After a while, Hirata returned, paler but composed, his hair plastered against his sweaty forehead. “The rocking boat made me seasick,” he lied valiantly.
They resumed their watch. The cabin’s atmosphere grew closer, tenser, and ripe with the smell of the river. Distant thunder rumbled. While the wind sighed and moaned around the boat, the first raindrops pattered onto the cabin roof and stippled the water. Sano began to wonder whether the killer would show up at all.
Then, rolling across the city, came the peals of myriad temple bells, signaling noon. Suddenly the watcher on the path paused while collecting a bit of trash. He straightened, peering down the slope toward the firebreak. The fisherman laid aside his pole.
Sano’s body went still and cold; his blood congealed. His last breath caught in his lungs. Hirata joined him on the bench, head close to his as they stared out the window together in paralyzed silence.
With exaggerated casualness, the watcher on the path lifted his hand to his head and scratched.
The signal for Chūgo.
Hirata moaned softly. The chains inside Sano released their grip. His heart pumped giddy relief through his veins. He expelled his breath as all of life’s boundless possibilities clamored around him: once again, the future existed. Feeling reborn and invincible, Sano wanted to shout and dance and laugh, but even as he and Hirata exchanged gleeful smiles, they were taking their positions. Sano, his sword drawn, stood to the port side of the door. Opposite Hirata waited, jitte in one hand, a coiled rope in the other, ready to help capture their prisoner.
A small eternity passed. Then Chūgo’s gaunt figure appeared on the path, moving with grim purpose, head down, through the rain that now pelted the city in fitful squalls. He reached the dock, turning to look in all directions before stepping onto it. Briefly he disappeared from view, hidden by the boat’s hull. Then came the creak of his footsteps on the gangplank. The boat dipped slightly under his weight. His head loomed over the railing. Sano’s heart lurched as he glimpsed Chūgo’s face through the shutters. Stony and ruthless, it was the face of the Bundori Killer.
Sano gripped his sword tighter. Then a movement behind Chūgo distracted him.
Instead of moving onto the dock as planned, the signaler was still on the path, looking toward the firebreak. The “fisherman,” who had left the bridge to join his companion, club and dagger in his hands, had stopped halfway there in obvious confusion. The man under the dock raised his head above it, but emerged no farther.
Chūgo’s shoulders came into view as he slowly ascended the gangplank. He paused, trying to peer through the cabin’s shutters. Sano and Hirata exchanged disturbed glances.
What? Hirata mouthed. Sano could only shake his head before looking back outside. Then, to his sheer amazement, he saw, coming down the path, a familiar trio.
Matsui Minoru carried a brightly colored umbrella. His two bodyguards, hunched beneath hooded cloaks, trooped along behind him.
Hirata turned disbelieving eyes to Sano. “Chūgo and Matsui?” he whispered. “What’s going on? What do we do now?”
“I don’t know! Let me think!”
One look at Chūgo had convinced Sano that the guard captain was the Bundori Killer. But why had Matsui come? Whatever the reason, the situation had altered drastically. Must they take four men instead of just the formidable Chūgo? If so, how would he communicate the change of plan to the outside team?
They had to act, fast. Chūgo was continuing up the gangplank. On the path, Matsui had passed the signaler and stopped just short of the dock.
Either the guard captain heard Matsui’s voice or sensed his presence, because he turned, his shock evident in the sudden rigidity of his posture.
“Chūgo-san! Cousin!” As Matsui hurried onto the dock, his voice carried across the water. “Wait!”
Sano and Hirata abandoned their posts to hurl themselves onto the bench, faces pressed to the shutters. Matsui huffed his way up the gangplank, his guards trailing him.
“What are you doing here?” Sano heard Chūgo demand.
Matsui and the guards appeared below Chūgo’s figure. Matsui was struggling to hang on to his umbrella, which the wind had inverted. “I got a letter from a woman who was at Zōjō Temple when the priest was murdered,” he panted. “She said to come here if I wanted General Fujiwara’s famed death’s-head sword.” He pulled Sano’s scroll from his cloak; the wind blew it open. “See?”
Chūgo snatched the scroll. “You got this letter, too?” Though his back was turned, Sano read dawning comprehension in his slow headshake.
“Cousin, I suspected you were the killer all along,” Matsui said. “I know how much you revere our ancestor. And I knew you owned the swords.” Dropping his useless umbrella, the merchant clutched Chūgo’s arm. “But I kept our bargain. I didn’t turn you in before, and I won’t now. I just want the sword. For my collection; for my shrine to General Fujiwara. I promise I’ll never tell anyone how I got it. Please, cousin, let me have it!”
With an angry jerk that rocked the boat, Chūgo freed himself from Matsui’s grasp, at the same time flinging away the scroll. “You fool! This is a trap!” Obviously he’d realized what Matsui, blinded by his desire for the sword, had failed to see. “The shogun’s sōsakan has set us up!”
He started down the gangplank, but Matsui’s guards blocked his way.
“Please,” Matsui persisted, seeming not to have heard Chūgo’s words. He pulled out a bulging coin pouch and waved it at the boat. “Madam! I’ve got five hundred koban here. You can have it all, if you’ll just give me the sword!” Coins spilled from the pouch and clattered onto the gangplank along with the raindrops that now fell in torrents.
“Get out of my way!” Chūgo ordered.
“Please, Madam-” Matsui grunted in surprise as Chūgo shoved him sideways. There was a loud splash when he hit the water. “Help!” he screamed. “I can’t swim!”
Sano made a decision. “We take Chūgo now.”
“But-” Hirata motioned toward the bank, where his assistants stood in a helpless huddle. They’d been told to burst into the cabin after the killer had entered. Now one suspect was in the river and the other hurrying down the gangplank to freedom. “They don’t know what to do!”
Sano was already out the door. The rain hit him like a curtain of water, drenching him to the skin. Over the wind that howled in his ears, he heard Matsui screaming and the bodyguards shouting. Clutching his sword, he lurched around the corner onto the starboard deck just in time to see one guard dive from the gangplank to save Matsui and the other face off against Chūgo.
In a blur of speed, Chūgo drew his sword. It cut the bodyguard’s throat before he could even unsheath his weapon. With a gush of blood, he fell dead. Chūgo kicked the corpse into the river and hurtled down the gangplank.
“Chūgo!” Sano shouted. “Stop!” Awed and horrified by the swift, efficient murder he’d just witnessed, he pounded after Chūgo. His feet slipped on the wet, slick gangplank.
Hirata followed on his heels. “Catch him!” he shouted to his assistants.
The three men hurried onto the dock, waving spears, clubs, and daggers. Then, as Chūgo rushed them, bloody sword raised, they scattered and fled in panic. Chūgo was on the path now, running for the firebreak. Sano leaped from the gangplank and onto the dock, glad the assistants hadn’t challenged Chūgo, who would have cut them down with one stroke. But how he dreaded chasing their quarry through the streets of Edo, where he might kill bystanders and escape into the crowds. Half blinded by the rain, Sano sprinted across the dock. His heart raced like runaway hoof-beats; determination powered his sore muscles. Chūgo passed the last dock. He reached the slope leading down to the Sumida River firebreak, but Sano was gaining on him, with Hirata panting at his elbow.