EDGE (11 page)

Saeko had recognized Kitazawa’s heart of gold almost immediately.

“You know, I’ve always wondered something. How come you’re
so formal and polite with other people, and so rude to me?” Kitazawa demanded.

“Because that’s what you deserve,” Saeko shot back, instantly overcoming the four-year blank in their relationship. It was something of a mystery to her that she could always relax so completely and speak her mind so openly with Kitazawa.

“The first time you showed up here, you brought your daddy’s bankbook, didn’t you? When my wife got a load of the account balance, she was completely dumbstruck, remember? Oh, the look on the old lady’s face when she saw those numbers!” Kitazawa opened his eyes wide and puffed out his cheeks in an imitation of Chieko.

Saeko burst out laughing. Chieko had been five years older than Kitazawa, and he’d frequently referred to her as “the old lady.”

“Excuse me for being so naïve,” Saeko laughed.

“You gave us a bit of a shock, that’s for sure. We figured we’d better look out for you or you’d be in big trouble.”

The first thing Kitazawa had done eighteen years ago when Saeko had hired him was to create a file containing the basic details of Shinichiro Kuriyama, the missing person. Name, age, date of birth, blood type, family tree, registered address, current address, educational history, employment history, physical description, social ties, driver’s license, passport, overseas travel history, hobbies, spending habits, religion, health insurance, frequent haunts, usual hospital, health condition, attire and possessions at time of disappearance …

Kitazawa and his wife weren’t the only detectives who worked on the case. They had deemed it necessary to hire three other detectives they sometimes employed, and the team of five had traveled to Takamatsu to conduct a thorough canvassing and to distribute flyers emblazoned with Saeko’s father’s picture and characteristics.

They had vetted the passenger lists at nearby airports and the ferry that served the nearest port, but Shinichiro Kuriyama’s name was nowhere to be found. He could have used an alias, so they combed over every facility where he might have stayed, including all of the hotels and motels in Takamatsu City and neighboring hot springs resorts. They found nothing. They questioned the staff at restaurants and department stores he might have visited, but to no avail. The entire search failed to unearth even the tiniest shred of information.

After returning to Tokyo, the team looked into other areas, tracing every destination reachable from Narita and gathering updated
information at regular intervals. But in the end, Saeko’s father’s trail had gone cold on August 21, 1994.

8
In early September, eighteen years ago, Kitazawa had sat at the sofa across the table from Saeko and shown her the report based on the team’s ten-day investigation. It was the same office where they sat now, though the ashtray that had once occupied the table had outlived its usefulness.

The content of the report had been straightforward: Kitazawa was throwing in the towel. It pained him deeply, but the scenario of a lone traveler vanishing mysteriously for no apparent reason presented more difficulties than any other type of missing persons case.

The investigators had confirmed only that Shinichiro Kuriyama had stayed in the N Hotel at Narita Airport on the night of August 21st. Beyond that, they were completely unable to determine whether he had actually reached Takamatsu or gone elsewhere. The word “unknown” appeared repeatedly in the report.

He was loath to say so to Saeko, but Kitazawa had a strong feeling, based on his many years of experience in the business, that Shinichiro Kuriyama was no longer among the living. When he worked on a case, Kitazawa sometimes experienced a flash of inspiration that told him the person he was looking for had ceased to be. And often, it wasn’t long before those subjects’ bodies turned up. Accidents aside, the vast majority of these cases were suicides. In such cases, the client was usually frantic to locate the missing person as quickly as possible to avert the tragedy.

Five years into his private detective concern, Kitazawa had been hired to locate a man who had been wracked with shame after a blunder he’d made at work caused major problems for his company. On a whim, the man had failed to show up at work one day and flitted hither and thither before randomly boarding a northbound train.

The man had left behind a wife and two small children. Those who knew him reported he’d always had a meek, retiring personality. Kitazawa couldn’t help but think that the man’s inability to get over his mistake exceeded the bounds of earnestness into the realm of cowardice.

With the family’s breadwinner gone, the man’s wife had found her way to Kitazawa’s office and tearfully pleaded for help. “Please, find my husband. If you don’t find him soon, he’ll take his own life!” After hitting the road, the man had left a message on the family’s answering machine
hinting at the possibility of suicide.

By the seventh day of his investigation, Kitazawa had tracked his target down in Sendai City. The man’s funds were almost depleted and he was wandering about in search of a place to kill himself. Using strong-arm tactics, Kitazawa escorted the man home to a tearfully overjoyed wife. She was so appreciative that Kitazawa was moved to shed tears of his own.

The satisfaction of being a private detective varied dramatically based on whether or not the investigations were successful, even though the fees were more or less the same. That was all part of the game.

When he’d set about to find Saeko’s father, Kitazawa imagined her joy should he succeed, and it drove him to do everything he could. But the case was simply unsolvable. Oddly, the circumstances of the case were different from anything he had seen before.

The subject had none of the usual involvements associated with a missing persons case—debt, a love affair, ties to illicit activities—that might serve as the motive of an intentional disappearance. Kitazawa could only imagine that Saeko’s father had wound up at the bottom of a river or steep cliff through some sort of freak accident or perhaps fallen victim to a random criminal act. In either case, the implications were the same. Unless Saeko’s father was being held captive somewhere, it was unlikely that he was still alive.

On top of everything else, Shinichiro Kuriyama was completely devoted to Saeko, his only child. The closeness of their relationship was the reason Saeko had been aware of his disappearance at such an early stage.

Based on Saeko’s own account, her determination to find her father, and the testimony of her father’s friends and acquaintances, Kitazawa was positive that Saeko had meant the world to Shinichiro and that the man would never have dreamed of abandoning her. The more clear it became that Shinichiro had no motivation to disappear, the more likely it seemed that he had met with an accident and that his body merely remained to be recovered. Kitazawa knew the possibility was absolutely unacceptable to Saeko, but he couldn’t convince himself otherwise.

Eighteen years ago, when he had informed Saeko that he was calling off the search, she had been absolutely furious.

“He’s alive!” she had raged at him. “I can feel his pulse. Maybe he’s lost his memory. Maybe he’s out there somewhere and doesn’t know where his home is …”

Of course, Kitazawa had considered that possibility. He had inquired
at hospitals and with the police, but there had been no profiles that fit the bill. Kitazawa shook his head slowly from side to side.

“Fine,” Saeko had declared. “I won’t ask you to go on searching for him. You can teach me how to do it instead. From this day onward, I want to be your apprentice.”

And sure enough, she had trailed after Kitazawa unrelentingly until he finally caved. How could he accomplish any sleuthing with a teenage girl constantly at his heels? He had no choice but to devote his spare time to teaching Saeko the ropes, and in the process they had forged a strong bond. It was this experience that had planted the seed for his detective school in Kitazawa’s mind, a project that later brought him quite a bit of success. And Saeko had wound up applying her investigative skills to her career as a journalist. You never knew where things led you in life.

With the file Saeko had handed him balanced on his knees, Kitazawa smiled wryly as he sipped his weight-loss tea. His wife had turned him on to it a decade ago, but it didn’t seem to have had any effect.

Saeko was now thirty-five years old and had been through both a marriage and a divorce. But had she ever really come to terms with the loss of her father? Kitazawa wondered. Even if it was her editor’s idea, the fact that Saeko was still walking around with a missing persons file after all this time led Kitazawa to suspect that she had never truly given up on her father, and the realization pained him.

Oblivious to Kitazawa’s concern, Saeko glanced hesitantly over her shoulder. “By the way, is Toshiya around?”

“Of course he is. He can’t wait to see you!” Kitazawa hit the button on his intercom, announcing, “Saeko’s here!”

Immediately, the door swung open and a younger man bounced into the room. His face was the spitting image of Kitazawa’s, but his frame was a size smaller and the energy he gave off was completely different.

“Sensei! Long time no see!” Toshiya greeted Saeko breathlessly, grinning from ear to ear. But the moment his eyes met Saeko’s, he averted them awkwardly, his gaze wandering off into space.

“It has been a long time, Toshiya. You’ve slimmed down, haven’t you?”

Kitazawa’s only child, Toshiya, was six years younger than Saeko. At twenty-nine, his entire being seemed to exude that odor of childishness of those who fled from reality. Saeko hadn’t seen him since Chieko’s funeral, but Kitazawa had brought her up to speed over the phone as to Toshiya’s recent activities.

An image flashed through the back of Saeko’s mind of Toshiya’s penis, half buried in foreskin, withering like a deflating balloon—evidence, surely, that the exact same image was flashing through Toshiya’s mind. Saeko retreated a half-pace, gazing off to the side to avoid looking Toshiya in the face.

Saeko, Kitazawa, and Toshiya. The three had been linked by student-teacher relationships. Kitazawa had schooled Saeko in the fundamentals of tracking down missing persons, and Saeko had worked as Toshiya’s private tutor.

Toshiya had been a roly-poly little sixth grader when they had first met. In time, at Kitazawa’s request, Saeko helped the boy prepare for his high school entrance exams, and Toshiya ended up successfully testing into his first-choice school.

Saeko was in college at the time. She based her approach on how her father had taught her, with special emphasis on the subjects of English, math, and physics. Thanks partly to that history, Toshiya eventually got into the engineering program at a national university where he went on to study information theory. Saeko hadn’t helped Toshiya prepare for his university entrance exams, though she did help him achieve top marks in math and physics.

When Toshiya was in his second year of high school, a year before he took his tests, she stepped down as his tutor. To Kitazawa senior, she claimed to be too busy job hunting. But the real reason was that during winter vacation that year, Toshiya had attempted to rape her.

Toshiya’s parents had been away, traveling on business. Saeko had lined up two chairs in Toshiya’s warm, cozy room and sat down with a page of physics problems for him to solve, oblivious to the fact that his thoughts were elsewhere and that he was in no state to study.

His expression distracted, Toshiya’s mind seemed to be churning over something. Muttering incomprehensively, he looked up from the page frequently to take a deep breath and let it out. Then his lips began to tremble, and he shook himself violently several times like a dog emerging from a river and shaking himself dry. It was then that Saeko began to notice the change that had come over Toshiya. Even from the side, she could see that his whole body was rigid with tension. He seemed to vacillate between hesitation and intention. Just as he seemed about to reach a decision, Saeko experienced a flash of wariness and suddenly drew back in her chair. At that moment, something seemed to well over in Toshiya, and he looked up with bloodshot eyes brimming with intensity and seized her
shoulders with both hands.

“I’m sorry, sensei … I can’t take it any longer.”

What?!

Saeko tried to pull away, but it was too late. Toshiya pushed her down onto the bed behind her and climbed on top of her.

With close to eighty kilograms of body weight suddenly crushing her chest and stomach, Saeko’s breathing froze. Normally sluggish, Toshiya’s movements were uncharacteristically swift, and for a moment Saeko was too baffled by what was going on to even cry out.

Toshiya brought his mouth up to Saeko’s ear and whispered, “Sensei … I just can’t take it anymore. I’m so crazy about you. It’s okay, right?”

“W-Wait …”

But of course, Toshiya wasn’t about to wait. He pushed up Saeko’s skirt and tugged at her panties.

A fuse blew in Saeko’s mind, and all of the colors in the room ceased to exist. The fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling was a glowing ring on the back of her eyelids, but its light grew fainter and fainter. An intense urge to escape flooded her. The desire to free herself surged within her stronger than any feelings of fear or anger. If she couldn’t somehow escape from this big hunk of meat that was holding her down, she would be stripped of all human dignity. Saeko curled her body like a shrimp, flipped over, and tried to straighten herself again. But Toshiya’s soft body weighed her down, inhibiting her movements. Pushed down, immobilized, insulted, this was no time to bite back on her anger. Saeko gave full vent to her rage. Gritting her teeth, she tried to ram her chin into Toshiya’s head, but it was just beyond reach. When she finally wrenched one hand free from under his body, she clawed at his exposed skin and sank her teeth into his upper arm.

Toshiya howled and his upper body jerked away, creating room between their bodies and a momentary reprieve for Saeko. She seized the opportunity to twist herself sideways, channeling the momentum to drive a fist into Toshiya’s chin. Already unbalanced, the direct hit sent Toshiya tumbling off the bed. He landed with a dull thud.