Malice (10 page)

That was as far as we were able to get—day after day, session after session—then today, in the middle of the interrogation session, something unexpected happened.

Osamu Nonoguchi suddenly put a hand to his stomach and complained of a sharp pain. The attack was so sudden and so severe, I was afraid he'd somehow smuggled in some poison and taken it.

He was taken to the police hospital immediately and given a full examination. The chief called me in shortly after with startling news: Osamu Nonoguchi has cancer.

*   *   *

I went to visit him in the hospital the day after he collapsed in the questioning room, first speaking briefly with the physician in charge of his case.

According to the doctor, the cancer had spread to the membrane around his internal organs. This was a dangerous phase of his cancer, and if he was to have any hope of surviving, it would require immediate surgery.

When I asked the doctor if the cancer was new or a recurrence after a remission, he told me that it likely was a relapse.

This news wasn't a surprise. In our investigation, we'd learned that, two years prior, Osamu Nonoguchi had to have a portion of his stomach removed due to cancer and been forced to take several months off from his teaching job.

Nonoguchi hadn't been back to the hospital until now, after he was arrested, even though, as the doctor told me now, he had probably known about the return of his cancer for some time.

I then asked the doctor if surgery would save Nonoguchi's life. The doctor pondered this for a while, then finally shrugged. “I give him a fifty-fifty chance.”

That wasn't the answer I wanted.

I took my leave of the doctor and went to visit Osamu Nonoguchi.

He was in a private room. “I feel bad that I get to lounge about here in the lap of luxury instead of going to prison,” he said with a weak smile, from his hospital bed. I realized it was more than just years that had aged his thin face since the time we'd been colleagues.

“How do you feel?”

“Not good, but considering the nature of my illness, I'd have to say I'm doing pretty well.”

I sat silent, next to his bed, for a while, until he turned to me and asked, “When will I be put on trial? If it takes too long, I might not make it.”

I was unsure if he was joking, though he had clearly already accepted that his death was inevitable and fast approaching.

“The trial won't happen for a while. We don't have enough evidence and detail to start.”

“Why not? I've confessed, and you have proof. Put me on trial and you'll get a guilty verdict. Isn't that enough? I promise I won't change my story when I'm on the stand.”

“Actually, I wish you would change your story. Right now, it lacks a motive.”

“That again?”

“I'll happily stop asking you about it if you tell me.”

“Like I said, there wasn't any motive. It was an impulsive act, done in the heat of the moment. That's all. I got angry and I killed him. There's no reason or logic to it beyond that.”

“People typically don't get angry for no reason.”

“Well, whatever reason I had, it wasn't anything important. To be honest, I have no idea why I lost my head. I guess that's why they call it ‘losing your head.' Even if I wanted to explain it to you, I couldn't.”

“Do you really think I'm going to accept that for an answer?”

“I don't think you have a choice.”

I looked at him and he again met my gaze, his eyes full of self-assurance.

“I'd like to ask you again about the notebooks and disks we found in your apartment.”

He looked disappointed. “Those have nothing to do with your case. Please stop trying to tie everything up into one neat little package.”

“Then help me set them aside by telling me what they are.”

“Nothing. Just notes and disks.”

“Notes and disks containing the text to Kunihiko Hidaka's novels. Or, to be precise, text extraordinarily similar to Mr. Hidaka's work. One might even call them rough drafts.”

He snorted. “What, do you think I was his ghostwriter? That's rich. You're overthinking this.”

“It's the only thing that makes sense.”

“How about I give you an answer that makes even more sense. Those notes you found were my homework. People who want to become writers have to work at it, you know. I practiced by copying Hidaka's works, trying to learn the rhythm of his writing, the manner of his expressions. It's nothing new or unusual. Lots of would-be authors do the same thing.”

I'd been expecting him to come up with something along these lines. When I'd spoken with Kunihiko Hidaka's editor, he'd made exactly the same conjecture. However, the editor had pointed out that, even if that was the case, it still left three questions unanswered. The first was why the manuscripts we'd discovered contained slight variations from Kunihiko Hidaka's work. The second was that, although it wasn't unthinkable that someone might copy an entire novel, it certainly was unusual that someone had copied so many by the same author. The third was that, while Kunihiko Hidaka was a bestselling author, his prose wasn't so amazing that another writer would look to it as a model.

I raised these same points now to Osamu Nonoguchi himself.

Without flinching, he told me, “As for that, there are perfectly rational reasons for all of them. In the beginning, in fact, I did simply copy what Hidaka had written word for word, but eventually I got tired of that. Eventually, whenever an expression popped into my head, or a different way of saying something came to me, I would try writing that down instead. You understand? I was using Hidaka's work as a starting point, but was trying to write something better. That ultimately became the whole point of the exercise. As far as the number of novels I rewrote, well, all I can say is that I kept at it for a long time. I'm single, and there wasn't much else to do when I got home, so I wrote. It's as simple as that. As for your last point, it's true that Hidaka's writing isn't all that great, but I think you're looking at it the wrong way. His writing
is
good. It might not be the most technically advanced, but it's simple, easy to understand, and solid. I'd argue that the simple fact that so many people read it is proof enough.”

Osamu Nonoguchi's explanations made sense. Yet they raised another question. Why, if all this was true, hadn't he said so earlier? Instead, he'd refused to talk about the writings we'd found at his apartment at all until now, after he collapsed in the interrogation room. I wondered if he hadn't used the break in his interrogation that resulted from his collapse and subsequent hospital stay to make up a suitable story. Of course, even if this was true, it would be exceedingly difficult to prove.

I decided to change tactics and bring up another piece of evidence we'd discovered: a collection of several memos found in Osamu Nonoguchi's desk drawer. The memos added up to the outline of a story, and the characters' names in them proved they were an outline for
The Gates of Ice
. However, it wasn't an outline of the parts already serialized. It was an outline for the remainder of the story, the part not yet written.

His explanation: “That was just more practice. Even readers like to guess where a story is going, right? I was just being a bit more hands-on about it.”

“But you'd already given up your teaching career and were working as a full-time professional writer, no? Why spend so much time copying another writer's work when you could have been writing your own stories?”

“Don't be silly, I'm nowhere near what one might call a ‘pro.' I still have a lot to learn. And I have plenty of time to practice, since I wasn't getting much work.”

I was unconvinced.

He must've seen it in my face, because he went on, “I know you want to make me out to be Hidaka's ghostwriter, but you're giving me too much credit. I don't have that kind of talent. Besides, if it were true, I'd be shouting it from the rooftops: ‘Those were all my novels! I'm the real author!' Unfortunately, I didn't write them. If I had written them, believe me, I'd have done so under my own name. Why use his? Didn't you wonder about that at all?”

“I did indeed. That's why it's all so strange.”

“There's nothing strange about it. You've just made an erroneous assumption and it's leading you to strange conclusions. You're just thinking about it way too much.”

“I don't think so.”

“I wish you would think so, and I really don't want to talk about this anymore. Can't we just get on with the trial? Who cares about my motive? Just make up a plausible one and I'll write my confession however you please.”

He sounded as though he truly
didn't
care.

*   *   *

I reflected on our discussion after leaving his hospital room. No matter how you looked at it, too many things didn't add up. Yet clearly, also, as he'd insisted, my reasoning had a flaw.

If he had really been Kunihiko Hidaka's ghostwriter, I had to wonder why. Had he thought the novels would sell better because Mr. Hidaka was an established author? That didn't make sense because the book that had kicked off Mr. Hidaka's career—the one that had made him a bestselling writer—was one likely written by Osamu Nonoguchi himself. He had no reason at that stage to publish it under Hidaka's name. So why not make it his own first novel?

Perhaps he'd withheld his name because he was still working as a teacher then? But that didn't make sense either. I couldn't think of an instance where a teacher had been fired for moonlighting as an author, so what would have been the purpose? And if he'd been forced to choose between professions, I was sure that Osamu Nonoguchi would have chosen author over teacher.

Finally, as Mr. Nonoguchi himself said, if he was Mr. Hidaka's ghostwriter, why deny it? Being recognized as the true author of Kunihiko Hidaka's many works would be a feather in his cap.

So maybe he wasn't a ghostwriter. Maybe the notebooks and disks found in his apartment were nothing more than what he claimed them to be.

Except, that couldn't be true.

The Osamu Nonoguchi that I knew was prideful, confident in his abilities. I couldn't conceive of him copying so much of someone else's work, even in the attempt to become a better writer.

Back at the station, I related my discussion with Mr. Nonoguchi to the chief. Detective Sakoda listened to my report with a sour look.

When I was finished, he commented, “Why would Nonoguchi want to hide his motive for killing Hidaka?”

“I don't know. What secret could be worse than the fact that he killed someone?”

“You think Hidaka's novels are somehow involved?”

“I do.”

“And that Osamu Nonoguchi was the real author? Even though he denies it?”

The department clearly didn't want to spend any more time on this case than it had to. People from the press had already started asking questions about the ghostwriter theory, though I had no idea how they'd caught wind of it. We'd avoided saying anything about it, but the papers would probably start printing stories about it, possibly even as soon as tomorrow. That would in turn mean another flood of phone calls.

“So he's claiming he just got mad and killed him?” Detective Sakoda shook his head. “That makes it sound like there was an argument, but if we don't know what that argument was about, then we don't have a place to begin. Honestly, I wouldn't mind if he just used his authorial talents to make something up. Of course, then he might contradict himself on the stand and we'd be back to square one.”

“I don't believe he impulsively kill Hidaka as the result of an argument,” I said. “If Osamu Nonoguchi left the house through the front door, then went around to the garden and snuck in through the window, he already had intent to kill before the deed was done. My guess is that his motive for killing him emerged during that first meeting with Hidaka.”

“So the question is, what were they talking about?”

“Nonoguchi's own account of the meeting doesn't mention anything of consequence. What I think is that they were discussing how to continue their working relationship once Hidaka moved to Canada. Maybe Hidaka said something that didn't sit well with him?”

“Maybe so.”

We'd already looked into Osamu Nonoguchi's bank records, but we found no indication that money was being regularly received from Kunihiko Hidaka. That didn't rule out the possibility of cash transactions, though.

“It looks like we're going to have to dig deeper into their past,” the chief said.

I agreed.

*   *   *

I decided to pay a visit, along with two of my fellow detectives, to Rie Hidaka. She'd left the house where her husband was killed and was staying at her family home in Mitaka, a suburb in the western part of Tokyo. This was the first time I'd seen her since Osamu Nonoguchi's arrest. The chief had called ahead to break the news. He avoided mentioning the ghostwriter theory, but she'd likely heard something from the press, who were probably calling her around the clock. I imagined she had as many questions for us as we had for her.

After arriving and briefly explaining all that had happened, I told her about the manuscripts we'd found in Mr. Nonoguchi's apartment. She was surprised.

I asked her if she could think of any reason why he'd be in possession of manuscripts closely resembling her late husband's work.

She insisted she had no idea: “I don't think my husband was getting his ideas from anyone else, let alone copying someone else's work. Writing, and coming up with new ideas, was always a struggle for him, but he wasn't the type to hire a ghostwriter.” Though her voice was calm, fire was in her eyes.

I had trouble believing that. She'd only been married to Kunihiko Hidaka for a month. I was sure there was much about her late husband that she didn't know.