Loups-Garous (34 page)

Really, an exceptional specimen here. However, she's got emotional problems, doesn't she?”

“Not at all.” Shizue responded arrogantly. “Mio Tsuzuki is clearly advanced. But beyond that, she's a completely normal fourteen-year-old. That's all. Sure, her intellectual maturity does not match her emotional quotient, but there are no real problems there to speak of. She has the same problems other children her age have, and she's growing in the same way that the other children are. There's no reason to see her advancement in education as a problem source.”

“I understand,” Ishida said. “She is a resident of Section C, yes?”

“Yes. She lives in the old red-light district at the center of that section. And?”

“We believe she has interfaced with what might be a suspect.”

“Mio?”

This was an unexpected development.

“Miss Fuwa,” Ishida said. “Mio Tsuzuki's parents, er—at least what looks like someone a generation older, shall we say, grandfather? Her grandfather did much for the expansion of the area when it was still a specialty business district. As the red-light district collapsed and the people deserted it, he stirred up quite a bit of action with the police and residents. Since her elder died off, she's been working in extremely specialized information production, and though not illegal, it's not the kind of thing we can exactly encourage. She's been involved with people with foreign citizenship or no citizenship.”

It was difficult to say what either of Mio's parents did. She couldn't immediately say whether they were a problem or not. They were what used to be called
bankers
, but she didn't know exactly what kind of setup they worked in.

And as Ishida pointed out, Mio was in an area surrounded by a lot of people who'd never had interactions with average citizens. Mio herself was raised by a foreigner and could be said to be in a very special living environment.

However, it hadn't once occurred to Shizue to connect Mio with recent events, and even now though told there was a connection, she couldn't be forced to believe it.

“It seems you've had personal dealings with this Tsuzuki kid also?”

“She tutors me after the communication labs. As you said, she is a world-class genius. There's a lot to be learned from her.”

“Have you heard of anyone referred to as ‘Cat'?”

Cat. That was…

“If I recall, Mio used to play with a cat when she was little.”

“So you remember this?”

“That there was a cat. I think it was a cat.”

“You mean like the animal?”

“Is there any other kind of cat?” Shizue asked. “There are still a lot of cats in that area.”

“It's the name of a human,” Ishida said. “Seems she's of Chinese descent—alias, Cat, the Chinese character for which is pronounced ‘Mao.' We don't have any details on her, but we believe she's an undocumented resident who's been involved in procuring illegal foodstuffs in what used to be a pharmacy.”

“That's your suspect?”

“We have a report of someone having seen, last Sunday at the time we believe that Ryu Kawabata was killed, what looked like two males and one female minor fighting. Based on what they said about her attire, we're pretty sure it was this Mao girl. Furthermore they've said there was one other girl there.”

“Another?”

“It's possible it was Yuko Yabe.”

“You're saying Yabe was at the scene of Kawabata's murder?”

“Possibly. There's a possibility she was at the scene. However, this Mao girl was also seen later near Yabe's home. It seems she was near Sakura's residence as well.”

“Sakura's? Really.”

“This Mao was probably visiting the Yabe residence. Hinako Sakura was visiting the Yabe residence. It was shortly thereafter that you and our investigator were there, and after a short dispute Sakura was apprehended and went back home. We think maybe Mao saw this take place and followed Sakura to her home. It fits with the time our observations say Sakura returned home.”

This girl had been watching Shizue and Kunugi at the time.

They were being watched.

Shizue's spine froze and sent a horrible chill through her entire body.

“We don't know what Aikawa has to do with this, but Kawabata, Nakamura, and Yabe all had some kind of exchange with Mao, and their lives were in danger thereafter. Kawabata was killed, and the other two, fearing for their physical safety, went into hiding. However, Yabe was discovered, and…”

“Killed?”

Really?

Something was slightly off in this interpretation. Maybe not off, exactly, but it was too simple. It seemed too convenient the way it all made sense.

“But the circumstances have suggested the interpretation for us,” Ishida noted. “In that case, you can assume there's a criminal organization amidst the undocumented resident community and that it is behind these murders. In fact, it'd be prudent to assume—”

“You're saying it's easy to understand. You really think an average city resident, a minor for that matter, is capable of organizing a criminal organization like that?”

Ishida laughed. “Do you recall a case from fifteen years ago in which a group of foreigners organized a huge sale of drugs? The targeted drug buyers were all between the ages of ten and thirteen. The reason that case blew open was because of a skirmish between the teenage buyers and the selling organization. Sixty percent of electronic crimes are committed by minors, and half of them are involved in some kind of criminal activity online. I don't know what's going on in this case, but it's not impossible.”

“Really…”

Something somewhere was off. Shizue couldn't shake the feeling.

“We discussed this at the first conference, but the rate of crimes among minors has decreased over the years. But that's a number our Investigative Unit R produced. If you include the figure produced by Investigative Unit V, that number is hugely skewed. Moreover, even in the figures Unit R produces, it doesn't figure in the attempted crimes, and we've determined that the number of people involved in crimes has gone up. So…”

“I understand,” Shizue said.

But this wasn't one of those situations.

“The only official record we have of this possible suspect, Mao, is her interaction with Mio Tsuzuki. This Mio and the victim were in the same communication session. And you were the counselor for both of them. That's why we—”

“I'm sorry, but I don't have any information I think will be useful to your investigation.”

“It seems that way,” Ishida said half seriously. “Well, seeing as how you didn't even realize we were talking about a human, I guess it's only fair.”

Ishida refreshed his monitor and read something on the screen. “This is our thinking. The cat print is similar to the old art of China. This description has been our lynchpin.”

“The cat print.”

“Yes. There are actual cats in Section C, and felines have…well, prints. So unless you are hunting for them, it's no sort of description. However…”

“The art of China.”

“That's right. We actually did a search on the keyword ‘cat' in the kids' files. As you can imagine, we got a lot of search results, but when you search Section C and Chinese people, Tsuzuki comes up. When we looked into it, we found out her residence was located near an area where there was a catlike person. Then we filtered our results. When we reviewed the information, we could only infer that the ‘cat' that popped up so frequently in her data was not an animal but instead referred to a human. If you read her descriptions carefully, the word for the animal ‘cat' was frequently spelled in katakana. And the cat pattern she referred to was a costume print, or rather, embroidery. Most of this is from descriptions from her early childhood. After she turns ten there is suddenly no more mention of cats.”

“Is that so? I mean, so it is.”

It had been five years since Shizue started seeing Mio.

It wasn't just that Mio possessed an unusually high intellect. She also had an incredible centripetal force. Her perspective and interpretations were unique and always stood out in comparison to the other children. Still…

Shizue knew nothing about the cat.

What else didn't she know about Mio's earlier years?

As a counselor, this could be a huge missing piece.

What a child saw, heard, ate, underwent, undertook in his or her formative years…

The advice and counseling one provided a child could change drastically based on these curious details. That was why Shizue had taken special care to check the historical data when she took over Mio's file from her predecessor.

But.

Her predecessor probably hadn't noticed references to the “cat” either.

By the time Shizue had been handed Mio Tsuzuki's file by the girl's previous counselor, Cat had probably long since passed into memory.

But there was no changing the fact that Shizue had known nothing about this.

Nothing.

Shizue knew better than anyone that there was no knowing a child.

Ishida had been staring at Shizue but eventually turned an ear toward the investigator at his back and then said
understood
.

“What did you find out?”

“We know that for now, there's no more information we can obtain from you. However, we'd like to be able to follow up with you. You'll be working here along with Miss Shima. Is that all right?”

Shizue didn't feel like responding.

She just nodded and left the room.

The spotless hallway seemed somehow smudged.

It was only a tentative straight line.

Shizue felt the wall against the palm of her hand.

She had not once in her life run a hand against a wall.

It was smooth.

And even though it was a different texture entirely…

It felt like when she had held the hand of her deceased mother.

Shizue took her hand away from the wall and wiped her palm with her wet wipes.

Repeatedly.

When she closed her eyes she could see Yuko Yabe's imploring face.

But it wasn't quite a face. It was more like a vague image, by no means clear, but definitely Yuko's.

Yet no sooner had she tried to remember the details than it devolved into a different being altogether.

That being was her dead mother, or Mio Tsuzuki, or Ishida, or the horribly exhausted self in the mirror.

The Yuko inside Shizue was…

All made up of borrowed images.

Why'd you go and die?

Shizue turned the inorganically placed corner of the building into the unpopular entrance hall and walked through to the counseling booth. It was the private office they'd designated hers.

In a room like this she could do her work even if just on standby.

She swiped her ID card, and the door made an unpleasant sound before opening into the room.

Everything in the room was painted in a green theme to calm the nerves.

Her private office was a bright, well-lit space. It was conceptually relaxing. But there was no way Shizue could relax in that environment.

Whatever the structure or the color of the room, it was a workspace for Shizue. Tension, yes. Relaxation, no. Countless children entered that space to unravel their inner thoughts, to express their minds, cry, and get angry. Shizue received any and all of these nonuniform communications and had to process them like a bureaucrat while seeming to care.

She got to her desk and took a deep breath.

She turned on her monitor and called up Yuko Yabe's face. There was no meaning in it. She'd wanted to see a real picture of her in order to clear away the vague one in her head.

Pink pupils, small frame.

“Color.”

There was no color in her visualization.

Adding the color pink quickly and permanently materialized the real Yuko Yabe for Shizue.

Now there was no confusing her image with anything else.

It still might have been a borrowed image, but at least the Yuko inside Shizue now had her own existence. In the middle of completing the image, Shizue felt suddenly like a hole had opened in her stomach.

This must be what they call being sad.

Just then.

Shizue noticed that the growth pattern in the field outside swayed unnaturally.

The counseling booth's window faced the inner courtyard of the center.

The inner courtyard connected to the green area surrounding the center. Though they were connected physically, the yard and the green area were cordoned off by laser sensors designed to prevent outside intrusions.

The security at public institutions was unsurpassed. In other words, this wasn't a place for ordinary civilians. Maintenance personnel came in throughout the day, but the days were different, and they usually had finished their work by very early in the morning.

That reminded her…

Shizue looked down at the windowsill.

A few days ago, four days maybe, they'd announced a search of the green area on the center's periphery for Yuji Nakamura, who it was believed had been hiding in the area. At the time of the communication, Nakamura was a person of extreme interest, practically a suspect, so it made sense they used the word “hiding” to describe his disappearance.

It was different now.

The investigators must have deepened their search into the courtyard.

Or it could be Yuji Nakamura himself crossing into the courtyard.

Shizue placed her hand on the window.

She turned off the security.

She focused her eyes again.

The natural makeup of the greenery.

It was swaying.

Shizue put her hand on the window lever.

The glass window slid open with a low buzzing sound from the internal motor. The outdoors broke in. Temperature change. Temperature change. Then natural sounds. Smells. The smell of damp earth. The scent of grass and trees that had grown out of decayed nutrients. A pungent and dirty scent Shizue detested.