A Dog in Water (18 page)

That day I had gotten a call on the wireless while heading to a location with Kijima, my junior partner, in a cruiser. A girl, a second grader, had been kidnapped. A witness had seen a college student who lived in her neighborhood drag her into a car. Since we happened to be in the area, we rushed over to the college student’s apartment.

We knocked on the door and a young man responded. When I said I was with the police he attacked me with a kitchen knife he’d been hiding. I tussled with him and tumbled into the apartment. I drew my gun and ordered him to drop his knife, but he ignored me and lunged for Kijima who was still standing in the doorway.

The bullet fired from my gun pierced the man’s chest. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. The girl’s corpse was found in the back of the apartment. While my resort to firearms was ruled as appropriate, the fact that I had caused someone to die cast a dark shadow over my heart. After that, I quit the force.

Those were all downright lies.

Two months before that incident, when I was back at home for the first time in a while, my wife had spoken up. It was after we had finished dinner and I was drinking a beer and watching a cartoon with my daughter on my lap.

“I know I shouldn’t say anything when you’re only just catching your breath …” she started hesitantly, “but I don’t know when you’re going to get called out for work again.”

They had just dissolved one of the special investigation HQs that
afternoon. The perp had been apprehended eighteen days after the crime. Once a special investigation headquarters is established, criminal investigators rarely get to go home. They sleep in judo halls within their precincts and are only permitted to go home to pick up changes of clothing. It had been ten days since I’d seen my daughter.

I honestly wasn’t in the mood for any tiresome conversations, but these were the only times I could take in what my wife had to say.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“It’s about one of Mari’s friends.”

Hearing that I was a detective with the MPD, the mother of one of my daughter’s classmates had sought advice from my wife. They’d been receiving one weird letter after another, addressed to the daughter. Clearly written by an adult male, these declared passionate love for the seven-year-old girl. None of the letters had a return address or name.

At first the mother was merely creeped out, but after the second and third letters arrived she became frightened. She felt all but convinced that if this continued, something horrible would happen before long.

The woman had a suspect in mind—a young man she often saw hanging around a playground in the neighborhood. The man all the mothers of young children whispered about. She didn’t like the way he looked at her daughter.

Rumor had it the young man was a college student who lived in a two-story apartment building on a back road two streets down. Apparently he didn’t attend class all that often, as he was frequently spotted reading a book on a bench in the playground when the children tended to play there. She’d also passed him in front of her house more than just once or twice. She had no positive proof that it was him, but soon she was unable to think about the letters separately from him.

After she discussed the issue with the school, students were made to walk home in groups. PTA members took turns acting as crossing guards. She had her daughter carry an anti-crime buzzer. She also spoke with the police in her precinct, but as expected their reply was:
“Receiving a letter from someone you don’t know doesn’t amount to a crime.” A fifth, sixth and seventh letter arrived.

The nature of the contents grew more intense.
We had so much fun at the amusement park together. That ice cream we shared was so delicious
. Worlds of pure delusion were detailed in neat penmanship that filled the page. The gap between the handsome handwriting, which hinted at intelligence, and the content only served to further frighten the family.

“Can’t we do anything to help?” asked my wife. The look on her face made it seem as though she was taking this personally.

“Okay. I’ll think about it,” I answered. But I didn’t think there was anything to be done. Just as the precinct police had said, no crime had yet occurred. An adult falling in love with a little girl is not a crime. No matter how frightened the recipient may be, a love letter does not incur guilt. Even if they could stop him from sending letters, would that have any meaning? Everyone was worried not about the letters but what they portended.

Even so, I didn’t want to be the type of husband who ignored his wife’s requests. Moreover, as the father of a daughter of the same age, I had to avoid letting the situation develop into a tragedy. I was terrified of the psychological damage my daughter Mari would suffer should that come to pass.

The next day on a break from work I looked up the young man who was at the center of the rumors. I found his name and address right away. He was a med student at a private university in Tokyo. His father had a clinic in Gunma Prefecture, and his brother, six years his senior, also worked as a physician at a university hospital in the city. Just to make sure, I queried the police database but as expected he was spanking clean as to priors.

After that, the most I could do was to contact the local precinct and see if there was anyone I knew personally so I might explain the situation and beg them to step up their patrols. A mere consolation.

A few days later, an entire family was murdered in Setagaya, and I was assigned to the special investigation HQ set up in Seijo Precinct.
Once again I was kept away from home for days on end.

We had mountains of evidence but were failing to close in on the perp. We couldn’t even determine if it was a grudge-based killing or just a random act of violence carried out by a stranger. All the investigators spent each day running around. My wife’s request nagged at the edge of my thoughts but I didn’t have the time to act on it. To begin with, there wasn’t much I could do.

The case dragged on without any satisfactory developments for nearly two months. A cloud of impatience cast a pall over the investigation HQ. At some point I stopped remembering my wife’s request.

Then that day came …

My wife called me on my cell at a little past six in the evening. I was in a cruiser with Kijima, driving along the Koshu Speedway, going from store to store to track down the sales route for shoes that matched footprints left by the culprit in the victims’ home.

“Sachi is missing.” The girl who was getting harassed by those letters. My wife’s voice was trembling.

It was a Saturday. The girl had come home from school then gone out again, leaving her backpack behind. Her family hadn’t been home. When her mother returned that afternoon, she got a phone call from the mother of one of her daughter’s classmates. Sachi was supposed to come over for a play date but hadn’t shown up. The mother was calling because they’d been waiting for a few hours and were worried.

Sachi’s mother immediately reported it to the police and contacted the school. She also sought help from other housewives in the neighborhood. My wife had called me as soon as she’d gotten word.

I gave Kijima a new destination—the apartment of that college student.

I had no proof but that was all that came to mind. I didn’t have a warrant, but I figured my only choice was to check him out.

“What’s going on?”

I had no answer for Kijima. I could only pray that the girl was safe. I prayed from the bottom of my heart that my fears were groundless,
yet I could already feel despair creeping up. And regret. What the hell had I been doing for the past two months? Knowing the girl was in danger, I’d failed to be of any use. Sure, I could make all kinds of excuses. But the emotions welling up in me at that point weren’t the sort that could be tamed with excuses. When I pictured the girl, her limbs were bound and her mouth gagged. I didn’t know what her face looked like. The only seven-year-old girl I knew was my daughter Mari. The girl staring up at me with fearful eyes and gnawing at the gag in her mouth had her face. My heart pounded at an alarming rate. It was a little hard to breathe. I felt like I’d heard my daughter screaming.

Suddenly the cruiser stopped.

“Here we are.”

I opened the door before Kijima finished speaking. I jumped out of the car and headed towards a room in the back of the first floor of the apartment building. I could see the lights were on inside through a pane of frosted glass set into the wall next to the door. I crept closer, being careful not to make any noise, until I was in front of the door.

I listened for sounds coming from inside the room. My mouth had dried out. I couldn’t hear anything. I reached for the revolver at my hip. A tremor raced through my right arm. I didn’t know whether it was due to fear or anticipation. I clutched the grip of the gun and knocked on the door with my left hand. I waited for a response. A muffled noise came from within the room. I drew my revolver and knocked again.

“Wait, boss!”

It was Kijima. He was right behind me, apparently shocked that I had drawn my gun. I turned back and pressed my index finger to my lips.

Just then, I heard the door open. I hastily faced forward again to find a young man standing in the long, thin aperture. The security chain was still fixed to the door.

“What is it?”

He was looking at me with unfocused eyes. A scent filled my nostrils. The all-too-familiar odor of a crime scene. I struck the door chain
with my revolver. Cheaply-made like the rest of the apartment, the chain flew apart. I shoved past the man and made my way in.

The air hung thick with the smell of blood. I looked at the man. He was holding a knife in his right hand. The blade was covered in blood. I aimed my gun at him. He dropped his knife to the floor in a hurry. I walked to the room in the back.

Noise rang in my ears, oddly loud. My pulse hammered as if my whole body had become one giant heart. I stopped dead in my tracks once my eyes took in the sight of the room. It was carpeted with blue tarp, the kind used at construction sites. On top lay a girl stripped naked. Our eyes met. I stopped breathing, and a shiver ran through my body. She was sliced open from throat to lower abdomen, the center of her torso spread wide. Her organs were tidily lined up next to her body.

I slowly faced away. I’d seen something that I shouldn’t have. I’d seen the wreckage of the girl I didn’t save.

I looked towards the man. He smiled awkwardly. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was the shy smile of a young man whose hidden sexual fetish had been exposed. The contrast between the carnage on the blue tarp and the smile was dizzying.

Dust plumed from the man’s jersey, and blood spattered on the wall behind him. He collapsed from his waist and slumped against the wall. I aimed my smoking revolver at his face. A bluish-black hole opened into the base of his nose and sprayed blood onto the wall. His body fell sideways to the floor. Kijima was screaming something.

Satisfied?
I heard the girl’s voice ask. I knew it was hers without turning around. She was still looking at me, her eyes devoid of emotion, just quietly studying me.

I realized I would never escape her gaze for the rest of my life.

I came to, seized with an uneasy feeling. The familiar room was darkened, colors dull and faded, as if I were suddenly in a black-and-white photograph. I glanced at my wristwatch and saw it was nearly noon. I had passed out while drinking and woken abruptly. I hadn’t even
realized I was asleep. This had become my pattern as of late.

Sitting upright on the sofa made my stomach twist in discomfort. These past two days I had barely eaten anything that constituted a proper meal. The stomachache only worsened my anxiety. I thought I should try to eat something but had zero appetite. The more I concentrated on not remembering, the more I remembered what I was trying to forget.

I was subsisting on alcohol and morphine.
The highway to bumhood
, I thought with a smirk. I caught myself scratching my head. My scalp itched.

I realized I hadn’t washed my hair since after the operation on my left hand. Of course my scalp itched.
Was I only realizing this now because I ran into the girl from the salon yesterday?
I wondered idly as I picked up the vial of morphine.

When I opened the door, a middle-aged woman wrapping the hair of another middle-aged woman around perm rods greeted me with a dubious glance. The girl sweeping up hair clippings in the back rushed over immediately.

“Thanks so much for stopping in so soon,” she said with her ever-present charming smile. “This way.” She hung my coat on a hanger and guided me towards a hair-washing basin.

She wrapped a towel around my neck and covered the towel with plastic, leaned the chair backwards and brought the back of my neck to rest against the edge of the basin.

“You’re a detective, right?” came the girl’s voice right beside my ear. I couldn’t see anything due to another cloth laid across my eyes.

“Yes. You’re very well-informed.”

“My boss knows everything there is to know about the neighborhood.” Her voice, tinged with a hint of laughter, felt good to my ears. The warm water from the nozzle also felt good. “Do detectives always get this badly injured doing their jobs?”

It was when I replied “Depends on the detective” that I realized that I no longer wore a nose guard and didn’t need to worry about
keeping my face dry. My usual barber by the train station would have sufficed instead of this salon.

“How long until your hand is healed?” she asked, working a lather into my scalp.

“I’ve no idea.”

“Is it really bad?”

“The doctor told me to give up on my dreams of becoming a pianist.”

A pause stretched out.

“So even detectives like to tell jokes,” she said, a forced smile apparent in her voice.

“Not me. The doctor said that. Really,” I insisted, a little loudly.

She burst out laughing at that. After she quieted down, she suddenly asked, “Why did you decide to become a detective?”

“Are you interested in detective work?”