Villain a Novel (2010) (40 page)

“What?”

“My precious daughter died because of you.”

Yoshio glared up at him, unblinking. A flash of fear crossed Keigo’s eyes.

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Why did you—abandon Yoshino at the pass!”

At Yoshio’s angry shout, a cat appeared from behind a light pole, bristled, and scampered off.

“What are you talking about?”

Keigo tried to run off but Yoshio grabbed his arm. Keigo attempted to twist away.

“I didn’t kill her! I didn’t do anything!” Keigo broke free from his grasp, but as he did, his elbow struck Yoshio hard in the face. Everything turned blank and Yoshio fell to his knees. Still, he managed to grab Keigo by the legs to keep him from escaping.

“Let me go! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Keigo roughly tried to shake free. His knees scraped the ground and a dry pain shot through him. Keigo tried to walk, dragging Yoshio behind him.

“Let me go!” he yelled.

At that instant all the strength drained out of Yoshio’s arms. Keigo slipped free and almost instinctively kicked him in the shoulder.
Yoshio flew out horizontally and hit his head on the guardrail of the street with a dull thud.

“I didn’t do anything!” Keigo said again. He looked furious and he bolted down the street. In the increasingly white world that surrounded him, Yoshio lay there watching his retreating figure.

“Wait.… You have to apologize to Yoshino.…” He’d meant to shout this, but all that came out was white breath. Keigo had disappeared into the swirling snow. A single cold flake of snow landed on Yoshio’s eyelashes and melted.

“Yoshino … Daddy’s not going to give up.”

As his consciousness grew dim, he could see Yoshino as a young child, toddling along.… Where is this place? Some ferryboat dock? There’s the sea over there. And Yoshino’s running across a huge parking lot. She’s holding a snack, some
chikuwa
from one of the stands, and she’s running toward the sea.

“Are you all right?”

Just as he was starting to lose consciousness, he heard a voice. A young man put his arms around Yoshio and helped him to his feet.

“Can you stand?”

“That guy … you have to … chase him.…”

As he made this desperate plea, the young man looked in the direction that Keigo had vanished in.

“Why … why do you need to chase Keigo?” the young man asked uneasily.

Nearby a black crow was pecking at a bag of garbage. As it tried to tug the bag along the ground, the garbage became covered in snow.

The pitch-black crow shook its head as it tore open the convenience-store bag. A crumpled wrapping for a
bento
flew out of the hole in the bag. A light layer of snow covered the asphalt, dotted with the crow’s footprints. As it spread its wings, they brushed against the glass of the phone booth.

With the freezing receiver held to her ear, Mitsuyo lightly tapped
the glass with her foot, hoping to drive the crow away. Startled, the bird leaped back a step, the plastic bag in its beak.

“Hello? Hello? Who’s calling?” Tamayo asked cautiously.

“Sorry I haven’t gotten in touch.”

“Mi—Mitsuyo? Where are you? Why haven’t you called me? Are you by yourself? Are you okay?”

Mitsuyo couldn’t get in an answer to this flurry of questions. “Calm down, okay?” she managed to say.

“What do you mean,
calm down?
Do you have any idea how panicked I’ve been? They said you’ve been taken away by a murderer. Please—tell me you’re all right! Is that guy with you?”

“No, I’m alone right now.”

“Good. But you have to run away. Right this instant! Where are you? I’ll call the police!”

“Take it easy, all right?”

Tamayo sounded as if she really was going to call the police at any minute. That made sense, Mitsuyo thought. Ever since the night that Yuichi half dragged her away in his car, after she’d told Tamayo not to worry, they had exchanged a few e-mails, but she never answered Tamayo’s questions about what was going on. They’d kept this up until her cell-phone battery died.

“Are you really alone?” Tamayo asked again. “If you really are, then I want you to say
Call the police right away.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“If that murderer isn’t with you, say it.”

Tamayo was serious, so Mitsuyo gave in and repeated the line. “The guy I’m with,” she added. “He really isn’t an evil person, you know.”

From the other end of the line, she heard a disgusted sigh.

According to Tamayo, detectives had been staking out their parents’ house. The police were convinced that Yuichi had forced Mitsuyo to go with him, and after the New Year’s TV programs ended and regular programming started up again, the talk shows began showing scenes of Mitsuyo and Tamayo’s apartment building, though they blurred out the name, and they didn’t give the sisters’
names or show their photos. The investigation was progressing better than they’d expected.

As she listened to Tamayo, Mitsuyo thought of Yuichi, back on the logging road. I’m fine going to the convenience store myself, she’d told him, asking him to stay back in the shack, but Yuichi was worried about her going alone and he had accompanied her down the hill, where he was hiding now in the bushes. The snow must be piling up in those bushes, too, she thought.

“But he really didn’t force you to go with him, did he?” Tamayo asked.

“No, he didn’t,” Mitsuyo answered firmly.

“So what are you planning to do? How can you stay with a person like that?”

Mitsuyo had no idea how to respond. Tamayo broke the silence and said, tearfully, “My God, of all people in the world, why did you have to choose a murderer?”

“Tamayo?”

The crow outside had flown off somewhere, its footprints filling with newly fallen snow.

“I did something terrible, didn’t I.…” Mitsuyo said.

On the other end of the line Mitsuyo could hear her sister gulp. “If you know that,” Tamayo said, “then you’d better—”

“But this is the first time in my life I’ve felt this way. I want to be with him, even if it’s just one more day.”

“You want to be with him? That’s a little self-centered, don’t you think?”

“Huh?” Mitsuyo clutched the receiver tighter.

“I hope you’re not telling me you want to run away with this guy. No matter how much you love him, you can’t tie him down with the way you feel. It’ll be painful, but if you really love him you have to take him in to the police. The more you two run away, the more guilty he’ll be.”

Before she realized it, Mitsuyo pressed the hook with her numb finger. All she heard now was an inorganic whoosh of the dial tone.
Tamayo hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know. She hadn’t expected her sister to understand, but the conversation had only reinforced what she expected—that no one else was on their side.

It had stopped snowing when she left the phone booth.

Leaving footprints behind in the light dusting of snow, she headed for the convenience store across the street. She’d already bought their food, but she’d seen a ¥480 pair of gloves and she wanted to go back and buy them for Yuichi.

You can’t tie him down with the way you feel
.

Tamayo’s words, and her own footprints, followed her.

The parking lot of the convenience store was empty except for one lone car, its engine running. The exhaust from the tailpipes was as white as cotton. Normally she would have noticed it right away, but perhaps because she’d been unsettled by Tamayo’s words, or perhaps because the car blended into the snow, she didn’t see right away that it was a patrol car. The moment she did, her legs went weak, and she couldn’t move.

The heat inside the store clouded the windows, and she couldn’t see inside. Still, she could barely make out a figure at the register that looked like a policeman.

He’s coming out. The policeman’s coming out
.

She tried as hard as she could to walk away, but her legs wouldn’t move. As the automatic doors slid open, she finally was able to walk. There was still some distance between her and the policeman. She was just about to glance back when someone tapped her on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,” a man’s voice said, close by.

She turned and found herself face to face with a young patrolman. His hat was lightly covered with snow. His nose was red in the cold, his breath forming a cloud that almost hid his face.

“Is something wrong?” the patrolman asked.

He smiled at her. He seemed to have been watching Mitsuyo from behind and saw how she had stood there, stock-still, on the road.

“No …”

She turned her face away and strode off. At that instant the patrolman’s eyebrows, stiff in the cold, twitched.

“Hold on a minute. You’re Miss Magome, aren’t you?”

Mitsuyo, about to break into a run, felt these words behind her. A truck drove past. The ruts in the snowy road led straight to where Yuichi was waiting for her on the logging road.

Yuichi
… Mitsuyo called out silently.

The ruts in the snowy road led to a narrow alley. The sunlight and shade cut the road neatly in two, with only the snow on the sunny half dazzling in the light.

Fusae bent over and walked straight ahead, so as to stay within the space between the ruts. Once out of the alley there was the pier, and past that the bus stop. She’d checked the bus schedule. Now if the bus would only come on time.

“Do you have a comment for us?”

“How do you feel now? Any feelings for the victim’s family?”

“Yuichi really hasn’t gotten in touch with you?”

“Do you know the girl he ran away with?”

Fusae stared at her feet, avoiding the cameras and reporters surrounding her. The spot in the snow where she was about to step next had been trampled down, leaving behind a dark footprint.

There’d been only a scattering of reporters up till now, but this morning they suddenly multiplied. Last night she’d talked to Norio on the phone, and he’d said they’d finally released Yuichi’s photo. Right after talking with him, the phone rang again. She was sure it was Norio, but it was yet another threatening call from the health-food people. “Listen, old woman, you haven’t transferred the money to us yet!” the voice on the other end growled.

Fusae hung up immediately, but the phone rang every fifteen minutes until after midnight. Fusae put the futon over her head to
block out the sound. More than anything, she felt frustrated at her own fear spilling over into tears.

That morning when she turned on the TV, the first thing she saw was a talk show reporting on the murder. They didn’t show Yuichi’s photo, but rather a graphic of Mitsuse Pass straddling the Saga and Fukuoka prefecture border, and the highway in both directions. Symbols indicated the murdered girl’s apartment in Hakata, the apartment on the outskirts of Saga City where Yuichi’s girl lived, and Yuichi’s home here in Nagasaki. One more symbol showed where Yuichi’s car had been abandoned, in Arita, and where a witness had seen them in a hotel.

The report said it wasn’t clear yet whether Yuichi had forced the girl to go with him, or whether she’d gone along voluntarily. According to the employee of the hotel who had spotted them, “the girl seemed to be pulling him by the hand,” to which an ill-tempered commentator added disgustedly: “If they’re running away together, the guy’s an idiot, and so is she. What I mean is this is the kind of girl who latches on to guys like that. It’s disgusting.”

Surrounded by reporters and cameras, Fusae finally made it to the bus stop. The microphones thrust at her occasionally brushed against her ears.

Even at the bus stop, the barrage of questions didn’t let up. Fusae didn’t say a word, which led one irritated reporter to shout, “Does your silence mean that you admit it’s true?” trying to force her into making a comment.

Luckily, there was no one else at the bus stop, but along the way, there were local housewives watching Fusae and the reporters, looks of pity on their faces. The bus finally arrived and Fusae, mumbling an apology, stepped forward. The reporters made room for her, though some clucked their tongues in disapproval. She grabbed the handrail and was climbing in when several reporters tried to get on as well. Five or six passengers were already aboard, all of them staring in amazement at the crowd at what was normally a deserted bus stop in a little fishing village.