FOURTEEN
In the homicide division of the Tokyo Police Department, Detective Shunpei Kusanagi was in the middle of laboriously typing up a report when he sensed someone standing in front of his desk. He looked up to see Division Chief Mamiya glaring down at him.
“Don’t tell me you can’t touch type, Kusanagi.”
Kusanagi narrowed his eyes. “What about you, Chief?”
“You know I don’t have time for that crap,” Mamiya said. He glanced around the office and leaned in a little closer. “Speaking of which, got a moment?”
Kusanagi chuckled. “Didn’t you just tell me you needed this report done on the double?”
“It can wait. Come with me, Director Tatara’s waiting.”
“Tatara?” Kusanagi immediately began thinking back over the last couple of days, trying to figure out what he could’ve messed up badly enough to get the director’s attention.
“Don’t worry, he’s not going to chew us out. Come.”
Mamiya walked off without waiting for an answer. Kusanagi got up from his desk and hurried after him. They reached a small meeting room, where Mamiya knocked on the door. A voice from inside said, “Enter.”
The two detectives walked into the room to find Tatara, his jacket off, sitting in one of the chairs. He had spread several papers out on the conference table, along with some photographs. Kusanagi spotted a photocopy of a map, though it wasn’t an area he was familiar with.
“Have a seat,” Tatara said. “I called you both in here because I have a somewhat irregular request for Kusanagi.” The director’s face was calm, but there was a serious look in his eyes.
Kusanagi straightened a little in his chair. “Yes, sir?”
“I assume you’ve heard about Masatsugu Tsukahara’s death?”
It took Kusanagi a moment to reply, “Yes, yesterday, but only a rumor. They said he died on a trip somewhere?”
Masatsugu Tsukahara had left the homicide division ten years ago. He’d been transferred to another department, apparently due to ill health. They hadn’t even been on the same squad when he was in homicide, so Kusanagi barely knew the man. He didn’t even know he’d retired when he heard about the death.
“Well, it’s a long story, but basically, I owe a lot to Tsukahara. My entire career, really.”
Kusanagi nodded, unsure whether he should offer his condolences.
“Yesterday, I went with his widow to visit the town where it happened,” Tatara continued. “This is where they found him.” He placed a photograph in front of Kusanagi, showing some rocks on the coast somewhere, photographed from above. “He was lying on these rocks. The local physician’s assessment was cerebral contusion.”
A wrinkle formed between Kusanagi’s eyebrows. “So he slipped and fell, something like that?”
“That’s how the locals are calling it. They weren’t even planning an autopsy.”
Kusanagi raised an eyebrow. “But something was off, I take it?”
“As soon as I saw the body in the morgue, I knew this was no simple fall on the rocks,” Tatara said, looking between the two detectives. “I’ve seen plenty of accidental deaths by falling. Even when we’re only talking about a few meters, if he hit hard enough to cause cerebral contusion, there should have been internal hemorrhaging throughout the body. But he was hardly bruised at all. Which says to me Tsukahara was dead before he hit those rocks.
“Once I had a chance to examine the scene, I felt even more sure foul play was involved. Tsukahara liked to drink as much as any of us, but I never knew him to drink to excess. I don’t buy for a second that he scrambled drunkenly up on that seawall, then slipped off the other side.”
“Is that what the locals said?” Mamiya asked.
Tatara chuckled and shook his head. “If we leave this case in their hands, it will die a quick death. No, we need to requisition the body and perform an autopsy here.”
Mamiya’s eyes widened. “And we’re going to do that?”
“The Hari police commissioner’s already signed off on it. I had our chief of detectives give the local station a call. If we find reasonable evidence of murder, we’ll get their homicide people on it—after sharing our findings with them, of course. That should keep the locals happy.”
Kusanagi nodded, duly impressed. He examined the man across the table, his neatly combed hair making him look more like a banker than a cop, remembering the stories he’d heard about Tatara back when he was a detective, not an administrator, and working actual cases. Tatara was rumored to have been a loose cannon who kept everyone on his team guessing what he’d do next. Guess the rumors had some truth to them.
“So when’s the autopsy scheduled?” Mamiya asked.
Tatara grinned. “It’s already under way. They brought the body in last night, and started the autopsy this morning. We don’t have an official report yet, mostly because they haven’t determined the cause of death.”
“Am I to take it that means it wasn’t cerebral contusion?” Kusanagi said.
“No. The injury on his head was most definitely inflicted after death. Nor were there any signs of natural causes, like a cerebral hemorrhage or heart attack. In other words, he didn’t keel over on top of the seawall and then fall onto those rocks.”
“So he wasn’t sick, and there weren’t any injuries other than the one to the head,” Kusanagi said, choosing his words carefully. “Poison?”
“Probably,” Tatara agreed. “They’re running a bunch of tests right now. It’s only a matter of time before we nail it down. The real question is, why did a dead man end up on those rocks?” Tatara tapped the photograph on the table.
Kusanagi raised an eyebrow. “I assume we’ll be setting up a task force in Hari?”
“Sooner or later, yes. I expect we’ll get a formal request for assistance from the Shizuoka Police. Problem is, if we wait that long, we might lose our chance to pick up the trail. Also, I doubt the locals will give us jurisdiction on their turf, so we might end up getting only part of the full picture.” Tatara took a breath. “We need to move on our own on this one.”
“You mean the Tokyo Police Department will be effectively taking over the investigation?” Kusanagi asked.
The director shook his head. “No. I’m not trying to shove the local police out completely. I’m happy to have them conduct their investigation. That said, I’m not going to go to Tsukahara’s widow or, for that matter, Tsukahara himself when we meet in the great beyond, and say we couldn’t find his killer because of inept police work. That’s why we need to conduct our own investigation. And if we find anything of value, we’ll bring it straight to the local prefectural headquarters.”
“And you want me to conduct this investigation?” Kusanagi asked.
“That’s right,” Tatara said, his eyes shifting to Mamiya. “How about it? You just wrapped up a case, probably won’t have anything for a while, right? Think you can loan me your detective until the next case starts up?”
“Well, it’s fine with me, but…” Mamiya’s words trailed off as he turned to look at Kusanagi.
“Why me?” Kusanagi asked.
Tatara’s eyes glimmered. “You don’t want to take this on?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. But assigning me to the case doesn’t make much sense. There are a lot of other people, high-ranking people, in the department who knew Tsukahara a lot better than I did.”
“Like me, for instance,” Tatara said. “You’re right.”
“Of course, I’m not suggesting that you go out there yourself, Director,” Kusanagi quickly added.
Tatara shook his head. “I don’t think anyone else in the department knew the deceased like I did. Which pretty much leaves everyone else but me on equal footing.”