“But you can see?”
“All I have is conjecture. You’re the one who has to tell me if I’m right or not. Isn’t that why you called?”
Kusanagi grinned and opened his notebook. “I found the restaurant where Setsuko Kawahata was working. It’s moved since then, but it’s still in business. Same owner, too.”
“And you had a chat with him?” Yukawa asked.
“That I did.”
“About what?”
“The good old days.”
* * *
The restaurant was on a small alley off of the Ginza. To the side of a white wooden lattice door hung a modest sign that read “Haruhi.” The place was practically designed to avoid attracting passersby.
“You must have a lot of regulars,” Kusanagi had asked the owner.
“About seventy to eighty percent, yep,” the owner, a Mr. Tsuguo Ukai, had replied. “And the people they bring with them wind up becoming regulars, and that keeps us gratefully in business.”
Ukai had perfectly white, neatly trimmed hair and looked sprightly for a man in his seventies. He said he still handled all of the buying for the restaurant himself.
When Kusanagi and Utsumi had arrived, it was a little after closing time, and there was still one customer at the bar, finishing his drink and chatting with Ukai while he cleaned up. They had to wait for the customer to leave before they could really start asking questions.
Other than the chairs at the counter, there were only three tables in the place. Kusanagi had guessed the max capacity was somewhere around thirty. Besides himself, the owner employed two cooks and a server.
Ukai had left Hari to become a chef while still in his teens. After working at a few famous places in the city, he had started Haruhi, a Hari cuisine specialty restaurant, at the age of thirty-four. In the beginning, he didn’t hire any help. It was just him and his wife.
“Our old shop was about a block down from here, along Sony Street. Small place—couldn’t fit much more than ten people. But we had some loyal customers, and that let us move up here once we’d saved enough.”
The move had been about twenty years ago.
“So when Setusko worked for you, that was at the old place?”
Ukai nodded. When they’d arrived, the detectives had told him they’d come to talk to him about Setsuko. They said that they were looking into someone else and trying to establish a better picture of their friends and associates.
“Yeah, I think she started working for us about two or three years after we opened. Eventually the work got too much for just the two of us. We started asking around, and one of our regulars said that he knew this nightclub hostess who liked to cook and had just quit her job, so he brought her by. I liked her well enough, but my wife, she loved the girl. Turns out she’d left the nightclub world and had no plans to go back, so she was only too happy to accept our offer. And it was a great deal for us. She was good with her hands and sharp as a tack. Learned recipes quick, too.”
She’d only stayed there three years, though, because she got married—to one of the regulars, no less.
Ukai remembered Shigehiro Kawahata well.
“His family ran an inn down in Hari Cove, as I recall. He was a big-city businessman through and through, but he got a longing for home now and then. That’s why he came. They used to come by together after they got married, too. Had a kid real quick, and they were pretty happy. I wonder what they’re up to these days. They sent me New Year’s cards for at least ten years after they left.”
“Were any of your regulars besides Mr. Kawahata on close terms with Setsuko?” Kusanagi had asked.
“Oh sure, there were a few. She was young, and, well, she used to be a nightclub hostess, so you can imagine she was great with customers. I’m guessing that more than a few of our regulars came here just for her,” Ukai said, his eyes twinkling.
“How about this man? Did you ever see him here?” Kusanagi had asked, showing him the photograph of Senba from around the time of his arrest. “He might’ve been a little younger than in this photo.”
“Oh!” Ukai had said, his eyes going wide. “Of course I remember him. That’s Mr. Senba. He’s the one I just mentioned.”
“Excuse me?”
“The one who introduced Setsuko to us. Yeah, he was a regular, too. Something about his wife being from Hari, I think.”
Kusanagi and Utsumi had exchanged looks.
“Did she know Mr. Senba because he was a customer at the bar where she worked?”
“That’s right. He started his own business and was always out on the town. He would drop by every once in a while with one girl or the other on his arm, getting drinks after work and such. We used to stay open a lot later in those days.”
Kusanagi had shown him the photo of Nobuko Miyake. Ukai had stared at the photo for a while, thinking, before he said, “Isn’t that Nobuko?”
“That’s right,” Kusanagi said.
“Yeah, she was a beauty, though I guess age caught up with her,” he’d said with a nod. “Well, it was thirty years ago I’m thinking about, so she’s probably a grandma by now.”
“The photo’s from about fifteen years ago.”
“Right, right. Nobuko worked at the same bar as Setsuko.” He’d chuckled and shaken his head. “We were all a lot younger then, that’s for sure.”
“But Mr. Senba and Nobuko stopped coming after a while. I always wondered what became of them. You don’t happen to know, do you, Detective?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Kusanagi had lied. “That’s why we’re out here asking all these questions.”
“Mr. Senba didn’t do anything, did he?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Kusanagi said. “I was wondering, though—do you think Senba and Nobuko ever had a serious relationship?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Ukai had said simply. “The way I saw it, the only one Mr. Senba had a thing for was Setsuko. He came here because his wife was from Hari, but he never brought his wife. I don’t think he wanted her meeting Setsuko, if you know what I mean. Of course, that might just be my imagination running wild.”
Ukai had told him he had some photos from back in the day, so they’d had him show them. The photo right in the middle of the front page of the neatly kept album showed a man sitting in front of a small counter with a woman on either side. The photo was about thirty years old, but the man was clearly Ukai. His build and his hair had hardly changed in the intervening decades.
“That’s Setsuko on the right,” Ukai had said.
She was a young girl, with large eyes and a memorable face. She had sharp features and might’ve looked a little aggressive without her round cheeks and big smile. She was wearing a kimono patterned with autumn leaves.
“She’s beautiful,” Kusanagi had said, and Ukai broke into a grin.
“Wasn’t she? You see why she was so popular. That foliage-print kimono of hers was like her trademark, too. My wife gave that one to her.”
The woman standing on the other side of Ukai in the photograph was a slender beauty, too, though much older than Setsuko.
“That’s her, my wife,” Ukai had explained. “She was three years older than me, and a hard worker. If she wasn’t around, well, Haruhi wouldn’t be here either. I doubt I ever would’ve tried starting a place without her.”
She had passed away the year before from pancreatic cancer.
* * *
Kusanagi finished relating what he’d learned from the old chef at Haruhi, but Yukawa was still silent.
“Hello?” Kusanagi said. “What do you think?”
He heard Yukawa sigh on the other end. “So that’s what it was,” he muttered.
“What’s what it was?”
“I’m sure you’ve realized by this point what interested the retired detective, Tsukahara, about Senba’s case so much. And how the Kawahatas were involved. Given what you just told me, there’s no possible way you couldn’t know.”
“Well, I do have a vague
idea.”
There was an awkward silence. Kusanagi imagined he could see Yukawa’s wry grin.
“I can understand,” Yukawa said after a moment, “how you wouldn’t want to make any rash suppositions, given your position in the police department, so allow me to say it on your behalf. Senba was wrongfully accused. He was not the killer, he was covering for someone. How am I doing so far?”
Kusanagi frowned. In truth, he did feel uncomfortable revealing his hand to Yukawa, but at the same time, he knew it was useless to try and obfuscate the facts. Yukawa knew better than anyone else how willing the truly devoted were to assume guilt in order to protect the ones they loved.
“It’s a bit of a stretch, though,” Kusanagi said.
“I don’t think so. Tsukahara continued investigating the case even after Senba confessed. Since it was his arrest, in ordinary circumstances, he wouldn’t want to uncover any unpleasant truths. The deed was done. But Tsukahara wasn’t satisfied. Why? Because Senba was found guilty with the truth only half uncovered, and Tsukahara couldn’t abide by that. That’s why Tsukahara looked for him once Senba got out of prison, and went so far as to put him into a hospital. He hoped to get the truth out of him. I think that was partly because he felt responsible for the wrongful sentencing—even if Senba set himself up.”
Kusanagi gripped his phone in silence. It mirrored his own thoughts exactly.
“Kusanagi?” Yukawa said. “I have a request.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Kyohei woke to the sound of his father talking on the phone. He rubbed his eyes and looked up. Hs father was standing facing the window. The curtain was partway open, and sunlight was streaming through. It was the beginning of another beautiful day in Hari Cove.
“No, we don’t need to tell the clients anything like that,” he was saying. “Yeah, yeah, that’ll work. I’ll probably have to come out here a few more times. Sure, there’ll be a trial. Yeah, you too.” He shut his phone.
“Morning,” Kyohei said to his father’s back.
His father turned around, smiling. “You’re awake?”
“That Mom?”
“Yeah. We’re leaving after lunch. We’ll probably get to eat dinner with Mom tonight.”
“We don’t have to stay here anymore? Won’t the police have more questions?”
His father gave a thin smile and shook his head. “No. I called them while you were still asleep. They said they don’t have any more questions for you. And if something comes up, they can just talk on the phone. I gave them my number.”
Kyohei got out of bed. “Are Uncle Shigehiro and Aunt Setsuko going to jail? Can’t we do something?”
The smile faded from his father’s face. He groaned and scratched his head. “We’ll do everything that we can. I’m going to get them the best lawyer I can find. But I don’t think they’ll get out of going to jail entirely. Especially not your uncle.”
“Is it that bad, what they did?”
His father frowned. “Like I said, if they’d told the police when the accident happened, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. That’s the way it works. We all make mistakes. What’s important is how we deal with them. What your uncle did—well, that was not the right way. And it’s going to cause all of us a lot of trouble.”
To Kyohei, it sounded like his father was less concerned about the rightness of what Uncle Shigehiro and Aunt Setsuko had done and more concerned about the trouble it would cause him. “But,” Kyohei said after a moment. “He’d be in even more trouble if the accident was on purpose, right?”
Kyohei’s father leaned back and shook his head. “You bet it would! An accident on purpose isn’t an accident: in this case, that would be murder. It’s an entirely different thing. You might not just get prison for that, you could even get the death sentence,” he said, looking down at his watch. “Hey, it’s getting pretty late. I’m not that hungry, but we should get breakfast.”
Kyohei looked at the alarm clock. It was almost 9:00 a.m.
Breakfast was served in the same tea lounge where he’d talked with the detectives the day before. There were a bunch of plates laid out on a large table, and his father told him he could pick what he wanted.
“But only take as much as you can eat. If you’re still hungry, you can always get more,” his father said, but Kyohei didn’t think the advice was necessary. For one, he wasn’t some stupid little kid who grabbed too much food. For another, none of the things on the table really looked that good.
Back at the table, he chewed on some bacon and drank his juice and looked around. The place was pretty empty. Yukawa was nowhere in sight.
After breakfast, they were heading back up to the room, when Kyohei called out to his father, who was walking ahead. “Can I go take a look at the ocean?”
“Sure,” his father said. “Just don’t go too far away from the hotel.”
“Okay.”
Kyohei went back to the lounge and out to the pool. There was a door here that went out to the beach. The beach was ostensibly private, which was apparently a selling point for the hotel, except it really didn’t mean anything with so few people around.
He looked around but didn’t see Yukawa, so he went back to the hotel. At the front desk, he asked the receptionist if she could tell him Yukawa’s room number.
“Did you have something for him?”
“I needed to tell him something,” Kyohei explained.
“One moment,” she said, making a phone call. However, after a few moments, she hung up without saying a word.
“Looks like he’s not in,” she said, typing something into her computer. “Oh,” she said. “He left a message saying that he would be out today. He’ll be back tonight.”
“Tonight?” Kyohei’s shoulders sagged. He’d be gone by then.
“You could leave him a note if you like. I’ll be happy to give it to him when he returns.”
Kyohei shook his head. “That’ll be too late,” he said and walked off toward the elevators.
FIFTY-SIX
“We found no issues with Sawamura’s statement,” Nonogaki said. “The people at the bar confirmed the time of his arrival after he disposed of the body, and the timing fits with the distance between the Green Rock Inn and the place where the body was found. There were, of course, no witnesses to any of this, but given the time and the location, that was to be expected. That’s all I’ve got for now,” he added crisply and took a seat.
The mood in the conference room in the Hari Police Department, where the investigative task force was meeting, was considerably different from what it’d been several days before. In particular, Commissioner Tomita and Chief Okamoto looked relieved that the days they would have to spend with the Shizuoka prefectural police breathing down their necks were numbered.
Among the detectives from prefectural homicide, however, there were a few glum looks. A closed case was a closed case, but the trail that had begun with an abandoned body had led them not to a homicide but to professional negligence resulting in death—a far less satisfying outcome.
Shigehiro and Setsuko Kawahata had both acknowledged the details of Sawamura’s story. They claimed they had lied because they didn’t want to burden one of their daughter’s friends, but now that he’d confessed himself, there was no longer any reason to hide the truth.
Physical evidence in support of their story was piling up, too. An examination of Sawamura’s pickup truck revealed several hairs in the flatbed. Though they were still running DNA tests, from the shape and composition of the hairs, it looked extremely likely that they belonged to Masatsugu Tsukahara.
The sleeping pill that Shigehiro had given to Tsukahara matched ones they found in the drawer of the living room table. They had gotten confirmation from the doctor who gave Shigehiro the pills as well—prescribed five years earlier for mild insomnia.
Yet there were still a few unanswered questions, the most pressing of which being exactly how Tsukahara had died.
The chief forensics offic
er stood and reported that his team had been up at the Green Rock Inn again that morning attempting to reproduce the conditions on the night of Tsukahara’s death.
“Basically,” he explained, “there were no major malfunctions in the boiler itself. However, we did find that by blocking the air duct leading down to the boiler, we could create a low-oxygen burn. The suspect was not clear on how the air duct might’ve been blocked, but we did find a cardboard box nearby that could’ve done the trick if, say, it had been standing near the vent and fallen over, blocking it. We furthermore went on to check the carbon monoxide concentration in the Ocean Room on the fourth floor in the event of a low-oxygen burn in the boiler. In our tests yesterday we were able to achieve a maximum concentration of one hundred ppm, with an average between fifty and sixty ppm. In addition, we discovered that the boiler was fit with a detection device designed to automatically stop improper burns after thirty minutes. However, a burn of that length is insufficient to produce the level of carboxyhemoglobin found in the body.”
“So what happened? Do we have an explanation for any of this?” Chief of Homicide Hozumi asked, his eyebrows knitting in frustration.
“We think that other conditions may have played a factor.”
“What other conditions?”
“The weather on the night in question, for one. If a strong wind blew, pushing smoke back down the chimney, carbon monoxide levels could rise dramatically. We estimate concentration in the room could have reached as high as a thousand ppm.”
“Okay,” Hozumi said, nodding. “So would it be fair to say that, basically, we’re still looking at negligence as the root cause of the accident, but the fatality was due to a number of coincidental factors?”
“That’s correct. Of course, we’re still running tests.”
“Right, carry on,” Hozumi said, his earlier consternation gone.
Things were drawing to a close, Nishiguchi thought. If the conditions leading to the death were so specific it was impossible for even forensics to re-create them, it made the possibility that Shigehiro had intentionally caused the poisoning extremely slim.