Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan (18 page)

The male detective must have had children about the same age because he backed down. “Of course. If it’s necessary, we will return.”

That particular detective did not come back. The disappearance of young Chie Toyama confounded the police for a couple of years. She never made contact with her parents in the countryside. The local newspaper unearthed the details of her life—how she had been so mercilessly bullied by some girls at her high school that she was driven away from their quaint town after graduation. Weighed down by shame, one of these bullying girls then committed suicide, and then all interest in the missing Chie Toyama receded, as if the suicide was, in essence, penance for whatever happened to the young woman.

For several months, Hideyoshi was in a state of disbelief that he had killed someone. And after Chie’s former classmate’s suicide, Hideyoshi couldn’t believe that he was actually going to get away with it. Every movement became intentional. Even just dragging his toothbrush against his front teeth seemed like a revolutionary action. Ironically, as a girl was now dead, Hideyoshi had never felt so alive.

Eventually, however, the mundane began to seep back into his life. More requests to pick up used furniture from retirement-age men and women, more purchases by bachelors. Hideyoshi needed to find another victim, but he knew that he had to be careful. It couldn’t be an actual customer, but a window shopper who passed through all the small stores on their street. Someone with no ties to the area.

He selected the second one because of her size. She was inordinately small, maybe only four feet nine inches in height.

He was closing up the shop while she was standing there studying her phone. A map was on the screen and the image kept flickering on and off.

“Excuse me,” she said to him. “I hate to bother you. But I’ve just moved into the neighborhood and I’m already lost. My phone seems to be malfunctioning.”

Hideyoshi asked the woman for her address. He knew exactly where it was: a part of town that happened to be a web of skinny back alleys. He could have taken her but he didn’t want to be seen with the woman. No, that would ruin everything.

He instead verbally told her how to get to her destination. Right, then left at the mailbox and then another right at the house with some stonework out front.

The woman giggled in embarrassment. “I can’t believe that I could be so stupid.”

“No,” Hideyoshi said. “It’s all quite understandable.”

Hideyoshi took a shortcut to the woman’s apartment. In spite of his directions she must have gotten lost again, because her small frame didn’t appear at her door until at least fifteen minutes later.

She had barely opened her door when Hideyoshi pushed his way in behind her.

The next day the murder was on the television news. The woman’s body had been found by, ironically, a deliveryman. She was discovered without her panties and skirt, although she was still wearing socks. And she had been strangled to death.

“Mah, what is the world coming to?” Atsumi commented, holding her soup bowl.

Yoshi was now fifteen and seemed mildly interested, especially with the implication that the woman could have been sexually assaulted. There would be proof, of course, but no bodily fluids. Hideyoshi made sure of that.

The newscaster mentioned that the woman, Kaneko Saijo, had been separated from her husband and had just moved into a new apartment.

“I wonder if the husband had anything to do with it?” Atsumi said in between slurps of miso soup.

Hideyoshi’s eyes widened. Would other people think the same thing?

One day in Hell—actually, Hideyoshi wasn’t sure if it was a day or just a moment—his box was opened. He looked up to see a person—or was it a person?—peering down at him.

She was blond like the women in his porno magazines, but only the hair was the same. The face, with its pinched nose, had an unattractive quality to it. It certainly didn’t look human. She wore a tight white uniform, but even her curves seemed a bit misplaced.

Hideyoshi immediately formed a strong distaste for the woman, or whatever she was. He imagined wrapping his hands around her stringy neck, putting his thumbs against the soft spot above her clavicle.

“We don’t like you talking to Mr. Osumi,” the blonde said about his neighbor.

“Why?”

“It’s not recommended.”

“I wasn’t aware of any rules. I wasn’t given any when I came.” He couldn’t remember much about entering Hell. Only that there had been some shaking.

He tried to sneak a look beyond the uniformed creature. Rows of boxes. “How many of us are here, anyway?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

“I want to talk to your supervisor,” he demanded.

“Suit yourself,” the blonde closed the top of the box and within minutes—or was it minutes?—appeared a creature with the same pinched, beaklike nose. Instead of blond hair, however, the figure had a bald scalp with extended veins all across it.

“I want to know where my son is,” Hideyoshi said. “We were to be executed by hanging on the same day. He should be here. We have the same name.”

The creature wore a black suit, which again didn’t seem to fit him quite right. He brought out a manila folder. “Well, let’s see,” he said, leafing through the papers.

“Hideyoshi Osumi,” Hideyoshi repeated, in case there was some kind of bureaucratic mix-up.

“Yes, Hideyoshi Osumi. I see him now. Twenty-nine years old. Young to be executed.”

What an unnecessary comment,
Hideyoshi thought, but he held his tongue.

“I will look into this,” the creature promised and then the box was closed again.

Yoshi was not Atsumi’s biological child. He wasn’t Hideyoshi’s blood child, either, but they did share the same linked DNA. Yoshi was
yoshi,
an adopted child from his sister’s family. She already had two sons and a girl, while Hideyoshi had none. This fourth-born would continue the Osumi lineage. Hideyoshi and Atsumi decided to call him Hideyoshi, too, although instead of kanji, they used the phonetic hiragana, Hi-de-yo-shi. His nickname, Yoshi, was an inside joke between the two. The creation of the nickname, in fact, might have been the last time they shared an authentic laugh.

Hideyoshi thought that a child would create a perfect triangle between the three members of the household, but instead Yoshi became a mama’s child, a
botchan
. Mother and son stood together on one side, while Hideyoshi remained alone again on the other. And that’s the way it was until the murder of the third woman.

Hideyoshi had erred in choosing her. She was physically stronger than the other two, with large shoulders and big breasts. She seemed more decisive, too. She wanted to see whether he had two more of a certain kind of chair, so insistent that she even followed him into his storage unit.

As they stood alone in a dark, dusty space, she didn’t seem the least bit afraid or tentative with him. She probably thought nothing of an old man in a long-sleeved shirt and khaki pants.

It was the smell of her hair, which was long and plaited in two long braids, that first tantalized Hideyoshi. It smelled milky, like the drink Calpis. He remembered how his mother would stir in the white syrupy liquid with cold water and ice cubes during hot summer months.

The girl was examining one of the chairs when Hideyoshi fingered one of her braids. He thought that he was being discreet, but she felt his touch immediately. She turned back at him and struck his cheek. “You dirty old man!” she proclaimed. She then rushed towards the open door, but Hideyoshi grabbed her jacket, which was tied around her waist. He pulled her back and she immediately started to scream.

To stop her, Hideyoshi grabbed hold of something on one of his shelves—a faux European lamp stand. One blow with it and she fell to the ground, twisting like an injured caterpillar.

Hideyoshi tore at the woman’s shirt.
How dare you slap me like that,
he thought. He held her neck as she struggled.

“Papa?” Yoshi had entered the storage unit. He was sixteen and partial to big breasts, based on his taste in semi-pornographic manga.

“Come, help hold her down.” Hideyoshi commanded.

Yoshi didn’t move for a second.

“Yoshi-
kun
!” Hideyoshi called out. His blood was racing. He had to have her.

After he was done with her, Hideyoshi tightened his grip around her neck until she breathed no more.

In hiding the body, Hideyoshi gave his son a series of directions. It was as if they were doing a home-improvement project together. “Yoshi-kun, get a bucket of water. Yoshi-kun, get that bag of cement mix.”

Usually Yoshi had no interest in his father’s business, choosing instead to stay in his room and read manga when he wasn’t in school. But this, of course, was entirely different.

Hideyoshi emptied a large plastic container of various knickknacks. “You get her legs,” he instructed his son as they carried the body into the container. It was tight, but she did fit.

Yoshi helped his father mix concrete together and pour it over the body in the container. As if they were preparing a special cake with a surprise inside.

They did everything in the corner of the storage unit in order to be efficient. That way, after the concrete hardened, they could just leave the box there. In the course of five years, four concrete blocks came to occupy different corners of the storage unit. All produced by father and son.