didn’t want to talk about his past. He did say that he had been in Hell for a very long time. Decades, in fact.
“Yes, still on my own here,” Hideyoshi answered. He wasn’t the type to share much about himself either. But without any kind of entertainment, Hideyoshi found that there was something satisfying about hearing his voice out loud. It was low and gravelly, a perfectly fine voice for a Japanese man in his late sixties. The noose, he thought, could have damaged his vocal chords. He had no sort of mirror to examine his neck, only the touch of the fingers on his working right hand, which revealed the evidence of loose, aging skin. There seemed to be a break in the bones underneath the skin, but he felt no pain.