But what Yukawa had said the day before still bothered him. How had he known that forensics wouldn’t be able to re-create the accident? Could it be because the physicist knew how it was done?
Motoyama stood and began giving his own report on news they’d received from Tokyo concerning Hidetoshi Senba. Hozumi was chatting and laughing with Isobe. Most of the other ranking officers weren’t even listening. It was clear that the room had lost interest in Senba and their suspect’s past.
And once the case was closed and a little time had passed—
I’ll go pay Narumi a visit, Nishiguchi thought. The presence of an officer might comfort her. He could be with her the entire time while the trial was going on.
A smile slowly spread across Nishiguchi’s face as the cloud over his thoughts lifted.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Kusanagi waited by the exit at Shinagawa Station for a full five minutes after Yukawa’s train was supposed to arrive before he saw the physicist walking toward the ticket gate. He was wearing a light-colored jacket and carrying a large document case under one arm. Kusanagi raised a hand in greeting, and Yukawa nodded back.
“Looks like you got yourself a tan,” Kusanagi said by way of greeting.
“I had to do more outside work than expected.”
“Glad to hear you’re keeping busy,” Kusanagi said. He had a vague grasp of what Yukawa had been doing out in Hari Cove, but he didn’t need to know the details. Yukawa stopped, looking at the long line of taxis waiting in front of the station.
“Something wrong?” Kusanagi asked.
“No, I was just amazed at how one’s perception of certain things can change in just one short week. For instance, train stations. I never realized how vast the stations in Tokyo are.”
“Got the country-living bug?”
“Hardly. No, in fact I’ve only reaffirmed that I don’t belong out there. I’m much more comfortable in a crowd. And look at all those wonderful taxis. Speaking of which, where’s your car?”
No sooner had Yukawa spoken than a red Pajero pulled up and parked alongside the curb. They ran over and got inside—Kusanagi in the passenger seat, Yukawa in the back.
“Long time no see,” Utsumi said as she pulled away from the curb.
“Kusanagi tells me you’ve been out pounding the pavement on this one—unofficially, no less.”
“Sounds like you’ve been doing your share of unofficial work too, Professor. Just can’t stay out of trouble, can you?”
Yukawa was silent for a moment, considering his reply. “No, I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” he said. “If trouble had been my concern, I had plenty of opportunities to avoid it. Even if you’d asked me point-blank to help you with your investigation, I could’ve always refused.”
“That’s my first question,” Kusanagi said. “Why are you being so helpful?”
“I believe I already told you.”
“Only something vague about a certain person’s life being ‘seriously disrupted.’ So who’s this mystery man … or woman?”
Yukawa made an audible sigh. “I’ll have to tell you at one point or another, but I’m not sure it will mean much when I do. The Kawahatas turning themselves in has made an already complicated situation worse. I might’ve been overly optimistic.”
“Lead me on, why don’t you.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Yukawa apologized. “I will tell you everything. Just not right now.”
“Aren’t you going to have to show your hand today?” Utsumi asked.
Yukawa thought for a while, then said, “I’m not coming with you today to lay any mysteries bare. I’m just looking for confirmation. If I get that, then many things may indeed become clear. But don’t think that this will solve everything. In fact, it’s more likely that we’ll end up a good distance away from anything like a solution.”
“Leaving us unable to prevent a certain person’s life from being seriously disrupted, maybe?”
Yukawa shook his head at Kusanagi and said, “I don’t know.”
For a while after that, the three of them rode in silence. Utsumi took them up on the freeway and exited at the Chofu interchange.
A few moments later, they pulled in to the parking lot at the Shibamoto General Hospital.
Yukawa stopped as they walked into the hospice. He looked around. “It’s so quiet,” he said.
“Yeah, Utsumi has a theory about that,” Kusanagi said. “She says it’s so the patients don’t notice the passing of time.”
Utsumi sighed. “It was more of an idea than a theory,” she added.
“I’d say it was a rather astute observation,” Yukawa said.
They took the elevator to the third floor. The nurse in the pink uniform was standing outside the visitors’ room, just like she had the day before.
“Sorry to bother you again so soon,” Kusanagi apologized. She smiled and asked them to wait as she walked off down the hall.
The director of the hospital had been unenthusiastic about giving Kusanagi permission to bring another visitor to see Senba when he’d called the hospital that morning, and he took some persuading. As they waited for Senba, Kusanagi was full of questions, though he decided it would be better to follow Yukawa’s lead. He was the man on the ground in this case, and he knew Hari Cove. If there was any key to tying together all the disparate threads of this investigation, Hari Cove was where they’d find it.
Kusanagi heard the sound of wheels rolling across the tiled floor and stiffened in his chair. Senba arrived, wrapped like a mummy in beige pajamas. He was facing straight ahead, a look of deep alarm floating in his sunken eyes. Kusanagi assumed it was because he thought they were going to ask him about Tsukahara again. He glanced sideways at Yukawa, curious to see how the physicist would act toward a man in his final days.
Yukawa’s eyes were fixed firmly on the old man. His face betrayed no emotion or surprise. Either he’d seen terminal cancer patients before, or he’d made an accurate assumption about the state Senba would be in.
“Should I introduce myself?” Yukawa asked.
It took a moment before Kusanagi realized the question had been directed at him. He turned to Senba. “Thanks for talking to us yesterday. I brought someone else who wanted to meet with you. This is my friend Yukawa. He’s not a police officer, he’s a scientist. A physicist.”
Yukawa held out his business card, but Senba’s arm didn’t move. The nurse took the card for him and held it up in front of his face.
Senba’s eyes moved across the card. His lips parted, and he made an inquisitive grunt.
“I suppose you’re wondering why a physicist would want to talk to you,” Yukawa said. “As a matter of fact, up until this morning, I was in Hari Cove.” His voice was low, but it echoed in the quiet room.
Senba’s eyelids twitched.
Yukawa opened his document case and pulled out a single file and turned the cover so Senba could see it.
“I’m involved in a project investigating the potential development of undersea resources in Hari Cove. I attended the hearing the other day. You’re aware of the development project? I heard you sent Mr. Tsukahara to the hearing in your stead.”
Senba gave a jerky nod.
“The sea in Hari Cove…” Yukawa began, speaking slowly, “… is beautiful. Enough to make you catch your breath. I saw the crystals on the seafloor. There’s no other word to describe them but miraculous. They are a true miracle, Mr. Senba, and they’ve been well looked after. I shouldn’t be surprised if the sea there today looks exactly as it was the last time you saw it.”
Senba began to sway, almost noticeably. His cheeks tightened and his lips trembled. For a moment, Kusanagi read his expression as fear, but he soon realized he was mistaken. The old man was trying to smile.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen with the development project. Except, even if it does go ahead, it won’t be for some decades. We can expect that technologies to preserve the environment will have advanced signific
antly by that point. I tell you this as a scientist who is committed to preserving the beauty of the cove and will do anything in my power to keep it unblemished. This is my promise to you.”
Senba nodded slowly. The hospital director had told them that the patient occasionally slipped out of consciousness, but he seemed to be fully alert at the moment.
“There’s something I’d like you to see,” Yukawa said, pulling a sheet of paper out of his case.
Kusanagi glanced at it from the side. It looked like a printout of a photograph, showing a painting of the ocean. Distant clouds floating in a blue sky reflected off the surface of the water. In the foreground, the coastline traced a gentle curve, and near the rocks, waves sent up a white spray.
Yukawa turned the picture toward Senba, and the reaction was instantaneous. It was as if something buried deep within him suddenly came welling up to the surface, charging his body with electricity. His skin blushed ever so slightly, and his clouded eyes became red. He groaned.
“This painting is on the wall at a small hotel called the Green Rock Inn. Perhaps you’ve seen it? It shows the view of the ocean from East Hari. I believe you lived there with your wife just before she passed. I should think the ocean looks much like this from her house. In fact…” Yukawa leaned forward, placing the photograph closer to Senba. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you or your wife had painted it. Then, after she died, and you left the house in East Hari behind, you held onto it as a memento, a treasure. Something you would only give to the most important person in your life. Am I right?”
Senba’s eyes widened, and his entire body went stiff. His breathing had grown ragged, making him shudder at regular intervals.
The nurse looked at him, worried, but when she looked like she might step in, Senba raised his left hand to wave her back. Mustering his strength, he took a deep breath. A look of determination came over his face.
“That … that’s not true,” he said in a thin voice. “I’ve never seen that painting before. Not … not in my entire life.”
“Are you sure? Please take a close look,” Yukawa said, holding the photograph even closer.
“No!” Senba batted at it with his other hand, knocking the paper out of Yukawa’s grasp. It fluttered and fell to the floor.
“I see,” Yukawa said calmly. “I have another photograph I’d like to show you.” He pulled another piece of paper out of his case.
Kusanagi peered over his shoulder at it. This time, it was a picture of a young woman. She looked like she was sitting behind the wheel of a car. She had a look of surprise on her face, as if she wasn’t expecting her photograph to be taken. She was attractive, with a healthy tan.
“I told you earlier that the cove is being well looked after. This is the woman who’s doing that. I’m going back to Hari Cove today. Isn’t there anything you’d like me to tell her for you?” Yukawa showed the photograph to Senba.
Senba’s face twisted halfway between tears and a smile. His many wrinkles froze in curved lines down his face, and his lips fluttered.
“Well?” Yukawa asked again. “Don’t you have any message for the woman responsible for protecting your home?”
Senba’s emaciated body convulsed. But then his throat moved like he was trying to swallow something, and the spasms subsided. He straightened his spine, and thrust out his chest, his sunken eyes fixed on Yukawa.
“I don’t know this woman, but tell her … thank you,” he said forcefully.
Yukawa blinked and a smile came to his lips. He looked downward for a moment, then back up at Senba. “I will tell her you said that. You can keep the photograph.”
He handed the two photographs to the nurse and turned to Kusanagi. “Let’s go,” Yukawa said, walking straight out the door.
“You’re done?” Kusanagi asked.
Yukawa only nodded.
Kusanagi looked over at Utsumi, then stood. He bowed his head to Senba and the nurse, and thanked them.
Outside the visitors’ room, the three walked toward the elevator in silence broken only by the echoes of their footsteps. While they were waiting for the elevator, they heard the sound of the door to the visitors’ room open. The nurse came out, pushing Senba in his wheelchair. She saw them and nodded in their direction, but Senba’s head was bent over and he wasn’t moving. The two photographs were clutched in his hands.
“You said that Nobuko Miyake met with Senba the day before she was killed?” Yukawa asked after they reached the parking lot. It was the first thing any of them had said since they left the hospice.
“That’s right, at a bar they used to frequent.”
“Any idea what they were talking about?”
Kusanagi shrugged. “I don’t know, the good old days? Except the bartender back then said that he saw Senba crying.”
“Crying,” Yukawa echoed, almost as if he had expected this. “Right.”
“You mind telling us what this is all about?”
Yukawa checked his wristwatch and opened the door to Utsumi’s Pajero. “Let’s talk in the car. We’ll get sunstroke standing out here, and, as I just said to Mr. Senba, I need to get back to Hari Cove.”
Kusanagi nodded to Utsumi, and she pulled the keys from her bag.
“Why do you think Nobuko Miyake went to Ogikubo?” Yukawa asked from the backseat as they drove.
Kusanagi looked around. “That’s exactly the question Tsukahara was asking after he arrested Senba. He never found out the reason himself, but I think it’s pretty clear at this point: she went there to meet with Setsuko Kawahata.”
“I agree, that’s the most obvious explanation. So why did she go to meet her?”
“Well, maybe when she was talking about the old days with Senba, she remembered Setsuko, and wanted to catch up.…” Kusanagi said before his voice trailed off. He shook his head. “No, that’s not it.”
“It’s not,” Yukawa agreed. “First of all, it would’ve been difficult for her to find out where Setsuko Kawahata was living, since the house she was staying at wasn’t her official address. She could have gone back to their mutual friends from their nightclub days and found out that way, but that would’ve taken quite a bit of time. So she would’ve had to have had a pretty good reason for wanting to see her—more than just wanting to catch up.”
“We know that Nobuko was in financial straits,” Utsumi said. “Maybe she went to borrow money?”
Kusanagi snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “That’s it. She got the idea when she was talking to Senba. Right?” He turned back to look at Yukawa.
“I can’t think of any other reason myself,” he said, “but that raises a new question. Why did Nobuko believe Setsuko would give her money? If they were that close, wouldn’t she have gone to see her before then?”
“That’s true, and as far as I’m aware, Setsuko and Nobuko weren’t all that close,” Kusanagi said, crossing his arms.
“They weren’t close, but she was sure Setsuko would give her money—absolutely sure. What does that suggest?” Yukawa asked.
“She had something on her,” Utsumi suggested. “She knew her weak spot.”
“A weak spot, yeah,” Kusanagi nodded. “In other words, she was collecting hush money.”
“Correct,” said the physicist. “Nobuko learned something from Senba about Setsuko Kawahata, a secret that only she and Senba knew until that moment. Then Nobuko went to use that secret as leverage to pry money from her. That accounts for the special trip out to Ogikubo the very next day.”
“But things didn’t go the way Nobuko planned,” Kusanagi said, continuing the story. “Instead of money, Setsuko killed Nobuko to keep her quiet. Which means we’re talking about a pretty damn big secret. Come on, Yukawa, I know you know. Spit it out already.”
Yukawa leaned back into his headrest, his eyes going up to the roof of the car. “The woman in the photograph I showed Senba just now is one Narumi Kawahata—Setsuko’s daughter.”
“And you said she’s been looking after Hari Cove??
?? Utsumi asked.
Yukawa nodded. “Yes, passionately. There’s a deep pathos in the way she goes about it, with almost painful dedication. But why is she so committed to a town, and a coast that’s not even her birthplace? And why did she so readily agree to move out there, when just the year before, she told her friends that she wanted to stay in Tokyo, even if it meant living by herself? I can only offer one theory that accounts for these mysteries. She needs to have believed in her heart that it was her duty. Not a civic duty, mind you, but a duty she owed to another person. A paying of a debt.”
“Yukawa,” Kusanagi groaned, “you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?”
“At first, I thought that Senba was taking the fall for Setsuko when he confessed. Except, at the time it happened, it’s likely they hadn’t seen each other for over a decade. Even if they’d once been intimate, it’s hard to imagine he’d accept a murder sentence to save an old flame. No, there was something bigger driving him. This realization brought me to another, completely different idea. Senba wasn’t protecting Setsuko. He was protecting her daughter—their daughter.”
“So Narumi Kawahata is Senba’s daughter.”
Yukawa looked out at the street straight ahead and breathed a deep sigh. “That’s the secret that Senba and Setsuko had to keep. The secret that drove their daughter to murder.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
With the nurse’s assistance, Senba lay down on his bed, still clutching the photographs in his hand. Sometimes lately, he couldn’t make his fingers grasp things like he wanted them to, but not today.
The nurse told him to call her if he needed anything and walked out without asking any questions, for which he was grateful.
He heard someone cough. Probably Mr. Yoshioka. He had a brain tumor too. There’d been three people in their four-person room up until the week before. Now, as of two days ago, the bed right next to him was empty.
He felt a dull pain in his head, and his field of vision narrowed. Darkness crept in around the edges, until he had to hold the photographs directly in front of his face to see them.