She had to have disappeared of her own volition. Where to? At that point, the words “Yuki’s condo” grabbed me again.
What if Juri had planned this scenario from the start?
She had gotten on board with my kidnapping game. However, she hadn’t been interested in becoming my puppet. She’d meant to disappear somewhere instead of going home once she’d gotten the money. But until she could find a permanent destination, she needed a place to hide away. She chose her friend’s condo. That was why its location had to be concealed from me. She thought that if I knew, I would come looking for her when I found out that she hadn’t gone home. Indeed, I went to Yokosuka.
With this theory, I at least had an explanation. But there was one point that still didn’t make sense.
If the theory was correct, she didn’t have to tell me about the existence of Yuki’s condo. Or was the part that she’d left a message on the answering machine true? No, even then, she wouldn’t have had to rush there. She could erase it at her leisure if she meant to use it as a hiding place later.
I must have been grunting noncommittally because Yamamoto stopped talking.
When I got back to the office and arrived at our floor, I was taken aback. No one was there.
“Huh, what happened?” Yamamoto said, also sounding confused.
But it was just our misunderstanding that the place had been vacated; everyone had gathered in one corner. There was a TV set there, but the screen wasn’t even visible to me thanks to the layers of people.
“Did something happen?” Yamamoto called out to one of them.
“Yeah, it’s intense. That rumor was actually true.”
“That rumor?”
“About Mr. Katsuragi’s daughter. They say she’s gone missing. And it’s been over ten days.”
“What?!”
Yamamoto pushed his way through. I followed him. Finally, I could see the TV screen. But there was just an announcer’s face informing us about a different case. It seemed the segment on Juri Katsuragi had ended.
The congregation around the TV started returning to their seats, musing about the whole thing.
“Work must be the last thing on Mr. Katsuragi’s mind now.”
“I thought it was weird for that man not to come to meetings.”
“Won’t Nissei’s stock go down again?”
“I wonder, did she just run away?”
“Let’s hope so. She hasn’t been murdered or anything, has she?”
The last, alarming speculation came from Sugimoto. I grabbed his shoulder.
“Hey, tell me the details. What’s up with Mr. Katsuragi’s daughter?”
Sugimoto looked at me with some surprise. “It seems she’s been missing since several days ago, and the police have begun investigating.”
“Investigating? What kind of investigation is this?”
“I don’t know. It’s probably showing on other channels.” Sugimoto went back to his seat like he couldn’t be bothered.
Ah, Yamamoto let out behind me. It seemed he’d been changing the channel busily, and a different announcer from before was displayed. Nissei Auto EVP’s daughter missing, the title said.
The female announcer reported pretty much what Sugimoto had told me. We have learned that Mr. Katsutoshi Katsuragi’s elder daughter, Juri, has gone missing. The Metropolitan Police Department and the Ota Police Station believe that she has been involved in a case and have launched an investigation—
Involved in a case?
What did it mean? Why didn’t they just say that it was a kidnapping? No, more importantly, Juri was missing. What in the world had happened to her?
Yet it was what followed the next moment that truly stunned me. A woman’s face appeared on screen.
It seemed to be a candid photo. Juri Katsuragi, the caption said.
The female announcer’s report continued. However, her voice didn’t reach my ears. If no one were next to me, I might have screamed at the TV screen. Holding back that urge took a great deal of effort.
The face of Juri Katsuragi on the TV screen didn’t belong to the Juri I knew. It was the face of a completely different person whom I’d never met.
18
I needed a drink, but I went straight home. If I got drunk carelessly, I might run my mouth about something I shouldn’t. I didn’t have the confidence tonight to keep my emotions under check.
Once I was home, I took out a bottle of bourbon and started drinking it straight. My heart was still thumping. Or maybe this was what they called a premonition. If that was what it was, it wouldn’t help no matter how much I drank.
The TV screen was burned into my mind and refused to go away. The face of Juri Katsuragi that had been displayed.
Who was that? Why was a different person’s face being presented to the public as hers?
But I kept seeing the same face on other news programs. If they had broadcast another person’s by mistake, they’d have corrected it by now.
In other words, that was Juri Katsuragi.
Then the person I spent several days with wasn’t Juri? Who was it, then? Why had she presented herself as Juri?
Was there any way I might ascertain if she had been the real Juri? Eventually I thought of one. Her voice.
In order to spy on the police’s behavior, we had used Hakozaki Junction. At that time, I had used Juri to manipulate Katsuragi. For grabbing the ransom money, too. Juri had spoken with Katsuragi. He hadn’t seemed to doubt that it was her. Even if the two women had similar voices, I didn’t think that a father would mistake his own daughter’s. Even if he had been at his wits’ end—and as far as I could tell, Katsutoshi Katsuragi hadn’t lost sight of himself. Down to just before his ransom money was taken, he’d responded to my instructions collectedly.
Then was the photo broadcast on TV wrong? Had Katsutoshi Katsuragi intentionally provided a different person’s pic? Why would he ever do such a thing?
No, that was definitely unthinkable. I wasn’t the only one tuning in. Juri’s acquaintances were, too. If the person in the photo were different, someone would call the station right away.
Juri. As in the first characters from “arbor” and “science.”
I recalled how she’d told me her name at the beginning. She’d definitely said so. Was that a lie, too? Had the lies started so early?
Who could that have been?
No matter how much bourbon I gulped down, I still felt sober. My pulse quickened, while I grew more and more unsettled.
I recollected the hours and days I had spent with her. It was a short time, but a lot had happened. We had played an audacious game, a staged kidnapping, to completion. What did it mean that I didn’t know my partner’s true identity?
That wasn’t the only thing I didn’t know. It seemed that somehow the real Juri Katsuragi had vanished the same night I had met the fake Juri. Where had the real Juri gone? Was the fake Juri running away from home coincidental or inevitable?
My brain was a disorganized mess. I couldn’t come up with a single logical answer.
I lost track of how much alcohol I’d imbibed. When I came to, I was lying on the sofa. I had left the light on, and the bottle of bourbon was on its side and empty. The sun was shining through from the other side of the curtain. I looked at the wall clock. It wasn’t even ten minutes off from the usual hour I woke up. It seemed ingrained habits didn’t break down even at a time like this.
I got up sluggishly. My head hurt horribly. My throat was completely parched. I went to the kitchen and pulled out Evian water and drank it straight out of the bottle. I felt dizzy and leaned on the refrigerator.
My eyes rested on the large pot that sat on top of the microwave. I recalled Juri had used it to make stew. The various things she’d talked about passed through my head. How much of it was true, which parts were lies? Or had it all been lies? As I was now, I couldn’t judge.
I went back to the sofa and turned on the TV. In the early morning, every station repeatedly broadcas
t the same news. As I watched absentmindedly, the case in question came up, too. Nissei Auto EVP’s daughter missing—now there was a question mark appended to the words. And beneath them: Running away from home?
And again, the photo of a girl I had never met before popped up. The missing Juri Katsuragi, it was captioned. There wasn’t anything new in the story. It seemed they hadn’t spoken to the Katsuragis. They must have been wary of approaching the family behind a leading corporate sponsor. There were signs the media were frustrated about not being able to obtain detailed information.
Perhaps the press hadn’t been told that it was a kidnapping. I vaguely saw why. The police wanted their blunder of losing the ransom to be kept under wraps. They probably thought that bit could wait until the culprits’ arrest. But to conduct an open investigation, they needed the mass media. Thus they had simply made it public that she was missing.
Starting with TV, the issue was how the press would cover it, I thought. They wouldn’t accept just being used. They probably had a hunch that this wasn’t exactly a missing person case. First, they would try to find out more about the Katsuragi household. It was a matter of time before Katsutoshi Katsuragi’s womanizing ways came to light. Once they learned that Juri wasn’t his current wife’s daughter, the daytime shows would have a field day. The stations would compete at the art of dishing out gossip without angering a leading corporate sponsor.
No—
Was that story true in the first place? The person who’d shared it with me was herself a fake. Yet, for a quick lie, it was well crafted. Irregular blood ties, a complex human tapestry—
It was then that a certain hypothesis came to me.
19
That afternoon, I went to Akasaka, to a café facing out toward Sotobori Street. About ten minutes past two, I saw Daisuke Yuguchi’s fat figure on the other side of the glass door. Yuguchi spotted me right away, waved his hand, and entered.
“Sorry for making you wait.”
“No, thanks for agreeing to see me on such short notice.”
Yuguchi worked at a TV station right nearby. He had graduated after me from the same college, but we had also worked together just once.
He ordered coffee, so I ordered a refill of mine.
After some small talk, I started on the issue at hand. “So, about the favor I asked for on the phone, did you find out anything?”
As soon as I said that, Yuguchi frowned. “It looks like my station is hard at it. But the Katsuragis and the police both have their guards up, and we haven’t dug up anything concrete.”
“But it’s not like all your info gets broadcast. Aren’t there some bits you just haven’t reported yet?”
If you know anything about the Juri Katsuragi case, please tell me, I had asked of him. Yuguchi hadn’t suspected me at all when I said I needed to know all I could in advance about whatever happened to the family of the EVP of our biggest client, Nissei Auto.
“The guys at the top of the news division might have heard something, but nothing’s come down to the lower ranks. Umm, you know the basics of the situation, right, Mr. Sakuma?” Yuguchi said as he pulled out a note.
“I know the gist of it. But just in case, do tell me what’s happened so far.”
“That’s fine. Umm, first, Juri went missing when…”
Yuguchi started reading his note out loud. There was nothing new in it, but I continued to feign interest. “How about a kidnapping? Could it be one?”
“It’s hard to say, but I doubt it,” Yuguchi replied rather confidently.
“Meaning?”
“This is just between me and you.” After looking around, he leaned towards me. “According to the press club guys, the Metropolitan Police Department’s abductions unit hasn’t mobilized. If it were a kidnapping, the investigation would have started when Juri was abducted about ten days ago, so there’s no way the press club guys wouldn’t have caught on. The MPD is definitely acting now, but it doesn’t seem like there are detectives at the Katsuragi residence keeping watch, for instance.”
“The MPD’s abductions unit didn’t act when she went missing? Are you sure?”
“Yes, that’s what’s being said.”
It felt like something was toppling over in my head. The MPD hadn’t acted? There was no way. This was a child of the Katsuragi family who had been kidnapped, so in fact it wasn’t inconceivable for them to have mobilized their investigative capacities on a massive scale. That couldn’t have avoided the notice of reporters covering the MPD.
If what Yuguchi was saying was true, there was only one possibility I could think of. Just as Katsutoshi Katsuragi had insisted, he hadn’t contacted the police. He’d done so only after paying the ransom. Yet Juri hadn’t come home, and he hadn’t been able to endure it any longer. It really seemed that way.
Why hadn’t he contacted the police? Was it because he thought that Juri would be in danger if he did and the kidnappers found out?
“The whole thing is a mystery,” Yuguchi continued. “According to our guys, Mr. Katsuragi reported it to the police only a few days ago. Everyone’s wondering why he didn’t do so immediately after she went missing.”
“And Mr. Katsuragi hasn’t given an explanation.”
Yuguchi thrust his bottom lip forward and shook his head. “No explanations, and he’s turned down all requests for interviews. The official statement is that there’s no need to talk about anything beyond what’s been reported.”
I growled and crossed my arms. Why hadn’t Katsutoshi Katsuragi sought any help from the police for the kidnapping? Did he believe he could just pay the ransom and get his daughter back? Did he decide that telling the police could wait until it was over?
I shook my head in my mind. There was no way. I didn’t think Katsutoshi Katsuragi, of all people, would succumb to threats. He was confident when it came to games. In a battle of wits with the culprit, he wouldn’t have thrown in the towel from the outset.
There was something here. And that thing had everything to do with Juri being a fake.
“Did you get any info on the Katsuragi family?”
“Oh, that wasn’t very difficult. They’d already looked into it.” Yuguchi pulled out a new note and placed it in front of me.
It had a list of names: Katsutoshi Katsuragi, wife Fumiko, elder daughter Juri, younger daughter Chiharu.
“He has another daughter?” I asked innocuously, glancing at the note.
“It seems that way. She attends a private high school. She’s a senior, I heard.”
“Senior…I wonder which school.”
“It was definitely—” Yuguchi gave the school’s name. It was a high school affiliated with a famous women’s college.
Asking just about Chiharu Katsuragi would have been strange, so I inquired about Juri and the wife as well. But Yuguchi didn’t have many details. I knew more than he did.
“The wife and younger sister must be so worried that Juri has gone missing,” I said.
“Apparently, the younger sister was quite shocked. She’s been bedridden since her sister went missing.”
“Bedridden? Chiharu?”
“Yes. Some of the press barged in on Chiharu’s high school to get her to talk about her family. But Chiharu had taken a sick day. She’s been taking time off for ten days now, so she must actually be sick rather than avoiding the press.”
I tried my best to keep a straight face, with Yuguchi there. I felt incredibly thirsty, so I finished my glass of water.
“Can I have this?” I reached my hand toward the note.
“Go ahead. But it must be really difficult for all of you, Mr. Sakuma. For a case like this to occur right before the Nissei Automobile new car campaign.”
“It does feel like a bad break.” I didn’t tell him I’d been taken off the project. I didn’t have any reason to.
I thanked him for doing this when he was busy, took the receipt, and stood up.
Exiting the café and hailing a cab, I gave my company’s addre
ss. As the car went out, I pulled out the note Yuguchi had just given me. Gazing at it, I changed my mind.
“Excuse me, driver, I have a change of destination. Please go to Meguro.”
“Meguro? Where in Meguro?”
I gave the name of a particular women’s high school. It seemed the driver knew it.
Naturally, it was the one Chiharu Katsuragi attended.
—
When the school was about a hundred feet away, I got out of the taxi. It seemed it was already past the final bell, and I saw gaggles of students heading home.
There was a small bookstore, so pretending to peruse a magazine, I kept an eye out for a high school girl I might talk to. The world saw this academy as a place for rich kids, but many had dyed hair and makeup done in the style of popular artists and didn’t seem any different from other girls their age. The school must have loosened its regulations.
After the stream of students had trailed off a bit, a pair of girls came by. Both of them had brown hair. They had well-formed but somehow vulnerable features; if they went to an entertainment district, they would get hit on at least once an hour. They were no doubt confident about their looks. I made my decision and approached them.
“Excuse me,” I spoke to them with a smile.
They both stopped walking and cast dubious looks at me.
“I’m not anyone to be worried about. It’s just that I do this type of work.”
The business card I brought out was for a rival station of Yuguchi’s. Faced with high school girls, there was no better weapon than working for the popular show XX TV.
Just as I thought, their expressions became curious and expectant.
“Excuse me, but what year are you now?”
They looked at each other. The girl to the left opened her mouth. “We’re seniors.”
I’d guessed right. I smirked in my mind. “Do you have a little time right now? I’d like to ask you two something.”
“Uh, what kind of thing?” It was, of course, the left one.
“There’s a senior called Chiharu Katsuragi, isn’t there? Are you aware that her older sister has gone missing?”