Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan (17 page)

“What do the police think?”

“It’s destruction of evidence! Ken’ichi’s blood was detected on the confiscated parts. But there’s nothing strange about finding the owner’s blood. As for how much blood he lost, we can’t tell, but it is still evidence.

“It may be true that had some novice disposed of the car, sooner or later it would have been discovered. Especially because it’s a luxury automobile. But when pros dismantle a car, they get rid of it securely. In fact, if we were just a little too late Amachi’s car could have ended up in Vietnam.”

“What are you saying—that Amachi’s been involved in some sort of crime?!”

“Before I answer your question, I want to confirm something.”

While Rieko was upstairs, Yatsuyanagi had gathered the remote controls to her household electronics and arranged them in a line nearby. Before Rieko could stop him, he switched on the LCD television.

“Just in time for the news. I’m guessing you knew that, too. The Inokashira Park incident was a grotesque affair—someone was stabbed in the chest with a stake. I expect that’s what they’ll be reporting on.”

After hearing that the news would address the vampire incident, Rieko made no move to stop him. Several of the station’s automated program advertisements played on the fifty-inch screen, and then the report began.
“Today at 1 p.m. an undocumented vampire was discovered in an apartment on Mitaka’s Renjaku Street, and was dealt with by the police. This undocumented vampire appears to be the suspect in a series of vampiric crimes, and the police department is in the midst of an investigation.”

Rieko appeared shocked upon hearing that the undocumented vampire had been dealt with.

“What do they mean when they say the vampire has been dealt with?”

“While resisting arrest the vampire injured the officer who was attempting to apprehend him, allowing the officer to use deadly force. The vampire’s name is Satoshi Kijima, and going only on what the Vampire Squad knows he is responsible for eight criminal incidents. On that basis alone he was a dangerous vampire.

“In the first five incidents he used a knife in an attempt to conceal that he had drunk the blood of his victims. But there was something different about the most recent three incidents. Why had he staked his victims?”

“I hear humans can’t comprehend vampire psychology because of our different brain structures. We can’t understand their behavior, but it doesn’t seem all that mysterious,” Rieko said.

“Incomprehensible behavior and irrational behavior are two different things. This is the rational explanation: The rogue vampire committed eight crimes, each time using a knife to wound his victims before drinking their blood. And in the most recent three incidents only, a second party appeared at the crime scenes after the vampire was finished and drove stakes through the hearts of the victims.”

“That seems improbable,” Rieko argued, staring into Yatsuyanagi’s eyes. The woman hadn’t changed, he thought. Though she was on the defensive, she remained poised for attack.

“You say that after the rogue vampire carried out his crimes another party drove the stakes through their hearts,” Rieko said. “But how would this person have known about the vampiric crimes? Do you mean that they knew where the vampire lived and followed him around? Ordinarily anyone who did this would themselves fall victim to a vampire attack.”

“This person wouldn’t need to know the vampire’s address or anything like that. They would just have to know where the victims reside.”

“What do you mean?”

“Rossmo’s formula—that is, regional profiling—is a technique used in criminal investigations to compute where a repeat offender resides. It isn’t that complex a formula. A university-educated person could do it. When it’s reliable, the real criminal’s address falls within the area determined by Rossmo’s formula.”

“And?”

“Now, let’s assume there was a human who took notice of the undocumented vampire’s crimes. Perhaps they zeroed in on the serial murders because of the unresolved matter of the knife. Based on the location of the crime scenes, this person deduced the general area where the perpetrator resides—that is, the hot zone. Accordingly, this person sought out humans that looked to be prime vampire bait and lured them into the hot zone. They served each one a delicious meal, gave them a small sum of money, perhaps. Then, they had them walk to a location in the hot zone where it would be easy to trigger a crime. There were probably misses. But there were hits, as well.

“There is one consistency about this person’s behavior. An important part of committing a crime is that you don’t dirty your own hands. They didn’t dispose of the evidence—the automobile—on their own; rather, they allowed it to be dismantled by a professional theft ring. Like tossing food at the feet of a hungry animal. In the same way, the victims that had been lured into the hot zone were attacked by the vampire. And after that, this person showed up and drove stakes through their hearts.”

“Hold on—why the stakes? To prevent them from becoming vampires? But if that were the case, it defeats the purpose of having the vampire attack them.”

“The stakes were used to give the impression that the motive was vampire extermination. But the real reason was to stop the still-living victims’ hearts, thereby halting their blood circulation. At the site of the vampire bite, the concentration of Factor X, which transforms humans into vampires, is high. And if you stop the heart, it remains in the periphery of the bite mark. And just like that, it becomes possible to extract blood from the puncture site and collect the vampire factor.”

“What does this have to do with Amachi’s disappearance?”

“That’s what I’ve come here to verify. Ken’ichi’s blood type is B. And on the night of Ken’ichi’s disappearance, he was walking in the hot zone. Alone.”

The sound of the electric range came from the kitchen. For the first time, Rieko let her feelings show.

“I set the timer while I was in the kitchen,” Yatsuyanagi said.

“Why are you doing this!?”

“Like I said, there’s something I wanted to check.”

Yatsuyanagi took the air-conditioner remote in his hand and hit the switch. The breaker flipped, and all of the electronics in the room ceased to function. Rieko let out a wail, and hearing this Muraki and Hashimoto burst into the Amachi residence.

“You tricked me!” Rieko said as they were about to place her in the patrol car.

“And before that, you deceived me.”

Rieko cursed at Yatsuyanagi’s reply, then climbed into the car. Muraki returned from her home.

“I sealed it off as per the doctor’s instructions. But what the hell is all of that on the bed? A factory? A household ICU? Intravenous tubes are hanging from his body, and he’s as cold as ice. I’m guessing the utility costs are no joke.”

“That’s the life-support device she constructed. It looks like she pilfered some hospital equipment. Keeping him at a low body temperature served to slow his metabolism. Over there is a body suspended in the process of transforming from human to vampire. Ken’ichi Amachi—an old friend of mine—is really the sixth known victim of the undocumented vampire’s attacks.”

“But he lived,” Muraki said.

“Because Rieko, like her husband, is an excellent surgeon. After the Mitaka conference we discussed earlier, Ken’ichi was attacked by a vampire. But his wife Rieko showed up to meet him. This is only conjecture, but it’s possible that even though there weren’t a lot of people on the streets that night, he chose the shortest route home. Or maybe he intended to meet up with his wife for a quickie.”

“But instead of his wife, he encountered a vampire.”

“Probably when Rieko appeared the vampire was already in the process of drinking his blood. Ken’ichi survived. Rieko understood what had gone down and single-handedly stopped her husband’s blood flow—damage control.”

“Why not go to the hospital?”

“He was attacked by a vampire. If they had gone to the hospital, by law he would have been treated as a vampire. For Rieko, this would have meant losing her husband. In order to save her beloved husband, Rieko made use of our uneducated vampire. She slowed her husband’s metabolism by lowering his body temperature, and while staving off his transformation gave him transfusions using the blood she extracted from the victims. By increasing the concentration of the vampire factor in his blood, she hoped to retain his personality to the greatest extent possible.”

“But if that’s the case, she could have procured a vampire from VLC and more easily obtained the vampire factor, right?”

“Had she done that, the vampire attack on Ken’ichi would have come to light. Rieko was afraid of this. VLC’s documented vampires were no good. She needed a rogue.”

“That’s quite a story. To create a vampire with her husband’s personality she drove a stake through the hearts of the cadavers, collected their blood, and transfused it … but is this even possible?”

“I don’t know. But given that she was able to stabilize him at such a low temperature, Ken’ichi is no longer human. That’s the only thing that’s certain.”

In place of the patrol car in which Rieko was riding there arrived two vehicles from the Metropolitan Police Department and the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. They had come to transport Ken’ichi Amachi to an appropriate facility.

“Doctor, why do you find this woman so alluring?”

Never backing down from her attack stance, even when on the defensive—that was Rieko. When she had come to Yatsuyanagi with the claim that the security system had been manipulated and their car had vanished, somewhere in his heart he had been suspicious of her story.

She had wanted to know what information the police had concerning her own crimes, and had contacted Yatsuyanagi in order to distance herself and her husband from the Kichij
ō
ji incident. He could understand this. But he wasn’t in the mood to discuss it with Muraki.

“Leaving that aside, I wonder what Rieko will be charged with?”

“Surprisingly, probably something trivial. She didn’t commission Kijima, so instigating a crime and compulsion don’t apply. Probably she’ll just be charged with luring people to a dangerous location. And though there’s the matter of the car, she is the victim of grand theft auto.

“In the end, this woman probabilistically took advantage of the fact that someone else’s actions were in accordance with her own desires. She took a series of gambles, and she kept winning. Whether we can call that a crime—that’s above my pay grade. We could charge her with the destruction of a cadaver, but since this was done in order to save her husband’s life … well, what would come of it?”

“At any rate, Rieko grew unable to keep up with this foolish behavior. That’s for certain.”

“Well, our rogue vampire has been disposed of, the mystery has unraveled, and these incidents are resolved. But still, collecting blood from cadavers for the sake of her husband—she’s insane,” said Muraki.

Yatsuyanagi turned to him and spoke.

“Is there any such thing as a sane vampiric crime?”

His son’s death should have occurred shortly after his own, but Hideyoshi Osumi remained alone in his box for what seemed like hours. Days or even weeks could have transpired for all he knew. Time in Hell was funny that way.

Back on earth, when he was alive and at home, Hideyoshi could measure time by the growling of his stomach. Breakfast was usually salad with Kewpie mayonnaise; his wife insisted on vegetables for their son’s health. (What good that did him.) Lunch,
teishoku
at a local eatery. And finally dinner, something traditional like
oden
with fat slices of
konnyaku
and soft balls of
satoimo,
shed of all its hairy skin.

In contrast, in Hell, Hideyoshi had completely lost his appetite. A good thing, considering there was no food there, at least in his box. Before, when he was killing the women, he never thought about an afterlife, either for his victims or himself. Reincarnation always seemed ridiculous to him. How could he be repackaged in the form of an insect or, even more ridiculous, a woman? His body—the heavy, strong hands and fingers, the rectangular face with the open forehead, his awkward toes with black and gray hair sprouting below his toenails—these were all part of his identity. To lose these physical markers would mean that he didn’t exist. As it turned out, he was right. Even in Hell he still looked the same.

“Hey, are you still alone?” a voice on the other side of the cardboard box hissed.

It was a next-door neighbor, who also was an Osumi. According to this Osumi, they were all arranged alphabetically; as a result, all the Hideyoshi Osumis were to be filed together in the same box. Hideyoshi wanted to inquire to see how this Osumi may be possibly related to his family in Okayama. But the next-door neighbor didn’t want to talk about his past. He did say that he had been in Hell for a very long time. Decades, in fact.

“Yes, still on my own here,” Hideyoshi answered. He wasn’t the type to share much about himself either. But without any kind of entertainment, Hideyoshi found that there was something satisfying about hearing his voice out loud. It was low and gravelly, a perfectly fine voice for a Japanese man in his late sixties. The noose, he thought, could have damaged his vocal chords. He had no sort of mirror to examine his neck, only the touch of the fingers on his working right hand, which revealed the evidence of loose, aging skin. There seemed to be a break in the bones underneath the skin, but he felt no pain.

Hideyoshi wondered about his son, his namesake, whom they called Yoshi. When Hideyoshi was relishing his last meal on earth—sautéed lobster with her roe inside—he had overheard the guards talking about the son’s food request. Yoshi’s desire was much more pedestrian. Beef curry rice with a bowlful of
rakkyo,
mini pickled onions. It was a pauper’s meal. Hideyoshi, who hadn’t seen his son since their sentencing seven years earlier, was both a little disgusted and charmed. His son was always satisfied with whatever was presented to him. His teachers had classified him as a bit slow, but since Yoshi was always so dutiful, they openly tolerated his academic weaknesses in the classroom. Yoshi was definitely no troublemaker.

Hideyoshi hoped Yoshi was not in pain now. Had the noose slipped? Was his death a slow one? Hideyoshi had remembered once watching an American movie, which featured actor Sean Penn, a death-row inmate who was executed at the end. His advocate, a nun, had witnessed his execution. Hideyoshi was fascinated by the scene. He had just killed his second woman, and perhaps he had a premonition that the same dismal fate would await him. But here in Japan, all hangings were conducted in secret, as if an arrow happened to pierce a certain space on a dart board one day.

“Something awful must have happened,” Hideyoshi voiced his fear out loud. His son, with the same name, belonged here with him, in the same box. Could his son be in a coma, perhaps unconscious, floating in the space between earthly reality and Hell?

“Is this really Hell?” Hideyoshi wondered.

“What else could it be?” Osumi asked.

“Purgatory. Like Dante’s
Inferno
.”

“I didn’t know that you were that well read.”

Hideyoshi felt annoyed to be insulted in this way. It was true, however. Hideyoshi was not a reader in any way. It had been a guard, a Catholic, who had shared Dante’s work with Hideyoshi. After reading of the nine circles of Hell, Hideyoshi had wild dreams of twirling down a giant drain of blackness, heads of red demons greeting him as he descended.

“So why are you here, anyway?” Hideyoshi asked his neighbor, who continued to ignore his questions. Instead, Osumi said, “Perhaps your son was extended mercy at the last moment. You were the mastermind behind the killings anyway, weren’t you?”

Even his own lawyer didn’t quite believe him, but Hideyoshi didn’t intend on killing his first victim, the one whose body had been hidden below their floorboards. She, like some of the others, was young. She was about twenty, originally from the countryside. Hideyoshi ran a used furniture shop a few blocks away from Okayama station. Inherited from his mother, it was the perfect business. First of all, Hideyoshi could encounter a fresh crop of young women, newcomers to the city, on practically a daily basis. He, a native of Okayama, was the expert on the best markets for deals, the best coffee shops, the best-maintained laundromats. For fifteen captive minutes, these women’s shiny faces would turn to him, open and accepting. And many times, when they ordered a large piece of furniture, they were grateful for Hideyoshi’s policy to provide free shipping within a ten-kilometer radius.

The twenty-year-old woman, Chie, was the type who couldn’t make up her mind.

It both infuriated Hideyoshi and excited him. “What do you think?” she’d ask him over each purchase, whether it be a skillet or an end table.

He suspected that she didn’t have anyone to consult with in Okayama City. No partner, no friends, no family. This had not been the case in her past. Hideyoshi couldn’t imagine this pitiful girl surviving on her own up to this point.

At the end she—well, they—decided on a
kotatsu,
a low table with a heater. You could eat at the kotatsu, use it as a desk, warm your thighs and feet. It was a piece of furniture with many uses, Hideyoshi said. The woman nodded her head as if she was trying to convince herself. “That makes sense,” she declared.

Hideyoshi could have carried the kotatsu with him. But he wasn’t in the mood to do that kind of labor for seven blocks. He offered to transport it in his van, free of charge. Chie bowed several times in appreciation.

It was one of those apartments where the walls were paper-thin. Even though it was a cold March, sweat ran down the sides of his face as he dragged the kotatsu into the tiny six-mat room. Chie moistened a face towel with tap water, apologizing that she hadn’t gotten hot water installed yet, and handed it to Hideyoshi. There was a scent on the towel, a slight perfume. He hadn’t been close to such a scent in years, maybe decades. Before he knew it, he was putting his mouth over hers.

It happened so quickly Hideyoshi couldn’t quite believe what happened. Chie lay limp on the floor, his fingers still around her neck. The damp face towel was on the tatami floor, a few centimeters away.

What could he do? Surely one of the neighbors had to have heard their struggle. Hideyoshi remained frozen for a minute, listening. Only a steady drip from the girl’s faucet. This small apartment unit was probably full of low-level salarymen and women still hunched over their desks at their workplaces.

Think, Hideyoshi, think,
he told himself. It was before five, before any neighbors would be arriving home. He quickly carried the kotatsu back to the van and then grabbed a dolly and a large flattened cardboard box.

He pulled her legs through the box and then closed both sides by folding in the flaps. After a few tries, he was able to get the box onto the dolly and quickly wheeled it into his van parked on the curb. He hadn’t touched anything in the apartment aside from the girl and the towel. He shoved the towel in the glove compartment. It later became a memento of what he had done.

She had been missing for about a week when the police came to visit Hideyoshi’s shop. Some neighbors had remembered seeing Hideyoshi’s van in the neighborhood about the time Chie went missing.

“Let’s see, Thursday. Thursday, Thursday.” Hideyoshi feigned a faulty memory as he leafed through his datebook, a mess of scribbles and old receipts. He had written a receipt for Chie’s purchase. “Yes, she had purchased a kotatsu. I went to deliver it but she wasn’t at home.”

The excuse, which he concocted on the spot, was so believable, so authentic.

“About what time was that?” the detective asked. He was in his forties, probably a seasoned veteran. Hideyoshi was more bothered by the detective’s partner, a young woman in her late twenties. She was a tomboy type, her brown hair in a simple bowl cut. In fact, with her round face, she resembled a chestnut. Hideyoshi found her utterly unattractive.

“About four,” he said with conviction. “And then I returned back to the store.”

“When did you leave the store, Mr. Osumi?” the tomboy detective piped up.

How rude,
Hideyoshi thought.
This line of questioning should be the purview of your superior. And just who do you think I am? A common laborer? I am a businessman with my own enterprise.
But he did not express any of this. Instead he said, “Hmmm. I always close at five-thirty, and then I went home to have dinner with my family. You can ask my wife.”

“Surely we will,” said the tomboy.

Hideyoshi wanted to slap her right then and there. But instead he just gave her a weak smile. “Of course, anytime.”

They came to the house that evening. The floorboards had been reinstalled outside of their bathroom, so everything looked exactly the way it should.

The four of them sat at the dining room table by the kitchen. Atsumi wore slippers that flapped on the linoleum kitchen floor as she went back and forth to retrieve hot tea and teacups. Finally the senior detective told her they were fine and that she needed to sit down.

The tomboy detective spoke up first. “Maybe, Mr. Osumi, you could give us a moment.” She gestured away from the table—so, the police wanted to question Atsumi without his presence.

Hideyoshi quickly smiled and dipped his head. “Of course,” he replied. He rose and turned the corner where he stood beside the door of their first-story bathroom over the spot where Chie Toyama’s body had been buried. He listened intently.

“Mrs. Osumi, can you tell us about last Thursday?”

“Well, he came as usual, around five-thirty. Maybe a little early, in fact. He ate sukiyaki that night. I always make sukiyaki on Thursdays.”

“How did he seem?”

“Fine. Nothing special. Normal.”

“Do you have any children, Mrs. Osumi?” the male detective then asked.

“A son.”

“Just one son?”

“He’s twelve. And he was there when my husband was home.”

The detectives wanted to question Yoshi, but he was studying for an important test for the next day.

“I would hate to distract him in any way,” Atsumi said in a quiet voice. “I’m sure that he wouldn’t know of anything that could help you.”