The Devouring God (16 page)

 

CHAPTER 30

Tuesday Morning

T
akuda spun. Yumi and Suzuki stood two meters away with their arms full of shopping bags.

Takuda held Yumi tightly as uniformed officers swarmed around them. The groceries lay scattered at their feet.

She struggled in his arms. “What has happened? What's going on here?”

Mori was badgering Suzuki. “Where is the Kurodama? Did you take it with you? Speak up, Priest!”

“It's on the table in the apartment,” Suzuki said. “Release me now. Control yourself, please!”

Yumi pushed Takuda away. “Tell me what's happened! There are police everywhere. They wouldn't let us in the parking lot until one of them recognized the priest.”

“The gambler in 203 was taken by the Kurodama. That's going to be the official story anyway,” Takuda said.

Yumi pulled free of him but still held his hand tightly. “He . . . what? Old Inaba? He was taken? Possessed?”

Takuda told her everything he knew.

Her eyes set hard when she heard about the hole in the wall. “And the Kurodama is gone.”

Mori had released Suzuki. “So I assume the two of you left the apartment to get the priest some food.”

“It was a great deal,” Suzuki said, “too good to pass up. The assistant manager of the Marukyo by the station came by to tell us we had won the grocery lottery. Everything we could gather and carry out ourselves for one thousand yen, but we had to be at the store in ten minutes.”

Takuda and Mori exchanged a glance. “You decided to leave the shards behind,” Takuda said.

“I was starving,” Suzuki said. “I couldn't stand it. But we didn't want to take that thing out in public, whether it was dead or not. And you said the counselor couldn't do anything about it, not directly. So we thought it would be safe in the apartment by itself until we decided what to do with it.”

“I just wanted to get out,” Yumi said. “Between that thing on the table and the priest complaining of his hunger pangs, I just couldn't take any more.”

Takuda turned to Mori. He was gone, nowhere to be seen.

“Yumi, Priest, where did Mori go? He was here just a second ago.”

They looked in all directions, but all they saw was Chief of Detectives Ishikawa striding toward them, his face set as grim as a kabuki mask. “Did you call this in? Did you? We got an anonymous tip that your neighbor was killing his wife, but no one else is home. Every other apartment in the building is empty.”

“Maybe they won the grocery lottery, too,” Suzuki said helpfully.

Ishikawa ignored him. “You've engineered this whole thing, haven't you?”

Takuda squared his shoulders. “Baseless accusations aren't your style. Someone told you all about us, just this morning, right?”

Ishikawa sneered. “You deduce all this based on your distinguished career as a detective. A detective who quit in disgrace. All you do is go around making messes for others to clean up.”

Takuda smiled. “You received a dossier of some sort.”

“I did,” Ishikawa said. “You need to stay as far away from police business as possible from now on. Unfortunately, this morning, you're in the middle of it.” He held up an evidence bag. It contained a bamboo-­handled kitchen knife.

Bright red blood had pooled in the bottom of the bag. Endo's thugs had actually used his kitchen knife to butcher his neighbor.

“Do you recognize this knife?” Ishikawa was waving the bag. His face was an angry purple, making Takuda think of venous blood once again . . .

“It looks like our kitchen knife,” Yumi said. “It's a very common kind of knife, though, the kind you buy at Daiei or Topos.”

“We're not responsible for this,” Takuda said.

“You show up everywhere, even on the security tapes of the mental hospital where Thomas Fletcher died, but I can't prove it because the tapes were mysteriously wiped clean right in our evidence room.” He drew a breath. “So now your near-­indigent neighbor proves he was the jellyfish killer or the starfish killer or what-­the-­hell-­ever. Meanwhile, his neighbors, who were there every step of the way, had nothing to do with it.” He brandished the evidence bag. “Except you had everything to do with it, didn't you?”

Takuda tried to show no expression at all. Suzuki rattled plastic behind him.

Ishikawa looked them over. “Stay close. Tell your Mori I said so. Don't skip out, or I'll hunt you down like rats.”

“We won't,” Suzuki said. His mouth was full. “We love Fukuoka.”

Ishikawa stared at Suzuki for a second over Takuda's shoulder, and then he spun on his heel and strode back to the apartment.

They stood in the parking lot as the forensics team finished in their apartment and the coroner's team carried the body bags out of apartment 203. Uniformed officers continued to keep the reporters out of the parking lot. Takuda ignored their shouted questions.

Suzuki continued to devour the groceries.

Finally, a small knot of uniformed patrolmen wearing white surgical masks descended the stairs. They surrounded Kimura, who turned from one to the other of them, confused. He asked them where they were taking him, and they refused to respond.

“There it is,” Takuda said. “They've got it, and they've got Kimura.”

The patrolmen hustled Kimura into the back of a van. As he clung to the doorframe before they pushed him in, Takuda saw a bright blue sparking. Kimura's hand clenched on empty air, and the patrolmen bundled him in.

Two patrolmen carried cloth bags tied to the ends of sticks.

“The Kurodama,” he hissed. “They've got it, and they're taking Kimura as well.”

Takuda sprinted toward the van. The last man at the door of the van spotted him: the head of the Zenkoku Security force, now dressed as a city policeman. He slammed the van door and drew the old Russian pistol. Takuda set his heels to dodge right, but pain shot down his leg. He dropped to one knee in the parking lot, meters from the goal.

Ogawa grinned down at him as the van pulled away. He held a long, forked device, an enhanced cattle prod. He leaped into the driver's seat of a black sedan. As Takuda struggled to his feet, the sedan sped through the cordon after the van, scattering reporters and patrolmen in its wake.

T
hey sat in the Lotus Café waiting for Mori to show up. “It's getting worse,” Suzuki said. “I'm hungry all the time now. There's obviously something wrong with me.”

Takuda was relieved that Mori wasn't there to agree. “You both did the right thing, leaving the Kurodama in the apartment. It might have gone badly if you had been carrying it.”

Yumi looked at him severely. “You don't call that going badly? We've been doing this too long, then. You've forgotten what it looks like when things go well.”

He flushed. “Well, at least the priest didn't leave you alone there. No telling what would have happened then. And he hid his sword. That's a good thing. You wouldn't want to get caught with it.”

“It's up in the rafters in the second bedroom,” Suzuki said. “There's a loose panel in the top of the bedding closet, and my arms are long enough that I can get the sword up over the second ceiling rafter, where no one could see it even if they were looking for it.” He sighed heavily. “Mice are chewing off the sharkskin wrapping.”

Mori slid silently into the seat beside Suzuki.

“Thank you for helping us with the detective,” Yumi said acidly.

“None of you seemed to see him coming,” Mori said. “I hoped we could keep at least one of us out of custody to help the others.”

“Or you were just tired of us,” Takuda said.

Mori frowned. “It was time to leave. I couldn't believe you were all still standing there.”

“It wouldn't have mattered,” Takuda said. “The Kurodama was on the property the whole time.” Takuda told Mori of Kimura's disappearance in the van.

“So Endo got his artifact back,” Suzuki said.

“And we have nothing. Nothing,” Mori said. “After three years on the road, fighting the forces of darkness, we'll have no work, no prospects, moving along at the whim of Counselor Endo. If he wants us out of Fukuoka today, we'll have to leave. We'll wander the islands, following the little jobs we're allowed like sparrows after fallen grains of rice. We'll be only as prosperous and happy as he allows us to be, until he needs us to clean up another mess, and then we'll move there to do his bidding.”

Suzuki looked up, his eyes blazing. “We must capture him.”

Takuda glanced over at Yumi, who stared at Suzuki. “You mean,” she said, “we must capture Counselor Endo?”

Suzuki nodded eagerly. He bared his teeth in an unpleasant grimace. “We should bind him with sutras and throw him in a well. Or a pit. Something to separate him from his base of power. That's the way to start.”

“That won't stop him,” Takuda said.

“No,” said Suzuki. “No, it won't. If we want to stop him, we have to kill him. We have to eat him.”

Takuda and Yumi sat back. Suzuki had crossed an invisible line. As narcoleptics slept and kleptomaniacs stole, so Suzuki ate, and his hunger devoured his rational thought. He believed that he could eat his problems. Suzuki had finally gone mad.

“It's not such a bad idea,” Mori said. “That would take care of the evidence right away.” He took the lid off a jar of seaweed flakes and peered inside. “We'd still have the bones to contend with, if there were bones.” He frowned at Takuda. “You seem to think he isn't human. Do you think he has bones? Would we make soup?”

Takuda heard his own knuckles popping under the table. Yumi laid a cool hand on his forearm.

“I'm committed to not finding out about anyone's bones today,” Takuda said quietly.

Mori feigned disappointment.

“You're mocking me,” Suzuki said, “but it's the only way to stop him. I'm serious.”

Mori leaned halfway out of the booth, away from Suzuki. “You're not going to eat me for disagreeing, are you?”

Suzuki grinned at him, a strange rictus of the mouth that Takuda had seen before.
Maybe it's more than madness
, Takuda thought.
Maybe the Kurodama set him off.

“Well,” Takuda said. “At least there are groceries to hold us through tomorrow, and tomorrow's going to be a busy day. I have to attend the cremation . . .”

“Whose cremation? Inaba the gambler's?”

Takuda bowed. “They have no friends or family. It's going to be rushed, of course, to beat the press, and I feel obligated to serve.”

“I could go,” Suzuki said.

Takuda hesitated. “You're not invited,” he said finally, “and you need to look for work. After the ceremony, I'm going to talk to Ota again.” He pretended interest in the tabletop. “Maybe he can find us something.”
Even if I have to beg
, he thought.
I can't ask Yumi to keep living like this.

“And I have work tomorrow,” Yumi said, “until the phone call comes that I don't. That will be any day now.”

“Well,” said Mori, “I can pay for one more dinner here, if your Koji ever comes to serve us.”

Suzuki flushed. “He's not
my
Koji.”

Takuda was satisfied. If the worst Mori did was tease Suzuki about his crush on the waiter, that was more than acceptable. But as Mori and Suzuki bickered, he leaned over and whispered to Yumi, “Make sure the priest has enough groceries tonight. Let's not let him get
hungry
.”

 

CHAPTER 31

Wednesday Morning

“I
t's really a nuisance,” said the apartment manager. “Their social ser­vices caseworker should be here, but he said he had to make the rounds, roust the unemployed, and get them out looking for work. I don't envy him that job. A never-­ending struggle.”

The crematorium waiting room was silent except for the apartment manager, and Takuda ate his boxed lunch while the man talked. The lunch was a stale, soggy mass of rice and fried vegetables that was supposed to be tempura but tasted of curry. He thought several times just to set it aside, but as he was unsure where his next meal was coming from, he kept eating.

“This is a depressing place, isn't it? Cardboard coffins, old ambulance gurneys to transport bodies, stale box lunches.” The apartment manager tossed his aside. “This is the only kind of place that accepts the charity cases the city sends them, I suppose. What a sad place to be disposed of.”

Takuda didn't look around. He had seen it all, from the dusty, ailing plants to the discolored imitation granite flooring. Takuda himself had never even been to a crematorium with a waiting area, but he was a country boy, and from a backward area, at that. Even when he had been a detective in the capital of his home prefecture, the mourners had dispersed when the body was removed for cremation, returning after the bones had cooled enough to be placed in the funerary urns.

This crematorium was so cheap there was no attendant to stay with the bodies. Takuda had waited alone, with the bodies in cardboard coffins perched on their battered gurneys. Of course he had peeked.

Inaba the gambler's wife was in a black plastic body bag, for which Takuda was immensely grateful. Inaba himself was under a white sheet. He had a cheap nylon shirtfront and suit, a one-­piece thing that opened at the back. It was tucked in underneath him very poorly, but it was all going to burn in a few moments anyway. Fake plastic shoes had been jammed on his feet. His face was puffy and greenish, as if he had died of liver disease rather than blood loss. His nostrils were stuffed with cotton to prevent leakage, and his jaw had been fixed shut. Maybe his teeth had been glued together. Takuda didn't want to know badly enough to touch the corpse. Inaba's slashed throat was covered with a beige bandage through which the rough, black sutures bulged visibly.

Like my new scars coming up
, Takuda thought.

Takuda had let the sheet drop and closed the cardboard coffin again just as the apartment manager had arrived. The attendants had wheeled the bodies off to the cremation chamber on his signal.

“The whole thing is inconvenient, that's all,” the apartment manager said as Takuda finished the dismal boxed lunch. “They had no family, no friends, no one but a neighbor and a landlord's proxy to mourn them.” He looked at Takuda, sizing him up. “They were always late with the rent, even though I knew exactly when they got it. These subsidized cases are a real handful sometimes, especially when they get in on a regular lease and then things go sour. You can never get them out. Never.” He sighed. “They said your brother-­in-­law helped them out sometimes. The tall one.” He sipped coffee. “He stays over a lot, doesn't he?”

“He's a priest in a small sect. He's got calls all over the northern part of the island, sometimes farther south,” Takuda said. “He sometimes sleeps over for convenience and safety. It's always nice to have a priest on the premises, isn't it?”

“Didn't help much this time, did it? Where did you say his temple is, or did you say?”

A sleepy-­eyed youth in a tight, shiny suit cut for nightclubbing stepped in to tell them that the cremation was completed.

They followed him out across the grimy lobby. Ahead were brass-­bound double doors. The attendant in the nightclub suit opened the doors with a smooth, practiced air. He escorted them into a spare, dim room. A young monk with mild acne stood at the foot of the gurneys, which now held stainless steel trays covered with bones.

Takuda drew closer. The bones were laid out more or less in the shape of human bodies, with the tumbled toe bones facing the young monk, the ribs and vertebrae laid out neatly in the middle, and the skulls sitting at the heads of the trays. Each gurney was overarched by a rolling tray, a repurposed over-­the-­bed hospital tray table. On each of these tray tables was a plain ceramic urn that Takuda and the apartment manager would fill with the bones of the dead. Takuda assumed they would push the tray tables along as they went.

“Are you family of the deceased?” the monk asked.

“No, we're not,” the apartment manager said. “I really have to go soon. Would you please start ­chanting?”

The monk blinked, then reached into his robe for his beads. He started to chant the “Expedient Means” chapter of the
Lotus Sutra
. Takuda realized he was a monk of the Tendai sect, the sect Suzuki referred to as “the heretics of Mt. Hie.”

Another reason it's good I didn't bring the priest. It would have turned into a brawl.

“Look,” the apartment manager whispered, “I know this is unusual, but why don't you take one, and I'll take the other? I have to dash, so I'll leave you the hyoid bones and the skulls, okay?”

Takuda bowed in assent.
The less this man touches the bones, the better.

Using oversized chopsticks designed for the purpose, they put bones in the urns, starting with the toe bones. The apartment manager all but pitched them in, moving quickly from phalanges to metatarsals to shattered long bones. The bones the apartment manager worked on were grayish, shadowed almost blue, but the bones on Takuda's table were pearly white, almost as white as the urns themselves. The long bones had been broken up for ease of loading into the urns, but as Takuda picked up one length of femur, he noticed an indentation along the length of the bone. He held it up to the light; it was an incision. It was the woman's femur, and the knife had cut into the bone.

My kitchen knife, or the black stone knife?
He stood holding the bone in the oversized chopsticks for a long moment while the apartment manager tossed bones into his urn.

. . .
clunk . . . clunk . . . clunk. . .

How many died because of that stone knife?

. . .
clunk. . .

The boy Haruma, almost surely.

. . .
clunk. . .

Thomas Fletcher.

. . .
clunk. . .

The girl at Able English Institute.

. . .
clunk. . .

How many at the cafeteria? I never even counted.

. . .
clunk. . .

The gambler and his wife.

. . .
clunk. . .

Kimura. Poor, conceited Kimura.

. . .
clunk. . .

He dropped the fragment into the urn and worked his way up to the shattered hip bones.

The apartment manager sidled over to him. “Okay,” he whispered, “you have the hyoid and skull over here . . . still on the ribs? I must have gone too fast, but I do have to be elsewhere. I'm honored that I could take part at all.” He bowed to the monk, bowed to Takuda, and then bowed toward the gurneys while holding his palms together and muttering prayers from a different sect altogether.

After he left, Takuda transferred bones. They echoed over the droning of the young monk.

Finally, Takuda reached the hyoid bone, the delicate arch of bone from the throat that allows speaking, swallowing, and breathing. He placed it gently on top of the other bones.

It was time to break up the skull. He looked around for the attendant. There was no one to help. The young monk droned on, pretending not to notice Takuda's dilemma.

Makes sense
, Takuda thought.
Just a drunken reprobate and his wife. No one cares about a hanger-­on at the boat races.

There was no one else to do it. He plunged the oversized chopsticks into the brittle skull of the gambler's wife. It split with a muffled crack.

Just another drunken gambler.
He stabbed again.

. . .
crack. . .

Just another silly schoolgirl.

. . .
crack. . .

Just another mad foreigner.

. . . crack. . .

Just another gay boy.

. . . crack. . .

The skull lay in plates, ready to line the top of the urn. He placed them carefully.

He moved to Inaba's tray. The hyoid bone was often placed by two mourners using two pairs of funerary chopsticks. Takuda did it by himself, just as he had for the wife. As he prepared to break up Inaba's skull, he noticed a tiny bit of bone at the base of the urn. The apartment manager had been in such a hurry that one of the smaller bones had missed the urn altogether.

Takuda picked it up. A toe bone, it seemed, too small for a finger, one bone from Inaba's tiny, delicate little feet. Takuda sighed as he placed the bone in the urn. It was all backward, a toe bone going in the top of the urn instead of the bottom, where it should have gone in.

Something about the toe bone nagged at him as he began to break up the skull.

. . .
crack. . .

Something about those little feet sticking out from under the blue plastic sheet.

. . .
crack. . .

Black socks.
Tiny feet in black socks.
Takuda paused with the chopsticks hovering above Inaba's skull like the bill of some hideous, bone-­puncturing bird. Inaba had been wearing black socks when he died in his apartment, Sunshine Heights 203. The Kurodama had been in Takuda's apartment, Sunshine Heights 201. Whoever had burst through that apartment wall had spread plaster dust all over Takuda's apartment. The apartment manager had personally vacuumed up as much as he could, with a promise to have the mats professionally cleaned or replaced. The footprints Takuda had seen were prints of stockinged feet, but much too big to be Inaba's feet.

Inaba's socks hadn't shown a trace of plaster dust. Inaba had been framed in his death.

Proof positive that someone had gone through Inaba's apartment to get to the Kurodama. Someone had butchered Inaba's wife and then stabbed him in the throat to frame him for the jellyfish killings.

Pointless.

. . .
crack. . .

It would have been easier to just steal the Kurodama.

. . .
crack. . .

Perhaps it wasn't so simple. Perhaps there was some truth to Endo's claims that he couldn't affect these things directly. There was a blood debt to pay. Endo had been willing to pay the price with other ­people's blood.

Takuda was angry, but his hands were steady as he placed Inaba's skull in the urn. When he was finished, he put down the funerary chopsticks, recited a verse of the
Lotus Sutra
, and walked out. The stylish attendant rushed after to hand him a certificate of cremation, which he refused.

He had made a decision. He had more pressing responsibilities to the dead.