Natsuki’s questioning expression said that she had not. The commotion seemed not to have reached this far.
“Just awhile ago, her house was burglarized.”
Natsuki’s fingers slowed down a bit. “A burglar?”
“Normally a burglar goes after a house when no one’s there. But this was the opposite. The burglar went in knowing someone was at home.”
“Really?”
“‘Really?’... Is that all you have to say? You’re being awfully cold-hearted. Who was the one who helped you get so good at calculations?” Keiko said as she imitated Natsuki’s finger motions.
Had she forgotten about those days when she was in lower elementary school? Fusano had been a big help. She had sat with Natsuki until late into the evening and even taught her how to calculate on the abacus. Shouldn’t Natsuki show some concern?
Of course, if she, Natsuki’s mother, could have come home earlier, her young daughter wouldn’t have had to be alone at night, or have the old neighbor woman take pity on her.
As she wrote down the calculation answers in her notebook, Natsuki said, “Don’t you have a much more important case you should be working on?”
She had jabbed at her mother’s weak point. “Well, yes. And I’m working hard on it.”
“Will you catch him quickly, please? A random attacker on the street isn’t cool at all. It’s a pain for me. I can’t even go to the convenience store after dark.”
“I know.”
“Maybe you don’t have any talent as a detective, Mom.”
“That might be true. Maybe a murder case is too difficult for a middle-aged female detective who commutes on the train.”
“On second thought, it may be better for you to be a lousy detective.” Natsuki closed her notebook. “If you can’t catch him, at least no one will come around here to pay their respects in revenge. If I lose you too, it’ll be a big mess for me.”
“‘Pay their respects,’ you say?” Where did this child learn such an expression?
The man who had run over her husband was an arsonist he had arrested, who was acting out of spite. Her husband’s life had been lost to this revenge, a detective’s occupational hazard.
She had told Natsuki the facts, but she didn’t recall having used such slang.
Even so...
The random street killing had occurred on November eighteenth. Two weeks had already gone by since then. What had she accomplished during that time? Without talent... maybe Natsuki was right.
Her chopsticks suddenly felt heavy. As she placed the mapo tofu into her mouth, she thought of something, and said in a loud voice, “Wow, Natsuki. This is good. You should open up a Chinese restaurant here.”
“Hey,” Natsuki coolly squinted her eyes, “you’re just saying that because it doesn’t taste good.”
Keiko leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Right. Truth is, the flavoring could use some help.”
“See, what did I tell you? It sounded so fake when you said it.”
“Actually, it wasn’t you I was talking to, Natsuki,” Keiko said in even more hushed tones, and continued after glancing toward the tatami room. “I wanted your father to hear it.”
“Then you should go in there and tell him in front of the altar.” Pulled along, Natsuki’s voice also quieted to a whisper.
“That wouldn’t work. Natsuki, don’t you know about the effect of overhearing something that is leaked?”
Natsuki shook her head.
“Then you wouldn’t have heard the phrase ‘heard at one remove,’ either. Listen. Let’s say there’s a made-up story.”
“Okay.”
“If you heard it directly from someone, you’d doubt if it was true, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“But how about if that same story was being told by that person to someone else, and you overheard that exchange? Then how would you take it? You might very well believe it, mightn’t you?”
“Maybe so.”
“That’s the effect of overhearing something. When you want someone to believe a certain piece of information, the trick is to tell it to another person and have it be overheard. So your dad should be happy in heaven now. ‘So, Natsuki has become a good cook,’ he’s thinking.”
“Hmm. So you call that way of telling someone ‘heard at one remove’?”
“Yes. See, you’ve learned something new, haven’t you?”
Keiko put down her chopsticks. She pulled the tab on the can of beer. Just then, the telephone rang, as if that were a sign.
“Is this Hazumi?” It was her section chief. His tone seemed normal, but it contained some irritation. “There’s been another murder, a second victim.”
Keiko had stood up even before she heard those words.
3.
The meeting, which started at five p.m., ended exactly two hours later.
Keiko was the first to dash out of the meeting room. Running into the restroom, she gargled over and over. It felt as if a needle was stuck deep inside her throat. She always felt this way when she was exposed to secondhand smoke. The man who had sat next to her was the problem. She knew his face. It was the deputy chief of the burglary section, who had questioned Fusano at her house on the night of December second, four days ago. Perhaps feeling important because he had been upped in rank to help pursue a murderer, he had smoked incessantly through the entire meeting.
Next time I’ll take the seat farthest away from him. So vowing to herself, Keiko returned to the squad room and opened the morning paper, which she had yet to read. The article on the random street killer was in the middle of the city page. It was in three columns. Though several days had passed since the second victim was killed, the case was still foremost in the news.
With no progress toward its solution, there was insufficient information for the article. In such cases, reporters resorted to desperate measures. The article treated as a scoop the fact that investigators from the white-collar crime, burglary, organized crime, weapons, and drugs sections had been temporarily assigned to the violent-crimes section to support the investigation.
“Detective Hazumi.”
Hearing her name called, Keiko lifted her eyes from the newspaper. The junior detective at the next desk extended the telephone receiver.
“Call for you. From lockup administration.”
What could they want? she wondered as she took the receiver.
“This is Itami.”
At the sound of his voice, Keiko pictured Itami’s square-jawed face.
“Can you come over here?”
“What’s wrong?”
“One of the guests staying with us insists on seeing you.”
“Who is it?”
“Number Fifteen.”
“I can’t tell from that.” She meant to tone down her voice, but couldn’t avoid sounding prickly.
“I can’t help it, it’s Number Fifteen. The rules say we have to call our guests by number.”
Keiko hung up the telephone and pressed her temples. Separation of investigation and detention: that was the entrenched principle that caused this inevitable conflict between the Criminal Investigation Department and the Detention Administration Department. It wasn’t something any of them could do anything about. Still, this kind of exchange was tiresome.
Is there a problem? her junior colleague asked with his glance.
“Give me some time,” she told him.
“Yes, but what about our interviews? When are we leaving?”
“Wait for me here. I’ll be right back.”
Keiko left the room and ran down one flight of stairs, to the third floor.
Among the “guests” in the detention lockup there were occasionally some who had information about crimes other than those they had committed. It was possible that “Number 15” had some information about the random street killer.