The Gate of Sorrows

Still, she’d been generous enough to accommodate his request. “If it’s for school, it can’t be helped, I guess. We’re students. We’ve got to put our studies first.” Her kindness pricked at his conscience.

  He had another reason for wanting time away from Kumar, one that would’ve been unthinkable a month ago: Seigo Maki. Kotaro was constantly tempted to look up from his monitor and focus the Eye on his boss.

  Galla had warned him. You may lose your faith in people completely.

  Perhaps. But Seigo was different. She’s not infallible, Kotaro kept telling himself. Yet because Seigo was different, Kotaro kept the Eye in check. He didn’t have to prove to himself that Seigo could be trusted.

  Still, his resolve sometimes wavered. He needed to get away for a while. His head told him that, but in his heart, the ex-detective’s words—Maybe he and Tashiro really were in a relationship—echoed.

  Was Seigo hiding something after all?

  As if to reinforce the doubts Shigenori had planted in his mind, the police were still a presence at Kumar. Detectives kept dropping by. Sometimes Seigo had to leave the office to meet with the special investigation unit.

  Because Keiko Tashiro was officially missing, the case remained open. Even if the police ignored everything else, the fact remained that a member of a university club had been murdered, and another had gone missing shortly afterward. Naturally the remaining club members would become persons of interest—not just Seigo, but all the people Kotaro had met at the wake.

  But was that the only reason the police were spending so much time with Seigo? Could he be their prime suspect? Had they discovered that his relationship with Keiko went much further than he’d been willing to admit to Kotaro?

  Was that why they were paying so much attention to him? Kotaro was ashamed to even think it.

  He finally persuaded Maeda, his boss on Drug Island, to get someone to fill in for him. Tomorrow, July 1, would be the start of a ten-day vacation.

  “When summer break comes, the net will get busy. Be sure to make it back before then,” Maeda said.

  “I will. I promise.”

  “And go tell Seigo yourself. Apologize, okay?”

  Kotaro was anxious to avoid just that, but he went to Seigo’s desk and told him what was happening. Seigo pulled up a shift schedule and peered at it, beetle-browed.

  “There’s this seminar I want to take. If I don’t get in now, I’ll miss my chance.”

  Seigo only looked more dubious at this extra bit of window dressing, but after a beat he said simply, “Okay. Fine.”

  That’s all? No lecture? No questions about the seminar or why it’s so important? Maybe he’s shutting me out? Is it because I asked him out of the blue about Keiko, even though I’m not supposed to know the first thing about his college days?

  Stop right there, Kotaro, he told himself. Remember what Galla said.

  He went away from there in a hurry, not even waiting for the elevator. In the stairwell he ran into Makoto, weighed down by a bulging shoulder bag.

  “Just getting off?” Kotaro asked.

  “Yeah. You too?”

  “Yep. I’ll walk you to the station. Is BB Island getting to you?” Kotaro said as they walked down. Makoto looked tired and pale.

  “Depends on the day, I guess.”

  “Is there more to deal with some days than others?”

  “No, it’s always the same. There’s a ton of it. Sometimes it’s just harder to handle. It can be a bit much.”

  I guess today is one of those days.

  “I’m off for ten days, starting tomorrow. I feel bad that Kaname’s gonna be by herself. If you could wrangle a transfer back to the island, you’d get a red-carpet welcome, squared.”

  “Mmm, I’ll think about it.”

  Makoto said little during the walk to the station. If something was bothering him, he usually worked hard to act cheerful. That was how he chased away the blues. Makoto was the kind of guy that even guys thought of as a “good kid.” He was unfailingly honest, open, and optimistic, the ideal young man.

  Makoto should be okay, squared. Galla’s not infallible.

  And Makoto would be the perfect way to prove it. The station was three stoplights away. There was more than enough time.

  Kotaro dropped back a few steps, dragging the heels of his beat-up sneakers to seem natural. Makoto’s steps were heavy, not at all like his usual cheery self.

  Kotaro closed his right eye and opened his left eye wide.

  He stopped, stunned. Makoto drew away from him. Two steps. Three steps.

  Kotaro was looking up at a giant.

  Everything was close to pitch-black, but the giant was faintly illuminated by light coming somewhere from behind. The sky had been cloudy since morning, with the kind of humidity that seemed to drown you. The sun on this last day of June shone sluggishly through a thick wall of clouds and water vapor. That was where the light was coming from.

  The giant looked like a mass of soot. No—it was full of something black, swirling in eddies. It was as though a huge inflatable doll had been pumped full of black smoke until it was close to bursting. That was the only way Kotaro could picture it.

  The giant was a step or two ahead. It walked like Makoto. It was Makoto Miyama’s Shadow, the aggregation of all the words he’d ever used. It was his story.

  The Shadow didn’t swirl around his feet the way Keiko’s did. It didn’t have the lifeless feel of a body bag. It walked under its own power, leaning forward slightly as if sheltering its owner, caring for him when he was tired and dispirited.

  Kotaro felt the ground shake under the giant’s steps. As though it sensed his gaze, it turned to look at him. It had no face, yet Kotaro had a feeling that their eyes met. It could see him.

  The black smoke that was the giant’s body swirled and pooled in constant motion. Kotaro heard a low buzzing sound.

  Suddenly it hit him. The “smoke” was something else. What filled the giant were swarms of tiny black insects, flies or wasps, maybe horseflies. Kotaro tasted something sour rising in his throat.

  “Kotaro?”

  Makoto stopped and turned around. “Are you okay?” Kotaro saw the giant turn slowly away.

  “Uhm, yeah, no problem.” He hurried to catch up, but he stayed just behind Makoto. The giant was too strange. Like Galla, it probably wasn’t a solid entity—if he touched it, his hand would pass right through—but he still didn’t want to get near it. His knees were shaking.

  You were warned.

  A few short threads of silver crossed his sight and disappeared.

  Kotaro hunkered down at his PC. He had to gather every scrap of information he could find before tomorrow’s sleuthing. Not surprisingly, he found a lot of information about Saeko Komiya. It was useful, but the fact that it was there troubled him.

  Personal data about the Serial Amputator’s victims—five, since everyone was still convinced that Ayuko was one of them—was easy to find. Job history, family makeup, personality. Customer opinions, if the victim had run a business. Even in the Akita case, where the murdered woman was unidentified, there was information on the condition of the body and about people who thought she might have been a relative or friend. The details were scattered, but they were there.

  There was a blog post from a woman who thought the victim might have been her grandmother, missing for two years. She had traveled to Akita all the way from Kyushu, only to discover that the victim was someone else. She included lots of details, like the name of the supervising detective and how the body had looked in cold storage.

  Every crime is surrounded by people with some relationship to the perpetrator or the victim. Even if they don’t see the whole picture, they have pieces of it. If they, or the people they’ve spoken to—from journalists to the kid next door—put those pieces on the web, an aggregator can assemble them into a big
ger picture and repackage them for others to consume.

  Your world overflows with monsters that surpass me, Galla had said.

  Not all those monsters are evil. They often have good intentions, even a kind of sincerity. They don’t “leak,” they “disclose.” In a free-market, capitalist world, information wants to be free. Citizens have the right to know everything. Knowledge should be freely available. These are rights, not obligations.

  But there are monsters waiting along the information highway.

  A hideous monster may not necessarily have hideous intentions. A monster may look hideous because it comes bearing information that is horrible in itself. Information monsters are most often neutral, neither good nor bad. But among them are some that truly are evil. How do you tell them apart?

  Right and wrong are not my concern. Galla didn’t distinguish one from the other. That left Kotaro unable to judge whether Galla herself was good or evil. In that sense she was no different from the monsters on the Internet. They were all words personified.

  All this concentrating left Kotaro nearly mute during dinner. For the first time in months, all four family members shared the table, but Kotaro hardly spoke even when spoken to. For the last few months, the only words he’d exchanged with his father were “Good morning.” Now it seemed Takayuki had been transferred to a better position within the bank. Asako was in a very good mood. Kazumi, who typically had little friendly to say, always switched on the charm when both parents were around. Very calculating, in a teenage girl sort of way.

  If, five minutes after he’d left the table, someone had asked Kotaro what he’d had to eat, he would’ve been hard pressed to answer. His head was so far away from the present moment that he forgot to ask Kazumi how Mika was doing. He also forget to tell her about the suspicious-looking young man he’d seen outside the Sonoi house after the trial of Keiko Tashiro. But seeing her did remind him of one important thing.

  Upstairs, he rummaged in his backpack. He pulled out Mika’s book, Land of the Sun, and extracted the hateful note inside the cover. He was about to rip it to shreds, but thought better of it. Yuriko Morisaki’s prediction seemed off target, but if anything did happen, it might be valuable evidence.

  He still had work to do. He sat down and stared at his laptop screen.

  Makoto’s giant. He wished he hadn’t seen it, and it would be better not to mess with it. Still, it had been bothering him since he got home.

  He gave up; it was no use. He opened his mail program. Transparency is a citizen’s obligation. Access to information is a citizen’s right.

  Where are you, Kaname?

  Kotaro here. Off work?

  He entered the subject line and paused to think.

  Im really sorry to put u out. I owe you. Treat u when I get back.

  OBTW I walked Makoto to the station today. He seemed real down. I never saw him like that. Have u heard anything about problems with BB? M wouldn’t tell, so I figured I better ask u. If u have 411, mail me.

  He sent the message, closed the program quickly, as if running away, and went back to his research. When his mother yelled up the stairs for him to take his turn in the bath, he went right down.

  When he came back, there was no response from Kaname.

  7

  The drug store in Kawasaki where Saeko Komiya had worked was called Sakura Pharmacy.

  The neighborhood was a mix of residential and commercial. Sakura Pharmacy, which occupied the first floor of an old building, was one of several near a cluster of medical clinics. The only thing new about it was the wheelchair ramp to the entrance.

  “I used to live in the neighborhood and got some prescriptions here. I wanted to offer my condolences.” Kotaro knew how to turn on the courtesy when he needed to, the kind older people didn’t expect from the young. The white-coated, middle-aged pharmacist who received him bowed politely.

  “Thank you, we appreciate that.” Kotaro noticed that the hair on the top of the man’s head was thinning.

  “Many of her patients have stopped by to pay their respects. Saeko started working here before she got married. She was one of our veterans, very friendly with a lot of people.”

  Kotaro knew that. He’d read it on the web.

  I knew Ms. Komiya …

  I got prescriptions from her for a chronic condition for many years …

  She gave me an antipyretic after I had a reaction to Tamiflu …

  She was very kind and always saw me off at the entrance …

  “I hope they catch the killer soon,” Kotaro said.

  “Yes, it’s something we pray for every day.”

  This was his first attempt to “read” a place, rather than a person, with his left eye. His first impression was one of solidified anxiety, with a faint shadow of fear. There were thin but distinctly visible threads of terror and fragments of sadness.

  Hospitals and pharmacies are frequented by the sick and those who fear they may be sick, and their words leave a characteristic signature. The words in Sakura Pharmacy were not harsh or sharp. They didn’t writhe violently or rush like knives at Kotaro’s eye. A faint smell of sadness seemed to cling to the place. For the first time, he detected the odor of words.

  There was no trace of the killer. He saw nothing that suggested the presence of a murderer, no Shadow like the one Keiko Tashiro had dragged around. The countless words about the murder had left behind only fear and sadness and regret. They were mixed with the remnants of words that predated the murder, or were only potent enough to persist for a short time before fading.

  Whoever killed Saeko Komiya had no connection to this place. Even if the perpetrator had been here, his words could no longer be traced.

  “Does the family still live in that condominium?” Kotaro asked.

  “No. Mr. Komiya couldn’t take care of their little boy on his own, so he sent him to live with his grandparents.”

  “I’d like to leave this.” Kotaro held out a small bouquet. “If it’s no trouble, maybe you could put these in some water and leave them on her desk.”

  “Thanks very much, I’ll do that.”

  Kotaro left the pharmacy and traced the victim’s route home. The buses she used to ride kept passing him, but he walked all the way.

  Condominium complexes big enough to have their own nursery school are like small towns. There must have been five hundred residences.

  Traces of words danced in the air, swirling and scattering as though blown by the wind, flowing, clustering, and disappearing. The sheer number was astonishing. This was another first for Kotaro, to see so many words in one place. There were so many that he had no idea where to start.

  But one thing was certain: he saw nothing dangerous or evil, or mournful. Most of the words, when he tried to focus on them, were too old and faint to make out.

  Like the others in the complex, the building where Saeko Komiya and her family had lived had no security lobby. Their condo was number 303, third floor, west side. Kotaro walked up to the door. The nameplate had been removed. There was nothing in the mail flap. A small bouquet of chrysanthemums was wilting in a milk bottle by the door.

  There were no traces here either. The husband and son had moved out soon after the murder. Kotaro went back down the stairs, wishing he’d brought his bouquet here instead.

  The nursery school occupied the northeast corner of the first floor. Blossom School was pasted to the inside of the big bay window in letters of colored felt. The door was glass too, with a colored frame.

  Facilities that care for children almost always have tight security. Without being a good deal older or younger, it would be hard for Kotaro to get a look inside by posing as a family member. But in the end it wasn’t necessary. As he sidled up to the entrance, using the big potted plant outside to keep out of sight, he saw it.

  The frame around the safety-glass door was a cheerf
ul green. Just inside the glass, next to the frame, was a frozen string of words.

  Thoughts.

  The nursery school was full of words, floating like dust motes. There were fewer here than outside, and most of them were colorless, faintly glowing fragments and broken threads. These must be the words of children, still learning to use language. Their words weren’t dyed with mature emotions and intentions.

  The black, slimy clot on the inner surface of the glass seemed to dominate everything else. The sight was so bizarre that Kotaro almost gasped with surprise. It reminded him of a fleck of vile, liquefied decay that had spurted from a puncture in a body bag.

  The maggots in the clot writhed and crawled on the glass. Kotaro wanted to take a cloth and some disinfectant and expunge them on the spot.

  Silver threads crossed his vision. Defilement.

  “Do you think it’s the killer’s?”

  That I cannot say, Galla’s threads relayed.

  True, the clot might have nothing to do with Saeko Komiya’s murder. It might be a trace of some other conflict: a quarrel between parents or hostile feelings among the staff.

  Still, Kotaro doubted it. There was something too awful about those words and the way they stuck to the glass like slime. Their vile color and the repulsive wriggling of the maggots almost burned themselves into his retina.

  It was time to hit the crime scene—the gas station in Totsuka.

  “Hey, you okay, mister?”

  A cracked voice called anxiously over his shoulder. Kotaro was in no shape to answer.

  Everything about the gas station was old, from the building to its stained and rusting pumps and equipment. The only thing new was this portable outhouse in a corner of the lot. Kotaro was hunched over the bowl with the door wide open, retching his guts out while the attendant looked on anxiously.

  The restroom where Saeko Komiya’s body had been discovered was locked and cordoned off with yellow tape marked KANAGAWA PREFECTURAL POLICE.

  “Yeah, it’s too weird. Nobody’s gonna go in there. Too scary. The boss figured leave it till they catch the guy, you know? So we got this thing—”