Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan (15 page)

“Didn’t you hear his car? Do you at least know what time he came back?”

“No, it’s an electric.”

“Is that so? Is there is a security system log? A video recording?”

Reiko shook her head. “It used to be set to keep records for a month, but it’s been reconfigured. Every morning at six it’s all erased. There aren’t any records.”

Reiko’s explanation was haphazard, but the facts suggested that Ken’ichi Amachi returned to his house late in the night after the conference, reprogrammed the security system, took the car, and disappeared.

There was something about her husband that his wife didn’t know, and whatever it was accounted for his disappearance. Rieko didn’t seem satisfied, but her story wasn’t unusual. While the motive for his disappearance was unknown, at present it would be difficult to call it a crime. This was a job for the Civil Police.

Choosing his words carefully, he explained the situation to Rieko. In the end, this was a matter between husband and wife.

“But … I’m worried.”

“Worried?”

“I wonder if he might have been involved in a vampire incident. Amachi’s research involves vampire immortality and how this knowledge might be practically applied in regenerative medicine. If the vampires knew about his work …”

“But that’s impossible. Ken’ichi is an excellent man, but his present research is a team operation. Abducting one or two researchers wouldn’t make any difference. And the vampires in the city are under constant surveillance. If something had happened, there’s no way it would have gone undiscovered for three or four days. Don’t worry, Ken’ichi is safe.”

As he instructed her to face up to reality, Yatsuyanagi offered an indirect warning. Rieko’s story suggested that she couldn’t accept that there was something she didn’t know about Ken’ichi. Accordingly, she had started going on about vampires and the like.

“Thank you. I’m glad we talked.”

Without further discussion the pair finished their meal and parted. Rieko returned home alone on foot.

“Come on in!”

Hashimoto held down the elevator door’s open button. But the pair of policewomen shook their heads. “We’ll take the next one,” one of them said. Without a word, Muraki pressed the close button. The elevator swiftly ascended the police station.

“Don’t let it bother you.”

“Are we that hated? Even by our colleagues?”

“They don’t have any reason to hate us—they hate the vampires. That’s all.”

The First Public Security Division’s Class Two Immigrant Unit was an independent unit that occupied one floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department building. The belief that vampirism was the result of a viral infection lingered, so all sorts of measures had been taken to ensure that the hypothetical virus would not be transmitted to the outside world. In those days, except when used by the Vampire Squad and the VLC staff, the elevator wouldn’t even stop on this floor. Naturally, ID tags were employed to closely monitor access to the rooms.

By the time Muraki and Hashimoto returned from the field, nearly all of the members of the Vampire Squad had arrived. Muraki greeted the subsection chief, Yamamoto, then took a seat in the last row. Hashimoto sat down beside him.

“Well, it’s about time, so let’s get started.”

Chief Yamamoto rose to his feet. The projector screen at the front of the room read “The Kichij
ō
ji Class Two Immigrant Serial Vampire Incidents,” and a small VT logo appeared at the corner of the screen. In affairs handled by the Vampire Squad, the word “murder” was anxiously avoided.

“First we’ll go over the facts that have come to light in the week since the incident took place.”

Chief Yamamoto fiddled with the remote control function on his government-issue smartphone, then displayed the information related to the incident in chronological order. The word “cadaver” was conspicuous on the screen. Because of society’s antagonism toward vampires, the late victims of vampiric crimes were referred to not as “dead bodies,” but as “cadavers.”

Even so, until the incident had been deemed a vampiric crime, it had been written with the characters for “dead body.”
In dubio pro reo
. When it had been determined that the incident fell under the jurisdiction of the Vampire Squad, “dead body” had been exchanged for “cadaver.”

The August 3 discovery of a cadaver with a stake driven through its heart in Inokashira Park was not the end of the story. Five days later, in the Inokashira Park zoo, a second body had been found, and seven days after the original incident a third body appeared on the grounds of G-Art Gallery, adjacent to the park.

“The first victim’s name was T
ō
ru Ishikawa, and he was twenty-eight years old. He was a vagrant, and unemployed. His blood type was B, and he had no history of disease. In good health, but poorly connected to society—a prime target for vampires. The last image of him alive was recorded in the morning on the day prior to the incident, by a security camera at a net café in front of Kichij
ō
ji Station. The second and third victims were similar. Blood type B, and we haven’t been able to contact any of the three men’s families.”

Everything Chief Yamamoto was saying was already known to the twenty or so Vampire Squad officers in the room. But one after another he flipped through the images on the screen.

As a matter of fact, it had come to light the previous day that the perpetrator of the three incidents at Inokashira Park had previously committed five other vampiric crimes. These five newly discovered crimes were identical to the more recent three, with the victims having likewise sustained knife wounds from which their blood had been sucked. Moreover, hair and skin cells collected at the scenes suggested that a vampire was involved, and DNA analysis had confirmed that it was the same vampire in all cases.

The DNA of the hundred thousand vampires residing in Tokyo—including that of both the immigrant vampires that accounted for the majority and that of the small number of indigenous ones—was registered in a database. Yet there was no match for the DNA that had been collected from the crime scene. It belonged to a cadaver that had been resurrected by one of the registered vampires. The perpetrator was a rogue.

So, they had searched the database for prior incidents involving a knife to find that five unsolved fatal robberies, all of which involved what appeared to be the same weapon, had occurred between June and July.

These hadn’t taken place in Inokashira Park, but rather in the peripheries of Kichij
ō
ji and Mitaka. The victims’ wallets and some other effects had been taken, and because they had been stabbed the Criminal Affairs Division had treated the cases as regular rather than vampiric crimes. Accordingly, they had neither tested for the W Factor nor informed the Vampire Squad about the details of these incidents.

A second investigation of the five cadavers and tissue samples collected from them confirmed the presence of the W Factor, as well as characteristics indicating that they had undergone vampiric metamorphosis. Thus, the five incidents were handed over to the Vampire Squad. It appeared that the suspect, in an attempt to conceal the vampiric element of his attacks, had endeavored to make them look like a series of muggings. After presenting this overview, Chief Yamamoto asked Muraki to share the results of his own investigation.

“I’ve just returned and haven’t prepared any slides. I’ll just have to project the notes I took at the crime scene. The doctor gave me a rundown of the postmortem exam findings, and a party that we think was involved in the incidents in some way has surfaced. It looks like the penniless victims of the most recent three incidents experienced an improvement in their financial circumstances immediately prior to their deaths. Their wallets were stolen, but we thoroughly analyzed the effects they left behind to look for skin and hair samples deriving from people who may have had contact with the victims before their deaths.

“In the end, we couldn’t find any skin other than that of the victims, and the only hair we found was broken off at the root, so we couldn’t perform DNA testing. According to the forensic examination, though, it came from a baseline nonvampiric human, and we’re more than 90 percent certain that the same person was involved in all of the incidents. We estimated their age based on the amount of melanin present, and we think this person is between thirty and forty years old.”

Muraki’s conjecture sent the meeting room into a commotion. He was suggesting that there was a human being out there who was aiding and abetting vampiric crimes.

“Something of interest: We recovered a banknote from the bottom of the first victim’s bag. A hair sample we collected from it was also a match. Based on this, we think that the three victims accepted money from the person in question prior to the attacks.”

Muraki projected a photo from his smartphone onto the screen. It was a grainy, pixelated image, untouched, and taken from a video monitor screen. It showed someone that resembled the first victim found in Inokashira Park.

“This image was taken from a security camera at the home-improvement center near Inokashira Park. It’s an old machine and the resolution is poor, but he’s purchasing a stake identical to the one used in the crime. The date is here—August second, the day before the incident. As you can see, his wallet contains a substantial number of banknotes. It was a cash purchase. Fortunately, we were able to collect fingerprint and skin samples before the money was deposited into the bank. As expected, we found the victim’s DNA. Here’s the problem.”

The projection screen magnified to display someone who appeared to be accompanying the victim. Because of the camera angle, one could make out only that the person was wearing a suit. After finishing his purchase, the victim walked toward the second party, and the final shot showed them leaving the store together.

“We used image processing to perform an analysis of the spectrum of fibers that compose the suit, and it’s a match with the fibers we collected from the cadaver. It’s definitely an Armani, but unfortunately we were only able to identify the fabric and not the exact type of suit.”

“So you’re saying that each of the three victims received cash from the person in the suit, and then was attacked by a vampire? I see, thank you.”

After Muraki finished his explanation, he sat down with a sigh of relief. Hashimoto offered him a canned coffee, and Muraki accepted it. It seemed Muraki’s report was new information to more than half of those present at the meeting. The room was astir.

“Well then, doctor, if you please.”

At Chief Yamamoto’s urging Cadaver Investigator Yatsuyanagi stood up. Using his smartphone, Yatsuyanagi displayed images taken from the three crime scenes on the screen.

“As we learned earlier, prior to the Inokashira Park incidents the vampire in question had already committed five other crimes.”

Yatsuyanagi displayed a new image. This one showed three stakes. Each was wooden type commonly purchased at home-improvement centers in order to exterminate vampires.

“The greatest riddle surrounding the affair is the question of why stakes were driven through the victims’ hearts only in the three most recent incidents. We have yet to find any evidence linking the perpetrator to the stakes. Nevertheless, we think these weapons are the same stakes purchased at the Kichij
ō
ji home-improvement center mentioned in this report. They’re your typical cheap, Chinese-made goods, so there’s no way to explain it. Now, aside from the stakes, two other factors also differentiate the three recent incidents from the five that took place prior.

“Firstly, in the recent three incidents surgical tools were employed, and an enormous quantity of blood was extracted from the cadavers. One to two liters, give or take. As far as I know, vampires don’t tend to drink such massive quantities of blood. This is something other than hematophagia.”

“Doctor, isn’t exsanguination a preservation method?” Muraki inquired, the canned coffee still in his hand.

“The motive remains unclear. To preserve a body you need the anticoagulant heparin or something of the sort, but your average vampire has an aversion to the drug. The possibility that preservation was the goal seems unlikely. And therein lies the second issue. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but ever since the incident in Inokashira Park the victims have shared the same blood type: B. Vampires aren’t picky about blood type—they’re far more concerned with avoiding persons with a history of viral disease. Among Japanese people, only one in five is type B. Based on simple math, the probability that three people in succession would be type B is less than 1 percent.”

“If we’re dealing with a human the blood could have been used for a transfusion, but …” Whether Muraki was voicing a question or an opinion was unclear, but as he trailed off, Yatsuyanagi continued with his explanation.

“A little while ago Muraki reported that the three victims accepted money from the same person. This is consistent with my postmortem exam findings. When I checked out the contents of the three victims’ stomachs, I got the impression that each of them had consumed a recent and rare feast. The pathology data suggests that all of them suffered from some level of malnutrition. But the contents of their stomachs indicated otherwise.”

“Doctor, if that’s the case … are you saying that the person in question prepared the victims for the vampire?”

At Chief Yamamoto’s inquiry, Muraki stopped drinking his canned coffee. The chief’s question had serious implications. Although vampires were permitted to reside in Tokyo, their activities had been restricted in many respects. But if there were humans assisting with their crimes, the Vampire Squad’s work was liable to become difficult.

“Based on the autopsy results alone, we can’t know that much. But even assuming human cooperation is at play, the
modi operandi
of the first five incidents and the most recent three differ. So, we can only confirm that the person in question was involved in the most recent three incidents.”

“Are you saying that the first five incidents and the most recent three might be unrelated?”