“Just who is this Higuchi?” Shoji raised his voice. “I have no idea who you're talking about.”
But Shigeko knew, and Shinichi realized that she knew. He attempted a smile. “Hideyuki Higuchi is the guy who murdered my Dad, my Mom, and my sister. Megumi is his daughter. An only child.”
Shoji gaped at him. “But why would the murderer's daughter want to meet you? Why is she chasing around after you?”
Shinichi took a deep breath and held it a moment, then answered quietly, “She wants me to meet her father.”
“She what?”
“She wants me to go visit him, and listen to what he has to say. And … and …” Shinichi's voice began to break as he spewed up the words in snatches, like a little boy coming home sobbing to his mommy. “She says that if I meet him, I'll understand that he's a victim too. And that I'll want to sign the petition calling for a reduced sentence. That's what she's after.”
Shigeko and Shoji could only wait in silence while Shinichi regained some measure of composure. Shigeko took him back into the living room, sat him down on the sofa, and sat next to him. Shinichi stopped crying right away, but for quite some time he found it hard to breathe, as if he was suffocating. It was if he'd been drowning at the bottom of a dark pond of mental anguish, and was at last reaching the surface, parting the cold water with both hands, and calling for help.
“You okay?” Shigeko asked after a while, looking him in the face as he let out a long deep breath, still shaking. “Shall I get you some water?”
“Um … please.”
She held a glass of water out to him.
“Thank you.” His hands were still trembling a little.
“I'm sorry,” Shoji told him, looking contrite. “I said some awful things to you.”
Still looking down, Shinichi shook his head. Shigeko shot Shoji a smile. He also needed consoling right now. Shoji smiled back weakly, and she felt reassured. Now they could at last both work together to help Shinichi.
“You're saying that Megumi Higuchi,” Shigeko started slowly, “is campaigning to reduce her father's sentence?”
Shinichi nodded. “It's not just her, but all their neighbors and also the employees at his firm.”
Shoji didn't know any of the details of the case, so Shigeko began filling him in, pausing now and then for Shinichi's confirmation. “Hideyuki Higuchi was the boss of a laundry near the condo where Shinichi's family lived. He had his own industrial laundry facilities and was quite successful, with about ten people working for him.” The firm had been called Hakushusha. “It started out as a small family business, which he inherited and made into big company. He must have been quite a savvy businessman.”
“Ten employees? That makes it about the same size as our business. Oh, we have a metal works, by the way,” Shoji told Shinichi. “A cottage industry, really.”
“Yes, but Higuchi had big ambitions. He wasn't satisfied with making Hakushusha a success, he also had his hands in real estate.”
Shoji grimaced. “When was this?”
“The bubble years, of course.”
“And so the bubble burst, and …”
“So did the business. Same as happened with everyone betting on real estate at that time.”
Debt piled upon debt. By the fall of 1995, Higuchi had accumulated loans amounting to over a billion yen. Hakushusha went bust, Higuchi's personal assets were reduced to zero, and all the employees were let go.
“And this was happening all over Japan at the time, wasn't it? It was crazy, but I can't help feeling a bit sorry for them …” Shoji muttered, and then hurriedly said to Shinichi who was sitting hanging his head, “But that doesn't mean I'm excusing what he did.”
“Me neither,” said Shigeko. “I don't think there's any scope for sympathy.”
Despite having a hard time with the bankruptcy, if Higuchi had been motivated enough to start again from scratch he could have found a way─even by working in someone else's laundry and steadily saving the cash to open his own shop again. It would have taken a huge amount of patience, effort, and determination, but he was a talented businessman with skills. He could have made it again. However, he lacked the patience and just wanted to get it all back as quickly and easily as possible. He wanted to start a new company right away. All he needed was the funds. Of course neither banks nor public financial institutions would give him the time of day in the current economic climate. During the bubble years, Japan had been awash in money, but it had just been an illusion. Higuchi came to one conclusion: he would have to steal it.
“If he'd decided to rob a bank, I could understand it─but why your family? What did your father do?” Shoji asked.
Shinichi sat hanging his head and staring into his glass. “He was a teacher.”
“A school teacher? It's not as though teachers make piles of cash!”
Shigeko glanced at Shinichi's profile. She was wondering if it was okay to go on talking. “Your father had just come into an inheritance, hadn't he?
“Inheritance?”
“Yes, quite a substantial sum.”
“Oh, so he'd got wind of that.”
“Yes, it was a neighborhood thing, so he must have heard about it. It really was a bit of bad luck …” Shigeko abruptly stopped. Shinichi had shut his eyes tight, as if he was in pain. “Shinichi, are you okay?”
He didn't answer, but after a few moments opened his eyes. He was having some trouble breathing again.
“In any case, Higuchi was entirely to blame.” Shoji folded his arms and looked at Shigeko. “I suppose his family has the right to help him with a petition or whatever, but trying to get Shinichi to─that's too much. It makes my blood boil!”
Hideyuki Higuchi had felt keenly responsible for his employees when the business had gone bankrupt, and that had doubtless been the main driving factor behind his reckless attempt to rebuild the business.
“Higuchi didn't commit the crimes alone, though,” Shigeko went on. “Two of his workers collaborated with him, and all three of them are in jail now. Their families are probably also behind this petition.”
“Probably,” Shinichi nodded.
“But what do they base their hopes for leniency on?” asked Shoji. “What's the excuse for that?”
That's something that Shigeko wanted to know, too. She looked at Shinichi. “What did Megumi say?”
Shinichi looked about to say something, stopped, moved his lips again, but then just shook his head saying nothing.
“They just want people to think they're victims of the bubble?” Now Shoji was really furious, and his voice grew rough. “It's no joke. It's his own fault for betting on real estate. Honest tradesmen don't use that kind of excuse.”
Maehata Metal Works was just managing to scrape by, too. It was always doing a balancing act on a tightrope, just the thickness of the rope changed from time to time, which was probably why Shoji's anger was so raw.
“Shinichi, are you the only one who knows what Megumi is doing?”
“So far.”
“Apart from Mr. and Mrs. Ishii─what about Higuchi's lawyer? Does he know that Megumi is coming after you?”
“Probably not,” Shinichi murmured. “Even if he did, he wouldn't be able to stop her. She doesn't have any fixed address.”
“Megumi doesn't? But she's harassing a family member of his client's victims. Haven't you told the prosecution?”
“No, I haven't.”
“Why don't you talk to them? I don't know how trials work, but … the case itself is still in court, right?”
“It's currently on hold because the defendants have asked for a psychiatric evaluation.”
“Psychiatric evaluation?” Shoji was incredulous. “But that's when someone claims they didn't know what they were doing because they were drunk or whatever─that's what it means, isn't it? Shirking responsibility,
basically.”
“No need to yell. It's not quite as simple as that. And it's the defendant's right to ask for it.
“What about the rights of the victims?”
“That's something else. You shouldn't mix things up like that.”
“Shige-chan, whose side are you on?”
Shigeko couldn't help a wry smile. He really did see things in black and white.
“It's no laughing matter,” Shoji grumbled. “I've never heard of anything like this. Shinichi is being trampled on and kicked while he's down, isn't he?”
Shoji leaned forward and clamped his hand on Shinichi's shoulder. “Okay, I'm sorry for what I said earlier. Now that I've heard your side of the story, I understand why you can't go home. Of course you don't want to see that Megumi. You won't get rid of a selfish brat like that just by yelling at her.”
He grinned, showing his strong, white teeth. “Don't worry. Shigeko and me, we're on your side.”
Chapter 12
Toward the end of September, some two weeks after the arm had been found in Okawa Park on the twelfth, Takegami rewrote the sign outside the incident room in Bokuto Police Station. The Okawa Park Case and the murder of the schoolgirl in Mitaka had now been officially linked as a joint investigation.
Around the same time, the Okawa Park investigators came up with a convincing suspect in Kazuyoshi Tagawa, an unemployed twenty-five-year old living in a riverside municipal housing project about two kilometers south of the park. His name had in fact been one of twenty-three on file since early on in the investigation, when the Bokuto police and the neighboring stations at Joto, Arakawa, Edogawa, and Hisamatsu had listed up all the people in their jurisdiction with a criminal record for sex offenses, homicide, and other violent crimes except armed robbery, grand larceny, and arson. This was common practice in a big case like this, despite fears that it could stir up prejudice against convicted felons and hinder their rehabilitation into society.
A dedicated team of six investigators, working in three pairs, had been assigned to the task of checking them out. Seven of the twenty-three were currently in detention, either awaiting trial or already serving jail sentences, and could therefore be discounted. The team had confirmed the current residence and contact details for fourteen of the remaining sixteen. They hadn't managed to track down the remaining two, and even their probation officers had lost touch with them, but given their convictions were both for manslaughter─one in a bar fight and the other in a neighborhood quarrel─they were considered unlikely suspects for the present case.
So, of the fourteen names on the list, the most suspect were numbers 6, a forty-nine-year-old male, and 11, a twenty-six-year-old male. Both had been charged with rape, indecent assault, and abduction with intention to commit indecent assault, and number 6 was a repeat offender. Investigators were aware that Number 11, too, had also committed a number of similar offenses as a minor, so they were not officially on record. Number 6 was living in the jurisdiction of Hisamatsu Police Station, and number 11 in that of Joto Police Station. The team therefore launched a thorough inquiry into the current circumstances of these two suspects.
At this point, the file was returned to Takegami. In addition to the two main suspects, a further two─numbers 2 and 13─had been flagged for their previous convictions for sexual offenses. Both cases had been relatively minor, however, and ultimately they had been discounted from the investigation. Takegami had filed the report and not looked at the data since. Later though, attention was refocused on Tagawa, who was in fact number 13.
According to the criminal profile issued by the investigating team, the perpetrator was thought to be someone living in the immediate vicinity of Okawa Park, since he must have had an acutely detailed knowledge of the area. The park had changed dramatically following major renovation work three years earlier, and further repairs were now underway in one section. This meant that the perpetrator couldn't be someone who had just grown up in the area, but must currently be living or working there. He would not have been able to devise the trick with the garbage can that Takegami had exposed unless he went to the park regularly enough to be acquainted with the garbage collection cycle, which was unlikely for someone who lived elsewhere.
Not everyone on the team was convinced the matter with the garbage can had actually been a trick: they were divided almost exactly fifty-fifty. Interestingly, Detective Akitsu, who normally idolized Takegami, was against him on this, while Detective Torii unusually had taken Takegami's side─although it was likely that he had just taken the opposite stance to Akitsu.
“Gami, you're giving the perp way too much credit,” Akitsu had said to him after the meeting. “I can't believe he's got the brain or balls to do something like that.”
“I don't suppose you think much brain or balls are needed to dupe a schoolgirl into going with you.”
Akitsu scowled. “That girl in Mitaka was a problem kid, wasn't she? What happened to her was awful, but I wouldn't be surprised if she was an easy catch.”
The murdered girl had been Chiaki Hidaka, 17, a junior at a private high school in Ikebukuro. When they showed a photo of her in uniform to the reception desk staff at the Plaza Hotel, they immediately identified her as the one who had delivered the letter. This had been the basis for the cases to be officially linked. Since then, however, the killer had kept his silence.
Takegami didn't want to give the killer undue credit, but he did think he was pretty shrewd. He was also talkative. Frankly, he'd been expecting him to make some comment after the police had linked the cases. When a perpetrator was talkative, it was better to get him to talk─that way he was bound to make a slip. But there had been no further contact─not even with Arima about appearing live on TV, as the killer had once suggested. Takegami was beginning to wonder what other things might be going on in his life. He might have come down with the flu, gotten busy at work, gone on a business trip, or left for a holiday abroad with his family. Such commonplace affairs would fit the criminal profile for this case.
And it was possible there was more than one perpetrator, maybe a mastermind with one or more accomplices, although that would be unusual for this kind of crime. In any case, it was entirely likely that whoever was behind it had charm, the kind of person you would never suspect of involvement, thought Takegami. He probably had a respectable standing in society and was reasonably well-off financially─competent, well-mannered, likeable, possibly married with kids, or at least in a steady relationship. Takegami believed he was a wholesome, normal working adult, nothing like the typical image of a murderer.
Takegami had been repeatedly going back over the records of his conversations with Arima, Chiaki's mother, and the TV station recording, wondering what kind of person this criminal could be. Despite the content of what he was actually saying, he sounded educated─well-spoken, with a solid vocabulary. Due to the voice changer they could only estimate his age as somewhere from his twenties through his forties. At that age, with a good education it was highly unlikely he would be without a steady job. If he was unemployed, it was most probably as a result of restructuring, or bankruptcy due to the high yen.
There were a number of sticking points. For example, the caller had known perfectly well that Arima would feel like a fish out of water at the Plaza Hotel, and had taunted him about it. Had he just been insulting him, or did it reflect some complex he had? Maybe he too was the type of person who would be out of place there? Certainly a person's appearance might affect the treatment he received at a fancy hotel, thought Takegami, but then again, things had changed a lot in the last decade. Society had generally become more wealthy and diverse, and it was no longer unusual to see student-types dressed in jeans and a scruffy T-shirt and carrying a backpack waiting for someone in a hotel lobby. Still, as the seventy-something-year-old owner of a tofu shop, Arima would naturally feel awkward in a classy hotel, and because of that might be treated condescendingly by snobbis
h employees─which is in effect what happened that evening. The perpetrator had known this, and had deliberately used it. Perhaps it reflected the experience of the culprit's own parents, Takegami thought. If that were the case, it might provide a clue as to the environment he had grown up in, if not his present circumstances.
Something else that was bothering Takegami was the fact that the perpetrator didn't just like to talk, but also seemed good at getting his victims to talk. He had made contact with Arima by calling the Furukawa home, and had also come to the house, but how had he found out the number and address? They had considered various theories, but after Chiaki's murder Takegami had begun to think that he was getting the information from the victims themselves.
Chiaki's body had been found in a children's park near her home in Mitaka, sitting atop an elephant-shaped slide. According to her mother's statement, Chiaki had loved this slide when she was a little girl, something that even the mother hadn't thought about for many years. When the killer had called the Hidaka home, he'd mentioned it specifically─but how had he known about it? It was possible that he was a close friend of Chiaki's, a childhood friend even─but he had also known Mariko well enough to know her address and telephone number. Yet there was nothing to suggest Chiaki and Mariko knew each other. They were different ages and had gone to different schools─the only thing they had in common was that they both lived on the Chuo Line. That, and their link with the killer.
One idea put forward was that the killer might have been a colleague of Mariko, with access to her personal data. But how could this colleague then be connected to Chiaki? Could it have been through the girl's involvement in prostitution? Even her mother had begun to get wind of her illicit activities, and some of her school friends had heard some pretty candid accounts of it from Chiaki herself. According to them, she had been acting entirely solo, not part of any group or working for a pimp. She would usually make contact through telephone clubs, and if the mood was right and she liked the man she would go to a hotel with him. She had apparently gotten into this through another classmate, who had been expelled in June for stealing but had stayed in touch. The team had tracked her down and questioned her, but she also acted alone and hadn't been able to give them any leads.