“Maeda-san, what’s going on?”
Makoto answered before Maeda could. “The amputator just claimed his fifth victim.”
Maeda heard this. His voice went up an octave and tightened. “Don’t check the news! Just get over here, all three of you!”
Kaname’s face was bloodless now, her voice trembling. “Ko-chan, there’s a video. Someone shared it.”
Makoto was about to say something, but he stopped when he saw Kaname’s expression. He put his smartphone in the pocket of his jeans. “Let’s get going.”
Maeda was calling to Kotaro. Shouting at him. He’d taken his phone away from his ear without noticing.
“Kotaro! Kotaro!”
“We’re leaving now.”
Kaname burst into sobs and squatted on the floor. Makoto sat in front of her and hugged her.
“Is that Ashiya?” Maeda’s voice was breaking too.
Kaname wasn’t just crying. She had begun to gag. She was about to lose her lunch. Makoto rubbed her back.
“Oh my God. Oh my God.” Her face was creased with pain as she gagged and sobbed. Makoto was nearly as pale.
“Take care of her,” Maeda said.
“We’ll get there somehow,” Kotaro answered.
He hung up, squatted next to them and pulled Makoto’s smartphone out of his back pocket.
“I’m gonna be sick.” Kaname’s eyes widened and she gagged deep in her throat. She was right on the edge. She covered her mouth with both hands.
Makoto pulled her to her feet. “It’s over there.” They stumbled quickly toward the RESTROOM sign.
Makoto had paused the video before he put the phone in his pocket, but the frozen image alone was enough to make Kotaro go limp. He toppled over into a sitting position.
It was the upper half of a woman’s body. She was lying in thick weeds, face up, torso twisted slightly to the right, eyes open, lips parted. Her long hair was spread in a halo around her head. Some of it lay across one cheek. There was no mistaking the face.
It was Ayuko Yamashina.
Her black suit was off one shoulder. Her blouse had been ripped open at the neck, which was ringed with purple bruises. A fly perched on one of her eyeballs.
Kotaro hit play. The camera shook badly as it moved across the body. Her skirt had been pushed all the way up, leaving her completely exposed. She was barefoot. Her limbs were splayed in all directions, like a broken doll.
Who the hell took this? Why’d he upload it? Why’s the host letting people see this?
There was an edit and the camera focused in on the right hand, then the left.
All ten fingers were missing.
The shot went on forever. Kotaro dropped the phone, threw back his head and howled again, and again, and again.
“Don’t worry. The police already have the kid who took the video.”
This was the first thing Maeda said to Kaname. Her face was a mask. She’d exhausted herself crying.
When they’d arrived at Kumar, three-quarters of the Drug Island team were already there. The rest were outside Tokyo and couldn’t get back right away.
Most people from other teams were there too, but Seigo was nowhere to be seen. The island chiefs were handling things, with each one briefing his team. Maeda had stepped in for Seigo.
Before they arrived at the office, Kaname had been so upset that she’d collapsed on the sidewalk. Makoto had carried her the rest of the way on his back. Now she was leaning on him for support. Many women on the other teams were clinging to each other and crying. There were suppressed tears among the men too. When he opened the door, Maeda’s eyes were red and swollen. Narita, the chief of School Island, daubed at his eyes with a tissue as he walked by.
But anger was stronger than sadness. Those who were crying now would soon be just as furious as the rest. How could this have happened? How could their president, loved by all, giving her all for society, become the victim of such an outrageous crime, her body mutilated grotesquely and left for everyone to see?
“Maybe the bastard who shot the video is the killer.”
“It’s completely perverted.”
Maeda raised a thickly muscled arm, as though pushing back the wave of anger that was about to crest.
“The killer didn’t shoot the video. It’s disgraceful, but the perp is just a kid. He’s in the eighth grade.”
Kotaro shook his head. That hit close to home. What a dumbass thing to do. Makoto was shaking his head too. There were no words.
“I’m sure the cops have him turning blue right now,” Maeda added.
Ayuko’s body had been dumped in a corner of a vacant lot in a dense residential area of southern Meguro Ward. The old residence that once stood there had recently been torn down, and the lot was for sale. Over the months the weeds had grown thick on the property.
“The crime scene is a typical old Tokyo neighborhood. Lots of narrow streets packed with houses and wood-frame apartment buildings.”
The body had been discovered that morning around five thirty, when a woman living next door took out her trash.
“She started yelling and a lot of people heard her. A crowd formed pretty quickly. It took about five minutes for the police to get there. That was long enough for the kid to make his damn video.”
The teenager had probably been beside himself with excitement. Awesome! If I upload this, I’ll get a million page views. Everyone will watch it. I’ll be famous! No, I’ll be a god! He’d been so excited that he hadn’t actually seen the horror in front of him. He’d been too busy videoing.
The Internet is an open space where everyone can express themselves, but it’s also a playground for idiots with a thirst for attention. Kotaro suddenly began to feel nauseated.
“Why didn’t someone stop him?” Makoto asked.
“They probably didn’t know what he was doing. Everyone was confused and distracted. There were a lot of people milling around in that empty lot.”
“Didn’t they know enough to leave a crime scene alone? They might’ve destroyed some evidence,” another member muttered bitterly.
“Still, I have to admit … It’s hard to say this, but …” Maeda grimaced. “One of our patrollers found the video. That’s how we knew it was Ayuko. We notified the police immediately. I hoped it was just a mis— A mis—” Maeda’s tongue stopped working for a moment.
“A mistake,” he said, his voice breaking. “Someone who just looked like her. Without the video, we might not even know something’d happened to her yet.”
Ayuko’s favorite black bag, her smartphone and laptop, her purse with her business cards—everything that might have helped identify her was missing. All the police would’ve reported initially was the discovery of a corpse in an empty lot.
The senior woman on the team spoke up sharply. “Wasn’t anyone keeping track of her? When did she come to Tokyo? Why was she alone? Wasn’t anyone managing her schedule?”
The question was on everyone’s mind. Maeda winced and nodded.
“She was supposed to be in Nagoya all this week. I got that straight from Seigo. But something must’ve come up. She arrived at Tokyo Station at eight last night and went to her condo in Azabu. She was supposed to be here at noon.”
“She took the bullet train alone?”
“No, Morohashi was with her as usual. He put her in a taxi at Tokyo Station.” Morohashi was Ayuko’s personal assistant in the Nagoya office. He was around thirty and fairly athletic.
Before she’d entered the public eye, Ayuko usually traveled alone, unless there was some need to bring Morohashi along. People in Tokyo rarely saw him. But things had changed, and recently Morohashi was always with Ayuko when she traveled. If he saw Morohashi, Kotaro knew she was in the office even if he hadn’t seen her. Kaname called him the “president’s bodyguard.”
No one had
seen Ayuko from the time she parted with her “bodyguard” at Tokyo Station until she was found that morning in Meguro Ward.
“I think most of you know, or probably suspected, that Seigo and Ayuko have been very close for a long time,” Maeda said, looking around the room.
For the past year they’d been living together. They just hadn’t made it official yet. Ayuko spent a lot of time traveling between Nagoya and Tokyo, but they were planning to marry and live in Nagoya after the Tokyo office closed.
“Ayuko was planning to have Seigo take over as president so she could concentrate on her nonprofit. He wasn’t too keen on that, but since he mentioned it at one of our meetings, I guess it was a done deal.
“So there was a lot going on,” he added, again sounding apologetic, as though he shared some portion of responsibility for Ayuko’s death. “She had to wear different hats and juggle a huge amount of work, and she’d started planning her wedding. Morohashi told me recently that he sometimes had trouble keeping track of her. But how was she supposed to travel absolutely everywhere with him?”
“Where is he now?” someone asked.
“With Seigo, talking to the police. I think her parents are coming up from Nagoya as we speak.”
Her parents. The room fell silent. Everyone was thinking the same thing. It was like a slap in the face.
“Where was Seigo this whole time?”
It was Kaname. She was standing straight and no longer hanging her head, but she wasn’t looking at anyone. She was staring into space.
“He of all people should’ve been protecting her. What on earth could he have been doing last night?” Her tone made the question sound like an incantation—or maybe a curse. Everyone on the team except Makoto and Maeda averted their eyes from her empty stare.
“Ashiya.” Maeda leaned toward her, hands flat on his desk. “I know how you feel. To lose Ayuko this way is devastating for all of us. But don’t talk that way. Seigo is suffering more, and feeling more grief and guilt, than anyone.” A few of the team members nodded.
“He was in the office all last night.” The senior woman on the team spoke up. Her voice had lost its edge. “I was here till four, so I know. He even told me not to work too hard.” Her voice faltered and she began to cry.
“My mother’s in the hospital. I need money. That’s why he told me not to work too hard, but he was up all night too. He said he had to catch up on the paperwork for the move to Sapporo, that he couldn’t focus on it in the daytime.” She glanced at Kaname and added reproachfully, “He was working all night. He wasn’t goofing off somewhere. He didn’t desert Ayuko.”
Kaname wailed in despair and started weeping.
Maeda looked down at his desk. His eyes were reddening again. “We still don’t know much about what happened. Let’s do what we do best and leave the police work to the professionals. We can’t let this affect our mission.
“We’re also calling for two volunteers from each island to patrol for information about the case. Are there any takers?”
Kotaro didn’t raise his hand. Makoto glanced sidelong at him and blinked in surprise as he raised his own.
The president of a company specializing in net-based risk management had been murdered. Soon—no, surely it was happening already—countless pieces of information about Kumar, useless and useful, harmless and harmful, would be flooding the web, along with thousands of comments from spectators and voyeurs.
“Can we assume this is the fifth murder by the Serial Amputator?” asked another team member.
“The police aren’t saying. In fact, they never officially said the other four killings were by the same person.”
“Yeah,” said another member, “but this one’s on Metro Police turf. It’s a whole new ballgame.”
The exchange of opinions grew more heated. Kotaro reached out and squeezed Kaname’s hand. She squeezed back.
I’m a machine.
I’m fast. I process of what’s in front of me. I have a mind but no heart. I don’t feel doubt, I don’t cry, and I don’t get angry.
That is what Kotaro told himself. He fulfilled his regular tasks in the regular way. He monitored it all: people looking to sell drugs, inviting others to use drugs, whining endlessly that drugs were destroying them psychologically, that they wanted to quit but couldn’t.
Ayuko Yamashina was dead.
Someone had stolen her life and left her body sprawled among the weeds of a vacant lot.
For Kotaro, Ayuko would have always been out of reach. Yet she possessed something wonderful. The simple fact of her existence had been enough for him to believe that life had meaning and value.
They may as well have killed an angel.
I’m a machine. I don’t feel. At least not yet. I don’t feel and I don’t think. Otherwise there’s no way I could be here.
Kumar was besieged by journalists and reporters. Kotaro could hear the commotion beyond the glass. Maeda had conferred with Kumar’s corporate communications rep in Nagoya on Skype and worked out how to deal with them. Someone from headquarters in a suit, with beads of sweat on his forehead, went into a closed-door meeting with the island chiefs.
“That guy’s a lawyer,” Kaname said.
Everyone’s phone was ringing. Family and friends called as soon as they heard the news. Kotaro got mails from his father and mother. Even Aunt Hanako sent him a message. Kotaro hadn’t the bandwidth to answer, so they kept sending them over and over. “Ko-chan, are you all right?” “Kumar’s on the news. Are you safe?” “You work at Kumar, don’t you son? Or did I get that wrong?”
He didn’t see the mails until his break. As he gulped down a can of coffee from the vending machine, they brought tears to his eyes.
Kumar, Kumar, Kumar …
A gentle monster who loved the little town on the fjord, and the people in the town and the sound of the church bells ringing. A monster who quietly protected the town, though no one knew.
The angel who loved Kumar was gone.
Goodbye. May we meet again.
There would be no “again.”
Kotaro clutched his phone and sobbed.
5
Three days later, at ten in morning, Kotaro was dozing in a reclining chair in the lounge after an all-night shift when Maeda, the new chief of Drug Island, shook him awake.
“The killer’s made a statement.”
They rushed back to the office. Everyone’s eyes were glued to their monitors. Every monitor showed a TV channel.
So it had finally come to this. It was really happening.
“What’s it on? NHK?” Kotaro’s voice was shaking.
“Everywhere. All the networks.”
He sat down at his monitor. Maeda was right. Every channel had started a special news report. News sites on the web were taking their cues from the broadcasters.
“The killer sent a letter to all five networks.”
Snail mail, Kotaro thought dully, still not fully awake. A letter. Was the killer old? Or a child? Maybe a kid who wasn’t sophisticated enough to send an email?
“He’s a smart one.” Maeda watched over Kotaro’s shoulder, arms folded. He was drawn up to his full height with a fierce expression, like one of those huge statues of guardians that flank the gates of temples.
“Smart how?”
“Smart enough to know there’s no way to hide forever if you send something like that over the net.”
“He’s not that stupid,” someone chimed in.
“If he was one of those nut cases who ‘confess’ to crimes they didn’t commit, he wouldn’t have used the post office.”
People had started posting fake confessions just hours after the murder in Mishima, but they were clearly pranks or the work of unbalanced minds.
“The killer must’ve figured the networks were the best way to get attention,” Makoto sai
d. He was peering over Kotaro’s shoulder now too. He looked exhausted. His hair was damp; he’d gone to wash up after working through the night. Kotaro nodded to him.
“Murder in Tokyo,” Makoto added with a venomous tone that was not at all like him. “It’s like he’s reached the big time, and TV’s the best way to make that big debut.”
“And this time he killed a celebrity.”
It was Seigo. He was standing in the door. He looked like a ghost. His shirt and trousers looked slept in. He face was covered with stubble.
“Seigo, you’re here!” Maeda rushed over to him, but Seigo waved him away impatiently.
“I’ve got to go back to the police station.”
“What, again?” Maeda was surprised.
“Keep monitoring the news. I have to be there when Ayuko’s mother arrives.” He turned and weaved unsteadily toward the restroom, like someone with a fever. “I have to show her her daughter, goddamn it!” His voice was tight with grief. Maeda hurried out after him.
Kotaro and Makoto sat side by side, monitoring the news. They split the work to cover all five networks. None of them had said anything specific about the killer’s statement. They wouldn’t even confirm whether each station had received the same letter, yet the announcers seemed to know more than they were letting on.
“It’s like they’ve got something stuck in their craws,” Makoto said.
It was true. Apparently the networks had received more than letters in the mail, but none of them would say what that might be. Maybe it was too shocking to disclose, or perhaps announcing it now would complicate the investigation. It was impossible to tell.
Noon came and regular programming was canceled. The picture was starting to come into sharper focus at last.
All five networks had received identical letters. The lettering was squared off, as if the writer had used a template. The text was a single sentence in the center of a small sheet of plain paper:
I’M ONLY TRYING TO PUT MY BODY BACK TOGETHER
The letters were all composed in the same script, on a brand of office stationery that was distributed throughout Japan. Forensics would be checking for prints and DNA as well as where each letter was posted, but Kotaro had no interest in these details. All he cared about was whether or not the letters were genuine.