by Meg Mezeske
As Jordan arrived at the door, she took a quick step back, surprised to hear voices coming from within. She knocked as she entered.
The three boys standing in the greenhouse whipped their heads toward Jordan so quickly that she thought they would spin right off their necks. Their eyes went wide and two of them became a flurry of movement, grabbing some items off a table and thrusting them into their pockets. Jordan thought she glimpsed a thousand-yen bill before it disappeared into one boy’s slacks.
“J-Jordan-sensei, what are you doing here?” the boy at the back said, his voice pitched high. Jordan spent a moment taking in their faces. Of course, she recognized them—the school was too small not to, and she taught every student there—but she couldn’t recall any of their names. They were newly minted third-graders; she had remembered that much, at least, and their nametags confirmed it.
“I think the better question is what are you boys doing here?” Jordan knew the students seldom took her reprimands seriously, so she made an effort to sound imposing and crossed her arms for good measure.
“Nothing. Just hanging out.” This came from the boy who had ferreted the money into his pocket. He had succeeded in wiping away the look of abject guilt from his face, replacing it with a veneer of nonchalance. A few beads of sweat rose at his temples like blisters.
“Well, you should either be at your club meeting or be headed home by now,” Jordan said firmly.
The boys exchanged furtive glances, heads lowered.
“Okay, let’s go.” She propped open the door and gestured for them to leave.
Grudgingly, the boy who had last spoken came forward, shuffling toward the door at an unhurried pace. As he approached, Jordan scrutinized his nametag: Nao Ka-something. Nao’s eyes were shaded by his mussed hair, but standing so close, Jordan could see that they were bloodshot—a lacework of thready, red veins. His shoulder jostled hers as he stepped outside and he mumbled something that couldn’t even be mistaken for an apology.
The other two boys followed him, almost comical in their haste to scramble out of the greenhouse.
“Thank you, boys,” Jordan drawled, hoping the sarcasm wouldn’t be lost in translation. They didn’t turn toward her voice or further acknowledge her in any way. As they ambled toward the bike racks, Jordan wondered if maybe she should have followed them. Or marched them straight to the new vice principal. She didn’t know exactly what to accuse them of besides slacking off, though they had obviously been caught red-handed at something.
Jordan sighed and let the door squeal shut behind her. Tugged by curiosity, she moved to look at the table the boys had been crowded around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There were only swipes in the dirt covering the table—vague shapes of fingers and hands where the boys had hurried to retrieve whatever had laid there.
She looked a minute more, scanning the floor and shelves. Everything was washed a sickly green color by the sunlight filtered through the plastic walls, but the empty seed trays, rusty trowels, and assorted gardening tools were not otherwise notable. Jordan shrugged and widened her scope to take in the whole room.
“Large pot. Watering can.”
Thirty-Three
“Excuse me. Is this your change?” Jordan asked with careful enunciation and held a few yen coins in her open palm toward Mrs. Okubo.
“Oh! My change! Thank you!” the English instructor said with a touch of melodrama. Jordan smiled, and some students chuckled, while others diligently followed the dialogue in the textbook.
As with many previous lessons, Jordan protested to Mrs. Okubo that the sample conversations sounded unnatural and that the students would be ill-served by memorizing such stilted lines. Mrs. Okubo agreed to an extent but said that if they deviated from the curriculum, the students would not pass their college entrance exams.
Jordan was tempted to ask whether they were trying to teach English or merely prepare the students for a single test, but she knew it’d be like pushing against a large stone sunk deep into the ground. Instead, the two of them mimed along with the lost change conversation once more and instructed the students to then practice in pairs.
Jordan strolled through the classroom, listening and offering tips over a background chorus of, “Oh! My change!” that rippled like a song in round through the pairs. Over the noise, Jordan heard the sliding rattle of the door being opened. She had to shield her eyes against the morning sunlight slanting through the windows to see who entered. The new vice principal stepped inside. He tempered his expression, but his cheeks were flushed and sweat stippled his brow.
He went straight to Mrs. Okubo without offering the customary apology for the intrusion or even bothering to close the door behind him. He spoke urgently in her ear, standing so close that each puff of his breath lifted the hair at her temple. The students’ practiced conversations quieted at his entrance, but Jordan still could not hear a thing. Mrs. Okubo nodded wordlessly, straight-faced, and the vice principal turned on his heel and left.
“Class, can I please have your attention? Everyone, return to your seats.”
The students rushed to obey and exchanged questioning, tight-lipped glances. Jordan joined Mrs. Okubo by the chalkboard and would have asked what was going on, except the other woman seemed completely unaware of Jordan’s presence at her side as she addressed the class.
“This morning, Nao Kazuki of san-nensei, san-kumi was found dead in his home.”
Gasps and incredulous exclamations burst from the students. Jordan had to strain to listen over their murmurs and the thrashing of her heart in her throat as Mrs. Okubo spoke.
“School is dismissed for today. Please return home if you are able. If you must wait for a parent to pick you up, please remain here in your homeroom. There will also be a counselor available in the afternoon.”
“Okubo-sensei?” A boy in the front row raised his hand and continued without being called upon. “Was Nao murdered?”
“I really can’t say, Eiji. I’m sorry, class, but Jordan-sensei and I must go to a teachers’ meeting. Hopefully we will have answers for you soon, but in the meantime, please return home or wait here until you are able. Thank you.” She nodded grimly and left, Jordan right on her heels.
“Do you know more than what you told the students?” Jordan said as soon as they were out of earshot of the class, itching to get to her cell phone and text Toshihiko.
“Nao was found just like the others. The police don’t know for certain yet but—”
It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
Jordan’s stomach dropped to the floor and she staggered as though tripped by it. Already pounding, her heartbeat throbbed even harder in her ears.
“But Ms. Nakamura is in jail awaiting trial…” Jordan said with effort, her breath strangled. She didn’t expect any sort of answer from Mrs. Okubo but had to give outlet to her over-spilling thoughts. She shook her head, but it did nothing to clear the fog of disbelief clouding around her. “How can this be possible?”
“I don’t know.” The instructor’s words were clipped, reined between grief and uncertainty.
“What if it wasn’t Ms. Nakamura?” Jordan said, rejecting her own words even as she spoke them, refusing to give the thought purchase. Mrs. Okubo didn’t respond and instead hurried forward, leaving Jordan behind in the hall.
She slowed to a stop and simply stood there. Unable to move, Jordan felt her thoughts hurtle themselves in all directions and slam into the walls of her skull, only to slide back down and churn.
Jordan leaned against her kitchen counter and rocked on her feet impatiently, waiting for the kettle to come to a boil while she stared out the window. There was only a thin glaze of yellow light still remaining along the horizon. She could see little beyond the silhouettes of spiders rappelling across their webs under the building’s eaves.
She had remained at the school for what had felt like an interminable amount of time, waiting for news. Principal Kikuchi had reported that Inspector Sakurai was at Na
o’s home and would be relaying information to the school, and Jordan had texted Toshihiko numerous times herself. But hours later, no word had come, and Jordan was eventually ushered home.
Jordan looked away from the kitchen window to fish her cell phone out of her pocket, checking it with a sigh. No new messages.
She texted Toshihiko yet again, pleading for details. Not expecting a response, she put down her phone to tend to the rattling teapot that gargled and hissed like a broken pipe on the stovetop. She nearly dropped the spitting kettle in surprise when her phone dinged at a new message.
Toshihiko had responded.
I’m still at the crime scene. Talk later.
Jordan’s stomach clenched. For its few words, Toshiko’s text conveyed quite clearly that Nao’s death was indeed a murder. Numbly, she keyed a quick reply and stirred some instant coffee into a mug of hot water, her mouth gone dry.
For a while, she sat at the kitchen table, sipping her coffee and listening to the whoosh of vehicles that passed along the highway. She had no idea where to start. Was it a copycat killer? Was Ms. Nakamura truly innocent? How could they have been so wrong?
Jordan knew nothing of Nao Kazuki, either. She thought perhaps she could track down and speak to his friends, ask questions like she had before. She could inquire after Nao’s shady behavior in the greenhouse, for one.
But instead of being flooded with determination and curiosity, she felt only a weak pulse of energy that had already begun to stutter to a stop. Jordan remained sitting long after her mug had emptied, letting thoughts float by, unable to latch onto a single one.
Only when the ten o’clock chime tripped from the town’s PA system through her open window did she move. She wasn’t sleepy and doubted she would be anytime soon. She opted instead to turn on the television and her laptop.
As she browsed the internet and checked her email, she was reminded of Mixi and her private messages to the user whom she assumed was Kenji. Though Jordan’s first message had gone unanswered, she had not been deterred, following up with three more requests for him to reply—each more insistent than the last. She had also messaged a few other promising users.
Still, she had not heard a word in close to two months, not from “Yakyuubi” or anyone else. Yakyuubi had posted nothing new to the community, either.
She suspected that she had scared him away, or at least pushed him to adopt a new pseudonym. So it was without much expectation that Jordan logged in to her Mixi account. She was unsurprised to find no new messages. With a nagging sense of finality, Jordan composed another private message to Yakyuubi:
Kenji, if this is you, please contact me right away. There has been another murder. What do you know about Ryusuke’s death? Please respond, or better yet, contact the police. –Jordan-sensei.
She pressed the send button, which made a sound like a drop in a shallow puddle. Unconvinced that she would ever receive a reply, Jordan closed the laptop and sprawled as best she could on the small couch, her long, bare legs sliding on the faux leather.
Slowly, the television newscaster’s gentle voice and the wave-like rushing of passing cars lulled her. She pushed aside thoughts of Nao, Kenji, and eventually, even Ryusuke, until only the blankness of sleep tugged at her.
Jordan awoke some hours later, her neck sore and tight from sleeping against the couch, ear to shoulder. She let her exhaustion-heavy eyelids flutter and nearly drifted back to sleep when a blinking light on the table drew her attention, as bright as a moon orbiting the television’s blue face.
The tiny beacon issued from her cell phone. She was greeted by the image of an envelope in the corner of the screen. Jordan opened her inbox and squinted as the bright light assailed her eyes. As soon as she saw that the message was a forwarded notification from Mixi, she sat straight up, fully awake.
Yakyuubi had replied:
Hello, Jordan-sensei. Please do not tell my parents or the police. I trust you will not. Let’s meet in person to discuss this…
Jordan reread the entire message twice over, writing down the address and time when Kenji—or Yakyuubi—instructed her to meet.
Thirty-Four
Risshaku-ji Temple looked as ancient as the dense cedars and twisting rocks that surrounded it, as though the temple had sprouted from the earth centuries ago. It was mid-afternoon and the temple grounds were teeming with tourists armed with umbrellas and wide hats to repel the sun. Most look tired but pleased, having just ascended the hundreds of steps that zippered up the mountainside.
Jordan watched the crowd carefully for any sign of Kenji, though her eye was constantly drawn to the hall’s swooping roof and colorful banners. They undulated in a languorous breeze she couldn’t feel.
She was more than happy to visit the picturesque mountain temple of Risshaku-ji, but it seemed an odd place for Kenji to choose—not really a hotspot for runaway teenagers. Then again, she wondered if that was exactly why he wanted to meet here. His message had been cagey to the point of downright distrusting, and he was obviously hesitant to communicate over the computer. A lively destination like Risshaku-ji was probably the last place anyone would expect him to be, and a safe, public place.
Just as Jordan started to suspect she had been put on, twenty minutes past their agreed time, she saw a familiar figure emerge from behind a cluster of people. Jordan’s heart jumped, relieved to see Kenji safe—happy just to see his face again. Though, that was tempered by his forlorn look.
Kenji noticed her immediately and nodded when he caught her eye. Instead of walking toward her, however, he veered to the side until he reached an outcropping off the main path. Jordan followed.
“Hello, Kenji.” Jordan found a smile. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Jordan-sensei,” Kenji said, his expression solemn. The young man’s eyes only stayed on Jordan for a moment before flicking to the side nervously. He cast his gaze at anyone who came close, though the other visitors didn’t even look in their direction. “Did you come here alone?”
“Yes, just as you asked me—”
“And you haven’t told the inspector?”
“No, I haven’t,” Jordan said hesitantly, taken aback by both Kenji’s demeanor and her guilt over hiding the meeting from Toshihiko.
She had spent restless nights wrangling with whether or not to tell the inspector. Kenji had insisted that Jordan come by herself and threatened to bail on the meeting if he had even the slightest suspicion that she wouldn’t comply.
Plus, until the moment Jordan actually laid eyes on Kenji, she had harbored strong doubts about Yakyuubi’s identity. She couldn’t imagine Toshihiko’s frustration if she had dragged him to the temple for some internet troll’s prank.
Yet there was no denying Kenji was pivotal to the case. She couldn’t risk losing his testimony, but asking to record him would only scare him off. Another layer of guilt had heaped upon her when she decided she would have to record Kenji in secret.
As nonchalantly as possible, she took a step closer to him and tapped her phone in her pocket to start an audio recording app. She cleared her throat and attempted to reengage him.
“How have you been, Kenji?”
Jordan had a good idea of his answer but thought it would seem odd not to ask. Even if she didn’t already know the circumstances behind Kenji fleeing Ogawa, his appearance clearly spoke to his state of mind. His clothes were wrinkled and stained with sweat, looking quite slept-in. His hair wasn’t exactly dirty, but it was wildly tousled, and not artfully. Despite his disheveled look and the dark circles under his eyes, his handsome, sharp features couldn’t be entirely disguised.
Instead of answering, Kenji merely shrugged. Jordan tried again.
“Thank you for meeting with me. I’m sure you can shed some light on what happened to Ryusuke…and the others.” She paused when Kenji grimaced at Ryusuke’s name. “You think you know who killed them?”
“It was Ms. Nakamura.” Kenji’s eyes fully met hers for the first time, dark and unyie
lding. “I’m sure of it.”
Jordan felt a current gallop through her body and vibrate every bone.
She knew it. All along.
Yet, the longer she weighed Kenij’s words, the more her vindication loosened its grip and backed away. Kenji had bolstered her long-held belief in the vice principal’s guilt, but Jordan also realized that she had hoped he would provide different information. A new lead perhaps.
“But Nao was murdered after Ms. Nakamura was arrested. It couldn’t have been her,” Jordan pressed.
“No. Whoever killed Nao must be a copycat murderer.” Kenji became more animated with each word and a fierce look suffused his eyes.
“A copycat murderer?” She had considered that explanation herself, even bounced the idea off of Toshihiko. He had said it was a possibility but was characteristically close-lipped about the likelihood. The newspapers had divulged almost as much information about the case as Jordan knew herself. Parts of the police report had also been made public—more than enough fuel for another killer to stoke a new fire. “Why are you so sure that Ms. Nakamura—”
“The night before Ryusuke was murdered, Vice Principal Nakamura came to my house,” Kenji said, voice trembling around his friend’s name. “She said we needed to talk about my grades.”
“But you were at the top of your class.”
“At the time, I didn’t even think about that. I was too worried about pleasing her—you know how she makes people feel.” His eyes narrowed as he continued. “I told her my parents weren’t home, but invited her in. What else could I do?”
“So she came inside?” Jordan felt her chest constrict with worry for Kenji, though he was standing before her unharmed.
“She was about to, but our neighbor, Mr. Tanaka, saw her and said hello. He worked with Ms. Nakamura for years when they both taught at Ogawa Elementary School, so he knew her pretty well. They talked for a minute or two, but I could tell Ms. Nakamura wanted to leave.”