A Cop's Eyes (2 page)

The detectives listened in silence, but Shinichi felt more and more anxious even as he spoke.

He realized he didn't have a decisive alibi. He hadn't dropped by a store. He hadn't run into an acquaintance. As for the arcade, he'd only played the crane game outside. There hadn't been any spectators, either.

Naoko was looking at Shinichi with worry.

“Is there anyone who can testify about that for you?”

Shinichi could only lower his eyes at the detective's question.

As he did, he caught a glimpse of Naoko's hands. They were trembling slightly.

Perhaps she, too, feared that the detectives might zero in on Shinichi.

Even after getting into bed, he couldn't begin to calm down.

Next to him, he could hear Haruna breathing softly, asleep.

“Sis, you awake?” Shinichi murmured, looking up at the dim ceiling.

“Yeah.”

“I … knew one of those detectives.”

“Huh?” Naoko sounded surprised.

“He's a judiciary technical officer called Natsume who handled my case at juvie.”

“Why would someone from …”

“I'm not sure. Why would that man—”

“It's okay, Shin … You have nothing to worry about,” Naoko said, sensing Shinichi's anxiety.

But the more he recalled Natsume's relentless gaze, which tried to wade into your heart, the less calm he felt.

Eleven years ago, Shinichi had been arrested for murdering his uncle. It was when he was fifteen. After the police interrogation, he was placed in a juvenile detention center. Natsume, who was charged with him, asked about his family environment, personal relationships, and mindset leading up to the crime in minute detail.

Unlike the interrogation by the police, Natsume's attitude throughout the interviews was gentle. With a warm, enveloping gaze, he listened to Shinichi talk about his background. Natsume was a type of adult that Shinichi hadn't met before.

But he only felt creeped out by the man's warmth. It could all be a trick to peek into his heart. Shinichi absolutely couldn't let his guard down, not against this man, and stuck to ambiguous replies, stubbornly refusing to show his true self during the interviews.

All he ever said face to face with Natsume was that adults were repulsive; that he hadn't come across a decent grownup; that the only one he could look up to was his sister, who was three years older than him.

Shinichi didn't remember much about his parents, who passed away in a traffic accident when he was five. He and Naoko had been taken in by their only relative, Yuya Kimura, their mother's younger brother.

But this Kimura was scum.

A single man, he was gainfully employed, but it seemed he showed completely different faces to the outside world and in the house. If he didn't like anything, he didn't hesitate to raise his hand at Shinichi and Naoko and to allow only the barest of meals, during which he'd place the plate on the floor and not let them eat until they obediently pretended to be dogs. Through intense violence, and by completely shattering their self-esteem, Kimura dominated their young minds and bodies. That abuse continued for ten years.

Although Naoko was doing well as a student, she gave up on high school and started working at a hamburger shop. With that salary, she provided for Shinichi, buying meals for his growing appetite and whatever else he needed. Their wan wish then was to run away in a few years.

When Shinichi was fifteen, Naoko confided to him that a certain man had proposed to her. She'd been dating him without telling Kimura. A full-time employee at the burger shop, Isobe seemed to be sincere about Naoko, and even wanted Shinichi to come live with them until he graduated from high school once
they got married.

But when Kimura found out, he attempted to mess everything up. It was then that Shinichi realized his uncle's true wickedness.

Shinichi didn't think the action he took was a mistake.

Murder was bad. He knew that. But he didn't think killing someone was the worst thing a person could do. More insidious and wicked people existed in the world.

After he turned himself in to the police, Shinichi couldn't stop worrying about Naoko. He thought Isobe might leave her because her younger brother had been arrested. Yet, Naoko and Isobe got married, and while Shinichi was in reform school, Haruna was born.

Shinichi meant to set out on his own after leaving the reformatory. He wanted Naoko to be happy.

But by the time he did, Naoko had broken up with Isobe and was living alone with Haruna. She wouldn't tell him why, either.

Was it the stigma of a murderer pinned on him, or were the deep scars she'd received at Kimura's hands the distant cause—

On the morning of the next day, with a job search magazine in hand, Shinichi made many calls. He contacted around twenty companies, but as expected, most of them demurred. Even so, one promised him an interview.

Shinichi hurriedly wrote his resume, got dressed, and headed to the food manufacturer located in Komagome.

He was rejected. When they asked him what he'd done after graduating from middle school, the endpoint of his educational history, for the first time Shinichi told them the truth. Even if he managed to be hired, he was sick and tired of being let go when they inevitably learned about his past. Maybe some people were ready to judge him by who he was now.

But that fleeting hope was quickly dashed. Chewing over his
disappointment, he got off the train at Otsuka station.

When he came to the crane game outside the station-front arcade, he stopped.

It was a day with no yields, but he could bring Haruna a gift at least. That morning, Naoko had told her about the case at Mai's, and it had wrecked Haruna.

Inserting a hundred-yen coin, he hit the button with perfect timing and netted a Momo-chan doll just like the day before.

“Bravo.”

Shinichi turned around in surprise at the voice. Natsume was watching him with a smile on his face.

“Wow, in one try. I wanted that doll too and tried several times, but forget it.”

The transparent excuse rubbed Shinichi the wrong way. Natsume must have been tailing him or checking his alibi.

“Coach me, will you?”

Natsume pulled some coins out of his wallet and started playing. No matter how many times he tried, the doll slipped off the crane. Unperturbed, he kept playing again and again.

“This is the one you gave Mai yesterday, right? Momo-chan. So you played here,” asked Natsume, staring at the dolls in the case.

Really? A man your age saying “Momo-chan” like that?
Shinichi spat inside, but said, “Yeah, I did.”

“Yesterday, while we were questioning her, Mai was hugging hers the entire time.”

Picturing the scene tore Shinichi up. He slapped Natsume's hand, which was over the button, hard the next instant. The crane descended and grabbed a doll.

“Wow!” cried Natsume, just about springing for joy as the doll fell into the chute.

“What're you gonna do with it?” Shinichi pointed out coldly.

“I'm giving it to my daughter.”

Natsume held the doll with a happy smile.

Come to think of it, at the juvenile detention center, Natsume had talked about his family just once. Shinichi seemed to recall a daughter who'd been three or four at the time, which meant she was in middle school by now.

“Middle schoolers these days wouldn't want one, you know,” warned Shinichi.

“I'm sure, in most cases. But my daughter's been lying on a hospital bed for nearly ten years now. I wanted to put one by her pillow.”

Shinichi thought he saw the fond face of a father peeking through Natsume's faint smile. “Is she sick or something?”

Natsume didn't answer the question. “Would you like to get some coffee nearby, as my way of saying thank you?”

“An interrogation, huh?” Shinichi responded with sarcasm.

“No. A genuine thank you.”

Putting the doll in his bag, Natsume began walking. Shinichi followed after him, not seeing much of a choice.

The doubt Shinichi had from the night before grew as he watched the man's back.

Why was he here? Most judiciary technical officers were qualified clinical therapists, pros in the field of psychology. When they'd first met, Natsume looked to be in his late twenties. That man was walking in front of him now as a detective.

Had he gotten fed up with having to face bad apples and changed jobs? No, entering the police force meant confronting greater evil.

As Shinichi wondered, the man's slim back began to look ominous and intimidating.

“It seems that you quit your job yesterday,” Natsume said after taking a sip of coffee.

Shinichi mentally clicked his tongue as he faced the man.

Of course Natsume—that's to say, the police, had been duly investigating him. How was this a genuine thank you? Apart from using a cafe rather than a gloomy interrogation room, they were grilling him all right.

“Have you decided on your next job,” Natsume asked.

“I'm looking right now. And you, detective work seems to leave you with plenty of spare time. A murder close by, and you play at an arcade and chat at a coffee shop.”

“On duty at that. You see, I was able to confirm a few things.”

“That a ‘person of interest' is sitting in front of you, for one? Investigations can't be too hard when someone who has killed lives right nearby, yeah? It's always like this. I try to live honestly, but my record gets in the way. Everyone looks at me through a tinted lens.”

In response to Shinichi's bluntness, Natsume patiently gazed into his eyes. Shinichi hated that look.

“Come on,” the detective said, “not everyone in the world looks at you weird.”

“Dunno about that,” Shinichi threw out. “The fact is, whenever there's a case, police flock to me. It's true that I quit my job yesterday. You probably looked into it already, so hell, I didn't quit, I was dismissed. For no reason. Just like you saw and felt, we don't have extra money lying around. I bet you can come up with a storyline where I wanted money and snuck into the Yokoses' as a burglar.”

“I'm sorry, but that's not the storyline I'm thinking of,” Natsume said, his chin on his hand, pensive.

“What do you mean?”

“There's zero evidence that anything of monetary value was stolen from Mr. Yokose's residence. The perp seems to have gone through the living-room cabinet and closets, but the wallet in Mr. Yokose's pants was left behind, and no bankbooks or cards seem to be missing. True, maybe there was some expensive item
that neither we nor Mai are aware of.”

“Weren't there fingerprints or something?”

“Nope.”

Shinichi was disappointed. If there were any fingerprints, he'd be in the clear.

“Mr. Yokose must have come home when the burglar was going through the living room. Looks like the perp found a nearby video camera and lay in wait by the door. Striking Mr. Yokose's head with it as soon as he entered, the perp then took off. Mr. Yokose was found collapsed by the door, with a bloodstained video camera close by. It wasn't your usual small one for families, but a heftier model for pros.”

Shinichi recalled Haruna saying that Mai's had a large television and an expensive-looking video camera.

“Are you allowed to blabber to someone like me about this?”

“You're right.” Natsume grinned wryly. “Keep this conversation between us.”

Natsume discussing operational secrets so readily almost made Shinichi worry about the safety of his neighborhood. The man was fairly unimpressive as a detective.

“When did you change jobs?” Shinichi tried asking.

“I quit being a judiciary technical officer ten years ago, and when I was thirty, I took the police employment exam. After graduating from the academy I served at police boxes for nearly six years, but recently, I transferred to my current section.”

Why had Natsume gone as far as to abandon his juvie job to join the police force? Even Shinichi could imagine that taking up an entirely different line of work at thirty posed considerable difficulties.

“Why did you become a cop?”

“I wonder … Maybe it was those police dramas.”

Shinichi immediately recognized that as an evasion.

“If I could give one reason, I must have wanted to do it for
my family.”

“But you don't seem cut out for it,” Shinichi told him.

“That might be true …” Natsume stood up, bill in hand. “But cut out for it or not, you hurry and find a job too. In order to live, and to protect your dear ones, you need to work.”

With that, Natsume left the coffee shop.

“Haruna, clean up your own messes!”

Shinichi could hear Naoko's reproach from the other room. Usually it ended with this one shout, but today she went on to lecture her daughter at length. In time, he heard Haruna blubbering.

He put his can of beer down on the table and went to check the situation in the other room.

Haruna's eyes were red from blubbering. Naoko was bending down to catch her gaze as she lectured her.

“Sis, could you leave it at that.”

“You stay out of it!” Naoko shot back.

Shinichi, who'd never seen her look so severe, backed down.

“Hey, Haruna …” Naoko admonished in a calmer tone. “You're big now so you have to start being able to do things for yourself. You can't just rely on others all the time. Do you understand?”

Haruna nodded, wiping her tears with her hands. “I'm sorry …” she apologized, looking at Naoko.

“Good girl,” Naoko stroked her daughter's head. “I'll brush your hair. Over here.”

Naoko went to the vanity and placed Haruna on her knee. As she gently combed Haruna's hair, the girl's expression rapidly turned into a smile.

Watching the scene, Shinichi couldn't but admire what a great big sister Naoko was.