The Hunter (24 page)

It was the first heavy snow in a long time. When four inches piled up, the city of Tokyo ceased to function. Now the forecast was for continued snowfall till the middle of the night, with the city center due for at least eight inches. This meant that Tachikawa, Akishima, and places farther west in Tokyo, with the hills of Okutama close by, would get an even greater accumulation of snow.

For Tokyoites, a weather disaster. For the wolf-dog, a perfect day for flight.

Takako felt guilty for even thinking such a thing, but on a day like this it was sure nice not to have to do actual legwork. In a police car fitted with radial tires, she drove through the snowy streets back to the hospital where Takizawa was waiting. The crime-scene unit on their way to the fire site had a rough day ahead of them. Getting rousted out of bed in the middle of the night was nothing compared to having to dig through wet, cold fire ruins. At least she could get around by car, and until Kasahara came round, she could spend her time inside a warm building.

If that was a wolf-dog that ran away, then he's our man.

A flood of questions went through her mind: Who was this Kasahara guy? What happened to Takagi? Where was he? Pretty weird, two guys sharing the same first name mixed up in the same case. Who was the young woman who died in the fire? What was her connection to the dog? Assuming this Kasahara guy had something to do with the string of wolf-dog attacks, and his house was set afire with the chemical, then he couldn't be the one with the benzoyl peroxide. So, two killers? What was their link? Hara. The one victim they had in common. Hara—the date club manager, the guy with a past, the guy bitten by a dog. He knew the other two victims. What had they done to deserve such a cruel death? What happened?

Loping through the falling snow.

Her thoughts kept returning to the wolf-dog. Why, though she'd never seen an actual wolf-dog, was she so drawn to the creature? She couldn't explain it. She couldn't forget the eyes in photographs. Eyes with an almost mystical power, eyes that bespoke a lofty intelligence, eyes brimming with life and light, personality and individuality. Eyes that expressed feelings richer by half than those of the human heart, eyes without a trace of savagery, eyes that took in everything they saw, accepting it on its own terms.

She wanted to follow those eyes. She wanted them to look at her, into her. The desire haunted her.

She crawled along roads jammed with traffic because of the snow, finally getting back to the hospital at 9:00. Despite the inclement weather, the dimly lit first-floor waiting room was packed with outpatients waiting to see a physician. The room was punctuated with dry coughs. In one corner, a large TV console was set on NHK. Many of the patients were elderly. If it wasn't a life-threatening emergency, wouldn't they be better off staying home? As their reward for coming out today, they were likely to catch cold, or fall and break a bone.

Takako went down a long corridor, turned and walked through a small connecting passageway, and then her surroundings grew noticeably brighter. Here, in what seemed to be a new wing, there were no outpatients, only long cream-colored walls.

She kept going, referring to the signs hanging from the ceiling to help her find her way, until she came to a corner where a uniformed police officer stood. Before he spoke, she showed him her badge. Still in his early twenties, perhaps, with a trace of boyhood in his features, he tightened his expression and said, "Straight ahead." She walked past with a nod, and kept on.

There was another policeman at the next corner. This one looked a couple of years older than the other one. Even after she showed him her badge, he continued to regard her with suspicion. Already brainwashed, she thought. Taught to think of police as an exclusively male fraternity. Why couldn't he at least give her a proper greeting, she fumed, as she turned the corner.

Finally she came to the door of the ICU. As she drew nearer, she began to hear something that sounded suspiciously like snoring. Green vinyl benches lined both sides of the empty, spotless corridor, and on one bench there lay Takizawa, sawing away. She wondered if she should wake him, but soon gave up the idea. Here in the corridor where the air was filled with the sound of nurses' shoes stepping briskly back and forth, the sight of her partner lying asleep as if dead, his arms folded and his mouth half open, was in stark contrast to everything going on around him. To the patients and doctors in life-and-death struggles in the ICU, Takizawa had to seem inconsiderate and offensive.

A woman would never get away with this.

Times like this were when you had to call on your reserves of strength. The saying that a cop had to be able to sleep anywhere, anytime, to catch what sleep he could, really applied only to men. People said women were the weaker sex, that they couldn't handle physically challenging assignments— and yet in the end, it was women who invariably had to push themselves harder than men.

She went to get a cup of coffee from the vending machine, and was sitting blowing off the steam when a middle-aged nurse came up and smiled. "Out like a light. Are you with him?"

From force of habit, Takako quickly drew out her badge from the inner pocket of her jacket and showed it to the nurse. Nodding as if she'd already figured that out, the nurse said, "He told us you'd be coming. You know, your work must be awfully hard."

The nurse was wearing a dark blue cardigan over her uniform and held a clipboard tucked under one arm. She had a kind smile, and her eyes twinkled behind metal frames. Takako simply nodded, realizing what a long time it had been since she'd had a conversation with another woman. The nurse looked at Takizawa again, and laughed. The nametag on her cardigan read Head Nurse Tatsuko Sawayama.

"I told him he ought to get that face looked at while he's here. But he insisted he couldn't go anywhere until you got here. He tried hard to stay awake, until just a little while ago. What happened to him? Something at work?"

Takako glanced down at Takizawa and made sure his breathing was regular before replying. "I think . . . it's ... a personal matter," she whispered. Nurse Sawayama looked startled, and then smiled again.

A smile—something she'd forgotten existed. "How's the patient?" Takako asked.

They were supposed to file frequent reports to headquarters; similarly, whenever headquarters acquired new information, one of them would be contacted. She wasn't here as a family member; this was her job.

"It's still too early to say. The doctor says he'll pull through if he regains consciousness."

The man who had been pulled alive from the fire was, for now, listed merely as an unidentified key witness. The nurse added that the extent of his burns was not life-threatening, but that he had inhaled a great deal of smoke and was probably suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.

"We treated him with hyperbaric oxygen therapy, so his blood density should have gone down by now. But because of the burns, his blood has a tendency to thicken, and the amount of blood in circulation is also down."

Takako wasn't sure what symptoms that might cause. "Is he out of danger?"

The veteran nurse, still calm-faced, said quietly, "No, his life is still in danger." Then, as she looked at Takako, her expression grew troubled. "I suppose you won't tell me, but did he do something bad? I mean, he's not just another burn victim, is he?"

"It's really too soon for us to say. We have to wait until we talk to him."

"And you're sure this is Katsuhiro Kasahara?"

"For now, yes."

At this response, the head nurse looked dubious and was about to say something when a young nurse came scurrying up, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking. She murmured something to Sawayama, then turned and hurried back into the ICU. The head nurse's expression remained tranquil, but she shifted her position.

"In any case, whoever he is, it's our job to save his life. But the minute he regains consciousness, I'll let you know."

With that, she too hurried into the ICU. As she went in, a nurse in a surgical garment came tearing out. The area was full of sudden activity. Then came the sound of a gurney trundling this way, IV tubes and container swaying, bearing another patient to the ICU. Sawayama came back out. Standing back to avoiding the gurney coming toward them, she said in a crisp tone, very different from the one she had used before, "Family members wait here." Several doctors and nurses passed, pushing the gurney and leaving behind a lone woman of about forty.

Takako scanned the woman's appearance. She was wearing a dark red windbreaker and light brown slacks with an elastic waistband. Her short hair was wet and so utterly bedraggled that although she'd evidently had a permanent, the effect was lost. She must have walked through the wet snow without an umbrella. Her brown shoes, of manmade material, were waterlogged and stained. She looked dazed. From her mouth came the low entreaty, "Oh, please." Then her gaze wandered, as if in search of something to cling to. Takako quickly looked away.

Roused by the commotion, Takizawa now dragged himself to a sitting position. He started to rub his face, then realized anew that he was hurt, and looked around cantankerously.

Catching sight of Takako, he lurched sleepily over. His left eye was completely bloodshot, the area below purplish and swollen. His mouth was badly bruised, too. The total effect was to give this face, which was far from beautiful to begin with, a lurid intensity.

"Any change?" he asked, his voice huskier than ever.

Takako shook her head, and motioned with her eyes toward the woman. Takizawa blinked several times and swung his head around. On the bench catty-corner from him, the woman was staring with undivided attention at the door. They could not hear her voice, but her lips formed the words "Please, dear god," over and over.

Praying for someone she loved. Was the patient her husband? Was this a sudden illness, or had he already been hospitalized and just now taken a turn for the worse?

"Kasahara is still unconscious," she reported. "The burns themselves are not so serious, but he's got carbon monoxide poisoning."

Takizawa yawned again, took out a cigarette, and then, realizing there were no ashtrays around, got up with a muttered comment she couldn't catch and walked down the corridor. If you want to smoke, go on and do it by yourself, she thought, watching him go off, but midway down the corridor he stopped, turned around, and looked back at her. She had no choice. Rising with the cup of now-cold coffee in her hand, she followed after him. His coat flapping open in front, Takizawa walked on with his bandy-legged gait to the end of the corridor. Spotting a smoking lounge ahead, he stuck the cigarette in his mouth and lit up.

The smoking lounge had ashtrays and a beverage vending machine in one corner. No one was there. Takizawa went over to the window and blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke, clearly savoring the taste.

"Look how it's piling up," he said.

Beyond the window, large flakes of snow fell thickly, blotting out the scenery.

"They've started the crime-scene analysis, I suppose?"

Takako stood beside Takizawa looking out at the snowy, gray scene.

"They've asked someone from the SRI to look in, too. They'll send us the results of tests on the animal hair ASAP."

Cigarette in mouth, Takizawa nodded slowly. Takako drank her cold coffee and then threw the empty cup in the trash. Short on sleep as she was, standing still made her feel lethargic. Just then her cellphone rang. She exchanged glances with Takizawa before pulling it out of her skirt pocket. It was investigation headquarters.

"The test results are in," Chief Wakita said. "The animal hair we collected from that house is from the same dog that was on the last two victims."

Takako turned back to face Takizawa. "It's a match," she said simply, and saw the uninjured half of his face stiffen slightly. She herself felt a suffocating sensation.

"What about the burn victim?" asked Wakita.

"Still unconscious."

A sigh of frustration came over the line. Then: "Now, this is not yet confirmed—although we're working fast on it—but we've had word from a hospital in Saitama."

"Saitama?"

"They're telling us they believe the dead woman could be an inpatient of theirs. The patient's name was Emiko Takagi, age twenty-six. She had gone home for a one-week visit with her father."

"Takagi? Her name was Takagi? Then—"

"We're asking the Yamanashi PD to check on it. Anyway, as soon as the patient comes to, find out all you can."

The atmosphere at headquarters was almost electric. Takako could sense her own heartbeat quickening. The face of Takizawa, who'd come up next to her and was watching her impatiently, entered her view. He was breathing right on her, with breath that reeked of alcohol and cigarettes.

"What about the dog?" she said into the phone. "Any sign of it?"

"We've notified all police stations in Tokyo and surrounding prefectures. Nothing yet."

"And the media?"

"We're not releasing any information yet. No point in stirring needless panic. Right now it looks like our chances of finding the dog are pretty slim unless Kasahara—or Takagi, or whoever he is—wakes up."

The chief was talking uncharacteristically fast. But when she thought the conversation was ending, he added this: "One last thing. We've arranged for the motorcycle for you. In this weather I don't think we're going to want you on it too soon, but it's ready for you. For now, whatever you do, get the burn victim to talk. We're counting on you."

With that, he hung up. Takako looked down at what she'd scribbled in her notebook: "Emiko Takagi, 26." Wakita's encouragement wouldn't make the patient wake up any faster. Perhaps they should say a prayer for him to recover, like that woman in the corridor.

"Who's that?" asked Takizawa impatiently, pointing to Takako's notebook. He listened to her report, then muttered, "Why didn't they call
me?"

"Maybe they thought that if they didn't call me once in a while, I'd get jealous." Not the cleverest response, but better than "They thought you might be asleep on the job." Takizawa still looked peeved, but he said no more. Earlier this morning at the fire scene, Wakita had taken Otomichi aside and told her to be prepared to go out on her motorcycle at any time; Takizawa knew nothing about this, and she didn't say anything about it either.

Finding the wolf-dog was a daunting task.

For starters, wolf-dogs were meant to live in a cold climate. For Japanese owners, unless they lived up north in Hokkaido or Tohoku, a big concern was always how to get their wolf-dogs through the hot summer months. So this wintry weather was ideal. By now, if it had a mind to flee, the wolf-dog had probably left Tokyo far behind, gone off to safety in the wooded hills to the north.

No. He won't go so far. He's just wandering around in the snow, somewhere nearby.

Because wolf-dogs were "one-master dogs," never forming attachments to anyone but their original owner. A dog that needed extra affection, one that opened its heart only to a select few—what had gone through its mind as it fled that scene of horror, watching its home go up in smoke and flames?

From beside her came the murmur, "So it was his daughter." Takako shot a glance at Takizawa's profile. The red eye appeared to be weeping. Her ill-natured partner, who could be slightly paranoid, scowled as he took out another cigarette. "If her name's Emiko Takagi, then her old man was one of us."

"It does seem that way."

Takizawa looked even more aggrieved. Cops esteemed their colleagues above all else. There might be sexual discrimination, outright betrayal, and ugly recriminations on almost a daily basis—yet to them, all this was in the nature of the family, no more. A closed-off world, perhaps; but then nobody likes having strangers stick their noses in private, family matters. Confronting a former colleague who had gone over to the other side aroused a welter of conflicting emotions. When news of a wayward cop aired on TV, Takako and the fraternity of cops experienced an awkward embarrassment, as if a family member had gone and made a damn fool of himself. Among themselves, the discomfort and misery were so great that they could barely speak of it.

"What was wrong with the daughter?" asked Takizawa, not looking at Takako.

"Don't know yet. They're still checking her out."

"Rotten luck for her, getting dragged into this just when she goes home for a visit." He sounded despondent. The sound of Takizawa's daughter saying "hello" on the phone echoed in Takako's ears. It seemed forever ago, and yet it was only this morning. A father beaten up by his son and then awakened by his daughter: that was her partner.

"Whaddaya think?" he asked abruptly, turning toward Takako. "If those are crimes of revenge, what's it all about?"

His weird-looking face stared straight at her. Once they pieced together the past connection among the victims, detectives had surmised that these were crimes of revenge, an assessment which Takako had no quarrel with. But what connection could there be between a former cop and a bunch of playboys who'd frequented the same watering holes? Takako paced, trying to think. "The daughter in the mental hospital, hmm, not the same age as the other victims, but close enough—close enough to hang out with them. Young girls in their teens can be very impressionable."

Takizawa's eyebrows lifted; his partner had seen a thread. Young daughter hangs out a bad crowd, goes off in a wrong direction, father seeks to level the score—not implausible. What had Emiko Takako been in the hospital for? If she was home for a week's visit, must have been long-term hospitalization. Had the father turned into a demon bent on revenge, all because of her?

"Twelve years ago, she was fourteen. A middle school student." The word "rape" sprang into Takako's mind. But wait, one of the victims was a woman. Then what else could it have been?

Again, Takizawa nodded. "They did something to her. What was it?" His thoughts seemed to be on the same track as hers, his expression bitter. What terrible thing happened to the cop's daughter?

"Why didn't he take legal action?" she said. "It seems logical that a cop would do that before taking things into his own hands."

"That's why I'm asking you. You went to college, right? You're a helluva lot smarter than me."

There he goes again.

Still trying to pick a fight, after all this time. She gave him a look—but found surprisingly little hostility in his eyes. Instead, somehow, he seemed pathetic and forlorn, the emanating loneliness not merely the effect of his facial injury.

"I only went to junior college," she said. "Never liked to study."

"Never liked to study but went to junior college anyway, eh? So, what'd you study?"

"Child care. It was what my parents wanted."

Takizawa expressed surprise. "What your parents wanted?" he repeated. "Huh. That's the way it goes." He took out another cigarette. "Parents always have their own ideas about their kids. If they wanted you to study child care I guess that means they never thought you'd end up a cop, huh?"

"Especially my mother. She hated the idea," Takako said, her candor surprising herself. Somehow she felt the urge to mention it, didn't want to pretend otherwise. She was willing to meet him halfway. Yet she didn't want to discuss details of her private life either. If she didn't get the conversation off this personal stuff, soon she'd be telling him about her divorce and revealing her ex's last name. She cut back to the chase.

"You think we'll catch the wolf-dog?"

"We got no choice."

"Takagi was a trained handler of police dogs. Someone like that has to love and respect dogs. How could he have used his own wolf-dog to carry out murder?"

Takizawa crossed his arms over his paunch and said, "Who knows? No matter what case you're working, no matter how much one-on-one you do with a suspect, no matter how fair his story sounds, whether it's true or not is one thing you'll never know."

Takako was silent.

"Our only job is to do what we're told and nail the suspect. Isn't that right?"

"Is it?"

"Even if there is some other truth, it's not our job to go look for it."

She'd heard this point made many times before. Each time, she was unconvinced.

"We've got enough to do. There's no end of bad guys out there, and the crimes just keep coming. Our job is to get a reasonable explanation out of a perp and gather enough evidence so it'll hold up in court. Even if it's not the truth with a capital T, as long as it holds together, what else can we do? The prosecution and the defense sure as hell don't know what the truth is. Especially in a homicide. I mean, who's gonna say what the victim's truth was? Dead men tell no tales. Even if the perp swears he's telling the truth, and maybe it is the truth, it's only his version of the truth. The truth it suits him to tell. In other words, it's a waste of time to think about it."

The more experience people had on the force, the more they sounded like this. Once Takako's boss said to her, "If you want to know the truth that much, go out and commit a crime yourself. That's the only way you'll ever know." That was probably true, she had to admit. How could one lone investigator hope to fathom the truth of a case, or the mind of the perpetrator behind it?

Especially when they were dealing with a dog.

She was aware that she was becoming too emotionally involved. Private feelings had no place in an official investigation. She knew this.

It's a dog, for heaven's sake.

A dumb, pathetic excuse.

For a while she and Takizawa continued to stand in silence, watching the snow fall thick and fast. Time passed slowly, uselessly. Takizawa went back to sleep on the bench. Takako paced up and down the corridor and drank two cups of coffee to fill her empty stomach. Better not eat anything now; it would only make her sleepy. She watched the hands of the clock crawl and the snow pile up. It was just nearing 1:30 in the afternoon when she heard busy footsteps coming her way. Sawayama, the head nurse, reappeared.

"Oh, here you are. The patient is starting to regain consciousness."

Until then Takizawa had been snoring with almost arrogant loudness, but at this announcement he jumped to his feet. "Can he talk?"

Caught by surprise, Sawayama mumbled, "Well..."

"We can see him now, right?"

He was on his way. Takako hastily got up and followed. From the corner of her eye, she could see the head nurse standing bolted to the floor, surprise still on her face.

9

The ex-cop was wearing an oxygen mask, with tubes up his nose and inserted into other parts of his anatomy. His head, arms, and torso were wrapped in bandages and he lay gasping for breath. Around him were the sounds of a compressor and the electronic beep of a heart monitor. The room was peculiarly inanimate, a world of machines—including, it seemed, the man stretched out on the bed.

Wearing sterile gowns over their uniforms, Takizawa and Takako stood beside the man's bed. The attending physician viewed them somberly. "The patient is not fully conscious," he said. "With all the smoke inhalation, his trachea was severely burned. So even if he comes to fully, he won't be able to speak."

Takizawa nodded absently and looked back toward the bed. Unlike earlier, when they had elicited testimony from people in the hospital, Takizawa wasn't wasting any effort on warm smiles. "We've gotta talk to him, one way or another. By writing is fine—that'd be OK, right?"

The doctor gave a brief nod, and instructed the nurse to bring a board with
hiragana
symbols. "He can use this to communicate," the doctor said. Taking the board from the nurse, he handed it to Takako. Then he knelt beside the bed and took hold of the patient's hand; the upper arm was swathed in bandages. "Kasahara-san, Kasahara-san," he called out gently. "Can you hear me? Kasahara-san, if you can hear me, squeeze your right hand."

The man in the oxygen mask moved his head from right to left in seeming pain. No other reaction. Takako stared at the gnarled hand, limp, half open.

Then Takizawa, standing next to the doctor, thrust his face forward and spoke: "Takagi-san, Takagi-san. Can you hear me?"