“I suppose that would make her fifty-three or fifty-four, then. She doesn’t look it,” Yukawa said, then turned to Kyohei as though he had just thought of something. “How old is your father?”
“Forty-five.”
“That’s quite a gap between siblings.”
“That’s because my aunt’s mother died when she was really little. My dad’s mother was my grandpa’s second wife.”
“Half-siblings. I see,” Yukawa said, adjusting his glasses.
“Also, my aunt left the house when she was still pretty young, and went to live by herself in Tokyo. That’s why my dad said he never really felt like he had a sister when he was growing up. She was more like an old cousin or something.”
“Your dad isn’t one to pull punches, I gather. At any rate, that means that your uncle was already into his fifties when he took over the inn. Any idea what he did before that?”
“He worked at some engine company.”
“Engines?”
“Yeah, he kept getting transferred all over the place, too, and leaving my aunt behind. When they were in Tokyo, it was pretty much just my aunt and Narumi in the house.”
“So they were based in Tokyo before coming here?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
Yukawa shrugged. “No particular reason.” He turned and opened up the closet, revealing a stack of white futons. After staring at them for several seconds, he pulled the futons out and climbed into the closet, where he began rapping on the wall with his knuckles and rubbing it with his fingers.
“Professor?” Kyohei said, suddenly growing uneasy.
Yukawa stepped out of the closet. He replaced the futons and shut the door. “Right, let’s go.”
“You’re all done?”
“I saw what I came to see, and everything was exactly as I expected.” Yukawa reached for the switch, but the second before the room plunged into darkness, Kyohei caught the look on the professor’s face. He looked more grim than Kyohei had ever seen him before.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Kusanagi stopped his car by the side of the road in Asagaya to take the call from Utsumi. It was creeping up on ten o’clock at night.
“You could’ve called a bit earlier,” he said by way of a greeting. “It’s been hours since I dropped you off.”
“Sorry, I lost track of time with all the walking around.”
“What, you’ve been beating the street this entire time?”
“Pretty much,” she answered, sounding chipper nonetheless. Seemingly boundless energy was one of Utsumi’s strong points. “I think it’s safe to say I hit pretty much every budget hotel in Sanya.”
Kusanagi was impressed. “Well, I hope you found something with all that.”
There was a pause, then, “I’d say I did, yes.”
“Good,” Kusanagi said. “Where are you now?”
“Walking toward Asakusa.”
“Asakusa? What’s there?”
“A good place for dinner. I haven’t had anything to eat yet.”
“Great, give me the name. I’ll meet you there. Dinner’s on me.”
“Really? Then maybe I should suggest a different place—”
“Don’t get greedy.”
Kusanagi punched the name of the place into his car’s GPS and pulled away from the curb.
Utsumi’s favorite spot to grab a late dinner in Asakusa was right next to the Azuma Bridge, a little place on a narrow alleyway wedged in between the main road and the Sumida River. Lucky for Kusanagi, there was a parking lot just across the way.
The two sat down at a table fashioned from the cross-section of a large log. They both ordered Utsumi’s recommendation: the cow tongue platter.
“Well, let’s hear it,” Kusanagi said, pulling an ashtray over and lighting a cigarette.
Utsumi pulled a navy-colored notebook out of her shoulder bag.
“Well, basically, you were right. Tsukahara was looking for Senba—no fewer than nine places told me that a man in his sixties had been around showing people a picture of him and asking questions. I didn’t quite get confirmation that the one asking the questions was, in fact, Tsukahara, but the description matched.”
Kusanagi looked up at the ceiling and blew out a stream of smoke. “That sounds about right,” he said. “So we know where Tsukahara was. What about Senba? Did Tsukahara ever find him?”
Utsumi looked up from her notebook and shook her head. “I don’t think he did. Not with the number of hotels he ended up asking at.”
“And nobody said they’d seen Senba around?”
“I showed the picture to everyone I talked to, but nothing.”
Kusanagi frowned. “Yeah, that would’ve been too easy.”
Their dinner arrived. Each one of them had seven pieces of cow tongue on a large tray, surrounded by a small bowl of grated yam, a bowl of boiled rice and barley, salad, and oxtail soup.
“This looks fantastic,” Kusanagi said, snuffing out his cigarette.
“You didn’t think we’d find Senba there, did you?” Utsumi said, staring at him.
“I had my doubts,” Kusanagi admitted. “Even if Senba was out looking for places to stay, Sanya probably wouldn’t be his first choice. It’s a tourist dive for backpackers from overseas. You can’t stay there too long without some kind of income. Maybe Tsukahara didn’t know how the area had changed because he was off the force for a while. Or maybe he knew, but he went to check anyway. Classic old-school detective, leaving no stone unturned.” Kusanagi took a bite of his cow tongue and whistled. The combination of texture and taste was sublime. “That is good. Dammit. Now I want a beer.”
“Where would he have gone, then? An Internet café?”
Kusanagi nodded, pouring his grated yam over the rice and barley. “That’s where all the drifters, young and old, wind up these days. Cheaper than budget places in Sanya, and they’ve got showers. Wow, this yam rice is amazing too.”
“Okay,” Utsumi said, “I’ll try the Internet cafés tomorrow, then. We still haven’t figured out why Tsukahara was looking for Senba in the first place, though.”
Kusanagi sipped his oxtail soup, gave a little sigh, and reached for his jacket on the chair next to him. He pulled his notebook out of the inner pocket and flipped through the pages.
“Well,” he said, “while you were out tromping around, I went to Ogikubo and checked the records from the time of Senba’s arrest. I found out that Tsukahara’s partner on the case was a sergeant by the name of Fujinaka. He’s still with the Ogikubo department, though out on medical leave. I got them to call him up, and he agreed to meet me, so I went to his place—a swanky apartment on the thirtieth floor of one of those towers. Sounds like his wife hit pay dirt with a massage business. I guess not every detective lives in a rundown place in the suburbs.”
Fujinaka was in his midfifties but skinny, which gave him the feel of a much older person. The medical leave was due to heart trouble.
“I remember the case well,” he had told Kusanagi. He was well spoken and had sounded almost like a schoolteacher. “They had me partnered with Detective Tsukahara from the beginning of the case, but I wasn’t able to assist with much of it, as I recall.” Fujinaka had smiled.
“And you weren’t there when Tsukahara took Senba in?” Kusanagi had asked.
“That’s right. I was on the other side of town, much to my chagrin. If I’d been with Tsukahara, I would have gotten the chance to see him chase that fellow down,” Fujinaka had said. Not I would’ve gotten the chance to take him down myself, Kusanagi noted. The deference Fujinaka showed his ex-partner was impressive.
“You said you weren’t able to assist much during the solving of the case,” Kusanagi had said next. “Did you do any follow-up work with Tsukahara?”
“Nothing much, beyond being his guide to the streets around here. It was a very clear-cut case, Detective. The murderer’s confession was believable; all the details checked out. In the end, there was really only one question.”