by Meg Mezeske
“How do you mean?”
“She kept trying to end the conversation and was sort of fidgety. I don’t know, she just seemed nervous—not like how she usually is. As soon as she was able to, she excused herself and left without another word to me,” Kenji said. His next words formed with eerie calm. “I think she planned to kill me that night.”
“Kenji…”
He looked not at all like a young man then, only a child. Jordan wanted to reach out and fold her arms over his shoulders. It would be easy to do—the space between them was so short and thin—but she clutched her hands to her sides and didn’t move.
“I have no doubt that she murdered Ryusuke and would have done the same to me. She knew Mr. Tanaka could place her at the scene; otherwise, she would have gone through with it. Maybe she even came back to try again, but I left right after I heard about…” Kenji’s voice died away, his expression distant. Several seconds passed before he spoke again. “Ms. Nakamura has to be held responsible for what she did to Ryusuke. She has to.”
“She will be. Especially if you go to the police with your story—it would help the case a lot.”
Kenji nodded but looked unconvinced, shuffling his feet in the dirt. “No one would believe me.”
“I believe you, Kenji. And so will Inspector Sakurai,” Jordan said firmly. If anything, Kenji looked even more doubtful, or maybe it was fear molding his expression.
“What good would the police do? Where was that inspector when Ryusuke was killed?” He spat out the words, and Jordan felt a pang of remorse on Toshihiko’s behalf. After a few deep breaths, Kenji calmed, but he still looked torn. “Besides, if I go to the police, I would have to tell them everything, wouldn’t I?”
“Everything? What do you mean?”
“About me and Ryusuke. About how we…” He dropped his eyes. “My parents would never have me back if they found out.”
“I don’t think the police have to know about that, if you don’t want them to,” Jordan tried reassuringly.
Kenji’s only response was to fix his gaze at the ground and shake his head in refusal.
Jordan struggled to reconcile the image of the gregarious young man she once knew with the listless, vengeful person before her. But, as she pictured Kenji with his easy smile, Ryusuke appeared right beside him, throwing an arm over his shoulders. A part of Kenji must have passed along with him.
A long silence followed, fissured by the tinkling of coins tossed against stones as visitors made their prayers.
“Will you come back to Ogawa? I’m not the only one who misses you,” Jordan said with a small smile. She considered saying his parents missed him, too, but didn’t know how Kenji would take it, or whether he’d be able to read her uncertainty. No matter what she said, words seemed too frail to even begin to penetrate the barrier he had raised.
“I don’t think so, Jordan-sensei. But thank you.” Kenji’s lips twisted in an attempt at a smile that fell away. He cast his eyes toward the path down the hillside. “I should go now.”
“Wait! Do you need a place to stay? Or some money?” Jordan reached into her purse, but Kenji began to protest before she even touched her wallet.
“No—no, that won’t be necessary. I should go.” He took a step back and shot another longing look at the path.
“Okay, Kenji,” Jordan said, reluctant, and felt her eyes flood. “Thank you again, for speaking with me.”
“Sure.” He shrugged, already walking away. “Goodbye, sensei.”
“Goodbye,” Jordan said, too quietly for anyone else to hear. She watched Kenji as he made his way down the mountain, disappearing among the thick trees.
Thirty-Five
“Are you sure there’s nothing else you can tell me about Nao?”
Nao’s friend Tomo shrugged at Jordan, his meaty arms rising and falling listlessly. Tomo had met every one of Jordan’s questions with a sullen, mumbled reply of no more than a few words. Soon, even those scant remarks had been replaced by grunts and nods that could be interpreted to mean any number of things.
Jordan wanted to give Tomo the benefit of the doubt; after all, his good friend had just been murdered. But she felt his resistance stemmed from more than grief. Perhaps he was still wary of her since she had stumbled upon him and Nao in the greenhouse. Jordan sighed with frustration, deciding the boy needed a little extra push to be more forthcoming.
“Come on, Tomo. I know Nao was up to something.” She whispered and leaned in. “He was selling drugs in the greenhouse that day, right? Or were you going out there to smoke? What was it—pot?”
It wasn’t exactly a stab in the dark. Jordan could think of few other reasons why the boys would have met in secret to exchange money. Their skittish behavior and Nao’s bloodshot eyes had only made her more certain. Still, Jordan was surprised when Tomo looked to her with abject fear.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, casting his wide eyes about nervously. His reaction offered all the confirmation she needed, and Jordan tried not to feel too satisfied as Tomo began to back away. “I have to go.”
“Okay. Thank you, Tomo,” Jordan said with no small amount of sardonic sweetness.
The large boy nodded jerkily, pushing together the pillowy band of flesh beneath his chin, and walked away from her down the hall. Tomo swung a wary look over his shoulder as he navigated through the milling students, and seeing Jordan watching him, shuffled away faster.
Tomo wedged past the boys’ gym teacher—Mr. Seki—and Mr. Mori as they came from the other direction. Mr. Seki watched the student’s back as he passed and shook his head.
“Is Tomo doing all right, Jordan-sensei?” he said. “I saw you talking to him, poor kid.”
“As well as can be expected, I suppose,” Jordan said and felt guilty about only perfunctorily asking how Tomo was before plumbing the depths of Nao’s life.
The small success she had felt at guessing Nao’s indiscretion was already being eroded by gusts of doubt. If Nao had in fact been breaking the law, he matched Ms. Nakamura’s other victims. But with Ms. Nakamura in jail, perhaps Jordan’s theory of the killer—and his or her motive—had been wrong all along. It was possible that the thefts and trysts committed by the other victims had merely been unrelated events—ones that had created the semblance of a pattern only to those hoping to find one.
“Any word from Inspector Sakurai?” Mr. Mori said, jolting Jordan away from her thoughts.
Despite what Mr. Mori had seen at the ryokan, Jordan felt a spike of indignation at the question. Yes, she had exchanged words with Toshihiko when she had sent him the audio recording of her meeting with Kenji, but he had no progress on the case to report. At least, not to her.
“I only know what the principal has relayed to us,” Jordan said truthfully.
Mr. Mori looked at her, eyes scanning from her mouth to her eyes, before he nodded once in acquiescence.
“Perhaps Ms. Nakamura will be released from custody soon,” Mr. Seki said, almost hopefully. “She couldn’t possibly have hurt Nao.”
Jordan’s stomach twisted at his tone, and though he was right about Ms. Nakamura and Nao, she couldn’t help but bite out her next words.
“I hope she’s ready to make herself comfortable in prison. She has to be involved with at least some of the deaths. Kenji said that—”
“You’ve seen Kenji?” Mr. Mori said, eyes sharp behind his glasses. “When was this?”
“Uh, the day we all found out about Ryusuke, I think. Before he transferred schools.” Jordan settled on the lie to avoid any discussion about why or how she had been in touch with Kenji long after he had stopped attending school in Ogawa. She thought she had covered her hesitation well enough, but Mr. Mori continued to scrutinize her. She gulped at the intensity of his gaze.
“And? What did Kenji say, Jordan-sensei?” Mr. Seki asked. He, too, funneled his full concentration toward Jordan, caught up by curiosity.
“Never mind. It was just gossip.”
Nao’s death was indeed a murder. That much had been confirmed to the general public, as had the manner of death—identical to the others. At this news, murmurs about Ms. Nakamura’s guilt had gradually transformed into proclamations of her innocence. Mr. Seki was apparently one of her supporters, and not the first Jordan had encountered.
Speculation about the murders, which had originally been confined to Ogawa, had now galloped across the prefecture. Even some national media outlets had picked up the story.
News reporters, with their hulking cameras and microphones, had appeared overnight like mushrooms. Most were pretty, soft-spoken women in immaculate dress suits who looked like generations of the same-model doll. Jordan had avoided one near the school the day before, though the reporter didn’t seem to be taking interviews, merely using the building as a backdrop.
As if reading Jordan’s mind, Mr. Seki continued. “Did you see the reporters? I heard they’re calling this the Red Tea Murders—”
“It’s almost time for the after-school meeting,” Mr. Mori interjected, taking in both Jordan and the gym teacher. “Let’s head on.”
Mr. Seki quickly apologized to Mr. Mori for delaying him, and Jordan followed them toward the teachers’ room. Mr. Seki was still eager to talk, though his focus had shifted.
“I’m glad it’s finally Friday! Are you doing anything this weekend, Jordan-sensei?”
“I’m taking the train to Yamagata City tonight for dinner, but no other plans,” Jordan said. She asked in turn about Mr. Seki’s weekend, making small talk until the three of them reached the teachers’ lounge.
Jordan spared a look at what was formerly Ms. Nakamura’s desk and frowned, conflicted, as she passed.
Jordan blinked sleepily as she disembarked from the train and exited Ogawa’s station. Despite dozing on the ride home from Yamagata City, she wasn’t rested, but rather in a detached state hovering below full wakefulness. She yawned, checked her watch—just before midnight—and headed to the poorly lit bike lot covered by a corrugated roof.
Before Jordan even reached her new bike, she could see it was listing badly, and closer inspection revealed a woefully flat front tire. Jordan cursed, but admittedly, she hadn’t been relishing a long ride home through the dark streets anyway.
She walked to the pay phone outside the station and picked up its bright green receiver, preparing to dial the cab company whose advertisements mottled every surface of the booth. Before she could slip any yen into the machine, a voice called to her.
“Jordan-sensei?”
A sedan rolled up beside Jordan, its headlights blinding her. Because of the dark and the lingering after images, Jordan needed a moment to recognize the man behind the wheel.
“Oh! Good evening, Mori-sensei.”
“How are you doing? Everything all right?” Mr. Mori’s car pulled to a stop, gravel crunching under its tires, and he leaned an elbow out the window. He didn’t appear overly concerned, probably only asking out of politeness.
“I’m fine. My bike has a flat, though. I was just about to call a cab.”
“Please, let me give you a ride. Your apartment is on my way home.”
It didn’t surprise her any more that so many people knew where she lived, seeing as every foreign teacher before her for the past fifteen years had been housed in the same apartment. Before she could answer, Mr. Mori leaned across the car to unlock the passenger’s side door.
Jordan hesitated, feeling uncomfortable about taking advantage of his kindness when she still wouldn’t consider him more than a tenuous acquaintance, despite sitting across from him and watching him grade papers and sip his tea every day.
A wave of tiredness made up her mind for her, and she couldn’t stifle a yawn as she stepped toward the car. She climbed in and closed the door with a heavy rattle that made her reflection quiver in the rearview mirror.
She didn’t bother to latch the seat belt, as she was often chided for wearing one, told time and again that only children needed such precautions. Even though it was almost too dark to see Mr. Mori, Jordan turned to address him.
“Thank you for the ride. Are you sure it’s not too much trouble?”
“Not at all,” he said. The car pulled from the parking lot and slipped into the street, which was awash with red light from an izakaya’s neon sign. Its glow gave some semblance of life to the abandoned stores that slumped against the izakaya on either side. Even if there were more light to see by, there was little beyond the car’s windows besides a few houses opening up to stretches of rice fields.
Jordan glanced around the car’s cabin. It was fastidiously clean and perhaps the first car she’d been in during her time in Ogawa that wasn’t pervaded by the smell of cigarette smoke. Mr. Mori continued to drive in silence for a minute more before Jordan felt obliged to make conversation.
“I didn’t see you on the train. Did you go to Yamagata City too?”
“Sagae, actually. I was visiting some former colleagues.”
“Oh, yes. You said you worked at Sagae High School before being transferred here last year, right?” Jordan said with a smile, glad that she had remembered at least one of their few, undoubtedly brief, conversations.
“That’s right.”
“Do you miss Sagae much?”
“Not really,” he said and smiled without any real pleasure. He took a sharp turn, and Jordan grabbed the door to keep from sliding into the center console. “Ogawa is much the same, I find.”
“Maybe too much the same. First those deaths in Sagae, and now here, too,” Jordan said, drawing without a second thought upon the well of information she’d filled over the past months.
“Those students died years ago. You know about that?”
“Yes. I—”
Jordan froze, every muscle in her body seizing up. She stopped herself from exclaiming when a cascade of thoughts hurtled against her like an avalanche.
Slowly, she turned her head to look at Mr. Mori. He was already peering in her direction. His mouth was closed in a tight line, eyes obliterated by the sheen of a passing streetlamp over his glasses. She had to scramble for breath before she could speak again. “I overheard something the inspector said once,” she finished quietly.
“You certainly do know more than you let on.” Mr. Mori returned his gaze to the road.
Jordan said nothing, devoting all her power to inhaling and exhaling around the fist of apprehension that stoppered her throat. All of her thoughts surrounding the case rushed to the front of her mind and tumbled end over end.
Ms. Nakamura wasn’t the only one who had lived in Sagae when Sadako Kudo was first poisoned and the suspicious deaths had followed—Mr. Mori had been there at the same time.
Any one of Ogawa High School’s staff could have accessed Emi’s medical file, and the storeroom.
Mr. Mori’s car was… She didn’t have to look to know the answer, yet she slid her gaze to the side-view mirror, which reflected a coin of yellow paint against the backdrop of the roadway.
Jordan wondered whether the car still bore a scratch from when it had ground against the bridge’s railing instead of her body—whether she would have noticed, if only she had paused for another moment outside the phone booth.
And it wasn’t the only time that she had been oblivious to what had laid before her. Jordan had been so single-mindedly focused on Ms. Nakamura that she had been blind to everything else in the periphery.
Jordan swallowed thickly and contemplated fishing her phone from her purse to alert Toshihiko, but she couldn’t risk revealing just how much she knew. Not until the car trundled past the turnoff to Jordan’s apartment without even a moment’s pause did she feel a spike of panic plunge between her ribs.
“Mori-sensei, we passed my apartment,” she
said, and with great effort, leveled her voice to a casual tone. “If we could just turn around here?”
“You know I can’t do that now,” he said, his utter lack of emotion seeping coldly into Jordan. “You never belonged here in the first place.”
“I’m not that easy to get rid of. But you knew that already,” Jordan said with more bravado than she felt, speaking loud enough to cover up the slide of her purse’s zipper as she thrust her hand inside to retrieve her phone.
“Stop.”
Jordan gasped, both at the abrupt command and the firm pressure of something touching her side. She looked down to see a knife pressed against her, its edge disappearing among the folds of her shirt but not penetrating her skin. Blood rushed to her head with a sweep of nausea, but she stayed stock-still.
Mr. Mori glanced at her impassively for just a moment before returning his eyes to the road. He accelerated the vehicle despite driving with only one hand on the wheel, the knife in the other. He spoke again in a low voice.
“Put that behind you in the back seat. Move slowly.”
Jordan did as she was told, wrenching her arm behind her to deposit the purse without aggravating the knife. Swells of desperation, hopelessness, and incongruous curiosity collided in Jordan’s chest.
“Why did you do it?” Jordan infused her voice with enough anger and accusation to keep her words from trembling.
“Oh, you were right. I heard you talking with that inspector more than once,” Mr. Mori said. His eyes glittered in the dim light as they flicked to her face. “They were all too dishonorable—too immoral—to realize their own shame. They were blind to their transgressions.”
Mr. Mori let out a long breath through his nose and continued.
“Would you like to know what Nao did?”
“He sold drugs to the other students.” Jordan floundered to breathe, and her voice came as a weak, gasping noise. With considerable effort, she managed not to be sick in her lap after she parted her lips to speak.