Keiko shook her head. “It’s a common name from way back in this area. What happened here?”
“It’s a B and E with resident.”
His mouth seemed to be stiff from the cold. It took her awhile to realize what he had said.
Again? Just a few days ago, an elderly person’s house had been burglarized in this district west of the station.
“What was stolen was cash. Just over one hundred thousand yen ($1,000). She had it inside a cupboard.”
“How about eyewitnesses? Are there any?”
She couldn’t stick her neck much further into this investigation; she was in a different section. But this was her neighborhood. She wanted to obtain as much information as she could.
“A neighbor saw someone suspicious just around the time of the burglary.”
“What kind of suspicious person would that be?” As she asked, Keiko turned her eyes to the front door.
The lock button stuck out like a protruding belly button from the center of the doorknob. It was a cheap, simple lock, one of the least protective against break-ins.
“I don’t know the details. But he may have had a large scar below his eye... The detectives were saying something like that.”
Could it be Nekozaki?
The person who came to Keiko’s mind was someone she had handcuffed in the past. A large scar beneath his eye. Within the Kinesaka precinct, the only criminal who looked like that was Soichi Yokozaki — nicknamed Nekozaki, for cat. But his criminal record consisted of stalking and assaulting his ex-wife. He had no burglary conviction. If Yokozaki was in this neighborhood...
“Detective, how is that murder case coming along?”
“No developments,” she replied curtly.
Looking at her watch, she saw that it was after ten o’clock. Should she drop in on Fusano, or should she take her leave? She wavered as she thought of Natsuki.
In the end, she said, “Excuse me,” in a small voice, and stepped inside the house.
Fusano was seated with her legs tucked under her in the living room off the entryway. She was being questioned by the detective from the burglary section as she sat with her back to the paper shoji sliding doors, whose holes had been repaired with pieces of newspaper. The stooped shoulders of the eighty-some-year-old woman trembled beneath the dim light.
Keiko waited until the questioning was over, shifting her position to stay out of the way of the crime-scene investigator.
2.
When Keiko returned to her home, Natsuki was at the dining table. Her arithmetic textbook and notebook were spread open in front of her.
She’ll probably hand over a note with “Welcome home” written in pencil. As she thought this, Keiko spoke. “I’m home.”
“Welcome home,” Natsuki answered aloud. Her head, topped with a short haircut, remained facing the table.
“...That’s a surprise,” Keiko said.
“Oh? What are you surprised about?”
“It’s been awhile since I heard your voice.”
“I’m not angry anymore.” Natsuki pointed the tip of her pencil toward the kitchen. “I made supper. It’s mapo tofu. It’s in the microwave. Eat it when you want to.”
“Thanks.”
With this, the current mother-daughter standoff was over.
When Natsuki had suddenly stopped speaking to her four mornings ago, Keiko was annoyed, though this happened often. She had no idea what had set Natsuki off. It turned out that it was because Keiko had missed her turn to clean up the kitchen. But it was only yesterday, when she found a postcard in the mailbox, that she learned that this was the cause of her daughter’s ire.
“Don’t you think it’s disgusting to have cobwebs in the kitchen?” Natsuki’s handwriting had covered the entire surface of the back of the postcard.
Feeling the tension at her neck ease a little, Keiko entered the tatami-mat room and put her palms together in front of the Buddhist altar there.
It’s been four years already...
That much time had passed — and so quickly — since her husband, a senior detective in the violent-crimes section, had been run over by an automobile and died.
Natsuki is well and doing fine.
After reporting this to her husband’s photograph, Keiko tried to think of other things to report about Natsuki during the past few days. He had so looked forward to seeing his daughter grow up. But she couldn’t come up with anything. All she could do was repeat what she had said the day before.
She still has her childish moments.
Her refusal to speak and her note-writing. These behaviors seemed childish to Keiko. Natsuki would be entering middle school next year, and Keiko wished she would stop this infantile imitation of her father.
It’s your fault.
“If something upsets you, try writing it down on paper. You’ll feel much calmer. I do that sometimes,” Natsuki’s father had told his daughter. Natsuki had been quick to anger from birth, and once angry, she wouldn’t speak. Keiko often recalled her husband teaching this way of dealing with her feelings to Natsuki.
Next she reported on her work day and told him of the case at Fusano’s house, which she had happened upon on her way home.
She had finally made eye contact with Fusano after several minutes of standing in her entryway.
The elderly woman got up and came toward her and bowed her head quietly. She seemed to have regained a bit of energy, seeing all the support that had come. Fusano knew that Keiko’s occupation was that of detective. But she wasn’t aware that Keiko was in the violent-crimes section, not the burglary section.
I’ll take some money to her later, Keiko thought. Using newspaper instead of shoji paper to mend her doors. Living like that, she could hardly have any savings. Her only income must be her old-age pension...
As these thoughts occupied the surface of her mind, Keiko was subconsciously counting. Three times. No, it might be four times this year, she had gone to the scene of elderly people living alone who had killed themselves. In each case, it was clear that the subject had been overwhelmed by poverty and, above all, by a sense of loneliness.
Keiko left the tatami-mat room and went to the kitchen. After warming the mapo tofu in the microwave, she also placed a can of beer on a tray and sat down facing Natsuki. Then she took from her handbag the postcard she had received the day before.
Natsuki was moving her thumb and index finger rapidly on the table.
Keiko slid the postcard toward the fingers.
“Will you stop doing this?”
Natsuki looked up at her, fingers still moving.
“If you have something you want to complain about, just tell me. If you can’t do that, at least write me a note and give it to me right then. When you do this, I worry so much, not knowing what you’re angry about until your note gets delivered.”
“Don’t want to.” Natsuki grinned. “That’s what my aim is, time-lag offensive.”
“Now listen... You know that the mail deliverer sometimes makes mistakes between our address and Auntie Fusano’s address.”
“I know.”
“Then, you remember that one of your postcards was delivered to her place by mistake, don’t you? I was so embarrassed by that.”
“That’s the fault of the delivery person.”
“It’s your writing that’s at fault. You write our house number, 9, like a 7.”
“Yes, Mom. I’ll be careful about that.”
Accentuating her sigh this time, Keiko changed topics. “Speaking of Auntie Fusano, did you hear?”