Red Chrysanthemum (16 page)

During his years as a police officer, Hirata had heard some mighty creative excuses from wrongdoers trying to slither their way around the law. He couldn’t help wondering if Reiko’s case was an example. His friendship with her urged him to deny that she was as guilty as she appeared, but his police instincts warned him against falling for a trick by a murder suspect who was far more intelligent than the average street criminal. Hirata felt torn between his wish to believe and protect Reiko and his reluctance to be a dupe and let a possible murderess thwart justice.

“Lily is about forty years old. She has a little boy named Jiro,” he said to the proprietor, dancers, and drummer. “Does that jog your memory?”

“No, master,” they said.

“The boy was stolen. Lily wrote to Lady Reiko, asking for help. Lady Reiko came here to see her. Do you remember?”

Again, a chorus of denials.

“I’ll ask you one more time,” Hirata said. “Are you sure you don’t know Lily?”

“We’re sure,” the proprietor said.

As the dancers nodded, Hirata surveyed them closely. They were all too young to be Lily. They looked nervous, but he couldn’t tell if it was because they were hiding something or from fear of the authority that he represented. His mind buzzed with warning signals that someone wasn’t playing straight with him, but he didn’t know who it was.

“Come on, let’s go,” he told his detectives.

Outside, Arai said, “Those people could be lying.”

“But why would they?” Inoue said.

Hirata shook his head, at a loss for a good reason. He could see his distrust of Reiko in his men’s faces, although they didn’t voice it because they knew his deep-seated loyalty to her as well as Sano. He stifled the thought that he didn’t know them as well as he once did. Had both their characters been corrupted by power?

“We have to find Lily,” he said. “She’s the best witness who can confirm Lady Reiko’s statement.”

He marched down the street, stopped at the first door he came to, and knocked until it was opened by a man wearing a nightshirt and accompanied by a wife carrying a lamp. They blinked drowsily at Hirata.

“I’m looking for a woman named Lily,” Hirata said. “Do you know her?”

“No,” the man said, and shut the door.

At the next two houses Hirata got the same response. At the fourth house an elderly man answered and Hirata said, “Where’s the headman of this neighborhood?”

“That’s me.”

“Show me your record of everybody who lives here.”

The headman complied. The ledger that contained the neighborhood census of names, family relationships, occupations, and addresses showed no Lily or Jiro listed.

“Something is fishy, but maybe not here,” Arai said, hinting that it was Reiko’s story.

By this time Hirata was anxious to find out the truth and silence the voice in his head that said Reiko had sent him on a wild goose chase. “I want everyone from every house out in the street.”

He and Arai and Inoue pounded on doors, yelling orders. Soon they had a crowd of frightened people lined up outside their homes. Hirata told them, “I’m looking for a widow named Lily, who’s the mother of a boy named Jiro. Anyone who knows her whereabouts, step forward.”

Nobody did. Hirata walked up and down the lines, studying the women, as stronger doubts about Reiko nagged at him despite his tendency to take her word over that of strangers. Planting himself in the center of the road, he announced, “Tell me where Lily is, or somebody will get hurt.”

They cowered in speechless fright. Hirata pulled an elderly, white-haired man out of the line and flung him at the detectives, who caught him. “I’ll count to ten, and if you don’t answer, we’ll beat him up. One… two…”

A younger man hurried forward, fell to his knees before Hirata, and cried, “Please don’t hurt my father!”

“Tell me, or else,” Hirata said even though he’d often deplored the police’s harsh treatment of helpless commoners.

“But I don’t know! I swear!”

A little girl began sobbing. “Grandpa, Grandpa!” she wailed, reaching her arms toward the terrified old man while her mother tried to shush her.

Inoue and Arai looked to Hirata for instructions. Standard police procedure called for him to administer the beating he’d promised, then move on to another victim until someone talked. But the little girl reminded Hirata of his daughter. He had no stomach for violent coercion tonight, especially since he wasn’t sure that it would produce the desired result.

Maybe Lily had set Reiko up, enlisted everyone in the neighborhood in a conspiracy of silence, then disappeared. But how much easier for Reiko to invent Lily and Jiro from thin air. Hirata felt his precious comradeship with Sano and Reiko disintegrating. His new position and his martial arts training had weakened his ties with them. Would this investigation sever them for good?

In the meantime, he couldn’t justify beating up an old man. “Let him go,” he told the detectives.

They obeyed. The old man staggered into the embrace of his family. The other residents gazed at Hirata, fearful that he would turn on them. He said, “I’ll be back. If you do know where Lily is, next time I ask you’d better tell me, or I’ll throw you all in jail.”

He and Inoue and Arai mounted their horses and rode away. Inoue said, “What will Chamberlain Sano say about this?”

“He won’t thank us for digging his wife’s grave deeper,” Hirata said. “We’d better search the surrounding neighborhoods for Lily.” He added under his breath, “And pray that we find witnesses to verify that things happened the way Lady Reiko said.”

14

“Mama, are you awake?”

Reiko’s eyes snapped open at the sound of her son’s voice. She was curled up in bed, her fingers gripping the sheet that covered her, every muscle tense. Masahiro hovered at the door. Dull, silver light penetrated the windows. The room looked the same as always, the table, floor cushions, and cabinets in their usual places. But Reiko perceived a difference in the atmosphere, as though the world had changed subtly but catastrophically while she’d slept.

An image of Lord Mori’s mutilated, blood-drenched corpse assailed her mind.

Reiko moaned and rolled onto her back, rubbing her eyes, wishing in vain that the murder had been a nightmare that wakening could dispel.

Masahiro hurried to kneel beside her. “Are you all right? Aren’t you going to get up?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” Reiko said, not wanting to worry him.

She eased her swollen body upright. Her muscles ached as if she’d lain in the same, rigid position all night. Her mouth was sour and dry, her stomach queasy. When she’d gone to bed, she’d thought she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, but exhaustion had plunged her into a long, deep slumber. Now it must be late morning. She could hear the servants bustling, sweeping, and chattering throughout the mansion. What had happened while she slept?

“I heard the maids say that some man was stabbed yesterday,” Masahiro said anxiously. “People think you killed him. You didn’t, did you?”

“Of course not.” Reiko was dismayed that he knew about the murder and her involvement in it. Yesterday Sano had given orders that no one in their household should tell Masahiro, but this obviously hadn’t kept the servants from talking among themselves or Masahiro from eavesdropping. “There’s been a mistake. Don’t pay any attention to them.”

He nodded, reassured. Reiko experienced a sudden, frightening sensation that they were speeding apart, the distance between them widening into infinity. If she were found guilty of the murder, she would never see him again in this world. She felt an urge to scream and claw wildly at the air in a desperate attempt to reach Masahiro.

Instead she said, “Come here. Give Mama a hug.”

He crawled into her lap and put his arms around her. She embraced him while her tears dropped onto his shiny black hair. “Mama, you’re squeezing me too tight,” he said, wriggling free.

Reiko dried her eyes on her sleeve. “Is Papa home?” No.

She hoped he was finding evidence that would prove her innocent. “I’ll get dressed, then we’ll have something good to eat,” she said with false cheer.

After she’d put on a silk kimono, styled her hair, and applied her makeup as on any normal day, she told the maids to wipe the puddles off the veranda so that she and Masahiro could sit there. While she sipped tea and rice gruel, he played with his food and chattered. She gazed out at the garden. A low spot in the grass was flooded; insects swarmed. Although the compound was vast, she felt closed in, trapped. She was glad Sano had kept her out of jail, but she wanted to help herself instead of waiting while others determined her fate.

“Masahiro,” she said, “go fetch Lieutenant Asukai.”

While her son ran off to obey, Reiko wandered through the garden, too agitated to sit quietly. The secret she’d kept from Sano needled her conscience. She knew that he suspected she hadn’t told him everything yesterday. Although she hated being less than honest with her husband, she feared revealing that she wasn’t sure that the story she’d told him was true.

She didn’t know whether she was innocent and wrongly accused or as guilty as she looked.

Yesterday she’d described to Sano the events as she recalled them, but her mental images of them had seemed flat and sketchy, no more lifelike than scenes from a book she’d read. Her memory, usually so vivid and reliable, seemed to be disintegrating. The more time passed, the hazier her recollections grew. Now she couldn’t even form a clear picture of Lily’s face. Ominous fear rippled through Reiko. Was she losing her mind?

Most frightening of all was that blank, lost space of time at the Mori estate. What had happened to her then? And how had she gotten to that awful point—the only part of her story she knew to be true—when she was kneeling naked and covered with blood beside Lord Mori’s mutilated corpse? Hirata and other people had witnessed that. Everything that she thought had taken place beforehand was uncertain. And while she didn’t believe she was capable of murder, she couldn’t be sure.

Did I kill Lord Mori, then forget?

Did something happen between us that I’ve concealed from myself as well as my husband?

Feeling dizzy and ill, Reiko leaned on a tree for support… and suddenly found herself seated in a roofed pavilion across the garden. Bewilderment, then panic, struck her.

She had no idea how she’d gotten there.

A few moments—or many—had disappeared from her awareness.

Reiko inhaled deep, shaky breaths. Her stomach muscles were clamped tight around the baby, and she tried to calm down for its sake. She fought the fear that she was going mad. While Sano tried to prove her innocence, she must refute her suspicions about herself.

Lieutenant Asukai came striding down the path toward her. Reiko sat up straight and donned a false, serene expression as he joined her in the pavilion.

“How are you?” he said, beholding her with sympathy.

“I’m better today,” she said.

Doubt showed on his face. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“As a matter of fact, mere is. My husband has asked me to think who might have a grudge against me.” Reiko hadn’t been so rattled by her harrowing experience, or her secret suspicions about herself, that she’d neglected this important charge. “I’ve come up with a possibility—the Black Lotus sect.”

Almost five years ago, she’d helped to expose the crimes of the evil sect and slain its leader. The sect had been disbanded and outlawed but had proliferated underground, and its members had sworn revenge on her.

“It has followers everywhere,” Reiko said, “maybe even in Lord Mori’s estate. Maybe one of them killed him and framed me. I need you to ask around town and try to find out.”

“I can do that.” Lieutenant Asukai seemed pleased to have a part in the investigation as well as a chance to serve her.

“Take my other guards to help you,” Reiko said.

“All right.” He poised on the verge of departure. “Is there anything else?”

Reiko had to ask whether his memory of events matched her own, even though she didn’t want him to think she was going crazy. “Do you remember taking me to the Persimmon Teahouse to meet Lily?” she said in a cautious, halting tone. “Do you remember how I spied on Lord Mori’s estate from the fire-watch tower and went to visit Lady Mori so that I could look for the stolen boy named Jiro?”

Lieutenant Asukai regarded her with puzzlement and concern. He hesitated a moment before he said firmly, “Yes. Of course I do. And so do the other men in your retinue. That’s what we’ll tell anyone who asks us.”

His response didn’t ease Reiko’s doubts a bit. Loyalty had its disadvantages. She couldn’t tell if he did indeed recall helping her with her investigation or if he was claiming he did because she needed him to substantiate her story. He would back her up if she’d said she’d flown to the moon. He would make her other attendants stand by her, too.

Furthermore, he couldn’t verify what had happened during her visits to
the
Mori estate or on the night of the murder. He hadn’t been with her; neither had her other men. She wondered if he and they had suspicions that she’d killed Lord Mori, but she was afraid to ask.

“Thank you,” was all she could say.

After the lieutenant had gone, she sat twisting her hands in anxiety. More than ever she wished she’d never taken on the search for Lily’s stolen child, the little good she’d done. But there was no use wasting time on regret or indulging her fear that she was a murderess. She had to discover the truth. And the truth lay in those lost hours.

First she must calm her mind, the better for buried memories to surface. Reiko positioned herself with her buttocks resting between her heels, her back erect but not rigid, her chin tucked inward, and her hands palms up with the left atop the right. She lowered her eyelids but didn’t close them. She rocked back, form, and sideways until her body was balanced, then sat still. Breathing slowly and deeply through her nose, she let thoughts and emotions go by like clouds drifting in a blue sky. Tranquility slowed her pulse, and she floated up to a higher state of consciousness.

Now Reiko cast her spirit back to that night at the Mori estate. She pictured herself kneeling on the veranda of the private quarters. The gray day and her familiar home surroundings vanished. Immersed in darkness, she heard water dripping and distant voices in the night. She inhabited the self mat peered through the hole she’d cut in the window.