The Silent Dead (29 page)

“Himekawa.”

“Yes, sir.” Reiko rose to her feet as the captain slowly approached the circle of six chairs. When he got up close, he looked at them all gravely, one by one, until his gaze finally settled on Reiko.

Captain Imaizumi paused and swallowed. His angular Adam's apple jerked up and down in his throat. “They found Otsuka's body.”

“Otsuka's body?”

“A call just came in from Ikebukuro. They found him in an empty music venue. I don't know the details, but I'm guessing that's where he'd arranged to meet Lieutenant Kitami. Otsuka was shot—”

Reiko didn't wait to hear any more. She broke into a run. Imaizumi stepped forward, blocked her, enfolded her in his arms, immobilized her.

“Himekawa, no. You can't.”

“Let me go,” she raved. “I've got to go.”

“You can't. Ikebukuro is getting Kusaka to handle things. Just because Otsuka's a cop doesn't mean that procedure can go out the window. Even if you went, they wouldn't let you do anything.”

Reiko shook herself free of Imaizumi's grip.

“Otsuka was my man. Why bring Kusaka in?”

Reiko tried to push past Imaizumi. She closed with him, and they grappled. She was like a rebellious daughter fighting with her father to leave home. It was only when Kikuta and Ioka joined in and got Reiko in a shoulder lock that she began to calm down.

“Lieutenant, I know how you feel, but you've got to get a grip.”

“The captain's right. You've got to stand back and let Kusaka handle this one.”

Reiko, who was unable to move, could only moan feebly. “Why Otsuka? Why him?”

She couldn't imagine why Otsuka would have been killed, let alone shot. It was simply incredible. She'd said good-bye to him on the train that morning. Otsuka, who was with Kitami, got out onto the rush-hour platform and disappeared into the surging crowd without looking back. Was that the last time she'd ever see him?

Otsuka had joined Homicide after Reiko, which made him the only person on the squad who was incontestably her junior.

It was like Otsuka was her kid brother. She only had a sister; she had gone to a women's college; her subordinates at Traffic had all been women. A male subordinate younger than she was a novelty. In her mind, her squad was a family, with Ishikura as the father, Kikuta as the big brother, and Otsuka and Yuda the baby brothers. Otsuka was only her junior by a whisker, and as they'd gotten to know each other better, he'd started teasing her a little—still, she knew that he was as rock-solid and reliable as if he were her real brother. If anything, his plodding and methodical approach made him stand out at Homicide where brilliance was in over-supply.

I will not cry.

That was the one thing Reiko would not permit herself to do on the job.

*   *   *

Today turned into tomorrow, and it was half-past midnight when Lieutenant Kusaka came into the meeting room with a “Sorry I took so long to get here.” His usual overbearing, almost aggressive manner was nowhere to be seen, and he was a shadow of his normal self. Normally, he and Himekawa were at one another's throats. But a detective from Unit 10—Kusaka's unit—had been killed. That was all that mattered.

“Thanks for coming,” said Captain Imaizumi gloomily.

“Himekawa?”

Reiko did not reply.

She had a pathological dislike of Kusaka. The first thing to turn her off him was his physical resemblance to her rapist. Beneath a receding hairline, he had big bug eyes and thin, cruel-looking lips. The likeness was close enough to revive the dark memories that still festered inside her.

She'd managed to get used to his appearance, but working with him made her dislike him even more. Kusaka sifted through the crime scene, the physical evidence, and the testimony with extreme thoroughness. His investigations were fanatically scrupulous and one hundred percent by the book. He marched around Tokyo like a martinet on parade, sucked up information like a robot vacuum cleaner, and typed up his reports like a data-entry professional. Reiko despised his whole mechanical approach.

As a person, Kusaka wasn't devoid of feeling. Reiko's prickly attitude had irked him once too often, and he started to provoke her deliberately. They were always at loggerheads.

Today, though, was an exception.

“I'm really sorry about Otsuka,” Kusaka said sympathetically. “I always thought he was the most promising member of your squad.”

His words did not register. Nothing felt real to Reiko anymore. She had the strangest sensation, as if she were floating off into the sky—or drowning.

She'd broken into a cold sweat when she got the news of her mother's heart attack the other day, but this was a thousand times worse. For the first time, one of her direct colleagues had been killed. The rest of her squad might well be in danger; she might be in danger. It brought it home that being a detective was a dangerous job, with death always lurking around the next corner.

She felt quite helpless. The everyday volume of work and her smugness at making lieutenant had deprived her of a basic sense of danger. Tamaki had said something about her having changed as a person. Was she a failure not just as a daughter, but as a cop too?

“Tell us what happened,” said Captain Imaizumi.

Kusaka gave a curt nod. “We found Otsuka's body in an empty building that used to house a live music venue called Rockman. The bullet was a 9mm Parabellum. A single shot. It entered the left eye and exited through the middle of the back of the head. As far as we can tell, the perpetrator left nothing behind. Ishii of Unit 6 is setting up a task force to work on this. They will need to interview you, Captain, and you, Lieutenant Kitami, tomorrow morning.” He paused. “Anyway, Otsuka seems to have crawled about thirty meters across a dark room and pushed the back door of the building open. It's incredible. His hands were cuffed behind his back and his head half blown off, yet he managed to squeeze halfway through the door before he died. Someone from the pub opposite spotted him and called it in. If he'd not made it to the outside, there's no way we would have found him.”

Kusaka glanced at Reiko.“The guy had guts. He was a true cop.”

Reiko pictured Otsuka crawling through the darkness with his hands cuffed, his left eye gone, and his head covered in blood. It was too horrible. She shook her head to drive the image from her head.

“Nothing else?” asked Imaizumi.

Kusaka grimaced. “One odd thing. We found Otsuka's badge and all the other stuff you'd expect him to have on him at the crime scene. Among his effects, though, there was an ATM transaction slip. At lunchtime yesterday—one p.m., to be precise—Otsuka withdrew two hundred and forty thousand yen from his Police Credit Union account, but his wallet only contained thirty-six thousand yen in notes, plus a little change. We couldn't find a receipt to help account for the missing two hundred grand.”

Imaizumi looked at Kitami meaningfully. The young man inhaled sharply. “Otsuka did go to an ATM after lunch, and he didn't spend any money between then and five o'clock, when we separated.”

Captain Imaizumi crossed his arms.

“Two hundred and forty thousand yen, eh,” he grunted. “What would he need that kind of money for?”

Kusaka cocked his head. “It's a decent sum, but not a huge one.”

“I think it's fair to assume that the money had some connection to whatever he went off to do by himself.”

“Agreed. But the money might have had nothing to do with the investigation. Is there any chance that Otsuka was being blackmailed?”

Reiko got the impression that Kusaka's question was directed at her.

“I … uh … really don't…”

She was disgusted at her own incoherence. Even Kitami was keeping it together better than she was.

“Otsuka went off on his own to pay that money to someone.…” said Captain Imaizumi, looking around the circle for suggestions. No one said anything.

“Himekawa.” Kusaka's tone was almost creepy in its gentleness. “No decision's yet been made as to whether I'll help the Ikebukuro task force or come here to reinforce you and your squad. I'm at your disposal. Whichever assignment I get, I'll coordinate with you. I need you to pull yourself together and catch this perpetrator with your usual speed. We don't know if Otsuka's shooter is connected to your ongoing investigation here, but catching him is the best tribute you can pay your dead comrade. Are you listening, Himekawa?”

Reiko couldn't bring herself even to nod in reply.

I know all that. Spare me your stupid lectures
.

Why Otsuka, of all people?

She couldn't bring herself to think about tomorrow, about the investigation and the task force that was being set up in Ikebukuro. The only thing she could feel was the awful reality of Otsuka's death: the fact that she had to go on living in a world where a man on her squad had been killed. The thought of it spread slowly through her like aching poison in her veins.

Kusaka picked up his briefcase, then turned back to Reiko as though he'd just remembered something.

“Be careful about Stubby. A dead copper means no more to him than a dead cat. The state you're in now—he'll wipe the floor with you.”

Reiko still said nothing. Eventually, with a nod at Captain Imaizumi, Kusaka stalked out of the room.

 

6

TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 11:30 A.M.

Katsumata sat alone in the sauna, deep in thought. Word of Otsuka's death had reached him the night before. Someone at the morning meeting had suggested that perhaps his murder had nothing to do with the Kanebara-Namekawa case. Katsumata wasn't buying it. His take was that Otsuka had found out something connected to the case that he wasn't supposed to find out—and had paid with his life. The ¥240,000 he'd withdrawn from the PCA Bank was obviously significant.

What was that Otsuka kid up to?

Someone had floated the possibility of blackmail. That was downright silly. Otsuka wasn't blackmail material—and that wasn't a compliment. The guy wasn't into anything big enough to blow back and hurt him.

For a detective, having enemies came with the job. Nobody
liked
being investigated. And the people you arrested and sent to jail were all going to get out eventually, even the murderers—at least, the ones who didn't get the death penalty. It was a thankless task: the better you did your job, the more dangerous enemies you ended up with.

Katsumata had consulted Otsuka's file. The man had never put a hardcore villain or murderer behind bars. Maybe someone from a whole other part of his life was extorting him, but no, the whole thing—the idea of his being blackmailed and then withdrawing money and going AWOL to pay someone off when he was still on the job—didn't fit with his character. Besides, ¥240,000 was an unconvincing, half-assed amount of dough.

Still, the guy must have been killed for something.…

It had been a long time since Katsumata felt sorry or angry about fellow cops who were killed in the line of duty; his main concern was to avoid the same fate himself.

That's why I'm taking this little break
.

The whole sauna—the benches, walls, ceiling—was made of Japanese cypress. Since it was a weekday morning, Katsumata had the whole place to himself.

Katsumata's personal responsibility was the investigation of Yukio Namekawa, the adman, but so far all their interviews had led nowhere.

At one recent task force meeting, another investigator reported finding a pattern of monthly withdrawals from Taiichi Kanebara's bank account: ¥100,000 on the Friday immediately preceding the second Sunday of the month. The logical conclusion was that it was the price of a seat at the murder show. The whole Strawberry Night murder show theory was getting more credible all the time.

Regrettably, his guys hadn't been able to find a similar pattern in Namekawa's accounts. Since the man lived large, it was much harder to pinpoint the movement of a modest sum like ¥100,000. Katsumata felt that of the two cases, he'd got the shit end of the stick.

Well, I've planted the seeds. There's no point in worrying
.

The proverb about “all things come to him who waits” flashed into his mind. He decided to lie down and do some serious sweating.

He had swung one leg up onto the bench, when he noticed someone peering at him through the little window in the wooden door. Another person coming in wasn't going to stop him having a nice lie-down. The door swung open just as Katsumata lowered his back onto the hot dry bench, and a man came in accompanied by a draft of cool air.

If this is the same guy who whacked Otsuka, I'll be in trouble
.

Katsumata quickly swung himself back upright.

“Oh, Lieutenant, fancy bumping into you here!”

The voice caught him in the stomach. And the fellow hadn't even bothered to cover himself with a towel.

“
You!
”

“As God made me.”

Ioka stood before him, stark naked.

Katsumata's designated partner changed every day. Today his partner was this Ioka character. Ioka had been Reiko Himekawa's partner until the day before. Why he'd been saddled with him today was one of life's mysteries. Captain Imaizumi had brought Ioka over after the morning meeting and announced, “You'll be working with Senior Officer Ioka today.” All the senior officers were particularly grim at this morning's meeting. Director Hashizume ordered that, after Otsuka's murder, everyone on the team would start carrying a gun while on the job. Right now, there weren't enough at precinct headquarters to issue them to the TMPD detectives, but the precinct officers they were partnered with were required to check out a sidearm. When Imaizumi declared Ioka would be his partner, his tone didn't invite discussion. Katsumata wasn't much bothered by who his partner was; he just didn't like it when they managed to track him down when he thought he'd shaken them off.