The Silent Dead (23 page)

“Okay, hit me. Tell me what's so intriguing.”

“Tashiro told me to go online and check out something called ‘Strawberry Night.' Namekawa mentioned it to him, apparently. At the time, Tashiro wasn't very interested and didn't pay much attention. Have you heard of it, Lieutenant?”

“What?”

“Strawberry Night.”

“Never heard of it,” said Reiko. “What the hell is it?”

Otsuka looked serious. “I scoured the Internet, but I couldn't find a Strawberry Night homepage. What I did find were people discussing it on underground message boards, the kind where people hero-worship bizarre serial killers and upload gory crime-scene photographs. All in all, I found seven message boards that contained references to Strawberry Night.”

“So what the hell is it?”

Otsuka refused to be rushed. “Well, as far as I can judge,” he said, slowly nodding his head. “It's a murder show.”

“A murder show?”

The phrase was simple enough, but Reiko had trouble wrapping her head around the concept.

“These are printouts from the message boards.” Otsuka extracted several sheets of paper from a large manila envelope. “See for yourself.”

Driller killer 08/08/16:45:20

Anyone actually seen the real Strawberry Night page?

Decapitator 08/08/22:01:02

Good question, bro. If anyone had seen the site, they'd have posted about it here. My guess is that no one has. The comments are all hearsay—
a friend of mine told me
BS. Hard to know what's true.

Entrail epicure 08/09/00:12:36

Guess you guys will think I'm a dick, but “someone I know” (LOL) really managed to access the homepage. He's a friend in the offline world. There's this streaming video of someone being, like,
seriously fucking killed
. Afterward, the words “Strawberry Night” appear in this bloody-drippy gothic-style font on the screen. They fade out and then “Do you want to see this live?” comes up. My buddy was too scared to click the “yes” button.

Decapitator 08/09/00.15.02

Click it, you pussy! (LOL). Wonder what happens?

“I'm not sure I understand what this all means,” said Reiko, putting the printouts down on the table.

“I'm not surprised.” Otsuka leaned forward confidently. “The people on the message boards all say more or less the same thing. I searched for the Strawberry Night site they refer to, but nothing came up. It must be hidden somewhere in the deep Web. The rumor is that on the homepage there's streaming video of people actually being killed, followed by the message, ‘Do you want to see this live?' You can choose to click ‘yes' or ‘no.' If you choose yes, then you'll get an e-mail inviting you to the murder show. The e-mail doesn't come straightaway, but some while later, when you've forgotten all about it. Some of the posts claim that the invitation comes in the form of a letter mailed to your house. Either way, the invitation always shows up without anyone revealing their real name, or inputting their mail address or home address. That spooks people out.”

“Did you find anyone who'd seen the actual homepage or been to the actual event?”

“Not exactly, but there's one contributor who takes an ‘I know a whole lot more than the rest of you morons' tone. I don't know how much credibility his postings have, but they include some interesting details.”

Otsuka pushed another sheet of paper across to Reiko. He'd highlighted one of the entries with a magic marker.

Wicked Wizard 08/15/01:32:55

You don't know shit. The victim is one of the spectators who was chosen at random. And the 13th is wrong. The show is held on the second Sunday of the month.

“Tha-that means—” Reiko said, her voice trailing off.

Otuska, clearly delighted with her response, nodded his head vigorously.

 

PART III

 

 

I loaded the body into the young guy's car.

He was weird. I'd killed his friend, but he was happy to have me there in his car along with the corpse, while he thought about the best way to get rid of it. He could have ditched his dead friend, run away, and reported me to the police. But he didn't. Instead, there he was, racking his brains for a solution to the problem. He wasn't panicky; in fact, he seemed to be enjoying the challenge.

I reached out to someone who could help us. He showed up in no time.

He looked at me with sad eyes. “You've killed someone else?” Then he glared at the young guy with me. “Who's this?” he asked.

I just shook my head. What else could I do? All I knew about him was that he was friends with the dead guy.

“Shall we burn him too?”

At the sound of my voice, the young guy looked amazed. He didn't know that the person who'd come to help me was the only person in the world I could actually speak to.

“Burning's no good. It doesn't do the job properly.”

“That's right. Burning's not a good way to get rid of a body,” the young guy chimed in.

“What shall we do?”

“Let me think.”

I had done the killing, but now I was sidelined as the other two discussed how to dispose of the body. I was cool with it. I didn't care either way.

“What about chopping it up and throwing away the pieces?”

“Too much hassle,” replied the young guy. “We need a quick, easy method.”

“Fire's no good? How about dumping it in a lake or something?”

“It'll just float back up to the surface.”

“What about a weight?”

“Easier said than done,” the young guy said. “Partially encasing him in cement before dumping him in would work, but if we went cement shopping right now, we'd just leave a trail for the cops. And without cement, the body would float up to the surface like a balloon when gas builds up in the belly.”

“Gas in the belly?”

“Yes, from decomposition. The bacteria in the gut makes the intestines rot, which turns the whole body into a big buoy or float.”

The young guy really seemed to know his stuff.

“What if we slit the belly open?”

“What do you mean?”

“If we slit the gut, then the gas won't build up—the body won't inflate in the first place, right?”

The guy young liked the suggestion. Everybody was happy.

That, I guess, was the start of our strange partnership of crime.

*   *   *

“You're fucking amazing. You blew my mind. What you did, it was like performance art. You're a genius—an artist of murder. I can't get the image out of my head.”

The young guy was even more of a weirdo than I thought. I didn't understand half of what he was saying. It felt quite nice, though. Fact is, I'd realized the same thing about myself. And I wanted to kill again.

I killed my parents. After that, I got the nickname F and used violence as a way to feel alive. I was like a trader, and life was the wares I dealt in. Live or die? Kill or be killed? Those were the only times when I felt even slightly alive. Usually, the people I was hanging with stopped me before I actually murdered anyone. No one wanted to trigger a cycle of killing. Not even my friends in the Gang lusted for full-on slaughter.

This young guy, however, was something else.

“I want to provide you with a platform,” he said. “A theater of murder, a stage where you can kill all the people you want. You get me?”

I got him. I liked the idea. But could he really do it? It sounded like a shortcut to the inside of a jail cell to me. The “all the people you want” part was hard to swallow.

Amazingly, the young guy seemed to be in earnest.

*   *   *

One night, he came to pick me up. “We've got our first performance, so come with me now.” I thought he was bullshitting me, but I felt a little bit excited anyway. I went with him.

He took me to a boarded-up building. It used to be a strip joint. There was a warren of passages, a dressing room, an auditorium, a stage. In the dressing room, I changed into my leather bodysuit, a new one, not the one I'd gotten from the old homeless fellow. Then I put on a mask, a black mask like the ones that professional wrestlers sometimes wore. It had holes only for the eyes and had mesh to cover the nose and mouth. I looked in the mirror. A real killer was looking back at me.

Cool!

I waited by myself in the dressing room for ages. The spectators came in, and the place gradually filled up. The atmosphere was electric. The spectators knew that something incredible was about to take place. They were going to see a murder show. I was going to kill somebody live on stage. But who?

“F, you're up soon.”

The person who came to fetch me onstage was the young guy's buddy—the one who had run off as fast as his legs could carry him the day I killed their friend. Today, though, we were all on the same side. Funny old world, huh?

I left the green room, walked down a narrow passage, and went to the wings of the stage. We hadn't discussed what I was meant to do out there. All I had with me was my pink box cutter, like a lucky charm. Everyone I'd killed, I'd killed with it.

“Get out there and do your thing,” said Mr. Quick Exit.

I went out onto the stage.

A spotlight went on with a thunk and bathed the stage in a beam of blinding white light. The rest of the room was in complete darkness. It was like there was nothing left in the world except the stage and me. It was a nice, simple world split cleanly between black and white. In the middle of the stage there was a bed. A woman lay on the bed. Duct tape covered her eyes, her mouth, her wrists, and her ankles. Her arms were pulled apart and her upper body was naked. Of course, I could see her titties. It was embarrassing, uncomfortable.

In a neat row at the foot the bed there was a saw, a carving knife, a sickle, a bat studded with nails, a broken beer bottle, and a whip. Had to be the tools the young guy wanted me to use on the woman. I'd never seen her before. I had no special reason to hate her. Killing her seemed a bit pointless.

I took a good look. She was slim and her skin was pale. Erect nipples on firm breasts, which rose and fell. Her hair was stylishly cut and dyed an elegant gray. She must have been excited because her breathing was fast and ragged. She was a looker.

You look like one of those normal people—one of those goddamned
happy
people.

Suddenly I felt that killing her was okay.

When I picked up the studded bat, she must have heard something. She turned toward me, trying to get a sense of what was happening. Her lips were writhing beneath the duct tape. She twisted and thrashed, trying to move. No chance. She was tied down good and proper.

I hadn't played much baseball, but I knew the basics. I imagined that one of her breasts was a ball and took my best swing.

There was a tremendous clattering of metal. The woman was squirming wildly, rocking the whole bed. Was it going to tip over? I heard sounds coming from the darkness of the auditorium. Screamlike sounds.

I held the bat up. Red blood was dripping from the bat. I looked back at her. As I watched, the red of the blood spread out, covering her whole torso. It was beautiful.

The spectators were making a lot of noise now. Must be enjoying themselves! They think I'm great, like the young guy who organized this murder show. “Make the bitch suffer! Kill her as cruelly as you can!” That was my interpretation of their whooping and yelling.

The applause. The tang of blood. And red, the most beautiful color in the world. I was feeling good now. I was feeling truly alive.

I took another swing. Then another. And another.

I forgot all about the spectators. I was delirious. I was obsessed with making this woman bright red—like a moist ripe strawberry.

Sweet!
I grinned behind my mask.

Perhaps it was time for something special to send her over the edge?

Yes, it is time
.

I took the pink box cutter out of my pocket.

 

1

SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 8:00 A.M.

Reiko and Otsuka loitered in front of the counter on the ground floor of Kameari police station. They were hoping to catch Captain Imaizumi and Director Hashizume en route to the morning meeting, fill them in on what Otsuka had discovered, and get his findings incorporated into the investigation. Reiko and Otsuka were all but certain that Kanebara and Namekawa were regulars at the Strawberry Night murder show—and had been killed as a result.

Other members of the task force, some from the local precinct, some from the TMPD, strolled by. Ishikura turned up with a morning newspaper stuffed under his arm.

“Morning, Lieutenant. What's up?”

“Just the man I wanted to meet. Could you reserve one of the smaller meeting rooms for us?”

“Sure, no problem. Planning on blindsiding the top brass again?”

Ishikura was sharp.

“Not me,” said Himekawa. “Otsuka.”

Ishikura grinned at Otsuka. Reiko knew that Ishikura had a soft spot for the younger man. As detectives, the two of them had a great deal in common.

“Nice work, kid.”

Ishikura gave Otsuka a playful punch on the chest.

“Just got lucky,” Otsuka said.

“Sure you did. Nice work, son.”

Instead of heading up the stairs, Ishikura headed down the passage to the admin offices. Reiko thought she detected a spring in his step.

*   *   *

Reiko and her squad gathered in one of the smaller meeting rooms along with Captain Imaizumi. Yuda was waiting out in the lobby with orders to bring Director Hashizume in the minute he showed up.

Several minutes later the door swung open. It was neither Yuda nor Hashizume.

“What's going on here? First thing in the morning, and already doing things behind my back!”

Stubby!