Nocturne of Remembrance (21 page)

In the previous session, the other side had become privy to the defense’s strategy. If Mikoshiba were the prosecution, he would pursue the point that he couldn’t prove the last time—namely, an imminent danger as the basis for claiming legitimate self-defense. He’d made the claim to argue a lack of murderous intent but had ended up tying a noose around his neck.

This is no good
, he thought.

He was trapped in a negative mental loop and clearly wouldn’t arrive at a favorable conclusion even if he continued.

Mikoshiba shut off his thought circuit. Once he did so, no external stimulus could start it up again until he willed it. It was a skill he’d acquired as a kid in medical reformatory.

Ironically, what he learned behind those walls served him much better than any schooling beyond them.

The next morning, Mikoshiba had breakfast at the hotel and immediately headed to his first stop: the Kobe City Nagata Ward Office. Before ferreting out a doctor, he needed to grasp the situation back then.

This was where Akiko had lived from age nine until the end of high school, but the area had been devastated by the quake that struck a year after she moved to Tokyo. Many buildings had completely crumbled or burned down, and even the land beneath was said to have shifted. Mikoshiba needed to start by comparing things to the present.

“I would like a map from before the earthquake, to contrast with the current map.”

No sooner than he had opened his mouth, the woman at the desk looked troubled. “Um, we don’t have old maps such as you are looking for.”

“You don’t? But aren’t they materials related to the earthquake?”

“Please wait a moment, sir.”

She seemed to be in her early twenties. She probably didn’t know everything about the ward office yet. After a short conversation over an internal line, she turned to Mikoshiba with a relieved look. “If maps made by a private firm are acceptable, ones from before the earthquake and now are available at the Townbuilding Section on the third floor.”

Mikoshiba was a little appalled that, in short, they only had commercially available maps. He had assumed that the local ward office would have examined in detail the townscape’s transformation due to the earthquake.

On the third floor, he got both an old and a new map. Akiko’s address at that time had been 3-2-2, Komiyama, Nagata Ward. On a map from 1994, that is, the year before the earthquake, that was on the second floor of an apartment house called Glorious Nagata. The road in front was a bit curved and narrow. Small homes, apartment buildings, and a tannery workshop lined it.

Mikoshiba’s eyes ran over the vicinity in a three-mile radius from Akiko’s apartment. Kusakabe Clinic, Nagata Second Hospital, Hisaka Pediatric Clinic, Inoue Internal Medicine—hospitals started to crop up outside of the crowded residential area. It was highly likely that Akiko had visited one or more of them. The question was how many of them were still there.

Next, Mikoshiba opened the current map and flipped to the page for the same neighborhood in Komiyama. Momentarily, he thought his eyes were deceiving him.

Flustered, he confirmed the heading in the margin, but it was the right page. Looking at both maps for a while, he was stunned at the changes.

The narrow curved road was gone. Instead, wide straight roads ran vertically and horizontally. Every house was arranged neatly along them, and while there were fewer apartment buildings, they looked that much more spacious. There were remarkably fewer symbols for factories, and what stood out instead were parks and public buildings.

This was gentrification under the name of reconstruction. The
earthquake had made way for a massive civic project that would normally cost considerable time and money due to protests and eviction negotiations. If the buildings, land, roads, and everything else turned to dust, demolitions and forced relocations were suddenly free and you could draw any blueprint you liked.

Mikoshiba looked for the clinics that he had found on the old map. But not one of the names was to be seen at or near the original spots.

“Don’t you have a database or something for where hospitals from before the quake moved to?” he demanded of the staffer at the desk.

She looked sorry but was evasive. “We haven’t compiled a specific database for individual relocations. Some families lost all of their members …”

When he asked where materials about the disaster were stored, he was guided to the Earthquake Archive on the seventh floor. He was already beginning to despair but headed there anyway. When he actually saw the aerial photo labeled “Damage Situation Pictorial,” he was totally devastated.

A scorched plain. Nothing in the bird’s-eye view of the area retained its original shape. Just to make sure, he compared it to his photocopy of the old map. The clinic locations that he’d noted were completely flat.

The size of each didn’t exceed that of a private practice, and most of them must have doubled as residences. The disaster had struck at 5:46:52 a.m. If the doctors had been staying at their clinics, chances were that they’d been crushed beneath the rubble. Indeed, the fact that the clinics’ original names were missing from the new map suggested that their owners were no longer of this world.

Before long, Mikoshiba had a sullen look on his face.

The further back he waded into the past, the less info. He’d been prepared for that, but not for such a catastrophic destruction of evidence.

Information was transmitted via humans and documents. A
7.3-magnitude earthquake, however, could obliterate both.

There would be no further progress here—that was Mikoshiba’s judgment as he left the Nagata Ward Office. The only remaining possibility was Akiko’s time in Kyushu, where her family lived before moving to Kobe.

He got on a bullet train for Hakata at JR Kobe Station. It was two hours and twenty-six minutes to Hakata. He would be there shortly after noon.

He was quite doubtful that he’d obtain any results even if he went. It was more than a quarter-century ago that Akiko’s family had lived in Fukuoka City. Even the Edogawa era, only sixteen years past, had failed to produce any witnesses, and as for the Kobe years, the locale itself had disappeared. The possibility that there would be any helpful evidence from even further in her past was almost zero.

Vexation, fatigue, and disappointment weighed on his shoulders. Another lawyer in his shoes would be having ulcers right around now.

If this were some other case, Mikoshiba’s response might have been a little different. He typically enjoyed the feeling of being driven into a corner. He’d been in this kind of situation numerous times, but always found a hole that only an ant could crawl through to bring down the prosecution’s dike. He’d even taken vexation and fatigue to be a harbinger of victory.

Now, however, he felt out of sorts. The more he struggled, the farther the goal slipped away. He didn’t feel like he would win.

He arrived at JR Hakata Station at 1:20 p.m. Here he would transfer to the Kagoshima Main Line to head to the city center. His destination was Akiko’s permanent address, Ohashi, South Ward, Fukuoka City. What waited there was a quarter-century-old past.

A telecom sales outlet stood where Akiko’s natal home had been. As befitting a commercial district, there were stores and restaurants across the street as well.

Learning from his Kobe experience, Mikoshiba had already
compared copies of old and new maps and was done with researching the neighborhood’s transformation. The name of the town had changed after Akiko was born, and the new one was still in use. The whole area had once been “undesignated” and dotted with farming plots. After a major electronics company was invited to set up a plant nearby, development took off.

As far as Mikoshiba could tell from comparing the two maps, most houses, including Akiko’s, had disappeared. When it came to hospitals, the old map didn’t note a single one but the new map showed five. He couldn’t glean anything beyond that.

He had, however, obtained useful information from an officer at a police booth. Old man Takamine, age 86, lived not far from the shopping area. He’d been the head of the neighborhood association back in those days, and in the manner of the elderly, he supposedly remembered the past better than the present.

What a boon.

Old man Takamine lived alone in an old wooden house. Perhaps he chatted often with his neighbors and had many visitors because he was hale, for his age, and fairly articulate for someone who lived alone.

“I remember little Akiko. Her family was very close. I saw the news of her husband’s murder in Setagaya but couldn’t believe that little Akiko … I guess she couldn’t cut ties with tragedy. Are you aware of the prior incident?”

“Yes. Until she was nine the family lived here, didn’t they?”

“But that thing happened. I felt awfully sorry, you know. The victim’s side suffering such slander from the neighbors and media.” Old man Takamine’s gentle voice bristled. “This neighborhood was no exception. People can be terribly unscrupulous and irreverent when they can remain anonymous. I heard that there were incessant calls. ‘How are you feeling now?’ they’d ask a family that had endured misfortune, or post signs that said, ‘The compassion getting to your head yet?’ The family was reduced to shopping at night to avoid prying eyes.”

Mikoshiba nodded silently, but that was to be expected. Sweet as honey, others’ misfortune—if it was within reach, people reached for a taste as if it were the most natural thing to do.

“But I felt sorriest for little Akiko. She always seemed terrified after the incident. Her parents would take her to school, but a girl who’d been so quick to laughter never smiled again.”

“Regarding Akiko … Do you remember if she visited a specific doctor at that time?”

“Doctor? Yes, there was one. A tragedy had befallen her at such a tender age. Medical care was absolutely necessary for her.”

Mikoshiba’s receiver twitched in response.

This
.

He’d grabbed its tail at last.

“Do you remember the name of the doctor she visited?”

“ ‘Remember’ isn’t the word … Hereabouts, ‘doctor’ meant Dr. Mizohata. From children to old people, most of the residents were his patients.”

“Where is this Dr. Mizohata now? I didn’t notice the name on a recent map.”

“He moved out sometime in the nineties. After closing his practice, he and his wife went to his son’s place if I’m not mistaken. I wonder how he’s doing now … Ah, pardon me. Once I start talking about the past, I’m buffeted by a host of memories. Old stories are harsh on old people.” Takamine gestured as if to scatter a damp haze.

“What kind of illness was she suffering at that time?”

“Oh, I don’t know that much. I didn’t ask her parents, nor did I pay attention to rumors. Sometimes the politest thing to do is to try not to interfere.”

Mikoshiba snorted. It was an admirable approach to life, but such piety hindered criminal investigations. It was, everywhere and always, curiosity and malice that smoked out hidden facts.

“Is there any way to contact Dr. Mizohata?”

“Well, he is older than me. Who knows if he’s still alive.”

“Whether I can obtain Dr. Mizohata’s testimony or not is likely to decide Akiko’s fate.”

This was enough to bring Takamine to heel. “Is it that important?”

“Much more than you would imagine.”

“Like I said, though, I’ve fallen out of touch with him.”

“I’m not asking you to contact him right at this moment,” Mikoshiba said, bringing his face closer to the old man’s.

Mikoshiba’s unkind demeanor and declarative tone had a sort of intimidation effect that he himself was well aware of. He also knew that this former neighborhood association chairman was the type to spare no effort to hunt down someone once he was on board.

“The trial will go on. If it’s in time for the final argument, we stand a chance to win. But after that, we’re doomed. Do you understand, Mr. Takamine? The power of life and death over Akiko lies in your two hands.”

The old man gulped.

—
3
—

The second session of the appeal trial.

Misaki entered Courtroom #822 ten minutes in advance. The defense attorney and the accused, let alone the three judges, had yet to show up, but an empty courtroom somehow sharpened his mind. Once upon a time the swordsman Musashi had won handily by turning up late to a duel, but it usually worked the other way round in court fights. It was much more advantageous to prepare meticulously, to sound out the enemy, to settle on a plan, and to wait.

Just when the seats in the visitors’ gallery were almost full, Mikoshiba appeared. Misaki cast a sidelong glance at the fellow’s profile but couldn’t read zilch from his ever Noh mask-like face. Whether he’d won a reduced sentence, as in the previous case against Misaki, or lost ground as in the preceding session, he always looked the same. In fact, his expression didn’t change a bit even as he made his arguments.

In the courtroom, logicality had priority over sentiment. This was because the premise was not to debate the weight of a crime based on emotion. Confronted with heinous criminals and impudent defendants, however, many prosecutors adopted a harsh tone out of a sense of justice that had led them to their vocation. Indeed, Misaki was one of them. His vulnerability had been exploited and had sunk him in the previous case, so he was trying hard not to show his emotions this time, but he was woefully unsubtle compared to Mikoshiba.

Did Mikoshiba have any at all? It was difficult to imagine him, with his heartless mug, getting angry. It was even harder to picture him laughing cheerfully. And presented with that face, Misaki felt an odd discomfort. Wondering what lay at the root of it, he arrived at the conclusion before long.

Gambling—whether poker or mahjong. It was like being forced to play a game where you had to read the other players’ minds from their expressions. The courtroom was supposed to be an arena where you fought by layering evidence on logic, but Mikoshiba brought in bluffing and psych-ops. That was what unnerved Misaki.

In due course, Akiko, and finally the judges led by Sanjo, entered. Everyone stood up.