The boiler room in the basement was connected by a single pipe to the chimney on the roof of the inn, bringing the exhaust from the boiler up through the walls and outside. The pipe ran past some of the guest rooms, including the Ocean Room, where it passed just behind the main closet. It had never been a problem, except the gradual deterioration of the building and an earthquake several years earlier had resulted in a crack in the back wall of the closet. The pipe itself wasn’t airtight. The Kawahatas had noticed an occasional smell of soot in the room before, and generally avoided using it for that reason.
Tsukahara, sprawled on the floor in his yukata, was dead, except his skin color looked unusually healthy. Having worked many years at an engine manufacturer, Shigehiro realized immediately it was carbon monoxide poisoning.
As to why Tsukahara had been in the Ocean Room in the first place, he could only guess. He thought maybe he had heard the sounds of fireworks going off in the backyard and come to take a look. In order to make things easier when they did cleaning, they rarely locked the unused rooms. To Tsukahara’s misfortune, he’d already taken the sleeping medicine he got from Shigehiro. Shigehiro thought he must’ve fallen asleep while he was watching the fireworks and never noticed the smell of gas in the room.
“I know I should have alerted the police immediately, but I didn’t. I don’t know what came over me,” were the words Shigehiro Kawahata used. He had suggested to Setsuko that they move the body somewhere else. Carbon monoxide poisoning wasn’t something readily apparent, so if Tsukahara were wounded in some other way, Shigehiro figured the police might never look any closer.
“I suggested we throw him over the seawall. My wife resisted. She said we should call the police. But I pressured her.” Shigehiro sat with his head hanging, his hands clenched into fists on his knees.
Setsuko looked like she might say something, but Isobe held up a hand to stop her.
“If you would, ma’am, please hold your testimony until later when we’re all back at the station. I’d like to hear everything your husband has to say first. Mr. Kawahata?”
Shigehiro coughed once before resuming his story. “My wife and I carried the body. It wasn’t easy, with my injury and all, but we got him into the van. Then we took him down to the seawall and, after we were sure no one was looking, we threw him over. I put an overcoat on the body before we dropped him so it would look like he had gone out for a walk. I threw the sandal down too. Then the two of us went back up to the inn. Our daughter and our only other guest, Mr. Yukawa, came back right after that. That’s it. That’s everything.” When he had finished speaking, he lowered his head again slowly.
Isobe nodded, rubbed the back of his neck for a moment, then turned to Nonogaki. “You get all that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Detective,” Shigehiro said, looking up. “I hope you understand, it was all my fault. My wife was just doing what I told her to. Please—”
Isobe held his hand out in front of Shigehiro’s face to silence him. “That’s enough of that,” he said in a low, cold tone. “I think we get the general picture. We’ll speak to both of you individually down at the station. We’d like your daughter to come down too.”
Narumi nodded silently.
“Okay, this hotel is off-limits to anyone not on the task force,” Isobe said in a loud voice. “We’ll take all the keys. And, didn’t you have a relative staying here? A boy?”
“His father came to pick him up this morning.”
“His father?” A cloud passed over Isobe’s face. “So he took the kid back home?”
“No, they’re still in town.”
“Good. Give me the number. We need to talk to the kid, too. Also, where is your other guest, this Yukawa fellow?”
“We had Mr. Yukawa move to a different hotel. We told him something came up and we had to leave town for a few days.”
“You know which hotel he’s staying at, then? We’ll get that number from you too.”
Isobe told his men to take the Kawahatas down to the station. Then he picked a few other detectives to close off the crime scene and had someone give forensics a call.
Nishiguchi stood and watched as the three Kawahatas were shepherded into three separate police cruisers. He wanted to call out to Narumi and tell her not to worry, but she was surrounded by officers, and he couldn’t get close enough to talk to her.
FORTY-EIGHT
Kyohei looked up from his notebook at the sound of a phone buzzing. His father swore under his breath and checked the display before answering it. It was the fourth call in less than an hour—probably Mom again.
“What? Look, I told you I don’t know anything.… Yeah, we’re at the hotel. We checked in, now we’re just waiting. I said we’re waiting. Look, given the circumstances, the police are definitely—” He stopped speaking for moment and looked around, then continued in a quiet voice. “The police are definitely going to want to talk to Kyohei.… No, what good would you coming here do? That would just make things even more confused than they already are.… No, we can’t. We absolutely can’t delay the opening.” Still holding the phone to his ear, he stood from the table and walked away.
Kyohei drank his orange juice through a long straw. They were sitting in the hotel lounge. The only people in the pool were a little kid wearing a floatie and a woman—probably his mother.
Kyohei’s father stood in a corner of the lounge, still talking. From the way it sounded, he’d left everything in Osaka up to Kyohei’s mom. Kyohei knew it was no little thing getting a new store open. He could imagine his mother fretting up a storm. “How dare they pull a stunt like this when we’re up to our necks in work!”
At first, his father had been mum about why he’d suddenly come to pick Kyohei up, but after they left the Green Rock Inn and checked in at this resort hotel, he had told him the truth. The guest, Tsukahara, had died because of a boiler malfunction at the inn. His aunt and uncle had tried to dispose of the body to hide that fact.
“They should’ve just called the police right away, but because they didn’t, well, now they’re in a bit of trouble. They might even have to spend some time in jail,” his father told him with a dark face.
Kyohei thought back to the way his aunt and uncle had been acting in the days after Tsukahara went missing: the strained conversations, the dark looks in the car. Suddenly it all made sense.
Kyohei slurped at his drink, becoming aware of someone standing next to him. He looked up. “Hey, Professor!”
“They send you here?”
“Yeah, with my dad. Did they put you up here too?”
“This is the hotel where DESMEC made my initial reservation. I hardly imagined I’d be taking them up on it under these circumstances.”
Kyohei looked up at him. “You knew what happened, didn’t you?”
The physicist pushed his glasses up with the tip of his finger. “Knew what?”
“About the accident at the inn. That it was my uncle’s fault.”
“Accident?” Yukawa raised an eyebrow. “I had some theories. How long will you be staying here?”
“I don’t know. We might head out tomorrow, but Dad says we might leave later tonight if we can.”
“I see,” Yukawa said, nodding. “That’s probably for the best. This isn’t a good place for you to be.”
“Why not?” Kyohei asked.
“I should think you’d know that better than anyone else.”
Kyohei looked up at Yukawa, but then he saw his father putting his phone in his pocket and turning back around. Yukawa nodded and walked away with long strides.