“There was a bicycle nearby. Some people from the local station in Edogawa already came to pick it up.”
“A bicycle? Probably trash somebody threw out.”
“It was a little new for that. And both of the tires were flat. Someone put a hole in them with a nail or something.”
“Hmph. The victim’s, then?”
“Hard to say. It had a registration number on it, so we might be able to find out who owned it.”
“Well, I hope it was the victim’s,” Kusanagi said. “Or else this is going to be a real tricky one. Heaven or hell.”
“How’s that?”
“This your first John Doe, Kishi?”
Kishitani nodded.
“Think about it. The face and fingerprints were destroyed, which means that the killer didn’t want anyone to know who the victim was. Of course, that also means, if we find out who the victim was, it should be easy to identify the killer. The question is how long it’ll take us to figure out the poor bastard’s identity. That right there’s what determines our fate.”
Just then, Kishitani’s cell phone rang. He took the call, talked briefly, then turned to Kusanagi. “They want us down at the Edogawa station.”
“Well, then, things are looking up,” Kusanagi said. He stretched and straightened, massaging his lower back with clenched fists.
When they reached the Edogawa police station, Mamiya was standing by the heater, warming his hands. Mamiya was their division chief in criminal affairs. Several men—probably local homicide—were scurrying around him, prepping the room to serve as investigation headquarters.
“You come in your own car today?” Mamiya asked when he saw Kusanagi walk in.
“Sure did. Train station’s too far away.”
“You familiar with this part of town, then?”
“I wouldn’t say familiar, but I’ve been here a few times.”
“So you don’t need a guide. Good. Take Kishitani with you and go—here.” He held out a piece of paper.
It was a memo with an address in Shinozaki, Edogawa Ward, beneath which was written a woman’s name: Yoko Yamabe.
“Who’s this?” Kusanagi asked.
“You tell him about the bicycle?” Mamiya asked Kishitani.
“Yes, sir.”
“You mean the bicycle they found near the body?” Kusanagi inquired, peering into the chief’s rugged face.
“That’s the one. We checked it out, and found a stolen bicycle report. The registration numbers match. That Ms. Yamabe’s the owner. I had someone give her a ring to make sure she’s home. I want you to go over there, get her to identify the bike and hear what she has to say.”
“You get any fingerprints from the bicycle?”
“Don’t you worry about that for now. Just get going,” Mamiya growled, his voice pushing them out the door.
“Great, the bike was stolen. I figured it was something like that.” Kusanagi clicked his tongue as he guided his car out into the street. He was driving a black Skyline, the same car he’d had for almost eight years now.
“You think the killer took the bicycle and left it there?”
“Maybe. But asking the owner’s not going to do us much good. It’s not like she knows who stole her bike. Though we might get a glimpse of the path the killer took that day, which is something.”
Following the memo and a map, Kusanagi drove around Shinozaki, the two detectives hunting for the address. Finally they found it: a modern-looking place with white walls. A nameplate by the door read “Yamabe.”
Yoko Yamabe was a housewife in her mid-forties. Her makeup looked newly applied; she’d probably put it on when she heard that detectives would be coming.
“No doubt about it, that’s my bicycle,” she announced crisply when Kusanagi showed her a photograph he’d gotten from forensics.
“I was hoping you could come down to the station and identify it in person.”
“I’d be happy to—I’m getting it back, right?”
“Of course. However, our colleagues at the station are still looking into a few things, so you might have to wait until they’re done.”
“Oh, but I need it back right now! It’s almost impossible going shopping without it,” she said, her brow furrowing with disappointment. The tone of her voice made it sound as if she blamed the police for her bicycle having been stolen in the first place.
Kusanagi sighed inwardly. He knew the type. He could just see her down at the station, demanding that they pay to fix her punctured tires. For a fleeting moment he considered telling her that the bicycle had been used in connection with a murder, just to see how quickly she lost interest in ever riding the thing again.
According to her, the bike had been stolen the day before—in other words, on March tenth—sometime between eleven A.M. and ten P.M. She had gone out to meet a friend in Ginza, gone shopping and had dinner, and by the time she’d returned to Shinozaki Station, it was already past ten o’clock at night. She had taken the bus home.
“Did you leave the bicycle in the lot?”
“No, along the sidewalk.”
“And it was locked?”
“Of course. I attached it to the guardrail with a chain.”
Kusanagi hadn’t heard anyone mention finding a chain lock at the scene.
He gave Ms. Yamabe a ride down to Shinozaki Station to see the spot where the bicycle had been stolen.
“It was right around here,” she said, indicating a section of sidewalk about twenty yards from the small supermarket in front of the station. There were a few bicycles lined up there now.
Kusanagi looked around. There was a bank branch office nearby, and a bookstore. There probably would have been quite a bit of pedestrian traffic during the day and early evening. Someone crafty enough could have cut the chain quickly during that time and taken the bike as though it were their own, but it was far more likely that the deed had been done later, after the streets had cleared somewhat.
Next, the detectives brought Ms. Yamabe down to the Edogawa police station to identify the bicycle.
“I think I’m just unlucky, you know,” Kusanagi heard her saying from the backseat. “I only bought that bicycle last month. I was so mad when I realized it had been stolen that I went and filed a report at the police box by the station before I even got on the bus.”
“And you knew the registration number? That’s impressive.”
“Well, I’d only just bought the thing. I still had the receipt at my house. I called and had my daughter tell me the number.”
“I see. Good thinking.”
“I was wondering—just what sort of case is this? The man on the phone didn’t give any details. But I have to admit all this has me very curious.”
“Well, we’re not even sure there really is a case just yet, ma’am. I’m afraid we don’t have the details.”
“What? Really?” She snorted. “I didn’t know you police types were so tight-lipped about these things.”
In the passenger seat, Kishitani was trying to keep from laughing. Kusanagi was glad he had gone to visit the woman today and not later. If the murder had already become public knowledge, he would have had to suffer through a deluge of questions.
Ms. Yamabe took one look at the bicycle down in the evidence room at Edogawa station and ID’d it on the spot. Then she turned to Kusanagi and asked who was going to pay for repairing her tires.
The forensics team got several fingerprints off the bicycle’s handlebars, frame, and seat. They had found other evidence as well. What they thought to be the victim’s clothes had turned up, stuffed into a five-gallon oil can, several hundred yards from the place where the body was found. The clothes were partially burned. There was a jacket, a sweater, pants, socks, and underwear. Forensics guessed that the killer had set fire to the clothes and then left. But the fire had gone out before finishing the job, and they hadn’t burned as well as he had hoped.