“Of course,” she replied.
* * *
They arrived at the scene about half an hour later.
Getting down to the rocks themselves was too much trouble, so they settled for looking down from the seawall. They could still clearly see the blood splashed on the rocks below. Sanae put a hand over her mouth as a choking sob escaped her lips. Tatara held his hands together in silent prayer for a moment before he began scanning the scene.
“We’ve been questioning people in the area since this morning, but nobody spotted Mr. Tsukahara down here last night,” Motoyama explained, his tone apologetic. “Out in the countryside, few people go outside after eight o’clock.”
Tatara looked around. “Must get pretty dark at night.”
“Pitch black, yes.”
“And this was about four hundred meters from the inn? I’m surprised he managed to walk that far in the dark. Or was he carrying a flashlight?” Tatara muttered, half to himself.
“Well, maybe I shouldn’t have said pitch black,” Motoyama corrected himself. “Er, that is, it gets pretty dark, but he would’ve been able to see enough to walk. The moon was out last night,” he added, a little meekly.
“But you didn’t find a flashlight?”
“No, well, that is, it might’ve fallen into the ocean,” Motoyama stammered, his eyes wandering toward Nishiguchi.
“Since the proprietor of the inn didn’t even know that Tsukahara had left, I’m sure they didn’t loan him a flashlight,” Nishiguchi said. “However, these inns usually have a flashlight in every room for emergencies, which he might have taken. I’ll check in with them and find out.”
Tatara stared down at the rocks, not even nodding in acknowledgment. Eventually, he looked back up, turning his sharp eyes toward Motoyama. “I’m sorry, but can we return to your station immediately? There’s something I need to discuss with the commissioner.”
TEN
Sweat trickled down the DESMEC development manager’s face despite a blast of cold from the air conditioner right above him. He wiped at his forehead with a handkerchief before lifting the microphone again. “Like I said, we need to do more studies before we know what effect this will have on the plankton. Admittedly, if we dig into the seafloor, it will affect the food chain. What we need to do is find out exactly how large an effect it will have, then—”
“But what if your survey has an effect? What then? That’s what I want to know. Who’s gonna take responsibility if we can’t catch any fish?” The man shouting at the stage was a local fisherman, thick arms protruding from his T-shirt sleeves.
“I’m sorry, if we could all calm down,” said a haggard-looking man off to the side of the stage. Today, they had a public relations manager from city hall acting as emcee, and the two hours of heated debate that morning had already worn his voice down to a croak. “DESMEC hasn’t finished explaining their position here, so let’s hear what they have to say, and then raise hands to speak. Please? I hate to repeat myself, but I really need everyone to follow these basic rules of order.”
The development manager from DESMEC brandished his mic again. “We’ve already done a little excavation, and, thus far, have seen no significant effects. Of course, we will be slowly scaling up operations—”
“What do you mean, already started? Who gave you permission to do that?” another voice shouted.
“What are you talking about?” a man in a suit sitting near Narumi said, standing. “Of course they already started their survey—that’s how they knew there’s rare metals out there in the first place. You don’t need permission to do a survey.”
“Hey, whose side are you on?” the man in the T-shirt growled back.
“No one’s side. Not until I hear more. That’s why I came. Enough with the fish, already. I want to hear what DESMEC plans to do for local business.”
“Enough with the fish? Enough with you! You ever—”
“Excuse me, people, please!” the emcee spoke loudly into his mic, his eyebrows furrowed into a consternated V. “If we could stop right there. Raise your hands, people. Then talk. That’s how this works.”
The first public debate on hydrothermal ore mining in Japan wasn’t going smoothly. With the exception of a handful people, no one in the room really knew enough about the topic to have a meaningful conversation. Even Narumi was frustrated with how little she understood of the issues, despite weeks of research.
That, and she was finding it difficult to focus on anything being discussed. Her mind kept wandering back to the day before, when her eyes had met Tsukahara’s. Had he nodded to her? Was she just imagining things? She’d hoped to learn something about him when she went to the police station with her mother the day before, but the police only asked them questions and told them nothing.
Narumi’s eyes went to Yukawa, sitting up on stage with the people from DESMEC. He had several papers spread out on the table in front of him, but the look on his face said he wasn’t paying attention to any of it. He’s not even wearing his glasses.
The meeting finally adjourned forty minutes past schedule. Everyone on stage stayed in their chairs, looking stunned with exhaustion. Everyone except Yukawa, who quickly gathered his things and strode from the room.
“Well, I guess that’s that,” Sawamura said, standing up and stretching. “At least we got them to agree to another hearing. I’ll consider that a victory.”
“But they’re not going to release any of their data on deep-sea organisms,” Narumi complained. “I don’t buy that they’re still ‘prepping’ it, whatever that means. I was hoping you’d say something during the Q and A.”
Sawamura slid his informational handouts into his bag and shrugged. “I thought about it. But then the topic shifted to fishing. I guess I just missed my timing.”
An unusual slip for someone like Sawamura, a veteran of this kind of debate, Narumi thought. She took it as a sign that this issue was far more complex than anything they’d dealt with before.
“By the way,” Sawamura said, turning to her and lowering his voice as they left the auditorium. “How are things at the inn?”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard about your guest. Small town, word travels fast.”
“Oh, that. It was such a surprise.”
“The police have anything to say about it?”
“Not much. They don’t really know what happened yet. Other than the obvious, that is—that he got drunk and fell.”
“Huh. You gotta wonder why he climbed onto the seawall in the first place. You think it was suicide?”
“Not really. I mean, it’s only a drop of five meters or so there. If you were going to commit suicide, wouldn’t you jump from someplace a little higher?”
“Yeah, good point,” Sawamura muttered back.
* * *
Outside the community center, Narumi said good-bye and got on her bike. Shortly after she began pedaling up the coastal road, she spotted a tall man up ahead, walking along the side of the road. She slowed down and called out, “Too quick, Mr. Yukawa.”
He stopped and turned around. “Hey,” he said, a little weakly. “What’s too quick?”
“You, standing up and leaving the stage before anyone else.”
“You noticed.”
“I also noticed that you weren’t wearing your glasses. It looked like you’d pretty much checked out.”
“I was mourning the loss of a perfectly good day spent listening to that pointless debate.” Yukawa started to walk again, so Narumi got down off her bicycle and starting walking alongside him.