Loups-Garous (56 page)

“Lieutenant Ishida's so virtuous,” Takasugi whispered to Shizue.

Don't kid yourself.

Shizue whipped herself away from Takasugi's side and walked over to the desk, where she looked at the screen from behind.

It was an inverse image of Hazuki Makino, who seemed from the angle to be floating.

“Makino…”

I don't want to see any more children murdered
.

Those were her mother's words.

Those stupid, naïve words.

“Run! Don't come here, Hazuki!” Shizue screamed.

Not like Hazuki would hear her or anything.

“She can't hear you,” Ishida said.

She knew that.

Shizue turned her head.

“I won't let you kill another child. I won't let you lay one finger on my children.”

“
Your
children? Well, well, well, I'm surprised to hear such an old-fashioned sentiment from you. Weren't counselors the ones that banned the teacher-student, priest-parishioner dynamic once and for all?”

“That has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. I know that child. She's my child. Don't kill her. That child…that child can't be killed. I can't watch that happen!” Shizue shouted.

“I don't want to hear this!” Ishida said. “It's no use listening to this illogical nonsense. It's unconstructive noise. Take this deranged woman and that idiotic man to…ah yes, to the microbe room. There is no need to soil this VIP room any further with them.”

Shizue felt a strong hand on her neck and hands.

She was pulled away from the desk. It hurt.

The inverse screen image of Hazuki Makino grew more distant.

No. This couldn't be.

Don't kill her.

“Don't kill…”

The large ornamented door opened and Shizue and Kunugi were dragged into the hall.

Everything was clean. This floor was probably sterilized.

They heard the sound of an alarm and the doors at the end of the hall opened. There was yet another set of doors past it. When Takasugi put his hand up against the panel, the door slid up. They pushed Kunugi through the doorway. Next, Shizue was dragged in. They no longer had the strength to resist.

They were thrown out.

The door shut.

Through the reinforced glass door they saw Takasugi's face. Yet another door closed, and finally they could no longer see anything.

Shizue crept toward the door and felt around.

Even exhausted of all energy, what disgusted her still disgusted her.

A feeling, close to anger, even frustration, which belonged nowhere, burned in her stomach.

She pounded on the door.

There was almost no sound.

“Please don't kill her…don't kill her,” Shizue said, crying.

“I'm sorry,” Kunugi said to her back. “Nothing good happens to people who stick by me.”

Shizue listened to the enfeebled voice behind her, but she did not want to turn around.

“My ex-wife said I was like a child. I'm beginning to think she was right. I'm about to turn fifty. And I'm still not going to be an adult. I wondered about why this was. And realized…”

Shizue turned around.

Kunugi was collapsed in the corner, his shoulders heaving with each breath.

Half his face was blackened and swollen. She thought he must have internal bleeding. His left hand was facing an unnatural direction, so it must also be broken, Shizue decided.

“I never had a proper childhood. That's why I can't have a proper adulthood. Kids have to be kids. I have all these issues because I never got to live out my childhood. That's why somewhere inside me I'm always thinking that I want to be a kid, that I want to do childhood right. Or I'll never become an adult. I'm an adult who longs to be a child. Things might have been different if I'd had my own children, but I suppose a child can't raise children.” Kunugi lowered his face. It sounded like he was laughing.

“Kunugi…”

He looked up.

He must be in so much pain.

“Are you okay?” Shizue corrected herself and sat upright.

“You can't really have thought of committing suicide with a dirty middle-aged man like me. I'm filthy and thoughtless.”

“Kunugi.”

“It's all right. My ex-wife always said the same thing. I know it. I'm sorry I brought you into this.”

“I chose to be here.”

“But if you'd never met me, you might have been able to save your children.”

“I don't know about that.”

She didn't think so.

In reality, Shizue was powerless.

Shizue wasn't able to do anything. Someone who couldn't even save herself couldn't save others. Reason alone couldn't change the world. It just made her hate herself.

Previously, if Kunugi hadn't been around, she wouldn't have noticed.

“I'm a terrible woman.”

“That's not true,” Kunugi said to soothe her. “I mean, I don't think you are. To be honest, that last thing you said, about how Ishida isn't moral, really made the most sense. In your words. It made so much sense to me,” Kunugi said.

She didn't want to see any more children being murdered.

I hate it. I don't want to see any more children murdered.

Mother.

“Those were my mother's words.”

The last thing she heard her say.

At the time, this was how Shizue responded.

“The dead don't return, Mother.”

“Ishida was suggesting,” Kunugi tried in vain to start a thought, “that your mother was famous, but I've never heard of her. You know, poorly educated and all.”

“My mother was, as he mentioned, a famous child psychologist and doctor. She had an ideological dispute with my father, who was a sociologist and feminist, and divorced him. I went to live with my father. This wasn't court-ordered but my own choice. I didn't like the way my mother talked when I was a child.”

A despicable woman
. That was what she thought of her.

Shizue had liked her father.

“My father was refined and rational. But still a man of the twentieth century.”

“My generation, then.”

“I suppose,” Shizue answered. “I eventually grew up to be offended by my father's ideals. Half-purposely, I developed a communication handicap. And the person who ended up saving me was the mother I loathed. I left my father's side and filed with the courts to return to my mother. Though really it was just a lot of paperwork.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Kunugi said, sarcastic.

“I wasn't dependent on my mother or anything. She may have saved me, but I didn't start liking her because of it. Her human interaction skills notwithstanding, she achieved a lot in her life. In that sense I respected her.”

“And she passed away?” Kunugi asked.

“Yes. One of her sixteen-year-old subjects with a behavioral disorder. He killed her. He strangled her.”

He strangled Shizue's mother for her own sake.

“This young man…he killed six people while under my mother's care.”

“During treatment?”

“Yes. He was arrested and then they uncovered murder after murder— as his physician she was held accountable.”

“Oh,” Kunugi raised his voice. “That happened in Area 312, didn't it? A bunch of teens were killed, four or five years ago.”

“That's right. My mother insisted on his innocence. The teen definitely had a behavioral issue and had committed violent acts. He was still in treatment, so he wasn't completely recovered yet. Behavioral disabilities are not easily cured. However, everyone asked my mother why she didn't recommend such a dangerous person be locked up. She kept insisting there wasn't sufficient evidence.”

And then her mother, Yukie Fuwa, was destroyed.

“Mother, my mother, died along with the convicted teenager during a psychological assessment.”

“Died together? Wait. I remember hearing that this boy lashed out during the psychiatric assessment, killed his psychiatrist, then committed suicide. Was that not true?”

“No.”

He didn't kill her.

“He didn't kill her. She made him kill her.”

“I don't understand.”

“By insisting on defending this young man, my mother lost her confidence in the world. She said she would go insane if she found out he was guilty. She would go insane if she learned that she was responsible for any of the children's murders.”

They would have died because of me.

Were they right? Tell me. Was I wrong?

Weakling.

“I hated this weak image of my mother. I couldn't forgive it. If she'd had any conviction she'd have pushed through. I told her coldly. That's what you're supposed to do as an academic, I said to her.”

The dead don't return, Mother
.

“But the evidence was overwhelming, and she started to think maybe he was guilty. If they could prove definitively that he'd committed these crimes, my mother's life as an academic and as a human being would have been over. That was the situation. My mother brought out the young man. It was her escape from reality. I received a voice message.

At my house.”

This boy…

He keeps saying he didn't do it.

Of course I believe him.

But it's clear he was the culprit.

His judgment is normal.

I can only determine that he's normal.

He's at no risk of temporary insanity.

Therefore he's totally culpable.

“To be honest I was shocked. Yes. I was shocked before I was surprised. No normal person would let someone undergoing psychiatric evaluation go free. It's not standard. I rebuked my mother. I told her to stop being insipid. This boy was already charged by the police, who filed with the public prosecutor, so short of any trial misconduct or aberrations in the last psychiatric assessment, her career as a psychiatrist would be over. All that would be left was a conviction by the court. ‘Those dead kids weren't ever going to come back, so stop being stupid,' I said. I said it over and over.

“I saw my mother crying on the other end of the monitor in the hotel. She cried that she didn't want to see any more children die. She was going crazy. That was the first time I ever saw her cry. I didn't like it. ‘I don't want to see any more children murdered,' she kept saying. I kept telling her: ‘You can cry all you want. The dead don't return, Mother.' ‘He's guilty. Don't you see?'”

It was right then that her mother fell apart.

Shizue noticed it. She also noticed that even though it made her feel bad she pretended it didn't.

That must have been the exact moment her mother totally fell apart. It wasn't the world that broke her. It wasn't academe. It wasn't the police.

It was Shizue.

Shizue's words broke her mother.

“And so my mother asked the young man to strangle her. ‘You're going to be convicted of murder anyway, so kill me,' she said. He was crying as he strangled her. And then the monitor went blank. He fell to his death.”

“Then…” Kunugi widened his cloudy eyes. “You watched…”

“While she was killed, yes. On that monitor I threw in the bushes yesterday.”

The broken pieces of a human image on a screen.

“That's…” Kunugi couldn't finish his thought.

“This was a kind of double suicide. But the police decided the public wouldn't appreciate the truth. A famous child psychology expert and a young man believed to be a serial killer escaped from a psychiatric assessment only to end up committing double-suicide would be too messy. So they released a report along the lines of what you were just saying. Therefore…”

“Wait.” Kunugi made a pained expression and tried to move his body. “Wait. It might be a false charge after all.”

“What are you saying? I saw with my own eyes…fingers wrapped around her throat. Tears streaming down her face.”

“That's not what I'm talking about,” Kunugi said. “Listen, Fuwa. Listen good. I'm finally remembering what I was trying to tell you yesterday and forgot. Look, until four years ago, Lieutenant Ishida was assigned to a prefectural post presiding over Area 312. I'm sure he was in charge of that particular case.”

“What?”

“Maybe that boy was innocent after all? Your mother could have been right. You remember what he said. Data can be rewritten. He can create all kinds of evidence. Tampering with evidence in order to maintain social order—after all, video shown on monitors is the easiest thing for people to accept. Right?”

“That can't be…”

Somewhere, Shizue, who was bisected, suddenly became whole again.

“All six of those victims were treated in the same medical center, right?”

“Yes. Where my mother worked.”

“If I recall correctly, that hospital was run by SVC. The company that operates it is an affiliate company of SVC.”

“Then…”

My mother. The young man. Everyone, all of them
…

“Shit.”

Kunugi adjusted his position on the floor. “Ouch. Dammit. He can't get away with this. I want to kill him. Ow ow ow ow.”

No.

Shizue stood up and looked around.

It was an empty room. Not just a figure of speech. There was truly nothing in there. No windows. No objects.

No textures. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, were all bathed in a dim blue-white light.

Only the mud-and blood-caked Kunugi stood out.

“They called this the microbe booth, didn't they?”

“Yes, they did. Because we're both dirty.”

There was no opening in the ceiling. A purplish hue shone from flat planes of light. There were a few open holes, but all that came out of them were nozzles. They must have been for antibacterial sprays.

“There don't seem to be anything like surveillance cameras. No sensors, instruments, or switches either.”