Loups-Garous (12 page)

Shizue sighed and chased out the image of Yuko Yabe's room from her head.

She confirmed the apartment number on her monitor and refreshed her connection just in case. The main monitor announced a vacancy, and the portable monitor was not being recognized. It was possible to deny it a connection, but monitors almost always recognized one another. Maybe Yabe's was broken. Maybe it was broken into.

Shizue turned around and saw Kunugi's back leaning against the driverside door of the car. The thinly armored vehicle most definitely did not suit this man.

Yabe's home was supposed to be in the third building from the corner.

The vacancy indicator said it was unoccupied.

If anyone were in the room that sign would not be lit. Either the sensors were broken or no one was home.

Shizue swiped her card through the reader and left her visiting information.

Her ID number displayed along with the time: 5:20 pm.

She inputted the reason for her visit and connected the monitor to the card reader. She then downloaded information and discovered that no one had been in there since 8:12 pm two nights before.

No one's been here since then?

It'd been forty-five hours since. Meaning Yuko Yabe had now spent two nights outside of her own home. According to her file there were no other residences Yuko would have been able to stay at. Meaning…

It was possible she was caught up in something.

Shizue looked back at Kunugi.

He stood there staring at nothing, as if thinking he had nothing left to do, having brought Shizue out here.

He couldn't have had ulterior motives. He was probably just sticking around in case something was wrong here.

A model policeman.

She thought of calling to him but stopped. Her unease kept roiling inside her, but she didn't want to acknowledge it.

She looked at the door again.

Yuko couldn't be inside…

“What's going on?” Kunugi's voice sailed over her head. “Not home after all?”

Shizue didn't answer. His voice came closer.

“When were they last here?”

“Two nights ago.”

Kunugi was right behind Shizue.

“That's odd.”

“Can't you get us in?”

“I could, but…even if I held up my badge and let us in it'd be no use,” Kunugi answered. Now he stood by Shizue's side. “The police are only allowed to take out a lock in case of emergencies, and Class D emergencies at that.”

“This is an emergency.”

“Anything over a Class B must be handled by at least a captain. This is barely a Class A. You just report this to the local precinct and that's it.

If it says no one's in there, no one's in there. It wouldn't say that unless absolutely no one was in there. If there is really someone inside, it just means the sensor is broken.”

“It might be. It doesn't even recognize my monitor.”

“Well, that's the kid's personal monitor, right? The house's main terminal should still be on.”

That was true.

“Besides, if we barge in I have to file the report.” Kunugi turned his rugged face to Shizue and made a weird expression with his eyebrows. “Well…a suspicion is a suspicion. I suppose I can do a vacancy sensor check.”

Kunugi pulled his police ID monitor from a holster. Shizue hurriedly pulled the cable from her own monitor from the card reader.

“The visitor's record is normally locked, you know. We can find out who visited without being let in. Sometimes it's visitors you don't want. That's just a Class A offense. Something even area patrol can handle.”

Something beeped.

“Huh?” Kunugi's face clouded over.

“Something wrong?”

“No, well…” He said it seemed there'd been two visitors here during Yabe's absence. Both of them were minors. “Does this girl have a lot of friends?”

Not really. Generally speaking Yuko's friends were friends via monitor. She wasn't known to have any special friends that would come visit her personally.

“I'll take that as a no,” Kunugi said. “Not even once in a while?

They're kids, after all.”

If it were just one friend that would be something, but two visits from friends in such a short period of time? Kunugi kept typing into his monitor, but he started to make a funny face.

“You aren't allowed to tell me the identity of those visitors, are you?”

“Not normally. But…”

Kunugi typed some more, then let out a small “whoa” and lifted his face.

“I've found a precedent.”

“What do you mean precedent?”

“I was searching cases in which protected information accumulated by police can be made public. If there is a precedent, a written explanation will suffice…”

Kunugi showed Shizue his monitor display as he made up this excuse. “I'm showing you. They're both kids who go to your center though…”

There were countless children in her jurisdiction. Unless she worked with them, a mere name and ID number would be futile.

But…

“This is…”

She knew these kids.

“Do you know them?” Kunugi asked.

“This second one, Hinako Sakura, is one of my kids. She's in the same communication session as Yuko.”

“Are they friends?”

They had no interactions.

At least Shizue didn't know of any.

“Sakura is a child of special tastes and has little interaction with any of the other children.”

By special tastes, she meant…an interest in the occult.

Hinako Sakura had a strong inclination for mysticism. A good 10 percent of any child population would demonstrate that kind of interest, but when it came to Sakura, it could only be said that she easily surpassed her peers in fervor. She'd been seriously studying divination techniques of the Middle Ages and had, moreover, begun practicing them.

People like Shizue couldn't think that a good hobby, but it wasn't causing any problems, so it wasn't a target of counseling.

Regardless, whatever the subject, there were those who would continue to further their knowledge in a specialized or academic way; coercive counseling at the juvenile stages was discouraged.

Shizue agreed.

It was no different with kids who were difficult to handle.

How about this one?

Yuji Nakamura.

She didn't know him. The name looked familiar to her, but she'd seen the register of names and the kids before, so it wouldn't be unheard of to remember the names of other counselors' kids.

“He's…” Kunugi cleared the display. “He's apparently a person of interest.”

“You mean in the killings?”

“Yeah,” Kunugi said and put his monitor back in the holster. “My monitor signals when someone related to the investigation is mentioned.

Apparently, this minor, no, child, was with the last victim, Ryu Kawabata, the day he was murdered.”

“Apparently?”

“He denies it, but…”

Kunugi stopped talking and took two steps toward the car, then continued to talk, practically to himself.

“He visited last night. So he came to this house right after being interrogated.”

“Does that mean Yuko Yabe is implicated in this case?”

“It means she could be. I will need to report this.” Kunugi turned around. “This will be extra work for you too. When I send this information, I will have to explain why we got this information from a pri-vate residence. In order to explain how this is a Class A situation, I need your statement.”

“I don't mind that, but…” Shizue's gaze wandered.

This was unexpected.

“Hmm?”

On the other side of the street sandwiched between the buildings moved a black
thing
.

“What's wrong?” Kunugi asked.

“Over here, just now.”

The person Shizue'd been looking at hid in the corner where she shifted her gaze.

Kunugi seemed to swallow the scene in one moment, jutted his chin, then returned the look and bolted down the road. Shizue followed.

That was…

Shizue tripped once on the road. It was like she'd forgotten how to run. Running was a decent enough activity certainly not beyond her abilities, but she had never run on asphalt in her life. Even though it was true that it had health benefits.

At just this side of the median she stopped and looked around her.

It was like this everywhere, but at dusk, the neighborhood was particularly inactive. In an age when over half the people worked from home, and home delivery of food and sundry goods had become mainstream, there was no more need to be wandering around the city. The sun started to sink and the streetlights went on.

It was practically real.

Even with a sense of dimension, merely seeing how sandy the sky looked made it feel less than fresh.

“Hey, come over here,” Kunugi said.

When Shizue looked up in the direction from which his voice had come, she saw the rough man holding the delicate arm of a girl in a mourning dress.

“Let go, let go.” The girl twisted and tried to pull herself from his grip.

“Stop squirming. I'm just—”

“I have nothing to do with it. Please let me go.”

“You don't—I just asked your name.”

She was wearing old-fashioned black clothing. Heels that looked like they came from a
real shop.

“Is this…the girl?”

As soon as Kunugi let go of her arm, Hinako bounced off to the light pole.

Perhaps because of the way her black clothing absorbed the light, or because the light outside had no warmth, Hinako's face took on a pale blue cast. Like it would break if you touched it.

Hinako jerked her face away.

She was refusing him.

“Miss Sakura—”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

Shizue reached her hand out to the girl's emaciated shoulders but stopped just short of touching her.

She was known to inflict incredible violence at a mere touch.

“Hinako, didn't you have something you wanted to do at Yuko's house?”

Shizue couldn't mention she knew the girl had come for Yuko Yabe. With her face still turned away, Hinako nodded her head several times. Then she turned her head up slowly and shot Shizue a hard look.

“I didn't think I had to report that to a counselor.”

“You're right, but—”

“You do have to report to the police.” Kunugi jutted his police badge in front of her face.

“Police…” Hinako twisted her neck and assumed a difficult-to-read expression, then looked at Kunugi.

“I've been saying that this whole time.”

“Police…but you're not in uniform.”

“The area patrol wears uniforms. They're citizen police. I'm with the prefectural police. I'm a regional officer.”

Hinako looked alternately at Shizue and Kunugi several times as if to compare their faces. The jet-black bangs cut dead straight across her forehead fluttered. There was something doll-like about her.

“Ms. Yabe got it after all…”

“
Mizz
?” Kunugi had started in a falsetto but continued in a deeper voice. “What do you mean, ‘after all'?”

“Well,
has
something happened to Ms. Yabe?” Hinako paused. “I knew it.” Hinako grabbed at Kunugi's sleeve. Kunugi, stunned for a moment, looked at Hinako.

“What makes you think that?”

He tried not to sound too aggressive. Just enough. He wasn't used to having direct conversations.

“Because…”

“What do you know?”

“I don't know anything,” she said without any energy, and turned her head so far her neck could've snapped.

She wouldn't break.

Kunugi hadn't thought to depend on Shizue for this.

“You said you had nothing to do with this, but that doesn't seem to be the case now either, does it?” Shizue asked.

“I don't have anything to do with it.”

“Then why are you saying things that would get us anxious about what's happened to Yuko Yabe?”

“Because…”

Hinako finally looked toward Shizue.

She had dark circles under her eyes. That was one of the reasons her face looked so sallow, Shizue realized.

Hinako looked up at Shizue with her black-rimmed eyes.

It was a pleading look…

In their counseling sessions Hinako would make this expression before revealing anything. It wasn't that she thought she needed approval to say things of importance, but she needed a firm reason. Instead of nodding, Shizue returned her gaze. It wasn't how a counselor should behave. Sure enough, Hinako, looking defeated, broke the gaze.

“I predicted it.”

“Predicted?”

“A less than good outcome.”

“Less than good outcome?”

Kunugi made as if to let Hinako loose and turned toward Shizue, implying,
so this is what you meant.
It was hard to explain. Shizue moved a step forward.

“Sakura, why were you looking into Yuko Yabe?”

Shizue couldn't understand the relationship between them.

Even in their communication sessions they sat far from each other.

“You girls…”

“We were called out during last month's medical checkups.”

If that were true Shizue hadn't known about it.

Of course as the number of chronic illnesses and handicaps increased among younger people, so did routine exams. The center where Shizue was employed had started requiring these exams three years ago. With a relatively large number of people in their center the ordeal would end up taking over two days, so it wasn't like the counselors would be able to see every one of their charges during that time.

“Does Yabe know you know about these things?”

“She looked into it,” Hinako answered in a small voice.

Now that she thought of it, it was in Hinako's public profile that one of her hobbies and subjects of research was the occult. For information exchange.