The Drowning God (6 page)

 

CHAPTER 11

S
ergeant Kuma was leaving the village police station just as Detective Takuda arrived. Kuma blocked the doorway, and he didn't seem to know which way to go. He bowed as stiffly as his belly allowed, and he wouldn't look Takuda in the eye.

As Takuda squeezed in past Kuma, Chief Nakamura shouted for the sergeant via the antiquated intercom. Kuma had escaped just in time. The two young patrolmen scurried around the building to find Kuma in a vain attempt to make the chief happy. Nothing was going to make the village police chief happy on a drowning day.

Nakamura answered Takuda's questions in a cold, halfhearted manner. When Takuda asked him what progress they had made with Lee Hunt's disappearance, the chief grimaced. “That's our business. We can handle the foreigner's disappearance. As to the matter that brought you here yesterday, I talked to your office.” Nakamura shook his head sadly. “Your superintendent says you didn't come here to decide whether to recommend prosecution in Ogawa's case. He says it's strange that I would think so.” He looked Takuda in the eye. “He says there is some sort of—­misunderstanding.”

The first real lie I tell in years, and I get caught.
He pulled out his cell phone.
But if I get caught, I won't be caught by this old scarecrow
.

Nakamura's gaze wavered even though he didn't know who Takuda was calling. Superintendent Yamada answered on the third ring. “Takuda, where are you?”

“I'm in the valley, the police station in Oku Village,” he said. “I don't think our office should exercise jurisdiction in Lee Hunt's disappearance, but I would like to lend logistical support.”

Nakamura blinked. His eyes were watering, and his nose seemed to twitch on its own.

Takuda's boss snorted. “You're doing my job now? Glad you're doing someone's job, since you don't seem to be doing your own. Anyway, I was going to send you up there if you ever checked in today.”

“Of course. When I heard about the missing man, I came straight here to find out what I could.”

“Sometimes, all we have is discipline and procedure. If we don't have discipline and procedure, we're nothing. We're no better than gangsters who live by their own rules.”

“I understand,” Takuda said. There was no way he would apologize for not going to the office, not in front of Nakamura.

Yamada sighed heavily into his ear. “I don't know what's happening with you, but if you can't control yourself, you won't be able to control the situation in that valley, and control is what we need right now. Do you understand? Control. I'm already getting pressure to keep this small.”

“I see. From whom?”

“Don't worry about that.”

“I hear you, Superintendent. I promised Chief Nakamura nothing yesterday in terms of recommending prosecution or exercising jurisdiction in the attempted kidnapping of Hanako Kawaguchi.”

“I don't care,” the superintendent said.

“Yes, that's right. No promise at all. There was obviously some sort of—­misunderstanding.”

Nakamura turned scarlet.

Takuda suddenly found the chief grotesque. He averted his eyes. “As far as the search for the missing man goes, I'll call for Officer Mori. No divers yet. The village police can start their search of the places where bodies always wash up. They know how to find drowning victims here. They call it the water safety question. Finding corpses is what they do best.”

Chief Nakamura's eyes burned.

Yamada growled into Takuda's ear: “Enough! Takuda, don't find any bodies. Don't find anything. Just make sure they're going in the right direction and get out of that valley till you hear from me. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Takuda said slowly, but his mind was racing.

“And don't bother calling for Mori. I'll have him sent to you by dinnertime. Just stick to procedure, keep it clean, keep the details clear, and document what you see.”

“Thank you, Superintendent.”

“And Takuda—­oh, never mind. Document everything on your end, but don't sign off on their reports. Just be smart. Don't find anything, don't sign off on anything.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.” He hung up. Chief Nakamura stared in stony silence as Takuda explained that he would simply make sure the village had all angles covered. Then the chief bowed stiffly and left without any acknowledgment that Takuda had spoken at all.

Takuda was free of the chief, but he had to be careful of his own superintendent. Someone had reached out to Yamada. It was probably a well-­placed friend of Zenkoku Fiber, probably no one from the company itself. At any rate, the call had been made, and the superintendent had been put on notice that the case was being watched.

Am I being watched as well?

He found the two young patrolmen studying a map of the canals. Takuda remembered it well. Their newer copy was laminated, and certain bends and gates had been highlighted red so many times that the washable marker residue bled a pink haze into the surrounding fields.

He said to the taller one, “You're Kikuchi, right?”

The boy bowed, pleased the detective had remembered. He introduced the shorter one as Inoue.

Takuda took the map from them. “With the spring runoff, nothing is likely to catch higher up.” Takuda pointed to a bend in the Naga River he knew too well. “Here is the lowest point on the river where a body is going to show up. Start there, and then work your way upstream toward the site where Hunt was last seen. That eliminates the river. After that, check the choke points in the main canals.”

The patrolmen glanced at each other. “The chief has us starting at the far end of the north reservoir and working our way all around the shore.”

To give someone else time to find the body?
It didn't mean the chief was part of some specific plot. It had always been standard operating procedure with the water safety question. The longer you waited to look in the right place, the more likely the corpse would disappear.

“Look,” Takuda said. “The water is cold, but the sun is warm. It's been more than twelve hours already. If the body washes up in the sunshine, the warmth will make your job more—­unpleasant.”

The patrolmen looked troubled.

Good.

“So, to save yourself trouble and cut traumatic waiting time for the family, do as I say. If you still don't find the body, look right at the end of the shopping street, at the last bend of the main canal.” He laid a finger on a pink cloud of marker residue behind the Gotoh house, right down the hill from his family tomb. “More than one corpse has shown up there.”

“Detective,” Inoue said, “we've been busy this afternoon with the family . . .”

“Where are they?”

“Just his wife. She's in the interrogation room.”

Takuda swore. “Put her in the chief's office. Get her some food and close the shades to give her some privacy.”

They jumped to obey, but he stopped them. “In a second, in a second. First, tell me if you're going to have any problems doing this right.”

Kikuchi said, “No, no one will stop us. Sergeant Kuma slipped out to search the cooling pond . . .”

“You were pretending to look for him a few minutes ago.” Takuda looked at the map to avoid embarrassing them. “Right, then let him look busy, just to keep the chief happy. Go find that body and don't let my name come into it. It's all on you. If someone asks why you were looking in the right place, it's not because I countermanded the chief's orders. You were stopping for a bowl of noodles or a soda from a vending machine, or you thought you saw a badger-­dog acting strangely. Understand?”

Kikuchi blinked. “So, you aren't coming with us?”

“No, I'm not. I have other business this afternoon.”

F
rom the parking lot of Eagle Peak Temple, Takuda watched darkness devour the Naga River valley below. The eastern side of the valley floor still glowed in the yellow rays of the afternoon sun, but the sunset shadows of the western mountains took the valley house by house and farm by farm. Despite the advances of science, despite the electrification of rural Japan almost fifty years before, farmers scurried to finish their work in the half-­lit fields. Everyone wanted to be home before nightfall. It had always been so.

As far as Takuda was concerned, the shadows could have it. The whole day. He crushed his cigarette into a concrete urn.
Perhaps tomorrow will be better.
He continued to grind the butt even after he was sure it was dead. He was tired of waiting for better tomorrows.

“It hasn't changed that much, has it?”

Takuda whipped around. The priest, the younger Reverend Suzuki, smiled and bowed. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you.”

Takuda bowed in return, eyeing Suzuki as he did so. Suzuki was very thin and very tall, a full head taller than Takuda. He wore a white kimono with an embroidered sash of cream-­colored silk slung casually over his shoulder. He carried his prayer beads in his right hand and a lit cigarette in his left. He held the cigarette far from his body to keep ashes and smoke away from the sacred sash.

“You move very softly for such a big fellow, Reverend Suzuki.”

Suzuki grinned and bowed. He was obviously delighted that Takuda had come.

“Your father, was he the head priest before you?”

Suzuki bowed in reply. “He disappeared seven years ago, apparently drowned. I have the honor to serve as head priest.”

“He was a good man. You seem to know me, Priest. Do I know you?”

Suzuki grinned again. He seemed on the verge of bursting into laughter. “I'm Ryutaro, the boy who stole your brother Shunsuke's toy airplane. Don't you remember me?”

Takuda flushed crimson. He remembered thrashing one of the old priest's sons, but he hadn't remembered which one.

The airplane thief still grinned. “Detective, I'm very glad to see you again. You showed me a direct expression of karma in human life.”

A parable for the afternoon.
Suzuki's lighthearted approach was all a patronizing front, a sugarcoating for the pill. “Ah, I see,” Takuda said.

Suzuki took the last drag of the cigarette. “I can tell by your expression that you don't.” He flicked the butt expertly into the concrete urn. “Maybe I'll explain it to you sometime. You didn't come here today for a lesson in practical karma.” He winked like an actor in a Hollywood movie. “Let's go inside.”

They ascended the stairs from the parking lot. With each step upward, more of the temple came into view: the great peaked temple roof piercing the heavens, the eaves turning up at the corners like wings to reveal the bright white stucco of the outside walls, then the dark cedar trim dividing white walls into perfect rectangles. The yellowed bamboo fencing marched on either side of the worn paving stones straight up to the main gate.

At the top of the steps, Takuda stood once again on the wide, sparse approach to Eagle Peak Temple.

“No,” Takuda said. “Nothing has changed much.”

Suzuki slapped him on the back, startling him again. “Let's go in the side door. It's cozier that way.”

Takuda followed Suzuki toward his own childhood.

 

CHAPTER 12

S
mells of incense and wax brought back childhood memories, but the worship hall was even dingier than Takuda expected. The walls, once white, were a mottled cream. The ancient floor matting was faded paler than winter straw. Near the altar, the mat bindings were threadbare, worn away by a very small congregation of old ­people who sat close to the priest so they could hear.

“When I was a boy, this room was full three times a week.” Takuda said.

“That hasn't happened since my father's funeral. I tried door prizes, but I think it was already too late.”

“You have a pretty breezy attitude for a priest.”

“Acting holy is pointless for a country priest. Don't you ever step out of your role as a detective to do your job better?” He slid open the door to his quarters and bowed. “For example, do you ever pretend to break rules in order to encourage a witness to cooperate?”

Takuda stopped on the threshold and turned to face Suzuki. Suzuki couldn't know about his promise to keep Okamoto's name out of the investigation of her husband. He wasn't psychic.

Suzuki was still bowing. Their faces were centimeters from each other, and Suzuki didn't blink. “Please enter my home,” he said.

The kitchen smelled of fried potatoes and dish detergent. Takuda sat at the table while Suzuki prepared the tea.

“So you've been away from the valley, too.” Suzuki was far too tall for the low kitchen counters. “I went away for school, you know, after your brother died, and since I came back, I've mostly stayed up here.”

“All your brothers went away to school too, didn't they?”

“All of them. I was the only one to come back.”

“Why did your father send you away?”

Suzuki poured Takuda's tea. “Here in the Naga River valley, they call it the water safety question.”

Suzuki's face was bland and unconcerned. He dumped a bag of ginger crisps onto a plate.

Takuda took a deep breath. “The water safety question is what brings me up here. One of your congregants seems to know something about it. Her name is Gotoh.”

Suzuki paused with a ginger crisp halfway to his mouth. “I know the Gotoh family. I hope you're not asking me for personal information.”

“I didn't say that. She said you know how some ­people in the valley travel safely by water. What did she mean by that?”

“Ah. Well, that's okay.” Suzuki didn't mind talking with his mouth full. “First, you should understand that most of my knowledge is historical. I've had little direct experience with the water safety question, and almost no contact with the Kappa worshippers.”

Takuda snorted. “Worshippers? Now you're confusing superstition with religion.”

“Not at all. The Kappa was an object of worship, and it still is, for some. You see, this temple has not been completely successful. The cult is no longer in open practice, as it was after the war. Your father and my father together finally broke the practice. They went door to door to stop the Kappa festival, and they got the city symbol changed from the Kappa to the eagle. But vestiges of the Kappa worship remain under the surface. Do you remember the eagle suit, the one the police have now?”

Takuda nodded.

“Well, if you peeled the fabric off the top and the wings, you'd find an old Kappa costume underneath. The clacking wooden beak has been wired shut and painted yellow, but otherwise, the costume is complete. The street was filled with them, my father said, clacking their beaks to represent the Kappa tearing the internal organs from its victims.”

“They were still doing that dance when I was a kid.”

“Yes, in the old Farmers' Co-­op hall, but not out in streets. From what I understand, the dances stopped altogether eight or nine years ago, before my father's disappearance. So the dance is ended. However, that doesn't mean the cult is dead. I know of only one surviving member who has completely renounced the cult. For all I know, the others still hobble on up to the old shrine.”

“So there really is a shrine.”

“Oh, yes. The Kappa dance was just the tip of the iceberg. Yes, the shrine is right below us, in the southwest corner of the valley. The dark corner. It's called the Shrine of the Returning Apprentice.”

Takuda described a photo Mori had found in Ogawa's apartment, a place on a river where two stones formed the uprights of a shrine gate. He sketched it for Suzuki.

“Yes, that might be the approach from the valley floor. I've never been there. The uprights formed a natural rock formation that the cult venerated. The shrine itself is on a rocky outcropping above those stones.”

Suzuki had spent half his life living directly above the shrine, but he had never climbed down to see it. It didn't make sense. Takuda said so.

“Ah, but there are specific reasons I've never been.” Suzuki stood to get more crisps. “Eagle Peak Temple was built high above the Naga River valley so that recitations of the sutras would float downstream and protect the valley. Powerful prayers were supposed to keep the old water spirits in check.” He smiled at the look on Takuda's face. “You want to laugh, but the priest's job here is to counteract superstition and evil on behalf of the whole community. The constant presence of a priest is important here. That's why I came back.”

Takuda took a ginger crisp just to fill the silence.

Suzuki joined him. “There was a very active cult here before the war, and it was important to stave off any modern resurgence. You see, when we refer to cults these days, we mean mass suicides. This was different. The cult here didn't have a charismatic leader. They had a living god.”

“What?”

“A living god.” Suzuki bowed his head as if in silent thought. After a moment, he asked Takuda to wait, and he left the room. He returned quickly with a large wooden box. It was very old. Gold leaf still glinted in the ornate relief carving.

“These treasures explain why the temple was built in the first place.” Suzuki removed the lid and set it aside. He laid a silken scarf on the table and pulled on white cotton gloves. He then removed two scrolls from the box and laid each on the silk.

He unrolled the first scroll. “This is a grant of land from the chief of the Kuroda clan, the Kuroda clan that ended up in Chikuzen. The year is illegible, but we know it is before the clan moved to Harima Province during the Warring States period. My father believed this was from the early fifteenth century.”

The scroll was weathered and water-­damaged. Much was illegible, and the remainder was in an old-­fashioned cursive that Takuda couldn't read. “And what else does it say, Priest?”

“From what we can read of this, it grants the land for three main purposes. The first is to spread the light of Buddhism. The second is to promote the wisdom and practice of the three sutras for the protection of the state.” Suzuki's face was drawn and expressionless. “The third purpose is to end the worship of the Drowning God.”

The Drowning God,
Dekishi-­no-­kami
. It was a disgusting phrase, a nonsensical title aping ancient names of gods from Japanese animistic religions.
A pet name for the make-­believe mascot of a murderous cult
.

“You're saying that the Kappa was an ancient god, the Drowning God referred to in the scroll, and that Eagle Peak Temple was built just to end the worship of the Kappa.”

“The Kappa and other spawn of ignorance and superstition.”

“I see. For a second, I thought you meant that the Kappa was real.”

Suzuki put the scroll back into the box without responding.

“The Kappa is a myth, a story to scare children away from the water. Why were our fathers so opposed to the folklore?”

Suzuki said, “It was not simply folklore. The Kappa is ancient Japanese animism, pure pagan superstition, and it doesn't fit with any version of the truth.”

“When you say ‘truth,' do you mean objective reality, or do you mean Buddhist law?”

Suzuki smiled. Takuda was beginning to see that priest's smile might have nothing to do with happiness or amusement. “The Kappa was originally a water god, of course. Not a very powerful one, more of a deadly prankster, but the Kappa is tenacious. It was never absorbed into Buddhism, not like so many others.”

“Like the flesh-­eating demons.”

“Exactly. As the light of Buddhism dispels the darkness, we adopt the old gods and devils. Here in Japan, some sects claim the sun goddess and other deities from the old religion as devotees, protectors of the sutras. My sect, however, avoids revering the gods of the old religions. It's difficult, of course, because our Buddhism is deeply intertwined with Hinduism and Taoism. We keep some of those traditions, but we've rejected the animistic Japanese gods. It's not that we're so pure. We just don't want to confuse ourselves.”

He unrolled the second scroll. “This is one priest's history of the cult. Most ­people thought he was mad. He lived before my family married into the priesthood, but we were already distant cousins. His account has more of the oral tradition from the local ­people. It actually indicated that the Kappa was shackled underground, beneath the shrine. The Kappa apparently weakens when bound by metal, especially iron.”

“Just as Ultraman's strength fades in earth's atmosphere.”

“Or silver kills werewolves in Europe.” Suzuki smiled as he pulled a clanking silken bag from the box. “These are supposedly left over from those days.” He let two sets of shackles slide out of the bag. “Please examine them.”

Suzuki hovered over him. Takuda used the bag to pick up the shackles. It was actually just one pair of shackles: two flat iron bars, each with oblong bracelets on each end. There were holes along each iron bar. If a prisoner put his hands through both sets of bracelets, then the jailer could pull the hands away from each other so that the oblong rings on each side would close on the wrists, and the jailer could secure the shackles by passing a small rope through the holes along the flat bars. Securing the two bars with iron rings or links of a chain would be better. The prisoner would not get far, even today.

“These are apparently designed to capture the Kappa,” Suzuki said. “They are a gift to you.”

“What? I can't accept these.”
And why would I want to?

“These are my personal property, not the temple's. They aren't a huge gift, but they're appropriate for a detective of the prefectural police. It's a fitting souvenir from this valley.”

Takuda turned the shackles over in his hand. The iron was almost jet-­black. Suzuki pointed out characters forged in the oblong rings.

“Chinese characters in very old forms, along with Pali script. They are names of Buddhist protectors, sworn votaries of the sutras.” Suzuki sat. “That's one of the reasons I think it is a good gift for you. You have become a policeman, a protector of the ­people, but I think you may be something more.”

“I'm not much of a protector.”

Suzuki nodded. “There was little you could do for your brother or your son. You didn't have enough information. Now, you're ready.”

“Ready for what, Priest?”

“Take a walk with me tomorrow.”

Takuda's cell phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Officer Mori.

“Detective, where are you?”

“I'm just above the valley.”

“Well, please hurry. They found Lee Hunt's body at the first gate. The chief made them pull it out and bring it back to the station.”

Takuda wasn't sure it mattered where they took the corpse. What he was looking for couldn't be hidden, no matter where they took it. “Keep them there. Don't let the victim out of your sight.”

Suzuki followed Takuda out the door. He picked up books and bits of vestment along the way. “Can I ride with you? It's easy for me to get a ride back. Besides, I would like to tell you a little more.”

The mountain peaks still held a bit of sunset glow, but the valley below was black. The lights from Oku Village and scattered farms twinkled like stars reflected dimly from the surface of an inky pool. Takuda and Suzuki descended into the night.