Goya Lane

By Rich Jackson

When detective Hidaka investigates the murder of a young, Tokyo student, he recognizes it as the handiwork of Misaki Okano, the Saitama Murderer. Okano first came under police scrutiny as a member of Aum Shinrikiyo, the urban terrorist group that released Sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system. He was one of four who escaped through the labyrinthine, complex subway beneath the city.

Goya Lane was inspired by the bombing of Japan in 1945 and the clear and present reality of a looming nuclear winter. In a growing climate of jihadist terrorism, ethnic fascism and geopolitical aggression, the world is in a race to acquire and stockpile nukes. The flashpoint will occur when radical extremists finally come into possession of a three-phase, stratospheric missile. That will be the last jihad. In Goya Lane, that reality is addressed.

While in pursuit of Tokyos infamous Saitama Murderer and child abductor Misaki Okano, detective Hidaka and Captain Saito come up against Ryodan, a radical terrorist group dedicated to avenging Japans loss of imperial glory in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the extensive, underground railway systems of Tokyo, the largest in the world, the two men discover a society of third-generation bomb survivors, governed by the strict, jihadist-like control of Ryodan.

The capture of Okano becomes all the more critical when it is discovered that he and his Ryodan counterparts have come into possession of a nuclear warhead. With forty-eight hours to locate the device, the detectives embark on a harrowing, underground odyssey. The time frame for detective Hidaka becomes all the more critical when he learns that his own daughter has just gone missing and the evidence points to Misaki Okano, the Saitama Murderer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503556621

Rich Jackson

Rich Jackson was born in Great Falls, Montana. He has lived in Minnesota, Louisiana and Pennsylvania and currently resides in Clovis, California. He has toured professionally as a musician and is a retired, secondary language instructor and soccer coach. He is an Infantry Army veteran and member of Post 147 American Legion in Clovis, CA. Rich Jackson performs music in a number of venues throughout the San Joaquin valley and writes contemporary mystery fiction. His pastimes include: golf, road-trips on his Harley, arranging and performing music with his brother, jamming with friends, following championship boxing and, when time allows, talking treason at the local Starbucks.

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Copyright © 2015 by Rich Jackson.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Rev. date: 04/07/2015

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Contents

PART I

Prologue

Chapter One The Saitama Murderer

Chapter Two A Soul’s Necrosis

Chapter Three Ballet Girl

Chapter Four Taxonomy of Evil

Chapter Five Subterranean Homesick

Chapter Six The Smile of a Girl Confined

Chapter Seven Di Colore Oscuro

Chapter Eight Sublethal Force

Chapter Nine The Adagio of Mai

Chapter Ten Political Thimblerig

Chapter Eleven Soul in Disrepute

Chapter Twelve A Lid Drawn Tight

Chapter Thirteen The Ledge

Chapter Fourteen Coming Into Kofun

Chapter Fifteen Like Bursts of Fruit

Chapter Sixteen From a Distance

Chapter Seventeen Death: A Noncontradiction

PART II

Chapter Eighteen The Saucer Magnolia

Chapter Nineteen The Okano Effect

Chapter Twenty The Fowler’s Noose

Chapter Twenty- One A Merchant Rising

Chapter Twenty-Two Project Code: Goya Lane

Chapter Twenty-Three The Solidity of Dreams

Chapter Twenty-Four Thunder Demon’s Hidden Moulin

Chapter Twenty-Five Like Kennedy

Chapter Twenty-Six Mission Drift

Chapter Twenty-Seven Descent to the Askew

Chapter Twenty-Eight Road to the Interior

Chapter Twenty-Nine Things Unequivocal

Chapter Thirty Sleeper Track

Chapter Thirty-One Kofun Revisited

Chapter Thirty-Two Goya Lane

Chapter Thirty-Three The Ledge Redux

Chapter Thirty-Four The Tombs Redux

Chapter Thirty-Five Isaia’s Colonnade

Chapter Thirty-Six The Principals Assembled

Chapter Thirty-Seven Like Rain on the Roof

Epilogue

All warfare is based on deception.

Sun Tzu

PART I

PROLOGUE

We learned in 1945 the elder ojiisan explained, that the human will is not always governed by moral law. We can choose, Otani, to act with morality or not. Ultimately, it is the only freedom we have.

Takuan was the age his son is now when the planes flew overhead. The clock above the dry-erase board marked 8:10. It was Thursday, clear and sunny.

Takuan exited the building with his classmates. He had been twice corrected and instructed to walk directly behind Miss Yoshimoto, something he hardly considered punishment. He had been in love with her since she took over his class mid-term. She would pass by his desk as fragrant as a cherry blossom and he decided they would marry when he finished grade school.

They walked in single file while Miss Yoshimoto counted heads with her finger like playing one-potato two-potato. She looked up into a sky that spread out pleasantly and shaded her eyes. Three large airplanes flew overhead with such integrity that they seemed to move as one. A siren sounded its familiar two-note carillon, an unwelcome reminder of a distant war. The real war didn’t happen in places like Hiroshima where peace flowed as naturally as the pulsation of an artery. The date was August 6, 1945.

The precise formation, now directly above, moved eastward. She made a visor of her hand and momentarily caught the movement of something unusual. She followed the arc of the aircraft. They would soon be out of sight and she could take her class to the recess field where she remembered the scores from yesterday’s game. She enjoyed acting as referee because it allowed her students to challenge her without appearing impertinent.

But she did see something. A metallic reflection separated itself from the formation and disappeared. When it reappeared she had to look directly overhead. The object fell out of the sky with frightening velocity and a horrid, sick wave passed over the substitute teacher. What descended upon the children’s playground was the solemn, universal groan of mankind unable still, to resist the powers of war and destruction, trading wrath for wrath and pity for pity. Kodomo, she whispered, hashire! Then as loud as she could she screamed, Kodomo—hashire! Run, children run, but for the good it would do. More than anything in this life, she regretted the chastisement that morning of the beautiful little Takuan. She prayed that the after-life would accept her without judging too harshly.

Takuan Saito never revealed the memory of that day until he was much older.

The cost of war he told his son, was too high. We lost twenty to their one; two and a half million perished.

Papa san, you’ve never spoken of that day.

No Otani, I have not, but you’re older now. Sit, musuko segare, it is time to learn about that day and about the violence and injustice into which you were born. Learn to hate these two faces of evil and you will live honorably. He pointed to a chair, And honor has no birthright. He faced the window, reliving that day.

"We stood in line behind Miss Yoshimoto and she told us to run. But she held on to me, and of course I loved her so I didn’t mind. When the sky lit up as a bright light, a huge weight descended on us and I felt everything leave my body. I couldn’t breathe because she had fallen on me, but she didn’t really fall on me. I know now that she had placed herself across me just before the light and pressure crushed and burned everyone. Miss Yoshimoto saved my life, the enemy did not spare me and for that there exists a world of difference.

The destruction caused by the blast conformed to no index. It was so innovative and unique that its purpose could only be admired. The fire burned skyward and out, and flames shot up from the city as high as forty thousand feet. All this I learned later. There were no buildings except for those reinforced with heavy concrete and nothing moved. I crawled from under Miss Yoshimoto and her weight was that of bamboo sticks, dry and withered. She had no features and only a faint outline of limbs. But Otani, and this has haunted me these many years, in spite of the terrible aftermath of noise and heat there was a hint of fragrance. Can you appreciate the absurdist comedy of a fifth-grade boy reveling in the scent of cherry blossom while being saturated with radioactive isotopes?

When I arose I saw distressed mounds of clothing in a very dark contrast and they were scattered as would have been my classmates. Then the nightmare became a sojourn into hell. Others began rising and some chattered and moaned but most were silent. Their skin, blackened and burnt, split open, exposing muscle and bone and the hair had been singed from their heads. I could not tell if I viewed them from the front or the back, such was the damage. Only when they began to move could I see their humanity. And they all moved. You cannot stand still under the weight of such mutilation. You must try and walk as if through movement you can regain the loss.

Otani my son, here is a nightmare. I see them walking at night when I sleep. Their movement is identical. They walk leaning forward with their arms out so that the skin from their hands and arms will not rub off on their bodies. I see people walking everywhere and they are like ghosts coming up from the ground. When I stood and moved what was left of Miss Yoshimoto, I had one small burn on my hand. How is that possible? I alone had been spared."

What happened then Papa san?

Everybody, all the walking ghosts did the same thing. They moved toward the road in front of the school. I don’t know why, there was nothing anywhere that remained. It was a road that went nowhere. But for some reason we all took to the road as if to distance ourselves from the destruction by walking into more destruction. When I looked back I saw many dead lining the road while others sat gently, and quietly settled into the relief of death.

Gomen nasai Papa san, but why are you telling me this now?

You are pardoned, son. I am telling you because you are of an age where responsibility will soon displace the doom of youth. You will be contacted at some point, I do not know how or when. But when that time comes, you must make the choice of a man whose blood line is traced directly to the greatest devastation your country has ever known.

Again Papa san, gomen nasai, but what will be required of me?

Much will be required. Two words I want you to remember. Do not write them down anywhere, nor repeat them to anyone, not even your wife, should you marry.

And they are?

Kaji Asa.

Kaji Asa, morning fire? What is that supposed to mean?

You will know when the time is right—Kaji Asa.

CHAPTER ONE

The Saitama Murderer

To be a thorough scholar you won’t need the discipline and constraint of a Master. If you intend to penetrate deeper into the world of academics, more specifically, the sciences, you will do it by virtue of your own genius and industry, spoken by a proud father to a son whose genius and industry were more byproducts of intellectual mercury than application. Nevertheless, the father’s kind words blew right by him like the white wind of a Japanese kaze.

I am honored by your confidence Papa san, but I have a plan beyond academics.

Soji Hidaka attended MIT on a scholarship. He received his Master’s in Nuclear Science with a focus on Quantum Physics and Fusion Technology. He went on to do graduate work and ultimately earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Differential Equations and Linear Algebra—which he proudly brought back to Tokyo, along with his new American bride, Carla Parlier.

Carla enrolled as an incoming freshman from Seattle. She had been accepted by MIT and reminded at registration that she had, quite possibly, the lowest overall SAT’s of any applicant. Her scores in critical reading and writing however, jumped off the charts. Unperturbed, Carla had no intention of making it through her freshman year—that is, until she espied the tall, athletic Asian dominating the tennis courts.

I didn’t know you liked tennis, Carla’s dorm partner plopped down beside her, or do you just like checking out the players?

"I like that player. He’s gorgeous. I like the way he moves."

Oh yeah, you mean Soji? He’s in my String Theory and Relativity class.

Introduce me. Carla would not see the U.S. for another ten years.

Soji and Carla settled in a nice, middle class apartment for 80,000 yen, or $679.00 in Carla’s part of the world. As a junior member of the Tokyo Psychiatric Board and the American wife of a well-regarded Japanese scientist, she looked forward to the privilege and prestige certain to follow. Unfortunately, her husband did not immediately trade in on his elite education. He had a plan.

Soji had been offered a position as lead inspector for the nuclear reactor facilities and PAC-3 missile sites in Japan. Since Korea had begun testing in Japanese waters, Japan had joined with the United States in the creation of a four-stage anti-missile shield.

Soji understood, as did the rest of the scientific community, that the current Japanese anti-nuke policy was naïve in the extreme. He knew also that terrorism had become as much a parochial concern as international. Still… he had a plan.

I know it’s what I’ve trained for, he told Carla, but I’m thinking of something more specific, like say, and he had to drop this with caution, police work.

Soji, you want to be a cop?

Detective actually, but yes, since I have a degree in Physics and Forensics is a science, I believe the two can be combined to create a third discipline—a study of the insurgency of political terrorism. Radical extremists aren’t interested in AR15’s and RPG’s anymore; they want a nuke. And trust me, they’ll get one.

Lovely—but I have a practical concern; being a cop doesn’t pay much.

How much could we need?

You and I, not much, but the other Hidaka will have needs.

Whoa, say again, other Hidaka… you’re pregnant? You really are?

Yes, I really am. How’s that for scientific expression? Are you excited?

Carla, I am overjoyed. I will call Tan Nakagawa at TEPCO Quality Control and accept his offer. Boy or girl?

Let’s not know for a while. Soji, can you believe our good fortune. I’ll make you a deal. Take the lead inspector job at TEPCO and if it doesn’t work out, you can apply for Tokyo’s finest.

Done, and who knows, maybe what I learn about nuclear reactors and missile installations will be useful in getting the bad guys.

In the beginning, just being a detective was romantic in a film noir way. Tokyo’s Saitama prefecture had a low rate of violent crime so he applied his powers of deduction to domestics, thieves and those who simply cannot live under the same heaven as other men.

His general outlook on humanity remained as optimistic as the day Captain Saito awarded him a gold shield. He had a good marriage, a daughter as lovely as Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, and a job that challenged him. Life was good… well, good until the body of that first child surfaced.

Soji answered a call to a crime scene in the hills of Saitama. The area, Chichibu region, boasted a rich, natural environment frequented by tourists and wealthy residents. Known for its religious festivals and hanging gardens, Saitama also provided access to the high speed railway lines that led in and out of Tokyo. It was not a place of secrecy and concealment and certainly not a place for the darkened body of a six year old girl.

Identifying the victim posed zero problems. There had only been three missing persons reported in his district in the last year—two adults and one child. Of course, the dna and dental would be completed after transfer, but fingerprints would be a problem—the girl had no hands.

It is the Aoki girl, he said to his partner. She has been missing for a week and her home is located less than a mile from where she now lies. Please stand away, Hozumi san. I want a wide radius of inspection. Also, I would like to be alone with her. Soji did not say body or corpse because he had a daughter of his own. Soon, he thought, some poor father will become familiar with an agony worthy of the name.

He circled from a distance of twenty yards, tightening as he closed the circle. He studied the ground round about her and found what he expected, a faint outline of prints neutralized by the rain, yet still discernible. He noted that they went in different directions. The killer had carried her in then covered her with brush and walked back out in the direction of his own tracks—tracks which told him something very significant.

He kneeled to within inches of the soil and examined the prints. They gave him an idea of the size of the man and the man did not seem in a hurry. But the prints hinted at something the detective already suspected—there seemed to be something abnormal about their regularity.

Detective Hozumi, come here kudasai, and tell me what you see.

They bent over the tracks and Soji pointed to a slight trail on the insides of each print. If he carried her in, the extra weight could explain the drag mark, but the mark followed the shoeprints going out as well.

Ah, very good detective Hidaka, this person appears to be maybe pigeon-toed?

That’s very possible, yes, although unremarkable. Most athletic men are mildly pigeon-toed or more accurately, have a noticeable pronation. I for instance, am pronated, as of course, are all the great basketball and tennis players of the world. No Hozumi san, his movement is much more described. The drag mark is more pronounced as the foot touches the ground. It is quite an abnormal movement and I’ll bet he has worked at correcting it, he thought a little further as was his habit and added: Or maybe it has already been corrected.

Yes, now I see the consistency. He steps he drags and he does it with both feet. That would tend to rule out injury, you think?

It is definitely not an injury. It has too much integrity for that. We’ll, come back to this. Let’s examine the Aoki girl and see what this man has told us about himself.

He noticed immediately the clean severance of both hands. It appeared to have been done with considerable expertise, but the coroner would know such things. He looked at her darkened face, still with features very much untouched and his heart ached for the soul of this young innocent. He wanted to close her partially opened eye so that she could be more private, but considered the forensic fallout of touching the corpse. Soji placed his hand on the child’s brow and gently closed the eyelid.

He studied the obscene discoloration that encircled her small neck and prayed that heaven would be able to backtrack to that moment and erase it. Since the bruising spread out wider on either side of her neck he deducted that it would be ruled a death by manual strangulation. What had she seen in those final moments—had the evil been blunted by a systemic shock to her psyche? Could she have mercifully fainted? He prayed again for heaven to walk this atrocity back for the sake of her eternal and immutable soul.

He arose, drawn back to the prints left by the murderer. Something called and he recognized it as that internal voice of conscience and reason working out the solution. The answer would come as always it did. He started to walk away but noticed another unusual detail on the tiny body. Where the pant leg rode up he saw a neatly drawn line encircling the ankle. He bent and traced his index finger along the line and thought: that line was made by a Sharpie.

Now you are telling me about yourself, he told the murderer. This is something you didn’t want me to know.

He’s young I’m thinking, maybe 20’s or 30’s. The victims’ ages and methodology indicate a man given to impulse. In any case, he’s of an age where uncertainty and hostility would be the overwhelming cadenza of his existence. I suspect he has something wrong, a physical impairment like a bad scar, limp or speech defect, whatever, but something physical. Everything else he hides, this he cannot. Detective Hidaka wasn’t sure how he knew this but he did.

Give me a lead, Soji. I need dna, a print, something.

I have a drag mark.

A dragmark—you’re not hearing me. I need something definitive, like, say a clue? We both agree that whoever did this has probably sworn hatred and revenge against whole planets and it’s a given he’s insane. Soji, I need for you to sound like detective Soji Hidaka not that Hannibal guy.

You mean Lecter? That’s a compliment actually. Absent the homicidal insanity I rather admired the character. But whoever did this is fairly young. The older ones don’t dump their victims, they dispose of them. The man we seek feels time is on his side. He can wait for the opportunity and well, we’ve seen the result.

So you don’t see the Aoki girl as random?

No, he doesn’t do random. It’s not in his circuitry; not since he learned the dangerous truth of all obsessions—they can never be satisfied, only placated.

Theoretically, what else you got?

Pretty standard stuff; he’ll have a low-profile, repetitious job because for him, professional competency goes hand-in-hand with concept and esteem. He will be a reliable, uninspired employee who lives alone and is not plagued by a chemical dependency. This is general background I know, but it’ll eliminate some of the more obvious psychos in the system.

You assume an awful lot. Describe Occam’s razor for your Captain.

The hypothesis with the fewest assumptions is best.

Thank you, now get busy detective, you’re going to need a whole lot more than a general profile to get this guy. And be advised, Saitama is my jurisdiction and I am, as you know, a political male. The next time we talk I better be impressed.

That evening Soji hugged his daughter until she pulled away. Carla watched the exchange and patted the couch.

Are you alright?

Yes, but not really. Sometimes you see things that make you grateful for other things, sometimes.

Wow, you’ve had a bad day. Come to mama.

He fell next to her on the couch. So what’s everybody watching?

Just some old Olympic highlights of Kristi Yamaguchi. Mai wants to become a professional skater now. She’s tired of playing tennis and fears her right arm will become too big and muscular—whatever.

Whatever, Soji said.

Kristi was an awesome athlete, daddy his daughter offered. Did you know she was born with Talipes Equinovarus?

Everyone knows that, he smiled, knowing she knew he didn’t. What is Talipes Equinovarus?

Mai lacked the scientific skills of her father, which she considered to be not of this landed earth, but she did inherit her mother’s facility with language—eidetic memory, was the term a counselor suggested. She also had her mother’s gift of perception.

It means club feet, she said. You know, born with both feet turned inward and down. Kristi had a procedure called the Ponseti something or other and now, look at her. Of course, this video is quite old.

Soji heard the internal voice of reason.

So tell me Mai, she skated like that with no physical impairment?

Well, the ice-lines from her skates tended to converge, but other than that…

He felt as though something had fallen at twice the time it takes a normal thing to fall. Now he understood the secret behind the drag marks. He dialed his partner.

Detective Hozumi, are you in the office? The man we are looking for might have a specific disability, Soji covered the phone, Mai what did you say it was?

Talipes Equinovarus.

He repeated the words for Hozumi, club feet, he clarified. That’s what made me think he walked like a man in leg irons. I need for you to investigate birth and medical records in Tokyo. Go back thirty years and spread out five in either direction. Find out how many cases of congenital Talipes Equinovarus were treated in the city. Eliminate all females and concentrate on the Saitama district. He probably would not be a transient, so eliminate anyone no longer residing in Tokyo.

Later that evening Carla comforted the man she loved. She had always admired his ability to disconnect from the sickness of big city crime (or as she put it, ‘late night in Rome’) and never brought his work home. She sensed that this case might change all that.

You found the Aoki girl, didn’t you?

Yes, and do you know what was so disturbing? It was the still perfection to the choreography of the crime scene. He might have been humming the aria from Mezzo Caraterre, for all we know. No Carla, this is a terrible person who has committed a deplorable act.

You’ll find him though, because now you know some things. Couple Mai’s tip about Yamaguchi with your own brilliant instincts and his days are numbered. How do you see him?

As a person so depraved that he is incapable of loving even himself. He finds nothing worthy either in joy or sorrow, for he has, as Dostoevsky observed, ‘a soul divided against itself.’ Today Hozumi and I found a young girl with missing extremities and I know why.

Why?

He wanted her motionless, powerless. He wanted to freeze time, to put her in a state of object permanence so he could possess her. I think he stopped though, for fear of revealing himself. I expect next time he will not feel such restraint.

How did he almost reveal himself?

He had taken both hands but left marks around the ankles.

What kind of marks?

I’m not sure, like maybe a Sharpie would make? I believe he intended to remove the feet as well.

Maybe the marks were made by a surgical pen. Maybe this guy’s a doctor. Anyway, if he had a disability like Mai described, the feet would have been a more appropriate objective than the hands.

Go on, I’m listening.

It’s like a purification ritual. By transferring the removal of his imperfection to the girl, in this case, feet, he would in some twisted way be saving her from his degradation which would in turn give him control over his own defect. Get it?

But he removed the hands, why is that?

Same principle, he finds his own hands, or what they are capable of so repugnant that by taking the victim’s he regains control of his own. Maybe he just ran out of time as regards the feet or worse—maybe he just got bored.

There is that. Damn, these guys always seem to have a jaw-dropping capacity for sublimating their most deviant behavior. I guess in their world, nothing ever happens to anyone else. Think he’s finished?

Negative, he’s just gettin’ warmed up.

Getting warmed up indeed. The serialization of murder follows a law of undulation—the initial ardor is expected to last forever and when it doesn’t, the disappointment is also presumed to last forever. The need to fall back into the thrall dominates and there is nothing left but to murder again.

Misaki listened to the popping sounds from the furnace. The warmth helped to ease the vague sense of melancholy that came upon him in the evenings when he realized, I get farther off from heaven every day.

He was not a drinking man but on occasion enjoyed a nice Suntory eighteen-year old Yamazaki scotch. He got a slight buzz but not like intoxication, more like a mild state of atraxia where things relaxed a bit. He continued cutting words from the magazine, pleased enough to toast recent events.

The day had been challenging but he managed to locate the next one. Routine would be an obstacle, but soon he would know her schedule. He went to the furnace and removed the metal tray wedged below the flames. A number of ghoulish objects lay blanched on the blackened metal of the tray and when he pressed them with a kitchen pestle, the small hand bones were reduced to a charred powder.

As the eighteen year old Yamazaki eased the sad parenthesis of his mood, he began arranging the words in a magniloquent message. He knew it to be a reckless action, however, moments like these demanded the attention given to music or laughter—they were meant to be shared. His hand-formed ascription stressed a sequence of adjectives and verbs that, for his purpose, represented a complete bypass of all human decency: Immortal, read the first, then—white, palmer, nectar, fountain, silver, mountain.

He used a glue stick to affix the words to a napkin from McDonald’s and put the napkin in a manila envelope. He filtered the ashes of her hands into the envelope and patted it down, then sealed it with the glue stick. The envelope had been pre-addressed from a library computer to Minora and Kenji Aoki sama (a respectful honorific for those of a higher rank), the parents of the child he had earlier discarded.

Hozumi called the next day, Soji, got a pen? Here’s the numbers.

Yes, wait. Hold on a sec, got it, go.

A little more than thirteen hundred cases of Equinovarus were treated in that time frame and two hundred and fourteen of those were in Tokyo. There were probably a lot more unreported and untreated, so this is the number we work with. Two-thirds of those were female so we’re left with about seventy-two realistic cases. Fourteen of those have passed on, twenty-nine moved away, and seven are in prison. That leaves us twenty give or take.

Good work, detective. Now find out which of those live in or near the Saitama district, more specifically, the Chichibu region of our prefecture.

When he hung up he decided to break a promise he made when he received his shield. He would have to bring the job home; he would have to seek the counsel of Carla, not as a wife but as a psychologist.

Just tell me, he said, from a clinical standpoint, what I need to know.

Okay, since no one demands empirical proof unless they’re certain it will be forthcoming, here’s your answer: Your man is the difference between a real man and a statue of a man. He is the difference between a place and picture of that place, get it? It’s important that you know this so that you don’t get lost in a pretext of his humanity.

Carla, if you’re talking about someone who has mastered the pantomime of socialization we could be looking at half the people in Tokyo.

"Right, anyway—he will be outwardly normal but for a disability we assume he has. He will have lived in the same place and worked at the same job for a while and he won’t be a loner like everyone always says. He is a wicked man and wicked people need to escape from themselves, so he will have acquaintances but not friends. He will seek others because when he’s alone he recalls too many disagreeable things."

Will he be a joiner, a member of clubs or affiliations?

Not likely, his sanctuary is anonymity, normalcy and projection. He’s worn this mask so long now that his face has grown into it. It’s even possible he’s unaware of his degeneracy.

That’s not much to go on, as a forensic tool I mean.

Here’s a forensic heads up—a significant period of time lapsed since the Aoki girl was abducted and when you found her. He’s into ritual. He kept her somewhere, probably wherever he lives so he could establish a routine. There will be forensics all over the place.

Did he keep her for sexual purposes?

Maybe initially, but the amputations indicate he saw her as a means of transformation, something to assuage his narcissim. If it were practical, he probably would have kept her alive indefinitely. She clearly wouldn’t have been going anywhere. Anyway detective, find out where this guy lives and it’ll all be there.

Soji went to the Aoki home that morning. He had limited experience with parents of murder victims, but he was a parent, so imagining was a reality. You are taught to pay strict attention to statements for therein lie critical clues—all those in-services and seminars. It was widely held that relatives of victims mostly rambled from the heart, which is at best inarticulation. Before detective Hidaka could ask when was the last time that . . . the father handed him an opened manila folder.

We weren’t sure so we looked inside. This is probably meant for you. He knew it would go beyond me, how could he not?

Soji put on rubber gloves and held the package up like an exhibition. He looked at the address. It had been mechanically directed which meant it came from a specific technology which meant the source could be identified.

He created an aperture and blew to separate the opening. A fine spray of dark gray dust blew out. A chill went through him, a reminder of the single catastrophe awaiting each of us. The gray powder could be anything from amaranthine to ricin he realized, in which case neither he nor the father would make it to CDC.

The detective found a message buried in the mysterious powder, which was itself a mystery: immortal, white, palmer, nectar, fountain, silver, mountain—I wish I loved the human race.

I am sorry for your tragic loss Aoki san, the detective offered. Accept my condolences. We must work together to catch this person. I have a daughter so I won’t tell you that I can’t imagine your pain. I’ve imagined it daily since she was born. Fathers have been agonizing over their daughters since the earth cooled. What I cannot imagine is the impassible frontier that you now face. Soji knew that a soft, tidal return of normalcy would never reassert itself for the Aokis. They would enter a world where everything seems permanently provisional and never have the bemusement of thinking it could be otherwise.

Domo arigato detective, thank you, we’ll pray for your daughter’s safety. I have too much time now it seems. I smoke, I fidget, I can’t settle down. Before, there was always too little time, now there is no end to it.

The words, do they mean anything at all to you Aoki san? Are they somehow connected to your daughter?

No, not at all, but they mean something to him. I despise this person and not just for the disfigurement. Death is a much worse disfigurement. I abhor that he has such a high opinion of himself that his choice of words should impress us.

I believe he gave the words some thought, Soji started to mention the powder but held off. Thank you Aoki san, I’ll take this packet to the forensic people. Try not to be frustrated, time will again be successive.

CHAPTER TWO

A Soul’s Necrosis

Kashi had seen him around enough to know him as a polite man. Consequently, she averted her gaze. Given her age and a precedent of Confucianism, her character had been shaped by the principle of respect and obedience to all elders. Anyway, he seemed polite and people smiled and cheered with him when her team scored a goal. He always sat in the bleachers at home games and because he came and left alone she suspected he did not have a daughter on the team. She guessed that there were other grown-ups who just came to watch the game although hers did not. Since her father moved away, her mother had little time for things extracurricular. So in a way, she and the man had something in common, they both came and left alone.

She was eight and still too young to distrust implicitly. Adults told you not to trust other adults and one parent told you not to trust the other, but ultimately the choice fell to her. And even at eight, choice is a most powerful statement of independence.

So she chose to ignore him, which wasn’t too difficult. He never looked at her—ever, and that struck her as odd. Maybe she was just as invisible to him as she was to everyone else. But something about him made her think that he watched her as she competed and it confused her because it was at once strange and complimentary.

He wore a broad-billed cap like American gangster rap artists, but pulled down way over his face and she could see that he had long stylish hair, and a nicely trimmed mustache and goatee, unlike the other parents. He seemed so, well… chigau, so unique but in a handsome way. Maybe he taught here or maybe he was a parent or an older brother of one of her team mates. He seemed so anonymous with his dark wrap-around glasses. And of course she could never understand why the heavy clothing

The coach had moved her from midfield to forward because of her speed and ball control which made her better at shots on goal than her teammates. Kashi developed into a standout player on the Narashino Antlers and it brought her attention like nothing else. When she looked to the stands after scoring, he would be cheering with the parents, but unlike the other adults, he never looked directly at her. Until recently that is, when the team passed in front of the bleachers after a victory, she heard: Nice game Kashiwa, you are the best striker the Antlers have, and she knew exactly who spoke.

He had a nice voice and he had called her by her full name and it made her blush. As they lined up at midfield to congratulate the visiting team, she looked back and saw him standing alone as the other parents passed around him. But now he looked directly at her from behind his dark glasses, and at the age of eight she finally had the undivided attention of an adult male. That was really something. He had a thumb raised in victory, and he smiled at what she had accomplished on the field. Later, when she returned to the sideline bench for her shoe bag she found a Pocky Almond Crunch resting on top and she knew who put it there. She left quickly and alone, as always.

She had time to think on the walk home. This game had been a defining moment for her. She learned that she could compete. Moreover, she could do it with greater ability than the other girls on the team. This success gave her great satisfaction, but it also burdened her with an indefinable sense of guilt as old as the sin of origination. Her background stressed that humility was the road to pleasure as surely as obedience was the road to freedom. We are made perfect through suffering little blossom, her mother would drive home at every opportunity. That being the case, her mother had to be well on the road to perfection.

Her father on the other hand, espoused less insipid beliefs. He urged her to vie for the best grades and to challenge and to excel on the sports field. He did not want her to be the submissive girl in the back of the room eager yet scared to volunteer the correct answer. Stand out and stand up for yourself, was his personal philosophy. We are unique only to the exclusion of others, he would tell her, "to be means to be in competition."

Her walk home took her past expensive homes built above high cinder-block retainer walls. The hills sloped gently to a wide, intricately designed wood sidewalk with an ornate, waist-high rock divider protecting pedestrians from traffic. The streets were lined with Matsu Pine and Moiji Maple and neighborhoods had begun re-introducing Take Bamboo as a throwback to old-world culture. As she neared the Watanabe Housing district with its high-rise, low-income affordable housing, the retainer walls and traffic dividers disappeared. She now walked a narrow asphalt sidewalk, darkened by weather and riddled with snakelike cracks.

The small economy car eased off the road just beyond her and partially blocked the narrow sidewalk. Kashi stopped. This had never happened before. She could see a man through the rear window. He slid to the passenger’s seat and she heard the door click. She looked behind her as an animal would instinctively assess the path of flight. She didn’t turn around though, and it would have been so easy, so sensible.

A man got out of the car and held a up ribbon like he had just won something. It was the polite man from the soccer game, the man who had given her the thumbs up. Kashiwa chan (he cleverly employed the familiar term used for female family members) you left so soon. Coach Aquino said to catch you and give you this. He told me where you’d be.

Again, the voice had a reassuring quality