Blue Light Yokohama

by Nicolas Obregon

  “Sorry, Doctor. What exactly do you mean?”

  “I mean that they were all stabbed to death. But not with any knife on sale in Japan. The cuts are too perfect, too sharp.”

  “You think it could be some kind of scalpel?” Iwata asked.

  “These wounds are simply too large for a scalpel. These are more consistent with a machete of some kind. Perhaps a small sword.”

  Iwata and Sakai looked at each other. The doctor continued as Sakai began to scribble down notes.

  “The results of the tests for the blood, urine, and gastric contents will be ready tomorrow morning. All the bodies had traces of some kind of black soot on them too. The father had the most on his body; he actually had it on the forefinger of his left hand, though he was right-handed. Perhaps he was forced to touch it.”

  “The black sun,” Iwata whispered to himself. “Kaneshiro was forced to make the symbol.”

  Doctor Eguchi led them out of the room again.

  “Now, how to put this delicately. The bodies—”

  “The maternal grandmother is handling the arrangements,” Sakai said. “The bodies should be removed by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “All right. We open at 8:30 A.M. tomorrow morning; I’ll have the results for you by then.”

  “This is my number.” Iwata tore out a page from his notebook and handed it across.

  The detectives both bowed and made their way out of the building. As they got into the car, Sakai’s phone rang.

  “Oh it’s you … Yeah? That’s good. And have you got a name?” She clutched the phone with her shoulder and jotted something down. “Okay, what else have you got for me? 2010? All right, good. And what about your boyfriend, did he get those registration plates from the car park? Yeah, well, that doesn’t interest me. Look, it’s now 2 P.M. I’m going to call again at 5 P.M, and I want those names. Your friend is off the hook. You’ve just inherited his little errand. Do you understand?”

  Iwata caught a smile of pleasure sail across Sakai’s lips.

  “Oh, and Hatanaka? You remember what I said before? Just keep in mind that I’m a woman of my word.”

  She hung up.

  “That was that asshole cop with the mole.”

  “Hatanaka.”

  “That’s the one. Two things. First, the family did have a car. Honda Odyssey 2010. No info on a sale or theft, though.”

  “Well, whoever has that car now is someone worth speaking to.”

  “I think so too. Second thing, Hatanaka got a name from the locals.” She held up her notepad.

  “Kodai Kiyota?” Iwata read out loud.

  “Neighbors say it was well known that he had bad blood with the family. Apparently he has links to the development company doing the demolition around the Kaneshiro house.”

  “He wanted them out; they wouldn’t go?”

  “Very possible.” She shrugged. “But get this, the guy has past links to the yakuza as an enforcer. And not only that, but his police records show he’s six feet two.”

  “Then I want this guy found, Sakai. I’m going to drop you at Setagaya PD. You find him, you call me.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “The father worked at a call center in Keiō-Tamagawa and the mother worked at a nearby university. I’m going to talk to colleagues, see if I can find out anything.”

  Sakai yawned and looked at Iwata now.

  “So where are you from?” she asked.

  “Miyama. Out in the sticks. Not too far from Kyoto.”

  “I heard you were American.”

  “I spent some time there when I was young, that’s all. College. What about you?”

  “Kanazawa.”

  Iwata laughed.

  “That’s funny to you?”

  “No, I just didn’t exactly picture you wandering over Flower-viewing Bridge in Kenroku-en garden. Is that where you’re from, then?”

  “I just got my badge there.”

  Iwata glanced at her. She seemed to bite her tongue and looked out of the window. Cheap chain hotels and anonymous corporations flanked the gray of the expressway. Love hotels stacked behind the road, overpriced apartment blocks stained with years of exhaust.

  I’m happy with you.

  “Who was that this morning? On the way to the elevators,” Iwata asked.

  “Who?” she said distantly, still looking out of the window.

  “The one that flicked the elastic band at you.”

  She turned to face him now. Her eyes searched his for a moment before she answered.

  “His name is Moroto.”

  “What’s his deal?”

  “Moroto is … look, just avoid him.”

  Seeing the green sign for Central Setagaya, Iwata turned off the expressway.

  “Well, first impressions and all that, but seems to me that Moroto is an asshole.”

  She looked back out of the window.

  “You know, Iwata, for a Kansai region guy, you’re not such a prick.”

  They smiled at each other for the first time and the rest of the journey to Setagaya Police Station passed in silence.

  * * *

  Happy Cloud Communications was on the second floor of a squat building in the shadow of the multistory car park. Iwata walked alone, passing a Korean restaurant and a tiny dental clinic, until he found the side entrance. He pressed the buzzer and an overweight man in a dirty cardigan opened the door. Iwata showed him his police ID.

  “Ah, you must be here about Kaneshiro?”

  Iwata nodded.

  “I’m Niwa, the manager. I’ll show you his desk.”

  Iwata followed him into a windowless room with yellow walls and plastic pot plants. Around thirty employees were sitting at their terminals, all locked into bright telephone conversations. A young man with long hair and a soft face looked up at Iwata, and then looked away sharply. He stood and left the room.

  “Did Mr. Kaneshiro have any problems here, Mr. Niwa?”

  Niwa chortled over his dandruff-laden shoulder.

  “Problems? The guy hardly said a word to anyone. He just did the IT stuff for me, he had little contact with the employees. Maybe a ‘hello’ in the mornings, and a ‘good night’ in the evenings, but not much more than that. This was his office.”

  Niwa knocked on the door ironically.

  “No one’s in.”

  “You can leave me here, Mr. Niwa.”

  Iwata made a few mental notes as he looked around the cramped office. It was set back from the main room and shared a side door with Niwa’s office. The blinds were drawn on the window, which gave out onto the back alley below. Iwata saw only litter, a skulking cat, and for some reason, a dirty old megaphone on the floor.

  Iwata snapped on a glove and unlocked Kaneshiro’s computer. He spent some twenty minutes going through the man’s e-mail but could find nothing even remotely connected to a dispute of any kind, much less a family homicide. He searched through the hard drive and found only work. Iwata locked the computer again, noticing the family photograph on the desk. Four smiles in a sunset, a picnic devoured.

  Please let me hear.

  Iwata checked the drawers of the desk but found nothing interesting. On the floor beneath the swivel chair there was some old, faded blood spatter.

  Maybe a nosebleed. Maybe something else?

  The hook on the back of the door supported a single raincoat, but its pockets were empty. On the wall there was a small calendar from the nearby Korean restaurant. Iwata flipped through the weeks, seeing nothing but perfunctory appointments, school meetings, and family engagements. He got back to the beginning of the year before he saw something that stood out. On January fourth, Kaneshiro had an hour after work blocked out with the note:

  MEET I.

  Iwata left Kaneshiro’s office, thanked Niwa, and left the call center. He stopped at the 7-Eleven across the road and bought two rice balls and a banana jelly drink. He returned to the Toyota, devoured his food, then called Sakai.

  “Yes?”
Her voice was impatient.

  “Sakai, it’s me. I’m at the father’s office. Listen, it’s probably nothing but I need you to look into something.”

  “One second.” He heard her shuffling through her bag. “Okay.”

  “On January fourth of this year, Tsunemasa Kaneshiro met someone called ‘I.’”

  “That’s it?”

  “Kiyota is a good bet for the murderer, but I want more than one horse in this race. You keep Hatanaka out there knocking on doors. If anything for ‘I’ comes up, you call me.”

  Sakai sighed.

  “Speaking of Kiyota, no location on him so far—he seems to have dropped off the map. But you’ll like this more. He has convictions for violent crime relating to yakuza enforcement. And not just that. He’s also got links to Nippon Kumiai. Heard of it?”

  “Some kind of nationalist party.”

  “Right. Looks like Kiyota wanted to fashion himself a career in activism. Oh, and I almost forgot. One of the VIVUS construction workers says he saw a man near the house on the morning after the murders. A man ‘with a limp who seemed to be talking to himself.’”

  “Okay that’s good. Listen, I need something else. I need you to get the permissions to access Mr. Kaneshiro’s bank account from the start of the year. There’s nothing on this in the case file, which is surprising. Anyway, anything out of place, you call me.”

  “What I said about you not being a prick? I spoke too soon.”

  “I’ll meet you at Setagaya in about an hour.”

  Iwata hung up.

  He was about to pull away when someone knocked on the window, making him flinch. The long-haired employee from the call center was standing there. Iwata wound down the window.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you police? Here about Tsunemasa Kaneshiro?”

  Iwata nodded.

  The young man looked up and down the street.

  “Niwa told you there were no problems in the office, didn’t he?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “There was a girl … young … I don’t know her name. But she had a grudge against Kaneshiro. She stood outside the office for hours at a time screaming obscenities over a megaphone. Screaming. ‘Cockroaches. Cockroaches. Kill the cockroaches.’”

  “Why?”

  “She knew Kaneshiro was Korean. It was mostly racist stuff. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone … so angry. The police were called a couple of times but she always came back. And then a few weeks ago, Niwa ordered Kaneshiro to go down and deal with the girl once and for all. He came back a few minutes later with a big gash on his arm.”

  “You said she looked young?”

  “No more than eighteen. Sixteen, I’d say. Around one hundred and fifty-two centimeters. Dyed hair.”

  “Name and number, please.” Iwata tore out a page from his notebook. “I may be in touch.”

  The man wrote down his details quickly, looking up and down the street again.

  “Kaneshiro was a good man.” He passed over the scrap of paper. Then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 4: IRISES

  Iwata parked near the old Olympic stadium and headed toward the main campus of Komazawa University. It was 3:30 P.M. At the entrance, there was an old stone carving with the university’s name dating back to the 1590s. The motto ran beneath:

  TRUTH. SINCERITY. RESPECT. LOVE.

  The rugby team was out training on the playing fields, the university mascot, a magpie, emblazoned on their chests.

  One for sorrow.

  At the main reception, Iwata explained that he was investigating the murder of Mrs. Takako Kaneshiro. The receptionist immediately sent for the facilities manager. It took only a few moments for an elderly, pudgy man in a worker’s uniform to appear. Iwata held up his police ID and the man bowed deeply.

  “I’m the manager, how can I help, Inspector?”

  “Mrs. Kaneshiro worked for you, correct?”

  “That’s right, she was a cleaner. Mainly in Radiological Sciences and Business Administration.”

  “Did she have a workstation?”

  “No, sir. Just a locker.”

  “Please show me.”

  The manager led Iwata along the polished corridors, descending several levels to the employee changing room. At the back of the dingy room, he pointed to the locker with wreaths of flowers beneath it.

  Two for joy.

  It was secured with a large padlock, twice the size of all the others.

  “Did Takako ever have any problems here?”

  “No, sir. She was a model employee, never late or sick. A wonderful worker and a wonderful person. What happened is … awful.”

  “Sir, forgive me. If she had no problems here, do you mind telling me why she had such a large padlock?”

  “Well there was an … incident at the beginning of the year. Takako complained that her locker had been broken into.”

  Pipes shuddered and groaned above them.

  “What was taken?”

  “That was the strange thing—only her worker’s uniform. It made no sense; those are issued by the university. It’s just a cheap uniform. Replacements are frequently given.”

  “Takako had no enemies that you can think of?”

  “She was a quiet woman. I can’t imagine her having enemies. Who could hate such a person?”

  “Do you have a key for this locker?”

  “Just one moment.”

  He rustled through a large ring of keys until he found the duplicate and unhooked it. Iwata unlocked the padlock and the door creaked open. The locker was empty.

  Three for a girl.

  Four for a boy.

  “You said Mrs. Kaneshiro had the theft problem at the beginning of the year, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Would you be able to tell me exactly when?”

  “I have records in my office.”

  He led Iwata along an unlit corridor that reeked of disinfectant. There was a soft scuttling in the darkness. The office held little more than a desk, a chair, and some shelves packed with binders. The manager grunted as he reached for the right folder.

  “Here we are.”

  He unclipped a page dated January 2011.

  TAKAKO KANESHIRO COMPLAINT OF THEFT FROM LOCKER.

  Iwata noted down the date.

  “Were the authorities called?”

  “No, sir. It was dealt with internally.”

  “Did you discover who was responsible?”

  “A young Iranian woman who worked with us for a short time was dismissed.”

  “She admitted to the theft?”

  The manager laughed uneasily.

  “The process was rather more … informal, Inspector.”

  “She lost her job informally?”

  “Several of her fellow employees voiced their concerns about her trustworthiness and the woman in question made no fuss.”

  Iwata nodded.

  “An Iranian immigrant would be unlikely to, don’t you think?”

  The manager turned red.

  “Inspector, I assure you that—”

  Iwata waved this away.

  “What was her name? That’s all I want.”

  “Saman Gilani. I’m not sure if that’s the correct pronunciation.”

  Iwata ran his finger along the page, scanning the characters mentally.

  “Do you have any employees here with criminal records?”

  The older man thought about this.

  “It’s quite possible, I suppose. However, I deal only in low-level workers, you understand. We don’t have those kinds of checks in place anymore. Everything is outsourced now.”

  “All right, well, thank you very much for your time here.”

  The older man bowed and showed him out of the office. Iwata walked alone through the dark corridor, the scuttling gone now, the shuddering squeals of the pipes and gasps of steam replacing it.

  At the bottom of the stairwell, Iwata dialed Sakai.


  “What now?” she huffed.

  “I think I might have found a couple more horses. Are you at a terminal?”

  “Yep, give me a name.”

  “First of all: Saman Gilani, though I’m not hopeful.”

  Iwata spelled the name out and there was a pause.

  Five for silver.

  “Okay. Iranian national. She was deported a couple of weeks ago. She arrived after the employment treaty in the nineties and seemingly never went back. Has a child with a Japanese citizen. Looks like the kid ended up in care. But what’s she got to do with this?”

  “Nothing. Now cross-reference the next search with the criminal records database. Any current employee of Komazawa University.”

  Iwata heard her fingers run over the keyboard, then a clucking sound from her tongue.

  “Okay, two hits. First up we’ve got a guy with several delinquency charges some ten years ago, nothing on him since then except parking fines. Then we have Masaharu Ezawa. Hm, he’s got a nice spread of sexual harassment, peeping in female toilets, and theft of underwear. No address on him for the last three years—”

  Six for gold.

  Iwata was already sprinting back toward the manager’s office. He ripped open the door, and the old man flinched.

  “Masaharu Ezawa, he works here?!”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Address?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “I need it now.”

  He opened a plastic wallet and then passed over a single-sheet file. It outlined Masaharu Ezawa’s address, national insurance number, and shift timetable. Iwata looked up.

  “He’s on shift now?”

  The manager nodded, a worried expression on his face.

  “Take me.”

  Moving faster than he had for many years, the older man hurried up to street level with Iwata cursing him forward. They cut across lawns and through buildings until he pointed. His finger was aimed through a bank of trees, to a man crouched over. In a quiet corner, Masaharu Ezawa was slowly and diligently tending to a strip of irises.

  Seeing them, Ezawa stood. He was a short man with a long, feminine mop of thin hair hiding one eye. His worker’s uniform hung off him like a child wearing his father’s clothes. His lips were full, his teeth were small, and his nose was pug-like. He looked like a boy put to work on a man’s job.