The Cloud Pavilion (12 page)

The sound of children laughing enlivened the private chambers of Sano’s estate. In the main room, Reiko chatted with her friend Midori, who was Hirata’s wife, as Akiko played with Midori’s little girl and boy. The children turned somersaults across the floor. Servants cleared away the remains of the evening meal.

“Take it easy,” Midori cautioned the children good-naturedly. “You’ll get dizzy and throw up.”

Masahiro lay on his stomach beneath the lantern, writing a lesson assigned by his tutor. Reiko peeked over his shoulder. He didn’t need her to supervise his homework, but she enjoyed seeing how good his calligraphy was, and how well he expressed his ideas, even at such a young age. She smiled proudly, enjoying the peaceful, cozy evening.

The rain had stopped, and the open windows let in the cool, damp breeze that blew in from the garden, where crickets chirped and cicadas hummed in rhythm to the drip of water from the trees. Frogs sang in the pond. The garden was radiantly silver with moonlight. Life was good tonight, Reiko thought.

Sano entered the room. “Papa!” cried Akiko.

She ran to him, and he lifted her onto his shoulders. Masahiro jumped up and said, “Look at what I just wrote.”

As Sano read and admired Masahiro’s composition, Reiko took pleasure in the company of her family. She was glad to see Sano, for she was bursting with questions about his investigation and eager to tell him what she’d learned.

She was also relieved that he’d come home safely. She still felt a lingering anxiety from the dangerous days when they’d been threatened by war at every turn.

In walked Hirata. His children clung to his legs, and he trudged under their weight while they rode and cheered. Midori greeted him, smiling and giggly. Reiko knew they’d had marital troubles in the recent past. Hirata had been gone for the better part of five years, pursuing his mystic martial arts studies, Midori had suffered from his absences, and they’d grown apart. They’d since reconciled, and Reiko was happy for them. She wanted to enjoy the peace, however long it lasted.

“Have you eaten yet?” she asked Sano and Hirata. “Are you hungry?”

“I forgot to eat, I was so busy,” Sano confessed.

“Same here,” Hirata said.

“Oh, you men,” Midori chided. “If it weren’t for us, you’d starve to death.”

Reiko ordered the servants to bring food. She made hot tea on the charcoal brazier and served cups to Sano and Hirata.

“Any luck today?” Sano asked Hirata.

Midori glanced at Reiko. Both women knew that talk about serious subjects was coming, and they didn’t want the children to hear. “It’s time for us to go,” Midori said.

Her children groaned and protested. Hirata said, “I’ll be home soon and tuck you into bed.”

“Come along,” Midori said, and departed with her family.

The nurse led Akiko away. Masahiro picked up his things and followed without argument. Reiko was surprised. He’d been so interested in the investigation that she’d expected him to beg her and Sano to allow him to stay and hear about it. She hoped he was outgrowing his penchant for detective work.

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” she said to Sano and Hirata. “What happened?”

“I went to see Jirocho,” said Hirata.

“The gangster?” Reiko had heard about him from her father, Magistrate Ueda, in whose court Jirocho had appeared more than once. “How is he involved in the kidnapping?”

“There were two other women kidnapped before Chiyo,” Hirata explained. “One is Jirocho’s daughter.”

“Is her case related to Chiyo’s?” Sano asked.

“I don’t know. Jirocho wasn’t very cooperative. He wouldn’t tell me anything.” Hirata described his conversation with the gangster boss. “He wants to handle the case himself.”

Concern showed on Sano’s face. “So does Major Kumazawa. I talked to him today. He’s not happy with my investigating two other crimes that we don’t know for sure are related.”

Reiko was offended that Sano’s uncle would criticize Sano’s work. To ask a favor after all these years of family estrangement, then object to how it was carried out! But Reiko kept silent. She didn’t want to fan the fire that was obviously heating up between Major Kumazawa and her husband.

“Did you have any better luck with Fumiko?” Sano asked.

“Even worse.” Hirata reported that her father had thrown the girl out and she was living in the marketplace.

“That’s awful!” Reiko exclaimed. All day she’d felt bad for Chiyo. Now she deplored that a young girl’s life had been destroyed. Which was crueler, the rapist or society?

“When I tried to talk to her, she tried to stab me, and then ran away.” Hirata sounded rueful. “But I did turn up a witness—the man who found her by Shinobazu Pond. He heard an oxcart.”

Sano nodded, gratified. “Maybe it was the same one that transported Chiyo.”

“Speaking of oxcarts,” Detective Marume said as he strode into the room with Fukida, “we went to the stables. The man in charge says there weren’t any oxcarts assigned to work in Asakusa on the day we found Chiyo there—or on the day she was kidnapped.”

“Whoever drove that oxcart, he wasn’t there on legitimate business,” Fukida said.

“We spent the rest of the day trying to track down drivers who hadn’t been where they were supposed to be,” Marume said. “But—” He turned up his empty palms.

“Maybe we can narrow down the search,” Sano said. “Hirata-
san
, did you get a description of the driver who was seen near Shinobazu Pond?”

“No. The witness didn’t see him. But he said it could be someone who’d been working in the vicinity—a fellow about twenty-five years old, with two teeth missing.”

Sano frowned as he drank tea and pondered.

“But that’s good news, isn’t it?” Reiko said. “Now you have an idea of whom to look for.”

“The problem is, I got a description of a suspect, too,” Sano said, “and mine doesn’t match Hirata-
san
’s.” He told of his trip to Z
j
Temple district. Reiko was aghast to learn that the third victim had been an elderly nun. “My suspect is a big, muscular man in his thirties, with a shaved head, an unshaven face, and a scab on his cheekbone. The novice who saw him outside the convent didn’t mention any missing teeth.”

“We could have two or three different criminals,” Hirata agreed. “What did the nun say?”

“Nothing, unfortunately.” Sano explained that she was apparently so distraught that all she did was pray.

At least Chiyo still had her wits, Reiko thought. But that was a mixed blessing. Chiyo couldn’t escape her misery by withdrawing into religion.

Sano asked Reiko, “Did you learn anything from Chiyo?”

Reiko felt his hope. “I’m sorry I have so little to report.” She told them about the man at the shrine who’d called to Chiyo for help. “But Chiyo doesn’t remember actually seeing the man. She does remember what he did to her.” Reiko described the bites on Chiyo’s breasts, how the man had suckled on her and called her “dearest mother, beloved mother,” and the threats he’d made against Chiyo and her baby.

Sano shook his head in horror and disbelief. “Chiyo didn’t see him while all that was happening?”

“No. I think he wore a mask.” Reiko explained about the demonic face and the clouds Chiyo had seen, or imagined.

“It sounds like she was drugged,” Sano said.

“That’s what I thought,” Reiko said.

“When the mind is disturbed, it can play tricks on itself, with or without drugs,” Hirata suggested.

“By the way, Chiyo is still at her father’s house. Her husband has cast her off,” Reiko explained.

Sano looked disturbed but not surprised. “As if she hasn’t suffered enough already.” Setting down his tea bowl, he added, “We’ve covered a lot of ground, but we only have an oxcart that might or might not be involved, and descriptions of two suspects who might or might not be the culprits in any of the kidnappings.”

“I started a search for mine,” Hirata said.

“So did I,” Sano said. “I sent my whole army out on the street to post notices and circulate my suspect’s description.”

“I hope it works.” But Reiko knew how many men among Edo’s million people probably fit those descriptions. Personal regret weighed upon her. “I wish there were something more I could do.”

“There is,” Sano said. “Talk to Chiyo again. Maybe she’ll remember something else. And I want you to interview Fumiko and the nun. Maybe you can get more information from them than Hirata and I did.”

For a brief moment when the sun ascended over the hills outside Edo, the rooftops of the city gleamed bright as gold. Then clouds rolled down from the hills, chasing and overtaking the rays of the sun. Edo was cloaked in a silvery mist.

Inside Sano’s estate, Sano and Masahiro knelt opposite one another, some ten paces apart, in a shadowed courtyard. Each wore white martial arts practice clothes, his hand on the long sword at his waist. They sat perfectly still, their expressions serene yet alert.

Sano drew his sword. In one fluid motion, he whipped his blade out of its scabbard, leaped to his feet, and lunged. Masahiro followed suit. They slashed at each other; they parried and whirled, attacked, and counterattacked. Their wooden blades never touched, never made contact with their bodies. At last they retreated, sheathed their swords, and bowed.

“Your form is improving,” Sano said, “but you were slower than usual.”

Masahiro hung his head. “I’m sorry, Father.”

Sano disliked criticizing his son. That was why he’d hired a tutor to teach Masahiro. He remembered his own childhood, when his father had taught him swordsmanship, and how much his father’s constant, merciless tongue-lashings had hurt. He and Masahiro enjoyed practicing together; it was their special time to share during his busy day. But Sano couldn’t ignore his son’s faults.

Uncorrected, they might be the death of Masahiro someday. His own father’s stern discipline was the reason Sano had fought and lived to fight again.

“You weren’t paying attention,” Sano said. “If this had been real combat, you’d be dead.”

“Yes, Father, I know,” Masahiro said, chastened.

Sano was concerned because Masahiro usually took martial arts practice very seriously. He knew better than other children how crucial good fighting skills were.

“What’s the matter?” Sano said.

“Nothing,” Masahiro said, with a haste that aroused Sano’s suspicions.

“Is something on your mind?”

Masahiro fidgeted with the hilt of his sword. “No.”

The gate opened, and Detectives Fukida and Marume appeared. “Please excuse the interruption, but there’s good news,” Fukida said.

“Can I go now, Father?” Masahiro said.

Sano studied his son’s eager, nervous face. Masahiro was normally enthusiastic about their sessions and reluctant for them to end. His behavior today puzzled Sano.

But Sano said, “All right,” and didn’t press for an explanation. His own father had made him practice for long hours every single day. He’d often wished for time off to play with other children, wander the city and see the sights, or simply do nothing.

Masahiro hurried off. Sano said to the detectives, “What is it?”

“We just went back to the oxcart stables,” Fukida said. “We asked the boss if any drivers fit your description of the man from the convent. He knew of one.”

Hopeful excitement rose in Sano. “Good work. Where is he? Have you arrested him?”

“Not yet,” Fukida said.

“He’s working right near our doorstep,” Marume said. “We thought you’d like to be in on the action.”

Before Reiko left home, she stopped at the kitchen, where an army of cooks prepared food for the hundreds of people who lived in Sano’s estate. Cooks slung vegetables and fish, grilled, stewed, and fried amid a din of cleavers chopping, pans rattling, and hearths roaring. Powerful aromas of garlic and hot oil permeated the steam from boiling pots.

Reiko packed fried dumplings stuffed with shrimp, grilled eel, raw tuna strips fastened to rice balls with seaweed, noodles with vegetables, and cakes filled with sweet chestnut paste into a lacquered wooden, compartmented lunchbox. She filled a jar with water, then carried the feast to her palanquin. She climbed inside and said to the bearers, “Take me to Z
j
Temple district.”

After hastily changing his martial arts clothes for his regular garments, Sano donned his swords, mounted his horse, and left his estate with his detectives. They stopped to fetch Hirata on their way out of the castle. Marume and Fukida led the way through the northwestern gate. They brought their horses to a stop on the avenue that circled the castle. The avenue separated Edo Castle from the
daimyo
district, where the feudal lords and their thousands of retainers lived in vast compounds. Traffic that consisted mainly of samurai on horse back avoided the roadside by the castle, where piles of rocks, scrap lumber, and dirt overflowed into the street. Sano looked up at the construction site.

It was a dilapidated guard turret atop the wall, partially demolished, its upper story gone. Laborers hacked at the remains with pickaxes. They dropped the debris onto the pile on the roadside below, where two pairs of oxen, each yoked to a cart, stood patiently, tails swishing off flies. The two drivers—men dressed in short indigo kimonos and frayed sandals—loaded the debris on their carts.

One man was big, muscular, in his thirties. He wore his hair shorn down to a black fuzz on his scalp. His face sported several days’ growth of whiskers. As Sano rode closer, he saw the large, pale scar on the man’s right cheekbone.

“It looks like the man that the novice at the convent saw,” Sano said.

The man spoke to his fellow driver, who grinned.

Hirata, riding beside Sano, said, “Look at the other fellow. He’s younger and has two teeth missing from the right side of his mouth. That’s my suspect.”

“That’s why a different man was at the scenes of two different kidnappings,” Sano said. “We haven’t got two separate criminals. They’re a team.”

“What a piece of good luck, finding them together,” Marume said as he followed with Fukida.

When Sano and his men approached the oxcarts, the drivers spied them. The humor on their faces turned to caution, then the fear of guilty men cornered by the law. They dropped the timbers they’d lifted. They both jumped in one oxcart, and the big man snatched up a whip.

“Go!” he shouted, flailing the oxen.

The oxen clopped down the avenue, dragging the cart filled with debris. Workers on the turret yelled, “Hey! We’re not done. Wait!” Sano and his men surged forward in pursuit. The driver with the missing teeth shouted, “Faster! Faster!”

But the heavy cart was no match for horsemen. Sano’s party quickly caught up with it. The drivers jumped off the cart and ran.

“Don’t let them get away!” Sano shouted as the drivers fled through the crowd and people swerved to avoid them.

Hirata leaped from his horse, flew through the air, landed on the younger man’s back, and quickly subdued him. Marume and Fukida rode down the other man. When they caught him, he punched, kicked, and thrashed. By the time they’d wrestled him to the ground, they were panting and sweating.

From astride his horse, Sano surveyed his captives. “You’re under arrest,” he said.

“Didn’t do anything wrong,” the big man protested, his scarred cheek pressed into the mud.

“Neither did I,” said his friend, pinned under Hirata.

“Then why did you run?” Sano asked.

That question stumped them into silence.

“Well, well,” Marume said, “our new friends don’t seem to have a good excuse.”

Reiko rode in her palanquin, accompanied by Lieutenant Tanuma and her other guards, along the misty streets of the city. Peasants on their way to work avoided soldiers on patrol. Peddlers selling water, tea, baskets, and other merchandise hawked their wares. Neighborhood gates slowed the crush of traffic. Shopkeepers arranged their goods on the roadside to catch customers’ eyes. At the approach to Z
j
district, pilgrims streamed toward the temple, while priests, monks, and nuns headed out to the city to beg. Reiko found the marketplace already crowded, with the children out in full force.

They’d emerged from the alleys where they slept at night. Ravenous, they begged at the food-stalls. Reiko was sad for the ragged, dirty boys and girls. She wished she could adopt them all. In fact, she had once adopted an orphan, the son of a woman who’d been murdered, but it hadn’t been entirely successful. The boy’s nature had been so affected by painful experiences that he’d not warmed to Reiko, despite her attempts to give him a good home. He shunned people, preferring to work in the stables with the horses. He would be an excellent groom someday, able to earn his living, if not overcome his past. Now Reiko watched for a twelve-year-old girl in a green and white kimono. Maybe today she could help another child in trouble.

Dogs barked. Reiko put her head out the window and saw, up the road, a pack of big, mangy black and brown hounds. They growled and lunged at something in their midst.

Feral dogs were plentiful in Edo. They came from the
daimyo
estates, where in the past they’d been bred for hunting. But the shogun, a devout Buddhist, had enacted laws that protected animals, forbade hunting, and prohibited killing or hurting dogs. He’d been born in the Year of the Dog, and he believed that if he protected dogs, the gods would grant him an heir. The result was that dogs proliferated unchecked. The
daimyo
still kept them as watchdogs, and when too many litters were born, they couldn’t drown the puppies because the penalty for killing a dog was death. Samurai could no longer use dogs to test a sword. Unwanted dogs were simply turned out to fend for themselves. They roved in packs, foraging and competing for food. They befouled the city and posed a danger to all, and too often their victims were the helpless children.