“No, I... uhm... I don’t—”
“Don’t try and give me the runaround. It’s written all over your face.” Tatara smiled maliciously. “If we assume that we are dealing with murder here, then the crime has to have taken place a little over three years ago. Finding witnesses will be all but impossible. Ditto with the physical evidence. On top of that, the place where the body was concealed has been almost completely destroyed by fire. How are you supposed to conduct a serious investigation in circumstances like that? I really don’t know. Whoever gets put in charge will have drawn the shortest of short straws; they’ll have every right to feel pissed off.”
Kusanagi looked down at the table and said nothing. Tatara had summed up the situation perfectly.
“However—” the commissioner went on. “Kusanagi, look at me when I’m talking to you.”
Kusanagi turned toward Tatara and looked into his eyes. “Yes, sir.”
“I absolutely insist that you — by which I mean you, Director Mamiya, and you, Chief Inspector Kusanagi — work this case.”
“‘This case’ being what exactly...?” said Mamiya.
Tatara stared back at Mamiya and gave a crisp nod.
“The old woman who lived in the trash-infested house wasn’t completely without family. She actually had a son. If anyone was going to sneak into her house after her death, the chances are that it was him.”
Mamiya leaned forward in his chair.
“Do we know where the son is?”
“He renewed his driver’s license a couple of years ago. The address on it is in Edogawa Ward, and he’s still living there. Before moving there, though, he had an apartment in the south of Kikuno. Around a mile from the victim’s house, as the crow flies. One day, he suddenly quits his job at a junk removal and recycling company and moves out of his apartment. That was right after Saori Namiki vanished.”
Kusanagi heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, a glimmer of light.
Mamiya picked up another sheet of paper, which he deposited in front of Kusanagi. “This is the man. Take a good look at him.”
It was an enlarged photocopy of a driver’s license. Kusanagi gave a start the moment he saw the man’s face. He’d seen him somewhere before... No, that was wrong. He’d actually met him face-to-face. When he caught sight of the name on the license, Kusanagi’s heart skipped a beat. He felt hot all over.
The typewritten name was Kanichi Hasunuma.
Kusanagi’s eyes opened wide and he looked from one to the other in turn. “Is it... that Hasunuma?”
“Yes, it is. It’s that Hasunuma,” Mamiya replied solemnly. “The defendant in the Yuna Motohashi case.”
So many thoughts flooded into Kusanagi’s mind that he was left quite speechless. He could feel one of his cheeks twitching uncontrollably.
He took a second look at the photograph. Hasunuma was older than when their paths had last crossed, but the coldness behind the eyes was exactly the same.
“Let me refresh your memory about another important matter.” Mamiya showed him another photograph. “This is the trash house that was destroyed in the fire. Someone from the local municipality took this picture a few years ago. Look familiar to you?”
Kusanagi picked up the picture. At first, all he could see was an enormous heap of garbage. When he looked carefully, however, he managed to detect the outline of a roof and something resembling a small front gate.
Kusanagi burrowed deep into his memory. A sudden realization hit him.
“It was Shizuoka prefecture, wasn’t it? Are you telling me... that this is the house where we seized that refrigerator?”
“Indeed I am.” Mamiya was jabbing a finger at Kusanagi’s face. “You went to this house with me. The two of us. Nineteen years ago. Of course, it wasn’t completely buried in trash back then.”
“It’s the same house?”
“I imagine you’ve finally realized why I want you and your team to handle this case, Chief Inspector Kusanagi,” Tatara said. “I’ve already made my position known to the heads of CID and Homicide — or would you prefer that I put someone else in charge?”
“No, sir.” Kusanagi clenched his hands into fists on the tabletop. “I completely understand. Please put me in charge of the case.”
Tatara nodded rather smugly.
“Sorry,” Utsumi broke in, “but I’m a little lost. What was the Yuna Motohashi case?”
“I’ll bring you up to speed later,” said Kusanagi.
Tatara had apparently said all he was going to say. Without a further word, Tatara rose to his feet. Kusanagi and Utsumi jumped to their feet and stood at attention. The commissioner stalked out of the room with long strides. Mamiya was following in his wake, when he stopped abruptly and turned back to them.
“We’re setting up a joint investigation task force with Shizuoka Prefectural Police at the Kikuno Police Station. Turn over your current case and let others tie up any remaining loose ends. What I want you to do is to switch over to this investigation as fast as you can.”
“Yes, sir,” Kusanagi said with great emphasis.
As the door slammed shut behind Mamiya, Kusanagi swung around to Utsumi. “Contact everyone on the team. Tell them to assemble at TMPD headquarters right now.”
“Yes, sir.”
3
Yuna Motohashi went missing twenty-three years ago. She was twelve years old at the time. She went out one afternoon to meet a friend in the local park. The park was near her house and was along the route the local students would walk to school. Because of this, Yuna’s mother wasn’t concerned about her. When dinnertime came and Yuna was still not home, her mother went to the park to fetch her. Yuna, however, was nowhere to be seen. When the mother went to the friend’s house to ask after her daughter, the friend said they had parted hours ago.
Starting to feel uneasy, the mother contacted her husband. The two of them visited every place they thought Yuna might be. When that yielded no results, they reported her as missing to the police.
Given the circumstances, the police immediately launched a full-scale search but they found no clues to the missing girl’s whereabouts. In those days there were far fewer security cameras and CCTV than there are now.
The only significant lead they uncovered was a statement from someone who had seen a girl who resembled Yuna walking alongside a man dressed in pale-blue work overalls. Because the witness — a housewife — had only seen them from behind, she had no idea what the man looked like. She described him as being of average height, neither fat nor thin; she hadn’t noticed anything peculiar about the girl’s appearance or behavior.
The workers at the factory, which Seiji Motohashi, Yuna’s father, owned and managed, all wore a uniform of that color. When they showed a set of the company overalls to the housewife, she confirmed that yes, they were similar to the ones she had seen the man wearing.
The factory had a staff of around thirty. Investigators visited and interviewed them all. The majority allowed the investigators to look around their apartments. Those who refused seemed to have plausible reasons for doing so and gave no grounds for suspicion.
Kanichi Hasunuma was one of the factory’s employees. He was thirty years old and lived alone. According to the investigation notes, a detective had visited Hasunuma three days after Yuna went missing and inspected his apartment. Nothing suspicious had been found.
Despite everyone’s efforts, Yuna wasn’t found. The case remained open and was classified as ongoing, but without any leads, the police had to move on. One month after Yuna went missing, her mother committed suicide. In her note, she apologized to Yuna and to her husband. She also blamed herself for letting the girl out to play too late. Convinced that her daughter was dead, she’d lost all hope.