EDGE (20 page)

The man’s pupils wandered for a moment, as if searching his memory.

“Nishimura, you mean?”

“That’s right. When Tomoaki Nishimura went missing, you were at the scene, weren’t you?”

“The scene? I was in the warehouse, stowing some cardboard boxes we were finished with.”

That was exactly what the file said, too. Nishimura had been manning the register while the manager carried some cardboard boxes to the store’s warehouse around the corner to the right.

When the manager returned to the store, Nishimura had vanished.

“Would you mind telling me a bit more about what happened?”

“Er …” the manager glanced at his watch, hinting that he couldn’t spare the time.

“It won’t take long. Just five minutes,” Kitazawa urged.

“I’m afraid I don’t think I can be of much help.” The manager was starting to look antsy. Perhaps he really couldn’t afford to stand around talking in the middle of his workday. Kitazawa didn’t want to waste the manager’s time by asking him the same questions he’d already answered multiple times. He had to cut right to the chase and ask the manager something nobody else had …

Kitazawa opened his file and pulled out two documents with photographs. One was the flier from the criminal investigation of Mizuho Takayama’s disappearance. The investigators had already distributed close to two thousand copies.

The words “Please Find Me!” were emblazoned across the top in elegant lettering. There was a headshot of Mizuho Takayama and a shot of her whole body, as well as information on her height, weight, name, age, personal effects, and the circumstances of her disappearance. In the photographs, Mizuho Takayama’s delicate features were visible behind frameless glasses, her head cocked at a subtle angle. The strap of her shoulder bag dug into her thin, waifish shoulder. What had she carried in that bag? Her style and appearance were that of a serious, hard-working career girl.

The other document was from the dossier the publisher of
Sea Bird
magazine had provided Saeko on Nobuhisa Igarashi. Along with two color photographs, it bore Igarashi’s full name, height, weight, and age, plus other details about his hairstyle and appearance. One of the editors at
Sea Bird
had put it together. There had been no criminal investigation of Nobuhisa Igarashi’s disappearance. His family preferred to believe that he would find his way back on his own. Not that they had any clue as to what had happened to him, but they had been reluctant to jeopardize the family’s reputation by involving the police.

“Do you recognize either of these people?” Kitazawa asked the store manager, holding up both documents.

The manager examined the pictures closely. “No. Afraid not.” He shook his head.

“Take a good look. Weren’t they customers of yours?” Kitazawa prompted.

“Sorry—I’m afraid I don’t recognize them.” The manager bit his lip
with his upper front teeth.

Mizuho Takayama lived in Tokyo. If she’d visited the shop, it was just once, and more than a year ago.
Of course he doesn’t remember
. Kitazawa was on the verge of giving up when his gaze wandered overhead and suddenly came to rest on a small object on the ceiling, directly above the cash register. He froze.

A security camera!

The human memory was unreliable. Footage from a video camera, on the other hand …

Immediately, Kitazawa changed tack. “That security camera records everything that happens in here, right?”

Kitazawa had a basic understanding of how it worked. There was probably a monitor installed behind the counter so that the person working the cash register had a full view of the interior. It helped prevent shoplifting by eliminating blind spots in the clerk’s field of vision. Generally, it was also connected to a computer that stored the footage so that it could later be reviewed.

The manager turned, following Kitazawa’s gaze. “Yes,” he nodded.

But security camera footage wasn’t stored forever, or it would end up consuming massive amounts of memory. Most stores recorded over their stored footage every two or three weeks, or every month at most.

“How long do you store the footage?” Kitazawa inquired.

“If nothing out of the ordinary happens, we overwrite it every two weeks.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary, eh?”

“Yes. When there’s some kind of incident, the footage might contain clues that might be useful to the police. So when that happens, we hold onto it.”

Kitazawa reflected on the information in Saeko’s missing persons files. When Tomoaki Nishimura was working at the cash register and the manager left to take some cardboard boxes to the warehouse, there was an earthquake.

It was right there in the file.

“What about in the case of an earthquake?”

“Huh, an earthquake?”

“Yes. Would you save the footage then?”

“Ah, I get it. You mean the day Nishimura disappeared.” There had been an earthquake that day—the manager remembered it now.

“We might still have it. It’s a good idea to hold onto footage when
something like that happens.”

Kitazawa paused for breath as he made some mental calculations. Detectives often bought information from members of the general public, and the minimum price they paid was 50,000 yen. The more critical the information, the more they were willing to pay. It wasn’t worth pinching pennies if it meant missing out on something you needed to know.

Kitazawa lowered his voice but spoke with emphasis. “I’ll buy it for 100,000 yen. Can you get me a copy of the footage from September 13th of last year, around the time of the earthquake?”

“Huh?” The manager seemed momentarily stunned by the mention of 100,000 yen. It was a pretty hefty reward for the simple task of locating some stored footage and making a copy of it.

Kitazawa was convinced that there was crucial information to be found in that footage. He would bill the TV station and publishing house for the expense later; it wouldn’t put any strain on his own wallet.

“Do this for me. When you have the footage, call me at this number and I’ll come and get it.” Kitazawa pointed out his cell phone number on the business card in the manager’s hand.

“I’ll be returning to Tokyo tomorrow, so I’d like it if you could get it ready for me tonight,” he stressed, making sure the manager realized that he’d better get cracking if he wanted to get his hands on that 100,000 yen.

The manager made an “okay, okay” motion, waving his hand close to his body and twisting away. Kitazawa understood; the man didn’t want his employees to overhear. There wasn’t anything illegal about what they were doing, but given that the manager stood to make what was probably a month’s wages for his staff for a few minutes of labor, his employees might hope for a taste of the pot.

If Kitazawa’s hunch about the footage were right, where would that leave him?

It’ll probably just raise more questions
, he realized. But he didn’t care. Bringing mysteries to light was what being a detective was all about. His professional instinct to seek out the truth behind bizarre enigmas spurred him on.

Kitazawa bought a yogurt and a can of tomato juice and exited the shop. The two youngsters over in the magazine corner were leafing through comics anthologies, completely entranced.

“Thank you!” the shrill voice of the girl behind the counter called out from behind him.

5
Kitazawa was late getting back. He’d planned to fly into Haneda Airport from Toyama, but the flight was sold out. At the last minute, he changed course and took a train from Itoigawa to Nagano, where he hopped a bullet train back to Tokyo. That was what Toshiya told Saeko when she showed up at the office. She had to wait another half-hour for Kitazawa’s return.

“My dad did say he was bringing back a surprise, though,” Toshiya promised as if in apology. They both knew what that meant; Kitazawa had found a lead of some sort in Itoigawa.

“What is it?” Saeko asked.

“He wouldn’t say. He was being coy.”

“I guess we’ll have to wait and see, then.”

“Well, make yourself at home, anyway.” Toshiya gestured vaguely towards the sofa.

Saeko looked away, her gaze flitting nervously around the office. It was well past closing time. There were two coffee cups on the table in the waiting room where the detectives met with clients during business hours. They hadn’t been set out for Saeko’s visit and were just left over from the last client who had visited the office. The computer in the corner of the office had been left on. The standby screen displayed a photograph of a pop singer posing in a bikini.

Hurriedly, Toshiya keyed in a command to change the picture and began babbling incoherently about the events of the day. His comments seemed to be directed at Saeko, but they sounded more like he was talking to himself. It was a bit awkward being alone with Toshiya waiting for Kitazawa’s return. Their relationship was still somewhat strained.

“Hey, Toshiya? Why do you think the universe has structure?” Saeko asked suddenly, cutting off Toshiya’s rambling monologue.

“Where did that come from?” Toshiya widened his eyes in his patent expression of exaggerated surprise.

The real mystery is the fact that anything exists at all
.

It had been a favorite contention of Saeko’s father. The fact that there was matter hinged on the existence of structure. There were two main categories of naturally occurring structure. One comprised the regular movements of heavenly bodies and their groupings, like the solar system or Milky Way. The other was the organic life that occurred on a planet’s surface. These organisms in turn created constructs of their own, spanning everything from simple nests built by birds and honeybees to huge
skyscrapers. Saeko and her father had discussed in detail the evolution of manmade creations.

“Why do the natural structures around us exist?” she reprised. “Because various physical constants dictate their existence. Countless parameters all have to line up for a star to form. A certain physicist once estimated the number of parameters to be 10 to the power of 229, while another physicist came up with the number ‘10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123.’ There’s a huge difference between those numbers, but both of them are mind-numbingly large. Far larger than the number of atoms in the universe. Basically, the fact that the universe as we know it exists is nothing short of a miracle.”

For the structure of our universe to be maintained, countless dials, more numerous than all of the atoms in the universe, had to be all tuned to precisely the right values. Saeko and Toshiya discussed various examples of matter and life and the conditions that had to be met for them to exist.

“The question is, who fine-tuned all of those dials in the first place?”

“The gods? I suppose that’s the easy answer,” Toshiya offered. The chances of life spontaneously occurring on Earth were so slim as to be almost zero. It seemed in fact reasonable to try to attribute it to a divine creator.

“But most physicists don’t attribute the universe to the work of a supreme being,” Saeko contended.

“Of course not. That would be an admission of defeat. It would mean acknowledging that we have no idea.”

“Okay—here’s another question for you, Toshiya. What do you think would happen if just one of those dials that maintains the structure of the universe got knocked out of tune?”

Toshiya pretended to fall sideways off of the desk where he was sitting. “That would be the end, I guess. If even one of those 10 to the power of 229 dials got misaligned, our universe would fall apart. It would probably disintegrate instantaneously.”

Even the forces that governed the orbits of the planets around the sun were governed by intricate relationships. If even one parameter were off, it could act like a crack in the system that sent the Earth hurling into the Sun, causing it to explode, or careening out of orbit into the pitch black reaches of space. If a parameter pertaining to the micro world went out of whack it could wreak havoc on the relationships between protons, neutrons, and electrons and cause atoms and molecules to disintegrate, instantly turning our bodies into vapor. In either case, existence hinged
on maintaining a very delicate balance.

“You know what I think, Toshiya? It might sound funny to you, but I think the universe didn’t just set those dials. I think they were fine-tuned by its interrelationship with the cognitive abilities of genetic life. The same is true of men and women, isn’t it? Slavery aside, there’s no such thing as a relationship where one completely dominates the other. The rules of their relationship evolve naturally, as a function of their interaction. They both have to … meet in the middle …” Saeko trailed off, embarrassed suddenly by her brazenness in opining on such topics when her own marriage had failed.

“The anthropic principle, you mean?”

“I guess I mean the interaction between the observer and the observed.”

“If you put it in those terms, it saves us from having a purely passive role, anyway. It also answers the enigma of why the universe can be described in mathematical terms even though math is a man-made construct.”

“Yes. Exactly. The fact that the universe can be described in mathematical terms is a real mystery.”

Why was it possible to consider the universe in terms of mathematics, which was a sort of language devised by human beings?
It was another question Saeko’s father had posed to her.

She found herself starting to really enjoy this conversation with Toshiya. There was so much more to talk about, but their time was up. Kitazawa had returned.

“Welcome back!” Saeko and Toshiya chorused, looking up in unison as Kitazawa entered the office.

“Thanks,” Kitazawa replied. His face was drawn with fatigue, but as he twisted with a grunt to pull a memory stick out of his shoulder bag, an expression of satisfaction and excitement flooded his visage.

“Is that the surprise?” Toshiya asked.

Kitazawa gave them a quick rundown on how he’d obtained the memory stick. “It may be totally worthless. We won’t know until we have a look.” His warning belied the look on his face.

Toshiya accepted the memory stick, plugged it into the computer, and played the footage.