Daughter of the Sword (16 page)

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “You must have thirty books here.”

“Forty,” said Yamada. “Well, forty-some, anyway. My publisher says the complete works will span twenty-five volumes.” He laughed. “Can you believe the gall? Complete works! You’d think they’d wait until a fellow was dead before they called it that. Suppose I feel like writing another one?”

Mariko looked at the man with new eyes. Had he lost his sight from all the writing? She reassessed his gnarled knuckles, the hunch in his back. A pen in hand, hunching over paper—was that how these books were born? Somehow she was certain Yamada had penned all those pages with his own hand, never resorting to a computer.

And why would he? By the time computers were advanced enough to help him, most of these books would have already gone in and out of print. She pulled a yellowed volume off the shelf, opened it, checked the publication date. Shōwa 31. She did the math in her head: 1956. Her parents weren’t even born yet.

“Take one,” Yamada said, grunting a bit as he got up from his knees. “Keep it. These old eyes have trouble reading anymore. I certainly won’t waste them reading my own work.”

As he walked to the kitchen, Mariko heard the first chortling of the teapot preparing to whistle. Yamada had sharp ears, sharper than Mariko’s, and she prided herself on her attentiveness to her surroundings. This old man was an enigma. A keen intellect, an alert mind, and yet he’d spoken of magic swords with all sincerity. One might as well put stock in ghost stories. Mariko was a person who relied on evidence—who prided herself on that, in fact—and yet she found herself feeling respect for this man, a man who had spoken of fate and destiny as if they lived next door to him, as if he could see them and hold a conversation with them.

“So you’ve come to talk swords,” he said from around the corner. “What about?”

“Well, I thought to myself, how many swords can there be in greater Tokyo between five hundred and a thousand years old? Then I did a little digging, and what I turned up told me you’re the man to ask. So? How many?”

“Maybe ten,” said Yamada, “but that’s not the question you should ask.”

“Oh?”

“What you should be asking is, how many of those swords are…well, how would you police officers put it? ‘At large’? What I mean is, how many of those are swords a man could use to commit a murder?”

Ten was a much higher number than Mariko had expected. Now that she heard Yamada’s question, though, she put two and two together. “They’re in museums,” she said. “These ancient swords, I mean. They’re under glass in castles and history exhibits and such. So how many are in private hands?”

“Three that I know of, but only two that count. Of those, one is upstairs. I should think it was the other that killed your murder victim.”

Mariko had heard this tone from the old man before. He spoke with more assurance than he should have. His voice was heavy with familiarity, as if he knew all about the circumstances of the murder. Only the investigators on the case had that kind of knowledge. No, Mariko thought. The murderer knew all the details too.

“Dr. Yamada, may I go upstairs and look at your sword again?”

“Of course,” he said, reentering the room, a cup in either hand issuing steam. “I’ll go up with you.”

He smiled with a nod and handed her a cup. She did not drink from it. “Smells good,” she said.

She made a point of walking behind Yamada. Mariko had ruled him out as a subject as soon as she’d learned of the Kurihara
murder—it was his demeanor, not just his age, that had eliminated him—but now she questioned her judgment. His first comment about the would-be thief was too intimate, and now he spoke of the murder in the same intimate way. He was connected to both crimes. Mariko was sure of it. She just couldn’t figure out how.

For a brief moment she was lost in her ruminations, and, coming back to herself, she saw Yamada was much faster than expected. He climbed the stairs with none of the hesitation she’d have guessed from someone so nearly blind, but she’d forgotten: this was his home. He lived within a perfect memory of it. And he was already at the bedroom door, just a few paces from the sword.

Mariko dashed up the stairs, hot tea splashing onto her hand. The teacup hit the carpeted stair. She reached the doorway to the bedroom just as Yamada turned to face her, his right hand holding the scabbard, his left hand supporting the tip. Her hand darted into her purse to find the Cheetah.

“Here you are,” Yamada said, moving toward her slowly, the sword held out to her in his right hand. “Inspect away, Inspector.”

“Put the weapon down,” she said. “On the bed.”

“As you like,” said Yamada, doing as he was told. He took a step back from it. “Have I given you a fright?”

With her eyes fixed on his hands, Mariko reached down, found the sword with groping fingers, and picked it up.

“Do forgive me. I didn’t realize a man my age could still frighten anybody.” He sat on the bed, hands on his thighs. “You should know, a sword is only dangerous when held in the left hand. The right must be free to draw and cut.”

Mariko pulled the blade from its sheath and held it to the light. Again the sheer size of it impressed her. “I didn’t know that.”

“Oh, yes. Proper
kenjutsu
is always taught right-handed.”

Her heart was slowing. She’d misjudged him. There was no sign of blood on this blade—none less than a hundred years old, anyway—nor any sign that he’d bleached it to remove trace evidence. This was not a
man who would cover up a killing anyway; not only was he not the type to wantonly murder, but he would probably rather spend his life in prison than douse an ancient masterpiece in bleach. And now the back of her hand was starting to sting from where she’d spilled the tea.

Yamada smiled at her, his eyes unfocused; at this distance she was sure she’d blend into the wall for him. “I’m sorry I startled you,” he said. “I should have known better than to approach a policewoman with a weapon in hand. Still, I’ll have to teach you more about swordsmanship. You have a lot to learn.”

Mariko looked at him curiously, then at the blade in her hands. All of a sudden she felt self-conscious about how she held it. Yamada was a lot stronger than he looked; Mariko needed two hands to hold the sword steady, yet Yamada needed just one. It was embarrassing not to be able to match the strength of his one wizened hand. And she was certain her grip was wrong too, but she had no idea how to properly hold a sword.

Self-consciousness was not something Mariko felt often. Shame was all right with her. When a person did something wrong, she ought to feel shame. But self-consciousness—being ashamed having done nothing wrong, feeling shame just for being there—was not an ordinary part of her experience. Even as she thought about it, she found it quickly replaced by resentment.

“What makes you think I have any interest in sword fighting?” she said. “And even if I did, what makes you think I’m suddenly going to ask to be your student?”

“There’s nothing sudden about it. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

Mariko sheathed the sword, immediately aware that there was a correct way to do it, and feeling equally sure that she hadn’t sheathed it properly. There was that damnable self-consciousness again. She felt her cheeks flush, and she willed the embarrassment and resentment away. Somehow this man made her feel like a pupil. She could not pinpoint why.

“Sir,” she said, her frustration threatening to boil over, “I never met you until a week ago. You haven’t been waiting for me. You can’t have been.”

“Right,” said Yamada. “I forgot. There’s no such thing as destiny. Please, forgive an old man. Go on about your life.”

Mariko dropped the sword on the bed. Back to the magic swords again, was it? Then that was enough for Mariko. The Kurihara murder wasn’t her case. It wasn’t even in her jurisdiction. She just wanted to help. But not if the price was putting up with all this nonsense about sorcery and fate. She had hoped to be able to give Yokohama PD a lead on their murder weapon, but she wasn’t about to call in and tell them to look for a magic sword. She was done.

“Sorry to bother you,” she said, the blood pounding in her temples. “I’ll be on my—”

Yamada held a callused palm in front of her face and a wrinkled finger to his lips. Mariko could have screamed at him for silencing her like that, but then she heard the noise.

The front door was opening.

And then it was open. There were footsteps. Many steps: three people, maybe four. Whoever they were, none of them spoke.

Someone entered the kitchen. She imagined shoe heels tearing the tatami floor in the sitting room. Mariko’s hand went to her purse. Yamada picked up his sword.

She was going to tell him to stay here, to call the police, but he was already out the door. Swift and sure, he swept down the stairs. For half a second Mariko wished her pistol was tucked into her waistband, not tucked into a locked drawer at work. She followed Yamada quietly, the Cheetah’s haft cold in her hand. She could see no one downstairs.

Then came a shout. Yamada drew his blade and slashed. Somehow, somewhere along the way down the stairs, he’d thrust the sword’s scabbard through his brown leather belt without Mariko seeing him do it. And now the draw, the step, the cut, it was all one smooth
motion. Someone screamed in the kitchen. Mariko could not see who it was; she only saw blood spatter the far wall.

A shadow moved below. Someone was approaching Yamada from behind. Mariko did not think; she just jumped the balustrade and landed in the sitting room.

The man rushing Yamada’s back was tall, powerfully built, the tail ends of tattoos winding up the back of his neck from beneath the collar of his white shirt. He heard Mariko and whirled, too late.

Mariko thrust the head of the Cheetah into his breastbone and pulled the trigger. Nigh on a million volts crackled into the man’s body. He gritted his teeth and groaned, the tendons in his neck standing out like high-tension lines, the Cheetah still buzzing. The man recoiled, reeling, his face a snarl of surprise, pain, and fury.

Yamada’s sword took him, a deft stab through the throat.

Then Mariko was on the ground, a hundred and fifty kilos crushing her. It was another intruder. He was on top of her before she saw him, and now all she knew of him was his balding head and his smell like the inside of a
gyoza
restaurant. Her right hand, the Cheetah with it, was pinned to the floor. She felt the man’s weight shift; his right arm was moving, reaching for a weapon.

Mariko tried to pull the trigger on the Cheetah and couldn’t. Her hand, smashed under her attacker’s bulk, could not budge its trigger finger. She brought her face close to the fat man’s cheek and bit his ear.

He shrieked, shifted, punched her in the ribs. All the air left her lungs. She saw stars. But he had moved enough.

The Cheetah sent 850,000 volts into the giant’s belly. He recoiled a bit but it wasn’t a clean contact. He punched her again. Her ribs turned into a thousand little knives. Again the Cheetah crackled. He flinched away.

At last Mariko could breathe again. Through the stars she saw her attacker regaining his feet. She stabbed out, swinging hard for the groin. The fat man seized her wrist with his huge left hand. Steel
flashed in his right, probably a knife. She flicked up with the Cheetah and zapped the arm that held her.

He released her, slashed, missed. She chopped at his knife hand. ABS plastic made hard contact with bone. Mariko didn’t stop swinging. The throat, the temple, the base of the neck—then the fat man lay still.

Adrenaline cleared the stars from her eyes and she saw Yamada. Two men faced him, both wary, one with tattoos like barbed wire bracelets. Mariko rose to help him but a thousand tiny teeth bit into the left side of her rib cage. The pain felled her like a tree. Yamada stood, one foot on the first stair, the other on the floor.

The men before him both held knives, huge ones, the sort a Stallone character would carry. The one with the bracelets withdrew, and with a sudden flick he hurled his blade at Yamada.

Yamada’s sword knocked the weapon from the air. In the same movement, the old man stepped toward his second attacker. The attacker’s knife came in, then fell to the ground, a hand and forearm still attached to it. The one with the bracelets dashed for the front door. Yamada’s sword slashed the back of his thigh, drawing a scream, and the intruder fled from sight.

Then it was over. Yamada was as still as a statue. His blank gaze fell on the bodies before him. Only Mariko’s fat man was likely to live. One had trailed a river of blood through the gaping front door, one sprawled facedown in the kitchen, and a third was bleeding out with his forearm lying next to him.

Mariko’s training took over. Her first priority was the one she’d knocked out; if he got back up, there was no guarantee she could put him down again. The handcuffs in her purse couldn’t come close to fitting him—he had wrists like Christmas hams—but she carried zip ties too. As she cinched them around his thumbs, she hoped to hell two would be enough.

Next was the guy bleeding out. She snapped a handcuff around his stump, clamping it down as tight as she could get it. Even as she called
110, she knew he didn’t have a chance. The thought of him dying made her sick, and she wondered if Yamada shared her nausea. On the job she had seen traffic fatalities, suicides on skyscraper sidewalks, but never had she seen anything so coldly gory as this.

Yamada seemed a different man. His shoulders were rounded with the weight of the sword; his face was like a wooden mask. Senseless, she thought. This was senseless bloodshed, and yet necessary. Inevitable. The coppery smell of blood gave the room a slaughterhouse smell.

It dawned on her then: Yamada could see none of it. The stink of blood would reach him, and the fast, shallow gasps of the dying man whose maimed right arm twitched in her grasp, but none of the rest. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Your sword
is
magical.”

Yamada’s blank eyes turned in her direction. “What’s that?”

“Your sword. It’s magical after all. It lets you see?”