Sano said, “Unfortunately, yes.”
“Then it’s true. There exists someone who has the power to kill with a mere touch.” Amazed, Lieutenant Oda glanced around, as though afraid for his own safety. “Who can it be?”
“That’s what I must determine,” Sano said. After five murders, his mission was more urgent than ever: Another man was dead because he hadn’t caught the killer. Crushed by a sense of failed responsibility, Sano hid his emotions behind a stoic expression. The odor of death mingled with the smells of wine and stale food. Sano felt the presence of evil, although the killer was far removed in space and time. He walked to the exterior door and flung it open, admitting fresh air from the garden, then turned to Oda.
“I need your help.”
“Of course.” The lieutenant appeared shaken sober; the flush had paled from his complexion.
“Tell me everyone that had contact with Colonel Ibe, starting two days ago.”
“I know some of the people, but not all-I didn’t go everywhere with him,” Oda said, “but his bodyguards did. They’re in the room across the hall. Shall I fetch them?”
Sano assented, and Oda brought the two young samurai into the parlor. They recited a long list of family members, colleagues, and subordinates whose lives had intersected Colonel Ibe’s during the critical period. When they’d finished, Sano glanced at Hirata, and they shook their heads: As far as they could recall, none of the people mentioned were the same as those who’d had contact with the four other victims.
Sano addressed the bodyguards: “Was there any time when Colonel Ibe was out of your sight?”
The men looked at each other, clearly ashamed because their vigilance had lapsed and horrified that the lapse might have resulted in their master’s death. One blurted, “It was just for a moment.”
“Last night, at Sanja Matsuri,” said the other. “We lost him in the crowd.”
Sano thanked the bodyguards and Lieutenant Oda for their information, gave them permission to take their master’s body home, and told them to let the brothel resume its business. He and Hirata and their men walked down the street toward the gate.
“That festival turns Asakusa Temple into a wild mob scene,” Hirata said. “It would have been a perfect place for the assassin to stalk Colonel Ibe and give him the touch of death.”
“With no one the wiser until now,” Sano said.
He paused at the gate, turned, and looked down Naka-no-cho. He saw the bodyguards carrying out the shrouded corpse of Colonel Ibe on a litter. As people gathered to watch, Sano heard the buzz of excited conversation and saw the crowds in the street group into clusters, spreading the news. Courtesans pressed their faces against the bars of their windows and revelers spilled from the teahouses, eager to learn the cause of the commotion.
“Do you think it was Captain Nakai?” Hirata asked.
“We need to find out where he was last night,” Sano said. “And we’d better go back to Edo Castle and report this latest murder to Lord Matsudaira.” Trepidation filled him as he imagined how Lord Matsudaira would react.
19
The teahouse was the fourteenth that Reiko had visited since she’d left the Court of Justice.
She’d already searched for Yugao’s onetime friend in all the teahouses near the Hundred-Day Theater, but none of the customers, proprietors, or servants at them knew Tama. Extending her search into the outlying neighborhoods, Reiko stepped from her palanquin in front of this teahouse on a street lined with tenements above shops that sold preserved vegetables and fruit. It was almost identical to all the others she’d seen. A curtain hung from the eaves halfway down an open storefront. A maid leaned, downcast and bored, against a pillar at the edge of its raised plank floor. The room behind her was vacant except for the proprietor, a middle-aged man who squatted beside his sake urn, decanters, and cups. She spotted Reiko’s guards, and her face brightened.
“Hello, there,” she called to Lieutenant Asukai. She was past her youth, but her figure was voluptuous. Her eyes gleamed at the prospect of male company and big tips. “May I serve you and your friends a drink?”
“Thank you,” Asukai said. “By the way, my mistress has some questions that you will please answer.”
Curious but wary, the maid beheld Reiko. “Whatever you like.”
The proprietor poured sake, and while the maid served the men, Reiko said, “I’m looking for a woman named Tama. She works at a teahouse around here. Do you know her?”
“Oh, yes,” the maid said. “We used to work together, here. Tama’s father used to own this teahouse.”
Reiko’s spirits leapt. “Can you tell me where I can find Tama?”
But the maid shook her head. “Sorry. Haven’t seen her in, oh, two years. She and her family moved out of the neighborhood. I don’t know where they went. Her father sold the teahouse to him.” She waved at the proprietor, who sat with Reiko’s escorts, engaging them in polite chat. “Hey, what ever became of Tama?”
He shook his head in ignorance. Disappointed, Reiko pressed on. “Did you know a girl named Yugao? She was friends with Tama.”
“No…” The maid reconsidered. “Oh, yes, there was a girl who used to come around to visit.” But when Reiko asked her about Yugao’s character and family, she couldn’t provide any information. “Say, why all these questions? Has Tama done something wrong?”
“Not that I know of,” Reiko said, “but I must find her.” Tama seemed Reiko’s only chance at facts that might shed light on the murders. “Where did Tama used to live?”
The maid gave directions to a house some distance away, then said, “Maybe I can find out what happened to her. I can ask around, if you like.” She jingled the money in a pouch she wore on her sash, hinting for a bribe.
Reiko paid her a silver coin. “If you find Tama, send word to Lady Reiko at Magistrate Ueda’s Court of Justice, and I’ll pay you twice as much.”
As she climbed into her palanquin, she told the bearers to take her to the house where Tama had once lived. The time until her father’s deadline was slipping away, and Reiko had an urgent sense that she must discover the truth about the crimes before Yugao was executed, or there would be consequences dire beyond her imagination.
A corridor as dim and dank as an underground tunnel extended past the prison cells in Edo Jail. Down this trudged a jailer who carried a stack of wooden trays that held food. He paused to shove a tray through the slot under each locked door. Uproarious cries from the captives greeted the food’s arrival.
Inside one cell, eight women pounced on their meal like starving cats. They shoved and clawed at one another and shrieked as they fought over rice, pickled vegetables, and dried fish. Yugao managed to grab a rice ball. She fled to a corner of the cell, which was only ten paces square and lit by a tiny barred window near the ceiling, to eat. The other women knelt, gobbling their food. Their hair hung shaggy around their faces; they licked their fingers and wiped them on their dirty hemp robes. Yugao gnawed the tough, gluey rice. How disgusting that a few days in jail had reduced her, as well as her fellow inmates, to wild animals! But she reminded herself that she’d chosen this fate. It was part of her plan. She must, and would, endure.
Finishing her food, Yugao reached for the water jar. But Sachiko, a thief awaiting trial, got to it first. She was a tough, homely girl in her teens who’d grown up on Edo’s streets and lived with a band of gangsters before her arrest. She upended the jar and drank, then fixed a belligerent stare on Yugao.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “Are you thirsty?”
“Give me that.” Yugao snatched at the jar.
Sachiko held it out of her reach and grinned. “If you ask me nicely, I might give you some.”
The other women watched eagerly to see what would happen. They all played up to Sachiko because they were afraid of her. Yugao scorned them for their weakness, and she hated Sachiko. She wouldn’t bow to the bully.