Tengu-in didn't answer. She continued her wordless praying as her fingers slid beads along the cord.
"I need to know what happened to you when you were kidnapped," Reiko persisted. "Maybe if you tell me, you'll feel better."
No response came. Reiko tried a different tack. "Two other women besides you have been kidnapped and attacked. My husband and I think it was the same man." Although Reiko wasn't so sure, after hearing Fumiko's story and comparing it to Chiyo's. "We want to catch him. You may be the only person who can help us. Can you try, for their sake as well as your own?"
As moments passed and the nun seemed unaware of Reiko's presence, Reiko had the eerie feeling that she was alone. Tengu-in's spirit had retreated into another, faraway realm. How could Reiko bridge the distance?
"I'll tell you what I think happened," Reiko said. "Can you give some sign whether I'm right?" It was like talking to herself, but she began to recite the story she'd learned from Sano. "You went to the main temple that day. With the novices. You couldn't keep up with them. They left you behind. That's when he came and took you."
Did Tengu-in stiffen with anxiety? Reiko wondered if it was only her imagination.
"He pretended he was hurt and he asked for your help," Reiko suggested, recalling the ploy that had lured Chiyo.
Tengu-in's expression of stoic suffering didn't alter.
"He had a pet monkey. He said he would let you play with it if you went with him." Even as she spoke, Reiko knew that although the monkey trick had worked for Fumiko, it probably wouldn't have for an old woman, and the kidnapper was smart.
A hoarse whisper came from the nun. Her eyes opened. Filmy and blank, their lids crusted, they gazed at nothing.
"What did you say?" Reiko kept her voice gentle; she hid her excitement.
"Place of Relief," whispered Tengu-in.
That was the polite term for the privy. "Do you need to go?" Reiko asked.
Tengu-in's lips moved, and for a moment Reiko thought she'd resumed praying. But her words were audible now, although barely. Reiko leaned closer to hear.
"I went to the Place of Relief," she said. "I was inside. He opened the door."
Reiko realized that she was talking about that day she'd been kidnapped. Finally her silence had broken. Reiko didn't know why. Perhaps the time had simply come. Reiko pictured Tengu-in crouched over the hole inside a public privy in the temple grounds, and the door opening. The kidnapper had cornered the helpless old woman there.
"Who was he?" Reiko asked urgently.
Tengu-in's head rolled from side to side on the pillow.
Reiko said, "Was he a big man with a shaved head and a scab on his cheek?"
"… I don't know."
If he wasn't the suspect sighted outside the convent, maybe he was the one Hirata's witness had seen by Shinobazu Pond. "Did he have teeth missing?"
"Couldn't see," whispered Tengu-in. "The light…"
The daylight behind the man must have left his features in shadow. "What happened next?" Reiko asked.
The nun's gaze shifted rapidly; her eyelids lowered.
"Then you woke up," Reiko prompted, anxious to prevent Tengu-in from withdrawing beyond her reach. "You were in a place filled with clouds."
"Clouds," Tengu-in echoed in a voice like the wind sighing.
"You couldn't move. The man was there."
A low, fearful whimper resonated through Tengu-in. Her body quaked.
"He nursed at your breasts," Reiko suggested. "He called you 'dearest mother,' and 'beloved mother.' "
Again Tengu-in's head tossed.
Reiko ventured, "He forced you to suck on him. He said you were naughty and beat you?" Tengu-in mumbled something Reiko couldn't hear. "What was that?"
"Pray," whispered Tengu-in. "He made me pray while he had me." Her voice rose to a loud, shrill pitch: "Namo Amida Butsu! Namo Amida Butsu!" I trust in the Buddha of Immeasurable Light. She was praying to be delivered from this life of suffering and reborn into the Pure Land, a heaven of beauty and enlightenment. Her voice trailed off while her lips kept moving. Her eyes closed as she withdrew behind the barrier of her private hell.
19
"I'm bringing these prisoners in for interrogation," Sano told the sentries outside Edo Jail. Behind him, the two suspects knelt in their oxcart, their wrists and ankles bound with rope, guarded by Detectives Marume and Fukida and Sano's other troops. Above him loomed the jail's high, mossy stone walls and guard turrets. "Let us in."
The guards obeyed. Sano and his entourage crowded into a courtyard surrounded by barracks. His soldiers brought in the oxcart and unloaded the two prisoners. His party marched into the dungeon, a building whose dirty, scabrous plaster walls rose from a high stone base. It was a reflection of Edo Castle in a dark mirror-one edifice designed to safeguard the regime's highest society, the other to cage its lowest.
The interrogation rooms, situated along a dank passage that smelled of sewers, had ironclad doors with small windows set at eye level. Hirata marched the young suspect with the missing teeth into one room. Sano, Marume, and Fukida took the other suspect into a room at the passage's opposite end. Shouts, moans, and weeping emanated from the rooms in between. Sano's room was just large enough to hold four people and swing a sword. Dim light seeped from a barred window near the ceiling. The walls were marred with cracks and gouges, discolored by old bloodstains. Marume and Fukida shoved the suspect down on the straw that covered the floor. Sano smelled urine on the straw, which was trampled and grimy; it hadn't been changed since the last interrogation. He stood over the suspect.
The big man stared at the wall behind Sano, his gaze sullen beneath his heavy brow. His unshaven face was mud-streaked from his tussle with the detectives. Sweat plastered his blue kimono against his muscles. He hadn't uttered a word since he'd been captured.
"What's your name?" Sano asked.
The suspect tightened his jaw. Marume kicked his thigh and ordered, "Speak up."
"Jinshichi," the suspect said. His deep voice was thick and raspy, as if he'd swallowed sand mixed with pitch.
"Well, Jinshichi," Sano said, "you're under arrest for kidnapping my cousin."
"Didn't kidnap anybody."
He spoke with conviction, but Sano didn't believe him. Something about the man didn't smell right.
"Let me refresh your memory," Sano said. "My cousin is the woman you met at Awashima Shrine. She'd gone there with her new baby. You hid in the bushes and called to her that you were hurt. She came to help you. You took her and left the baby."
"I never," Jinshichi said, adamant.
"You gave her a drug that put her to sleep." Sano kept his voice calm, but anger mounted inside him. "You locked her up."
"Never."
"Then you raped her," Sano said, controlling an urge to lash out at Jinshichi for hurting Chiyo, to wipe that hard, defiant look off his face.
"You're wrong." If Jinshichi was afraid, it didn't show.
Standing on either side of him, Marume and Fukida exchanged glances. They looked at Sano, who saw that they had doubts about the man's guilt.
"You kept her for two days," Sano said. "When you were finished with her, you dumped her in an alley, as if she were a sack of garbage."
Jinshichi muttered. Fukida smacked his head, and he said, "Wasn't me. I'm innocent."
"I suppose you didn't kidnap Tengu-in, either," Sano said.
"Who?"
"The nun. She was taken from the Zj Temple precinct on the first day of the third month. You were seen outside her convent the day before."
"Couldn't have been," Jinshichi said. "Wasn't there."
"Then where were you?" Sano demanded.
Jinshichi eyed Sano with incredulity. "That was a long time ago. Damned if I can remember. Working, probably."
"Working where?"
"Around town. Hell if I know!" Jinshichi grew loud, impatient. "I didn't do anything wrong. Can I go now?"