Malice: A Mystery Read online

  “People typically don’t get angry for no reason.”

  “Well, whatever reason I had, it wasn’t anything important. To be honest, I have no idea why I lost my head. I guess that’s why they call it ‘losing your head.’ Even if I wanted to explain it to you, I couldn’t.”

  “Do you really think I’m going to accept that for an answer?”

  “I don’t think you have a choice.”

  I looked at him and he again met my gaze, his eyes full of self-assurance.

  “I’d like to ask you again about the notebooks and disks we found in your apartment.”

  He looked disappointed. “Those have nothing to do with your case. Please stop trying to tie everything up into one neat little package.”

  “Then help me set them aside by telling me what they are.”

  “Nothing. Just notes and disks.”

  “Notes and disks containing the text to Kunihiko Hidaka’s novels. Or, to be precise, text extraordinarily similar to Mr. Hidaka’s work. One might even call them rough drafts.”

  He snorted. “What, do you think I was his ghostwriter? That’s rich. You’re overthinking this.”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “How about I give you an answer that makes even more sense. Those notes you found were my homework. People who want to become writers have to work at it, you know. I practiced by copying Hidaka’s works, trying to learn the rhythm of his writing, the manner of his expressions. It’s nothing new or unusual. Lots of would-be authors do the same thing.”

  I’d been expecting him to come up with something along these lines. When I’d spoken with Kunihiko Hidaka’s editor, he’d made exactly the same conjecture. However, the editor had pointed out that, even if that was the case, it still left three questions unanswered. The first was why the manuscripts we’d discovered contained slight variations from Kunihiko Hidaka’s work. The second was that, although it wasn’t unthinkable that someone might copy an entire novel, it certainly was unusual that someone had copied so many by the same author. The third was that, while Kunihiko Hidaka was a bestselling author, his prose wasn’t so amazing that another writer would look to it as a model.

  I raised these same points now to Osamu Nonoguchi himself.

  Without flinching, he told me, “As for that, there are perfectly rational reasons for all of them. In the beginning, in fact, I did simply copy what Hidaka had written word for word, but eventually I got tired of that. Eventually, whenever an expression popped into my head, or a different way of saying something came to me, I would try writing that down instead. You understand? I was using Hidaka’s work as a starting point, but was trying to write something better. That ultimately became the whole point of the exercise. As far as the number of novels I rewrote, well, all I can say is that I kept at it for a long time. I’m single, and there wasn’t much else to do when I got home, so I wrote. It’s as simple as that. As for your last point, it’s true that Hidaka’s writing isn’t all that great, but I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. His writing is good. It might not be the most technically advanced, but it’s simple, easy to understand, and solid. I’d argue that the simple fact that so many people read it is proof enough.”

  Osamu Nonoguchi’s explanations made sense. Yet they raised another question. Why, if all this was true, hadn’t he said so earlier? Instead, he’d refused to talk about the writings we’d found at his apartment at all until now, after he collapsed in the interrogation room. I wondered if he hadn’t used the break in his interrogation that resulted from his collapse and subsequent hospital stay to make up a suitable story. Of course, even if this was true, it would be exceedingly difficult to prove.

  I decided to change tactics and bring up another piece of evidence we’d discovered: a collection of several memos found in Osamu Nonoguchi’s desk drawer. The memos added up to the outline of a story, and the characters’ names in them proved they were an outline for The Gates of Ice. However, it wasn’t an outline of the parts already serialized. It was an outline for the remainder of the story, the part not yet written.

  His explanation: “That was just more practice. Even readers like to guess where a story is going, right? I was just being a bit more hands-on about it.”

  “But you’d already given up your teaching career and were working as a full-time professional writer, no? Why spend so much time copying another writer’s work when you could have been writing your own stories?”

  “Don’t be silly, I’m nowhere near what one might call a ‘pro.’ I still have a lot to learn. And I have plenty of time to practice, since I wasn’t getting much work.”

  I was unconvinced.

  He must’ve seen it in my face, because he went on, “I know you want to make me out to be Hidaka’s ghostwriter, but you’re giving me too much credit. I don’t have that kind of talent. Besides, if it were true, I’d be shouting it from the rooftops: ‘Those were all my novels! I’m the real author!’ Unfortunately, I didn’t write them. If I had written them, believe me, I’d have done so under my own name. Why use his? Didn’t you wonder about that at all?”

  “I did indeed. That’s why it’s all so strange.”

  “There’s nothing strange about it. You’ve just made an erroneous assumption and it’s leading you to strange conclusions. You’re just thinking about it way too much.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I wish you would think so, and I really don’t want to talk about this anymore. Can’t we just get on with the trial? Who cares about my motive? Just make up a plausible one and I’ll write my confession however you please.”

  He sounded as though he truly didn’t care.

  * * *

  I reflected on our discussion after leaving his hospital room. No matter how you looked at it, too many things didn’t add up. Yet clearly, also, as he’d insisted, my reasoning had a flaw.

  If he had really been Kunihiko Hidaka’s ghostwriter, I had to wonder why. Had he thought the novels would sell better because Mr. Hidaka was an established author? That didn’t make sense because the book that had kicked off Mr. Hidaka’s career—the one that had made him a bestselling writer—was one likely written by Osamu Nonoguchi himself. He had no reason at that stage to publish it under Hidaka’s name. So why not make it his own first novel?

  Perhaps he’d withheld his name because he was still working as a teacher then? But that didn’t make sense either. I couldn’t think of an instance where a teacher had been fired for moonlighting as an author, so what would have been the purpose? And if he’d been forced to choose between professions, I was sure that Osamu Nonoguchi would have chosen author over teacher.

  Finally, as Mr. Nonoguchi himself said, if he was Mr. Hidaka’s ghostwriter, why deny it? Being recognized as the true author of Kunihiko Hidaka’s many works would be a feather in his cap.

  So maybe he wasn’t a ghostwriter. Maybe the notebooks and disks found in his apartment were nothing more than what he claimed them to be.

  Except, that couldn’t be true.

  The Osamu Nonoguchi that I knew was prideful, confident in his abilities. I couldn’t conceive of him copying so much of someone else’s work, even in the attempt to become a better writer.

  Back at the station, I related my discussion with Mr. Nonoguchi to the chief. Detective Sakoda listened to my report with a sour look.

  When I was finished, he commented, “Why would Nonoguchi want to hide his motive for killing Hidaka?”

  “I don’t know. What secret could be worse than the fact that he killed someone?”

  “You think Hidaka’s novels are somehow involved?”

  “I do.”

  “And that Osamu Nonoguchi was the real author? Even though he denies it?”

  The department clearly didn’t want to spend any more time on this case than it had to. People from the press had already started asking questions about the ghostwriter theory, though I had no idea how they’d caught wind of it. We’d avoided saying anythin
g about it, but the papers would probably start printing stories about it, possibly even as soon as tomorrow. That would in turn mean another flood of phone calls.

  “So he’s claiming he just got mad and killed him?” Detective Sakoda shook his head. “That makes it sound like there was an argument, but if we don’t know what that argument was about, then we don’t have a place to begin. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if he just used his authorial talents to make something up. Of course, then he might contradict himself on the stand and we’d be back to square one.”

  “I don’t believe he impulsively kill Hidaka as the result of an argument,” I said. “If Osamu Nonoguchi left the house through the front door, then went around to the garden and snuck in through the window, he already had intent to kill before the deed was done. My guess is that his motive for killing him emerged during that first meeting with Hidaka.”

  “So the question is, what were they talking about?”

  “Nonoguchi’s own account of the meeting doesn’t mention anything of consequence. What I think is that they were discussing how to continue their working relationship once Hidaka moved to Canada. Maybe Hidaka said something that didn’t sit well with him?”

  “Maybe so.”

  We’d already looked into Osamu Nonoguchi’s bank records, but we found no indication that money was being regularly received from Kunihiko Hidaka. That didn’t rule out the possibility of cash transactions, though.

  “It looks like we’re going to have to dig deeper into their past,” the chief said.

  I agreed.

  * * *

  I decided to pay a visit, along with two of my fellow detectives, to Rie Hidaka. She’d left the house where her husband was killed and was staying at her family home in Mitaka, a suburb in the western part of Tokyo. This was the first time I’d seen her since Osamu Nonoguchi’s arrest. The chief had called ahead to break the news. He avoided mentioning the ghostwriter theory, but she’d likely heard something from the press, who were probably calling her around the clock. I imagined she had as many questions for us as we had for her.

  After arriving and briefly explaining all that had happened, I told her about the manuscripts we’d found in Mr. Nonoguchi’s apartment. She was surprised.

  I asked her if she could think of any reason why he’d be in possession of manuscripts closely resembling her late husband’s work.

  She insisted she had no idea: “I don’t think my husband was getting his ideas from anyone else, let alone copying someone else’s work. Writing, and coming up with new ideas, was always a struggle for him, but he wasn’t the type to hire a ghostwriter.” Though her voice was calm, fire was in her eyes.

  I had trouble believing that. She’d only been married to Kunihiko Hidaka for a month. I was sure there was much about her late husband that she didn’t know.

  She must have picked up on my hesitation because she went on, “If you’re thinking about how long we were married—not very long, I admit—allow me to point out that before I was his wife, I was his editor.”

  I already knew this. Rie had worked at one of Hidaka’s publishers, which was how they’d met in the first place.

  “When I was his editor, we spoke at great length about the novels he might write in the future. In the end, I was the editor for only one of his books, but it’s a novel that never would’ve existed without our discussions. I don’t see how Nonoguchi could’ve been involved at all.”

  “Which novel was this?”

  “Sea Ghost. It was published last year.”

  It wasn’t one I’d read, so I asked one of the detectives with me if he knew anything about it. In our investigation, many of my fellow detectives had become experts on Kunihiko Hidaka’s work.

  His response was intriguing. Sea Ghost was one of the novels lacking a counterpart in Osamu Nonoguchi’s notes and disks.

  Nor was Sea Ghost alone in this. All of the novels Mr. Hidaka had published in the first three years of his career appeared to be originals. Even after that point, nearly half of his books had no counterparts in Nonoguchi’s apartment. This made sense if we assumed that Mr. Hidaka continued some of his own writing, even while using Mr. Nonoguchi as a ghostwriter for other works.

  If that assumption was correct, then even if there was a work that, as Rie Hidaka claimed, “never would’ve existed without our discussions,” it didn’t disprove my theory.

  I tried a new angle to see if Rie had any idea what might drive Osamu Nonoguchi to kill her husband.

  She said, “I’ve been thinking about it ever since he was arrested, but I just don’t know. To be honest, I still can’t believe he did it. They were such good friends. I don’t think I ever saw them fight or argue. I worry that this might all be some horrible mistake.”

  I believe she was sincere. Nothing in her manner suggested this was just a performance for our benefit. I asked a few minor follow-up questions, then I thanked her for her time.

  As we were getting ready to leave, Rie Hidaka handed me a book with a gray jacket, speckled as though with gold dust—a copy of Sea Ghost. I think what she had in mind was that I read it and then stop doubting her late husband’s talent.

  I began reading it that night, recalling that Osamu Nonoguchi had recommended this very book to me when I asked him if Kunihiko Hidaka had ever written a mystery. I wondered if there was a deeper meaning behind Nonoguchi’s choice of book. Was he suggesting I read a Hidaka novel that he had nothing to do with?

  Sea Ghost was the story of a man of advanced years and his young wife. The man was a painter, the wife his model. The painter began to suspect that his wife was cheating on him, a typical theme for the genre. However, the wife had two distinct personalities, and the real action kicks off when the husband discovers her secret. One of her personalities is his loyal wife who seems to love him from the bottom of her heart. The other personality has a lover, and it becomes clear this personality is plotting with her lover to kill the painter. As the painter agonizes over whether he should bring her to a hospital for treatment, he finds a memo on his desk:

  “Who will the drugs kill? Me? Or her?”

  The memo had been left by his wife’s “other” personality, and the message was clear: even if treatment could fix her multiple-personality disorder, there was no guarantee that the personality who loved him would be the one that remained.

  Deeply troubled, the painter begins having nightmares. In these dreams, his wife comes into the room with an angelic smile on her face and opens the bedroom window, through which a man enters. As the intruder lifts a knife to attack the painter, the intruder’s face changes to become that of the wife—at which point the painter wakes in a cold sweat.

  In the end, a real attempt is made on his life, and defending himself, the painter accidentally stabs his wife. She dies in his arms, but the way she looks at him makes him believe that, just before the end, her personality shifted back to that of the good wife. So, did he kill the angel or the demon? The painter is doomed never to know.

  That’s the general outline, though I’m sure a more discerning reader might have come away with a higher-level interpretation. Themes such as lust in old age, and ugliness in the heart of an artist, were probably there for the taking if one read between the lines, but I was never much for literature in school. Nor am I particularly qualified to pass judgment on the quality of the writing itself. That said, with all due respect to Rie Hidaka, in my opinion it wasn’t a very good book.

  * * *

  Let’s consider the careers of the two men: killer and victim.

  Kunihiko Hidaka joined a private high school attached to a university and climbed up that ladder into the university’s Department of Literature and Philosophy. After getting a degree, he worked first at an advertising company, then at a publisher. Roughly ten years ago, a short story he’d written won a small literary magazine’s new-author award. This started his career as a novelist. For the next two years, none of his books sold all that well, but the book he published in the fo
urth year, An Unburning Flame, won a major award for literature. This began his march toward being a famous author.

  Osamu Nonoguchi went to a different private high school from Hidaka’s and, after taking a year off, began studying in the literature department of a national university. His major was in Japanese literature. He got his teaching credentials and after graduation took a job at a public middle school. He worked at three schools before he retired from teaching earlier this year. The school where we worked together was the second of those three.

  Nonoguchi made his own authorial debut three years ago with a short story published in a biannual children’s magazine. To date, he hasn’t yet published a novel.

  Though they took different paths, according to Osamu Nonoguchi, the two met again about seven years ago. He claims to have seen Hidaka’s name in a newspaper and reached out to reconnect with his old friend.

  I believe this is the truth because roughly half a year after they supposedly reconnected, Hidaka won the literature prize for An Unburning Flame, which is the first of his books with a version found in Nonoguchi’s manuscripts. It seems safe to assume that Hidaka’s reunion with Nonoguchi brought a change in his fortunes.

  I went to speak to the editor of An Unburning Flame. A short fellow by the name of Mimura, he was currently serving as the chief editor of a literary magazine.

  I asked him if he could imagine Kunihiko Hidaka writing An Unburning Flame based on what he had written before.

  Before he answered my question, Mr. Mimura had one of his own: “Are you investigating that ridiculous ghostwriter theory that’s been making the rounds?”

  Clearly, Mr. Mimura wasn’t a fan of my theory. Nor did his company have anything to gain by besmirching Kunihiko Hidaka’s work, even after his death.

  “I wouldn’t call it a theory, there’s not enough evidence to call it that. I just need to make sure we have all the facts straight.”

  “Well, it seems like a waste of time to follow up on baseless rumors, but you don’t need me to tell you how to do your job.” Then he answered my question: “When you get right down to it, An Unburning Flame was a turning point for Mr. Hidaka. He showed tremendous growth as a writer in that novel. Some might say he transformed overnight.”