The Kizuna Coast: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mysteries Book 11) (8 page)

“Sure. She’s not on duty yet,” I said, striving to behave the way a professional dog-handler might.

“Hello there, Shimura-san.” Miss Michiko Tanaka looked just as I remembered: pretty and petite, with a placid face that turned incredulous at the sight of Hachiko. “Oh! Your cousin did not mention a dog was with you.”

“If it’s too much trouble, I suppose I could find another way to Tohoku—”

“But we are the first civilian volunteers arriving. There is no other group going that could take you.” Tanaka-san bent to look closely at Hachiko, who was sitting with her head drooping like a disgraced schoolgirl. “I’m sure she could be very useful. I’m partnering with Yano-san on organizing this trip, so I’ll put in a word for her. But where shall she go during the ride? Surely she cannot fit into the luggage compartment.”

“She could sit on my lap,” I suggested confidently.

We both looked at Hachiko, who, lengthwise, was about the size of a human five-year-old.

“I suppose.” She still looked worried. “But I don’t know who else would willingly sit with you and that dog…”

“I will sit with them,” a male voice volunteered from somewhere in the crowd.

“I’d certainly like to hold the dog,” an older lady cried out.

“What is cutie’s name? She’s so sweet,” gushed two girls wearing Waseda University sweatshirts.

The Hachiko hubbub finally brought around Yano-san. Now wearing a tattered army jacket and jeans tucked into knee-high rubber boots, he looked even more laid-back than during the orientation. Surely he would turn out to be a dog lover.

“Yano-san, please excuse me.” Swiftly I began my white lie, because he had an expression even more dubious than Miss Tanaka’s. “Did you receive the phone message I left about this service dog?”

Yano-san ran his hand through his unkempt hair. “Sorry, I’ve been so busy. I heard many messages on my phone but may have missed or accidentally deleted a few. I didn’t get any message about dogs.”

“Dogs like this help find people. Please allow her to come,” the grandmotherly woman said in a softly authoritarian tone.

“Which breed is she?” Yano-san looked dubious.

“Hachiko is an Akita-beagle mix. She belongs to the gentleman called Ishida-san whom I mentioned I’m looking for—”

“Helping Hands means
human
hands,” Mr. Yano said. “There is another volunteer group rescuing abandoned animals in Tohoku, not Tokyo.”

A man in his twenties with a cockscomb haircut like Mr. Sato’s hurried up. “Excuse me?” he said, making a quick bow to Mr. Yano.

Good, I thought, a distraction. As the director turned to hear the young man’s request, I gently brought Hachiko out of the garage for one last toileting opportunity. After returning, I encouraged anyone who hadn’t yet petted the dog to meet her. If Hachiko became part of the group, it would be harder for the Helping Hands leader to reject her. But after what he’d said, I knew I was in danger of blowing my chance to rescue Mr. Ishida.

Shortly after I’d come back to the group, Mr. Yano’s voice came over a microphone reminding everyone to take seats on the bus, as he hoped to leave town within ten minutes.

I took a deep breath and went up to him, Hachiko at my side. “What do you think? May I load my luggage and join you?”

After a tense pause, Mr. Yano spoke. “Yes. But please keep him on your lap at all times, and if there is any incident on the way up, we will have to leave the two of you at the gas station. It’s a bit unexpected, you see….”

I wanted to fist pump the air but resisted. I hid my smile, bowed deeply, and said, “Thank you very much. What a great kindness to Hachiko and her owner.”

“This dog will have to work, too,” Yano-san said.

“Of course, of course.”

As I kept bowing, Hachiko nuzzled my leg as if to say
thank you
. But my gratitude was being supplanted by nervousness. Hachiko’s working-dog costume wasn’t a reflection of who she really was. Just as Richard’s red puffer jacket was hardly enough to shield me from the chilly uncertainty ahead.

B
y the time I was cleared to bring Hachiko aboard, most people had already found seats. Hachiko and I wound up next to Mrs. Endo, the lady in her seventies who’d lobbied for her. Endo-san encouraged me to let Hachiko spread out over the two of us so she didn’t get cramped during the ride. As I thanked her, Mrs. Endo produced a terry-cloth neck pillow and a cotton sleep mask.

“I shall sleep most of this journey, to conserve energy. Please excuse me.” Mrs. Endo rested with a hand on Hachiko’s back, and within minutes appeared to be in a more comfortable world.

A young man seated several rows ahead of me, across the aisle, turned and winked at me as Mrs. Endo began snoring. He was the one with the stand-up hair and black leather jacket who’d arrived last minute and looked even less equipped to volunteer in a disaster zone than me.

By the time the bus had proceeded up the Shuto Expressway to the Northeast, Mrs. Endo was murmuring in her sleep. After all that had happened, and my continued battle with jet lag, I tried to drift off, comforted by the heavy warmth of Hachiko’s body on my lap. Sometime later, I awoke to an incessant vibration against my stomach.

Immediately I guessed that my buzzing cell phone held an incoming call from Michael. Instead, Tom’s picture flashed up on the screen.

“Hi, Tom,” I said, trying to keep my voice low because so many passengers around me were sleeping. “How are you?”

“Actually, that’s why I’m calling. Did you manage to get Hachiko approved for travel?”

“Yes. Right now she’s resting on my lap.” I pressed the light on my watch. “We’ve been driving about four hours. Halfway there.”

“I have a small update for you. I e-mailed someone at a hospital in Sendai who said that in Yamagawa there is a shelter for injured and geriatric patients. Perhaps this is the place from where Ishida-san called.”

“Great. Is there an address?”

“I heard they’re based in a recreation center. That shouldn’t be hard to find once you’re there. I hope you can get your friend out quickly and back to the city.”

“Thanks,” I said, just as the bus started shaking like a blender on puree cycle. The phone fell in my lap, and I looked frantically out the window to see what was going on, but all I could see was black sky and red taillights. It felt rougher than the earthquakes I remembered in California and Japan. Was it just because I was on a bus on the freeway rather than at home? I thought of Michael and how he’d already lost his first wife when she was traveling thousands of miles away. There would be too many parallels if I vanished.

Other volunteers were awakening and gasping and murmuring.

The driver had stopped the bus, and I could tell from looking at the brake lights of cars around us that they were also blindly riding out the awful, buckling experience. The bus jerked up and down, awakening all the sleepers. There wasn’t a sound, but I felt the stiffness of our group fear. Even Hachiko sat up, whimpering and shaking.

“It must be an aftershock,” Mrs. Endo said, her hand bumping into mine as we both stroked Hachiko.

“Rei-chan? Are you still there?” Tom’s voice reminded me

“Yes, yes! Sorry about that.” I wouldn’t tell him about the aftershock, as it would only feed into his concerns. “Tom, thanks for calling, but I’d better hang up. People around me are trying to rest.”

I was too anxious to let myself fall asleep again after signing off, even though the movement underneath the bus had subsided and traffic had started up again. After an hour’s worth of driving, the bus pulled off to a Jomo station for refueling. Despite the fact it was two a.m., more than a hundred cars were lined up waiting to enter the station. I worried about how long our fill-up might take before realizing that all those private cars were waiting for one pump, while buses and other official vehicles had sole access to the other.

The bus rolled to a stop behind two others, and I disembarked along with everyone else who queued for the toilets while I took Hachiko aside for her potty break. After Mrs. Endo was through with the restroom, she offered to stay with Hachiko so I could take my own turn. I barely had time to get into the putrid facility before Mr. Yano was calling into his microphone, “Helping Hands, now departing!”

Mrs. Endo was already seated with Hachiko when I jumped on, making apologies for my tardiness. I glanced at my cell phone and found Michael had sent a text. As usual, it was short on emotion.
Where are u and what’s going on? Dog okay?

We’re both on the bus doing well
.
I love you
, I tapped back along with a string of heart emoticons. The fact that Michael had messaged me meant he’d cooled off. It was better going into Tohoku with neutral language from him than nothing.

I waited for an answering text, but it didn’t come. Since the battery was already down to 70 percent, I clicked off the phone and pulled out my water bottle. My slight hunger reminded me of the
senbei
in my jacket. As I tore open a cellophane wrapper, the young man with cockscomb hair looked at me. He’d exchanged seats with someone and was now closer. I imagined that he could probably smell the aroma of the savory crackers.

Remembering the unwitting favor he’d done for Hachiko, I offered the second cracker page to him. “Please, go ahead. I’ve got more in my bag.”

“Ie, ore daijobu desu.”
As the young man politely declined with “No, I’m okay,” I caught his Tohoku dialect, which before now I’d only heard when traveling to auctions or watching TV dramas.

“But our journey is several more hours, and who know what we’ll have to eat when we arrive? Please take it.”

“Itadakimasu.”
Taking the package, he bobbed his head and murmured the phrase that meant, “I gratefully receive this food,” which every proper Japanese person said before eating.

“Are you volunteering till Sunday or longer?” I asked after we’d each finished chewing. I found it amazing how delicious a freshly made cracker could taste.

“I will not return to Tokyo.” Seeing my surprise, he added, “I’ve been in Tokyo for almost a year, but my family lives in Sugihama. They need me now and perhaps for a long time.”

I’d guessed right that he was a northeast boy. “Are they okay? Your family, I mean.”

“My parents’ house is in the hills just outside of town, so the property came through fine. Some windows broke from the quake, but that was all. But my sister and her two daughters were in a low-rise apartment building near the harbor. They didn’t make it.”

“I’m so sorry!” Now I wished I hadn’t been so nosy. My neighbor’s composure was gone, and he wiped a hand across his eyes.

“If I hadn’t moved away, I could have saved them,” he muttered. “Little children are hard to move quickly by yourself. My nieces were age one and three.”

A tear rolled down his cheek, and I felt a familiar, awful prickling in my own. Perhaps sensing my discomfort, Hachiko stirred. She sniffed in the direction of the man, stiffened, and made a low growl.

“Hachiko!” I was upset that she might make a grieving man feel worse. “I’m sorry, but I think she might be tired or hungry.”

“What’s her name?”

“Hachiko. You know, like the famous dog statue in Shibuya. She’s actually a very sweet dog.”

“If she’s hungry, I can give this to her.” He showed me that he had a cracker fragment left.

“She’s got plenty of her own treats.” I reached in my coat pocket and took out one of the sweet-potato biscuits from the vet’s office. “Here, Hachiko. Yes, sweetie, just one snack until it’s breakfast time.” I yawned. “I suppose four a.m. would be harder if I wasn’t still operating on Hawaiian time.”

“I should introduce myself—after your kindness of sharing food,” the young man said. “My name is Rikyo Akira.”

“I’m Shimura Rei.” As Hachiko munched away, I explained that I’d traveled from Honolulu to find Hachiko’s owner, who’d had a head injury and might be in a shelter in Yamagawa.

Akira looked at me intently. “What is your friend’s name?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t know him. He’s an elderly gentleman from Tokyo who had the bad luck to be here attending an auction when the earthquake hit.”

“There’s an antique auction house right in Sugihama that opened a year or two ago. Maybe that’s where he went. What is your friend’s name?” he repeated.

“Ishida Yasushi,” I said, surprised by Akira’s concern. “I heard there’s an injury shelter at a recreation center.”

“If you’re going to Yamagawa, try finding the Morito Recreation Center. That’s a nice, large facility for sports. It’s too many miles from the water for the wave to have hit.”

“Thanks,” I said, surprised. “You know a lot about the area.”

He shrugged. “When I played on my middle school’s basketball team, we had games there. Yamagawa and Sugihama are only two miles apart.”

“So you like basketball?” I continued, glad to have found a less loaded topic than the death of his sister and nieces.

“I’m tall for someone in Japan, so I did pretty well. But I stopped playing in high school.”

“Japanese high school is so demanding.” I felt sympathetic.

“It’s a bit different than that. My father and mother wanted more help with our family business—since I was getting older.”

“Was their business inside Sugihama?”

“No. My father’s a carpenter, and his workshop is near the house. I was working construction in Tokyo, but now that I’m home, I’ll help him repair people’s homes and shops. It’s too much for one person.”

Now I noticed how his leather jacket stretched over broad, strong shoulders; Akira was as buff as any construction worker I’d seen in Western Oahu. Smiling, I said, “It sounds like you’re probably the most essential person heading to Sugihama. No wonder Yano-san took you at the last minute.”

I expected Akira to chat a bit more, but he only gave a slight nod and closed his eyes, just as Mrs. Endo had. I got the message. I was being too American and talking all over the place, while all the Japanese people understood this journey meant hours of precious rest before the onslaught of hard work.

Even Hachiko had the good sense to sleep. I let the rise and fall of the dog’s body guide my own breath. This relaxation practice must have worked, because the next time I opened my eyes, the bus had stopped moving.

“Look at that!” One of the college girls sounded horrified.

“Unbelievable…” Her friend’s voice trailed off.

The sky was light enough to reveal we were driving through the midst of what had recently been civilization. But mud covered the entire landscape. Dropped into filth were a variety of cars, uprooted trees, parts of houses, and many small silver scraps that I realized were fish.

The bus slowly zigzagged through, tires protesting against the mud. Mr. Yano sat behind the driver, leaning in and offering words of encouragement.

“So many fish.” Mrs. Endo had finally wakened, and her eyes widened as she gazed out the window. “The wave must have thrown them all on land.”

And not taken them back. How many millions of fish and other sea creatures had been flung ashore to die? Crows circled and dived, enjoying their feast.

I watched a pair of Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force sailors wearing sinister-looking respirators force open the door of a Toyota hatchback, unleashing a miniflood of dirty water and fish. The men were carefully pulling out something using a plastic tarp. Judging from the bit of pink coat that showed itself from under the mud, I guessed the decomposed body was female. The next corpse to emerge was much smaller, with a dangling Mickey Mouse backpack. I thought this was the worst thing I’d ever seen—until the appearance of an even tinier body, with feet that suddenly flashed a thin ribbon of lights.

Toddler sneakers. My mind went to Akira’s dead sister and nieces. I turned my head and saw Akira was looking in the same direction. Noticing my consternation, he muttered, “Not them. They were already found.”

One sailor walked around with a notebook, stopping at the license plate to write it down. Another tied a ribbon to the car’s side mirror and used a marker to write “3” on the driver’s door.

I shut my eyes, wishing I’d never looked.