The Gate of Sorrows (51 page)

If, five minutes after he’d left the table, someone had asked Kotaro what he’d had to eat, he would’ve been hard pressed to answer. His head was so far away from the present moment that he forgot to ask Kazumi how Mika was doing. He also forget to tell her about the suspicious-looking young man he’d seen outside the Sonoi house after the trial of Keiko Tashiro. But seeing her did remind him of one important thing.

Upstairs, he rummaged in his backpack. He pulled out Mika’s book,
Land of the Sun
, and extracted the hateful note inside the cover. He was about to rip it to shreds, but thought better of it. Yuriko Morisaki’s prediction seemed off target, but if anything did happen, it might be valuable evidence.

He still had work to do. He sat down and stared at his laptop screen.

Makoto’s giant. He wished he hadn’t seen it, and it would be better not to mess with it. Still, it had been bothering him since he got home.

He gave up; it was no use. He opened his mail program. Transparency is a citizen’s obligation. Access to information is a citizen’s right.

Where are you, Kaname?

Kotaro here. Off work?

He entered the subject line and paused to think.

Im really sorry to put u out. I owe you. Treat u when I get back.

OBTW I walked Makoto to the station today. He seemed real down. I never saw him like that. Have u heard anything about problems with BB? M wouldn’t tell, so I figured I better ask u. If u have 411, mail me.

He sent the message, closed the program quickly, as if running away, and went back to his research. When his mother yelled up the stairs for him to take his turn in the bath, he went right down.

When he came back, there was no response from Kaname.

The drug store in Kawasaki where Saeko Komiya had worked was called Sakura Pharmacy.

The neighborhood was a mix of residential and commercial. Sakura Pharmacy, which occupied the first floor of an old building, was one of several near a cluster of medical clinics. The only thing new about it was the wheelchair ramp to the entrance.

“I used to live in the neighborhood and got some prescriptions here. I wanted to offer my condolences.” Kotaro knew how to turn on the courtesy when he needed to, the kind older people didn’t expect from the young. The white-coated, middle-aged pharmacist who received him bowed politely.

“Thank you, we appreciate that.” Kotaro noticed that the hair on the top of the man’s head was thinning.

“Many of her patients have stopped by to pay their respects. Saeko started working here before she got married. She was one of our veterans, very friendly with a lot of people.”

Kotaro knew that. He’d read it on the web.

I knew Ms. Komiya …

I got prescriptions from her for a chronic condition for many years …

She gave me an antipyretic after I had a reaction to Tamiflu …

She was very kind and always saw me off at the entrance …

“I hope they catch the killer soon,” Kotaro said.

“Yes, it’s something we pray for every day.”

This was his first attempt to “read” a place, rather than a person, with his left eye. His first impression was one of solidified anxiety, with a faint shadow of fear. There were thin but distinctly visible threads of terror and fragments of sadness.

Hospitals and pharmacies are frequented by the sick and those who fear they may be sick, and their words leave a characteristic signature. The words in Sakura Pharmacy were not harsh or sharp. They didn’t writhe violently or rush like knives at Kotaro’s eye. A faint smell of sadness seemed to cling to the place. For the first time, he detected the odor of words.

There was no trace of the killer. He saw nothing that suggested the presence of a murderer, no Shadow like the one Keiko Tashiro had dragged around. The countless words about the murder had left behind only fear and sadness and regret. They were mixed with the remnants of words that predated the murder, or were only potent enough to persist for a short time before fading.

Whoever killed Saeko Komiya had no connection to this place. Even if the perpetrator had been here, his words could no longer be traced.

“Does the family still live in that condominium?” Kotaro asked.

“No. Mr. Komiya couldn’t take care of their little boy on his own, so he sent him to live with his grandparents.”

“I’d like to leave this.” Kotaro held out a small bouquet. “If it’s no trouble, maybe you could put these in some water and leave them on her desk.”

“Thanks very much, I’ll do that.”

Kotaro left the pharmacy and traced the victim’s route home. The buses she used to ride kept passing him, but he walked all the way.

Condominium complexes big enough to have their own nursery school are like small towns. There must have been five hundred residences.

Traces of words danced in the air, swirling and scattering as though blown by the wind, flowing, clustering, and disappearing. The sheer number was astonishing. This was another first for Kotaro, to see so many words in one place. There were so many that he had no idea where to start.

But one thing was certain: he saw nothing dangerous or evil, or mournful. Most of the words, when he tried to focus on them, were too old and faint to make out.

Like the others in the complex, the building where Saeko Komiya and her family had lived had no security lobby. Their condo was number 303, third floor, west side. Kotaro walked up to the door. The nameplate had been removed. There was nothing in the mail flap. A small bouquet of chrysanthemums was wilting in a milk bottle by the door.

There were no traces here either. The husband and son had moved out soon after the murder. Kotaro went back down the stairs, wishing he’d brought his bouquet here instead.

The nursery school occupied the northeast corner of the first floor.
Blossom School
was pasted to the inside of the big bay window in letters of colored felt. The door was glass too, with a colored frame.

Facilities that care for children almost always have tight security. Without being a good deal older or younger, it would be hard for Kotaro to get a look inside by posing as a family member. But in the end it wasn’t necessary. As he sidled up to the entrance, using the big potted plant outside to keep out of sight, he saw it.

The frame around the safety-glass door was a cheerful green. Just inside the glass, next to the frame, was a frozen string of words.

Thoughts.

The nursery school was full of words, floating like dust motes. There were fewer here than outside, and most of them were colorless, faintly glowing fragments and broken threads. These must be the words of children, still learning to use language. Their words weren’t dyed with mature emotions and intentions.

The black, slimy clot on the inner surface of the glass seemed to dominate everything else. The sight was so bizarre that Kotaro almost gasped with surprise. It reminded him of a fleck of vile, liquefied decay that had spurted from a puncture in a body bag.

The maggots in the clot writhed and crawled on the glass. Kotaro wanted to take a cloth and some disinfectant and expunge them on the spot.

Silver threads crossed his vision.
Defilement
.

“Do you think it’s the killer’s?”

That I cannot say
, Galla’s threads relayed.

True, the clot might have nothing to do with Saeko Komiya’s murder. It might be a trace of some other conflict: a quarrel between parents or hostile feelings among the staff.

Still, Kotaro doubted it. There was something too awful about those words and the way they stuck to the glass like slime. Their vile color and the repulsive wriggling of the maggots almost burned themselves into his retina.

It was time to hit the crime scene—the gas station in Totsuka.

“Hey, you okay, mister?”

A cracked voice called anxiously over his shoulder. Kotaro was in no shape to answer.

Everything about the gas station was old, from the building to its stained and rusting pumps and equipment. The only thing new was this portable outhouse in a corner of the lot. Kotaro was hunched over the bowl with the door wide open, retching his guts out while the attendant looked on anxiously.

The restroom where Saeko Komiya’s body had been discovered was locked and cordoned off with yellow tape marked
KANAGAWA PREFECTURAL POLICE
.

“Yeah, it’s too weird. Nobody’s gonna go in there. Too scary. The boss figured leave it till they catch the guy, you know? So we got this thing—”

That was as much as Kotaro had heard before he lost his struggle with nausea and dashed into the outhouse.

There was no doubt. The spoor was clear and unmistakable. This time, what he saw
did
burn itself into his retina.

It was the nursery school all over again—black slime filled with wriggling black maggots. But here the slime had arms and legs, a torso and a head. It was an effigy of the killer himself, the dregs of his thoughts left behind in words, like fingerprints or footprints. But the writhing maggots made the effigy undulate sickeningly.

Like Makoto’s giant, the effigy was faceless. Kotaro couldn’t tell which way it was facing, which was a small blessing. If the thing had made eye contact, he wasn’t certain he could’ve kept his sanity.

The killer had left a ferociously malevolent darkness. The effigy made no sound. Kotaro heard no voices. Like the words he saw at the nursery school, the traces here were fragmentary, but the stench of defilement and sexual frenzy was overpowering.

Kotaro recalled the snakelike appendage dangling from the effigy’s crotch and was overcome by another storm of nausea. Trembling violently, he threw up everything he’d eaten since morning. When his stomach was empty, he tried to disgorge that as well.

“Should I phone for an ambulance?” The attendant rubbed Kotaro’s back gingerly.

“No. I’m okay,” he answered in a half gurgle.

“Are you, like, somebody who can see ghosts and stuff? Some people can. There’s this girl that cries every time she comes round here. She says she saw a naked lady with a white face and a rope around her neck outside the restroom.”

Kotaro flushed the toilet and stood up. “I’m not that type.”

“Oh, okay.”

“I knew the victim. I just wanted to stop by and say a prayer.”

“Really? Sorry, didn’t mean to be rude. Hey, why don’t you come inside?”

They went into the office and the attendant handed him a moist towel. He had dyed red hair and a pierced ear—the picture of a delinquent, but he came across as a pretty nice guy.

“Thanks,” Kotaro said. “Sorry to put you out. I’m not even a customer.”

“Oh, it’s all right. We practically don’t have any customers anyway. I mean, since the thing happened.”

“So you get mostly people who are curious?”

“I hear things were crazy right afterwards. These days it’s people like yourself, who knew her or who’re from around here. They leave flowers sometimes. There’s the reporters, you know, and the TV people. There was even a big table out there for the flowers and candles. But the boss said it wasn’t a good idea to have something like that around forever. So they got rid of it last week. I’m sure her spirit’s gone to its reward by now.”

Kotaro felt a sudden surge of affection for this openhearted stranger. “Have you worked here long?”

“Me? Oh, no. Started last week. Miyata and the boss, they keep getting called down to the station. They’re too busy to take care of business.” He laughed. “Course, we got no customers, so it doesn’t really matter. But they need somebody to keep an eye on the place. That’s me.”

“The ‘boss’—is that the owner?”

“Yep. Then there’s Miyata. He’s part time, but he says he’s been pumping gas here ten years.”

“The police are still talking to them? It’s been a while since the murder.”

“They’re not suspects. They go down and look at photos. Most people pay cash here, but sometimes they use a card. We got a security camera too, ’cept the pictures aren’t real clear.” He pointed to the ceiling.

“This will sound kind of strange,” Kotaro said, “but does either your boss or Miyata have young children?”

The attendant shook his head. His oversize earring glinted in the late morning sunlight. “Miyata’s single. The boss has a son, but he’s my age. We went to high school together. Well, for a year, anyway. Before I dropped out.”

“I see. So that’s why you’re working here.”

“Yeah. They asked me. Said I oughta work for ’em and keep an eye on the place if I didn’t have anything better to do.”

The owner and his part-time employee have nothing to do with the nursery school, then.

The slime at the school was on the inside of the door. Whoever left it there had some connection with the school—someone who worked there, family to one of the children, or maybe someone who would be in and out, handling deliveries or maintenance. In any case, some kind of insider. The owner and Miyata and this good-natured attendant were clean.

“You got good manners,” the attendant said. His tone was utterly sincere. “You must be from a good family. Or are you with one of those religious groups?”