A Cop's Eyes (20 page)

Kumiko recalled hearing it somewhere before. Where? She frantically searched her memories and finally remembered. The man who'd been caught groping Yuka.

Amends to Iwasaki and self-hatred for what she'd done? What was Natsume talking about?

“What the heck? You've lost me,” Yuka said, glaring at Natsume.

“You were ordered to frame Iwasaki for groping,” the detective accused. Yuka's expression stiffened the moment he did. “Isn't that the thing you didn't want to do that Sawamura forced you into?”

“Wrong.” Yuka frantically shook her head. “I never did anything like that …”

“Your first target was Mr. Iwasaki. Am I mistaken? As soon as you claimed you'd been groped, Sawamura would close in and get the target off the train, onto the platform, with the pretext of taking him to a station attendant. Then, he'd make a show of talking with you, still pretending to be a stranger, and threaten to turn the mark in to the police if he didn't pay up. If a woman claims that she was groped and she has a male witness, the victim really has no way out. But maybe because it was your first try, your timing was off, and an actual stranger on the train grabbed Mr. Iwasaki and handed him over to a station attendant. You ended up going to the police together and got stuck with filing a complaint against Mr. Iwasaki.”

“That's not true!” Yuka denied vehemently.

“If it isn't, why are you covering for Mr. Iwasaki, a supposedly detestable man who groped you?”

Yuka looked at the detective dubiously. “Cover?”

“This morning, Mr. Iwasaki came to the police station to confess that he was the one who killed Sawamura,” Natsume informed Yuka, who turned pale. “You must have been sick with guilt for what you'd done to Mr. Iwasaki. Yet, Sawamura kept on coercing you into fabricating gropings. There are no other records of you filing a complaint, so you must have succeeded at the blackmailing. Making up those cases, you came to cut your wrists from the guilt …”

Yuka hung her head at Natsume's words.

“I'll say it again … What you need to do to atone is to tell the truth.”

Still hanging her head, Yuka didn't open her mouth.

“Yuka! Please do,” Kumiko begged. She wanted to know what Yuka was really suffering from, to be able to support her, so she'd never contemplate suicide again.

“That day … encouraged by Ms. Tanabe and my mom, I thought I'd try and go to school. But I ran into Mr. Iwasaki on the way. He noticed me and followed me with a really intense look on his face. I rushed to get away, but he caught hold of my wrist in the park. Then, he frantically started pleading with me that he wasn't the one who'd groped me. I was seriously scared, but the moment he saw the scars on my wrists, his expression changed and he immediately let go of my hand. He was really kind and said I should stop doing it because my parents would be sad. He said he had a daughter around the same age and if he saw her looking like I did, he'd almost feel like his heart was being cut apart … When I heard him say that, I started crying right there.”

Her eyes grew moist even as she spoke.

“He bought us juice at the park and we talked for a while. Thanks to my groping charge, he was unemployed and lived alone in a cheap apartment away from his wife and daughter. He said he was on his way to an employment agency to find work … but didn't say a single grudging word against me. Instead, he
sympathized with me and said it was terrible that I'd been groped. But he swore that it wasn't him. If nothing else, he wanted me to know that. When I thought about his daughter, I couldn't stand it anymore. My dad getting arrested had been so painful for me … So I told Mr. Iwasaki the truth. I told him how I'd been blackmailed into making the whole thing up. I cried and apologized to him and told him I wanted to go to the police right then and testify that he was innocent, but if I did, that guy would …”

“And you told Mr. Iwasaki about the obscene pictures and your ongoing false accusations of groping?” Natsume asked, to which Yuka nodded.

“Then Mr. Iwasaki asked me where Sawamura lived … He said he'd talk to Sawamura and get back those photos. If he did that, he asked me, would I come to the police with him and tell them honestly that he hadn't groped me? When I nodded, he told me to wait there and headed to Sawamura's condo …”

“And you began to worry about Mr. Iwasaki and went to see how he was doing.”

“When I arrived, I saw him coming out of Sawamura's room. I thought Mr. Iwasaki looked different from before, like he was afraid. When he started wiping the doorknob with something that looked like a towel, I had a bad feeling. After he left the condo, I went into Sawamura's room and …”

Then Yuka must have found Sawamura's body. She'd taken his cell with the loathsome footage and made herself scarce.

“If I hadn't done that … if I hadn't given Mr. Iwasaki his address, none of it would have happened. I trapped him not just once but twice. It's all my fault! I wish I'd never been born!” Yuka wailed.

“Mr. Iwasaki testified that when he met you, he was reminded of his daughter. He said he had to get those pictures somehow in order to prove his innocence, but even more, to eliminate the source of your continued suffering. But Sawamura was adamant
about holding on to them. Not only that, he turned violent, grabbing Mr. Iwasaki by the collar. During the altercation and scuffle that ensued, Sawamura fell and ended up dying …”

Yuka lifted her head and looked at them. Her eyes were bloodshot.

“Mr. Iwasaki hadn't been able to confess to the police up until now, but he said he couldn't run from his mistake—if he kept running, he'd continue to make you suffer, so he turned himself in. You can't run from your own errors, either. I know it won't be easy for you, but will you talk about what really happened, to the police and at Mr. Iwasaki's trial?”

Stealing a glance at Natsume's profile, Kumiko was struck by his eyes. They were the same ones from their grad school days when he used to talk to kids with such passion.

“It's your responsibility, as well as your atonement.” Sniveling, Yuka nodded broadly.

“Well … the rest is your job.” Standing up and clapping Kumiko on the back, Natsume left the room.

Kumiko immediately rose and chased after him. “Natsume—” she called.

The detective turned around.

“I guess you haven't changed much, after all.”

Natsume laughed. “What, so I haven't grown?”

“I might say that,” Kumiko returned with a smile.

She was still absolutely certain that no occupation suited Natsume less than being a detective. At the same time, just maybe, a cop like him wasn't such a bad thing.

“You know what, I'm not doing this …”

As the
izakaya
pub came into view, Seiji Tsukamoto lost his nerve and stopped walking.

“What are you saying, after coming this far? Everyone is looking forward to seeing you, Sei,” his wife Kyoko pepped him up, pulling on his sleeve.

“But I feel bad toward your parents. We're having them take care of our kid while we go drinking. I'll go get Nozomi and take her home and then you can have fun for yourself.” It was all an excuse to skip the coming party.

“They don't mind something little like this. They even said to take our time even if we don't get her tonight. Stop being a broken record. Let's go. You have to do some PR. Nozomi is going to need a lot of money and stuff from now on.”

Kyoko steadily drew Seiji's hand towards the pub. Looking at the approaching sign, he let out a heavy sigh.

His middle school reunion was taking place in the pub. It seemed Kyoko regularly saw her classmates, but Seiji hadn't met with anyone in the eleven years since graduation. No, not even graduation. He hadn't been in attendance at the commencement ceremony, having gotten in trouble with the police.

As he thought over his many doings during middle school and seeing his classmates now, he felt heavy-hearted, like he was about to sit on a bed of nails.

“Welcome—”

He followed behind Kyoko as they were guided by one of the pub's employees.

Upon seeing the many shoes lined up at the entrance of the Japanese-style guest room, his feeling of tension reached a crescendo.

“Sorry for being late,” Kyoko said. Hiding behind her, Seiji entered the guest room.

At that moment, the boisterous guest room suddenly quieted down. About twenty of his classmates were staring intently at Seiji. Although they were grown up and seemed more mature, he could remember everyone's names by their faces. Memories of his time in middle school flashed before his eyes, and he couldn't speak right away.

“Thank you … it's been a while …” he squeezed out the words, but everyone was still looking at him vacantly and hadn't reacted.

“Did everyone hear? Tsukamoto said ‘thank you.' When did you learn those words?”

The moment a classmate named Sudo said this, everyone there was wrapped in laughter.

“Well … only recently,” he replied, and the laughter doubled as he scratched his head.

A classmate in the middle of the room opened up a seat for them, and Seiji and Kyoko sat down side by side.

He ordered a beer and had a toast with everyone. One by one, everyone came to his side, curious, and poured for him. Still not knowing what to talk about, Seiji drank his beer and chimed in occasionally.

After some time, his nervousness seemed to have subsided and he was able to talk with everyone normally.

It seemed he had been needlessly anxious. To everyone right now, it seemed the trouble Seiji had caused in school was nothing more than old memories.

“More importantly, who ever thought the class chair Toda, of
all people, would marry Tsukamoto?” cajoled Hashimoto, who had been studious and reserved in their middle school years. He seemed to have judged that Seiji had been safely defanged after talking to him for a bit.

“Yeah? Even back then, I felt like they had feelings for each other. But Tsukamoto was always busy fighting and just didn't have the time for dates,” Tomomi Sekiguchi, who was still close to Kyoko, poked some more fun at them.

Seiji meekly lowered his head. “I'm really sorry for how I was back then … I caused everyone a lot of trouble.”

“You sure were rough. We were scared, so all we could do was avoid you … but everyone sympathized with you in their hearts,” said Nishikido, who'd had the best relationship with Seiji out of everyone there.

Unable to say anything in return, Seiji put his glass to his mouth.

“Looks like the party's getting on—”

Seiji turned toward the entrance and the shrill voice that seemed to extinguish all their boisterousness.

A man threw off his shoes and stepped up into the guest room. Looking at him, Seiji realized that it was Ohta.

The moment Ohta entered, Seiji felt the atmosphere change. Everyone watched Ohta with distant eyes and started whispering to their neighbors.

Seeing that, he guessed that Ohta was an uninvited guest.

Showing no sign of noticing everyone's stares, Ohta looked around the room and smirked. He sat down in an unoccupied seat and poured himself a beer, which he started drinking.

“Who invited him …” Nishikido muttered with an annoyed look on his face.

“I think no one did,” Sekiguchi answered coolly.

“Did something happen with Ohta?” asked Seiji, not understanding the shift in mood.

“Well, until recently, we invited him to our reunions … but the way he acts and talks is so strange, it's creepy … and we've been leaving him out.”

“When you say he acts and talks strange …”

“Look at that face for yourself,” Nishikido told Seiji, which he proceeded to do.

Ohta was grumbling and muttering to himself, all the while sneering and looking around. The moment their eyes met, Seiji felt like he'd witnessed something disgusting and averted his gaze.

“It feels like something's off with him, doesn't it …”

Just as Nishikido said, the look in his eyes wasn't normal. Tugging back his memories from middle school, Seiji remembered Ohta as a gloomy and somehow irritating guy. He had been teased often, by Seiji and the rest of the class.

During elementary school, he'd sometimes gone to Ohta's house to play, but at some point, as far as Seiji was concerned, he'd become a nuisance.

“You know that case from a long time ago … where a man who'd been picked on went to a reunion and killed all his classmates? When I see that guy I get the chills.”

“He wouldn't … right?”

When Seiji looked next to him, Kyoko's expression was taut, too.

“What's that guy been up to?”

“Apparently, ever since he dropped out of high school the freshman year, he's been a hermit. If you've been living that way for a decade, I guess that's what you become …”

Come to think of it, he had heard about this from Kyoko in the past.

She had been in the same cram school as Ohta during middle school, but after summer break of their freshman year, he'd stopped coming. She'd said there was a rumor at the cram school that he'd also quit high school around that time.

“Well, let's not mind him and have fun. By the way, what have you been up to, Tsukamoto?”

“Oh … I started bartending when I was twenty, and I finally opened up my own place this past year.”

“Oh, that's amazing. Can I come by sometime?”

Seiji, who had anticipated this, pulled a business card holder out of his pocket.

“ ‘Hope' … that's a good bar name,” Nishikido said looking at the card.

Seiji thought it was a bit of a cliché but had decided on it because it described his current self best.

“It's just a small, counter-only shot bar in Ikebukuro, but if you can, please come. I'll give you a discount.”