Malice (3 page)

“I guess he's still out.”

“But he didn't say he'd be going anywhere.”

She walked to the front door, pulling the keys out of her bag. I followed along behind her. The door was locked. She unlocked it, went inside, and started turning on lights. It was cool inside the house. Empty.

Rie walked down the hallway to Hidaka's office. This door was also locked.

“Does he always lock the office door before leaving?” I asked.

She shook her head as she fished another key from her purse. “Not much recently.”

She opened the door. The lights in the office were off, but it wasn't completely dark. The computer was on, and a pale glow came from the monitor. Rie felt along the wall for the light switch, then she abruptly stopped.

Hidaka was lying in the middle of the room, his feet pointing toward the door.

After being frozen for a few seconds, Rie dashed over to him. But before she reached him, she stopped in her tracks, frozen again, her hands pressed to her mouth.

Gingerly, I approached. Hidaka was lying facedown with his head twisted so I could see the left side of his face. His eyes were half-open. They were the eyes of a corpse.

“He's dead,” I said.

Rie slowly collapsed to the floor. The sobs came welling up the moment her knees touched the carpet.

*   *   *

While the police were examining the scene, Rie and I waited in the living room. At least, it used to be the living room; now that both the sofa and the table were gone, it felt a little bare. Rie sat on a cardboard box filled with magazines, while I paced in circles like a bear, occasionally poking my head out into the hallway to see how the investigation was proceeding. Rie was crying the whole time. I looked at my wristwatch: 10:30 p.m.

Finally, there was a knock and the door opened. Detective Sakoda came in—a calm fellow, approaching fifty. He seemed to be in charge of the investigation.

“Might I have a few words?” he asked me after glancing at Rie.

“Sure, anything.”

“I'm fine to talk, too.” Rie dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Tears were still in her voice, but her words were clear. I remembered what Hidaka had said earlier that day, about her being able to dig in when it mattered.

“It won't take long.”

Detective Sakoda asked us to tell him everything that had happened that day up until we found the body. I started first, and as I talked, I realized my story would have to include Miyako Fujio.

“Around what time did Hidaka call?” Detective Sakoda asked.

“It was a little after six, I think.”

“And did he mention Ms. Fujio when you spoke?”

“No, he just said he wanted to talk to me about something.”

“So it could've been about something else?”

“It's possible.”

“Any idea what that might have been?”

“No, not at all.”

The detective nodded, then turned to Rie. “Around what time did Ms. Fujio go home?”

“After five, I think.”

“And did you speak with your husband after that?”

“A little.”

“How did he seem?”

“Upset. The talk with Ms. Fujio hadn't gone so well. But he told me it was nothing to worry about.”

“And it was after that when you left the house and went to the hotel?”

“That's right.”

The detective nodded. “Okay, so you were planning to stay at the Crown Hotel tonight and tomorrow night, then leave for Canada the day after tomorrow? But your husband had some work to finish, so he stayed behind at the house.” Sakoda looked over his notes as he spoke, then looked back up at Rie. “Who knew that your husband would be at home alone?”

“Well, myself and…” She looked at me.

“Of course I knew. And I expect that someone at the magazine,
Somei Monthly,
would have known as well.” I explained that Hidaka had been writing a serialized novel for them and it was the next installment that he was staying behind to finish. “Still, that hardly narrows down your suspects.”

“I'm just collecting facts,” Detective Sakoda said, smiling ever so slightly.

He then asked Rie whether she'd seen any suspicious people around their house lately. She said no. That was when I remembered the woman I'd seen in the garden earlier that day. I wondered if I should say something, but ultimately kept silent. Who would commit murder to avenge a cat?

When the questions were done, the detective said he would have one of his men take me home. I would've preferred to stay with Rie, but it sounded as if they had already called her parents and someone was coming to pick her up.

As the shock of discovering Hidaka's body gradually faded, I could feel a wave of exhaustion coming over me. I felt bleak inside when I thought of walking all the way to the station and taking the train all the way home. I decided to accept the offer of a ride home from the police.

A crowd of police were still outside the room, mostly walking back and forth down the hall. The door to the office was open, but I couldn't see inside and I assumed the body had already been removed.

A uniformed officer called out to me and led me to a police car parked outside the front gate. It was the closest I'd been to a police vehicle since the time I was pulled over for speeding. A tall man was standing next to the cruiser. If he was a police officer, he was in plainclothes, but the way the streetlights fell on him made it hard to see his face.

“Long time no see, Mr. Nonoguchi,” he said.

“Do I know you?” I stopped, squinting at the man's face.

He stepped forward out of the shadows. It was a familiar face, with narrow eyebrows and close-set eyes. I knew I knew him, but it took a moment for the memory to surface.

“Do you remember me?”

“I do! Er…” I thought for a moment. “Kaga, right?”

“In the flesh.” He bowed politely. “It's been a while.”

“It certainly has.” I nodded back to him. I looked at him again. He had good features, and age had improved them. It had been at least a decade since I'd seen him, maybe longer. “I'd heard you'd joined the police force. Never imagined our reunion would be under these circumstances.”

“I was surprised, too. When I heard who discovered the body, I wondered if it was someone else with the same name. At least until I saw your business card.”

“Nonoguchi isn't the most common surname out there, I know.” I shook my head. “What a coincidence!”

“We can talk in the car. I'll give you a lift. Sorry it's not a private car.” He opened the rear door for me. The uniformed officer got into the driver's seat.

Kaga, fresh out of graduate school, had come to work at the middle school where I used to teach social studies. Like most new teachers, he was passionate about the job. An accomplished kendo practitioner, he'd taken over the school's kendo club, and he made quite an impression on the other teachers.

He'd quit teaching after only two years for a number of reasons, though as far as I could tell, none of it was his fault. Still, I suspect he wasn't cut out to be a teacher in the first place. However, I'm sure his departure from the school had more to do with the way things were going for him at the time.

“Which school are you at now?” Kaga asked, soon after the car started down the street.

Kaga. That's what I'd called him when he was a new hire at the school. I'd have to remember to call him
Detective
Kaga now.

I shook my head. “I was working at a middle school in my hometown until just a little while ago. I quit back in March.”

Kaga look surprised. “You don't say? What are you doing now?”

“Well, it's not glamorous, but I'm a writer. I write stories for children.”

“No kidding! Is that how you knew Kunihiko Hidaka?”

“Not exactly.” I explained our past. Kaga nodded with every detail. I wondered if Detective Sakoda hadn't told him anything, since I'd certainly included this in my earlier statement.

“So you started writing while you were still teaching?”

“That's right. But not much. Just a couple of short stories a year. When I finally made up my mind to try my hand at being a real writer, I realized I had to quit my job.”

“I see. That's quite a decision.” Kaga sounded impressed. I wondered if he was comparing my choice to his own. Of course, even he had to realize there was a big difference between switching professions in your early twenties and doing it when you're much older, with four decades already under your belt.

“What sort of novels did Mr. Hidaka write?”

I looked at him. “You mean you haven't heard of Kunihiko Hidaka?”

“Sorry. I'd heard the name, but I've never read any of his books. I don't read many books these days.”

“I'm sure you're busy.”

“No, just lazy. I know I should read more, two or three a month.” He put a hand to his head.
Two or three books a month
had been my catchphrase back when I was teaching composition. If Kaga had been making an intentional reference, it was a good one.

I gave him the digest version of Hidaka's career, starting with his debut ten years ago. Then there were the awards and his rise to the bestseller lists. I also mentioned that he wrote works of pure literature as well as pure entertainment.

“Did he write anything I might be interested in?” Kaga asked. “Like murder mysteries?”

“Only a few, but yeah.”

“Tell me the titles so I can look them up.”

I mentioned Hidaka's novel
Sea Ghost
. I'd read it a long time ago and didn't remember it all that well, but it was definitely about a murder.

“Do you know why Hidaka wanted to move to Canada?” Kaga asked when I was finished.

“I think he had a few reasons, but mostly, I think he was just tired. He'd been talking about going overseas and taking it easy for several years now. The decision to move to Vancouver was Rie's.”

“Rie is the wife, yes? She seemed young.”

“They just got married last month. It was his second marriage.”

“And his first wife, are they divorced?”

“No, she died in a car accident. That was five years ago already.”

The realization that Hidaka was no longer in this world hit me again, hard. I wondered what he'd wanted to talk to me about this evening. I wondered if I had just ended my unimportant meeting and gone to see him right away, I might have saved him. I knew there was no point in thinking about it, yet the regret was hard to keep down.

“I heard there was some trouble with a Mr. Fujio, someone he'd used as the subject of one of his novels?” Kaga said. “Can you think of any other troubles he might have had? Anything from his novels or personal life?”

“Nothing I can think of.” I realized for the first time that this was an interrogation. Suddenly, the complete silence from the police officer driving the car made me uncomfortable.

“By the way,” Kaga said, opening his notebook, “do you know anyone by the name of Namiko Nishizaki?”

“What?”

“I have two other names, too: Tetsuji Osano and Hajime Nakane.”

“Oh, right,” I said, finally understanding. “Those are characters in
The Gates of Ice,
the serialized novel that Hidaka's writing.” I wondered what would happen to the serial now. I supposed they'd have to abandon it midstory.

“It seems he was working on it right up until the moment of his death.”

“Ah! His computer was left on, wasn't it?”

“The document he was writing was open.”

“I see.” Something occurred to me. “How much of the novel had he written?”

“What do you mean by how much?”

“How many pages?”

I explained that Hidaka had told me he had to write thirty pages that night.

“It was more than a couple of pages,” Detective Kaga said.

“I wonder if you could nail down the time of death by the number of pages he'd written. You see, he hadn't even started working on it when I left the house.”

“Yes, we considered that. But as you well know, writing is a start-and-stop kind of thing. It's hard to estimate the time based on his progress.”

“That's true, but you could at least figure out what his maximum speed was, and then come up with a shortest-possible time estimate.”

“Interesting,” Kaga said. “What do you think Hidaka's maximum speed was, then?”

“Good question. He told me once that he averaged four pages an hour.”

“So even if he was rushing, you'd say a reasonable top limit might be about six pages?”

“That sounds about right.”

Detective Kaga fell silent. He seemed to be doing some calculations in his head.

“What is it?”

“It's hard to say.” Kaga shook his head. “I'm not even sure if the document he had up on the screen was the part of the serial he was working on.”

“You mean he might've been looking at an earlier part of the novel.”

“Yes. We're going to visit the publisher tomorrow to try to find that out.”

I quickly turned the situation over in my mind. According to Rie, Miyako Fujio had gone home around five o'clock. It was after six when the phone call from Hidaka came. If he'd been writing during the time that we knew he was alive, he could've written five or six pages, max. That meant the question was, how many more pages had he actually written?

“I understand you might not be able to disclose this,” I said to Detective Kaga, “but do you have an estimated time of death?”

“You're right, I can't disclose that, or at least, I shouldn't.” Kaga chuckled. “But I suppose it doesn't really matter. We're still waiting on an autopsy for the final results, but we're pretty sure it happened sometime between five and seven o'clock.”

“Except, he called me after six.”