Puppet Master vol.1

by Miyuki Miyabe

  　“Recently …”

  　“Yes.”

  　“And?” Machiko leaned forward.

  　“Mrs. Furukawa, does Mariko paint her nails?”

  　A flash of doubt crossed Machiko's face. “Paint her nails? Well, not at work. It was forbidden. They were quite strict about that at the bank. But when she had plans to go out, she sometimes used a pale color.”

  　“What about the day she went missing? Can you remember if she was wearing nail polish?”

  　Machiko held her head in her hands. “I wonder … I remember what she was wearing─it was a pink suit. She'd dressed up a bit because she was going out that night. She'd just bought that suit. When she didn't have any plans she would wear jeans, since she had to change into a uniform at work anyway. But that day she … but nail polish?”

  　“Are the nails on that hand painted?”

  　“Yes. I'm not sure what you'd call the color─a dark pink maybe, or pale purple. In any case, that sort of color.”

  　“So there's no doubt that it's a woman's arm?”

  　“That much is definite. It's not a man, and judging from the condition of the skin, it was a young woman. In her twenties or thirties.”

  　“Nail polish …” muttered Machiko, still holding her head in her hands.

  　“It's okay, there's no need to think that hard about it,” Sakaki said brightly to ease her. “I only asked to know whether she was in the habit of wearing it. It's been ninety-seven days since Mariko went missing, after all. Which means that if it does happen to be Mariko, she might have had any number of opportunities to paint her nails during that time.”

  　Machiko's hands dropped into her lap. “Oh right … I guess so.”

  　“And one other thing,” Sakaki said, holding up a finger. “Does Mariko have a birthmark on the inside of her right arm?”

  　“Birthmark?”

  　“Yes, a pale mark about the size of a postage stamp. Although whether it was there originally, or whether it's come to be there for some reason after─” Sakaki was doing his best to avoid using words like “death” or “murder.” “Anyway, we're not sure. But Mariko didn't have a birthmark did she? At least nobody mentioned it before.”

  　Machiko shook her head vigorously. “No, no, she doesn't. No birthmark.”

  　“So that arm has a birthmark?”

  　“Like I said, we're not sure how long it's been there, but yes, there's a visible mark.”

  　“So it can't be Mariko!” exclaimed Machiko, crossing her hands over her heart, the tension suddenly released from her face. “Dad, it isn't Mariko!”

  　Yoshio too felt a wave of relief, but he thought it was still too soon to celebrate. Sakaki had said that they weren't certain when the mark had been made. He was also worried about Machiko's wildly oscillating mental state.

  　“That's a relief,” he said soothingly. “Calm down, now, and take a seat. Okay?”

  　Just then someone appeared at the door. Yoshio looked up, and Sakaki turned to see a uniformed policewoman trying to catch his eye. “Detective Sakaki, can you come with me a moment?”

  The reason why Shinichi and Kumi Mizuno had been subjected to such long questioning became clear as he talked to the detective in charge. It wasn't that they had been suspected of anything─as Kumi, who had already been sent home, had angrily suggested earlier─but rather to meticulously eke out of them information on what they had seen or heard right before discovering the arm, and since they walked in the park daily, whether they had seen anything strange in the past few days, such as a car parked in an odd place or someone they hadn't noticed before, or someone acting strangely, and so on.

  　The police relentlessly asked the same things over and over again─it was their job, Shinichi knew that, and didn't let it get to him. Plus Detective Takegami must have said something to the detective in charge, since he treated Shinichi very gently. Nevertheless, Shinichi was now exhausted.

  　They had taken a break for lunch, and the detective had ordered in some lunch boxes, apologizing for not offering anything better. Shinichi hadn't wanted to eat lunch with the guy, and was relieved when he was left on his own to eat. Now that he thought about it, he didn't have any appetite although he hadn't eaten all morning and his stomach was rumbling. He ate about half the cold lunch, which didn't taste of much, in silence. All around he could hear phones ringing, people talking, footsteps coming and going.

  　Then he was questioned again for almost an hour. When it was over, the detective double-checked Shinichi's address and school so that he could contact him again if necessary, before finally allowing him to go home.

  　“Thank you for your help. I'm sorry to have kept you all this time,” the detective had said. “Oh, by the way, I saw your mother downstairs in the waiting room.”

  　“My mother?” responded Shinichi reflexively. My mother's dead.

  　“Your mother is Yoshie Ishii, right? When she called in, she was told that we would finish after lunch, so she said she would come to pick you up. She must have been waiting for half an hour or so now.”

  　“Really?”

  　He went downstairs to find her. Yoshie spotted him first across the busy waiting area. “Shin-chan!” She had a thin jacket draped over her shoulders, and was dressed casually with no makeup. She gave Shinichi a wave, and trotted over to him. “I'm glad I found you. I was wondering whether I would in all this crowd.”

  　The space they were in, bare except for its rows of molded plastic chairs, was located right across from the Traffic Division. It was busy, and the atmosphere was much lighter than elsewhere in the police station.

  　“What a terrible thing to happen, eh? You must be tired.”

  　“Yes, I am a bit.”

  　“Have you had lunch?”

  　“They gave me a lunch box.”

  　“Don't you want something hot? How about some soba noodles on the way home?”

  　“Is it okay for you to be off school, Aunt Yoshie?”

  　“No problem. I don't have a homeroom class now, and I took the day off today.”

  　Yoshiyuki and Yoshie Ishii both worked in local junior-high schools. That spring Yoshiyuki had become deputy head at his school, while Yoshie taught Japanese language and literature at hers. Shinichi's father and Yoshiyuki had been childhood friends and were very close, and since the Ishiis didn't have any children of their own, they had immediately offered to take Shinichi in.

  　Both his mother and father had siblings, who they had seen fairly regularly while they were alive, but after the tragedy none of them had been willing to take Shinichi in. That had really hurt. He felt that everyone was blaming him because of the circumstances leading up to the murders. It continued to bother him even after the Ishiis took him in. Though they weren't connected by blood, they had always gotten along very well with his parents. Still, he couldn't help feeling that, deep down, they were blaming him as well. It was too scary for him to voice this thought─or rather, it was tiring pretending not to notice and having to weigh up what they were thinking all the time.

  　“What about Rocky?”

  　“A patrolman brought him home. I was so shocked when he told me what happened.”

  　“I'm sorry.”

  　Yoshie's face softened. “You shouldn't be apologizing, Shin-chan.”

  　Shin-chan. He still hadn't gotten used to her calling him that. His mother had always called him Shinichi, and had never once called him Shin-chan. In the tenth grade he'd had a girlfriend who would always call him at home saying, “Is Shin-chan there?” and his little sister would tease him by imitating her. Embarrassed, he'd completely ignored her for a whole day and she'd gone to their mother in tears, thanks to which Shinichi had received a thorough telling-off. That had been the first and last time anyone in his family had called him Shin-chan.

  　Yoshie called him Shin-chan, while Yoshiyuki called him Shinichi-kun. Now nobody ever called him plain Shinichi, or “big broth
er” for that matter, and nobody ever would again. Even after a year, he still couldn't get his head around this fact. Shinichi closed his eyes. I shouldn't have come to the police station. Details that he didn't want to remember, big things he didn't want to think about it, kept flooding into his head and plunging him into turmoil. He wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible.

  　Yoshie had parked her red car in the visitors' parking lot. “This car's a bit small for you, isn't it Shin-chan?” she said as she opened the door for him. “Maybe I'll get a new one─a four-wheel drive maybe. Next year you'll be able to get a license, too.”

  　Yoshie was in a hurry to leave the police station building behind, wanting to distance Shinichi from this morning's incident as best she could. She didn't venture to ask him any of the things an ordinary parent would ask, like what sort of things did they ask you, or how did it all happen. It came across as really unnatural, as Yoshie herself was probably aware. She looked sad as she got into the car.

  　Shinichi suddenly remembered Detective Takegami and, wondering if he was still around, turned to look back at the police station entrance. Or course he was unlikely to be outside now, but Shinichi would have liked to see him again and talk even just briefly. He had the feeling that the sense of distance the detective had adopted was the thing he needed most right now.

  　Takegami wasn't there. Shinichi was just turning to get into the car when the automatic doors opened and the mother-daughter pair he'd seen a couple of hours ago came out. The mother was in tears and clinging onto the daughter, who was also crying as they staggered out into the street. Shinichi stood petrified with his hand still on the door handle. That arm! Had it been someone in their family? Was that why they were crying so openly and painfully?

  　“Shin-chan?”

  　Ignoring Yoshie, Shinichi broke into a run and sprinted across the parking lot after them as they headed for the bus stop. “Excuse me!” he called out.

  　The daughter turned around. She was pretty, with a slim face. Her eyes were red and cheeks streaked with tears, but even so it was clear from a glance that she was very good looking.

  　“I … er …” Shinichi hesitated.

  　Supporting her still weeping mother, the girl turned to face him. “What is it?” Her voice was tearful, with a whine in it.

  　“I … er … was it identified?”

  　“What?” The girl looked at him inquiringly, then at her mother. Then they both looked at Shinichi. “Identified?”

  　“At Okawa Park, this morning …”

  　The girl recoiled in surprise and stared at him.

  　Flustered, he said quickly, “I'm sorry! Don't worry, I'm not just some busybody. I'm the … the one who found that arm … who happened to find … so …”

  　“Oh.” Her expression relaxed. “No, it hasn't been identified.”

  　“But …”

  　They both wiped their tears with their hands and smiled at him. “It's just that we found out it's not my brother.”

  　“Your brother?”

  　“Yes. The news report I heard didn't say whether it was a man or a woman's arm. So, since we live in the area, we thought it might be him. He's been missing for ages.”

  　“We're so relieved,” the mother put in. “Although it doesn't mean we've got him home yet, of course.”

  　“Even so, it's a relief,” the daughter said. “Definitely.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

  　Leaning on each other, they walked away leaving Shinichi standing there. So he'd been wrong, it wasn't them. Maybe the other family he'd seen arriving before them? But they weren't the only ones. How many people were missing in Tokyo, or in Japan as a whole? A thousand? Two thousand? More? Out of them, how many had fallen victim to a crime? Which one of them did the arm that he'd found─happened to find─belong to?

  　“Shin-chan.” Yoshie had come up behind him, and now put an arm around his shoulders to give him a hug. She was about the same height as him. “Let's go home. Okay?”

  　Shinichi nodded without saying anything. And yes, he did really want to go back to the only place that he could now call home.

  Six thousand three hundred people, thought Yoshio Arima.

  　After Sakaki had been called away, Machiko had become unnaturally cheerful, laughing heartily at her own excessive anxiety, and talking brightly to Yoshio. Desperate to raise her spirits, Yoshio went along with her, but deep down he thought it was too early to celebrate and was still bracing himself.

  　But his hopes had been raised. And so he was thinking. Six thousand three hundred people. This was the figure Sakaki had given when, some two weeks after Mariko had disappeared, Yoshio had asked him how many people went missing in Japan every year.

  　“Last year altogether it was about eighty-two thousand.”

  　“That many? Not just a few hundred, or a thousand or so?”

  　“That's right. But that number includes all kinds of cases. In cases like Mariko's”─Machiko wasn't there at the time, so he was speaking candidly─“where the person disappeared in suspicious circumstances, that is, cases where they might have fallen victim to some crime, it's about fifteen thousand. Of those, about six thousand three hundred are women.”

  　So she was one out of six thousand three hundred. Yoshio kept repeating this to himself. One out of six thousand three hundred. That was the probability of the arm being Mariko's. Tiny, right? Don't worry, Mariko isn't dead. She hasn't been murdered, or had her arm cut off. He carried on waiting, hardly able to breathe.

  　Sakaki came back after about thirty minutes, but this time he stood in the doorway where Machiko couldn't see him, summoning Yoshio with his eyes. Yoshio felt his heart give a lurch. Five years ago, he had been bothered by an irregular heartbeat and it felt like that again. Mr. Arima, mouthed Sakaki, keeping himself hidden from Machiko, who was sitting in an armchair smoking. The Hi-Lites were stronger than she was used to and she was choking on the smoke, but otherwise looked quite calm.

  　“Machiko,” said Yoshio nonchalantly, “I'm just going to the bathroom. I'll be right back.”

  　“Do you know where it is?”

  　“It can't be that hard to find.”

  　As he went out into the corridor, Sakaki took him by the arm and quickly closed the door behind him.

  　“What's up?” Yoshio asked in low voice.

  　Sakaki frowned at him and said so quietly that Yoshio had to put his ear right up close, “How is Mrs. Furukawa doing now?”

  　“Right now, she's recovered herself a bit.”

  　“If possible you should take her home with you. No─perhaps it would be better to take her to her house.” He was trembling, and Yoshio felt his heart lurch again. “If you can, please stay with her. The investigative team will pay her a visit there. I think they'll be over pretty quickly.”

  　Yoshio's mouth went dry. After several attempts to moisten it, he managed to force out a voice, “What's up? Has something happened?”

  　Sakaki's eyes were dark, reflecting no light whatsoever, and it was like staring into a deep abyss. “They've found something else in Okawa Park, in a different trash can. A small Louis Vuitton handbag.”

  　The name meant nothing to Yoshio and he couldn't picture what it might look like. But he knew what Sakaki was about to say. Even though he didn't want to. Even though he tried to block his ears, and shut his eyes. Slowly, as if eking out her life for just a few moments more, his words coming in fits and starts, he asked, “Is … was it … the bag … Mariko's?”

  　Sakaki just held his head in his hands and said, “In the bag, along with a woman's handkerchief and a makeup bag, there was a commuter pass with the name Mariko Furukawa on it.”

  Chapter 3

  By the time Shigeko Maehata woke up and sleepily rubbed her eyes, the afternoon sun was already streaming through the bedroom window. It was perfect weather, the sun beating down on a colorful patchwork of bedding hung out to air on
balconies all around the neighborhood.

  　Oh no, she'd gone and done it again! She could just hear her mother-in-law's voice: Sleeping in means sleeping until nine or ten, or at least getting up before noon. Whoever heard of sleeping in until after lunch, really!

  　This was what Shoji's mother had said to him the other day. After forty years of marriage his mother always rose at five-thirty to prepare breakfast, and it must have been galling to see her daughter-in-law sleep so late most days. Shigeko understood this─while she had a job, she was a homemaker, too, and it was quite scandalous for her to be sleeping in so often.

  　She went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on. The clock said almost two. She lit up her first cigarette of the day and smoked absently while she waited for the water to boil. If a neighbor happened to drop by now with the latest circular from the local community association and saw her in this state, she'd be the talk of the neighborhood. Shigeko was loafing around in her pajamas well into the afternoon again, you know! And then Shoji would have a go at her about it. Quickly she got up and went to get dressed.

  　After a cup of instant coffee, her body finally got going and her stomach began rumbling. She repressed the urge to feed it right away, and first went to hang out the bedding to air. As she carried Shoji's quilt out onto the balcony, old Mrs. Shigeta appeared on the balcony next door as if she'd been waiting for her. She was carrying a futon beater.

  　“Oh my. Good morning, Shigeko.”

  　Whaddyamean morning? But she just smiled brightly and said, “Hello.”

  　With a polite smile, Mrs. Shigeta proceeded to energetically beat the mattress as if delivering punches to someone she detested. “It's really fluffed up nicely. Of course, it's such nice weather today.”

  　“It really is. No one would ever believe how hard it was raining yesterday,” Shigeko said. She thought she could actually see a gleam appearing in the old woman's eyes.

  　“It's a pity you didn't hang out your bedding earlier too, isn't it Shigeko?”