Malice (12 page)

“Well, I'm sorry, but she has nothing to do with the case. You'll have to trust me on that.”

“Then why don't you just tell me? If you refuse, you'll be forcing us to investigate, and I guarantee you that we'll find out everything there is to know. Once our detectives start looking at this, there's a good chance that the press will catch wind of it. I imagine that's not something you particularly want.”

But no matter what I said, Osamu Nonoguchi wouldn't tell us the woman's name. He even took issue with our continuing to search his apartment: “I'd prefer you stopped rooting through my things. Some of my books were gifts from friends, and they're very important to me.”

At that point, however, the doctor intervened. I'd reach the time limit he'd placed on my visit and I was forced to leave.

I felt I had achieved what I needed that day, for I was now convinced that looking for this mysterious woman would be a meaningful step in establishing Nonoguchi's motive.

I began by speaking with Mr. Nonoguchi's neighbors, asking if they'd seen a woman in his apartment or heard a woman's voice there. People who are normally reluctant to answer most questions from the police frequently become overly eager to help when it comes to their neighbor's relationships. In this case, however, my questions didn't yield much. Even the woman who lived next door to Nonoguchi, a housewife who was often home, said she'd never seen a woman visit his apartment.

“It doesn't have to be recently. In fact, it might have been several years since she last visited.”

The neighbor told me she had been living there almost ten years, meaning she'd moved in around the same time as Nonoguchi. It seemed likely she'd have seen anyone he was dating.

“Maybe there was a woman,” she said at last. “But that was some time ago, and I'm afraid I just don't remember.”

I tried taking a fresh look at all of Osamu Nonoguchi's relationships—personal and professional. I started by visiting the middle school he'd quit back in March. However, I found that few people there knew anything at all about his personal life. He'd never been much for socializing, and he'd never spent time with anyone from the school outside of work.

I next went to the middle school where he'd taught before that. This was where he was working when the Okinawa trip was planned. I wasn't eager about visiting that school because this was where I'd once taught as well.

I waited for classes to finish before going. Two of the three school buildings had been renovated, but that was about the only difference. Everything else looked exactly as it had ten years before.

Suddenly lacking the courage to walk through the front gate, I stood there and watched the students leave school. Then a familiar face passed in front of me, an English teacher named Mrs. Tone. She was about seven or eight years older than me. I went after her and called out to her. She turned, recognizing me with a surprised smile.

I said hello and asked how she was before telling her that I wanted to talk about Nonoguchi. She nodded, her expression growing serious.

We went to a nearby coffee shop, a place that had opened since I'd worked at the school.

“We were all surprised by what happened, and no one can believe that Mr. Nonoguchi was the killer,” she told me, then added excitedly, “And to think that you're on the case! What a coincidence.”

I told her that this coincidence was making it hard for me to do my job, which she said she understood. Then I got down to the matter at hand. My first question was whether there ever was a woman in Osamu Nonoguchi's life.

She said it was a difficult question. “I don't know for sure, but my feeling is there wasn't.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Intuition?” She laughed. “I know, I know. ‘Intuition' is usually dead wrong. But … I think some objective facts make this likely the case. Did you know that Mr. Nonoguchi had a bunch of people set him up on blind dates?”

“No, I didn't. He doesn't strike me as the dating type.”

“It was less random dating and more like he was looking for a potential spouse. I'm pretty sure our headmaster at the time set him up at least once. If he was so desperate to get hitched, I can't imagine there was a woman in his life.”

“How many years ago are we talking?”

“It wasn't that long before he left the school, so maybe five or six years ago?”

“What about before then? Was he getting set up then, too?”

“I don't remember exactly. Should I ask some of the other teachers? There are still quite a few who were here in those days.”

I told her that would be a huge help if she would check around with her colleagues.

Mrs. Tone pulled out a PDA and wrote herself a memo.

I moved on to my second question, asking if she knew anything about Osamu Nonoguchi's relationship with Kunihiko Hidaka.

“Oh, that's right,” she said, “you'd already left the school by then.”

“By when?”

“By the time Kunihiko Hidaka won that new-author award.”

“I'm not sure if I was here or not. I'm not the sort who keeps tabs on literature awards.”

“Oh, I wouldn't have known about it myself if Mr. Nonoguchi hadn't brought the announcement to school and showed it to everyone. He seemed very excited that his old schoolmate had won.”

“Do you know if Mr. Nonoguchi was in contact with Mr. Hidaka at that time?”

“I'm not sure, but I don't think so, not at that point. He did eventually meet up with him, I know, but that was some time after that.”

“How long after? Could it have been two or three years?” That would mean his reunion with Hidaka was seven years ago, as he'd claimed.

“Sure, that sounds about right.”

“Did Mr. Nonoguchi ever talk about Mr. Hidaka in detail?”

“What kind of detail?”

“Anything at all. Maybe he commented on what kind of person his old friend was, or maybe he said something about his novels.”

“I don't remember if he said anything about Mr. Hidaka as a person, but he was a little outspoken about not liking his writing very much.”

“He didn't think his novels were good? Do you remember anything specific?”

“Oh, he would always say more or less the same things. That Mr. Hidaka didn't understand literature, or he couldn't write people, or that his books were too lowbrow.”

This sounded nothing like what I'd heard about Hidaka's writing from Osamu Nonoguchi. Nor like the words of someone who had held up Hidaka's books as a model for his own writing.

“But he still read Hidaka's books even though he didn't like them? And he went to visit him?”

“He did. Honestly, I think he only said those negative things about Mr. Hidaka's work because of his own mixed feelings.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you see, Mr. Nonoguchi always wanted to be a writer, and his childhood friend beat him to it. But he couldn't just ignore what his friend was doing. Of course he thought, ‘What's so great about these? I could write better.'”

Now that, I could picture.

“Do you remember how Mr. Nonoguchi reacted when Kunihiko Hidaka won the award for
An Unburning Flame
?”

“Well, it'd make a better story if he'd been wracked with jealousy, but actually, I don't think he was. In fact, he sounded pretty proud of it.”

I could interpret this a number of ways, but it was good information. Though I wasn't able to find out anything about a girlfriend, I wasn't leaving empty-handed. I thanked Mrs. Tone for her time.

That business behind us, Mrs. Tone asked me how I'd been since I left teaching, and how my new job was going. I said something harmless, mostly avoided talking about my departure from the school, which wasn't my favorite topic.

I believe she understood this and she didn't press too hard. Except at the end when she said, “You know, bullying is still a problem.”

“I don't doubt it.” I had spent years noticing every time bullying was mentioned in the news. Mostly because the guilt over my own failure hadn't ever left me.

We left the coffee shop, and Mrs. Tone and I parted ways.

*   *   *

The photograph turned up the day after my meeting with Mrs. Tone. Makimura discovered it during yet another search of the Nonoguchi apartment.

We'd come back again hoping to find a little more information on the woman, Hatsuko. Our main goal was to find a photo. I was certain that someone who so carefully stored mementos such as the apron was sure to have a photo around somewhere, yet none had turned up. There were some albums, but none of the photos in them were of women of the right age. This seemed odd.

“Why wouldn't Nonoguchi keep a photo?” I asked Makimura during a break.

“Maybe he didn't have one? People usually take couples shots if they go somewhere together, but assuming they never made it to Okinawa, maybe the opportunity never presented itself?”

“Really? This is a man who kept old travel documents in his dresser. Surely he would've taken at least one photo.”

The apron suggested that the woman had come to the apartment regularly. We knew he owned a camera and could've taken a picture of her during one of her visits.

“Well,” Makimura said, “if there was a photo and we haven't found it, it's because he's hidden it.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. But why hide it? He certainly wasn't expecting a police search.”

“Another mystery.”

I was looking around the room again when something Mr. Nonoguchi said to me the other day popped into my head, something about his not wanting us to root through his things anymore—his books, in particular.

A bookshelf ran the length of his office wall. I divided the books up between myself and Detective Makimura, and we searched each one, cover to cover, checking for any photos, letters, or notes stuck between the pages.

This took over two hours. As one might expect of a writer, he owned a large number of books. As we searched, the piles towered around us like miniature Leaning Towers of Pisa.

Eventually it occurred to me that I might have gotten it wrong. Why keep a photograph if it was so well hidden you couldn't take it out to look at it? It made more sense for him to have it in a place where he could easily grab it and quickly put it away again.

Makimura went to the table with Mr. Nonoguchi's word processor on it. He sat down, pretending to be the author at work. “So, I'm working on my latest masterpiece, and my thoughts drift to her. I suppose he could put a photo right around here.” Makimura indicated the blank space directly next to the word processor.

“What about a place you can't see, but is always within reach?”

Detective Makimura looked around, spotting a thick dictionary with gaps in between pages where Nonoguchi had left bookmarks. He smiled and reached for it. His guess was on the mark. Five bookmarks were inside the dictionary, one of them a photo of a young woman standing in front of what appeared to be a roadside restaurant. She was wearing a checkered blouse and a white skirt.

It didn't take long to find out who she was. Rie Hidaka identified her immediately. She was Hatsumi Hidaka—Kunihiko Hidaka's late wife.

“Hatsumi's maiden name was Shinoda,” she told us. “They were married for twelve years, which lasted until she died in a traffic accident five years ago now. I never met her. She'd already passed away when I met Hidaka. But I knew her face from the albums he still had at home. That's definitely her.”

I asked if we could see those albums, but she shook her head. “I don't have them anymore. Right after we got married, he sent them and everything else of hers back to her family. There might be something left in the stuff we sent to Canada, but I'm not sure. I'll take a look though. Our things are being returned and they are supposed to arrive back in Japan any day now.”

I asked if she thought he'd sent the albums back to the family out of respect for her.

Rie frowned. “Perhaps he was doing it for my sake, but I honestly didn't mind having her things there. After all, they were married a long time. I thought it would be only natural if he'd wanted to have some keepsakes of her around. But he didn't keep anything and he never once spoke about her to me. Maybe it was too painful for him? For my part, I never brought it up. It wasn't out of jealousy or anything, there just never was a need.”

It seemed to me that Rie was going out of her way not to sound too emotional, though nothing in what she said struck me as unusual or suspicious. Incidentally, she did appear curious as to why we had a photo of her husband's late wife. She asked whether it had anything to do with the case.

“We're not sure yet,” I told her, then added vaguely, “The photo came from a rather unexpected place, so we thought we should look into it.”

“What do you mean an ‘unexpected place'?”

I regretted saying it immediately. “I'm sorry, but I can't say any more at this time.”

However, her intuition was already working overtime. A shocked look came over her face. “You know, I think it was at my husband's wake, but Mr. Nonoguchi recently asked me a strange question.”

“What's that?”

“He wanted to know where our videotapes were.”

“Videotapes?”

“I thought he was talking about the movies my husband had been collecting. Except it wasn't that. He was asking about the videos Hidaka took for research.”

“You mean, your husband took videos when he was doing research for a novel?”

“Yes, particularly when the subject he was researching was something living, or moving, he would bring a video camera along with him on his research trips.”

“What did you tell Mr. Nonoguchi?”

“I told him I thought the tapes had been sent on to Canada. When we were having the house packed up, my husband handled all of his work-related things, so I honestly wasn't sure.”