Loups-Garous

by Natsuhiko Kyogoku

  “Right? We were there two days after she’d been declared missing. Given that, whatever they heard in the area had to have been incidental. I doubt that they went as far as patrolling Sakura’s home. When I was attached to the case, Sakura wasn’t believed connected to any of this.”

  Shizue had heard the same. Hinako was under interrogation now, but that was only now, after Yuko Yabe had been discovered dead.

  Kunugi shrugged his whole body.

  “Overheard evidence is tricky. These days, nobody just sits outside and observes. No one walks through town. Everyone’s reading their monitors. When officials ask to make real contact most citizens deny them. You can’t force them. Everything you say to them is recorded. Not like back in the day. You can be charged for saying outrageous things now. They’re always saying your statements will remain anonymous, but if you say anything they think reveals accountability, they’ll shut you down.

  “That’s why I doubt they were able to obtain such perfectly compact and convenient evidence. Even this bit about Kawabata accompanying Nakamura on his outing was evidence submitted by a cohabitant and local cop.”

  “In that case, how should we interpret what Lieutenant Ishida has divulged? You don’t believe he actually obtained this information?”

  “No, if the lieutenant divulged this information in a circumstantial interrogation, it’s got to be at least somewhat accurate. There were other investigators present when Ishida questioned you, yes?” Shizue asked. “No matter where the conversation took place, all statements made under questioning are a matter of public record. Besides I doubt if the lieutenant would start lying to you now. So this is what I think: they got to the girl they suspect of being the criminal first.”

  “First?”

  “Yeah. If you take into account that business about Mao being suspicious, the story changes.”

  “You mean they’ve dug up information targeting the undocumented residents?”

  “I’m sure they got some information. There are a lot of people out there who harbor negative feelings toward the undocumented residents. If you go to any anonymous tipline on your monitor and enter anything about potential criminals and input features of that young girl, I’m sure you’d get tons of information in less than an hour. Most of it will be useless junk data, and there’s no credibility to any of the information, but some of it will seem useful,” Kunugi said. “Even if it’s anonymous there’s a source for everything, and that means you can always trace it. If you know what you’re looking for, odds are good you’ll find it. It eliminates a lot of the labor.”

  “In that case.”

  “So…” Kunugi crossed his legs and balanced an elbow in his lap, then put his chin in his hand. “I’m wondering where this first bit of information came from. We have to figure out the connection. Before the police knew of Cat’s existence they couldn’t have started anything. Who’s the source? Until we know that, the evidence can’t be collected. Because you can’t wring it out of her. I’m positive someone was spilling information.”

  “Spilling?”

  “Secret information, I mean. Someone must have been leaking info on Cat to the police. Moreover, it’s very sensitive information. If it wasn’t, the police wouldn’t go that far. Regardless of whether they were bewildered or not, there was a suspected culprit—Nakamura, who after your little suggestion went from suspect to potential victim—so something happened to make the direction of the investigation change.”

  Direction, meaning that even after what Shizue had said, the police were still suspicious of Yuji Nakamura. But then…

  “I was under the impression from what Lieutenant Ishida said that Yuji Nakamura was no longer under any suspicion at all.”

  “I’m sure he isn’t.” Kunugi sat up. “I think Yuji Nakamura is already in police custody.”

  “What?”

  “The search around the center’s premises ended Monday night. But it’s not like they found who they were looking for, so normally they’d keep a few people on. This was considered the most likely place he’d hide. But then suddenly everyone is taken off duty yesterday. It’s just a hunch, but I think Nakamura is the one who provided the information on Mao.”

  “Nakamura?”

  “Nakamura’s testimony would be rock solid. If Nakamura himself states that he and Kawabata were attacked by this girl, they’d stop at nothing to find her. So—”

  “Why wouldn’t they announce that they’d apprehended him, then?”

  “Because…” Kunugi was forced silent with his mouth open as the monitor on the desk lit up with a message.

  Kunugi’s hunch was wrong.

  The message on the monitor screen was a notice of the discovery of Yuji Nakamura’s body.

  CHAPTER 017

  “WHAT’S GOING ON?” Mio yelled.

  Surrounded by cables and particle board, Mio appeared strong.

  “Why? Why’d she get killed? What the hell is this fatal wounds to the abdomen? Abrasions all over both her legs? A section of her viscera missing, including her liver? Severed carotid artery?! Hey, Makino!”

  Mio kept gesturing at the different monitors lined up in front of her. Over and over.

  It was…

  Hazuki couldn’t look directly at them.

  “Look! Look at what they did to Yabe! Why?!”

  “I…”

  “This wasn’t Nakamura. So who did it?”

  “I don’t know, I…”

  Hazuki was at a loss for words.

  She had no idea what was what anymore.

  It was another turtle icon on her monitor. Another series of directions followed that had led her here to Mio’s.

  And as soon as she’d arrived, Mio showed her the images of Yuko Yabe.

  She had been torn apart.

  “The area patrol came where we left her. They came, right?”

  Hazuki kept nodding. It made her nauseated.

  But she worried she’d get yelled at if she sat down, and just as the thought occurred to her she felt tight in the chest, and then before she knew it the bridge of her nose got hot. It reminded her of her early childhood.

  “Stop crying!” Mio barked, and glared at Hazuki. “Why are you crying? This is the first time I’ve seen anyone cry. You’re pouring liquid from your eyes.”

  “I am?”

  She wouldn’t have known unless someone told her.

  Tears.

  Mio turned her back.

  “Our plan failed. No, that’s not it. It went as planned. Right? Did we screw up somewhere?”

  No, we didn’t.

  Saturday night.

  Hazuki and Mio, along with Ayumi, had taken Yuko toward Hazuki’s house. First, Hazuki had gone inside, walked to her bedroom, and turned on the monitor. Then after ten minutes, she started to pretend to do schoolwork. Then another ten minutes. The alarm went off. An image of the area leading up from the front gate to her foyer appeared on the monitor. She confirmed it was the image of Yuko slumped over and made the emergency call on her security receiver. Five minutes later the area patrol showed up with the security company and made vocal confirmation.

  We’ve secured the trespasser on your grounds.

  Could you please verify for us?

  Yuko’s face appeared on the screen.

  Do you know this young woman?

  No, I don’t, Hazuki had replied.

  If someone had really just suddenly appeared on Hazuki’s front step, Hazuki wouldn’t immediately recognize who it was on the screen. To play it safe she’d decided to pretend she didn’t know. To avoid suspicion.

  It would have been strange for Hazuki to know that Yuko Yabe was supposed to be missing.

  The Yuko on her monitor screen looked lifeless. It was a ruse, of course. Hazuki thought she saw Yuko form a faint smile as she turned her face away from the screen.

  Even if she did, who knew what that smile meant. Hazuki didn’t.

  That was the last time she saw a moving image of Yuko.

&nb
sp; And today, the image of Yuko.

  Torn apart.

  “I confirmed everything too,” Mio said. “Yabe definitely got into the squad car. I told her to tell them who she was as soon as she got in the car, so she was sure to have let them know. There was a request for questioning out for her, so once they knew who she was they would have immediately taken her into protection. Even if they needed to verify her identity they would have at least kept her in custody. She would have been totally safe. But…”

  Why’d she die? Mio said again.

  Just as she was about to holler something again the door slammed open.

  Beyond the ocean of black cables stood Ayumi.

  She was totally calm.

  “Why’d you call me out here?”

  “You’re late.”

  “I don’t really use my terminal. I don’t even look at the monitor.”

  “You should at least look at your monitor. Look, Ayumi…”

  Her eyes narrowed before Mio could say anything. She’d noticed the image on her screens.

  “Yabe…?”

  “Yeah. Cut up into pieces.”

  “Who…did it?”

  “You think we know?” Mio said and turned around with her chair.

  Mio was crying too.

  “Where did you go after we dropped off Yuko, Ayumi?”

  “I did like you told me and followed the car for a while.”

  “Till where?”

  “You know I can’t very well chase a car on foot. I’m pretty sure they were headed to the center in that patrol car. They’d gotten too far from me to confirm, so I gave up.”

  “That’s right. That’s it. The area patrol squad car unit G02254 definitely went to Makino’s residence, picked up Yuko Yabe, then headed to the protective services of the administrative center. I checked. They even called in to headquarters. They reported that they’d apprehended a young woman they believed to be the one for whom there was an interrogation request still pending. Look at this.”

  Ayumi closed the door and walked past Hazuki straight to Mio’s side.

  “This is the news I got.”

  On the monitor screen was a list of notifications.

  “The same emergency message was sent to the prefectural police investigative unit. But…”

  Mio tapped at a key.

  “It was never received. In fact, there’s no record of the transmission, even.”

  She tapped again.

  “Look. There’s no record of the transmission from car G02254. It’s just disappeared. In fact it was erased. The only record of it is in my hands.”

  “What do you mean erased?”

  “It’s been made to look like it was never there. Everything’s been made a lie. Do you understand, Makino? We’ve been denied by someone. What we did that night has been completely erased! Who would turn us into a lie? Who would rip Yabe to pieces?”

  “Calm down, Tsuzuki.” Ayumi had been reading the information on the various monitors and then settled down on a duralumin case.

  “This is police data?”

  “Yes. It’s a postmortem report. Though the autopsy results aren’t posted yet.”

  “What moves are they making?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know, but the murderer isn’t Nakamura.”

  “Probably not,” Ayumi said quietly, but with certainty.

  “What’s with you?” Mio glared at Ayumi with her now red eyes. “How would you know, Kono? Nakamura was going to kill Yabe, you know.”

  “But he couldn’t.”

  Still…Mio rubbed her bloodshot eyes.

  “You wouldn’t think that normally. You’d think Nakamura did it.”

  “Not really. If it was in fact Nakamura I saw under the bridge that night, there’s no way he could attack Yuko, who was being protected by area patrol, by the way. Besides, the police say he’s a kid. About your age, Tsuzuki.”

  “Yeah, but…the reason I’m saying Nakamura couldn’t have done it isn’t the same!” Mio wiped her nose and tapped at her keyboard again. “Look.”

  This time Ayumi quickly jolted her head away after just a quick glimpse at the image.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Look closer.” Mio pulled up the monitor. “Yuji Nakamura was killed too.”

  Killed?

  There was in fact an image of a male body torn apart on that screen.

  “Even I was surprised. This was released just before Hazuki got here. He’d been tossed out of a deserted house here in Section C. A local cop found him, and there’s been no autopsy performed yet. Now you ready? Look. Look at this. It says he’s been dead for at least three days. It says so right there.”

  “Three days since they found him? Wait, what?”

  “Three days since he died, you idiot!” Mio screamed, hysterical for an instant. She took a deep breath.

  “Until the final results of the official autopsy are released we don’t know for sure, but they’re saying that Yuko was probably killed on Monday night. But Nakamura was killed on Saturday or Sunday. Yabe was found first, but Nakamura died first.”

  “Him too…”

  Hazuki, like Ayumi, had to turn away from the monitor.

  Mio huffed through her nose.

  “Similar methods. Their throats were cut with a dull weapon. Deep wounds in their chest, stomach, and right arms. You can’t really tell from this image, but it’s the same as the others…especially Kawabata. What does all this mean?”

  Something’s not right, Mio kept muttering to herself.

  “This screws up everything. I thought this whole time Nakamura was the one who killed Kawabata. They had a falling out. They both attacked Yabe. That much is certain. They were going to kill her. Kono saw that too.”

  Ayumi said yeah in a small voice.

  “Then, Rey Mao appeared, saved Yuko from being killed, got pulled into the fight, and Nakamura ended up killing Kawabata, right? Now everything’s uncertain!”

  “What do you mean uncertain?” Hazuki asked.

  “I can’t sort any of this out. It’s all just so nonsensical. Maybe Nakamura wasn’t the culprit of the other murders either. So I looked into it.”

  “What did you look into?”

  “The reason they supposedly attacked Yuko. It was hard to tell from just what Yuko was saying. So I looked into it. I got a better idea. They had a motive.”

  A motive to kill Yuko.

  To curb the spread of this extrasensory defect Yuko had.

  “Kawabata and Nakamura were apparently big followers of that old-fashioned style of moving image.”

  “Following what?”

  “No, like they were maniacal fans. To the point where they started to believe in those images.”

  “Believe—you mean those old pictures?”

  “Something or other movies. It’s a special kind of moving image.”

  Belief in moving images? It didn’t quite come to her.

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about? They’re like those antiques from forty or fifty years ago. What was it again, you know, you take a roll of film and draw directly on it and then transfer it to transparent film, and then roll the images. There’s stuff that’s not stick figures either. Kawabata collected old machines to tune up and watch this stuff from antique real shops. He would apparently try to convert it to soft files. Nakamura collected paper versions. Paper! Can you imagine how expensive that would have been?”

  “So what?”

  Well, Mio placed her fingertips on the tablet this time. “Okay, so one of the directors of these something something films—he’s obviously been long dead but let’s see…Here it is. And this too. This is a movie by a different person. There are apparently a lot of people who still collect and talk about these two guys’ work.”

  On the screen were several images of a girl in fascinating clothes.

  “This, and then this is a little different…These were made by various directors, but these two happen to have died within a day
of each other. I mean they were born a year apart, but what do you call that? The day you die?”

  “A death anniversary,” Ayumi replied. “It’s called a death anniversary, the day they die.”

  “Okay, death anniversary. Well, their death anniversary is a holiday for these guys. They call it their AM-versary, but it was started by a group of old people. It’s at the end of March. They have events and stuff. Let’s see. So people from all over the world, yes, from abroad and everything, were summoned by this group. I mean it’s just a message from a crazy fanatic. I don’t know what purpose they have in sending messages to dead people, but there’s a pretty substantial amount of mail that gets sent.”

  What appeared to be a monument appeared on the screen.

  “There’s apparently a data stocker at this commemorative statue, where every year the messages get transferred. It’s a complete waste of time, but that’s where these people write to.”

  Mio entered some code into the search window and pressed return.

  “‘Ryu Kawabata/Everything begins with you/The world you created is majestic/The imbeciles who pass off their replicas of your work as their own originals, they forsake you, but I will not forgive the jerks that refuse to acknowledge your work/These retarded idiots…’ How do you say this word? I’ve only ever read it.”

  E-rad-icate, Ayumi said.

  “‘…shall be eradicated,’ it says. ‘These retarded idiots shall be eradicated.’ Doesn’t that sound like he’s going to kill them? No one talks that way. He’s totally nuts.”

  “No one says totally nuts anymore either.”

  “Shut up. Nuts is nuts. But look. This is the next message. ‘Yuji Nakamura/This world is a facade/That which transforms and decays is not the truth/The world you guys have created is absolute and unchanging/ You are the truth/The idiots who try to make their filthy reality appear true must die/I will not forgive such blasphemy…’”

  “Blasphemy,” Hazuki repeated.

  Yuko said she was accused of being blasphemous.

  “You think this is why she was targeted?”

  “Yes,” Mio answered. “She had an extrasensory defect. In other words she saw even her own face this way.” Mio returned the screen to the image of the deformée character illustrations.