For that reason, although they were not formally husband and wife, Keiko had taken it upon herself to arrange for the funeral as the chief mourner.
A man she didn’t recognize was offering incense. As she stared at him wondering who in the world he might be, the incense finished burning, and he approached her himself.
“Mr. Hideaki Sato’s family, I presume?” the kindly, slim-faced man asked her. “I am deeply sorry for your loss. I’m Natsume from the East Ikebukuro precinct.”
He’d politely expressed his condolences before offering her his card. It certainly did say that he was Nobuhito Natsume from the East Ikebukuro precinct.
Learning his identity, Keiko felt less on guard than thrown off balance. This tall, slender man clad in a black suit was distinctly not her idea of a detective.
For her, the word summoned someone with drilling eyes tinged with distrust; yet, the man she beheld had nothing oppressive about him. His tidy hair, not in the least greasy, and his thoughtful pupils reminded her more of the young doctors and technicians she knew than any detective. A lab coat would have become him, more so than his suit.
“I am in charge of the arson case,” he cut to the chase in the gentlest voice.
“I see …”
Over the last two months, the neighborhood in Zoshigaya, Toshima Ward where Keiko’s apartment was located had suffered successive arson cases, in each of which garbage dumps and parking lots had been doused with gasoline. Her apartment fire had occurred amidst the spree.
“What’s happening with the investigation?”
“We’re certainly on it. We’re not sure yet if this arson was committed by the same perpetrator, but for the sake of the victim and the bereaved, we’ll do everything in our power.”
As he said this, Natsume turned toward Yuma, who was standing next to her, a gaze that was kindly, enveloping. Her son, who’d been expressionless until now, looked back at the detective, startled. Keiko felt like she understood part of the reason.
Natsume’s demeanor was somehow reminiscent of Koichi, who’d been an X-ray technician.
“We have something called a victims’ consultation room at the station. Please don’t hesitate to drop by if there’s anything.”
Natsume’s compassionate gaze won Keiko over, but at the same time, a strange sense of unease seeped out of some gap in her heart.
“Please … catch the culprit soon.” Averting her eyes somewhat, she uttered the words that the bereaved were expected to in face of a detective.
When she looked at the clock, it was past seven thirty.
“Yu, wake up.”
Keiko knocked on the door. Her friend was still asleep in the adjacent room, so she couldn’t be loud.
Going back to the kitchen, she poured whisked eggs into the frying pan. Once they were moderately firm, she added the chicken rice she’d cooked in advance. Wanting a spatula to adjust the shape, she rummaged through the shelves below the sink but couldn’t find one. This wasn’t her own kitchen, after all. She gave up and used chopsticks for the final touch; then, she packed the rice omelet into the lunch box.
After their apartment had burned down, Keiko had been given a place to stay by a friend of hers, a former high school classmate who was now the “Mama” at a club in Ikebukuro. They hadn’t kept in touch after graduating but had united in the past year when the friend came down with appendicitis and found herself in Keiko’s hospital.
Though never very close during their high school years, Keiko had taken care of her even outside of work hours, seeing that her former classmate was single and particularly inconvenienced by her admittance. She must have felt obliged; when she got wind of the tragedy, she offered one of her apartment’s three bedrooms for an extended stay saying that it wasn’t in use. Keiko had taken advantage of her kindness and moved in with Yuma, but planned on finding a new place to rent within the week.
She wanted to shake off what had happened and start a new life with Yuma, the sooner the better.
She heard the front door clamp shut, and when she went into the hallway, Yuma’s shoes were gone from the entrance area. Keiko hastily grabbed the lunch box and ran after him.
Yuma wore a helmet in addition to his school uniform and was heading toward the bike racks.
He went to school on a scooter. He’d earned his license this past summer vacation, having turned sixteen, and bought his ride with the money he’d saved from his part-time job.
“Yu, your lunch.”
Her son turned around sluggishly.
When she handed the box to him, he took it as though it were a chore and stuck it into his bag. He straddled the scooter and turned the key without saying a word. Even with his helmet on, she could tell that his face was expressionless.
Keiko’s heart ached as she watched him race away on his scooter.
At some point, Yuma had turned into a kid who didn’t let out his emotions.
Once upon a time, he’d been affectionate and considerate. When Koichi had an accident and passed away, Yuma was in his second year of elementary school. Keiko suffered the depths of despair, but her son, while no doubt equally devastated at losing his father, cheered her on with a bright smile.
At an age when kids were most consumed with play, Yuma instead helped Keiko, tired from working odd hours as a nurse, with the housework. No matter how spent she felt when she came home, just seeing Yuma’s smile gladdened her. As long as she had him by her side, she needed nothing else.
She would live only for Yuma from now on. She’d honestly thought that until two years ago, when she met Hideaki.
A bike accident that had fractured both his legs landed him in Keiko’s hospital.
Apparently he’d been a reckless youth, joining a biker gang and what not, but was an honest truck driver at that point.
At first, she didn’t see him as a member of the opposite sex. He was just a patient, and a rather bratty one. Keiko, thirty-seven then, was eight years older than him, so that was part of it. In addition, Hideaki was the diametric opposite of all the men she’d known until then.
In his hospital room, Hideaki often used dumbbells to work on his upper body. Both his immobile legs steadily lost their muscle, but his chest and upper arms grew until they seemed ready to burst.
She’d thought nothing of seeing her patients naked, but now found herself unable to look away as the sweat dripped off Hideaki’s chest onto his toned abdominal muscles.
For his part, he might have noticed the attention.
As Keiko came into his room one day when he was soon to be discharged, Hideaki forced a kiss. Then he started rubbing her breasts, hungrily, from over her white uniform.
She couldn’t resist his daring overture.
It was as though a gust of wind had blown off a bolt she’d desperately been holding down as a woman ever since Koichi’s passing. She could only wonder where all the moisture had been in her parched body as the lustrous flow streamed out of her unchecked.
When he was discharged, Hideaki asked her out on a date. They went into a hotel and made love the very same day. For the first time in a while, clinging to Hideaki, her body scaled into pleasure. No, not for the first time in a while—this joy, she’d felt for the first time in her life.
Never had she experienced such intense pleasure, not with any of her past dates—no, not even with her dear departed Koichi.
She felt her body was melting from the heat of Hideaki’s thrusts. Her mind was going blank, white on white. But every time, just when her pleasure was about to crest, Yuma’s image flickered in her mind.
Her son mattered more than anything to her, no matter how many times she was loved, and however much her body craved it—she at least retained enough sense to think so.
From then, she came to meet with Hideaki at a hotel once a week, but didn’t seek anything beyond that. She also hadn’t told Hideaki about Yuma.
Keiko believed that even if she joined her body with Hideaki’s for a fleeting moment, she would unf
ailingly go home to Yuma as his mother.
After some time, Hideaki unexpectedly proposed to her that they start living together, with the understanding that they’d eventually get hitched.
While ecstatic over his words, Keiko was worried. She had Yuma—
After agonizing over it, she told Hideaki the truth. She had a son in middle school. She made the confession prepared for a break-up, but Hideaki started asking her to introduce him to Yuma.
Although Keiko couldn’t tell if Hideaki really meant it, the three of them got into a car Hideaki had arranged for and went out to an amusement park, where she watched Hideaki interacting with her son with ease. With this man, Keiko thought, she and Yuma might win happiness.
Some days later, she told Yuma that she wanted to live with Hideaki and marry him in due course.
Yuma, however, was revolted by the idea. No one was his father except Koichi, and he just couldn’t trust Hideaki, he said.
Keiko didn’t think that Hideaki was untrustworthy, but she understood why her son might reject her taking a new husband.
Even as she concluded that her only choice was to persuade Yuma over time, Hideaki cancelled his lease and pushed his way into their home.
She couldn’t turn him away. In any case, if they lived together for a while, Yuma might come to see Hideaki in a better light. She attempted to bring her son around with that hope in mind, and he reluctantly consented.
But after living together for some time, Hideaki turned into a different person.
It started with him quitting his trucker job. He said he was fired for slugging a manager with whom he’d never gotten along.
From then on, making no effort to be reemployed, Hideaki adopted a new lifestyle: sleeping during the day, going out to pachinko gambling parlors, and drinking out at night.
He came up with one excuse after another to ask Keiko for money. Neither Yuma’s college fund nor Koichi’s insurance payout was off limits for him. By the time she knew, her actual savings were nearly drained, too.
Whenever she complained and stood up to him, he became violent toward Keiko and Yuma. He was especially ruthless with Yuma, who’d never come to see Hideaki as his father. Keiko, no match for the man physically, could only watch.
She considered driving Hideaki out of her home but didn’t follow through. If she did such a thing, she might lose him altogether.
Yuma was dear to her, but she didn’t want to give up Hideaki.
Hideaki was just acting out over being fired; once he regained his senses, he’d go back to being the winning man who took them to amusement parks.
She wished that in her heart, but Hideaki’s behavior failed to improve.
Ever since he’d barged into their home, the trust that had cemented Keiko and Yuma’s relationship had vanished, and a deep ditch stretched between them.
There was Yuma’s face from that one time that clung to her mind even now.
As she was having sex with Hideaki in their room, Yuma had come home and obliviously opened the sliding door. Beholding the scene froze him in place, and he stood stock-still. Although Keiko immediately tried to uncouple and cover herself with a blanket, Hideaki wouldn’t let her. Tightly gripping Keiko’s waist, he kept thrusting into her from behind.
“Stop …” Keiko pleaded, but Hideaki wouldn’t even then.
Yuma’s eyes were filled with disgust.
“Hey, ya feeling good?!—Hurry and become a man who can please women like this.”
Keiko just couldn’t shake off Hideaki, who continued to jerk his hips, laughing. In fact, Yuma’s contemptuous gaze, and a sense of shame that transcended words, entwined with her man’s thrusting, had transported her to untold heights of ecstasy.
Perhaps she had stopped being a mother then—
The conflagration must have been her divine punishment. Henceforth, she was dedicating her life to making amends with Yuma.
Hideaki’s funeral was over, and Keiko intended to go back to work that very day. She was on the late shift, which started at noon. She still had time.
Exiting the condominium, she decided to visit her apartment before going to the hospital. The day before, she’d reached out to her superintendent, according to whom the police were done with their inspection. She could now go inside.
The site where Hideaki had been caught in flames. It certainly frightened Keiko, but another her urged that, like it or not, she needed to stand there once again if she were ever to embark on a new life.
Taking the street that ran by the Sunshine 60 skyscraper from East Ikebukuro, she headed to the Zoshigaya apartments. The Ikebukuro General Hospital where she worked was along the way. From there, the apartment was less than a ten-minute walk.
It came into sight as she proceeded through the residential district. Pain gripped at her heart, and her legs faltered. Even so, she needed to see the disastrous scene in there with her own eyes, she told herself, and forced her legs onwards.
The two-story wooden apartment building had eight units total. Although it had avoided burning down entirely, there were no signs of anyone living there now. The unit they’d lived in, #101, was at the corner on the first floor.
A scorched odor assailed her nostrils the moment she opened the door. When she entered, the kitchen just past the shoe alcove didn’t look all that badly burnt, but the floor was soaked with a tremendous amount of water. Still wearing her shoes, Keiko stepped up from the entrance area and slowly looked around the kitchen. While the furnishings might not have turned to ash, they were too black with soot to serve any use again. To begin with, she wouldn’t want to live surrounded by stuff that had sat where Hideaki died.
Keiko examined the sink. A plate of rice omelet that she’d cooked for dinner that day was still there. Yuma and Hideaki usually finished all her dishes, but oddly some of it had been left over.
The sight awakened bitter thoughts in her, so she turned her eyes toward the Japanese-style room behind the kitchen.
The room had burned down almost entirely. She took a firm step onto the charred floor mats and entered it.
A stack of paper on the veranda outside had been set on fire, and Hideaki had been caught in the flames as he slept in this room.
Keiko quietly closed her eyes and put her hands together.
“Good afternoon—”
Hearing the voice, she snapped back to reality and looked toward the entrance. Right outside the front door, which she’d left open, bowed a man.
It was the detective, Natsume, whom she’d met at the vigil. Why was he here?
“Would it be okay if I came in?” he asked in a reserved tone.
“Go ahead,” Keiko answered.
Natsume stepped into the alcove but looked at his feet and seemed to hesitate a little.
“Please, as you are.”
“In that case,” he said with a light bow and entered the kitchen with his shoes on.
“Earlier, too, I came here to inspect the site. It’s in a terrible state.”
Keiko turned toward him across the dining table. “Yes …”
“How are you faring? Is your current residence …” he asked, choosing his words carefully.
“A friend has taken us in and we’re okay for now … But we need to find a new place to live asap.”
“With most of your things wrecked, it must be very difficult.”
“As you can see, we had a simple life. I don’t care about what happened to our furniture. A person’s life, though, won’t come back.”
“That’s true …” Natsume agreed. “I heard you were there during his final moments.”
“Yes, because he was brought to the hospital I work at.”
“There’s something I need to ask you … What exactly was your relationship with him?”
Keiko couldn’t blame Natsume for wondering. “He was my husband. We just hadn’t formalized it yet, it was a common law relationship.”
“I see.”
“My son is still at a sensitive age, so I
wanted to deal with that after things settled down.”
“Then Hideaki was an adoptive father for your son. He must be quite shocked by what happened.”
That wasn’t true, Keiko thought, but she replied, “Yes …”
“At least, his wife was with him when he passed away.”
Keiko’s eyes welled up with unfeigned tears at Natsume’s words.
“Are you the chef in your family?” the detective changed the topic as though to lighten the mood.
“Yes.”
“It can’t be easy when you work, too.”
“I just make easy meals.”
“A rice omelet that day,” Natsume said looking at the sink. “Usually kids love that.”
“It’s Yuma’s … my son’s favorite, so I always cook it when I can’t make up my mind,” she answered, and finding all this funny, couldn’t stifle a laugh.
Natsume gave her a blank look.
“No, it’s just that seeing you, I can’t believe you’re a detective … You’re too different from my image of one.”
“What kind of image is that?”
“A scary person who’s kind of stern and has a piercing gaze.”
“Many are like that. I haven’t been one for long, so it might just be that I don’t give off the proper vibes yet.”
That was surprising. Although his fresh bearing made him appear young, Keiko had assumed that they were about the same age.
“I switched jobs,” Natsume said, picking up on her puzzlement.
“Switched … What were you before?” she couldn’t help but ask.
“Do you know what a judiciary technical officer is? I worked at a juvenile detention center for kids who had committed crimes. I evaluated their psychology, et cetera. I was thirty when I joined the force.”
Hearing this, she understood why Natsume’s eyes, seemingly so kind, had made her nervous.
The detective before her had dealt with many offenders in the past and peered into their hearts. She absolutely couldn’t show this man a chink in her armor—
The goodwill she’d held for Natsume vanished in an instant.
“Yesterday, I visited the hospital, but it seemed you hadn’t come back to work yet, so I was planning to visit again after this. Meeting you here was good timing. There are a number of things I need to ask you.”
A Cop's Eyes Page 11