“Why are you saying those things?” Haru interrupted, and hurt eclipsed the happiness on her face. “I told you I didn’t set the fire. Why do you want to turn everyone against me?”
Her father regarded her sadly. “We were wrong to hide what we know about you. Now we must tell the truth.”
“And you must face up to what you’ve done,” said her mother, turning a tear-streaked face toward Haru. “Repent, and cleanse the disgrace from your spirit.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Haru protested, beginning to wheeze as she glared at her parents. “You never loved me. No matter how hard I tried to please you, I was never good enough. It’s all your fault that I’m in trouble.”
Sano had kept quiet during this exchange. He’d identified Haru’s feelings for her parents as a vulnerability, Reiko thought, deploring the cruel tactic by which he’d exposed a dark side of Haru. Now he said, “But it wasn’t your parents who committed murder and arson. It was you.”
“They made me marry that horrible old man. I told them how badly he treated me and begged them to let me come home, but they wouldn’t listen.” Louder wheezes rasped from Haru; she squirmed, straining at her bonds. “You didn’t care how I suffered,” she shouted at her parents, who cringed. “All you cared about was the money the old man gave you. I had to protect myself.”
“And that’s why you killed your husband?” Sano said.
“No, no, no!” Haru shrieked, rocking back and forth. “The night he died, he got angry at me for serving him cold tea. He hit me, and his arm knocked over a lamp. It set his clothes on fire. I ran away and let him and his house burn. He deserved to die!”:
The confession descended upon Reiko like a vast iron bell that resonated with her shock and horror. She barely heard the audience’s outcry. Everything seemed hazy. She felt sick because she no longer believed anything Haru said.
“More lies.” Sano addressed the girl with scornful contempt. “I suggest that you threw the lamp at your husband and set him on fire. Did you kill Commander Oyama, too?”
Haru’s resistance suddenly broke into hysteria. “Yes,” she moaned. “Yes, yes!”
Reiko bowed her head, mournfully resigned to the knowledge that Haru had deceived her from the start. She’d compromised her marriage and her vocation over a liar and criminal. There would be no exoneration of Haru, no ultimate justification of Reiko’s defense of the girl. Reiko had made a fool of herself in public and failed to direct the power of the law toward the Black Lotus. Mortified, she looked to see if Sano would acknowledge his victory over her, but he was watching Haru.
“What happened that night at the Black Lotus Temple?” he said.
“Commander Oyama told me to meet him in the cottage. I didn’t want to, but the Black Lotus needed his patronage.” The words rushed from Haru like water pouring through a broken dam. “So I sneaked out of the orphanage. When I got to the cottage, he was already there, naked on the bed. He ordered me to-” Haru’s voice dropped in shame “-to suck on him.
“He said that unless I obeyed, he would stop giving money to the Black Lotus, and Anraku would be angry with me and expel me from the temple. I was afraid he was right, so I knelt and took him in my mouth.” Haru gulped, as if swallowing nausea engendered by the memory. “Suddenly his legs came up around my neck and started squeezing, choking me. I begged him to let go, but he just shouted at me to keep sucking. I broke free, and he started hitting me. He pinned me down on the floor and rammed himself inside me. He was strangling me. Everything started going dark. I was so frightened that he was going to kill me.”
Through her emotional turmoil, Reiko absorbed the fact that Oyama had caused Haru’s bruises. But what did it matter that Reiko had correctly believed Haru had been the victim of an attack that night, when she’d been mistaken about too much else?
Haru began to cry in loud, whooping sobs. “I had to stop him. There was an alcove in the wall, with a little brass statue of Kannon inside. I grabbed the statue and struck at his face with it. He ducked, but he let go of my neck and fell off me. I kicked him in the crotch. He howled and doubled up in pain. Then I hit him on the back of the head with the statue. All of a sudden his voice stopped. His eyes were open, but he didn’t move. There was blood all over his head, on the floor, on the statue. I knew he was dead.”
Whether Haru had really killed Oyama in self-defense, or was twisting the truth again, Reiko didn’t know what to think, for she could no longer trust her instincts. They’d failed her, and she perceived the worst of what she’d done. Instead of serving justice, she’d sabotaged Sano’s work and dishonored her vocation. Self-hatred tormented Reiko.
“I was so terrified that I couldn’t move,” Haru went on. “I sat there for a long time, crying and wondering what to do. I thought of going to High Priest Anraku for help, but I was afraid he would get angry at me for killing an important patron. Finally I decided to make it look like an accident, I picked up the statue, left Commander Oyama lying in the cottage, and ran to the main hall. I wiped off the statue and set it in a niche with a lot of other statues like it. Then I got the idea that Commander Oyama was still alive. I had to see, so I went back to the cottage. That was when someone came up behind me and hit my head. I didn’t see who it was. The next thing I knew, the firebell was ringing, I was lying in the garden, and it was morning.”
Tears streaming down her face, Haru cast a beseeching gaze up at Sano. “Yes, I killed Commander Oyama. But not the others. I didn’t even know they were there. That’s the truth, I swear!”
It sounded as if someone else had killed Chie and the boy, then framed Haru for their murders by knocking her unconscious so that she would be found at the scene. Their bodies must have been put in the cottage while Haru was hiding the statue, or while she lay oblivious. Perhaps someone else had indeed set the fire. Yet Reiko had little hope of this, and even if the girl was telling the truth now, it would make little difference to her fate.
“Honorable Magistrate,” Sano said, “whether or not Haru is responsible for the deaths of the woman and boy, she has confessed to killing an important man. She deserves punishment.”
Nor did the possibility of a second murderer change the fact that Reiko had been wrong to ever believe in Haru’s innocence. Sick with shame and regret, Reiko wanted to rush from the room, but a stubborn need to see the case through to the end compelled her to stay.
“Haru, I pronounce you guilty of two instances of murder and arson,” Magistrate Ueda said solemnly. Reiko saw in his face his personal conviction that he’d chosen the correct verdict. “The law requires that I sentence you to death by burning.”
“No!” Haru’s shrill, terrified protest pierced the quiet of the courtroom. She writhed, as if already beset by flames. “Please, I can’t bear it.” She turned to Reiko, begging, “Help! Don’t let them burn me!”
Reiko wordlessly shook her head because she couldn’t help Haru even if she’d wanted to.
Sano exchanged glances with Magistrate Ueda. When the magistrate nodded, Sano said to Haru, “There is one way you can earn a quicker, more merciful death, if you wish.”
The girl exclaimed in desperate relief: “Yes! I’ll do anything!”
“You must tell me everything you know about what’s going on inside the Black Lotus Temple and what the sect plans to do,” Sano said.
Comprehension stunned Reiko. Now she knew why Sano had convened the trial, then pushed so hard for Haru’s conviction. He’d meant to break Haru, thus forcing her to inform on the Black Lotus. Reiko wished he’d told her his intentions even as she inwardly berated herself for not guessing them. By defending Haru, she’d almost ruined Sano’s attempt to get the facts needed to justify an inspection of the temple. She remembered the look he’d given her: He’d been trying to let her know what he was doing. By disregarding his silent plea, she might have cost Midori her life!