“Possibly. It sounded like he was pretty bad off.”
“He might’ve required hospitalization.”
“Which would mean paperwork.”
“That’s right. Except, when a homeless person with no registered address needs hospitalization, the hospital typically tries to register them for public assistance to defray costs. In order to do that, they need to issue a residence card under the hospital’s address. But his records showed no sign of that having happened, either.”
“So what did happen?”
“Well,” Utsumi said. “I’m thinking it was either a hospital that didn’t require public assistance, or”—she leaned forward, a gleam in her eye—“someplace that owed Tsukahara a favor.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
At the Hari police station, the overall mood of the investigative task force was dark, and with every successive report, the mood in the conference room darkened further. Everyone could see that the proceedings lacked one important element: results. Hozumi from prefectural homicide stared glumly at the reports on the desk in front of him. They were essentially a detailed and objective account of how little the task force had achieved after days of questioning. They included Nishiguchi’s report on the restaurant in East Hari where Masatsugu Tsukahara had eaten seaweed udon the day he died—more information that offered no hope of resulting in a lead.
Nishiguchi sat toward the back, keeping one eye on the proceedings while he ruminated on his exchange with Yukawa in East Hari. Nishiguchi had checked the blog My Crystal Sea, where Yukawa claimed he’d seen Narumi extolling the virtues of the view, but there was nothing in there about the view from East Hari. In fact, East Hari wasn’t mentioned at all.
Did that mean the physicist had intentionally lied? And if so, why?
The meeting dragged on. Now they were getting into the reports on the method of the killing and possible murder scenes. They still hadn’t found the place where the victim was poisoned. If the murderer had somehow lured the victim into a car, drugged him with sleeping pills, then arranged to kill him by carbon monoxide poisoning inside the vehicle, he or she could have done the deed anywhere. Afterward, they could have dropped him off the seawall when no one was looking—an easy feat to pull off after sundown, in the countryside, where there would be no witnesses.
Just in case a car hadn’t been used, they looked into unused storerooms, cottages, and empty homes in the area as well. Yet they had found nothing with any connection to the case. There was a room in one hotel, closed now for several years, with scorch marks on the floor. However, given the accumulation of dust, it was unlikely anyone had been there within the last month, if not longer. The marks were probably something left by vandals.
“How about the victim’s background. Anything on that?” Hozumi asked, his voice thick with fatigue.
“I have a report from our Tokyo task force,” Isobe said, standing with some papers in his hand. The Tokyo task force was a small squad that had been sent to look into Masatsugu Tsukahara’s personal life and connections.
Isobe cleared his throat and began. “The victim, Masatsugu Tsukahara, retired from the Tokyo Police Department last year. Before he retired, he was part of the Department of Regional Guidance, and we spoke with three of his colleagues there.…”
Isobe delivered his report with uncustomary vigor, but the news clearly wasn’t what Hozumi had been hoping for. Tsukahara had been devoted to his work, committed to crime prevention with impressive determination, and displayed an uncommon attention to detail. He wasn’t very social, but once he got to know someone, he would do anything for them. In other words, he wasn’t the type who made many enemies.
He was never at the center of any drama in the workplace, and his transition to retirement had gone smoothly. All his former colleagues agreed that no one had been rubbed the wrong way, and nothing critical had been left undone.
Hozumi frowned and stretched, putting his hands behind his head as he leaned back in his chair. “Doesn’t look like much is going to come from that direction, then. How about this other guy. Senba, was it? Anyone seen him?”
“We were thinking of expanding our questioning in East Hari a little further east,” Isobe offered, though it didn’t sound like he had much hope that would result in much.
“And we still don’t know if this guy’s even alive?”
Isobe winced. “Tokyo said they’d let us know if anything turns up.”
“What about the connection between the victim and Hari Cove? Anything other than Senba we can go on?” Hozumi asked the room, irritation creeping into his voice.
“Tokyo says that no one remembers hearing the victim talking about Hari Cove. Which means the only thing we have that might have brought him here was the hearing on the undersea development project. I think we have a report on that—hey, Nonogaki,” Isobe called out, looking around. Nonogaki stood from one of the tables toward the front of the room.
So that’s where he got to after we finished, thought Nishiguchi. He hoped Nonogaki had more to show for the day than he did.
“Right, so, attendance vouchers were required to get into the hearing, and we confirmed that the voucher in the victim’s possession was genuine. In order to get a voucher, it was necessary to send an application to DESMEC by mail, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope. Also, not everyone who applied actually got in. They received about twice as many applications as they had spots for, so the winners were decided by lottery. I talked to DESMEC, and they confirmed that the victim was one of the winners.”
“And?” Hozumi prompted, a look in his eyes that said there had better be more.
“The dates for the hearing were set in June, and they started accepting applications to attend in July. Announcements were posted in the Yomiuri, Asahi, and Mainichi papers, as well as on DESMEC’s Web site. The victim sent in his application on July 15, which we determined by checking the postmark on the envelope he’d used to send it in. Interestingly, the watermark showed that he’d mailed it from the Chofu Station Post Office.”
“Chofu?” Hozumi raised an eyebrow. “That’s in Tokyo, right? Er, out on the west side, was it?”
“Someone get a map of Tokyo,” Isobe barked.
One of the young detectives on Isobe’s team dashed up to the front table with a Tokyo-area road map in his hand and opened it for Hozumi. In the back, Nishiguchi looked up Chofu Station on his phone. It was to the west, about fifteen kilometers out from Shinjuku.
“The victim’s residence is in Hatogaya, Saitama, which as we know is north of Tokyo,” Nonogaki continued. “That address was written on the back of the envelope, and matches the address that DESMEC had on file from their application lottery. But we’re still not sure why the envelope was posted from Chofu.” Nonogaki took a seat.
Hozumi looked at the road map a bit more, then he frowned. “Could be there was no particular reason. He probably had something to do in Chofu and threw the letter in a mailbox along the way.”
“That’s a possibility,” Isobe said. “But we spoke to the widow on the phone, and she said she couldn’t think of any reason why her husband would have gone to Chofu. They had no friends or relations out there, and it’s also quite a haul from their home in Hatogaya. The victim didn’t own a car, so he must’ve gone by train. That means he would’ve had several chances along the way to post a letter much closer to home.”
Hozumi’s silence seemed to indicate that he didn’t think Isobe was full of it, for a change. Eventually, he lifted his eyes from his desk and looked around the room. “Anyone else have any opinions on this?”