Endō.
Sano’s excitement overrode his relief at learning that the abbot meant to facilitate his investigation. As the abbot and his retinue ushered them up the path toward the temple’s inner precinct, Sano asked, “Was the dead priest a descendant of Endō Munetsugu?”
“Why, yes. Brother Endō took orders after retiring from the bakufu service.” Many samurai sought a contemplative life in their old age. “He was very proud of his ancestry. But how did you know of it?” Displeasure brought a transient frown to his serene face. “Did the guards tell you that the name Endō Munetsugu appeared on the label fastened to Brother Endō’s head?”
Sano and Hirata exchanged glances of suppressed elation. This fourth victim proved the theory.
“No,” Sano said, hastening to exonerate the guards of disobedience by explaining how this tragedy had brought enlightenment.
They passed beneath a torii gate at the end of the path, then climbed the steps.
“What was Brother Endō doing outside after dark?” Sano asked. Priests, who rose at dawn, usually retired by sunset.
“He was the security officer who led the night patrol.”
Now Sano knew that the Bundori Killer chose his victims deliberately, familiarizing himself with their habits, then selecting the right time and place for their murders. Anyone in the banchō could have told him of Kaibara’s visits to the pharmacists’ district, but he must have paid informers to tell him the rōnin Tōzawa’s whereabouts. To learn of Brother Endō’s job, he must have questioned someone living at the temple. The thought of such elaborate calculation froze Sano’s blood.
At the top of the steps, an enclosed corridor with a tile roof formed the temple’s inner wall. Through its narrow windows, Sano saw frightened faces looking out at him, and heard whispered conversation. Even before he entered the main precinct, he could feel the atmosphere of fear, shock, and horror that pervaded the temple.
The precinct blazed with the light of flames that leapt within stone lanterns and flared from torches planted in the vast courtyard. The massive architecture, with its carved columns and doors, and undulating thatched roofs supported on complex wooden bracketry, dwarfed the priests who stood around the Buddha Hall, five-story pagoda, octagonal sutra repository, and the temple bell in its wooden cage. On the hill outside the wall, Sano could see the roofs of the temple’s other buildings: abbots’ residence; priests’, novices’, and servants’ dormitories; refectory; the tombs of past shoguns. Stripped of the animating panorama of pilgrims and ritual, the temple seemed like a stage set where the minor players waited, motionless and silent, for the principals to arrive.
“This way.” The abbot led Sano and Hirata around the main hall. There, outside the rear door, seven priests stood in an outward-facing circle, shielding something at the center. “Out of respect for our brother, we have retrieved his head, which the killer left outside the main gate, and placed it by the body. Otherwise, the scene is undisturbed.” At the abbot’s command, the priests followed him to the courtyard, leaving Sano and Hirata to their task.
Even the Bundori Killer’s earlier atrocities could not have prepared Sano for his first sight of the priest’s remains. Horror-stricken, he sucked air through his teeth. He heard Hirata moan.
Blood covered the white gravel in a lurid crimson stain. At its center, the priest’s headless corpse lay on its back. Sword wounds covered his body. The torn fabric of his saffron robe framed a deep gash in his right side. Minor cuts on his calves showed beneath the hiked-up hem of his cloak. And he’d lost his left hand, which lay several paces from where he’d fallen. This victim, unlike the others, had fought back. Still clenched in his bloody right hand was the spear he’d wielded in vain against his attacker’s sword. More splashes of blood on the gravel defined the area where the fight had taken place.
Sano glanced at the trophy head just long enough to note the rouged face and square mounting board that proclaimed it the work of the Bundori Killer, who had nailed the name label to Brother Endō’s shaven scalp. He surveyed the murder scene with a sinking feeling due only partially to his failure to prevent another death.
From behind him, Hirata voiced the troubling question in his mind. “Sōsakan-sama, why did the shogun’s shrine attendant send us to that house in the marshes, instead of here?”
“I don’t know, Hirata,” Sano answered wearily.
And he wouldn’t, until he saw Aoi again. But for the first time, he doubted the woman who had gained his trust, aroused his senses, and touched his spirit.
“Search the area and see if you can find any trace of the killer,” he told Hirata. “Footprints. Blood-the priest may have wounded him.” Brother Endō’s spear was covered with blood, perhaps not only from his own wounds. “Maybe he left a trail showing which way he went after he left the temple.”
While Hirata strolled and stooped in widening circles around the murder scene, Sano rejoined the abbot in the courtyard. “Please send Brother Endō’s remains to Edo Morgue,” he said. “Now I need to speak with each member of your community, starting with the person who found the body.”
An incredulous smile touched the abbot’s mouth. “That’s hardly necessary. I can tell you whatever you need to know. The night patrol discovered Brother Endō. They report having seen no one and nothing out of the ordinary, either before or after. Everyone else was in their quarters, where they are now: all safe and accounted for. I and my assistants have questioned them and ascertained that no one saw anything relevant to the murder. And you surely don’t think one of us is the killer?”
“No,” Sano admitted, having no evidence to tie the other murders to the temple.
He realized that the abbot’s cooperation didn’t extend to independent interrogation of his subjects, which would breach their seclusion and challenge his authority. Much as he hated to overrule this man whom he revered, Sano knew he must, or endanger his chances of success.
“But I must insist that you bring your people to me, one at a time, in a place where we can talk in privacy.”
The abbot’s frown forced him to back his request with a veiled threat. “The murders have thrown the city into a panic that can only worsen until the killer is caught. I wonder what effect it would have upon the faithful to learn that their spiritual leader had actually obstructed justice?”
He didn’t have to hint at the reduced donations and the mass defections to other temples that would result should such news spread. The abbot conceded with a wounded dignity that hurt Sano more than open reproach. “As you wish, sōsakan-sama.” He ordered his aides to prepare a room and assemble the community. “But you are wasting your time. No one can help you.” He paused. “With the possible exception of one individual.”
Sano’s spirits lifted. A witness, at last?
“A woman came to the temple early yesterday evening seeking shelter,” the abbot explained. “She said she wished to renounce her worldly life and become a nun. I gave her a room in the guest quarters, pending her transfer to one of our sect’s nunneries. I believe it was she who discovered the murder and rang the bell. None of the priests, novices, or servants were outdoors after evening rites.”
Sano took a deep breath to still the thudding of his heart. “Then I must speak to her. Where is she?”
“I’m afraid she has disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Sano echoed in dismay.
The abbot spread his hands in a calming, beneficent gesture. “When the security patrol searched the premises after discovering Brother Endō’s body, they found the guest quarters vacant and the woman gone. She must have fled after ringing the bell.”