Loups-Garous (24 page)

Bad things had to happen on bad days.

“You're saying the butsumetsu killings are a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

That's ridiculous
.

“Isn't it?” Kunugi said. “But…I think it's the truth. In the end, people's motives for killing each other are really trite, no? When it happens it's always a big deal, of course. In the long history of humanity, an incalculable number of people have been killed, but how many of these murders seem justified when you hear the motive? Money, revenge…nothing's really worth taking human lives.”

She couldn't but nod.

He was absolutely right.

Murder sans motive had become a popular cliché sometime toward the end of the twentieth century. But it wasn't as though motives for murder became more tenuous with time. Motives for murder had been lame since the beginning of time.

The value of human life was over-exaggerated in past arguments.

When you think of it
that
way
, Kunugi started, and glared at the fish-shaped food product on his plate suspiciously, even though it had no bones.

“When you think of it that way, this guy would not commit any crimes on days that didn't fall on the butsumetsu. It's the daian,” Kunugi said.

“But the MO is otherwise identical, right?”

“The shapes and kinds of weapons used, the way the bodies were disposed of, and of course, the victims' commonalities—these are all definitely related. However, if you look at the details there were things that didn't correspond.”

“You're talking about just the anomalies in the two cases you think were committed by a different culprit?”

“That's right. You can distinguish the two cases from the other four with points of difference. Actually…”

Kunugi bit into the head of his boneless fish-shaped food. Then.

“Something's missing,” he said.

“Missing?”

“Yeah, missing. With the third and fifth murders. There was an internal organ missing from each of them.”

“What?”

“Last year the case was brutal. The murderer took apart the insides of his victims, and the remains were well…very damaged. Scattered everywhere.

“We probably shouldn't be talking about this over food,” Kunugi continued. “But…I've told you the worst of it, so I'm going to keep going. You see, there wasn't a whole body's worth of parts in the remains we collected from the scene. The liver was never found.”

“In just those two cases?”

“Yeah,
just
those two. But that any of them at all were missing livers…Anyway, we decided that a wild animal must have eaten it, but what's a wild animal, right?”

“There are cats and dogs in Section C.”

“The bodies were found in Section B. There are no cats or dogs there.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don't know.” Kunugi played with his chopsticks. “I have no idea. All I know is that these six murders can't have been part of the same streak. There had to be, at the very least, two different sets of murders. That's my opinion. It's an opinion that got me reprimanded, but well, for what it's worth.”

Reprimanded
. Ishida had been saying something about that.

“I was reprimanded,” Kunugi said shamefully. “I was trying to be constructive, but I got the veto from on high. I was speaking out of line, disobeying the normal protocol for investigation, reading data outside of the case's jurisdiction. I suppose I deserved to be scolded. I lucked out though. The old lieutenant didn't want to touch any sort of controversy because he was up for a promotion. They just reprimanded me. In the end no one heard my theory.”

Kunugi pushed aside his flatware and leaned his face over the table.

“This time it's in our jurisdiction.”

“Kunugi, you aren't—”

“Am I wrong?”

“No, it's not that. All we've said tonight is that these are not one string of murders. Last year's cases are different. Still…”

Kunugi clasped his hands up behind his head and waited for Shizue to finish her thought.

“Including the discovery of Ryu Kawabata in the area directly adjacent to ours, there have now been six murders. As you said, the Kawabata case isn't considered part of the serial killing. The reason being he's the only male victim so far. Conversely, the other five are being treated as part of the same serial killing spree. But you're asking whether that's appropriate?

“In other words, the murders believed to be related aren't, and the one murder believed to be unrelated is.”

“I can't say anything about the Kawabata case.” Kunugi touched his monitor and turned up the AC. “But as it stands, the reality is that this one case stands out. What concerns me though is what these victims have in common. Is it truly just that they are all girls of approximately the same age who live near each other? Isn't that too easy? There's got to be another way to look at this. Once we figure that out, I think we'll be able to fit the Kawabata case into this too.”

Kunugi was looking for some key concept to neatly explain all the murders. Something like last year's butsumetsu theory.

There was probably a foreign idiom software for this. Certainly if you sussed out the rules a structure would appear. And if you had the structure, you had the translation and the definition.

But.

Shizue wondered if it could go that well. Unlike the imaginary space created by numbers, this guy, and reality, was full of impurities and discord.

Nothing could be predicted.

Nothing was going as planned.

Reality was something unusually scrambled and gross. It was an indefinite space without straight lines, a filthy world in which pure things could not exist. Even if you looked for something that happened to be beautiful, it was pointless.

Shizue started to realize that the idea that the world operated under one pretense was delusional.

“Do you have any clues?” Shizue asked, as Kunugi turned his head to the side.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“I'm not Ryu Kawabata's counselor.”

“I know that. But your associates haven't been very cooperative, and besides, I don't know any of them. If I tried contacting them in private, I'd be reported in a heartbeat. Also…”

“Also what?”

“I think I have a key to the missing Yuko Yabe.”

“Key…”

“You said it before, but she might be the next victim. Wasn't she into
deformée characters
?”

“What are deformée characters?”

“When I was a kid they were called comics,” Kunugi said in an unusually serious tone. “Before that they were called manga. In other words it's non-real animation.”

Yuko Yabe wasn't that into animation, as far as Shizue recalled. All she did remember was that Yabe's room was filled with toy figures. When she told Kunugi all this he answered, “She was a collector, then.”

“I don't think she was a collector necessarily.”

“But you gotta admit that these days you'd have to be collecting in order to find much of this stuff.”

“I remember them being things her guardians gave her. I don't know if it was her father or mother, but I have it written down that one of them gave her these toys in her childhood, and that she kept them safe with her. Probably…”

Probably…

Her memory was hopelessly foggy. Diffuse. But Shizue did have some memory of hearing all this. If she looked at her counseling files, she'd know immediately. There were records of all conversations with the children.

Even if compressed, the record would be totally accurate. Memories were all converted to digits. That way they would never deteriorate.

It could even be duplicated.

“You should check with the data we just handed over to the police,”

Shizue said, but as soon as she did she went silent for a long moment. “But…you can't.”

“That's why I offered you dinner. All right, so Kawabata it is.”

“By the way, Kawabata's optical, uh…”

“
Animation
,” Kunugi said.

“Its origin is the word
animism
, apparently. Because it's similarly an image that shouldn't move that does, as if possessed by its own spirit. I can't remember exactly. Everything on our monitors is an image, and most of them move.”

“It might move but I didn't say anything about
fucking spirits
,” the off-duty cop swore.

“Actually, the first victim was an aspiring character designer, and there's record of her having exhibited at the D.C. Biennial to a lot of acclaim. And the second victim was connected to that character—what was it? It's supposed to be the most popular anime character right now.”

Kunugi uttered a proper noun that rang an bell, but it wasn't quite right.

She knew it was slightly off, but Shizue couldn't definitively correct him either. It didn't matter. It had nothing to do with this case.

“She was a regular on the fan site. The fourth victim was also a huge fan and even dressed up like the character. Made her own costumes and everything. The third victim was the one who got wrapped up in deformée characters. The other two had nothing to do with it.

“Ryu Kawabata is different too. In his case, he was into works from several decades ago. If I recall, he was into what I think was called
cel
animation. He did collect that. We're talking about artifacts from over thirty years ago. Yuko Yabe also. Her collectibles were not from the present. Other than those two, we're talking about three out of five likelihood. What do you think about that?”

Hmm.
Kunugi let out a low sound.

“I know. I'm saying this knowing all that full well, but well…it's as if wholly unrelated to the character, the other two victims are…”

“Like I said, they were missing internal organs,” Kunugi said, his dark expression drawn.

CHAPTER
013

LIVE DOVES WERE
really creepy.

The way they cooed, their stink, their texture, everything. But mostly their brilliant beady eyes. You couldn't guess what they saw. Those eyes rejected Hazuki. No, Hazuki's whole world.

“Groooossss.”

Mio turned away after having stared at the doves cautiously.

“Animals are so disgusting. You like these things, Makino?”

Hazuki couldn't respond.

The window had been left open for the doves to come in and out, and the whole room had been fitted out for them. Hazuki could count six doves in all.

About a third of the room was dedicated to the doves.

Ayumi had said it was a bird
house
, but it was more like a dove
room
. In the space that remained were a table and three chairs, and against the wall was a very simple bed.

Yuko Yabe was sleeping on that bed.

Standing at the doorway was Rey Mao.

They were in an illegal building structure on the roof of Ayumi's residence.

This was Mio's idea of a refuge for Yuko.

There was no denying that even though they were in Section A there were no sensors or surveillance units here in the doveroom. There wasn't even an occupancy indicator.

It appeared to be a good hiding spot.

Except.

If you thought about it, this was also terribly inconsiderate.

In the midst of a serial murder investigation when there was probably an interrogation request out to anyone with any information, they'd hidden the one person, a sick girl no less, who had any information, and they did so without any semblance of a plan. Even a child would know this was totally dangerous.

But.

Hazuki ignored all of that.

They'd taken turns carrying Yuko on their backs beyond Section C borders.

The human body was squirmy, lukewarm, and heavy. The way they sweat, breathed, and smelled was intolerable.

Hazuki didn't know why she had to get her hands dirty with this. For that matter she didn't know why they had to move her to a different location or hide her in the first place.

Still, Hazuki was overcome with a feeling of obligation that couldn't be reasonably explained.

It was because Ayumi hadn't refused.

She thought. For some reason, Ayumi hadn't objected whatsoever to Mio's reckless plan to cart Yuko out to her place.

Just that…

Ayumi'd said she didn't want to have to touch Yuko.

That was why Hazuki had gone along like it was the most natural thing on earth.

Yeah, that was what it was.

After the matter had been decided, Hazuki had stopped by her home with Mio. If they'd parted ways there it would have been over.

But Hazuki had left again. With Mio's magic they'd tricked the occupancy sign to read positive. As far as anyone was concerned, Hazuki was in her bedroom right now.

After going to such illegal lengths she was forced to help move a squishy body.

But the transfer itself had gone smoothly.

Barring the business district, there was little human activity at night in the city. There was no fear of being seen by anyone if they took the route away from the weather observation point. They still ran the risk of being stopped by policemen on area patrol, but there was no time to consider another route.

Fortunately Hazuki and her associates were able to finish their task without any run-ins. Ayumi's home was in a different direction than Yuko's and also far away from the scene of the murders. Whether the way was clear simply because the police weren't patroling areas not of interest to the case or if fate had simply worked in their favor, Hazuki couldn't tell.

The task was complete in approximately seventy-three minutes, and Yuko Yabe was put to bed in Ayumi's doveroom.

Hazuki looked at the birds alongside Mio. In real life, little animals were not cute.

As she watched their bellies convulse, Hazuki gradually came to the realization that her current situation was quite unusual.