Malice: A Mystery Read online

  “So, about that novel,” Kaga said once the waitress had left. “The one that was left open on Mr. Hidaka’s computer screen? The Gates of Ice, was it?”

  “Right. You were wondering whether the open file was something he’d written yesterday or something already published that he was looking over, right? Did you figure it out?”

  “We did. It looks like it was new material, written yesterday. We talked to the editor at Somei Monthly, and he said it fit perfectly together with what had been written before.”

  “So he was working hard until he was killed.”

  “There was something odd, though.” Detective Kaga leaned slightly forward and rested his right elbow on the table.

  “Something odd?”

  “The number of pages. We worked out how many pages the file would be when printed out, and it came out to twenty-seven-odd pages. Even if he had started writing immediately after Miss Fujio went home at five o’clock, that seems like too many. Based on what you told us yesterday, he could only write four to six pages in an hour.”

  “Twenty-seven pages? That is quite a lot.”

  I went back to Hidaka’s house at eight o’clock, but even if he’d been alive and working right up to the moment I arrived, he’d have to have written nine pages an hour.

  “So,” I said, “maybe he was lying?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe he’d already written ten or twelve pages when I saw him before. Maybe he just wanted to act like he hadn’t started yet—you know, maintaining appearances and all that.”

  “That’s what the editor at the publisher suggested, too.”

  “Thought so.” I nodded.

  “But Hidaka had told Rie when she left the house that he wouldn’t make it to the hotel until rather late. Despite that, by eight o’clock, he already had twenty-seven pages written. Since each installment of The Gates of Ice was around thirty pages, he was almost finished. I understand writers are often late, but do they ever finish early?”

  “I suppose. Writing isn’t a purely mechanical operation. You can spend hours at your desk without writing a single page. But when inspiration strikes, sometimes it’s hard to stop writing.”

  “Was Mr. Hidaka that kind of writer?”

  “He was. Which is to say, I think most authors are that kind of writer.”

  “I see. I wouldn’t know anything about that.” Detective Kaga settled back into his seat.

  “I’m not sure why you’re so hung up on the number of pages he’d finished before he was killed,” I said. “The basic facts are, when Rie left the house, his story wasn’t finished, but when the body was found, it was almost finished. All that means is that he did some amount of work in the time before he was killed. Right?”

  “Maybe so.” Detective Kaga nodded, but he still looked unsatisfied.

  Kaga, my former colleague, now a detective, seemed unable to let even the slightest detail go without thoroughly working it over. I suppose that was part of the job.

  The waitress brought our food and talk ceased for a while.

  “By the way,” I asked eventually, “what happened with the remains? You mentioned there was going to be an autopsy?”

  “Yes, they did it today.” Detective Kaga looked over at Makimura. “You were there, right?”

  “No, not me. If I was, I wouldn’t be eating this now.” He frowned as he stabbed his meat loaf with a fork.

  “True enough.” Kaga smiled wryly. He turned back to me. “What about the autopsy?”

  “I was just wondering if they had determined a time of death.”

  “I haven’t read the reports myself, but I heard they had a pretty good estimate.”

  “Are they sure it’s accurate?”

  “It depends on what they based the estimate on. For example—” Kaga began, but then he shook his head. “No, I should save that for later.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to ruin your shrimp Doria,” he said, indicating my plate.

  “Indeed.” I nodded. “Let’s let that one rest for now, then.”

  Detective Kaga nodded to indicate I’d made a wise choice.

  While we ate, he said nothing about the case. Instead, he asked about the children’s books I was writing. He wanted to know what the current trends were. What were people reading? What did I think about the decline in reading overall?

  I told him that the books aimed at children and teens that were selling were the ones that the Ministry of Education had promoted as “library recommendations,” and that the decline in reading among children was largely the fault of their parents.

  “Parents these days don’t read books themselves, but they feel they should make their children read. Since they aren’t readers, however, they have no idea what to give their children. That’s why they cling to the recommendations from the Ministry of Education. Those books are all insufferably boring, and as a result, the kids learn to hate books. It’s a vicious cycle, with no end in sight.”

  Both of the detectives listened to my story with the appearance of rapt attention while they ate. I secretly wondered whether they had the slightest interest at all.

  Coffee came after the meal. I ordered myself a hot milk.

  “You smoke, right?” Detective Kaga said, gesturing toward an ashtray.

  “No, no thanks,” I said.

  “What, you quit?”

  “Yeah, about two years ago. Doctor’s orders. It was wrecking my stomach.”

  “I see. Sorry, we should have sat in the nonsmoking section. I guess when I think of authors, I always imagine them smoking. Mr. Hidaka was a pretty heavy smoker, too, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s right. Sometimes I thought he was fumigating his office to keep the bugs out.”

  “How about last night when you found the body? Was there still smoke in the room?”

  “I wonder … I was a little upset, as you can imagine.” I took a sip of my milk. “Now that you mention it, I think there was a little smoke.”

  “I see.” Detective Kaga brought his cup to his lips. Setting it down, he slowly pulled out his notebook. “Actually, there was one other thing I wanted to check with you. About when you went to Hidaka’s house at eight o’clock?”

  “Yes?”

  “You said that since no one answered the intercom, and all the lights in the house were off, you called the hotel where Rie was staying, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, about those lights.” Detective Kaga looked straight at me. “Are you sure they were all off? All of them?”

  “They were off, without a doubt.” I stared right back.

  “But you can’t see the office window from the gate, can you? Did you go around to the back garden?”

  “No, I didn’t. But you can tell from the gate whether the lights are on in the office or not.”

  “Really? How’s that?” Detective Kaga asked.

  “There’s a large cherry tree right in front of his office window. If the office lights are on, you can see it clearly.”

  Detectives Kaga and Makimura nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “Was that a big problem?”

  “No, we’re just dotting our i’s here. If we don’t get every detail in the report, our boss gets mad at us.”

  “Sounds tough.”

  “It’s like any other job.” Kaga smiled in a way that reminded me of when he’d been a teacher.

  “So how is the investigation going? Have you made any progress?” I looked at each of the detectives in turn, before settling on Detective Kaga.

  “Well, we’re really just getting started,” he said softly, as if trying to suggest they weren’t supposed to talk about it.

  “On the news,” I said, “they were saying it might have been a happenstance murder. That someone might have just broken in, found him there, and had to kill him.”

  “Well, it’s not entirely out of the question,” Detective Kaga said.

  “By which you mean it’s o
ut of the question.”

  “Pretty much.” Detective Kaga had one eye on his partner. “Personally, I feel it’s highly unlikely.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, typically, someone breaking and entering with intent to steal will go in through the front door. That way, if they’re discovered, they might be able to talk their way out of it. They also tend to leave via the front door. But as you know, the front door to Mr. Hidaka’s house was locked.”

  “And thieves don’t generally lock up behind themselves?”

  “The dead bolt on the front door can only be locked from the inside when it’s closed, or from the outside with a key. The Hidaka house had three keys, and Rie had two of them. The third one was in Mr. Hidaka’s trouser pocket.”

  “But some robbers still come in through the window, don’t they?”

  “That’s true, but they tend to be the ones who’ve done the most prior planning. They case the place first, learning when the residents are out, making sure they can’t be seen from the street, and so on, before they act.”

  “And nothing suggests that might’ve happened?”

  “Well”—Detective Kaga smiled, showing white teeth—“if anyone had cased the place, they’d have realized there was very little left in that house worth stealing.”

  My mouth opened in a perfect O. Detective Makimura was smiling slightly.

  “Personally…,” Detective Kaga began, then stopped as though hesitant to say more. He started over. “I think it was someone who knew him.”

  “Well, that’s troubling.”

  “Just between you and me.” He raised a single finger to his lips.

  “Of course.” I nodded.

  He glanced at Detective Makimura. The junior detective then picked up the check, stood up, and headed over to the cash register.

  “Oh, no, I’ll get it.”

  “No need.” Detective Kaga held out a hand to stop me. “We were the ones who invited you out after all.”

  “But they don’t pay for your meals, do they?”

  “No, not for dinner, unfortunately.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “No worries.”

  “Still.” I looked over at the cash register. Detective Makimura was paying.

  Something about what he was doing was strange. He was talking to the woman at the cash register. She glanced over in my direction, then turned back to Makimura and said something.

  “Sorry,” Detective Kaga said without even glancing toward the cash register. He was staring directly at me and his expression hadn’t changed. “We’re just checking your alibi.”

  “My alibi?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “We already checked with Mr. Oshima, your editor at Dojisha Publishing. But we have to corroborate as many details as we can. That’s just how we do things. I hope you understand.”

  “Is that why you wanted to come here?”

  “If we didn’t come at the same time of day, there might be a different person working the register on that shift.”

  “I see,” I said, deeply impressed.

  Detective Makimura returned. Kaga nodded to him. “They overcharge us for anything?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “That’s good for a change,” Kaga said, looking toward me, his eyes narrowing in the suggestion of a smile.

  When I told him I was keeping a record of the last couple of days, Detective Kaga was interested in seeing it. We’d already left the restaurant and were walking back toward my apartment. If I hadn’t said anything, we would probably have parted ways there.

  “I figured I wouldn’t have another experience like this in my life, so I should probably write it down. I think it’s just part of being an author.”

  The detective thought about that for a while, then said, “I wonder if you’d let me read your account?”

  “Read it? You? I don’t know. I never wrote it with the intention of having someone read it.…”

  “Please.” He bowed his head to me. Next to him, Detective Makimura did the same.

  “Enough of that. What will people think when they see two policemen bowing to me by the side of the road? Besides, I’ve already told you everything.”

  “I’d still like to see it.”

  “Well, if you insist.” I scratched my head. “Can you come up to the apartment? I have it all in a file on my word processor, so you’ll have to wait while I print it out.”

  “Not a problem,” Kaga said.

  The two detectives accompanied me up to my apartment. As I was printing out the manuscript, Detective Kaga came and looked over my shoulder. “You use a word processor?”

  “I do.”

  “I noticed that Mr. Hidaka was using a regular computer.”

  “Well, he uses it for other things besides writing. E-mail, games, all kinds of things.”

  “You don’t use a computer, Mr. Nonoguchi?”

  “A word processor’s enough for me.”

  “And how do you deliver your manuscripts to the publisher? Do they come and pick them up?”

  “No, usually I send them by fax. Right over there.” I pointed to the fax machine sitting in the corner of my room. I only had one phone line so my cordless phone was attached to the fax.

  “But your editor did come over yesterday to pick up your manuscript.” Kaga looked up. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I thought I saw a keen gleam in his eyes. I remembered what Detective Kaga said about Hidaka’s killer having known him.

  “There were a bunch of things we needed to talk about in person, so I asked him to make a special trip out to see me yesterday.”

  Kaga listened to my response in silence, nodding, but said nothing more.

  When the printout was finished, I handed it to him, saying, “Actually, there was one thing I haven’t told you yet.”

  “Really?” Detective Kaga didn’t look particularly surprised.

  “You’ll see once you’ve read this. I didn’t think it had anything to do with the case, and I didn’t want to cast suspicion on a stranger.”

  What I was talking about, of course, was Hidaka and the cat.

  “I understand. I know that happens.” Detective Kaga thanked me profusely, and the two detectives headed out.

  Well now.

  I began writing today’s entry right after Kaga and his companion left. The continuation of what I handed to them, that is. I know he might want to read this, too, but I will try not to dwell on that as I write. Otherwise, what’s the point?

  * * *

  Two days have passed since Hidaka’s murder. The funeral took place at a Buddhist temple several kilometers from the house. A throng of publishing-industry people were in attendance, and the line to offer incense was long.

  The TV crews were there as well. While the reporters were wearing their serious faces, they were, like snakes hunting, looking around for any dramatic scenes. If any of the mourners even looked as if they might be in danger of tearing up, the cameras would be on them in a flash.

  After I had offered my incense, I stood by the reception tent, watching the mourners as they arrived. There were a few celebrities. I recognized some actors who had played some of Hidaka’s characters in the movies made from his novels.

  A reading of scriptures and a brief talk by the head priest followed the offering of incense. Rie was wearing a black suit, prayer beads clutched in her hand. When the priest was done, she stepped forward and thanked the others for coming, then spoke about her enduring affection for her husband. I heard some sniffling in the otherwise quiet crowd.

  Not once in Rie’s talk did she mention or express any hatred toward the killer. To me, that was a surer sign of her wrath and sadness than any other.

  The coffin was carried out, and as the mourners began to shuffle home, I noticed someone I’d been expecting to see. She was walking alone.

  I called out as she left the temple, “Miss Fujio?”

  Miyako Fujio stopped and turned, her long hair whipping around. “Yo
u are…?”

  “We met in Hidaka’s office the other day.”

  “I remember.”

  “My name is Nonoguchi, I’m Hidaka’s friend. And I was a classmate of your brother’s.”

  “So I heard. Hidaka told me after you left.”

  “I was wondering if we could talk? Do you have time?”

  She looked down at her watch, then off into the distance. “Someone’s waiting for me.”

  I followed her eyes. A light green van was parked along the side of the road. The young man sitting in the driver’s seat was looking in our direction.

  “Your husband?”

  “No, not that.”

  Then, her lover, I assumed.

  “We can just talk here. There’s a few things I wanted to ask you.”

  “Like what?”

  “I wanted to know what you talked about with Hidaka that day.”

  “What we always talked about. Recalling as many of the books as possible, admitting his wrongdoing in public, and rewriting the story so it had nothing to do with my brother. I had heard he was leaving for Canada and wanted to know exactly how he was going to show his sincere apologies once he’d left.”

  “And what did Hidaka say to that?”

  “He said he would still respond in good faith, but he had no intentions of compromising his own beliefs to do so.”

  “So he wasn’t going to go along with your requests?”

  “Apparently he felt that as long as the intent was not an exposé, but the attainment of art, that some intrusion on his subjects’ privacy was unavoidable.”

  “But you didn’t agree.”

  “Of course not.” Her face softened slightly, but nothing you could remotely call a smile appeared.

  “So you didn’t get what you wanted that day.”

  “He said that as soon as he was settled in Canada, he would contact me, and we could continue where we left off. He promised. He did look like he was busy getting ready to relocate, and I didn’t see any use pushing it, so I agreed and left.”

  I myself couldn’t imagine anything else Hidaka could’ve said.

  “And you went straight home?”

  “Me? Yes.”

  “You didn’t stop anywhere along the way?”

  “No.” She shook her head. Then Miyako Fujio’s eyes opened a little wider and she stared hard at me. “Are you checking my alibi?”