Loups-Garous (4 page)

The area chief looked perplexed and shifted his gaze to his right at another participant. That participant then shot a look at Shizue.

“C'mon, Fuwa.”

He sounded retarded.

“Stop saying things that make no sense. It runs our discussion off course. It's a waste of our time.”

This whole conference was a waste of time.

“What's not making any sense, Counselor Takazawa? I should like to repeat, as a counselor, that these baseless accusations are discriminatory. I should like you not to use these terms if you're not prepared to define them.”

“Discriminatory…”

The police chief looked like he didn't know what it meant and this time shot a glance at the counselor on his left.

Was he a superior? The skinny man gave the police chief a cold look, then faced Shizue.

“I am Ishida, from Division R of the prefectural police, head of the violent crimes investigation unit,” he said. “This is, as you say, a term we don't want to have misunderstood. Let me try to explain. The deviant Officer Yokota is talking about will have committed crimes that are wholly removed from typical crimes prosecutable or non-prosecutable by the police, or else has attempted these crimes or is a person suspected of having participated in such crimes.”

“What does ‘wholly removed from typical crimes' mean?”

“This is a very crude way of saying it, but sexually based crimes including stalking, for example. If I go any further than that it will seem discriminatory, as you say.”

“In other words—”

“You are correct. Distinguishing ‘normal' from ‘abnormal' is a very delicate issue. For example, there is nothing we can do about a person's behavior if their proclivities remain personal, with no effect on others.

Even if he stepped outside those bounds, even if we are able to prove that he is a poor influence on society, if we can't arrest or prosecute him, we can't legally call him a criminal. However, if we're to solve this crime swiftly, or prevent it from happening again, we must know what kind of person we're looking for. We've aggregated all the information we need, and the prefectural police has a database of sorts.”

“That's—”

Before Shizue had a chance to respond, Ishida sharply interjected.

“Could you say this is infringing on privacy? Sure. However it is not as if we were taking any extreme liberties into anyone's information.”

“Does that mean you're simply collecting public information on citizens into a database?”

“Public or private, we're taking information deemed important to the general public, as well as secondhand information parlayed by others.

We're not invading any personal information sources.”

“Of course not.”

“Right. This is information the average person could gather without a police badge. However it's the mass of information. It's on a scale the average person would never be able to collect. That having been said, for the police to collect this information in a calculated fashion…could raise issues.”

“I'm sure.”

“That's why we can't speak in simple terms.”

“That's why you have these vague definitions of elusive notions?”

“That's right. It's like you said. There are too many different kinds of people in the world. If you look at our barometer, there are a good number of dangerous types out there. But no matter how dangerous they are, if they haven't committed any crimes, they won't spill out of the ‘lawful citizen' category. And so I think our officer here dares to use the term ‘deviant.' I'd like your affirmation on this terminology.”

This was all too convenient.

“So essentially, the authorities will draw the line on what is to be considered normal,” Shizue said.

“We're determining which personages demonstrate a potential danger from the stance that we are to protect society at large. We are calling them deviants for the convenience of this conference.”

“That's enough,” Shizue said quietly.

“Pervert or deviant, who cares. You're stalling the conversation.”

“It's important.”

“You're just a troublemaker now, aren't you, Miss?”

The area chief had made a reckless comment. Must have been in his fifties. Definitely born before the turn of the century. Shizue scowled at him. Ishida reprimanded him.

“Officer Yokota. That's a clear instance of sexual harassment. We don't approve of comments made on the basis of difference in age or sex.”

The area chief looked totally dissatisfied and stared at Shizue. Shizue looked away. She didn't want to look at him.

“But as the counselor points out, there seems to be some unsatisfactory terms in the local police's explanations, which the prefectural police will hopefully clarify,” Ishida said, as if to correct the situation. At least his delivery was acceptable.

“As I've just proffered, my prefectural police team, through the area patrol, will investigate the current situation and use the database to survey those who have the potential to commit violent crimes in the neighborhood.”

They were talking in circles.

“We're working on a very minute survey process. And in that regard, we're requesting the participation of the residents in the area in question. We will formally request their cooperation.”

Ishida turned toward the superior assemblyman.

“Of course,” he said.

“But, if I may be frank, the reality right now is that the police force is facing a difficult investigation. Truth be told we have a huge gap in our database.”

“Gap?”

“There is a remarkable lack of information on minors.” Ishida looked out at the group, one by one. His gaze finally landed on Shizue.

“We don't have any data on the minors save what's already been made public.”

“You mean the data
we
have collected?”

“Correct. All we have right now is the public data collected by your local community center—the local register of residents aggregated by each local youth welfare department and local government,” the representative said.

“There must be a lot of heinous youth crimes unmentioned in that data, eh?”

What an irresponsible thing to say. A lapse in judgment. The head chief of the area youth protective services gave a sideways glare at the representative.

“May I have a word, Assemblyman? Crime among minors has decreased drastically since its peak in 2002. It has not risen at all.”

It was something she'd say.

Actually, no she wouldn't. It would imply counseling was totally useless.

“Whether the rate has decreased or not does not matter. Obviously since I was elected assemblyman, the laws have been repeatedly revised.”

Ishida replied that anyone who'd committed a crime would be charged and prosecuted, even minors.

“As you know, this will involve a criminal penalty. If it's covered by existing laws, there is no distinction in criminality. Other than that it takes longer in court, there is no difference between criminal cases involving adults and minors. Just that in the case of minors, we have no legal access to personal information about them other than what's been made publicly accessible. It's the entire police organization's judgment that accordingly, there is no need to gather that information.”

A man sitting next to Ishida who looked like a police officer said,
You mean there's no budget for that
.

“All this data aggregation is difficult as it is.”

Hearing this wasn't going to get anything started. The bug in Shizue's gut started to act up again.

“I get that the police have no budget, but what about it? Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying, but this meeting itself is a waste of our time and hence your budget.”

Ishida spoke without change in expression or intonation.

“Let me be totally forthright. I want the information you all have on people over the age of ten to be handed over to the police.”

“That's not right.”

Shizue looked at the counselor sitting next to her.

He wouldn't move.

Is he shocked, or does he not think anything of it?

“What is the meaning of this?”

“Just as you heard. These minors—who until now were bundled up and referred to as ‘children'—in the residential quarter number approximately 3,200. We are respectfully asking you to provide nonpublic information about them.”

That's not right.

“We can't do that,” Shizue said. “As a rule, we do not make public the personal information collected on the children in each community center. Even if they are over the age of ten, if they are under supervision, you need their consent to peruse their file. It doesn't matter that you're the police.”

“These are rules by default,” the police chief said. “I'd like you to think about the situation. It's a serial murderer.”

“People are killed all over the country every day. This isn't even the first time someone's been killed in this quarter. I've never heard such an illegal request.”

“It's not illegal. This is a necessary measure we take as a matter of mitigating extralegal circumstances.”

“You're twisting the words.”

“Hey, hey, Fuwa,” the head assemblyman said, stroking his hair back in an awkward gesture. He scratched his head, but his hair flopped back into place. It was depressing.
Memory-hair transplants were truly one of the most regrettable innovations of the age
, Shizue thought.
If you're going to grow hair like that, at least don't try to make it move.
He probably wasn't held enough as a child.

“You're overreacting, but we understand that. That's precisely why we've organized this conference, so if you could just bear with us.”

“You're saying you're suspecting children now?”

They think they're gonna get the last word here?

The assemblyman dropped the end his sentence and just flapped his mouth.

“You believe that there is a killer among these children at the center, do you?”

“It's a possibility.”

“They're under suspicion then.”

“Enough, Fuwa. C'mon—”

“They are,” Ishida said matter-of-factly.

“The victims are minors and have to be within shooting range. Of course we haven't narrowed it down that far yet, but we need more information to do just that.”

Relationships.

There was no age limit on friendships. If they were communicating via monitors, there was no saying what age or sex their associates were. It had nothing to do with anything. If anyone were having frequent inperson exchanges there'd be no need for communication sessions.

I know what you want to say
, Ishida said as if reading the look on Shizue's face.

“We're not just assuming that because they're minors their friends are all the same age. The police are well aware of the reality. We've studied the monitor histories of these victims, and we're in the process of filtering their public records. The victims all seemed to be fans of cel-based animation and seemed to be corresponding frequently with other fans. Of course, the age, sex, and nationality of their friends is all scattered. If anything, the average enthusiast shows to be older. However…”

Ishida looked briefly at his own monitor.

“In murder cases like this, it's almost always the case that the victim and the culprit will have had physical interaction. You already know this. It was not poison or explosives used in these killings. Because the victims sustained physical damage, we know for a fact the killer was in personal contact.”

He did not have to explain all this again. She understood.

Ishida looked around.

“Since we're talking about kids who aren't just passing information around, since we know there was real physical interaction involved, the investigation is terribly limited. In any case, children these days don't interact with people. Their only interactions are through communication labs. Learning levels and counseling notwithstanding, classrooms are divided strictly by age, after all.”

“You're right,” Ishida agreed.

He didn't want to answer.

“None of the victims had siblings. Other than their counselors, these kids had no physical interaction with anyone but groupmates and children in other groups they might have seen at their local centers.”

“That's not necessarily true. It's difficult to be certain as the police don't yet have all the information on these kids, but the kids do have
some
interaction with society.”

“Right. So we'd like for you to share that data with us,” Ishida said directly at Shizue.

They probably thought that if Shizue relented now they could end this conversation. By settling one argument when confronted with two, the police side of the room was able to circumvent the original issue of the appropriateness of police requests for extreme lawful diligence.

Shizue was a scapegoat.

Who are my allies?

“As you've just mentioned, each of you has personal data on each of these children. It should be your job to collect the data and supervise the lives of these children.”

“You say ‘supervise the lives of these children' like it's nothing. No matter how you look at it, supervision comes down to information. We aren't directly supervising the children.”

“Don't you think that's the same difference?”

“No, it isn't. If a problem arises, resolving the issue will always end up being the individual's responsibility. We will counsel them, and the children will respond according to their own whims, but our hypothesis is that our advice is absolutely not legally enforceable. It's fundamentally different from back when school institutions strictly enforced a down-the-middle sociability on these kids, like they were animals or something. Those minors who seemed like social weaklings—we protect their basic human rights, and in order to maintain a position of aiding in the exercise of the right to full development, we expunged the word ‘education' from our vocabulary, remember?”