Narumi picked up the long-handled lighter from the tray and went to light the small burner in front of Yukawa.
“Don’t bother, I’ll get it myself,” Yukawa said. “You can just leave the lighter there.”
Narumi looked a little surprised by this, but she put it back. “Enjoy your meal,” she said, preparing to leave.
“Actually, I know where that view is from,” Yukawa said to her turned back. “That’s the ocean from East Hari. I went and checked it out today.”
Narumi stopped in her tracks, her entire body motionless. Then her head turned back around, slowly, like a robot badly in need of oil.
“Oh?” she said weakly, an unnatural smile on her face. “East Hari?”
“You really didn’t know?” Yukawa asked.
“Like I said, I never really thought about it.”
“I didn’t think you’d need to think about it, being as familiar as you are with the sea around here. Enough to make your own Web site.”
“Well, I don’t go to East Hari much.”
“Really? I thought you had something on your blog about the views from there.”
Narumi’s eyes flared. “I wrote nothing of the sort,” she said sharply.
Yukawa chuckled. “It’s nothing to get angry about.”
“Who’s angry?”
“Well, if you didn’t write that on your blog, I must’ve been mistaken. I should apologize.”
“No need to apologize. Was there anything else?”
“No, I’m fine,” Yukawa said, pouring beer into his glass.
“Enjoy,” Narumi said and left, her shoulders a little slumped.
“So you really found the spot?” Kyohei asked Yukawa. “You know where the painting was painted?”
“More or less,” Yukawa said, pouring some soy sauce into a little saucer in front of him. He grabbed a clump of wasabi in his chopsticks and began dissolving it into the soy sauce. His motions were clinical, a scientist stirring a solution in a petri dish.
“You went all the way out there just to check the view? It bothered you that much?”
“It didn’t bother me. It excited my curiosity. And I believe there is no greater sin than to leave one’s curiosity unsatisfied. Curiosity is the fuel that powers the engine of human advancement.”
Kyohei nodded, wondering why the physicist always made a big deal out of every little observation.
Yukawa picked up the lighter on his dining tray. He pressed on the switch and with a click, a thin tongue of flame extended from the end. Kyohei had a lighter just like it back home. They bought it for barbecues, except they had only actually used it once. His parents were usually too busy for barbecues.
Yukawa used it to light the small cylinder of waxy fuel inside the burner on his table.
“You know what the container on this burner is made out of?” Yukawa asked.
There was a white bowl-shaped saucer sitting on the burner. Kyohei stared at it and said, “It looks like it’s made out of folded paper.”
“That’s right, it is paper. They call these containers paper pots. But don’t you think it’s strange that the paper doesn’t burn?”
“It’s probably coated with something, right?”
Yukawa used his fingers to tear a small piece off of the edge of the paper pot, then picked the piece up with his chopsticks and lit the lighter in his other hand. When the flame touched the piece, it didn’t burst into flame, but instead slowly shriveled into black ash. Yukawa didn’t stop until it looked like his chopsticks were going to catch on fire.
“Regular paper would have burned up the moment the flame touched it. So yes, it has some flame-retardant coating on it. But it wasn’t impervious to the fire, either, which makes me question your theory.”
Kyohei put down his fork and knife and came around to Yukawa’s side of the table.
“So why doesn’t it burn?”
“Look inside the paper pot. There’s veggies, and fish, yes, but there’s also a little soup. Soup is water. Do you know what temperature water boils at? They teach that in fifth grade, don’t they?”
“Yeah, sure. A hundred degrees Celsius. We did an experiment on that last year.”
“I’m guessing you put water inside a flask, heated it, and checked the temperature?”
“Yeah. When it got close to a hundred, the water started to bubble.”
“And what happened to the temperature afterward? Did it keep going up?”
Kyohei shook his head. “No, it just stopped.”
“Correct. At one hundred degrees Celsius, water becomes a gas. Conversely, as long as water remains a liquid, it can’t get any hotter. In a similar fashion, as long as there is soup inside this paper pot, you can heat up the bottom as much as you want and it will never burn. That’s because paper burns at around 230 degrees Celsius.”
“I get it,” Kyohei said, folding his arms across the chest and staring at the burner.
“Time for our next experiment.”
Yukawa moved his beer glass and picked up the round paper coaster from underneath it.
“What would happen if I put this on top of the fuel cylinder in the burner?”
Kyohei looked between the coaster and Yukawa’s face. It felt like a trick question. Hesitantly, he said, “It’ll burn?”
“Probably, yes.”
Kyohei rolled his eyes. “Where’s the experiment in that?”
“Patience. How about this?”
Yukawa picked up a pot sitting next to him on the table and poured some water onto the coaster until it was drenched. Some of the water dripped on the tatami mat below the table, but the physicist didn’t seem to care.
“Now what would happen if I put this on the cylinder?”
Kyohei thought for a moment. This time, the problem didn’t seem so straightforward. “I know,” he said. “It would burn, but not right away.”
“Why not?”
“Because the paper has water in it. So it won’t burn until the water’s completely gone. After the water dries up, it’ll catch on fire.”
“I see,” Yukawa said, his face expressionless. “Is that your final answer?”
Kyohei nodded. “Final answer.”
“Right,” Yukawa said, throwing the drenched coaster on top of the burning fuel. The coaster fit perfectly over the foil packaging around the cylinder, like a lid on a box.
Kyohei stared at the coaster. The middle was starting to get darker. He expected flames to burst up any moment, but after a while, he noticed that nothing had changed.
Yukawa took the coaster off of the fuel cylinder. The fire had gone out. “Hey,” Kyohei said, giving the physicist a quizzical look.
“The important detail here is the container around the fuel. Whether you’re a fuel cube or a piece of paper, you need oxygen to burn. But when I put the coaster on the fuel container, like a lid, oxygen could no longer get into the fire. Now, if the coaster weren’t wet, it probably would’ve burned before the fire went out, and oxygen would’ve come back in. However, because it was wet, it didn’t burn right away, like you theorized. And wet paper is much better than dry paper at blocking the passage of air.”
Yukawa picked the lighter back up and relit his fuel cube. Again, he put the wet coaster on top of it. He snatched it off a moment later, but the fire had already gone out.
“It’s like magic,” Kyohei said.
“Haven’t you ever learned that when oil in a frying pan catches on fire, you shouldn’t pour water on it? The best thing to do is to throw a wet towel over it and cut off the supply of oxygen. Things need oxygen to burn, and without oxygen, fires go out. And if there’s some oxygen, but not a lot, it will burn incompletely.”
“Like what we were talking about today in the car?”
“That’s right,” Yukawa said, lighting the fuel block for third time. “Burning fuel without sufficient oxygen in the air creates carbon monoxide.”
Kyohei thought back to their ride in the van, wondering why his uncle and au
nt had looked so put out.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Yukawa asked. “Your meatloaf’s getting cold.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Kusanagi was at a coffee shop near the north exit of Ekota Station. It was a small place, with room for only three at the counter by the windows looking out toward the street. He sat on the chair in the middle of the counter, drinking water and biding his time. His coffee cup had been empty for the last ten minutes.
When the hour hand on his watch reached seven, he stood and went outside. He walked down the winding one-way street lined with small shops, noticing signs for ramen and a couple of bars. Eventually he emerged onto a slightly wider street, though still too narrow to warrant a center dividing line.
Past the shopping district, he came into a more residential area. He advanced slowly, taking care not to miss his turns. This was already his second visit to the house, but he’d gotten lost the first time and didn’t care to repeat the experience. He used landmarks to guide him. The streets in the residential area were even more tangled than the shopping district, with nary a right angle in sight. He sympathized with the local police—the officers on patrol had their work cut out for them.
It was with some relief that he spotted the white tile building illuminated by a streetlamp: the residence of one Osamu Kajimoto.
He pressed the button by the door, and Mrs. Kajimoto answered the intercom as she had earlier that day. He’d known Mr. Kajimoto wouldn’t be home, but he’d dropped by to leave a message and impress her with the importance of his visit.
The front door opened and a skinny man in a short-sleeved polo shirt greeted him. He had big eyes and a long face that made Kusanagi think of horses.
“Mr. Kajimoto? Sorry to bother you this time of the evening.”
“Not at all,” Kajimoto said, welcoming him inside, a curious look on his face. All Kusanagi had told the wife was that he wanted to talk to them about their old company apartment in Oji.
He was led into a living room that was spacious; however, every flat surface was covered in clutter, making the room feel much smaller. Kusanagi complimented them on their nice home.
“It’s falling apart around us,” Kajimoto said, though he didn’t sound displeased. “I’ll have to put some work into it one of these days.”
“You moved here directly from the company apartments?” Kusanagi asked, getting right to it. “How long were you in Oji altogether?”
“Quite some time. Eighteen, nineteen years. We married young.”
“You were in apartment 206, correct? I was wondering if you happen to remember the person living in apartment 305, a Mr. Kawahata?”
“Kawahata?” Kajimoto said, slowly nodding. “Yeah, there was a Kawahata there. You remember him, don’t you?” he asked his wife, who had taken a seat in one of the dining room chairs.
“The Kawahatas lived there almost as long as we did, as I recall,” she said.
“Yeah. They had already been there for five years when we moved in. But he got married late, and was a lot older than us. Mostly you just get the young newlyweds in company housing.”
“According to our records, you overlapped with them about ten years at the apartments. Did you socialize at all?”
Kajimoto folded his arms across his chest and thought. “Well, there was a big cleaning day every year, and occasional apartment meetings, so I saw him there, but we weren’t particularly close.” He turned a curious eye toward Kusanagi. “Um, did something happen to Mr. Kawahata?”
Kusanagi gave a thin smile. “I can’t get into the details, but we’re looking into people who moved from the Oji area to other areas during a certain time frame, and Mr. Kawahata moved during that period.”
“Oh, I see. So you’re not just looking into Mr. Kawahata, then?”
“That’s right. He’s the—” Kusanagi paused to count on his fingers. “—twentieth person I’ve looked into so far, and that’s just me.”
Kajimoto leaned back and shook his head. “Sounds like quite the job, Detective.”
“It’s not all car chases and handcuffs like you see on TV,” Kusanagi agreed. “Anyway, was there anything about Mr. Kawahata that left an impression on you? Any trouble or anyone else in the apartments?”
Kajimoto gave it a moment’s thought, then said, “No, he wasn’t really the kind to start trouble, at least as far as I knew.”
Mrs. Kajimoto frowned and turned to her husband. “Weren’t they the ones who were hardly ever there?”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, I’m sure of it. I remember he got assigned to an office somewhere down south.”
Kajimoto pondered that, then nodded. “Yeah, now that you mention it, that’s right. Mr. Kawahata did get transferred—he was down in Nagoya.”
“Ah, we do have records that say he had been assigned to your company’s Nagoya branch at the time of his retirement.”
“Well, that makes sense,” Kajimoto said, then he laughed. “If you knew that, you could have saved me the trouble and told me, Detective.”
“Sorry, I forgot until your wife mentioned it,” Kusanagi lied. “So it was just his wife and daughter in the apartment most days, with Mr. Kawahata coming home on the weekends, something like that?”
“That sounds about right,” Kajimoto said.
“No, dear, it wasn’t like that,” his wife butted in. “It wasn’t like that at all. You remember.”
“What was it like?” Kusanagi leaned forward.
“Nobody was in their apartment those last one or two years. Not him or his wife or his daughter.”
* * *
It was a little after eight o’clock when Kusanagi finally left the Kajimotos’ house. He thought back over their conversation as he made his way back down the winding streets toward Ekota Station. The biggest surprise of the evening had been the fact that none of the Kawahatas had been living at the apartment for a year or two before they officially moved out.
“It’s not as though they were completely absent,” the wife had told him. “Occasionally I’d see Mrs. Kawahata come in to freshen the place up or pick up some things. I talked to her on one occasion, and she said that they were staying at a friend’s house—something about their friend being overseas on work, so they were watching the house while they were away. She said it was more convenient for them, because the house was much closer to her daughter’s school.”
Kusanagi wanted to know who this friend of theirs was, and where their house was, but Mrs. Kajimoto didn’t know or didn’t remember. She did, however, recall the name of the private school where the Kawahatas’ daughter was going. It was a school for girls, wellknown enough that Kusanagi had heard of it.
He decided that he would pay a visit to the school to check out their yearbooks the following morning. He knew from Yukawa that the Kawahatas’ daughter’s name was Narumi. If he could find some of her classmates, he might be able to find out whose house they had been living in.
He managed to reach the station without getting lost. There was still no word from Utsumi. He was about to call her when his phone rang—but it wasn’t her. He quickly answered. “Kusanagi speaking.”
“Hey,” Director Tatara said in a deep voice. “You have a moment?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I was just meeting with a friend of mine—he’s a regional director from Tsukahara’s last posting.”
“Yes?”
“Well, apparently someone from the prefectural police paid them a visit today. I’m sure you can guess why.”
“They were asking about Tsukahara? Did they want to know if anyone had a grudge against him, something like that?”
“And whether he had ever mentioned Hari Cove, yeah. They’re going down through a list of everyone connected to the victim, looking for loose ends.”
“Something wrong with that?”
“Not with that in particular, but there’s something I don’t get. They weren’t asking anything about Hidetoshi Senba. Do the guys down in Shizuoka not think
Senba’s case is important? You told them what I said, right?”
Kusanagi frowned. He hadn’t expected Tatara to get back to them so quickly, nor could he think of a good excuse off the top of his head.
“What?” Tatara said when Kusanagi didn’t immediately reply. “You haven’t told them?”
Kusanagi took a deep breath and said, “No. Not yet, sir.”
“Why not?”
“A conjecture, sir.”
Kusanagi tensed; his hand on the phone was sweating. Unconsciously, he braced himself, as though he were about to get physically smacked.
All he heard on the other end of the line was a long sigh. Then Tatara said, “This conjecture of yours is based on some information from a source?”
Tatara was sharp. He was talking about Yukawa, clearly.
“Yes, sir,” he replied. “Valuable information.”
“Valuable enough to help us identify a suspect?”
“Probably, yes. But it’s going to take a bit of doing before we’re ready for that.”
“On your part, I take it? And you don’t want the guys from the prefectural police involved?”
“I think this would go more smoothly if we handled it ourselves, yes.”
Tatara fell silent. Kusanagi felt a bead of sweat trickle down beneath his armpit. He tensed again, ready for the shouting to start.
But when Tatara spoke again, he was calm. “What’s Utsumi up to? She with you?”
“No, I have her tracking down Senba right now.”
“Any leads?”
“An eyewitness who saw him.” He explained about the soup kitchen in Shinjuku.
“All right,” Tatara said. “I left this in your hands, so we’ll play this the way you want to. But I need you to promise me you’ll tell me the exact moment you have everything you need to pin down a suspect. Got it?”
“Understood, sir.”
“Great, then get to it,” Tatara said, hanging up.
Kusanagi took a deep breath and pressed the buttons on his phone, feeling his shirt cling to his skin with sweat.
“I was just about to call you,” Utsumi said when she answered. She sounded chipper. Maybe she’d found something.