The files on his brother and his son looked pristine, exactly where he expected them. He didn’t read them.
That evening, he left the office to oversee an aikido class at the local community center. The class practically ran itself thanks to a few dedicated young men and women, but casual students complained if no senior black belt showed up. It was absurd. Many of them didn’t practice between classes. They wanted to absorb the art just by being in the same room with advanced black belts. This kind of foolishness was the last thing he needed after a morning in the Naga River valley and a strange afternoon at headquarters.
He was preoccupied. During the freestyle drill, the entire class lined up to attack him, one by one. After the first few throws, the hobbyists approached him very slowly, even timidly. He barked at them to keep up the pace. It took him several more throws to realize that his practice partners were ending up very far behind him. They were taking a long time getting back to the end of the line, and some were missing. He turned to see a few students sitting at the edge of the mats rubbing their limbs and checking each other’s teeth. He had tossed them all the way to the back wall. He had tossed them like laundry.
He rushed over to help the seated students back into line. Luckily, they at least knew how to fall, and no one was injured. Takuda was ashamed and confused, but he managed a quick, impromptu speech about demonstrating the power of aikido. He hoped they didn’t think he was bullying them. He merely wanted to show them where they were going if they kept on the path.
They bought it. The relief shone in their faces, and most of them even seemed inspired. Takuda calmly restarted the drill, but he was in turmoil. Only with the advanced black belts did he ever use more than a fraction of his true power, and usually just to demonstrate the martial application of the techniques. Tonight, the flow was more powerful than usual, more powerful than it had ever been. As the drill continued, he barely touched the hobbyists. He was rooted deep into the ground by an invisible axis of energy, and that energy pulled the students toward him. He simply took away their support, and they fell as he wished.
When the young black belts got to the front of the line, he eased into a little more power. When he applied a full technique, even with very little of his newfound power, the strongest of the young black belts flew away from him and bowled over the next three students in line.
While they picked themselves up, Takuda stood on the mats, flexing his hands. They looked normal, but he could have crushed a man’s forearm with grip strength alone, and that was just the beginning. His whole body was charged with power beyond physical strength. He was connected. He flexed his feet on the mats, and he felt the tough straw stretch and snap. He could have pulled the flooring to bits with his toes.
Only the blindest, most foolish vanity would let him believe that his years of practice had suddenly paid off with superhuman power. This was new. He simply hadn’t been this strong in the morning.
Where did this come from?
He looked up at his next partner, a young office worker named Matsuo. She had received her first-degree black belt in the winter test. Her chin was high and her expression was calm, but she was ready to burst into tears. She was not ready to practice with him.
He stopped the drill and had students practice in pairs. This strange new strength was easy enough to control, but it was seductive. Even after endangering his students, he still wanted to experiment with it.
The class continued without incident, but the students seemed more interested in talking about him than in practicing their techniques. They seemed impressed and excited. That was the most humiliating part. Not only had he abused his students, not only had he been tempted by the power so that he continued the experiment when he knew it was dangerous, but now his students admired him for it. Showing off like that was a perversion of the art, an abuse of the trust placed in him by his own teachers.
Humiliation made Takuda laugh at himself: He was now in agony over his own betrayal of the hobbyists, students whom he had held in complete contempt at the beginning of the class.
I don’t know what I’ll think ten minutes from now.
It helped to make small talk after practice. The camaraderie of fellow martial artists and a hot shower made him feel like a member of the human race again.
Matsuo fell into step with him as he left the showers, and they left the building together.
“I wasn’t afraid back there, Teacher.”
“I could see that.”
“I’ll fight you now, if you want.”
“You’re a fool, Matsuo. Go home.”
She laughed and tousled her hair. It was still damp from the showers, and it smelled of—lemons? He gave an involuntary shudder.
“You were really tossing us around back there. A very powerful man, aren’t you?”
“Aikido is about discipline and control. I’m embarrassed about that display.”
“Yeah, it was a little much. Still, I’ll bet people will work harder. That is, if anyone comes back.”
He laughed for her sake, but it was a poor effort.
“Teacher, a few of us go to a pub at the next station after practice. You should join us. Some of the guys you tossed would probably like to buy you a beer. It would cheer us all up.”
He wondered if there was an ulterior motive. He mentally reached for his intuition as a carpenter might reach for a saw, but he found nothing. It was strange. Maybe Matsuo was just a modern girl trying to get laid. Maybe she was attracted by the strength he had shown in practice. Maybe, like the hobbyists, she thought she could just absorb Aikido technique by being around him. Or maybe she was just trying to be polite. He didn’t know. The day before, he would have known to a near certainty what she wanted. For some reason, he suddenly had no clue to his own intentions, much less anyone else’s.
He turned to her and bowed. “Listen, please tell them that I’m sorry, Matsuo. Tell them that drinks are on me after the spring testing, okay? For right now, ah—I’ve got to go.”
He left her standing there bowing and confused. It was awkward, but Matsuo could take care of herself. Right now, he had bigger problems, problems that made his unexpected power seem insignificant.
He had to tell his wife he had been to the Naga River valley.
CHAPTER 9
Yumi scolded him at dinner. “You should text me,” she said. “When you call, I have to leave the office. They don’t care that you’re a detective.”
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” Detective Takuda said. Always true. She spoke in a husky whisper due to her damaged larynx. The scar on her throat had faded, but it was still so deep that it had its own shadow.
Yumi licked broiled mackerel off her thumb. “You make me stand out on the sidewalk with the smokers.”
“I was in the valley.”
She stopped with rice halfway to her mouth. “Our valley? The Naga River valley?”
“The Naga River valley,” he said.
She dropped the rice back into the bowl and tossed her chopsticks on the table.
“One of us had to go back eventually,” he said. “The Gotoh family has been so kind . . .”
“You should have told me.” The color had drained from her cheeks.
“It was time to go back.”
“Did you go about that little girl? The one who was almost kidnapped?”
“That was the excuse.”
Her eyes flashed at him, but she held her tongue.
“Not much has changed. The Zenkoku plant keeps the valley alive. Everything is older and dirtier, and more storefronts are boarded up on the shopping street. The docks are rotting away, and the satellite dishes have sprouted like mushrooms. That’s about it.”
She rubbed the edge of the table. “The Gotohs?”
“I didn’t see him. She’s turned strange and bitter. She won’t tell me what’s happen
ing.”
“Is something happening?”
“I don’t know. It—it smells like it.” With that, he had told her as much as he dared tell anyone. “The suspect is not what he seems. At first, I thought it might be a case of identity theft, but it’s not. It’s as if some insane drifter moved into an engineer’s body.”
“What did they think you were doing there?”
“I told them I was sent there to gather information. I told them I would recommend whether the prefecture would prosecute.”
“Recommend? Do you do that?”
“I’ve never been asked, really.”
“So you lied to them?”
He put down his chopsticks and picked up his beer. “Well, I don’t mind lying to the Oku Village police force. Nakamura is the chief.”
She stilled, and her eyes narrowed.
Takuda continued, just to get it out of the way: “He didn’t recognize me at first. He asked how you were.”
She snatched up her chopsticks and tore into her fish. “I would have scratched his eyes out. I don’t think I could have helped myself.”
“Maybe it’s best that I was the first one to go back,” he said.
“Seventeen years ago, only half the village police were fools. If Nakamura is chief, then they all must be fools. Someone should test the water.” Her eyes welled with tears, and her hands shook. “Nakamura. It’s unbelievable. It just goes to show that anyone can succeed in Japan. It’s true. If you’re too stupid to move on, too cowardly to die, and too poor to retire, they’ll eventually put you in charge of something.”
They ate in silence while Yumi regained her composure. Takuda flexed his hands under the table. His newfound strength wasn’t hard to control, but he wanted to keep it in mind.
When Yumi spoke again, she sounded more sad than angry. She asked if he visited the tomb, and he told her that he had, of course he had. He told her it was beautiful and peaceful, which was true, as far as it went.
Later, they lay under the covers watching the curtains move in the cool spring breeze.
“It was selfish of you to tell me about Nakamura,” she said. “You’re the one who decided to go back. You’re the one who decided to dig up all that pain. If you made that decision on your own, you should have kept it all to yourself.”
“It’s not the past. It’s not over.”
“I know it’s not over. Every time I look at the bankbook, I see the payments to the Gotohs. It breaks my heart just thinking of my little Kenji’s tomb.” She turned toward him. “Let’s save the money we send to the Gotohs and move the tomb up here.”
He turned toward her. “I mean that it’s not over for the valley. There’s something wrong there.”
“There’s always been something wrong there.”
“All day today, people were trying to tell me something, but they wouldn’t come out and say it. They were trying to tell me about the canals.”
“The canals are dangerous. Who knows that better than we do? Who’s lost more to the canals than we have?”
He rolled over. Maybe someone has lost more to the canals, but I don’t know who. He drifted into dreams of dark water.
Sergeant Kuma woke with a start and struggled to his feet. He had dozed off at Chief Nakamura’s desk again, and he hated being caught sleeping on the job.
The office was empty. The lights were dim, and the kerosene stove was nice and warm. Kuma heaved a sigh of relief. It would be just like the chief to pop in unexpectedly even though Kuma had taken an extra shift to watch the prisoner. The chief had been difficult all day because of the prisoner and because of visitors from the prefectural police. Seeing the detective again had just made the chief worse. When the chief had realized he was sitting knee-to-knee with Detective Tohru Takuda in his little conference room, he looked as if he’d swallowed a toothpick. The memory made Kuma grin as he eased his bulk back into the chief’s chair.
It was good to Takuda again, but he wasn’t so sure of Officer Mori. He had known someone would come to him when questions started building up. It always happened that way because everyone thought he was simple-minded. Maybe it was true. Sergeant Kuma couldn’t make sensible answers unless the questions were right, and Officer Mori was an intellectual. He couldn’t feel around the edges and ask the right questions. No one in the Naga River valley could tell the detective anything unless he asked directly, at the right time, and in the right way.
The water safety question. That was as close as anyone could come to talking about it. The more directly anyone spoke about it, the vaguer the conversation became. Kuma could make hints about it, though. He had told Officer Mori about Little Bear because he knew Takuda would remember, and he knew Takuda would care.
Whatever happened to Little Bear? Kuma was brooding, and he didn’t like it.
Just then, he heard the murmuring. It was a voice, but it was strange and whispery. He wasn’t even sure he heard it through his ears. The hair suddenly stood up on his neck. Was he hearing voices in his head? He listened carefully. There was just the constant rushing of the canal down below the station, the clang of the pachinko parlor up the street, and the far-off sound of a scooter. He did hear a voice, but it was a different voice. Ogawa’s voice, coming from the holding cell. The suspect was not alone.
The sergeant vaulted to his feet, and his knees were shaking. The blood rushed to his head, and he had to bend over and hold on to his knees to keep from fainting. By the time he got to the holding-cell door, the voices had stopped. Kuma listened for a second, and then he quietly opened the door.
Ogawa stood on his cot. He stared at the toilet. The stench of rotting fish was overwhelming.
Kuma almost retched from the smell. “What are you doing?”
Ogawa shifted his gaze from the toilet. His eyes were wide with fright.
Kuma hit the switch outside the door, and the fluorescent overheads stuttered into life, casting stark, greenish shadows over the whole room.
Ogawa stepped backward on his bunk to lean against the wall.
Kuma opened the door all the way, just to be sure there was no room for anyone to hide behind it. He stood in the doorway picturing that space behind the door, a very narrow space between the door and the wall even when it was all the way open, space for something smaller than a child . . .
He thought he should peek into that space behind the door, through the gaps between the secured, sealed hinges. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Behind the door, under the cot, behind the toilet, too many spaces to hide. . .
“If only it were a Japanese-style holding cell,” Ogawa moaned. “No steel cot, no plumbing, no hinged door . . . this wasn’t a holding cell at all to start with, was it? Who would design a holding cell with a hinged door that swings inward?”
“Shut up, fool!” Kuma edged forward, covering his mouth and nose with his handkerchief.
Ogawa slid down the wall as if suddenly boneless. He lay in a heap, staring blankly at the toilet. “Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .”
The open door was at Kuma’s back. He was too fat to bend down and look under the cot. He was too afraid to do anything but shuffle toward the reeking toilet.
Ogawa went silent. Kuma looked over his shoulder to see Ogawa huddled on the cot staring at him, eyes glittering in the harsh fluorescent light. It was the first time the suspect had more than glanced at Kuma, and Kuma didn’t like it at all.
He reached the toilet. There was no water in the trough, nothing but black, stinking slime. The suspect had turned off the water and flushed the toilet dry before doing his business. Kuma bent, groaning, to turn the water back on, one eye on Ogawa the whole time. As the fish stench began to fade, he suddenly felt much braver, brave enough to chastise the suspect.
“You’re disgusting. What have you been eating? Can’t you even use a toilet?”
&
nbsp; “I am not the one.”
Kuma felt a chill pass up his spine, like cold water being poured into his body. “What do you mean?”
Ogawa stared. “The trouble has just started.”
“What trouble? What are you talking about?”
Finally, the suspect lowered his feet to the floor. “I am not the one you are looking for, but I know who is. If you want to find him, I can help. I need to talk to that detective again.”
Kuma found himself nodding in agreement. He didn’t have the authority to call the detective back into this case, but he wanted to get out of the cell quickly. Something was terribly wrong in there.
“Also, you have to keep me in jail. My life is in danger.”
Kuma nodded as he backed out of the cell. When the door was locked and bolted, he leaned against the wall to catch his breath. He knew as much as he wanted to know, and he was determined not to know any more. If the detective or the officer wanted to ask questions, he would steer them toward the suspect. Ogawa seemed ready to talk, but Sergeant Kuma was more committed than ever to keeping his own mouth shut.
CHAPTER 10
It was Thursday afternoon, two days since the attempted abduction of Hanako Kawaguchi. For his interview with the suspect’s estranged wife, Detective Takuda had chosen a Japanese-style pub, a dark place with an interior of red paper lanterns, painted screens, and polished cedar. Customers sat cross-legged at the low, lacquered tables. It was perfect for informal interviews. The pub always emptied quickly after the lunchtime rush, so they would have the back room to themselves. Takuda drank cold barley tea and waited.
Ogawa’s wife walked in with a wary expression, but her face went smooth and bland when she saw him. She nodded to the bowing waiter and wound her way among the tables. She was beautiful in a high-strung, overbred way. She wore a designer suit with the perfect accents of jewelry, probably also from the correct designers. The silk handkerchief held lightly in her left hand was colorful enough but not garish. Everything was just right, the perfect picture of a young woman overcompensating for marrying a psychotic would-be kidnapper.
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