Loups-Garous (28 page)

“Meaning that's the man personally responsible.”

“Vocal communications are obviously recorded. He knew it too. But if the director of this investigation himself contacted you, our not knowing about Asumi Aikawa's disappearance and as a result no one here doing anything about it is totally the police's fault, isn't it?”

The area chief asked if this Ishida character was in fact in a position of being able to take any responsibility.

“He
is
the director, so…”

“Director, yes, but the director of the prefectural police. I think it always comes down to the local responsibilites.”

“That may be, but he's really high up in the chain of command. You could even say he's top brass at the prefectural department, and looking at his public profile, it seems that his record, his backers, and his connections are plentiful and very influential. Not to be overlooked, it seems. He's at central right now, but again, very high up even there.”

“Hmm.”

It sounded like he was impressed. But also relieved.

Shizue held her breath. Something was rotting.

“But why is this guy sticking around the area of the crime, then? Doesn't he have more to do up at central?”

“Actually, he's apparently an expert in heinous crimes, and especially in special cases like this one involving savage or brutal murders, and so whenever something takes place he inserts himself with the area patrol. Well, this isn't anything they've publicly broadcast at police headquarters. It's underground information.”

That
Ishida
?
If he is in fact an expert, he is one incompetent expert
, Shizue thought.

These past few years there had been very few arrests made in connection with serial killings and especially not in the more heinous ones.

Besides, if you thought about the way the police were organized, the odds of such crimes taking place were low. There were certainly situations that required a specialist with focused talents be dispatched to a crime scene, but it was difficult to imagine a bureau superior assuming such a position. Even if that officer had prior experience with a similar case.

The problem here was the source of this information.

This “underground information” the director referred to was probably the nonpublic information supplied by crime fetishists. They collected information on crimes by various methods. Very little of that information could be trusted. It was just a kind of online rumor mill.

What they were saying about Ishida was conjecture based on his having been by coincidence at the scenes of these savage crimes. No doubt that was all it was.

If you looked at it realistically…

A case would be deemed unsolvable, and then after sending the case to the cold file another similar crime would occur. The police would fail once again to solve the crime and once again stop investigating.

If that were the case it wasn't inconsistent with Shizue's appraisal of the murders.

She didn't know about his past record or his network, but Ishida was not remarkable. That much she was sure of. However, everyone above the area chief was convinced.

The area chief told Shima and the representative counselors to stay behind and work overtime. Everyone else should wait till the police made their statement about the crime and keep quiet until then. Finally, the meeting drew to a close.

“The police news conference is planned for six o'clock exactly. At the same time, Shima and her colleagues will be meeting with the victim's relations. Sometime after tomorrow we'll convene another conference. I will send details shortly.”

That was really all he had to say from the beginning. No need for a half hour of nonsense.

That took all of twenty seconds.

Shizue looked at the clock on her monitor and reexamined what the area chief had just said, then confirmed the time required, shut off the power, and scrambled out of her seat. She had to admit it was pretty rude.

As she stood up and turned on her heel however, she ran into Shima, who had a severe expression on her face.

She didn't quite look sad or worried, but exasperated. Shizue couldn't really blame her. Even she was exhausted by all this. And if something had happened to Yuko Yabe, Shizue would be in this same situation. And in that situation, she would certainly make the same face as Shima was making now. Or so she thought.

Similarities.

Shizue called out, and Shima responded with only a weak glance.

“This might be a strange question, but this girl Asumi Aikawa, she didn't by any chance have an interest in deformée characters, did she?”

Shima narrowed her eyes without changing her composure in any other way. Now she looked annoyed.

“What's that?”

“Anything, really. Just anything like animation or…”

“
No
,” Shima answered clearly and out of sync with how annoyed she seemed from her body language. “She expressed no other interest or hobby besides running. I think she
hated
people who were into animation. Her parents remembered hearing her say that too.”

She seemed awfully knowledgeable. This was unusual for Shima, so Shizue couldn't help but ask again, at which point Shima said, “I like that stuff a lot.”

“You…you mean you personally like animation?”

“Yes. I had to see Asumi Aikawa a lot because she had such a special talent for running and competed in national races. Once, when I mentioned deformée characters she abruptly cut me off. I'll never forget it.”

Shima spoke as if there was nothing in her heart and continued to speak with no intonation before finally turning her back to Shizue and leaving. Then as if only to herself Shima mumbled,
Why'd you have to go and die
, and trudged out of the room.

It wasn't as though Asumi Aikawa had died because she wanted to.

In any case, Kunugi's hypothesized key connection—the shared interest all the victims had in deformée characters—did not apply to this victim.

No.

She could simply be the anomaly.

The exception.

Those who fell outside…

… were all missing something. Their livers.

It would be strange for Shizue to ask about something like that. It would be strange even for a police officer to ask about it, much less a counselor.

The autopsy results wouldn't be made public for some time. Plus, only people in the police department would have access to that information. Civilians would only have access to that information after the case was over—after the suspect had been prosecuted and sentenced.

Then there was the complicated process of obtaining consent from the bereaved necessary to get that all started.

The data would have a serious protection applied to it and couldn't be seen except on the monitors they were downloaded onto. Furthermore it probably couldn't be copied.

Unless Kunugi…

Nah, there was no way a dropout cop like Kunugi, who'd been relieved of any responsibility for this investigation, would have access.

What was I thinking
?

That was when Shizue realized. The only thing she had to be concerned with was the disappearance of Yuko Yabe, not the investigation of this murder. That was someone else's job. If she was preoccupied with this murder it was only because she was trying to escape reality. She was thoroughly disgusted with her work, but she knew she ought to give some more thought to figuring out her own situation.

Shizue shook her head several times.

CHAPTER
015

NOTICE OF THE
communication center's temporary closure came on a Saturday.

That day, her legal foster father came home with no warning, which was unusual and made Hazuki feel cloistered.

But that her foster father came without warning did not mean he came alone.

Executive secretaries, assistant secretaries, security details, and the like came streaming in, clearly having created time between duties to force this meeting.

So yes. They were there.

In this case though, it'd be more accurate to say they had come to this building where Hazuki, the man's foster child, resided, merely to pop their heads in.

He'd always say something nice to the people he met. He was a gentleman.

You seem well.

You're pacing through your curriculum well.

You'll only lower your achievement level if you work too hard.

The day's average study periods are too long, aren't they?

Hazuki's foster father knew a tremendous amount about Hazuki. Before he came home he would always examine the data collected on her. It was no doubt his commute read, prepared for him as her guardian.

In just one hour, this person could know what Hazuki had done in the past month.

She felt fortunate but not happy about it.

Hazuki's foster father had six children to his name. Not all of them were biologically his. Legally, Hazuki had one older sister and older brother, two younger brothers and a younger sister.

She'd met them before but couldn't remember their faces.

Each of them had been sent to a home, each of them had started a life there. Her foster father would take in and raise these children as his own.

You could have said Hazuki was lucky.

Orphans in this country were beyond numbers. Fifteen years ago when Hazuki was born, the nation was at its peak in the number of parents who'd abandoned their children or else were denied the right to raise their own children, though both figures had waned over the years.

These parentless children lived mostly in welfare institutions. Though they were institutions, the environment was good and there was no real social stigma attached to living in one. Orphans weren't discriminated against as they were in the past and enjoyed all the freedoms every other child did. From the child's point of view, it was probably much better than living with impoverished parents.

Hazuki's life in the institution was not so different from the one she lived now.

You could have said the house she lived in now was like her own private institution.

But she had a father figure, at least legally. The person with kind words for her was not just a guardian or counselor, but a man who assumed the role of father.

Hazuki didn't know why her foster father did any of this. As far as his actions were concerned, Hazuki had heard that at one point he'd been criticized, but lauded at other times. Hazuki didn't really care one way or another whether he was a philanthropist or hypocrite.

All that mattered to Hazuki was that here was a man who invariably assumed the role of father over her, and that he was sympathetic and kind toward her. That was enough for her.

However, Hazuki's father was a sort of foster father and yet not quite a foster father. He'd not once ever called her by name. It wasn't as if she hated it or refused to let him. Just that having this gap in their relationship put her at ease.

Her foster father was saying the same thing with the same tone as he always did. Adding that she ought to pay particular attention to her surroundings now.

That was his reason for coming home. He had come for
real access
to assure Hazuki would “pay attention to her surroundings” since there'd been another murder in the area.

He could have just sent her a message, but it was very conscientious of him to go out of his way to engage in real access.

At times like this Hazuki realized that her foster father worried about her deep down inside. It was clear in his body language he was sincerely concerned, but if he weren't his actions were still pretty impressive.

Whenever she saw her father she recognized that she had developed an adeptness at expression comprehension, and she didn't see the usefulness of communication labs anymore.

It was difficult to learn an unquantifiable, uncodifiable skill. When you spent your days in front of a monitor you gradually forgot the power of communicating via your expressions, with your gestures.

Maybe not so much forgot as stopped being aware of doing so.

Hazuki would certainly laugh when amused and cry when sad, but she didn't know what she looked like to someone else.

For that reason she also couldn't tell when looking at a laughing stranger whether they were laughing because they were amused or for some other reason. She couldn't be sure. She couldn't imagine.

Everything outside the monitor really was fake.

Her foster father's power of expression and his ability to convince her that lies were true perplexed Hazuki.

She did think he must have been a good person.

She received the message about the community center's closure in the midst of this cloistered feeling.

Because of this, she evaded her father, who kept doling out statements of worry.

“I'm sorry.”

Say it.

There was no way to verbally distinguish one sort of apology from another.

No, if apologizing for interrupting a conversation, it should sound different from when you apologized in earnest.

Though Hazuki didn't know why it was different.

When an apology was in writing there was no nuance to detect in the first place, and eventually you stopped using ambiguous expressions. Flat words with limited meaning became the language of choice. It was meant to prevent confusion.
Expressions with only one interpretation
. Writing under this rule was a mandatory condition of the era's uninterrupted communication style. Of course, it was no more than a pretense. Trouble couldn't be avoided, but at least this way it never surfaced.

Hazuki's generation derived 80 percent of its conversational communication from written language, so saying “I'm sorry” for any other reason than to apologize was practically obsolete. There was no use for the expression and no one knew how to say it.

“What's the matter?” her foster father asked.