Seventeen

by Hideo Yokoyama

  “The three of us climbed Osutaka this morning. They’d worked hard on getting that trail put in, and it was in pretty good shape, so it only took us about two hours to get to the crash site. When we got there, we split up to do our own thing. After a while Kurasaka came up to me and asked me to take some photos with his camera.

  “With his own camera?”

  “Right. It was one of those cheap instant cameras you can set the date and time on. Well, I couldn’t refuse. He gave me directions: ‘Take this, get that’—you know—so I just took the photos as he instructed. And then, in the middle of it all, he told me to take a photo of him.”

  Yuuki felt sick. Surely not—

  “So I did as he said. I took a picture of him standing in front of the main wing, which had JAL written on it.”

  A commemorative photo.

  “Tono!”

  In response to Yuuki’s exasperated groan, Tono shifted closer, as if to signal that he had reached the main part of the story.

  “The thing is, that kind of stuff wasn’t all that unusual up there. There were idiots from other companies doing the same thing. There were even members of our team posing for photo after photo and making peace signs in front of the wreckage.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it’s the honest truth.”

  It was very difficult to believe that anyone would take commemorative photos at a scene where five hundred and twenty people had just lost their lives. Yuuki did his utmost to stay calm.

  “So, that wasn’t the reason that Hanazawa punched Kurasaka?”

  “No, well, not directly. Hanazawa was standing a little way off, watching Kurasaka. After I’d taken about five pictures, he came over. ‘Don’t you think that’s enough?’ he asked him, perfectly calmly. Because all around us there were police and Self-Defense Forces guys practically performing a bucket relay of body parts. Hanazawa had become very nervous about Kurasaka’s behavior, particularly as he was wearing an NKT armband. Anyhow, at this point Kurasaka listened to Hanazawa and stopped posing for pictures.”

  “So then what happened?”

  “He caught him.”

  Tono’s expression hardened.

  “Caught him doing what?”

  “I saw it, too—Kurasaka picked up a bit of broken fuselage or a scrap of insulating material or something and tried to slip it in his pocket.”

  Yuuki was speechless. Kurasaka had tried to take home a souvenir. Or perhaps it was intended to be a small gift for one of their advertisers …

  “And what then?” said Yuuki, his voice turning hoarse.

  “Hanazawa threw himself at Kurasaka and kicked the hand that was holding the piece of fuselage. He made him empty everything out of his pockets on the spot. He grabbed him by the collar and pulled him behind a tree. Then he began to lay into him. Punched him over and over. In the face, in the stomach…”

  Yuuki’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull.

  “And then?”

  “Well, I stopped him. But I was a bit late—Kurasaka’s face was pretty messed up, he’d even lost a few teeth. There was so much blood…”

  Yuuki closed his eyes.

  “What did Hanazawa do after that?”

  “He went back down the mountain by himself. A little while later, I helped Kurasaka down, too. I drove back to Maebashi and dropped him off at a hospital. Then I came here.”

  “Did Kurasaka say anything to you in the car?”

  “Not a word. He had a towel pressed over his mouth. He put the passenger seat back and stared ahead the whole time.”

  Yuuki got up.

  “Which hospital?”

  “Mori General. They’re open on Saturday evenings. And they have a dental surgery, too.”

  “What time did you drop him off?”

  “Um … about an hour ago.”

  “Was it busy?”

  “The parking lot was full.”

  “Then he should still be there.”

  “I suppose.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Just a minute!”

  Yuuki spoke quickly to Tono as he moved to open the door.

  “What about the film from Kurasaka’s camera?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Did he ask you to develop it?”

  “No. Not after all that.”

  “Even if he asks you, don’t develop it.”

  “Of course not,” said Tono angrily. “Even I wanted to punch him. If my wife wasn’t pregnant, I might have done it.”

  Yuuki nodded.

  “What’ll happen to Hanazawa?” asked Tono, looking worried.

  Yuuki didn’t answer. He left the darkroom and headed down the stairs. He left the building by the back door and hurried to his car.

  He hadn’t been able to offer Tono any consoling words. It was going to be tough to protect Hanazawa. Or rather, this thing couldn’t be resolved by dealing with Hanazawa alone. He was sure that Kurasaka was a puppet of the managing director’s faction. Which meant that Iikura was bound to get involved once more. The editorial management would be beset by accusations that they were raising violent reporters, and the managing director’s faction would be rounding up their troops to make sure this reached the ears of the external board members.

  If this happened, Hanazawa would be beyond help—not just because the managing director faction was making such a fuss but because the Editorial Department would have no choice but to let him go in order to calm the situation down.

  Yuuki bit his lip and hit the accelerator. Now that he knew the reason Hanazawa had resorted to violence, he felt a lot more concern and sympathy for the man. He felt exactly the same way Tono did. If he’d been there on Mount Osutaka with them, he’d have punched Kurasaka, too.

  At any rate, the most important thing was to get hold of Kurasaka as soon as possible and persuade him not to talk. Most likely in vain. But it didn’t matter. He had no intention of slowing down.

  40

  Despite it being five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, there was quite a crowd of patients in the ground-floor lobby of Mori General Hospital. They had probably been enticed by the gorgeous, brand-new building, Yuuki guessed.

  On the sofas in front of the Oral Surgery Department he counted at least twenty people waiting. He began to walk up and down the rows, looking for a ruddy, square face, but Kurasaka wasn’t there. Would he have gone home? Or gone back to work? But he’d taken the day off to climb Mount Osutaka, so that wasn’t likely. And anyway, at five o’clock on a Saturday, the Advertising Department would be deserted.

  Yuuki approached the reception desk. After confirming that Kurasaka’s name wasn’t on the list of patients, he headed for the door. But then he heard a voice behind him.

  “Hey there. It’s been a while.”

  He turned to see an elegant man in a suit. It was Shimagawa from the prefectural police department. If you hadn’t known he was a policeman, you’d never have guessed. He had the look of a well-dressed salaryman. Two or three years Yuuki’s senior, he was a detective born and bred. Yuuki had heard that he was currently head of the Forensics Division.

  “Yes, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch.”

  In fact, it was the first time they’d met in five years, when Yuuki had been taken off the police beat. Yet Yuuki had the feeling they’d met much more recently. He realized it was because he’d seen the detective in footage from Mount Osutaka, issuing commands to the Azami riot police squad.

  “How’s it going at the accident scene?”

  “Haven’t you been reading the news?”

  “No need to be sarcastic,” replied Yuuki with a smile.

  “We’re identifying the victims through dental records and fingerprints.”

  “I see.”

  Yuuki glanced over Shimagawa’s shoulder at the sign on the door of the Oral Surgery Department.

  “I’m sure the police must have an incredible amount on their plate right now.”

 
“You, too, I’m guessing.”

  “Right. Actually, we’re all feeling a bit helpless.”

  “Now, that word’s taboo.”

  “What?”

  “We’re all locals: you at the North Kanto Times; us, too.” His features remained completely unruffled. “How does an airplane fly? That’s about our starting point.”

  Yuuki was startled. He remembered that Sayama had said almost the exact same thing to him. Was that one of Shimagawa’s lines? In the near future, the prefectural police were planning to start up a separate division for dealing with emergencies. With his extremely precise and calm intellect, Shimagawa was very popular with his junior officers, and was reportedly at the top of the list of candidates to head up that new project.

  “Well, it looks as though it’s going to be a long case. It’s ours, and we have to deal with it. There’s no escaping the fact that a jumbo jet crashed in Gunma Prefecture.”

  Yuuki felt as if someone had stabbed him in the forehead. The police were utterly dedicated to the task.

  He hadn’t realized it in the beginning. He’d started out believing that this crash was too much for the prefectural police to handle. He’d even dared to underestimate the members of the police force by assuming they felt the same way. Earlier that same day he had read the Kyodo News report about the criminal investigation and had paid attention only to the words “National Police Agency.”

  And yet, this man was determined. He was going to investigate the matter of criminal liability in this massive air disaster. Or, to think of it in another way, how had he, Kazumasa Yuuki of the North Kanto Times, approached this major disaster?

  “Well, I have to get going,” said Shimagawa, turning to leave. “Maybe we’ll meet in about another three years.”

  In another three years … A jumbo jet had gone down with the loss of five hundred and twenty lives. Would that be how long it took to prosecute this case?

  Yuuki spent some time staring into space. It occurred to him that, whenever they got to that point, it would be the very moment they would need Hanazawa of the North Kanto Times. Someone who had witnessed the immediate horror of the accident scene. Someone who had felt it keenly and shed tears for the victims. Someone who had been so haunted by the image that he had felt compelled to climb that mountain over and over, day in, day out. Hanazawa was the only one. Over the next thousand days, as the police investigators assembled the case for the prosecution, Hanazawa should be the one to follow and report on their work.

  Yuuki couldn’t stay still for another moment. He hurried out of Mori General Hospital and got back into his car.

  41

  He was lost. Kurasaka lived in Rokkumachi, a residential area of Maebashi City. He’d been to the address once before, a long time ago, to drop off some documents. He remembered it being two doors down from a big house with its own traditional Japanese-style storehouse. With that memory, he’d come looking for the house, but the area had undergone some kind of large-scale rezoning and the streets looked completely different. Yuuki drove at a snail’s pace around the whole neighborhood about three times, hoping to spot that distinctive storehouse, but to no avail.

  His pager began to buzz. It was already 6:30 in the evening. For sure, the copy team would be starting to complain that they hadn’t received any articles on the crash yet. He knew it’d be quicker to call somebody at the newspaper and get them to look up Kurasaka’s address for him. He’d been keeping an eye out for a public phone booth for a while now.

  He finally found one on the edge of a children’s playground. It wasn’t a phone booth per se, but it had a small shelter over it to keep the rain off. He stopped the car and ran toward it, fumbling in his pocket for change.

  He called his own extension, and Kishi answered.

  “Copy’s freaking out.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can. For now, could you find Kurasaka’s home address and telephone number for me?”

  After getting the information from Kishi, Yuuki asked if there’d been any response to his earlier pages. Apparently Sayama had called back to say he was in the pressroom at the prefectural police station, but there’d been no contact from Hanazawa.

  Yuuki guessed that the two men were together. As he walked back toward his car, he checked the note he had written. The third block of Rokkumachi. He was sure that it was just a little way to the south of where he was. Should he walk? Or go by car and perhaps stop to ask the way? Feeling lost, he looked around. He stopped when he saw a white mask, the kind that people wore over their nose and mouth when they had a cold.

  About fifteen meters away, the man wearing the white mask was crouching down near the entrance to the children’s playground. The mask was large and covered the whole lower part of his face.

  It was Kurasaka. Yuuki instinctively moved closer to his own car and watched him covertly. First of all, he was wondering why he was crouching down like that.

  It soon became clear. Kurasaka had a dog with him—a very old dog.

  Wow, Yuuki thought. It’s still alive.

  The same dog that he’d gotten as a gift from Shirakawa … That was right after Okubo/Red Army, so it must be about thirteen years old now. Or even a little bit older—he wasn’t sure exactly when the puppies had been born. When he thought about it, the dog must be positively geriatric.

  About the size of a Shiba Inu, the dog looked as if about half its fur had been torn out, the way it was molting in great patches. It appeared to be defecating right now—or at least it was trying to, but its legs were too unsteady.

  Kurasaka reached out and supported the dog’s torso with one hand, while with the other he patted its back in encouragement. He was looking into the dog’s face with a kind and gentle gaze.

  Yuuki quietly opened his car door and slipped into the driver’s seat. He adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could see Kurasaka. Now he was picking up the dog’s droppings with a small shovel and putting them into a plastic bag. Then he stood up and began to walk. The dog followed. Kurasaka’s steps were almost painfully slow—keeping pace with the elderly Shiba Inu.

  Yuuki started the car and drove away. He turned at the first corner and merged onto the main road. He was filled with a mixture of pity and disgust.

  Kurasaka had just wanted to play at being a reporter. He needed to get ads into the newspaper, so he’d climbed Mount Osutaka in search of material he could use in conversation. He’d wanted to show the advertisers that he wasn’t just an adman; he was also a serious reporter. He wanted to be able to tell them that he’d visited the site of the world’s biggest plane crash and show them photos and fragments of the fuselage to prove it. He wanted them to be impressed. That was the only reason he had climbed Osutaka. But on some level, any ex-reporter forced to leave the News Department would be prone to a tendency to show off. Maybe it was nostalgia.

  So, while pretending to be a reporter, he’d ended up being punched by a real one. Yuuki knew that Kurasaka’s pride wouldn’t let him tell anyone. Right about now he’d be thinking up a plausible reason for his missing teeth.

  Yuuki took a deep breath. Perhaps Mount Osutaka refused to allow anybody with dishonest motives to climb it.

  He looked into his own heart.

  The traffic light turned red. It stayed red a long time. In his mind, he began thinking through his plan of attack for the newspaper. However unpleasant or uncomfortable it got in the newsroom, he was going to have to stick it out as JAL crash desk chief.

  42

  It was half past seven when Yuuki got back to his desk. It was snowed under with papers, and a mini-avalanche seemed to have occurred, flowing onto Kishi’s territory. Before leaving, he had turned in only the two front-page stories: CRIMINAL LIABILITY INVESTIGATION and PRESSURE BULKHEAD.

  He pulled his chair up, cracked his knuckles, and rotated his wrists a few times before attacking the first job of sorting them by topic. Next, he started work on the story that would head the local news pages—FAREWELL MESSAGES. As he rea
d, his eyes and throat began to burn.

  A businessman, knowing that he was about to die, had written a goodbye letter to his family. He’d scribbled the names of his wife and children, and then …

  But Yuuki found he couldn’t read it. It was too blurred.

  Yuuki rested his face in his hands and tried as hard as he could to focus on the letters on the page. But it was impossible. The images that entered his eye were passing through the thalamus, but the meaning was failing to register in his brain.

  “Daddy is really sorry. Goodbye … Please take good care of the kids. I’m grateful that I got to live such a happy life.”

  He turned to the next letter.

  “Look after the kids.”

  And then another one.

  “Live life to the full.” “Grow up to be wise and good.”

  Yuuki realized he could give these letter writers a voice.

  Determined, he got to his feet. He cupped his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice and shouted across to the copy team.

  “Kaku-san! We’re changing the top story!”

  He could see the expression on Kamejima’s round face change.

  “What the—?”

  “Drop that third story about the new mountain trail. We’re printing the farewell letters.”

  Kamejima came rushing over.

  “What are you talking about? They’ll be fine on the local news pages.”

  Yuuki held out the article for him to see. Kamejima looked dubious but began to read. A couple of moments later, he abruptly turned his back to Yuuki.

  Yuuki had Kamejima make a huge number of copies of the article and distribute them to all the members of the Editorial Department. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. There were even some who had to excuse themselves to go to the men’s room to cry.

  Yuuki set about choosing the other stories related to the crash.

  Nodai Niko loses to South Ube

  … Ah, they lost, he sighed to himself.

  Ministry of Transport orders reconstruction of plane

  Collision with mountain ridge, one engine fell off

  Bulkhead and other items added to inspection list