by Meg Mezeske
Jordan looked around her once more, and when convinced she was alone, approached the car casually. She cupped her hands to either side of her face and peered inside the driver’s-side window. The interior was extremely tidy—no papers, no leftover drink bottles, no cigarette packs, and no indication of whom the vehicle belonged to. She sighed and pulled away.
Jordan was tempted to wait around on some pretense to see who drove away in which cars, but most of the teachers would continue to work for a few hours more. Plus, she’d have a hard time explaining why she was loitering around the parking lot after claiming her headache was severe enough to warrant going home early. Mind made up, Jordan headed for her bicycle and decided to return early the next day as everyone was arriving.
Twenty-Six
Jordan crouched further into her jacket and tried to flex her chilled fingers, feeling equal parts cold and ridiculous. She had arrived before everyone else, when the sky was still shifting from grey to pink in the early dawn, and had staked out a lookout spot behind some hedges near the ball field. She had even laid her bike down beside her on the hard ground, so no one would know she had arrived, feeling positively clever.
But after forty-five minutes crawled by and not a single person had yet arrived, she simply felt silly, huddled behind a bush to spy on her coworkers. She sincerely hoped no one would see her; not for the sake of the case, but rather her reputation.
As she fretted, the first vehicle finally arrived. The janitor’s truck wheezed out huge plumes of exhaust, matching the breath that stuttered from between Jordan’s chilled lips. Gradually, more cars arrived, until at last, she saw a patch of yellow coming up the road, moving like a ray of bright sunlight between the trees and buildings.
Jordan held her breath as the yellow car pulled up and slowed to a stop. She leaned forward anxiously, as though that extra few inches would allow her to peer into the car.
The door of the yellow sedan sprang open and the driver struggled out of the car, head down as she carefully placed her feet. Jordan’s heartbeat thudded in her throat, her eyes scanning the figure’s slim frame, rumpled skirt, and white hair. Slowly, the woman straightened and turned. It was the school lunch lady.
Surprise and disappointment battled inside Jordan. She noticed that the lunch lady was also quite short and hunched with age. The old woman did not match Junichi’s sister’s description of a tall stranger at all. Maybe the mysterious figure and the yellow car weren’t related to the murder after all. Or perhaps one was a key clue while the other was not, and Jordan was just chasing flickering shadows of the truth. She felt suddenly hopeless and impossibly frustrated.
For the first time, she wondered whether she was grasping at straws. She had built her theories upon rumors and distrust of Ms. Nakamura, and now that foundation had begun to split with ever-growing fissures. Jordan felt a hot tear run down her cheek and scrubbed at it angrily as Ms. Nakamura pulled up in a white sedan. The vice principal collected her purse, closed her car door, and walked calmly to the front entrance, not seeming to feel the crisp touch of the morning air.
After Ms. Nakamura entered the building and no one else was nearby, Jordan righted her bike and locked it up in the bicycle lot. It was still much earlier than her usual arrival time, and the teachers’ room was mostly empty when she reached her desk.
She half-heartedly thanked the lunch lady—silently cursing her yellow car—when the old woman brought her a cup of steaming instant coffee. Jordan pressed the mug to her lips, but a whisper of caution stilled her hand before she could take a sip. She lowered the untouched coffee to her desk, the cup rattling in her unsteady grip, and tuned a smile for the lunch lady.
“I just remembered something,” Jordan said brightly, and the woman widened her eyes with attention. “You weren’t at a symphony in Yamagata City on”—she searched her memory for the date Ryusuke had been killed—“January seventh, were you?”
“Oh, no, I don’t believe so. I can’t remember the last time I went to a concert,” the lunch lady said, happily engaged. “Why do you ask?”
“Really? I could’ve sworn I saw you there! Oh, well, I’m sure you must’ve been up to something else exciting,” Jordan said in a gently probing way. She knew it was odd of her to ask, especially over a month later, but she also guessed the lunch lady would simply be pleased for the conversation. Assuming she wasn’t the murderer, that is.
“I really couldn’t say, child. All these days start to look the same after a while.” She chuckled warmly and made small talk for a moment more before returning to serving drinks.
With a defeated sigh, Jordan rolled the still-warm coffee cup between her palms. Of course, she couldn’t really have expected the lunch lady to remember such a specific date and provide an alibi for Jordan to investigate. But perhaps she could try again later, armed with different questions and the dates of the other students’ deaths.
She pushed aside the mug and began to arrange papers, when a low voice suddenly addressed her from behind.
“Jordan-sensei, good morning,” Ms. Nakamura said. “You seem to be feeling better.” What would otherwise seem like warm concern was chilled by the older woman’s dry, monotone voice and downturned lips.
“P-pardon?” Jordan stammered, taken off guard.
“I saw you leave early yesterday. When I checked on Akira in Mrs. Takahashi’s office, she said you had been complaining of a headache.” Ms. Nakamura’s expression was unreadable, and though she hadn’t asked a question, she seemed to be waiting for Jordan to explain herself in some way.
Jordan felt the blood siphon from her face at the thought of the vice principal visiting the school nurse. Was she being too obvious in her prying? Had Akira said anything? Or more importantly, was he in danger, now that he had caught Ms. Nakamura’s attention? She swallowed hard.
“Yes, that’s right. But I’m feeling much better now, thank you.” She attempted a smile. “How’s Akira?”
“His injury was quite…superficial.”
“That’s good. I’m glad he’s all right,” Jordan said, feeling actually quite worried for Akira’s well-being. Ms. Nakamura stared back implacably. “Well, I’d better—”
“You’re here unusually early.”
“I decided I should make up for going home early yesterday,” Jordan said quickly. She felt rather proud of her fast thinking, knowing that Ms. Nakamura couldn’t possibly argue against punctuality and a sense of duty. Ms. Nakamura nodded once, appeased, and Jordan was flooded with relief.
But just as quickly as the relief had come, it was replaced with a surge of revulsion. Jordan felt sick at her own actions—at how she was always scrambling to please the vice principal, to say just the right thing in her presence.
Jordan looked hard at Ms. Nakamura. The older woman met her gaze unflinchingly, and Jordan straightened, refusing to be the first to avert her eyes. As she faced Ms. Nakamura, Jordan reminded herself that this was the woman who was very likely responsible for Ryusuke’s death. Responsible for all of Ogawa’s empty spaces hollowed out by loss. Jordan’s hands clenched at her sides.
Like Ms. Nakamura herself, the older woman’s stare was stridently cold and unfeeling, and Jordan imagined she could see the woman’s guilt rolling off her in icy waves. A few more tense seconds passed before the vice principal lifted an eyebrow and parted her withered lips.
“Very well, Jordan-sensei. Now if you’ll—”
“Speaking of Akira,” Jordan said, knowing the segue was tenuous at best but feeling emboldened enough to push forward. “Months ago, you confronted him about Yuki. About him stealing from the school?”
Ms. Nakamura said nothing for a long moment. Her face remained impassive. “Yes. Why do you ask?”
“How did you know something was missing from the storeroom?” Jordan’s mouth had gone dry, but her voice was steady. She hadn’t thought of any reasonable pretext for asking this and didn’t offer further explanation.
Besides, whether Ms. Nakamura answered her
or not was unimportant. What Jordan wanted was a reaction.
“Inventory,” Ms. Nakamura bit out impatiently. The corner of her mouth twitched, and she pinned Jordan with a look one might give a cockroach on a kitchen counter. Then, Ms. Nakamura abruptly turned away and stalked to her desk.
With Ms. Nakamura’s back to her, Jordan smiled triumphantly. The vice principal hadn’t implicated herself, but neither had Jordan been cowed, and she would embrace that as a victory.
“Yes, you were perfect. Brilliant,” Jordan said for what felt like the hundredth time, reassuring Akira that he had played his role to a tee the day before. She smiled. “Thanks again for your help.”
“Sure! I would do anything for Yuki. A-and for you too, of course.” He smiled sheepishly. “If you tell me your plan, I bet I could help even more. I know I could!”
“I’m sorry, Akira. I hope I can tell you soon,” she said and shook her head, feeling doubly guilty for withholding information from Akira and for unwittingly putting him on Ms. Nakamura’s radar. She tried to ignore his crestfallen look and convince herself that the less he knew about the murders, the better.
“Well, I’d better get going, sensei. Clubs already ended.”
“Of course, sorry to keep you,” she said. Akira nodded and shrugged in a casual way that suggested she hadn’t really inconvenienced him. He shouldered his backpack and was just about to duck out the front door of the school when Jordan caught his sleeve. “Akira! Don’t let Ms. Nakamura in your home if she comes by.”
It all came out in a rush of breath, and Jordan wasn’t surprised by the perplexed look Akira gave her.
“Sensei? What are you talking about?” He half-laughed.
“Don’t let any faculty members inside, for that matter,” she amended hastily. “Promise me.”
“Not even you?” His laughter came fully this time. The kind that bubbles up to obscure a tenor of uncertainty.
“Not even me.” Jordan forced a jocular smile to put him at ease. “Promise?”
“Sure, I promise,” Akira said, more to humor her and be on his way than with deep sincerity. He was already halfway out the door before he had finished speaking, and he flung a wave over his shoulder before hurrying on. “Bye, sensei!”
“See you tomorrow.” Jordan doubted Akira even heard her as he rushed away, and she sighed, not at all assured that he would heed her warning. As though her thoughts were literally weighing her down, she followed Akira out of the school with a certain dragging slowness.
Though she wanted to simply go home, she knew she’d arrive to an empty fridge, and an even emptier stomach. Instead, she pointed her bike toward the Ai-Yu grocery store and doggedly pedaled onward.
The small store wasn’t busy, which Jordan was glad for, since she often had to make several circuits to find everything on her list. She had not fully adjusted to her food options, still unable to identify those dense orange fruits that resembled tomatoes, fish after fish with only subtle differences in stripes and fins, and rows of canned items of which there were no American equivalents, like rubbery konnyaku and pickled burdock root.
Jordan finished up in the frozen aisle, where desserts could be relied upon to be identifiable and unintimidating. She selected matcha ice cream and headed to the checkout cashiers.
One of her younger students waved to her from a rack of comic books near the checkout aisles; she waved back to him with a smile as she fished in her wallet for the store’s point card. She paid in cash, bagged her own items, and exited to the darkened parking lot.
An open trailer with startling orange-red lights had moored itself in the small lot. Dark, aromatic smoke puffed out of its side, so thick that the flavor of savory charcoal and grease touched Jordan’s tongue. A hand-painted sign reading yakitori slapped the side of the trailer in the evening breeze. Lit by the orange glow of the grill’s coals and the trailer’s lights, skewers of chicken glistened.
The fatty sizzle of grease and meat was tempting to Jordan, but she made up her mind to prepare her own dinner as she packed her grocery bags in the basket of her bike. She rolled up her pants to the knees, swung one long leg over the side of the bike, and pedaled into the night.
Though the sun was well down, most people were still at work, and Jordan found herself in the bubble of the early evening lull when salaried workers had yet to commute home, stay-at-home moms and grandparents had already finished their daily errands, and children were hunched over school books before dinner.
Jordan cursed her luck when she heard perhaps the only car on the road rumble close behind her, its headlights stretching her shadow in stark relief against the pock-marked pavement. The road was narrow, braced on either side by shoulder-high brick walls that hugged in nearby houses. Since she took the same route to and from her apartment nearly every day, Jordan knew the roadway would soon thin even more as it formed a small bridge over a man-made culvert.
Jordan was aware she was riding slowly, so she skirted the wall as close as she dared. She was careful not to sink the bike’s tires in the long gaps between the sidewalk and roadway, which directed water from the surface to be diverted away underground. She motioned for the car to pass her, but it made no change in course or speed, its headlights staring ahead unblinkingly. Jordan shrugged and began to move closer to the center of the road as the bridge approached.
The rubber of her bike’s front tire had only just whisked across the threshold of the bridge when the car gave a throaty roar and heaved forward. Jordan could barely begin to register or anticipate the car’s movement as it crushed in on her in the space of a breath. She heard a crunching squeal and felt her body rush forward under a powerful force, like an enormous hand had swatted her.
In the next instant, Jordan was tumbling and panic gripped her, her heart beating so fast it ached. The headlights’ glare swirled end-over-end, mixing in a looping spiral with the street lamps and pale moon. She finally landed with a wet smack and a painful heaviness that pressed her into the culvert’s algae-slick stones.
She felt that never moving again would be too soon. Her arm, from shoulder to fingernails, complained of hurt after absorbing the brunt of the fall. Jordan groaned as she attempted to catch her breath and right herself with her free arm, though it slipped in the slow stream of water that slid along the culvert.
Over her anxious breaths, she could hear the sound of the car picking up speed, though it had already passed out of sight. The high wail of its engine soon diminished as it pulled away into the darkness. Jordan sat in the channel a minute longer, shaking with residual fear and cold as the creeping water soaked into her clothes.
Carefully, she moved her arm, wincing with pain. The elbow and shoulder ached, but she could move her arm with a little effort; it seemed unbroken. Jordan got unsteadily to her feet and climbed out by pulling at the coarse weeds at the top of the bank.
Once out of the water, she further assessed her condition. The wind had been knocked out of her and she swore at a gash across her knee, but she felt otherwise unhurt besides the possible injury to her arm. She shuffled with halting, nervous steps to the bridge and let out a gasp at the sight of her bike.
It was crumpled and grotesquely twisted, like a body in a crime scene photograph. The handlebars were wedged so high in the bridge’s railing that the bike seemed to be rearing on its back wheel, or at least what was left of it. Both rims were bent beyond repair. A pedal and the seat were torn off and scattered on the ground amid other crushed debris.
She was struck by the violence of the encounter, overcome by a shudder that had nothing to do with the frigid water darkening her clothes. Judging by the scene, she had somehow been thrown over the railing instead of crushed between it and the car.
She took a few deep, calming breaths before grabbing the bike frame to wrest it from the bridge and clear the roadway. As her palms closed around the bony metal, a patch of brightness along the bridge’s railing caught her eye: a gash of yellow paint.
Twenty-Seven<
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“Do you have a moment, Inspector?” Jordan said and felt some small satisfaction when Toshihiko twitched in surprise. She hadn’t intended to startle him, not really. But she had tucked herself behind a tree near his parked car so that she could catch him, without drawing attention, as he left the school.
“Jordan, as much as I enjoy being your sounding board, I’m afraid I must return to my office,” Toshihiko said blandly and fished in his coat pocket for his keys. “I’ll be returning to the school next week if you’d like to speak with me then.”
“I won’t take up much of your time, I promise. If you could just give me a quick lift home, and I’ll say my piece on the way.” She knew she was pushing her luck, but she suspected his patience would stretch far enough. “Please. You’re headed that direction anyway.”
“Don’t you have a bike?”
“Actually, that’s sort of why I wanted to talk to you,” Jordan said, purposefully leaving out any other details. If she knew Toshihiko, which she felt she did at least a little, those few words would stoke the coals of his curiosity. And he couldn’t ignore any information that could contribute to his case, even if she was the source.
He lifted an eyebrow and cast a wary glance around the parking lot. Jordan knew she almost had him, but her satisfaction was fleeting, sobered by the reason why she wanted to speak with him in the first place.
After limping home the night before, Jordan’s first instinct had been to call Toshihiko. But her cell phone—like her bike—had not survived the accident. As she had stared at its ruined display, splintered into silvery webs, she had convinced herself it was best to speak with Toshihiko in person anyway. If he would just agree to give her a ride.
“Don’t worry, there’s no one around,” she said to herself as much as to him. “Besides, if anyone does see us, it’s not like it’s that unusual for you to be talking to me, right?”