Takuda looked up, and he saw steaming columns rising up over the shopping district a few blocks away, a dark and dreaming world that mirrored his own, a world where the sites of the fiercest battles and greatest injustices were the sites of the most fruitful worship and the grandest structures were erected on the bedrock of human misery.
“Okay, what do you know?” Mori’s voice cut through Takuda’s hallucination, for surely that’s what it was. “What are you sure of?”
Takuda stopped. They stood on the sidewalk in front of Able English Institute, the junior college where Thomas Fletcher had worked. It was a narrow building with a broken clock on the face, both hands hanging down to an incorrect and dispirited 6:30. The sky above it was alight with the black fire of invisible prayer.
Takuda blinked and tried to focus on the daylit world. “I know that you weren’t able to turn the priest into a swordsman. I know that we’ve been broke since we quit the police force, and a little money has shown up in one account or another since we started this whole thing.”
Mori studied his shoes.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Takuda said. “Twenty thousand yen, thirty thousand yen, always with a little change to make it confusing, as if they were strange little dividend payments. Sometimes it’s the big donations dropped into Suzuki’s begging bowl. Just enough to keep us afloat. It always works that way, and I quit questioning it a long time ago.”
Mori frowned. Takuda glanced at the building. All seemed normal except for a girl running from the front door with her hand over her mouth.
“I’m willing to agree that it’s been Zenkoku all along,” Takuda said. “They’re just making sure we don’t starve, like a really cheap, unofficial retainer. They knew they’d need us to clean up some sort of mess someday.”
“Or they start a mess when we’re on the scene,” Mori said. “First, rumors about the jellyfish murders throw everyone into a panic, even though there are no bodies, just some missing kids. Then Ota’s little security firm gets a fat contract without a single bid. An overworked counselor in a county office gets a phone call related to this Kurodama, and we’re right on the spot. It doesn’t make sense unless Zenkoku put us in place.”
Suzuki had drifted up behind them. “This object, the Kurodama, has an evil influence, and it might have been around here at some time.” He pointed east. “In 1945, the Japanese Army’s Western Headquarters was right over there, at the end of the moat. That’s where it’s said the liver of an American airman was grilled and seasoned with soy sauce for a welcoming reception at the Officers’ Hospital.”
Mori sighed. Sirens shrieked in the distance.
“The Japanese lawyers said the Occupation made up the cannibalism story, but the vivisection of the American airmen is well-documented. The doctors at Kyushu Imperial University Medical Department removed fliers’ organs, pumped their veins full of seawater, even drilled holes in their skulls and stuck in knives, just to see what happened.”
Mori poked his finger into Suzuki’s chest. “Listen, Suzuki. I know that story, too. The cannibalism charges were dropped. Dropped altogether. As for the vivisection, it was barbaric, if it happened, but let’s not get stupid. The Chinese say that Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army killed thousands of Chinese and Russian prisoners in Manchuria. But Manchuria is pretty far away, isn’t it? Kyushu University is on the other side of town, isn’t it? Do you think this Kurodama causes atrocities at a distance?”
Suzuki shook his head. “I don’t understand it yet.” He seemed too troubled by his own thoughts to take offense at Mori’s rudeness. “There’s a connection here. I can taste it.”
Mori and Takuda glanced at each other. Mori moved forward as if to start pushing Suzuki around, and Takuda was stepping forward to intervene when a blaring police car pulled up to Able English Institute.
Then another, and yet another. Uniformed officers poured out of the cars. Detective Kimura jumped out of an unmarked cruiser and raced toward the back entrance, hair and tie and coattails flapping.
Traffic had stopped, so Takuda raced across the street with Mori and Suzuki in tow.
Takuda wanted to follow Kimura, but there was trouble at the entrance. A harried patrolman held the double doors closed as panicked students pushed against them. The patrolman was losing. He would be crushed if he didn’t move.
Takuda bowed and murmured that he should be allowed to help. The patrolman didn’t answer. He pushed against the doors with all his might, but he was buckling. Takuda eased in beside him and slid the breadth of his shoulders against the doors, displacing the patrolman altogether. He put his foot against the wrought-iron banister and locked his legs. The doors snapped shut. A student squealed through the glass; Takuda gave her enough slack to get her backpack out and then eased back into his duties.
Mori bowed to the patrolman and stood beside Takuda. The patrolman stood back and got his first glance at their uniforms.
“Where were you two?” He obviously assumed they were Able English Institute employees.
Mori bowed again. “We were at lunch, Officer.”
“I’m a patrolman, you fool. Don’t go anywhere. Your incompetence may have allowed a suspect to escape.”
There was a sharp rapping on the glass. Takuda glanced over his shoulder. A lieutenant was waving him away from the door. Order had been restored in the lobby.
He and Mori held the doors open as students began to file out clutching their student identification cards.
The patrolman adjusted his uniform. He glared at Suzuki. “You, are you a teacher?”
Suzuki bowed. “Japanese History and Literature, Grammar, Religion, General Humanities and Ethics . . .”
“Okay, okay. You stay here until the students are cleared from the lobby. All the other staff ran out.”
“What happened here?” Suzuki’s bony hand drifted to his mouth. “What happened?”
The patrolman hissed out the words between students. “Nothing . . . I can tell you. The . . . students left . . . No witnesses, no suspects, nothing. Just . . . keep them in . . . until the office manager . . . can check them out.”
Takuda said, “Actually, we were called from lunch to see a Detective Kimura. Can you tell me where to find him?”
“Wait right here,” the patrolman said. “Don’t move.”
The patrolman shoved past distraught students. Takuda and Mori peered in after him. The patrolman addressed the lieutenant, who shushed him and continued to watch over the shoulder of a small, elderly man with a clipboard who carefully checked the students’ identification cards, glanced at their faces, and sent them filing out the door. They seemed to know him, and he had encouraging words for each student.
The patrolman frowned deeply as he waited for the lieutenant’s ear. When he noticed Takuda and Mori peering in, he waved them back.
A forlorn young man came through the door. Takuda clapped him on the shoulder. “Big guy, hold the door open for your classmates, will you? We have to go to work.”
The boy bowed and fumbled in his pack to put away his identification. Takuda thought he must be the saddest boy he had ever seen.
“Why the long face?”
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. Fire alarms. Rats in the attic. Murder. Something always goes wrong during the Saturday cram sessions.” He glanced up at the broken clock. “They don’t even care if you’re late for class.”
Mori was watching. He let two students go by and then called a cute girl over. He bowed and called her “little sister.” “Hold the door open, and keep your classmate company. We need you both to count the students as they leave.”
“How many so far?” she said.
“Eleven, including you,” said the sad-sack boy.
She sighed. “Twelve.”
The boy had brightened. He didn’t quite smile at the girl on the other side of the
threshold. “Terrible, huh? These jellyfish murders, I mean. Half my composition class is missing.”
Takuda and Mori slipped away from the doors. Takuda motioned for Suzuki to follow.
They squeezed into the alley between Able English Institute and the business hotel next door. There was a breezeway between the main building and a two-story building squatting in the rear of the lot.
“Up there,” Takuda whispered, pointing toward the second floor of the rear building. “They’re all up on the second floor.”
Flashes of light, uniforms blocking the windows—the second floor was crawling with police.
Mori hitched up his own jumpsuit uniform and made an attempt to brush the lint off Suzuki’s suit. “Here we go, then,” he said. Suzuki watched him with clear amusement. “Here. We. Go.”
Takuda led the way through the back door and to the stairwell. When they got to the first landing, a patrolman coming downstairs yelled and raised his gloved hands as if to push them back down the stairs.
“It’s okay,” Takuda said. “We’re here to see Detective Kimura.”
“Detective Kimura knows you’re coming?”
They nodded in unison, and the patrolman had them wait, holding up his gloved hand as he backed up the stairs as if to keep them on the landing by sheer power of will.
“We won’t get in,” Mori said.
Kimura was down in seconds. His face was pale and grim. He wore gloves, a mask, a hairnet, and white fiber booties to keep from contaminating the scene. He pulled the mask down to his throat. “The one in the suit, is he the priest?”
“Ex-priest. My order no longer exists. Please call me Suzuki.” He bowed to the detective.
Kimura took a deep breath. “Speak to no one here. Be invisible. Understand?”
They nodded.
“Hide the insignia.”
Takuda crossed his arms, covering patches on his breast and his sleeve. Mori followed suit.
Kimura studied them. “You used to be policemen. You know how to act. When we get in the door, I’ll go straight and you go left to the windows. Don’t cross the tape. And watch your step. I think it’s all behind the tape, but there are slippery spots. You’ve never seen so much blood in your life.”
CHAPTER 18
Saturday Afternoon
Detective Kimura entered the lecture hall first. Takuda, Mori, and Suzuki followed.
The stink of blood and emptied bowels hit them at the door. Old wooden chairs were tossed in heaps radiating outward from the bloodied center. Blood splattered the foam baffles hanging from the center of the ceiling, the whiteboard, and even the windows. It was as if a student had exploded in the center of the room, leaving behind radiating crimson spatter and a starburst of shredded meat.
Takuda had seen horrible things, and he had confronted evil and chaos incarnate. He had never seen an innocent girl boned like a fish. He assumed from the blood-soaked hair that it was a girl. He was light-headed. Despite his experience, he was dizzy and nauseated between one step and the next. He felt the blood draining out of his face. He looked at the others in the room to draw strength from the living.
Takuda wasn’t alone. Patrolmen in paper booties either stared at the purplish mass in the center of the room or stared out the windows.
At the outer edge of the flayed, mounded flesh, a white-clad photographer carefully laid a plastic ruler beside a footprint in blood. The sole was made up of a flattish horizontal zigzag with a large empty circle in the instep. The tread reminded Takuda of tennis shoes he wanted as a child. It was the tread of a fashionable retro canvas tennis shoe popular among girls.
A girl’s footprint.
Kimura pulled up his mask as Takuda, Mori, and Suzuki followed the tape to the left, just as he had instructed them.
“Here’s a start on the weapon,” an officer crouching next to the photographer called out to Kimura. “There are triangular cuts in the vinyl flooring. The tip slipped and stuck into the flooring multiple times as they boned the victim.”
“They?” Kimura stared at the flayed mass as if willing himself to do so. “You’re sure there are multiple perpetrators?”
“I’m sure of it.” The portable lights reflected off his glasses. “We have at least three sets of footprints already.”
Kimura surveyed the chairs. “Chief of Detectives Ishikawa, shall I have prints taken on all these chairs?”
Ishikawa grunted from the lectern. “I’ve already had to restrain your men from doing so. More equipment is coming, along with the experts to use it.”
Kimura turned to Takuda. “It looks like the perpetrators left here barefoot and naked. They had to. The footprints stop right at the edge of the chairs, right in front of you. The bathroom was cleaned at around 4 p.m. yesterday. We haven’t gotten in touch with the custodian yet. I’ve got two men going through the trash.” He turned back to Ishikawa without missing a beat. “And what can we learn from the blood spatters? Anything interesting in the pattern?”
Ishikawa glared. Kimura’s breezy approach was a pose calculated to anger him, and it worked. “You’ll be sorry if this information gets to the wrong people. Do you want that?” He indicated Takuda, Mori, and Suzuki with a jutting chin. “Your friends who aren’t worthy of introduction—or is it I who am unworthy? Everyone is affected by such rudeness. Do you trust your friends?”
Kimura grinned. “Implicitly,” he said. “With my mother’s life.”
Ishikawa snorted and looked down at his work. “The victim was alive when this started.”
Kimura tapped his cell phone case in the silence.
Takuda glanced at Mori. Mori was steady and impassive. Beyond Mori, Suzuki muttered the sutras as he stared at the ruined flesh on the floor. He stared as if—
Merciful Buddha, he looks hungry.
Takuda shook the thought away. He was letting Mori’s disapproval of Suzuki cloud his thinking.
Ishikawa held his gloved hand a few inches over the corpse. “The blood on the sound baffles above me and over there on the window are outliers, too high or too far for arterial spray if the victim was on the floor. Otherwise, the only spatter like that is very regular, as if the instruments spun horizontally at about this level.” Ishikawa waved his hand palm-downward over the corpse and stopped cold, a look of intense concentration on his face. “Of course. What an idiot I’ve been.”
Kimura peered over the tape and the jumbled chairs. “Something new, Chief of Detectives?”
Ishikawa glanced at Takuda, Mori, and Suzuki. “Nothing to report yet, Detective. Not here, not now.”
Kimura smiled a thin, tight smile. “You are thorough and discreet, Chief of Detectives. Experience shows.”
Suzuki cleared his throat. “Might it have been a curved blade?”
Takuda, Mori, and Kimura went still. The chief of detectives looked up slowly.
“Detective Kimura, perhaps now it is time to have the patrolmen assist the lieutenant in the main building.”
Kimura nodded to the patrolmen. Ishikawa dismissed the crouching officer and the photographer with a gesture. The officer fairly sprinted from the room. The photographer bowed formally and packed his kit so quickly that he fell into line behind the last patrolman going out the door.
As the door swung shut, Ishikawa returned his attention to the corpse. “One of your mysterious friends addressed a very interesting question to me, Detective Kimura. It is a question regarding a very sensitive aspect of this investigation. Yet I still don’t know this man’s name.”
“Detective Kimura has no administrative role in my presence here, Chief of Detectives Ishikawa. Officially, I am not here.” Suzuki bowed deeply. “My colleagues are employed by a private security firm. They are also officially elsewhere.”
After a few seconds of silence, Takuda and Mori bowed with their arms still crossed. Kimura exhale
d loudly.
“They say you come from heaven, but I think you come from hell.” Ishikawa stripped off his gloves. “More thugs. More damned Zenkoku enforcers.”
Suzuki walked around the perimeter of caution tape toward Kimura. “Chief of Detectives, we are not from Zenkoku. We’re not from the governor’s office. We’re not from the National Police Agency.” He lifted his lapels with his thumbs. “Look at this suit. Would they even let me into the commissioner general’s office with this suit?”
Ishikawa picked his way through the blood spatters to meet him. “I’ve gotten over my surprise about who gets into the commissioner general’s office.” Kimura held the caution tape down as Ishikawa stepped over. Ishikawa unzipped his paper coveralls with Suzuki towering over him. “You don’t know anything about the commissioner general’s office, though, because you aren’t police.” He indicated Takuda and Mori with a tilt of his head. “Those two might be. But not you.”
Suzuki bowed. “I serve a higher function. I regret that I cannot reveal more.”
Ishikawa’s face darkened.
Suzuki straightened. “A curved blade, sharpened on the inner edge. You think it might be a linoleum knife, a hawksbill fruit knife, or a fishing knife. At the most extreme, you think it might be a modified scythe.”
“Who are you?”
“You also know there were seven assailants. You just realized that a moment ago from the gaps in the spatter.”
Ishikawa growled as he stepped backward, stretching the caution tape with his calves. He reached for the cell phone at his belt.
Suzuki said, “Chief of Detectives, we need your cooperation here. If I tell you something you don’t know, will you cooperate?”
Ishikawa’s growl became a sputtering laugh. “If you don’t tell me everything, and right this second, you’re going to jail.”
Suzuki lowered his head. “As you wish.” He pointed to the flayed mass behind the caution tape. “You’re not looking for multiple weapons. That was done with a single blade.”
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