Chapter 012
THE PHANTOM OF her mother dissipated as soon as Shizue stepped outside.
But that feeling, the nostalgia, heartbreak, the extreme version of a small feeling—the sickly sentimental bathos clung to her. It was a feeling she’d never felt toward her actual mother, which made her all the more uneasy.
She was probably just turned around. Or else that smoky scent of incense had intoxicated her.
She drew in a deep breath of air outside. It was odorless but textured.
What am I doing?
Spores in the air traveled through her nostrils to the depths of her body, invading it. It was an awful image. It was wholly unclean. She had a mountain of work to get through, but Shizue was not doing anything one could call constructive. The reason for her indifference toward paperwork would not come to her. She decided for herself that she was mildly depressed.
It couldn’t be anything else.
Her actions were useless.
The request to investigate Yuko Yabe had already been accepted. Furthermore, the police had started investigating, probably. Yuji Nakamura’s physical protection, same thing. There was no need for Shizue to go out now. She just couldn’t fight the urge.
You could say.
That didn’t mean she would find anything out from meeting with Hinako Sakura, nor did it clarify matters for Shizue. It wasn’t as though Hinako had anything to do with the disappearance of Yuko, and this wasn’t necessarily a murder case. Hinako hadn’t even had real contact with Yuko. She’d just gone to Yuko’s residence to check on her after Yuko was absent from lab, making it no different from what Shizue herself had done the next day. In actuality, the police had not come to Hinako. They’d apparently determined from reading Kunugi’s report that the visit was unrelated.
But.
That was beyond consent to begin with. Actually, Shizue was confused by the mere fact of having met Hinako. It wasn’t so much that it had been spurred by a desire to make something happen—the “fieldwork” was just the reflection of Shizue’s inner consciousness telling her she didn’t want to get involved with any run-of-the-mill office work. She’d been looking for a means to justify escape from reality by doing something out of the ordinary.
Shizue was disgusted.
There was such a thing as being disgusted with such self-analysis, but it was more likely the influence of having lost the excuse to escape from reality.
There was an insect flying.
Shizue watched the bug’s path. Few things in the city actually moved.
Beyond it.
A solar car.
“Kunugi.”
Standing next to the solar car looking bored was Officer Kunugi. He waved a limp arm once and mouthed, without uttering, the word yo.
“What are you doing here…at the Sakura residence?”
“It’s not like that,” Kunugi said, rolling his eyes. “I need to talk to you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, well, the outside line indicated this address. It’s the fortuneteller girl’s address, isn’t it?”
“What’s the problem? Is this about Yabe?”
“It’s not like that.” Kunugi waved his hand again. “It’s a private matter.
Don’t take it the wrong way. It’s not like that either.”
“What do you mean by that?”
It was going to be too complicated to try to arrange an official meeting. Kunugi’s already nervous face became tenser still, and he sighed.
Aghh.
“Our generation…we still have complexes about gender relations. Even if it’s private, it’s still sexual harassment. I’m sorry. I just assumed if you came here it was because Yuko Yabe is still the subject of an investigation at the center as well. Is that correct?”
“Why are you asking?”
“It’s just, the police can’t find out what the center is up to, and I’m not asking as a public matter. You aren’t under any obligation to answer.”
“You’re talking in circles.”
Was he just being careful?
“Other people of your generation are a lot less serious than you. That’s why you’re so thoroughly hated.” Kunugi let out a weak laugh.
They hate me when I use my senses, so maybe that’s pointless.
“So what did you want with me?” Shizue said, cold. She felt more like herself. “I clearly just met with Hinako Sakura, but it was a private matter and unrelated to the center’s activities. They’re treating Yuko Yabe’s disappearance as a possible murder, so the investigation has been turned over to the police.”
“Is that so?”
“Of course, we’ve been instructed to cooperate in every way possible with the police investigation. That’s why we’ve sent them all the information we have on the kids, but we haven’t done any surveys on them individually, or their active social lives.”
“You’re talking in circles yourself,” Kunugi said. “You were concerned and came out here, then. Was it useful?”
“That I definitely don’t have to answer. It was a private meeting.”
“I guess. I’ve been left completely out,” Kunugi said, apathetic.
“From the investigation?”
“Worse. From the department. I’ve been asked to take a sabbatical.”
“Sabbatical…Are you being blamed for our incident?”
In which case Shizue wasn’t exempt from responsibility, though it’d be difficult for her to assume any if asked. When she asked if she was under suspicion Kunugi said It isn’t like that again.
“Technically yes, but it’s just words. I’d been eyed from the root. I’m a nuisance to them. I’m always somehow at odds with what the rest of the team is doing.”
“In that case…”
Why was he here? If it wasn’t to talk about his concerns, was he just here to complain?
“I’m just not satisfied with the explanation.” Kunugi sounded hopeless.
“Of what?”
“With the turn of events. Things just aren’t fitting, and at this rate it’ll all go bad. But I seem to be the only one thinking that way. But it’s because it’s gone unresolved we have a serial killer on our hands.”
“The police lose credibility.”
“I don’t care about that,” Kunugi said and turned around. “What’s credibility anyway? We weren’t trustworthy to begin with. Kids and families might trust you inherently, but the police, we’re just a bunch of functionaries. People hate us; they don’t depend on us. Besides, the only people we have real contact with are suspects and the associates of known criminals. We don’t even need to be human.”
Shizue was at a loss for a response.
What was trust? In today’s age trust had to be quantified. It would be measured with immutable numbers through a monitor, but it still had to be measured.
“Well then, what are you going to do?”
“I can’t do anything. I told you. I’m not satisfied with the way things have gone.”
Not satisfied.
That was one way of putting it.
It was how Shizue felt right now too. Mildly depressed. Not entirely satisfied.
“Wait. You’re not suggesting investigating this matter privately, are you, Mr. Kunugi?”
“I can’t. Off duty I’m a strictly monitored civilian. I have no authority.”
“But are your moral standards making it hard for you to remain quiet? Or are you just curious about what’s happening?”
Kunugi turned around again and lowered his brows. “I might be old school, but I’m not so old I borrow moldy concepts like ‘moral standards.’ Besides, I’m not curious about people dying. I might not have any authority, but I’m not totally useless. So I just need to, you know, get it. Just the stuff that’s not sitting right with me. It might just be for my own edification. And that’s why I had to talk to you.”
“That’s why you’re following me?”
“If I use my monitor to arrange a meet it leaves a record. I had to run into you without an appointment.”
“You’re really a pain, aren’t you?” Shizue said.
“Am I?”
“If I refused to see you and reported you to the police you’d be discharged. Those who are assigned authority by law can be prosecuted for forcing a personal meet without permission. It may be a soft offense, but I’m sure even off duty you’d be dismissed.”
“Report me then.”
Kunugi gave Shizue his monitor.
“I can report you anytime.”
Shizue pulled out her own monitor.
“I would rather make an appointment than report you. Thanks to your little organization of cops, I have been suffering a tremendous amount of stress and am mildly depressed. I was going to buy myself some high-end cuisine to alleviate this stress.”
Kunugi laughed weakly. “All I know are the police cafeterias. Three meals a day there. I had started to think about where I would eat off duty, but I didn’t get very far.”
Kunugi withdrew his own monitor and started typing into it. Searching for a restaurant?
“I’ll decide after I’ve eaten whether I’m going to report you or not,” Shizue said.
She’d never had any intention of reporting him.
Shizue’d inferred from his past reactions that if she told him he was bothering her he’d run away with his tail between his legs, and that would be a lot less work for her. But she didn’t tell him he was bothering her.
She wasn’t sure herself why not.
Maybe because this was her excuse to get out of reality.
That was probably it.
To be frank she didn’t really want to have dinner with this man. She just thought it would be better than being seen on the road talking to him. He was driving a different solar car from last time. The model was the same but not the smell. It was apparently a rental and not for public use. It was a privately rented car meant for public welfare. Another datum demonstrating that public authority types liked to use these government-issued machines for personal use.
Kunugi made reservations at a Japanese restaurant at the top of an antique real shop.
Japanese cuisine contained many dishes difficult to re-create with synthetic ingredients. Produce notwithstanding, animal proteins all had to be synthetically produced, and so a cooking method replicating “rawness” was near impossible.
That was why it was so expensive.
They were in a private room.
She could tell it was a nice restaurant because the cameras mounted on the walls weren’t visible. As a police measure, every real shop was equipped to record all actions by patrons. Especially in eating and drinking establishments, where people spent long periods of time, the area patrol would install surveillance units to record a facial image of everyone who came in. To respect their privacy their conversation wouldn’t be actively listened to, but the recorded images and voice data would be saved for a period of time, and if any patrons were later involved in a crime the recording would be released by the police to the courts.
In low-ranking restaurants the mics and cameras were exposed. You knew your conversation wasn’t being monitored in real time, but people were opposed to being recorded, and when you thought about the image of you eating being broadcast somewhere else, no amount of familiarity would reassure you.
A high-ranking restaurant recorded the same data.
“That must be it.” Kunugi pointed at the light fixture on the wall with his eyes. That was where the camera was.
“All right, I’m screwed. I’m going to have to eat something I’ve never had before. Could you order for me?”
Kunugi looked at the menu on the monitor and had it downloaded into his own. It was set up so that once you ordered, the cost of the meal would be withdrawn from the account of the monitor’s owner.
“Please don’t go overboard. If you don’t have enough funds to cover the food you’ve ordered, the difference gets deducted from me, since I’m eating with you.”
“It wasn’t like this in the past,” Kunugi said as he punched keys. “When I was young, it was all credit cards. But it got to be too much data to analyze, right? There was a time lag between the charge and the payment, which meant there was always a debt at some point. It used to be you bought confidence. These days you can’t confide in anyone. But seriously—what is this sashimi made of?”
“Sashimi is sashimi,” Shizue said, but Kunugi said, “It’s different. It used to be you cut up something that was once alive and then ate it. I think when I first joined the force we celebrated by eating the flesh of a real dead animal. That’s the last thing I clearly remember. All right, I’ll have the sashimi.”
Kunugi tapped randomly on the keyboard and smiled, proud of himself.
It was endearing. It had been a long time since Shizue felt endeared.
As soon as he’d inputted his order Kunugi’s posture collapsed.
“Do you think synthetic food really doesn’t have any effect on the human body?” he asked.
“A public authority like you shouldn’t be saying things like that.”
“Nah, the fact that the government approved it doesn’t necessarily make it safe. It’s tied in directly with the biofood industry.”
“Wouldn’t it be exposed by the media, then?”
“Impossible,” Kunugi said with a frown. “I’m an incompetent local functionary. They’re not letting me investigate missing people, much less murder cases. The biofood industry has rooted into everything from the Department of Food and Welfare and even central administration. With its growth in the past five years it has the whole world in its hands. They’re saying synthetic food products are what’s keeping this country’s economy afloat. No challenging that.”
“Then…you shouldn’t mix up your social standing. You’re being recorded.”
Kunugi huffed through his nose at Shizue’s criticism. “When I was young, the biofood industry was a venture business. It started taking off about twenty years ago. What was that all about? Suddenly everyone wanted it, and it became really popular. The best minds in business transferred to that industry.”
“There can’t be a single exact cause for that.”
“I dunno. I think the country gave them free rein.”
“That was because cloning technology had finally gotten a foothold.”
The moral standard for clone technology had also been established around that time, Shizue remembered. Shizue couldn’t be sure what exactly the moral code was on biocultures. Maybe they’d been groping for a different, more ethical methodology at the time.
Kunugi tilted his head. “That’s an alternative.”
“Alternative…”
“What I mean is, as far as I can remember, acceptance of cloning only became widespread after the boom went down in flames. Cloning used to be harshly criticized. What’s more, everyone was suddenly all for the databasing of everyone’s DNA.”
“Ahh.” Shizue had heard of that much too.
“There was also the brazen idea of using the DNA data registration system in professional discrimination.”
“Registration system…”
“Of course it was a national operation. I believe they got halfway through it. They knew it would be a definitive way to distinguish work classes. And much better than assigning numbers. Also really useful in criminal investigations. Though they’re adopting this at the police station. It’s more effective as evidence than fingerprints. If they have a prior record, DNA can find them. In other words it’s used in place of family registries and ID cards.”
“If I recall, weren’t Human Protective Services vehemently opposed to that?”
“Yeah. But it’s like you said earlier, it’s probably correct to assume they couldn’t analyze the data. I mean a private company could figure it out so easily.”
“You mean there were technical obstacles,” Shizue said.
“There were no problems biotechnologically. The issue was dealing with the information. It’s not like how we have these things now.”
Kunugi tapped at the monitor in his hand a couple times.
“There is an immense amount of information encoded in genes. Plus every individual is different, right? There just wasn’t a way to even properly organize the system to analyze DNA. Half the police budget alone has been spent on systematizing our information on ex-convicts. The DNA project was going to cover every single person in the country! Besides, can you imagine the shitstorm we’d be facing if there were an information leak? Think of how opposed you were to the idea of distributing private information on children. If you think about it—no, you don’t even have to think. The fact is, misuse of DNA information would lead to infinitely worse consequences. Half-assed data analysis could snowball into a national problem. That’s why the plan was dismantled midcourse. And at that point, the government got itself in debt with the industry.”
“Debt?”
“Yeah, they’d apparently spent an outrageous sum setting this up, but for nothing, right? The industry launched its own project of epic proportions specifically for that system, but since it was never adopted, their work was all for naught. Billions in investments were totally sunk. The citizens couldn’t be asked to shoulder the entire cost, naturally. They had no need to. The government had to fill the hole they’d created.”
Cloning was the solution.
Or so they say, Kunugi left implied.
“Medically speaking the deployment wasn’t so lacking. Tissue culture technology was far more advanced in other countries. That alone made it difficult for the government to pay out its debt. That’s why I’m convinced the laws encouraging the complete switch-over from animal to man-made animal protein five years ago are rooted in the failure of the government’s system. It passed under the auspices of animal protection or environmentalism, but the venture capitalists are the ones who grew fat from the plan.”
It was true that this country was a step ahead in man-made food stuffs technology.
What Kunugi said was entirely plausible.
Still…
Regardless of the backstory, the fact remained that the country was poised to adopt legislation banning the killing of animals for their flesh. There were more than a few voices of concern regarding the effects that synthesized food had on humans. Concerns were still expressed today, but even without them, humans had long ago lost the skills needed for self-sufficiency. Generally speaking, this was the most appropriate outcome for all, Shizue thought.
As they pondered these things, the synthetic sushi arrived.
It definitely looked high class. Aside from a few vegetables everything was synthetic, but the cuisine was real. The ingredients were still prepared and presented in a particular way.
Though of course Shizue couldn’t know how exact a replica it was.
The complete conversion to synthetic ingredients took place five years ago, but organic ingredients were unavailable long before then, and synthetic products had been popular for a while.
Kunugi popped a piece of sashimi into his mouth and then made a strange face.
“Is it anything like that sashimi you said you were fed when you first joined the police force?”
Kunugi swallowed the sashimi and muttered, Yeah…
“I don’t know.”
“The monitor tells me it’s got the exact same chemical makeup, and it’s been put together exactly the same way, and that the coloring and texture should be identical. I just can’t judge without having a real sense of the original.”
“It must be the same,” Kunugi said, bored. “But I’m not completely satisfied. Why is it so difficult to describe the sense of taste or smell? I just don’t know how to describe how this is different.”
Completely unsatisfied.
“More importantly…”
Shizue pulled chopsticks out of a sterilized paper sleeve.
“Did you have something you wanted to discuss with me?”
“Right,” Kunugi said and adjusted himself.
“Pardon the bulletin.”
“Well, let’s be frank. This is just going to make my food taste bad, so say it quickly. Put it this way. I’m…”
Busy, Shizue said only to herself.
“Actually.” Kunugi sat up. “You think I’m too informal in the way I talk, don’t you?”
“I don’t think that.”
But since he’d mentioned it, yes, he spoke too casually. Still.
She hadn’t noticed.
“Thank God. I only know how to talk this one way, you know? So yeah, I’ll be frank. I guess I have, you know…serious doubts about this serial killing investigation.”
It must have been difficult for him to explain.
“This time there’ve been four people killed in the vicinity. Actually, one of the murders took place farther away from the others, but they still think it’s one perpetrator. There have been five victims. They’ve all been female. The oldest was sixteen, the youngest thirteen. The sixteen-year-old had just had a birthday, and the thirteen-year-old would have been fourteen in another month. Suffice it to say they were all around fourteen or fifteen.”
Kunugi traced numbers on his plate with the tip of his chopsticks.
“The oldest one had been held back a year in communication sessions because of an illness. In other words all of the victims were in a section for fourteen-year-olds.”
Shizue had followed most accounts of the crimes following the media coverage, but this last detail was news to her.
“So right now that’s the only common denominator. But this Ryu Kawabata kid was a different gender and in a different session. Because he didn’t share this common denominator, he was excluded from the case. All of this is public information.”
“Not a confidential investigative matter.”
“No. Or what I mean is that the information the police have been able to gather on this case is no different from what the average person already knows. By the way, do you remember the serial killings from four years ago on the west side?”
These kinds of serial killings occurred every year. Shizue felt like she remembered something about the case four years ago, but she didn’t really know. She told Kunugi as much. As a matter of fact, the serial killings last year and the year before that were also so similar. It was hard to differentiate them.
“Last year six people were killed,” Kunugi said. “Two men and four women, and they were all between the ages of nineteen and twenty-six. But you see, they all had one thing in common. They were all employed by the same conglomerate. What’s more they were all employed at around the same time.”
“Scion Enterprises, right?” She’d forgotten about it but she’d heard this enough times to go practically insane at the time.
“That’s right,” Kunugi said. “The killer still hasn’t been caught. The investigation is ongoing, but no one’s sure it’ll ever be solved. There are no witnesses to date. The rest of this is off the record.”
“You’re still being recorded here.”
“As long as I don’t get violent or kill you or anything no one will listen to these tapes. They can’t. And the recordings are erased after a year. But get this, last year we had our sights on a real criminal suspect.
We were 80 percent sure, but we weren’t even able to arrest him in the end.”
“Why not?”
“He had an alibi. Of the six incidents, he couldn’t possibly have been at the scene of two of the killings.”
“Well then.”
“It’s no use. It doesn’t matter if you were 80 percent sure. You could have been 90 percent certain and it still wouldn’t matter. There is no gray area in these matters. You need to be 100 percent to be black. Anything less than that is white.”
Kunugi responded that they were 100 percent on four of the cases.
“But there were problems with two of the incidents, right?”
“What I’m saying is that because the six killings were determined to be part of one serial killing spree, the percentage of certainty went down. There was no need to aggregate the certainty like that. If we had just considered them separate cases, it would have been settled. This suspect was responsible for four of the six killings. There’s no doubt about that, as far as I can tell.”
“But that wasn’t the final determination.”
“Exactly,” Kunugi said, and tossed a mound of white rice into his mouth. “It had to be a serial killer, they decided.”
“I seem to recall this was a really drawn-out investigation, and if the investigation unit concluded as such there must be a reason. Either way, it wasn’t like one person made the decision.”
“Maybe. According to witness testimony and the circumstances of the scene, there were no accomplices. Just the one killer. If it really were a serial killing spree, an alibi would be hard to come by.”
His tone implied more.
“You’re suggesting that the events last year weren’t related? In which case, if the two killings for which your suspect had an alibi were unrelated, are you suggesting the last two cases might have been copycat killings?”
“That’s where I run into problems.”
“Problems?”
“It’d be simple if of the string of six killings the last two were different, and I wouldn’t be here talking about any of this. Unfortunately, this prime suspect’s alibis were for the third and fifth murders.”
“Third and fifth?”
“Yes. At the time the third killing took place, details from the previous two incidents hadn’t been released yet, nor had we determined that it was a serial killing. In other words a copycat wouldn’t make any sense.”
“Wouldn’t make sense…”
“Not at that point. But that notwithstanding, the second and third victims happened to share a lot in common. On top of which the guy we had pinned for the other four incidents had a serious communications handicap, making it impossible to ever come across the third victim. It’s improbable that our suspect had an accomplice.”
“Then he probably isn’t your criminal. There’s no logical consistency. Isn’t it a simple conclusion?”
“That’s what I thought too until I read the reports. But you see, the third and fifth incidents were truly different. From the other four. On paper they all had a lot in common. It looked like it had to have been one person committing all the murders. But…”
Kunugi set down his chopsticks and scratched his forehead with his middle finger.
“Hear me out on this one before you think I’m crazy.”
“I already do.”
“Right. That’s fine then. So outside of the third and fifth killings, the other four incidents all took place on butsumetsu.”
“Butsumetsu…”
“You don’t know? In the ancient Asian calendar there was a repeating cycle of auspicious days. Like a ‘lucky week’ every month. That’s the butsumetsu. If you look in any old almanac you’ll see it in there. It’s based on the day of the Buddha’s death.”
“I know what it is. I just remember it being meaningless.”
“It is indeed. Just from what I’ve read, there’s no basis for the worries of dyed-in-the-wool believers. Up until about ten years ago you’d see these butsumetsu dates still listed in calendars. People would plan things around them. Stupid things, like signing contracts and delivering shipments. They were planning dates by baseless barometers. You can’t call that a reasonable circumstance.”
“The baselessness of it is what allows you to make a value judgment, right?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kunugi responded, furrowing his brow.
Shizue said, “They’re divinations.”
“I suppose they are. No one believes this crap anymore though, which is precisely why no one noticed it.”
“You noticed. But then you said it’s only four of the six murders that took place on butsumetsu dates. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.”
A coincidence.
There are no such things as coincidences. Is calling it a coincidence an excuse? Hinako Sakura would know a lot more about this…Shizue found herself preoccupied.
“You’re probably right,” Kunugi said in the interstice in which Shizue was at a loss for words. “But that’s exactly why I think it’s so questionable. It screws with the story. But you know what else? Our guy actually screwed up. One of his victims was left alive.”
“Screwed up?”
“He didn’t get it done. He was arrested six days after the last killing.
He escaped while in holding, and when we caught him he had a murder weapon on him. And this is the thing. The sixth killing was supposed to look like an accident. The timing doesn’t match, but the four other killings, plus the one failed attempt, all took place on butsumetsu dates.”
“The butsumetsu.”
It was still unfamiliar to her ears.
Shizue started to empty her plates.
She wasn’t savoring the food so much as consuming it.
Because she was always thinking about something else.
“As I recall, there are six kinds of butsumetsu, right? Like, the daian day and yubiki day, etcetera. I don’t know any others, but…”
“You’re right. There’s also akaguchi and senbu. I mean, we still have a seven-day week named according to some weird mythology, don’t we? I think it’s the same thing. Just that with the six-day system each day meant something like ‘get stuff done,’ or ‘don’t do anything.’ You’re not supposed to do anything bad on the butsumetsu.”
In that case…
“There are many cases of crimes committed, repeatedly, on these dates. I’m sure it’s a case-by-case thing, whatever sets off these periods, but if, say, there’s a repeating six-day period of crimes, wouldn’t you forcibly have to commit the next crime on the same day later? Regardless of the butsumetsu? But it doesn’t work that way,” Kunugi said.
“The six-day cycle occasionally has to adjust over a day. It’s not always necessarily a six-day cycle. Plus this guy was a fanatic. For calendars. Actually not so much a fanatic as an obsessed collector. He collected calendars from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. The police just considered him a classic art collector, but I didn’t. He must have been looking at those calendars because he was curious to see how events of the past coincided with these auspicious dates. Comparing the events to their calendar years. Predictions in hindsight.”
“Compare?”
“Comparisons. Calendars are made before the dates come to pass, right? And old calendars went so far as to tell you which days were good and which were bad. He must have been studying up on whether bad things did indeed take place on those bad days and good things on good days. It got worse and worse.”
Bad things had to happen on bad days.
“You’re saying the butsumetsu killings are a self-fulfilling prophecy?”
That’s ridiculous.
“Isn’t it?” Kunugi said. “But…I think it’s the truth. In the end, people’s motives for killing each other are really trite, no? When it happens it’s always a big deal, of course. In the long history of humanity, an incalculable number of people have been killed, but how many of these murders seem justified when you hear the motive? Money, revenge…nothing’s really worth taking human lives.”
She couldn’t but nod.
He was absolutely right.
Murder sans motive had become a popular cliché sometime toward the end of the twentieth century. But it wasn’t as though motives for murder became more tenuous with time. Motives for murder had been lame since the beginning of time.
The value of human life was over-exaggerated in past arguments.
When you think of it that way, Kunugi started, and glared at the fish-shaped food product on his plate suspiciously, even though it had no bones.
“When you think of it that way, this guy would not commit any crimes on days that didn’t fall on the butsumetsu. It’s the daian,” Kunugi said.
“But the MO is otherwise identical, right?”
“The shapes and kinds of weapons used, the way the bodies were disposed of, and of course, the victims’ commonalities—these are all definitely related. However, if you look at the details there were things that didn’t correspond.”
“You’re talking about just the anomalies in the two cases you think were committed by a different culprit?”
“That’s right. You can distinguish the two cases from the other four with points of difference. Actually…”
Kunugi bit into the head of his boneless fish-shaped food. Then.
“Something’s missing,” he said.
“Missing?”
“Yeah, missing. With the third and fifth murders. There was an internal organ missing from each of them.”
“What?”
“Last year the case was brutal. The murderer took apart the insides of his victims, and the remains were well…very damaged. Scattered everywhere.
“We probably shouldn’t be talking about this over food,” Kunugi continued. “But…I’ve told you the worst of it, so I’m going to keep going. You see, there wasn’t a whole body’s worth of parts in the remains we collected from the scene. The liver was never found.”
“In just those two cases?”
“Yeah, just those two. But that any of them at all were missing livers…Anyway, we decided that a wild animal must have eaten it, but what’s a wild animal, right?”
“There are cats and dogs in Section C.”
“The bodies were found in Section B. There are no cats or dogs there.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.” Kunugi played with his chopsticks. “I have no idea. All I know is that these six murders can’t have been part of the same streak. There had to be, at the very least, two different sets of murders. That’s my opinion. It’s an opinion that got me reprimanded, but well, for what it’s worth.”
Reprimanded. Ishida had been saying something about that.
“I was reprimanded,” Kunugi said shamefully. “I was trying to be constructive, but I got the veto from on high. I was speaking out of line, disobeying the normal protocol for investigation, reading data outside of the case’s jurisdiction. I suppose I deserved to be scolded. I lucked out though. The old lieutenant didn’t want to touch any sort of controversy because he was up for a promotion. They just reprimanded me. In the end no one heard my theory.”
Kunugi pushed aside his flatware and leaned his face over the table.
“This time it’s in our jurisdiction.”
“Kunugi, you aren’t—”
“Am I wrong?”
“No, it’s not that. All we’ve said tonight is that these are not one string of murders. Last year’s cases are different. Still…”
Kunugi clasped his hands up behind his head and waited for Shizue to finish her thought.
“Including the discovery of Ryu Kawabata in the area directly adjacent to ours, there have now been six murders. As you said, the Kawabata case isn’t considered part of the serial killing. The reason being he’s the only male victim so far. Conversely, the other five are being treated as part of the same serial killing spree. But you’re asking whether that’s appropriate?
“In other words, the murders believed to be related aren’t, and the one murder believed to be unrelated is.”
“I can’t say anything about the Kawabata case.” Kunugi touched his monitor and turned up the AC. “But as it stands, the reality is that this one case stands out. What concerns me though is what these victims have in common. Is it truly just that they are all girls of approximately the same age who live near each other? Isn’t that too easy? There’s got to be another way to look at this. Once we figure that out, I think we’ll be able to fit the Kawabata case into this too.”
Kunugi was looking for some key concept to neatly explain all the murders. Something like last year’s butsumetsu theory.
There was probably a foreign idiom software for this. Certainly if you sussed out the rules a structure would appear. And if you had the structure, you had the translation and the definition.
But.
Shizue wondered if it could go that well. Unlike the imaginary space created by numbers, this guy, and reality, was full of impurities and discord.
Nothing could be predicted.
Nothing was going as planned.
Reality was something unusually scrambled and gross. It was an indefinite space without straight lines, a filthy world in which pure things could not exist. Even if you looked for something that happened to be beautiful, it was pointless.
Shizue started to realize that the idea that the world operated under one pretense was delusional.
“Do you have any clues?” Shizue asked, as Kunugi turned his head to the side.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“I’m not Ryu Kawabata’s counselor.”
“I know that. But your associates haven’t been very cooperative, and besides, I don’t know any of them. If I tried contacting them in private, I’d be reported in a heartbeat. Also…”
“Also what?”
“I think I have a key to the missing Yuko Yabe.”
“Key…”
“You said it before, but she might be the next victim. Wasn’t she into deformée characters?”
“What are deformée characters?”
“When I was a kid they were called comics,” Kunugi said in an unusually serious tone. “Before that they were called manga. In other words it’s non-real animation.”
Yuko Yabe wasn’t that into animation, as far as Shizue recalled. All she did remember was that Yabe’s room was filled with toy figures. When she told Kunugi all this he answered, “She was a collector, then.”
“I don’t think she was a collector necessarily.”
“But you gotta admit that these days you’d have to be collecting in order to find much of this stuff.”
“I remember them being things her guardians gave her. I don’t know if it was her father or mother, but I have it written down that one of them gave her these toys in her childhood, and that she kept them safe with her. Probably…”
Probably…
Her memory was hopelessly foggy. Diffuse. But Shizue did have some memory of hearing all this. If she looked at her counseling files, she’d know immediately. There were records of all conversations with the children.
Even if compressed, the record would be totally accurate. Memories were all converted to digits. That way they would never deteriorate.
It could even be duplicated.
“You should check with the data we just handed over to the police,”
Shizue said, but as soon as she did she went silent for a long moment. “But…you can’t.”
“That’s why I offered you dinner. All right, so Kawabata it is.”
“By the way, Kawabata’s optical, uh…”
“Animation,” Kunugi said.
“Its origin is the word animism, apparently. Because it’s similarly an image that shouldn’t move that does, as if possessed by its own spirit. I can’t remember exactly. Everything on our monitors is an image, and most of them move.”
“It might move but I didn’t say anything about fucking spirits,” the off-duty cop swore.
“Actually, the first victim was an aspiring character designer, and there’s record of her having exhibited at the D.C. Biennial to a lot of acclaim. And the second victim was connected to that character—what was it? It’s supposed to be the most popular anime character right now.”
Kunugi uttered a proper noun that rang an bell, but it wasn’t quite right.
She knew it was slightly off, but Shizue couldn’t definitively correct him either. It didn’t matter. It had nothing to do with this case.
“She was a regular on the fan site. The fourth victim was also a huge fan and even dressed up like the character. Made her own costumes and everything. The third victim was the one who got wrapped up in deformée characters. The other two had nothing to do with it.
“Ryu Kawabata is different too. In his case, he was into works from several decades ago. If I recall, he was into what I think was called cel animation. He did collect that. We’re talking about artifacts from over thirty years ago. Yuko Yabe also. Her collectibles were not from the present. Other than those two, we’re talking about three out of five likelihood. What do you think about that?”
Hmm. Kunugi let out a low sound.
“I know. I’m saying this knowing all that full well, but well…it’s as if wholly unrelated to the character, the other two victims are…”
“Like I said, they were missing internal organs,” Kunugi said, his dark expression drawn.