“It was a bad idea in the present circumstances. People are asking me what our policy is on such matters. Now I have to find a policy. For review. I don’t know whose review. Way, way up, maybe not even in the prefecture. I can’t see that far.”
“Reverend Suzuki happened to be there. It was a humanitarian act.”
“The governor’s office asks if we consider Japanese religion better than foreign religion.”
Takuda shook his head. “That’s stupid.”
“They ask why you didn’t call a Catholic priest.”
“Reverend Suzuki just happened to be there.”
“As he just happened to be there when you found the shrine?”
“The cavern might not have been found otherwise.”
“No one will soon forget that fact, Detective. They tell me that you two have partially destroyed an important cultural artifact, some altar at the shrine above the cavern, and that you allowed the priest to trespass on a crime scene. Or you thought it was a crime scene.”
“How did they know we broke the altar?”
“So you admit it.”
“There were a lot of human remains. I thought the prayers of a priest were as appropriate as Officer Mori’s crime scene flags.”
“Takuda, don’t bring up Mori in my presence. Just don’t say a word about him. If you’ve got some sort of mania about that valley, that’s your problem, but you’re dragging him down with you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You know that he’s been following you around for a year now, and you’ve got him staked out as your personal driver.”
“He’s a very bright young man.”
“He’s smarter than both of us put together, and we’re lucky that a man like him wants to be a detective. He could have been a damned fine one, too, but you’ve probably already ruined his chances.”
“How have I done such a thing?”
“Takuda, you had him steal evidence. Right in front of a sergeant, apparently. I have to deliver the papers back to Nakamura. With an apology.”
“Shouldn’t I return them?”
“You won’t be going back there. You’re useless in that valley, Takuda.”
“I was only asking simple questions. Why are they so upset? Isn’t that strange?” Takuda leaned forward. “What about this counselor, Endo? He has friends in high places. Is the pressure coming from him?”
“Don’t worry about where the pressure comes from.” The superintendent folded his hands neatly on the table. “The pressure comes from me, Detective.” He regarded Takuda with dead, expressionless eyes. “The only pressure you ever need to think about comes from me.”
It was a bad time to ask questions, but Takuda was beyond caring. If he was going down, he might as well go down swinging.
Just as Takuda opened his mouth, the superintendent’s phone rang. Yamada looked at the phone’s tiny screen for several seconds before motioning Takuda out of the room.
Takuda stood outside. Detectives passing him in the hallway returned his greetings but did not look him in the eye.
The superintendent called him back in. “You’re off the hook, Takuda. There was an accidental release from the southern dam, and the water has sluiced out the cavern. Washed it clean, apparently, and the walls have collapsed. It would have been a mess anyway, so it doesn’t matter, whatever you and Mori and that half-homeless priest did up there.”
Takuda blinked. “An accidental release.”
The superintendent nodded. “Don’t start, Detective. You’re thinking like an insurance adjuster, not a policeman. The real question would be why Zenkoku ever built a plant there to start with, but that’s not our job.”
Takuda sat without being asked.
“So that leaves us with the question of what comes next. I remember when you were a rookie, and you patrolled the bar district. Do you remember that?”
Takuda nodded.
“Mori is taking his exam pretty soon, and I expect that he’ll be an assistant detective. I’m partnering you two for the bar district. You’ll bring a lot of stability to that area.”
“The gangsters bring stability to that area. You send us there, and your stability will be gone.”
“Steady, Detective, steady. It’s not war, not since the new gang laws went into effect. You’ll be surprised at how things have changed. This is the best way to keep Officer Mori’s record clean and to bring him up through the ranks. Brushing elbows with thugs in the bar district can teach him a thing or two without plunging him straight into anti-gang work. You know there are several ways to temper a sword, and we want to be careful with Mori. We want to bring him in smoothly.”
“And where will I fit? Do I end up window-sitting, with a nice view of the water?”
The superintendent rolled his eyes as if hearing an old joke. “We can do it that way if you choose, Detective. It’s all up to you.” He laid his hands flat on the table. “You know why you never got ahead? Why no one ever tapped you for bigger things?”
Takuda paused. “I noticed that I was passed over for a few things, but no, I never knew why.”
Yamada looked at his hands. “You were passed over for everything. Did you wonder why the Organized Crime Division sent you back early?”
Takuda said, “I thought you requested my return.”
Yamada didn’t smile. “I pulled enough caseload from other detectives to make it look that way. They requested that I take you back. You were quite the hero. Leading every single big bust, the first one through the door every time, on the front line against the most hardened criminals in the country. It looked like leadership at first, but after a few busts, the guys backing you up got a little nervous. After a few more, they started thinking you were reckless. Finally, they started to think you didn’t want to go home. They thought you wanted to die. Were they right? ”
Takuda was silent.
Yamada sighed. “It’s a hard pill to swallow, but there it is. Take Mori to the bar district. Don’t get him killed. Help him get his feet wet and keep his nose clean. Then we’ll see if you have a career.”
Takuda rose from his seat. He turned to go, but something struck him. “You remember everything about my loan to the Organized Crime Division, but do you remember the name of my hometown?”
The superintendent frowned. “Some little village to the south, as I recall. I remember you were pretty green when you got here, even after a few years in a local force. Why do you ask?”
Takuda said, “Who said you should let me go to the Naga River valley? Who told you I was a good man for the job?”
“You volunteered to go, didn’t you? Did you ask for this?”
“You never forget an assignment. You never forget anything. But you’ve forgotten twice that I grew up in the Naga River valley. Now you forget whether I volunteered or not. You don’t think it’s odd that your mind is so foggy about this?”
“I’m not foggy about anything, Takuda. I want you in the bar district until you get settled, you and Mori. Now get to it, and don’t let me hear a word from you until you’re in. Do you hear me?”
CHAPTER 23
Takuda walked the corridors of the prefectural police department, probably for the last time.
Beige-and-gray or gray-and-beige, take your pick. I won’t miss this.
He would be fired if he didn’t take Mori to the bar district. So would Mori, unfortunately. Then again, if the bizarre forgetfulness that had stolen over his supervisor was any indication, they might keep drawing pay for months after they quit showing up.
As if I wanted anything extra. I just need to be sure Yumi is taken care of.
He found Mori camped out in a darkened conference room. “Hey, Officer, I’m cutting you loose. Thanks for everything you’ve done.”
Mori stared at his computer. “I have something
to tell you.”
“Forget it. You’re back on the regular duty roster.”
Mori looked up sharply. “Have you already done it? Am I already back on the roster?”
“No, but it’s all over. Not only have they designated the cave an archaeological site, they’ve washed it clean. Sluiced it out and collapsed it. There was a release at the upper dam.”
Mori’s face clouded.
Takuda continued. “They’re calling it an accident. It might be worth trying to retrieve remains from the river and the canals. Perhaps there’s something to salvage . . .”
The officer barked laughter. “There’s nothing to salvage. Those remains are already ashes in the bottom of a kiln, but that’s not the end of our work in the Naga River valley. I know whose bones they are.”
Takuda sat across the conference table from Mori.
“I also know how the good people of that valley covered up the murders of their neighbors,” Mori said.
Takuda felt suddenly sick to his stomach. Why nauseated now? This is what I’ve wanted to know all along, isn’t it? “Tell me, Officer.”
“I can show you.” Mori presented a sheet of paper.
It was a copy of a family registry faxed from Hyogo prefecture. It was an old registry, and there hadn’t been births, deaths, or marriages recorded in almost thirty years. Otherwise, there was nothing unusual about it, just the record of the marriage and births of two sons to Kamekichi and Junko Kuma . . .
Kuma. Takuda looked at the sons’ birth dates. There was Tadanori Kuma, with a birth date less than a month after Takuda’s own.
Little Bear, with your overbearing mother and your tears and you chopstick-thin arms. So that’s where you ended up.
Mori said, “Tadanori Kuma and his whole family were murdered when you were a boy. Probably dragged out of their farmhouse in the middle of the night. They died in the canals if I’m right, but their bodies went down that hole under the shrine among the bones and the rotting bodies of their neighbors.”
Takuda stared at the fax without really seeing it. Little Bear didn’t deserve such a death. No one deserves such a death. “How did you find this?”
“Sergeant Kuma gave me the time frame for Little Bear’s disappearance. I searched newspapers on microfilm for disasters around that time. In the same month, I found a massive landslide in Hyogo prefecture, in the middle of nowhere. I called the county office and asked for the Kuma family register, probably in the ‘dead’ register file, meaning there was no address registry associated with it. They faxed me this twenty minutes later.” He pushed up his glasses. “I used your name, by the way.”
The fax was shaking in Takuda’s hand. When he focused on it, he noticed that the registry was a transferred document, not from Oku Village but from Osaka. “They didn’t live in Osaka.”
Mori smiled without mirth. “That’s the clever thing here. The copy on file with our prefecture says the Kuma family moved to Osaka. Hyogo prefecture thinks they moved from Osaka, but who knows? If anyone asks Osaka, Osaka has never heard of them.”
Takuda said, “And you asked Osaka.”
“All twenty-four wards, just to be sure.”
Takuda sat back. “Why fake a broken paper trail from Oku Village? That’s stupid. That’s a waste of time.”
Mori nodded. “Unless you’re trying to protect your fellow villagers.”
Takuda said, “Officer, do you have a name? Can you give me a name?”
Mori was very still as he spoke. “To make this seamless, the village office had to retype the appropriate pages and reapply personal seals. But if they murdered these families, using their personal seals one more time was no big deal—then they probably tossed them into the fire with their clothing. Ivory seals would go up like wood, and even the hardest stone seals would chip and break up in a kiln . . .”
“Officer, you’ve been working on this alone for too long.”
Mori looked at Takuda with quiet rage. “You have no idea. Look at the names, all the vital information here. All retyped on an old Zenkoku Q–35 typewriter. It’s unmistakable.”
Takuda examined the sheet. “The Q–35 was a three-thousand-key nightmare. That’s not casual labor. The head clerk at the village was probably the only one who could work that old clutch-control beast.”
Mori exhaled in a stuttering way. It was something like laughter. “There was a steep learning curve with the old clutch-control typewriters, yes.”
“Well, we might be able to find that head clerk.”
“It should be easy. You were standing out in front of his house the other day.”
“Gotoh!”
“Gotoh.”
She has to pray twice as hard to make up for her husband. Finally, Takuda understood his mother’s words about Miyoko Gotoh, far too late to help his family or himself. His mother had known. Suzuki had known. Even Mori—
“Officer, you didn’t pull this together overnight.”
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I’ve been working on this since the disappearance of my sister, Yoshiko.”
Takuda gathered himself and stood. “Well, now I understand your interest in the Naga River valley. I also understand your interest in me and my history.”
Mori frowned. “Detective, there’s a lot more to it than you seem to understand.”
“Well, no matter. We can make sure no one ever loses another little sister to that valley. Let’s go see the Gotohs.”
Mori looked at him in surprise. “It’s not that simple.”
“What do you mean?”
Mori closed his laptop. “There’s more. There’s much more. The priest has a great deal to tell us. He’s meeting us downtown in twenty minutes.”
Sunshine poured into the community center practice hall through mezzanine windows. Suzuki stood in the center of the room waiting for Takuda and Mori. He looked like a traveler from a fairy tale with his priestly robes and embroidered rucksack, but he grinned like a teenager as they approached.
“We’re sorry to make you wait, Reverend,” Takuda said as he bowed. “We hope this is a good place to meet.”
“It’s perfect, Detective.” Suzuki unslung his rucksack. “There are a few things I need to show you in the light of day, and we might need a little elbow room.”
“Show us later,” Mori said. “You’re the only one who’ll tell us anything about the cult and the Farmers’ Co-op.”
“Officer, the cult is dead, even though the Co-op survives. If there were any former cult members among the worshippers at my temple, I couldn’t tell you anyway. I’m sorry.”
Mori frowned. “Then give us names of cult members who weren’t members of your temple.”
Suzuki smiled. “I wish it were so simple.”
Takuda nodded. “It’s a sacred trust, isn’t it? I understand your position.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Now, Priest, you must understand this,” Takuda said. “The cult murdered for decades, and someone is still killing. You saw the bones, and you saw the dead American. If we don’t get to the bottom of it, the killings may continue.” He put away his pen and notebook. He had pulled them out of his jacket pocket specifically to put them away when the time came, just to show Suzuki that everything was off the record.
Suzuki grinned about the pen-and-notebook trick. He sat on the straw matting and gestured for them to join him.
Takuda sighed and sank to the matting. “Give us names from the Farmers’ Co-op. The core members. The ones responsible. You must know. I’m sure your father knew.”
Officer Mori sat with his hands on his thighs. He seemed resigned to letting Takuda and Suzuki resolve the nonsense so he could get to work.
Suzuki smiled. “Very well. First, I have gifts for you. Then I’ll give you the name of one man who quit the Farmers’ Co-op whe
n he became bedridden.”
Suzuki pulled three swords from his rucksack. Their scabbards were wrapped in lengths of silk.
“These are part of my temple’s history, but they are private property, my property. I can do with them whatever I please.” He laid them on the mats. “Three minor warriors of the Kuroda clan of Chikuzen were lost on a pilgrimage to Sado Island, and their horses drowned in Naga River valley. They barely escaped with their lives. They donated these swords to the temple to fight the evil in the river. This was long after the days of the warrior-monks, but it was a fine gift anyway.
“There are three of them, a matched set. It was unusual for blades so different to be made as a matched set for three men, but men of the Kuroda clan practiced various styles. This kind of sword, for example, is sometimes called a ‘laundry-pole sword.’ It’s uniquely suited for a modern swordsman of unusual height. Someone my height, for example.”
The sword was lean and streamlined as if for flight. It was almost ridiculously long. The scalloped pattern along the cutting edge was very narrow, showing that the blade was tempered for maximum flexibility, not hardness. He set it aside, unsheathed, before he took up the next scabbard.
Mori glanced at Takuda. The officer was clearly not pleased about the naked blade lying on the straw matting.
Suzuki seemed oblivious. “This one, the smallest one, is better suited to a more modern duelist.” Suzuki drew the sword and rested the spine of the blade on his thumbnail. That allowed him to show the blade without smudging it. He then carefully removed his hand from the hilt. The blade balanced on his thumbnail.
Takuda and Mori leapt to their feet and stepped back. This was a foolish way to handle a true sword, but Suzuki seemed pleased with himself.
“It’s the closest thing to a perfect blade that I’ve ever seen. It was designed for precision, finesse. A younger man, someone of slighter build, might put it to good use. It would be almost dainty in the hands of a man like you, Detective.”
He grasped the sword properly, sheathed it, and passed it to Mori. Mori accepted it with obvious surprise, but Takuda noticed that he handled it with familiarity. This was not his first sword.
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