“I-I want to know who killed you,” Sano faltered, startled by the fresh shock of having the spirit address him directly. And in a voice he could easily attribute to the frail, elderly Kaibara, whose remains he’d viewed in the morgue.
A long, tremulous sigh. “Why does it matter? What is done is done.”
“Your murderer must be prevented from killing again,” Sano said. “Please, Kaibara-san, tell me what happened last night. Did you see your killer?”
A long pause. Sano noticed with amazement that Aoi had assumed Kaibara’s characteristics. Her body shrank into itself, her jaw slackened, her eyes dimmed. And were those new wrinkles creasing her face and neck? The candles sputtered. The incense smoke now filled the hollow with a thick, pungent haze that made Sano dizzy and his eyes water. The sound of more dogs barking echoed up and down the hill. Then Kaibara’s voice issued again from Aoi’s mouth:
“It was dark. Foggy. I could not see his face. But he was very tall. And he walked with a limp… ”
“Which leg?” Sano demanded.
“… the right… ” As Kaibara’s voice faded, the old-man cast fell away from Aoi, leaving her face blank of all personality.
“Kaibara!” Sano resisted his impulse to clutch at the departing spirit. “Come back!”
With the slow, deliberate movements of a priest during a sacred ceremony, Aoi replaced the pouch on the altar. She unfolded the paper from around the dead eta’s lock of hair, which she rubbed between her finger and thumb, then cupped in both palms and sniffed. Recovering from the disappointment of losing contact with Kaibara, Sano waited tensely for the eta’s spirit to appear.
Aoi’s facial muscles tightened; her eyes darted from side to side with a feral wariness. Her shoulders hunched, and she held her arms close to her sides, hands clasped to her bosom. Sano gasped as he recognized the characteristic cringing posture of the eta.
A sudden gust of wind stirred the pine boughs overhead. The candles flickered; one of them went out in a hiss of singed wax. Aoi’s lips moved.
“… sorry… please, master, I don’t mean to offend you. Forgive me!” This time the voice was hoarse, guttural, and laced with fear. Aoi bobbed a series of rapid bows, while her gaze flitted from Sano’s face to the swords at his waist.
“I won’t hurt you,” Sano hastened to assure the spirit. “I just want you to tell me who killed you.”
“Samurai. Don’t know his name.”
“What did he look like? Describe him.”
Aoi’s eyes blurred in fearful remembrance. “Big. Strong. Bad leg. And he was scarred.”
“A scar? Where?” That the Bundori Killer had a visible identifying mark seemed too good to be true.
She shook her head impatiently. “Not just one. All over. Face. Hands.” Her mouth worked as the inarticulate spirit struggled to say what he meant.
Sano hazarded a guess: “He was scarred from the pox?”
A vigorous nod; a look of relief in the fearful eyes.
“What else? Tell me more.”
But the spirit lapsed into an incoherent muttering that soon faded. Aoi shed the eta’s feral guise and subservient posture. Sano watched with mounting excitement as she replaced the hair on the altar and picked up the label. Would he now learn the tall, lame, pockmarked samurai’s identity?
Aoi fingered the label, and a deep shudder convulsed her body. Fixing her stricken gaze on some distant scene visible only to her, she whispered, “The soldiers are on the march again. Soon they will arrive at the destined battle site. He will draw his sword. And then-”
With a shriek, she hurled the label away from her. The paper swirled in brief flight, then drifted downward. Sano thrust his hand out to snatch it away from the candle flames.
“Look out!” he shouted as concern for the evidence overcame his fear of disrupting the ritual.
In a fumbling movement devoid of her customary grace, Aoi stood. Her knees upset the altar, scattering candles and incense burners across the clearing. Her groping hands knocked Sano’s away before he could rescue the label or other relics.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, angry as well as confused.
“Fire, fire!” she cried. Her trance had dissolved; her voice was clear and sharp, her face alert and filled with dismay.
Sano looked down and saw the fallen candles smoldering in the dried pine needles that covered the earth. He jumped up and started to stamp out the fires. In her haste to help, Aoi darted into his path. They collided full tilt, face to face, with a stunning crash. Instinctively Sano threw his arms around her to keep them both from falling.
He felt his insides turn to molten heat. Her body was warm, firm, and pliant, her breasts soft against his chest. His breath caught as a surge of desire hardened his manhood and intoxicated his senses. For the long moment during which he held her, he read in her wide eyes, parted lips, and rapid breathing a need that matched his own.
Then, with a quick wrench of her body, she broke his embrace. She knelt before the upset altar, face averted, arms hugging herself.
Sano finished extinguishing the fires. He righted the altar and reassembled the candles and burners on it, along with the label- charred on one end; the hair-a few strands missing; and the pouch. As he resumed his place, he found himself shaking. His heart thudded; his body still clamored with desire. The rapid succession of strong emotions he’d just experienced-the shock of hearing his father’s voice, elation at getting the killer’s description, and the excitement of the ritual’s abrupt, chaotic end-had left him totally drained and exhausted.
“Are you all right?” he asked Aoi.
Without looking at him, she nodded.
“What happened?”
Now, when she faced him, he saw that although her face was paler, she'd regained her composure. "Forgive me for behaving so badly. Sometimes objects speak to me of the places they've been. The people who have touched them. The emotions they've absorbed. That paper made me see and feel disturbing things. "
Judging from her cool manner, they might never have touched. “You talked about soldiers marching, and someone drawing a sword,” Sano said, trying to vanquish his lingering arousal by concentrating on business. “Was it the Bundori Killer?”
Aoi shook her head. “I don’t know. But I sensed a great battle lust in him.”
A new thought distracted Sano from his body’s need. “Maybe the killer considers the murders acts of war, like the shogun does,” he mused. “But was Kaibara his enemy, or Araki Yojiemon?” The battle scenario fit Araki’s time better than the present. “And if it was Kaibara, why not put that name on the label?”
“Maybe he wanted them both dead.”
Sano realized that Aoi didn’t know who Araki was. “General Araki died at least a hundred years ago,” he explained.
“Then perhaps the killer connected the two men in his mind. And attacked the living one.”
“It’s a thought,” Sano admitted, intrigued by her suggestion. The connection between Araki and Kaibara bore looking into when he questioned Kaibara’s family tomorrow. “But then why kill the man whose hair I brought you? He was an eta, with no conceivable link to two high-ranking samurai.”
Interest animated Aoi’s features as she rose promptly to the challenge. “And who better than an eta for a samurai to kill when he wants to test a sword or practice his technique?”
“Of course!” Sano regarded her with growing admiration. “The killer wanted to murder Kaibara, but he’d never taken a man’s head or prepared a trophy. So he practiced on a victim for whose murder he would never be punished, if caught.”
Discovery of Aoi’s perceptive intelligence increased Sano’s attraction to this mystic whose shocking, erotic ritual had yielded valuable clues. And her shining eyes, the eager forward tilt of her body, reflected her enjoyment of their collaboration. Fleetingly Sano thought of his prospective bride, about whose character and appearance he knew nothing. Then he forgot her as he sought a way to further his relationship with Aoi.