The Silent Dead (38 page)
Authors: Tetsuya Honda
He silently nodded his agreement as he jotted down a note on the back of his hand.
“What happened after that? It took us a while to get there. Don't tell me that you, Kitami, and Yukari had a threesome.”
Gross!
Katsumata, sharp though he was, had no way of knowing what had happened during that time. Reiko omitted any mention of how Kitami had physically abused her. She simply explained that Kitami had been boasting about his criminal exploits as they waited for Ogawa to turn up.
“He went on about how he had lived his life âlooking higher' and how that had made him want to look down into the depthsâat death, basicallyâto give him a sense of how far he'd risen. Yukari was the complete opposite: she knew only the dregs of life. Maiming and killing was the only way she knew to make herself feel human like the rest of us. By making people bleed, she could show herself that her blood was red like everybody else's. Kitami and Yukari were the co-organizers of Strawberry Night, but their motives couldn't have been more different. That was the essence of their revelations.”
“So by the time Ioka and I rolled up, those two were in the middle of a messy breakup.”
“Correct.” Reiko paused and sighed. “Kitami said something about me being the same as him. That I came across dead bodies every day of the week at Homicide, and that he knew what they made me feel.
Thank God I'm a detective and not one of those dead losers
. He went on about what a rush it is to see death up closeâabout the intense sense of being alive and warm glow of superiority it gives you.⦠You know what shocked me? Kitami was right.”
Katsumata spread his arms palm upward as if to say, “I told you so.”
“That's exactly what I meant when I said you were dangerous. Your instincts are incredibly sharp. You've got a real genius for profiling. That's a fact, and it's why you've collared so many perps. I'm happy to give you that.
“But your approach and proper profiling are not the same thing at all. You don't identify the perpetrators by extrapolating from a small amount of hard data. No, what you doâand you may not be aware of it yourselfâis tune directly into their minds. The reason you can identify perps and figure out why they act the way they do through little more than guesswork is because your brain is wired the same way as theirs.
“You were horrified when Kitami said basically the same thing to you at the crime scene. And then what do you go and do? You burst into tears and start cuddling the wounded Yukari. Same thing when I asked you why the gang had put the body on the hedge by the pond when Yasuyuki Fukazawa was already dead. It happened because of a communication slipup by Ogawa. In other words, you were right about that too. That's what I meant about your way of thinking being dangerous.”
My brain ⦠is wired like theirs.
Reiko had never thought of herself in those terms. To have someone come out and say it to her face was a shock, but she couldn't very well protest. It was true. She acknowledged that.
Reiko had done the whole weeping and hugging act before: there was that young repeat offender who had killed himself just as they moved in to arrest him. No one else had him down for the crime; only Reiko believed him to be guilty, and she took the initiative to bring him in. Casting her mind back, she could think of any number of cases where her empathy with the perp had made her break down in tears.
Of course, it wasn't always like that. She was not a random crybaby who wept over any old scumbag. Plenty of murderers deserved no sympathy at all. Nonetheless, there were times when she felt sorrier for the murderer than for the victim. Murder was an exceptionally heinous crimeâand sometimes people had exceptional reasons that justified committing it. On those occasions, empathy got the better of Reiko, and she would cry, oblivious to her position as a detective and the dictates of the law.
She was not sure which of the two categories Yukari fell into. She suspected the latter. Captain Imaizumi had given her an update on Yukari's status before he left.
“Her heart, her lungs, and even her immune system are all in a critically weakened state, and she's barely conscious. Despite that, the minute the nurse leaves the room, she rips the drip out of her arm. It's a miracle that she's alive, but it's obvious that she actively wants to die.”
Sounds like Yukari probably won't make it
, thought Reiko. She knew that Yukari's death would make closing the case a whole lot harder, but on a human level she just wanted to let her go. She couldn't explain why. That was just how she felt.
Maybe I'm not cut out to be a cop.
Reiko sighed. Katsumata gave another impatient snort. Had her face given her away? She had a pretty good idea of what Katsumata must think of herâa loser, a pitiful washout. Although the open distaste with which he was contemplating her was uncomfortable, she felt duty-bound to grin and bear it.
“Hey, you,” growled Katsumata after a while.
“Yes?”
“What's with the long face?”
She'd been right. Her face was an open book.
“Sorry.”
Might as well apologize
, she thought,
though I don't know what for.
Katsumata rose languidly to his feet. He sauntered over to the window and opened it all the way, despite the air conditioning being on full blast.
“Don't let nonsense spouted by some nasty little murdering crook get you down. âI was always looking up, so I wanted to look down.' âI could only look down, so I wanted to look up.' What the fuck's that about? You can look up, down, left, or right for all I care. The only thing that matters is to focus on the important things.”
Katsumata swiveled around from the window and looked Reiko straight in the eye.
“There's only one way to live your life:
facing forward
.”
Reiko gulped involuntarily.
Live facing forward? He's not the first person to tell me that
. Detective Sata had used the same phrase in her journal. “Reiko, I want you to get back on your feet, and live facing forward.”
After all these years, she finally understood what the words meant.
“Right, got to go. Shitloads to do.”
Reiko was in a daze when Katsumata left.
The chilled air was sucked out of the open window. The muggy outdoor heat rolled in and took its place. It was summerâsummer, the season that Reiko hated so. Or did she? Now she felt as though the summer heat was going to thaw the frozen numbness of her heart.
Yes. Live facing forward.
Reiko looked up at the sky. It was a solid blanket of gray clouds without a glimmer of sunshine. But Reiko knew that it wouldn't stay that way forever. At some point, the sky would brighten. And then it would get cloudy; then it would rain; then it would snowâand then, at some point, it would brighten up again.
It always did
. The banal insight filled her with unreasonable joy.
“Detective Sata,” murmured Reiko, looking up at the sky. “I'm ready to fight again.”
Soon the sky would be the same pure expanse of blue that it had been on that hot summer day, all those years ago.
For the first time in ages, Reiko wanted to walk through a park on a warm summer night.
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About the Author and Translator
TETSUYA HONDA
is one of Japan's bestselling authors with his ongoing crime series featuring Reiko Himekawa, a homicide detective with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. The series has sold millions of copies in Japan and is the basis of two TV miniseries, a TV special, and a major motion picture. Honda lives in Tokyo. You can sign up for email updates
here
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Translator
GILES MURRAY
was born in the United Kingdom, lives in Tokyo, and has translated various Japanese works of fiction and nonfiction.
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Contents
About the Author and Translator
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE SILENT DEAD.
Copyright © 2006 by Tetsuya Honda. Translation copyright © 2016 by Giles Murray. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photographs: sky by atiger / Shutterstock; city by Arend.H.Hoefman / Shutterstock; woman by Charlie Wang / Imagebrief
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-06159-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-6731-4 (e-book)
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at
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Originally published in Japanese as Sutoroberi Naito by Kobunsha Co. Ltd., Tokyo, in 2006.
English translation rights arranged with Kobunsha Co., Ltd., through the Michael Staley Agency, Inc., Tokyo.
First U.S. Edition: May 2016
