Loups-Garous (23 page)

“Debt?”

“Yeah, they'd apparently spent an outrageous sum setting this up, but for nothing, right? The industry launched its own project of epic proportions specifically for that system, but since it was never adopted, their work was all for naught. Billions in investments were totally sunk. The citizens couldn't be asked to shoulder the entire cost, naturally. They had no need to. The government had to fill the hole they'd created.”

Cloning was the solution.

Or so they say
, Kunugi left implied.

“Medically speaking the deployment wasn't so lacking. Tissue culture technology was far more advanced in other countries. That alone made it difficult for the government to pay out its debt. That's why I'm convinced the laws encouraging the complete switch-over from animal to man-made animal protein five years ago are rooted in the failure of the government's system. It passed under the auspices of animal protection or environmentalism, but the venture capitalists are the ones who grew fat from the plan.”

It was true that this country was a step ahead in man-made food stuffs technology.

What Kunugi said was entirely plausible.

Still…

Regardless of the backstory, the fact remained that the country was poised to adopt legislation banning the killing of animals for their flesh. There were more than a few voices of concern regarding the effects that synthesized food had on humans. Concerns were still expressed today, but even without them, humans had long ago lost the skills needed for self-sufficiency.
Generally speaking, this was the most appropriate outcome for all
, Shizue thought.

As they pondered these things, the synthetic sushi arrived.

It definitely looked high class. Aside from a few vegetables everything was synthetic, but the cuisine was real. The ingredients were still prepared and presented in a particular way.

Though of course Shizue couldn't know how exact a replica it was.

The complete conversion to synthetic ingredients took place five years ago, but organic ingredients were unavailable long before then, and synthetic products had been popular for a while.

Kunugi popped a piece of sashimi into his mouth and then made a strange face.

“Is it anything like that sashimi you said you were fed when you first joined the police force?”

Kunugi swallowed the sashimi and muttered,
Yeah
…

“I don't know.”

“The monitor tells me it's got the exact same chemical makeup, and it's been put together exactly the same way, and that the coloring and texture should be identical. I just can't judge without having a real sense of the original.”

“It must be the same,” Kunugi said, bored. “But I'm not completely satisfied. Why is it so difficult to describe the sense of taste or smell? I just don't know how to describe how this is different.”

Completely unsatisfied.

“More importantly…”

Shizue pulled chopsticks out of a sterilized paper sleeve.

“Did you have something you wanted to discuss with me?”

“Right,” Kunugi said and adjusted himself.

“Pardon the bulletin.”

“Well, let's be frank. This is just going to make my food taste bad, so say it quickly. Put it this way. I'm…”

Busy
, Shizue said only to herself.

“Actually.” Kunugi sat up. “You think I'm too informal in the way I talk, don't you?”

“I don't think that.”

But since he'd mentioned it, yes, he spoke too casually. Still.

She hadn't noticed.

“Thank God. I only know how to talk this one way, you know? So yeah, I'll be frank. I guess I have, you know…serious doubts about this serial killing investigation.”

It must have been difficult for him to explain.

“This time there've been four people killed in the vicinity. Actually, one of the murders took place farther away from the others, but they still think it's one perpetrator. There have been five victims. They've all been female. The oldest was sixteen, the youngest thirteen. The sixteen-year-old had just had a birthday, and the thirteen-year-old would have been fourteen in another month. Suffice it to say they were all around fourteen or fifteen.”

Kunugi traced numbers on his plate with the tip of his chopsticks.

“The oldest one had been held back a year in communication sessions because of an illness. In other words all of the victims were in a section for fourteen-year-olds.”

Shizue had followed most accounts of the crimes following the media coverage, but this last detail was news to her.

“So right now that's the only common denominator. But this Ryu Kawabata kid was a different gender and in a different session. Because he didn't share this common denominator, he was excluded from the case. All of this is public information.”

“Not a confidential investigative matter.”

“No. Or what I mean is that the information the police have been able to gather on this case is no different from what the average person already knows. By the way, do you remember the serial killings from four years ago on the west side?”

These kinds of serial killings occurred every year. Shizue felt like she remembered something about the case four years ago, but she didn't really know. She told Kunugi as much. As a matter of fact, the serial killings last year and the year before that were also so similar. It was hard to differentiate them.

“Last year six people were killed,” Kunugi said. “Two men and four women, and they were all between the ages of nineteen and twenty-six. But you see, they all had one thing in common. They were all employed by the same conglomerate. What's more they were all employed at around the same time.”

“Scion Enterprises, right?” She'd forgotten about it but she'd heard this enough times to go practically insane at the time.

“
That's right
,” Kunugi said. “The killer still hasn't been caught. The investigation is ongoing, but no one's sure it'll ever be solved. There are no witnesses to date. The rest of this is off the record.”

“You're still being recorded here.”

“As long as I don't get violent or kill you or anything no one will listen to these tapes. They can't. And the recordings are erased after a year. But get this, last year we had our sights on a real criminal suspect.

We were 80 percent sure, but we weren't even able to arrest him in the end.”

“Why not?”

“He had an alibi. Of the six incidents, he couldn't possibly have been at the scene of two of the killings.”

“Well then.”

“It's no use. It doesn't matter if you were 80 percent sure. You could have been 90 percent certain and it still wouldn't matter. There is no gray area in these matters. You need to be 100 percent to be black. Anything less than that is white.”

Kunugi responded that they were 100 percent on four of the cases.

“But there were problems with two of the incidents, right?”

“What I'm saying is that because the six killings were determined to be part of one serial killing spree, the percentage of certainty went down. There was no need to aggregate the certainty like that. If we had just considered them separate cases, it would have been settled. This suspect was responsible for four of the six killings. There's no doubt about that, as far as I can tell.”

“But that wasn't the final determination.”

“
Exactly
,” Kunugi said, and tossed a mound of white rice into his mouth. “It had to be a serial killer, they decided.”

“I seem to recall this was a really drawn-out investigation, and if the investigation unit concluded as such there must be a reason. Either way, it wasn't like one person made the decision.”

“Maybe. According to witness testimony and the circumstances of the scene, there were no accomplices. Just the one killer. If it really were a serial killing spree, an alibi would be hard to come by.”

His tone implied more.

“You're suggesting that the events last year weren't related? In which case, if the two killings for which your suspect had an alibi were unrelated, are you suggesting the last two cases might have been copycat killings?”

“That's where I run into problems.”

“Problems?”

“It'd be simple if of the string of six killings the last two were different, and I wouldn't be here talking about any of this. Unfortunately, this prime suspect's alibis were for the third and fifth murders.”

“Third and fifth?”

“Yes. At the time the third killing took place, details from the previous two incidents hadn't been released yet, nor had we determined that it was a serial killing. In other words a copycat wouldn't make any sense.”

“Wouldn't make sense…”

“Not at that point. But that notwithstanding, the second and third victims happened to share a lot in common. On top of which the guy we had pinned for the other four incidents had a serious communications handicap, making it impossible to ever come across the third victim. It's improbable that our suspect had an accomplice.”

“Then he probably isn't your criminal. There's no logical consistency. Isn't it a simple conclusion?”

“That's what I thought too until I read the reports. But you see, the third and fifth incidents were truly different. From the other four. On paper they all had a lot in common. It looked like it had to have been one person committing all the murders. But…”

Kunugi set down his chopsticks and scratched his forehead with his middle finger.

“Hear me out on this one before you think I'm crazy.”

“I already do.”

“Right. That's fine then. So outside of the third and fifth killings, the other four incidents all took place on
butsumetsu
.”

“Butsumetsu…”

“You don't know? In the ancient Asian calendar there was a repeating cycle of auspicious days. Like a ‘lucky week' every month. That's the butsumetsu. If you look in any old almanac you'll see it in there. It's based on the day of the Buddha's death.”

“I know what it is. I just remember it being meaningless.”

“It is indeed. Just from what I've read, there's no basis for the worries of dyed-in-the-wool believers. Up until about ten years ago you'd see these butsumetsu dates still listed in calendars. People would plan things around them. Stupid things, like signing contracts and delivering shipments. They were planning dates by baseless barometers. You can't call that a reasonable circumstance.”

“The baselessness of it is what allows you to make a value judgment, right?”

“What's
that
supposed to mean?” Kunugi responded, furrowing his brow.

Shizue said, “They're divinations.”

“I suppose they are. No one believes this crap anymore though, which is precisely why no one noticed it.”

“
You
noticed. But then you said it's only four of the six murders that took place on butsumetsu dates. Maybe it's just a coincidence.”

A coincidence.

There are no such things as coincidences. Is calling it a coincidence an excuse? Hinako Sakura would know a lot more about this
…Shizue found herself preoccupied.

“You're probably right,” Kunugi said in the interstice in which Shizue was at a loss for words. “But that's exactly why I think it's so questionable. It screws with the story. But you know what else? Our guy actually screwed up. One of his victims was left alive.”

“Screwed up?”

“He didn't get it done. He was arrested six days after the last killing.

He escaped while in holding, and when we caught him he had a murder weapon on him. And this is the thing. The sixth killing was supposed to look like an accident. The timing doesn't match, but the four other killings, plus the one failed attempt, all took place on butsumetsu dates.”

“The butsumetsu.”

It was still unfamiliar to her ears.

Shizue started to empty her plates.

She wasn't savoring the food so much as consuming it.

Because she was always thinking about something else.

“As I recall, there are six kinds of butsumetsu, right? Like, the
daian
day and
yubiki
day, etcetera. I don't know any others, but…”

“You're right. There's also
akaguchi
and
senbu
. I mean, we still have a seven-day week named according to some weird mythology, don't we? I think it's the same thing. Just that with the six-day system each day meant something like ‘get stuff done,' or ‘don't do anything.' You're not supposed to do anything bad on the butsumetsu.”

In that case
…

“There are many cases of crimes committed, repeatedly, on these dates. I'm sure it's a case-by-case thing, whatever sets off these periods, but if, say, there's a repeating six-day period of crimes, wouldn't you forcibly have to commit the next crime on the same day later? Regardless of the butsumetsu? But it doesn't work that way,” Kunugi said.

“The six-day cycle occasionally has to adjust over a day. It's not always necessarily a six-day cycle. Plus this guy was a fanatic. For calendars. Actually not so much a fanatic as an obsessed collector. He collected calendars from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. The police just considered him a classic art collector, but I didn't. He must have been looking at those calendars because he was curious to see how events of the past coincided with these auspicious dates. Comparing the events to their calendar years. Predictions in hindsight.”

“Compare?”

“Comparisons. Calendars are made before the dates come to pass, right? And old calendars went so far as to tell you which days were good and which were bad. He must have been studying up on whether bad things did indeed take place on those bad days and good things on good days. It got worse and worse.”