Nocturne of Remembrance (20 page)

In the spring of the third year at their new house, Shingo’s company, in the red for the second year in a row, went under bank management. As if it were descended from Shylock, the bank demanded, if not a pound of flesh near the heart, the heads of a third of the staff.

Shingo’s name appeared on that list. His pride grievously wounded, he delivered a parting shot at HR before leaving the premises. His severance pay that arrived a few months later was only the equivalent of a year’s salary.

The supposedly smooth-sailing Tsudas were attacked by a sudden gale. Yet the captain, Shingo, had no experience or expertise when it came to navigating rough seas, just an excessive store of vanity and baseless self-confidence. With him at the helm and a madly swerving compass, no ship could ever hope to sail.

Yes, that was when it all started to fall apart
.

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2
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Mikoshiba had before him a copy of the attachment to Akiko Tsuda’s family register and her maternity health record book.

The attachment recorded a person’s history of relocation in chronological order. The maternity health record book listed the history of hospital visits during her pregnancy. Even when the visit wasn’t to an ob/gyn department, it was likely to be her primary physician or a nearby hospital.

Combining the two documents, Mikoshiba was trying to trace Akiko’s past. Embedded in it, probably, was some breakthrough for the case. Finding it was the only way to overturn the verdict.

Despite Rinko’s disavowal, Mikoshiba looked into hospitals within a mile of their Taishido, Setagaya address. He didn’t find much. Between 2005, when the Tsuda family purchased a new stand-alone house in the area, and the present time, Akiko had made five visits to the doctor, but the last treatment had concluded four months prior to the incident. It was intriguing that all five were marked as visits to a plastic surgeon, but that wasn’t the kind of record that he sought.

Nonetheless, there was one thing that exploring her medical records had driven home, and that was the wall of Personal Information Protection Law at clinical institutions.

The law applied to any business that handled personal info. Among them, medical establishments dealt with particularly sensitive details and were accordingly cautious.

Even an individual’s legal proxy couldn’t obtain any information
through a mere phone call. They even hemmed and hawed at disclosing the fact that there was no corresponding information and got around to it only after a power of attorney was shown at the front desk. Just for once, Mikoshiba envied the police.

Next, Mikoshiba visited Hachioji in Tokyo’s western suburbs, the Tsudas’ previous address. The maternity health record book gave Hachioji Medical Center as the name of the hospital where Miyuki and Rinko had been born. Akiko must have trusted the place to choose it again for her second delivery.

Having explained his purpose and shown his notification of appointment at the desk, he was escorted to the reception room forthwith. The title of lawyer worked to expedite things just a little, though not to the extent of a police badge.

It was a fortyish obstetrician, Dr. Kurebayashi, who showed up after about five minutes. With his short hair smoothed backward, he was no doubt popular among his female patients.

Mikoshiba put to him Akiko’s name and photo, but they weren’t ringing any bells.

“I can’t seem to recall her … When was the latest visit?”

“It was six years ago.”

“Six years ago … Then I’m not sure we even have her chart. I’ll go check. Please wait a moment.” Kurebayashi excused himself and came back in a little while with a file in hand. He said, “We do have her chart,” and started to flip through the documents. “These jog my memory more than a name or photo … Tsu, Tsu, Tsuda, Akiko … Oh, here she is.” After reading the relevant page, Kurebayashi looked up at last. “I remember now. I handled both the first and second delivery for her, didn’t I? What do you want to know?”

“Did you notice anything singular between the initial exam and the delivery?”

“Singular?”

“Compared to other pregnant women, was anything clearly different?”

Looking down at the chart again, Kurebayashi pondered this. “Ah. Now that I think about it, she kept asking about anesthesia.”

“Anesthesia?”

“Yes. Did I use anesthesia just before the delivery? She was very concerned about it. I thought maybe she couldn’t tolerate pain. I remember because she was like that for both deliveries.”

“Anything else?” pressed Mikoshiba, but Kurebayashi just shook his head. To make sure, the doctor went to the other departments to check their records but came up empty.

“So you are defending Mrs. Tsuda in court … What did she do?”

Akiko’s case seemed to have passed him by. Even after seeing it on TV, he must not have remembered her. Kurebayashi furrowed his brow when Mikoshiba brought him up to speed.

“Oh my …” Whether surprised or saddened, the doctor was speechless for a moment. Folding the file, he let out a faint sigh and said, “I’m starting to remember things now. When Miyuki was born, her husband and her father-in-law, as well as her mother from Kobe, all visited and crowded her room. Such a loving couple coming to that …” How Kurebayashi felt about a former patient of his turning defendant was a matter of his professional ethics and didn’t interest Mikoshiba right now, but the man added, “I can’t help but feel sorry for their daughters.”

Oh, that’s where you go with this?
Mikoshiba glanced at the still young doctor, who returned a gloomy look.

“It might be just me, but the futures of the children that I help deliver end up worrying me more than their mothers. Those kids must be so depressed.”

Rinko’s face immediately came to Mikoshiba’s mind. Her exaggerated carefreeness in his presence was a child’s transparent way of acting brave, but he had no obligation to share that with Kurebayashi.

Leaving the Hachioji Medical Center, Mikoshiba systematically investigated all hospitals within a ten-mile radius. Since he targeted those with a specific department, there weren’t too many. Still, it was a
lot of work to go to the front desk of each one.

In the end, Hachioji yielded nothing. Mikoshiba hadn’t found what he was looking for at the hospitals there. But he’d taken this possibility into consideration from the beginning and wasn’t discouraged.

Next, Mikoshiba headed to Edogawa Ward, also in Tokyo.

“1 Chome, Niihori, Edogawa Ward.” The apartment where Akiko had spent her single life was here—or rather, had been.

When Mikoshiba visited, the building wasn’t around anymore, having been replaced by a monthly parking lot. A neighbor told him that the owner had opted for a parking lot over the aging apartment building. It had been sixteen years since Akiko lived there, so the owner’s judgment was sound. Compared to financing a new rentable property, using the space as a parking lot eliminated the construction cost and minimized management overhead.

Mikoshiba, still in the dark about what Akiko was up to, stood in the middle of the parking lot. Perhaps he could synch their minds by being where she had been. Such a whim was unusual for him. A feeling of closeness over having committed the same crime had put him in the mood.

Then the wind blew. Not over his skin, but in his heart.

The wind blowing in his heart since he’d committed a murder as a boy, a wind that blew across a wasteland and chilled his body to the core, still swirled. Maybe he’d harmonized with Akiko’s mental landscape, and he hastily shook his head.

It wouldn’t do to get off his game. In the end, shattering an opponent’s assertions with cold logic suited his nature better than feeling his way into a client’s heart.

He turned and left the place where the apartment had once stood. His destination was the office of a health insurance association.

For four years from her recruitment until her resignation and marriage, Akiko had worked for the Takimoto Accounting Firm in Chiyoda Ward. Even back then, the firm had employed seven CPAs and twenty-odd office personnel and been a member of the Tax,
Accounting & Audit Firms Heath Insurance Union. The fact proved very useful to Mikoshiba.

If your company belonged to a health insurance union, hospitals where you received care sent invoices to the union, which checked them and handed you a notice of medical expenses and determination of insurance benefits. Since the documents contained not only a breakdown of the expenses but also the name of the medical institution, they were perfectly suited for Mikoshiba’s investigation. If Akiko had received medical care, it only made sense that she’d drawn on her health insurance. Moreover, for the union in question, the coverage rate was 7.2 percent, and the employee’s out-of-pocket payment half of that at 3.6 percent, an excellent deal.

When he offered his business card at the front desk of the health insurance union, the person in charge immediately came forth holding a file under his arm. Mikoshiba had made a request beforehand to see all four years’ worth of Akiko’s notices, and this time the host was prepared.

Told that a lawyer would be coming, the man had probably had to prioritize putting the documents together. He said in a vaguely accusatory tone, “You didn’t have to come all the way to our office. We could have mailed these to you.”

“We’re close to the trial and don’t have a moment to lose.”

Mikoshiba, too, hadn’t forgotten to be sarcastic. Corresponding via mail wouldn’t have gotten him anywhere. When he’d requested similar documents from a union for another case, it had taken them two weeks. He’d learned his lesson then. These guys were public corporations and bureaucratic, so without some forcefulness you didn’t cut into their queues.

The person in charge seemed to want to say something more, but Mikoshiba dismissed him with a curt “Thank you” and began looking through the records straightaway. Akiko must have been pretty healthy. She had required care only four times in as many years, all at the same hospital. He’d gotten lucky. This was going to save him
a lot of trouble.

Edogawa Horibe Clinic, Internal Medicine. Guessing from the name, it was near the apartment where Akiko had lived while single.

When Mikoshiba searched the name on his smartphone, there was only one matching result. Indeed, it was only a quarter mile from the demolished apartment.

The question was whether they had charts from sixteen years ago and whether the doctor who’d seen her was still there. Since this was a private clinic, it was possible.

On reaching the address, however, Mikoshiba wasn’t so sure. Contrary to the impression that its name imparted, “Edogawa Horibe Clinic, Internal Medicine” was fairly large in scale, a three-story building. Looking at the sign, Mikoshiba saw why. After internal medicine, other specialties were also listed. The clinic must have added new departments while retaining its original name.

“I am sorry but …” the female staffer at the front desk prefaced her reply after he’d explained the situation to her, “our clinic discards records six years after the completion of medical care …” Her tone was polite, but her eyes stated that anyone who wasn’t a patient could hurry and get lost.

“Then, are there any doctors from back then?”

“I am sorry about that, too. As far as I know, the previous director did everything by himself, but when he was succeeded ten years ago, the staff was totally replaced.”

“Totally replaced? And the previous director?”

“He passed away.”

Mikoshiba clicked his tongue faintly. Now it was impossible to confirm Akiko’s records from eighteen on.

He’d feared as much, but the past grew less clear the further back he went. Now his only hope was documents from before she’d turned eighteen, but things would get even more vague.

But griping about it didn’t help. He knew that he was trying to find a needle—that might not even exist—in a haystack. And he’d
never expected the investigation to bear fruit in just a couple of days.

Mikoshiba went back to his condominium in Yotsuya, then caught a bullet train at Tokyo Station. It was sometime after seven p.m. Heading out at that hour, all of the doctors’ offices would have already closed, but he’d be walking around visiting them from the morning and might spend the night on location.

Although he had rushed aboard, the first-class car was almost empty. There were no families with children or loud businessmen. Mikoshiba could finally spend some time alone with his thoughts.

Looking for a needle that might not exist. It was akin to gambling. But if that needle could tip over the trial, it was worth betting on.

The second session was just ten days away. If the material evidence that Mikoshiba sought turned up by then, good; if not, he’d have to consider an alternative plan, but the thought made him involuntarily furrow his brow. He could extract the information from Akiko or force her to undergo a medical exam, but since she was concealing the matter from her own lawyer, she wasn’t likely to cooperate. Submitting evidence without the defendant’s cooperation risked the possibility of it not being allowed in court.

Somewhere in his negative train of thoughts flashed Prosecutor Misaki’s face, and the wrinkles between Mikoshiba’s brows only deepened. The drubbing he’d suffered in the previous oral argument owed first and foremost to underestimating Misaki.

For any practitioner, the lessons of experience were the go-to armament. When your powers of concentration or of judgment dulled, you solved problems with assets accumulated over the years. In addition, however, that man was equipped with a capacity for learning and a virile combativeness. Misaki’s attack waves had been based on a meticulous analysis of the investigation records and were like a tiger tiring out its prey before pouncing.

Mikoshiba had faced various prosecutors, but this was new. No matter how seasoned, once they scored a loss to Mikoshiba, they either began to back away fearfully or leapt for a quick victory and went
down in flames. Misaki, on the contrary, had analyzed the reason for his past defeat and used it against Mikoshiba to induce carelessness.