“Why don’t you want me to talk to her?” Reiko said.
“Just leave her alone!” Yugao shouted.
“Are you afraid of what she might say?”
“Quit pestering me!” Yugao clambered to her feet and stumbled across the room. She beat her chained hands on the door, crying, “Let me out!” Curses and shrieks spewed from her.
The door opened. At the threshold stood Magistrate Ueda, flanked by two guards. His expression was severe, disapproving. “Put me to death,” Yugao begged him. “Make her leave me alone!”
Magistrate Ueda ignored her and said to the guards, “Keep watch on her while I talk to my daughter.”
His eyes signaled Reiko to follow him. They went outside to a courtyard enclosed by storehouses, whose thick plaster walls and iron roofs and doors protected valuable documents from fire. Sunlight bleached the walls and pavement. Reiko could hear Yugao screaming inside the building.
“May I assume that Yugao was no more cooperative today than before?” Magistrate Ueda said.
“You may.” The failure discouraged Reiko.
“Have you decided whether she’s guilty?”
Reiko mulled over her entire cache of knowledge, then said, “Sometimes the most obvious answer is the correct one. I believe Yugao did murder her family.”
“If you think she did it, that will suffice,” Magistrate Ueda said. “I trust your judgment, and it confirms my own. Furthermore, we’ve made a good-faith effort to discover the truth about Yugao.”
“But I still don’t understand why she did it.”
“Perhaps she’s deranged.”
Reiko shook her head. “Yugao certainly behaves as though she is, but I think she’s just as sane as anyone else. I think she has logical reasons for the things she does; if only I could figure out what they are.”
“The law doesn’t require that a motive for a crime be determined before an accused person is convicted,” Magistrate Ueda reminded her.
“I know,” Reiko said, “but I may be getting closer to finding out Yugao’s motive. She got very upset when I mentioned her friend Tama. I’m interested to know what Tama knows that Yugao doesn’t want her to tell me. I suspect that it pertains to the murders.”
“You haven’t yet talked to this Tama?” When Reiko described her fruitless search for Yugao’s friend, Magistrate Ueda looked concerned. “I cannot delay a verdict any longer. Three people have been brutally slain, and Yugao appears beyond rational doubt to be the killer. Until I put her to death, I’m avoiding my duty to administer justice, and I rightly deserve to be censured. I might add that it’s not fair that one among thousands of criminals should have an exception made for her, especially when she appreciates it so little.”
Reiko nodded; she couldn’t dispute her father’s point. But a sense of incompletion gnawed at her. Even if she’d made a strong case against Yugao, she didn’t want to cease her inquiries. She sought to articulate why they must continue. “I believe that the reason Yugao stabbed her parents and sister to death is even more important than the fact that she’s the killer. I believe that if we don’t find out what it is, there will be a greater threat to law and order and the good of the public than if you let her walk free.”
“On what do you base those beliefs?”
“On my intuition.”
Magistrate Ueda’s gaze tilted skyward. Reiko remembered many times when, during her childhood, she’d made statements that she’d insisted were true because her feelings said so. Before he could argue, as he had then, that emotions weren’t facts and women were flighty, irrational creatures, she said, “My intuition has been right in the past.”
“Hmm.” Her father’s expression showed grudging agreement.
During the murder investigation at the Black Lotus Temple, Reiko’s unfounded suspicions had proved true. Now she said, “I think that whatever Yugao is hiding is too dangerous to let her take to her grave, and if she does, we’ll regret it. Please give me a little more time to find Tama. Please wait at least until I hear what she has to say before you convict Yugao.”
Magistrate Ueda smiled with fondness and vexation. “I’ve never found it easy to say no to you, Daughter. You may have one more day to investigate. At this time tomorrow, I’ll reconvene Yugao’s trial. Unless you can present evidence that exonerates Yugao-or justifies continuing to investigate the crime-I must send Yugao to the execution ground.”
One day seemed not enough time to solve the mystery in which justice and a young woman’s life hung in the balance. But Reiko knew she’d pushed her father to overstep his authority too much, and Sano would be even more displeased than when he’d first heard about her investigation.
“Thank you, Father,” she said. “I’ll have the answers for you by tomorrow.”
18
The afternoon sun beamed down on a queue of soldiers, officials, and servants who crowded the promenade outside Edo Castle and inched up to its gate. Sentries examined each person’s identification document, which consisted of a scroll bearing his name, post, and the shogun’s signature seal, before letting him inside. They searched everyone’s body and possessions for hidden messages or bombs. In the guardroom above the massive, ironclad portals, more sentries, armed with guns, peered out barred windows, monitoring the street traffic. In the covered corridors atop the stone walls that enclosed the castle’s buildings and wound around the slopes up to the palace, guards scanned the city through spyglasses. Lord Matsudaira, goaded by his fear of attack, had increased the usual security precautions and made Edo Castle the safest place in Japan.
Sano rode with his detectives to the head of the line. The men trapped in it bowed and yielded politely to him. He heard someone calling his name, turned, and saw Hirata galloping toward him, accompanied by Inoue and Arai. Sano signaled his men to wait. Hirata and the detectives joined them.
“We’ve got news,” Hirata said.
At the gate, the sentries recognized Sano and his companions and waved them through without inspecting their documents. They bypassed the troops who were searching people and opening trunks and saddlebags in the guardhouse and rode uphill through the passages.
“We traced the movements of all the murder victims except Treasury Minister Moriwaki,” said Hirata. “His habit of sneaking off alone made it impossible. As for Court Supervisor Ono, the retainers who accompanied him outside the castle didn’t see anyone touch him or any stranger behaving suspiciously around him.”
Sano asked, “What about Highway Commissioner Sasamura and Chief Ejima?”
“We got lucky there,” Hirata said. “Ejima went to an incense shop two days before he died. One of his bodyguards said that a wandering priest bumped into Ejima in the crowds and knocked the package of incense out of his hands. Ejima bent over to pick it up. The priest could have touched him then.”
“The bodyguard didn’t notice?”
“The traffic in the street blocked his view.”
“Did you get a description of the priest?” Sano asked.
“He wore a saffron robe and a wicker hat and carried a begging bowl.” Hirata shook his head in regret. “Just like any other priest in Japan. One moment he was there; the next, he’d disappeared.”
“Did the highway commissioner also have an encounter with a priest soon before his death?”
“No, but he did with someone else, at a money-lender’s shop.” Although officials of Sasamura’s rank earned big stipends, many overspent on lavish lifestyles and wound up in debt to merchant bankers. “A guard stationed outside the shop saw a water-seller loitering nearby while Sasamura was inside. That in itself wouldn’t have been unusual-except the guard noticed that his water buckets were empty. The guard thought he was a bandit in disguise, waiting to rob people who borrowed money from the shop. He chased the water-seller away.”