What Otsuka was left with were Namekawa’s friends from his college days. With almost nothing to go on, Otsuka decided to visit Namekawa’s college, Haseda University. Namekawa had graduated from Haseda fifteen years ago. That was all that Otsuka knew about the victim’s college days.
Universities are like an alien planet to me.
Otsuka had taken the Metropolitan Police entrance exam fresh out of high school. For his first job, he was assigned to the Koganei police station on Tokyo’s outer fringes. A humble Community Affairs officer, he was passionate about becoming a detective. He knew that the reality of the job was nothing like the cop shows on TV. He wouldn’t be spending his time firing his gun or punching smart-assed suspects. That didn’t matter. If anything, the lack of glamor made him want it worse. While going about the daily grind of giving street directions, dealing with lost-and-found articles, and dropping in on local residents, he submitted multiple requests for a transfer to Criminal Investigation.
Opportunity came knocking sooner than he’d dared hope. A robbery-murder took place just a few hundred meters from his regular beat. A task force was established at the precinct, but the workload proved too much for the CI detectives. They decided to draft some cops from Community Affairs to lend them a hand. Otsuka was one of the lucky ones pulled off routine duties. All the CI detectives wanted Otsuka to do was to act as a neighborhood street guide. Otsuka didn’t care. He was elated and flung himself into the investigation with gusto.
Several days later, the perpetrator was apprehended somewhere else entirely. Somewhere Otsuka had never even heard of. He’d canvassed the neighborhood until his legs had turned to lead, but his contribution to solving the case was a big fat zero. Nonetheless, his partner, a seasoned CI hand, had nothing but kind words for him.
At the party to celebrate the successful conclusion of the case and the winding down of the task force, the old detective clapped Otsuka on the back, grinned, and told him he was “one heck of a stubborn bastard.” Clasping the man’s hands, Otsuka bowed so deeply that his forehead almost touched his knees. He didn’t want anyone to see the tears in his eyes.
Soon after, Otsuka’s transfer request was approved, and he joined the larceny division of the Criminal Investigation Bureau. Only later did he discover that the old detective had put in a good word for him. Determined not to disappoint his secret patron, Otsuka applied himself doggedly to his job.
Otsuka was just made that way. He never unearthed key leads or directly contributed to closing important cases. What he specialized in was working his way through the list of initial suspects and flagging any who were obviously innocent.
Ultimately, every investigation was a process of elimination, and somebody had to do the eliminating. It was a tedious job but an important one. His colleagues noticed his contribution and valued it.
In the squad, Ishikura was the one who valued Otsuka’s contribution the most, more than even Himekawa and Kikuta did. “Your tenacious approach really helps tighten the focus of an investigation. You’re doing an important job.”
That was how Otsuka ended up being saddled with Namekawa’s university. Unfortunately, there were few places Otsuka felt less at home than on a college campus. He’d visited several for various investigations over the years, and they always made him feel like a fish out of water.
It had taken him a while to realize that at university not all the students went to class when the bell signaled the start of classes. There were youngsters out on the lawn playing catch, youngsters in the dining room eating, drinking, and gossiping. Wasn’t college supposed to be for studying? Instead, to Otsuka, universities looked more like vacation resorts that had been plunked down in the middle of the city; students were just spoiled brats who lived the life of Riley.
It was summer vacation, but despite there not being any classes, plenty of students were milling aimlessly around. There was a group sunbathing on blankets at the edge of the big sports field, and the sound of someone performing a drum solo came from one of the buildings. Mysteriously, a mud-stained rugby player was dragging an empty bicycle-drawn trolley after him. A criminally sexy girl greeted the rugby player with a wave.
“Hiya. Seen Komori anywhere?”
“He was in the library a minute ago. You want his notes, rights? He gave them to me.”
“Are they in your locker?”
“No, they’re in the rec room chest.”
“Okay if I help myself?”
“Pick up mine too, will you?”
What are you two talking about? What is a “wreck room” anyway?
The girl, in a fluffy top that made her look as though she was about to sprout wings, vanished into a gloomy-looking building. A cute young girl had no business in a dump like that.
At their age, Otsuka already had his nose to the grindstone. In the summer, he spent the day either at the station or doing the rounds on his police-issue white bicycle. When he was assigned to nights, he’d sit at his desk staring out at the dark street, darting out from time to time to give a rowdy drunk a talking to. In those days, he had mostly dealt with old people who lived alone, housewives, store owners, janitors, real estate agents, workers in local factories and workshops, elementary school kids who came to hand in coins they’d found on the sidewalk. University was a different planet.
Otsuka glanced over at Lieutenant Kitami. He was squinting up at the sky, looking thoroughly bored as he lit a cigarette. I forgot. The guy’s a rich kid who graduated from a top university.
Kitami got into the National Police Agency without having to take the state examinations. The only way you could do that was by having a first-rate degree. He probably had a law degree from Tokyo University. Having completed the three-month-long cadet course at the National Police Academy, Kitami was now in the field as a trainee.
Seems like a mellow enough guy, given his background.
Kitami was already a lieutenant as soon as he graduated from the academy. On his first day with the task force, he’d introduced himself to Otsuka with a deep and respectful bow. Since Otsuka was just a regular officer, he’d been taken by surprise. As there’d been plenty of other detectives around, Kitami could just have been playing to the gallery.
“I’m a total greenhorn, Officer Otsuka,” he’d said. “I’m looking forward to you showing me the ropes.”
Kitami was perfectly coiffed, and his features were handsome and regular. He wore trendy frameless glasses and a suit and tie that were obviously expensive. By contrast, Otsuka’s hair was a tousled mess, his three-year-old suit was rumpled and shapeless, he’d picked up his tie cheap from a street vendor, and his looks were nothing to write home about. Despite being under no obligation to do so, Kitami had treated him with respect. It wouldn’t be fair for him to be standoffish in return. Besides, word had come down from the top brass to go easy on the boy. Otsuka decided to err on the side of caution and ratchet up the deference.
“Do you think the administrative offices of universities are closed during the summer vacation, Lieutenant Kitami?” Otsuka asked solemnly. A little groveling couldn’t do any harm.
Kitami gazed thoughtfully at a tall building on the far side of the playing field. “It’s the middle of a recession. I would guess that the career center, where they help the students find jobs, is still open.”
That made sense. Students needed jobs like everybody else.
With the economy in a rough patch, finding jobs was probably not easy for recent graduates—that much Otsuka could figure out for himself. But making the leap from there to figuring that the career center would be open over the vacation would never have occurred to him.
Otsuka decided to let Kitami take the lead in tracking down Namekawa’s college buddies while he tried to avoid saying anything tactless and making an enemy of the young lieutenant.
* * *
“Why don’t we start by finding out what clubs or societies Namekawa belonged to when he was a student,” Kitami suggested.
They exp
lained what they were doing to one of the clerks in the career center. After setting up camp in one corner of the room, the clerk brought them the written records of the different clubs at the university.
“The clubs all submit annual accounts. The accounts include a list of the members for the relevant year,” announced the clerk offhandedly. There were around three hundred clubs and societies at Haseda, so a single year’s worth of accounts was enough to fill several thick binders. Kitami and Otsuka were going to have go through the accounts for all four years Namekawa had been a student. That meant an awful lot of checking.
In an effort to speed things up, Otsuka called Kikuta and got him to ask Namekawa’s wife what clubs her husband belonged to as a student. She had no idea. He called Himekawa and asked her to do the same thing. She replied that asking that of the man’s coworkers would be a complete waste of time, then hung up.
Something’s pissed her off, thought Otsuka.
So much for shortcuts. Otsuka and Kitami began examining the accounts. Since Namekawa had worked for an ad agency, they looked at the Advertising and Marketing Study Group first, but had no luck. Since he had been quite robustly built, their next ports of call were the rugby, American football, and soccer clubs. Another blank. They were going to have to grind their way through the whole lot.
It was half past four by the time Otsuka came across Namekawa’s name. The students had mostly gone home, and they could feel the resentful glares of the office staff burning holes in their backs. “Here it is, Lieutenant Kitami,” yelled Otsuka excitedly. “He was in the hiking club.”
Perhaps Kitami wasn’t cut out for this sort of simple, mechanical work. He looked exhausted and only managed an indifferent grunt. Identifying a group of potential interviewees in Namekawa’s fellow hikers was only a small first step, and it was all they had to show for their day’s work when they reported at the evening meeting.
* * *
The next morning they called Yuzuru Takeuchi, who had been the head of the hiking club when Namekawa was at university. Takeuchi had last seen Namekawa at a reunion in November the previous year, he said, but they had not really seen much of each other since graduation. A guy by the name of Tashiro would be a much better bet, as he had stayed in close contact with Namekawa over the years.
Tomohiko Tashiro was thirty-nine years old and worked in sales for an electronics company. He was amenable when they called, and he made time to see them that evening.
They met in a café in a busy pedestrian street in Shibuya, not far from Tashiro’s office. Otsuka and Kitami both got to their feet when he came in and bowed. “Sorry to call you out of the blue like this, sir.”
“That’s not a problem.… But is Namekawa really dead?”
The man came across as an archetypal “salaryman,” earnest and rather dull.
“I’m afraid he is. We contacted you because we heard from Yuzuru Takeuchi that you and Namekawa were good friends.”
“That’s right. About once every three months—six at the most—we got together for a drink. It’s a ritual we’ve kept up since graduation. There’s no business relationship between our two companies; it was a purely personal thing. Namekawa always used to tease me, ‘You guys should hire me to make a TV spot for that new product of yours.’” He sighed. “I can’t believe he’s dead. If you don’t mind, how was he killed?”
“He was stabbed,” Otsuka said. It wasn’t the whole truth, but it kept things simple. There was no need to let Tashiro know that his friend’s body had spent a month rotting at the bottom of a pond.
“When was the last time you two met?”
“Let’s see. The end of April, I think. Yes. The Golden Week holiday was about to start, and I remember Namekawa saying he had a backlog of work to get through.”
“Did you notice anything strange about him?”
“Strange? I don’t think so.” Tashiro tilted his head to one side. “Wait, let me rephrase that. There was something strange about him, but that was just how Namekawa was. I mean, he had multiple women on the go and was working his ass off, which was business as usual for him. There was one thing, though. Last year he told me he’d been in a creative slump.”
Himekawa had mentioned Namekawa’s creative loss of form at the meeting yesterday evening.
“You see, the year before last, the guy won a grand prix for this TV commercial he made. It was a really big deal, apparently. But when all the fuss died down, he lost all interest in his job and couldn’t seem to get it back. When we met up this April, he was firing on all cylinders again. I thought, ‘Great, he’s back on track.…’ I still can’t believe he was murdered.…”
Tashiro’s statement lined up with what they’d previously learned.
“Do you have any idea how Namekawa pulled himself out of his slump?”
“What snapped him out it? Not really. I didn’t know much about the slump in the first place, let alone what got him out of it.” Tashiro sank into silent thought for a moment or two. “No, it’s no good. I don’t recall anything.”
As a matter of routine, they asked Tashiro where he’d been on July 13, the day they believed Namekawa was killed. He told them that he was in Osaka on business, which they later verified with his firm.
As they were wrapping up the interview, Tashiro asked Otsuka, “Was Namekawa murdered last month, then?”
“Uhm, well,” Otsuka mumbled halfheartedly, “I guess he was, yes. Anyway, we need to be getting going.”
They left Tashiro in the café, sitting at the table alone.
* * *
It was eleven thirty when the evening meeting ended and they emerged from Kameari police station. Tonight followed the usual pattern. Rather than going out for dinner, Himekawa’s squad headed straight to a bar near the railway station for a drink. The relationship between Himekawa, Kikuta, and Ioka had started getting interesting over the last few days. After a few drinks, of course.
Ioka was always pushy with her at the pub. Every second word was, “Lieutenant Reiko, I love you,” and he frequently tried to sneak a kiss. Sometimes she would shove him away with a “No, thank you very much,” other times she would give him a mighty slap in the face. She did her best to look angry, but she usually had the ghost of a smile.
All this provoked extravagant reactions from Kikuta. Yesterday he had seized Ioka by the lapels and bellowed at him, “No way in hell am I going to let you take Reiko away from me, you creep.”
It was the booze speaking, of course, but for Kikuta, shouting about his feelings and referring to Reiko by her first name was quite a showy performance. The man was almost giving Ioka a run for his money.
Reiko’s response was interesting in its own way too. With a face flushed scarlet from drink, she sat quite still, slumped forward over the table with her hands clamped tight around her napkin.
“Did you hear what I said, you jerk?” yelled Kikuta, pushing Ioka out of the way as he sat down heavily next to Reiko. Still clasping her napkin, Reiko gave a convulsive nod of her head, then another and another and another. It wasn’t clear if Kikuta was responding to Reiko’s nodding when he put an arm around her shoulders and dragged her forcefully toward him. Far from resisting, she leaned into him and kept right on nodding. With one arm wrapped around her and a tankard clutched in his other hand, Kikuta sat there and slowly drank his beer. Off to the side, Ioka sniveled about what an unfair place the world was, before falling asleep and starting to snore.
“God, what a bunch of misfits,” said Yuda with a rueful grin. “Things could get interesting if any of them remember this tomorrow.”
Never was a truer word spoken.
* * *
Today had been all too similar to yesterday. There’d been nothing worth calling a breakthrough in the investigation. They’d all completed their assigned interviews and dumped their not very helpful reports with the desk sergeant. Despite last night, Kikuta didn’t seem to be any more intimate with Himekawa. Nor did Ioka, for his part, look ready to give up.
>
I’m looking forward to the sequel down the pub tonight, thought Otsuka. But he was in for a disappointment. His cell phone buzzed as they were about to board the bus to the railroad station. Pulling it out, he didn’t recognize the caller’s number.
“I’ll catch up with you later,” he said to the other four. (Unusually, Ishikura had agreed to come out tonight.) He knew he’d find them at the usual place. He moved away from the bus stop to take the call.
“Otsuka here.”
“Hello, this is Tomohiko Tashiro. We met earlier. Sorry to call so late.”
Otsuka had handed Tashiro a card with his cell phone number scribbled on it and told him to get in touch if he remembered anything.
“No problem. Did you remember something?”
Tashiro seemed to hesitate.
“It doesn’t matter what it is. Trivial things can sometimes be important.”
“Well, I was thinking about Namekawa.… I doubt it’s important, though.”
“You never know. Go ahead and tell me.”
“Okay. When we met in April, Namekawa kept going on and on about how he was feeling truly and fully alive. At the time I just thought he’d gone and got himself another hot girlfriend or work was going well, but…”
“But what?”
“Detective Otsuka, do you spend a lot of time online?”
“Some, not a lot. I mean, I’ve got a PC like everybody else.”
“Have you heard of something called Strawberry Night?”
“Strawberry what?”
“Strawberry Night.”
Just at that moment, Otsuka glanced back at the front door of the police station. Kitami, his partner, was just coming out, flanked by the station commander and the local chief of detectives. Otsuka slipped behind a police car for cover.
He had a feeling that the fewer people who knew about this phone call, the better.
6
The “Mizumoto Park Multiple Dumped Bodies Case” investigation had hit a wall.
Things had gotten off to a promising start when Reiko spotted the link between Taiichi Kanebara’s sliced-open abdomen and Yasuyuki Fukazawa’s death by Naegleria fowleri, and, as a result, they’d retrieved the body of a second victim, Yukio Namekawa, from the pond. Now, despite all their efforts, they couldn’t find anything to connect the two victims. They had also failed to establish a link between Fukazawa, the man Reiko believed to be responsible for dumping the bodies in the water, and Kanebara or Namekawa.
The Silent Dead Page 14