The Hunter (8 page)

Takizawa was maddening. He hardly ever opened his mouth unless it was to be snide. It was always "Bully for you" or "Thanks for caring"; he had no idea how to treat a person decently. If he'd only let her have even one happy memory of being his partner, she would be satisfied, and her opinion of him would soar; but he was too short-sighted, or just too set in his ways, to think of such a thing. He was an ass, a tight ass, that's what he was.

There's a man for you. What did I expect?

Sighing, she pulled herself out of bed. The suit she had on didn't need cleaning yet. Then she spoke the words out loud: "It's for your sake, Teruo Hara, that I stay well groomed and walk around with that penguin!" How many women friends Hara may have had, there was no telling; but it made her feel funny to think that she, more than any of them, would probably come closest to understanding his true self.

It was not until Takako was about to turn off the lights that she noted the blinking light on her answering machine. In her exhaustion she'd forgotten to check.

"Hello, Takako?" It was a familiar voice. "This is your mother. New Year's came and went without any word from you, so I got worried. Why don't you come home to visit us once in a while? Your father and Koko would love to see you, and Tomoko is. . . well, call me back, all right? I'll tell you about it then. Anyway, how are things? Are you OK? I know you won't listen to me, but you're not doing anything dangerous, are you? You know, really, I just wish that when you first said you wanted to be a policewoman I had put my foot down, because lately I—"

The tape ran out while she was still talking. Her mother's messages were always like this, but she never called back to finish what she'd been saying. Her mother no doubt found it frustrating, too, but for Takako, listening to such half-finished messages was unsettling, like a bout of indigestion. That was her mother's way.

Takako arranged a cushion at the foot of the bed to prop up her legs. This was the best way to get rid of the heaviness and swelling in her feet. What could be going on with her youngest sister, she wondered. She and Tomoko, who was five years her junior, had always gotten along well.

Call home. I have to remember to call home.

When Takako first suggested becoming a policewoman to her family, her mother opposed the idea violently. It was quite common for members of the family to work as civil servants or in the medical or teaching profession; that's what almost all of them did. Apart from the stability of such careers, it was part of the tradition of not overtly chasing after profit, not living for monetary gain. Takako's father was a government employee, and her parents had met at work.

From the time she was a little girl, Takako had assumed that she, too, would be a civil servant one day; only later did she make up her mind to become a policewoman. Not because she had it in for bad guys, or because she wanted to fight for justice. Nothing like that. Rather, she liked the idea of doing something with her aikido, which she had taken up as a way of steeling herself against asthma; in addition, the uniform appealed to her. Sitting all day at a desk didn't. If she could, she wanted to be active, lead a life filled with variety. Such had been her motivation in the beginning.

When Takako graduated from junior college and entered the police training academy, her mother was half hysterical in opposition, standing beside her as she packed to move to the dormitory and weeping bitterly. Her father had no problem with her decision. Although for all she knew, he may have thought that as long as she was a civil servant, anything would do.

Women who sought to become policewomen generally were strong-willed and had a mean streak, Takako soon discovered. Even though the academy was an all-female environment, it was worlds away from the peaceful, fun-filled, and easygoing atmosphere of junior college. These women lacked a shred of any kind of fellowship. Beneath the protective armor of a strong sense of justice or mission, they were startlingly feminine. They traded on an integrity rooted in a deep inferiority; they put on high-minded airs that were filled with vulgarity and greed; they used filthy words without the least embarrassment. Full of swagger and self-consciousness, they acted with the conviction that they alone were right. They were a jealous bunch of bullies. What on earth made them want to enter the police force, Takako wondered. During her six months in the dormitory, it was made abundantly clear to Takako, more times than she could count, that the enemy was not the opposite sex; it was her own gender.

What kept Takako going, besides her own stubbornness, was the merciful presence of a few inspiring friends and seniors. One in particular had continually displayed qualities of single-minded purpose, seriousness, and purity, teaching Takako by example that it was possible to be a first-rate policewoman without ceasing to be ladylike. If not for her, Takako would probably have given up long ago.

On graduating from the police academy, she was transferred to a new dormitory near the police station where she was assigned. After further training, she had gone out on patrol in a squad car, as a member of the Traffic Division. While other young women her age were continuing their studies, or dressing in pastel suits and learning to apply natural makeup, Takako was starting out at the bottom of a rigidly disciplinarian and hierarchical world.

"So now you're a cop! Actually, it kind of suits you."

That's what her junior college friends would say, with a mischievous smile, when they got together. And then they would reveal how they used to be surprised by her obstinacy, or how inflexible they always thought she was. Aghast to hear this, and saddened to discover the gap between them—after all this time, they were still like fluttering butterflies—Takako was at the same time reassured that her becoming a policewoman was not a mistake. As a fledgling, dewy-eyed officer, she was full of ideals; she was on fire with a sense of mission, determined to uphold the law—even if that meant being somewhat inflexible—and to maintain social order.

But as she patrolled the streets in her Traffic Division vehicle, certain things that she had been blind to as an ordinary citizen now became clear. She discovered that simply riding in a black-and-white car, and wearing her uniform, caused men's attitudes toward her to undergo a drastic change. They would either assume a very low profile, or come right out and tell her that since so-and-so in such-and-such a division was a pal of theirs, she'd better back off. Or when she preparing to have a car towed, they'd protest that they were just trying to make a living, sister, and what was the big deal.

Really, it took all kinds. Back when she was enforcing no-parking laws, she experienced all sorts of horrors that she could laugh about now. True, her senior officers had often been spiteful; one had been the perfect picture of an ogress. Yet overall, her first experience on the police force had been enjoyable. She and her like-minded colleagues would get together and talk about the pitiful cases they came across each day, always finding something to laugh about. They had talked about the normal things that interest young women, too: which male officer was especially good-looking and whom he was going out with, or which spinster officer was having an affair with a younger patrolman. Even if they wore police uniforms, inside they were scarcely different from your average young O.L., what they called "office ladies."

We were embarrassingly, scandalously young.

When she thought of her life since then, it seemed like police work had controlled her destiny. From the time she followed the recommendation of her boss and put in an innocent request to join the women's motorcycle corps, her life started to change. Right away, while commuting to the training center in Asaka for motorcycle lessons, she met her future husband, who was also working in the Traffic Division. Her prospects were rosy; of this she had no doubt. Those were days when she'd been her most audacious, exultant, confident, positive. She'd been utterly carefree; scoldings from her superiors rolled off her back.

The women's motorcycle corps had been part of a campaign to soften the image of the MPD. Rather than law enforcement, their work consisted of ornamental tasks like providing a motorcycle escort for marathons and public events; they were sent strictly to safe environments where, as women, they would stand out. Even so, in the beginning it seemed festive and exciting. Takako got calls from friends who'd seen her in a telecast of the marathon; once she was written up in a magazine. Even if former colleagues from her days as a patrol officer looked on her with jealousy, and male officers treated her like a fifth wheel, still she felt on top of the world. Love had made her strong and bold.

After a while, as her relationship with her then-boyfriend settled into permanency and she could turn her mind to other things, a pleasant sort of boredom had crept over her. The idea of staying on as a figurehead member of the motorcycle corps held no magic. The work lacked excitement. She needed more challenge.

"Everybody says you're doing great," her boyfriend tried comforting her. "Your motorcycle skills are getting up there, too. Why don't you enter a tournament? You're good enough to join the top ranks."

But while she stayed in her rut, he was gaining valuable experience as a member of a mobile riot squad. She might be wearing a uniform like him, but she could not share his experiences; one might think they were walking side by side, but in the end she would be left behind.

Takako felt a growing impatience. Wanting to test her abilities, she requested a transfer to the Criminal Affairs Division. She'd made the request lightly, not expecting it would go through quickly, if at all—but surprise surprise, she was assigned to the larceny investigation section and ended up undergoing training to become a detective.

Takako could still remember the look of astonishment on her ex's face. "You mean you're gonna be a dick?" he said. Then, with a resigned laugh, he added, "Imagine, a wife who's a dick." That, in effect, had been his proposal of marriage. And so, when she was twenty-six and he was twenty-eight, they had wed.

After her marriage, Takako had begun assisting at crime-scene investigations, and she learned to make the rounds of pawnshops looking for stolen goods. In the beginning it seemed like a game; there was fresh stimulation in her work, but more than anything else she felt free and alive. When she came back to their newlywed home after work, those times when they could eat dinner together, she would chatter incessantly about the events of her day. But after a while, from around the time she began to work in the detention rooms of police headquarters, the situation changed. When she was put in charge of guarding the women's cells, for the first time she came into direct contact with actual criminals, encountering women of all ages and backgrounds.

Why would someone like this do a thing like this? Day after day, she asked herself this same question. Some of the women were openly hostile to her, others spoke to her with a trace of something like a fond memory. Thing was, they struck Takako as rather like herself. They were separated only by a trick of fate—and yet there was a great, unyielding difference: the difference between the captive and the captor. Takako did not speak about these women to her husband. Not because of her professional duty to preserve confidentiality, but rather because as a fellow woman, to do that seemed thoroughly inappropriate.

In time she was assigned to the homicide section, where her thinking was forced to undergo yet another dizzying change. Now she found herself in an all-male society which no longer treated her with distant politeness but stood rudely in her way. There were six female police officers in the entire Criminal Affairs Division, but they did not band together for mutual support; differences in the work they were assigned, as well as in their ages and personalities, contributed to an atmosphere which, as had been the case at the police academy, kept them from becoming best friends. Besides, among the roughly 1,200 investigators in police headquarters, a mere handful of women would have been virtually powerless.

Day after day, surrounded by men, Takako ran around performing unfamiliar tasks, studying how to write reports, and learning the ropes of actual investigation, all the while being told things like, "Get out my way, will you?" At home, before she knew it, she and her husband were spending less and less time together. Without realizing that the hours he was keeping were odd, she put up with bald-faced lies. Finally the day came when it hit her:

I'm being played for a fool.

If she had listened to her mother and become a nursery school teacher, or something feminine like that, what would her life have been like? Would that have been any guarantee of happiness? By now, she'd probably be the mother of at least one child, but would she be satisfied passing the time schmoozing with the other mothers? She would never have learned to ride a motorcycle or to fire a gun; she would never have gotten so tired she was ready to pass out; she would never have had to worry about bladder infections or spend so much time staring at the ugly butt of human nature. Without somebody like the emperor penguin snapping at her, she might have gone on secure in her belief that men were protectors of women. It might have been a fine life. Better than this one, definitely. Peaceful, laid-back, carefree. But there was no turning back now. Besides, when had she ever wanted a life like that?

Takako craved stimulation. And in her current position in the homicide section, it had become a thing with her to expose the truth about people.

Hate the sin but not the sinner. She had no intention of making any such noble declaration—and yet it was true that hatred for perfect strangers was far from easy to sustain. Hatred took energy. With case after case always cropping up, and a ceaseless flow of offenders passing through, it was impossible to go on feeling such callow emotion. There simply wasn't time.