Villain a Novel (2010) (29 page)

Finally she couldn’t stand the cold so she headed back to her apartment on the second floor. She opened the door and called out, “I’m back!”

Tamayo, from the bathroom, called out, “You had to work overtime?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mitsuyo answered, and took off her shoes. She went down the hallway to the living room, where she saw a plate on the table. It looked like Tamayo had been eating stew.

“Did you make this yourself?” she asked, turning toward the bathroom, but there was no response.

She slid open the door to her small bedroom. Yuichi must be on the highway already, she thought. She found herself next to the window, pulling aside the lace curtain. A stray cat loped across the spot where she and Yuichi had said goodbye. Just then a car pulled off the main road at a high speed, almost spinning out as it headed in her direction. The cat, about to scurry toward the garbage cans, was illuminated in the bluish headlights.

Mitsuyo instinctively clasped her hands together. “Watch out!” she said to herself. The car came to a halt, just shy of hitting the plastic garbage cans. The cat, shrunk back in the headlights, scampered away.

“Yuichi?”

The car that had skidded to a halt there was definitely his. The headlights illuminated the empty space where the stray cat had been.

Mitsuyo closed the curtains and raced to the front door. She was in such a hurry she couldn’t get her heels into her shoes. As she grabbed her bag, Tamayo called out, “Where are you going?” Mitsuyo didn’t reply and ran out of the apartment.

From the staircase she could see Yuichi inside the dark car, head down against the steering wheel. The car’s headlights shone on the filthy garbage cans. As she ran down the stairs she came to an abrupt stop.
Was this all a hallucination?
she suddenly wondered.
Did I want to see him so much I’m having a hallucination?

Still, as she slowly approached, the gravel crunched under her feet. She rapped on the window with her fingers and as she did Yuichi bolted upright.
What’s the matter?
she wordlessly mouthed. Yuichi’s eyes as they followed her lips looked like they were gazing at something else, something far away.

Mitsuyo rapped on the glass again, asking with her eyes again the same question,
What’s the matter?
As if in reply, Yuichi looked away. She tapped the window once more, and Yuichi, clutching the steering
wheel, eyes down, slowly opened the door. Mitsuyo took a step back.

Without a word he got out of the car and stood in front of her. Looking up at him, Mitsuyo again asked, “What’s wrong?”

A car rushed by on the main road; the weeds along the road whipped in the blast of air. Yuichi suddenly grabbed her and held her tight. It was so quick that Mitsuyo let out a short cry.

“I wish I’d met you earlier,” he said as he held her against his chest. “If I’d met you earlier, none of this would have happened.…”

“What do you mean?”

“Please get in the car, okay?”

“Huh?”

“Get in the car!” Yuichi suddenly said roughly, and grabbed Mitsuyo’s arm, pulling her around to the passenger side.

“What is going on?” Mitsuyo tried to pull away, her heels digging into the gravel.

“Just get in!”

Almost holding her under his arm, Yuichi opened the passenger door. With both doors open, the wind rushed through, carrying out the heated air from inside.

“Wait—wait a second!” Mitsuyo said, resisting. She didn’t mind so much getting in the car, but she wanted to know why.

“What is up with you?
Tell
me!”

As he pressed her down, Mitsuyo grabbed his wrist. After his harsh words, and the rough treatment, Mitsuyo was surprised to feel his trembling wrist feel so frail.

Yuichi shoved her inside, slammed the door shut, and hurried around to the driver’s side. He almost tumbled inside and, breathing raggedly, he released the parking brake. The tires sprayed gravel as he shot down the path. He roared past the vacant lot in front of the apartment building and turned sharply to the left. As he turned, he nearly crashed into a car coming from the opposite direction, and Mitsuyo screamed.

They barely missed the other car and sped down the dark path through the rice fields.

Fusae turned off the light in the bedroom, sat up in her futon, and, without making a sound, crawled over toward the window. With a trembling hand she parted the curtain a bit. Outside the window was a cinder-block wall with a few blocks missing, and through the holes she could see the narrow road in front. The patrol car that had been outside was gone now. Instead, a black car was parked there, and in the light from inside the car she could see a young plainclothes detective talking on a cell phone.

An hour before, Fusae had called Yuichi, the local patrolman and the plainclothes detective standing in front of her as she did. She could barely follow their directions to call him. Before she called, they warned her not to let him know they were there, but she’d blurted it out. When he heard this, Yuichi hung up.

It was all so unexpected. They’d all thought the Fukuoka college student was the murderer, but he wasn’t. Even so, she still couldn’t understand why the police had come here again.

“Yuichi has nothing to do with this,” she insisted, her voice trembling, but the police wouldn’t relent. “Just call his cell phone,” they told her. The instant she let slip that the police were there, they couldn’t hide their anger and disappointment. This is one worthless old lady, they must have thought, and their expressions were exactly like those of the men who had forced her to buy the Chinese herbal medicine. The irritated men who told her just to
Sign it already!

She took her hand from the curtain. Usually the only sound she heard in this neighborhood was the waves, but now, with several strangers hanging around outside, she could sense their presence, even with the windows closed.

She closed the curtains and crouched down next to the wall. It seemed as though the wall were shaking, but she knew it was her. If she stayed still, the shaking would only get worse; she was about to faint. The Fukuoka college student they’d arrested apparently hadn’t murdered that young woman. He’d taken her to the pass—that
much was certain—but what he said about events after that didn’t make sense. He said that before he gave her a ride she’d been at Higashi Park, in another man’s car, a car with Nagasaki plates. Apparently the other man looked like Yuichi.

In the dark kitchen, Fusae lowered the phone from its shelf and cradled it. She lifted the receiver and, still trembling, dialed Norio’s house. The phone rang for a long time, and finally Norio came on, sounding sleepy.

“Hello? It’s me, Fusae. Were you asleep?” Norio sounded out of sorts and Fusae spoke quickly.

When Norio realized who it was, he grew tense. “Did something happen to Katsuji?”

“No, that’s not it,” Fusae said. But the next words wouldn’t come. She realized she was sobbing.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” Norio asked. His wife sleeping next to him must have woken up, for Fusae heard him explain to her, “It’s Auntie Fusae. I don’t know.… No, it isn’t Katsuji.”

“Yuichi isn’t coming back.…” That was as much as she could get out between sobs.

“Yuichi? What do you mean he isn’t coming back? Where did he go?”

“I don’t know. The police are here and I don’t know what’s going on.”

“The police? Was he in an accident?”

“No. But I just don’t understand.…”

“What don’t you understand?”

“I called him and told him the police were here and he hung right up.… If he wasn’t involved in the murder he wouldn’t hang up like that.”

As he listened to Fusae’s tearful voice, Norio crawled out of his futon, slipped on a cardigan, and looked over at his wife, Michiyo.

“I’ll come over,” he said. “I can’t follow what you’re saying over the phone. Just stay put. I’ll be right over.”

Norio hung up and muttered to Michiyo, who looked extremely
worried, “Yuichi seems to have gotten himself in some sort of trouble.”

“Something happened to him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he got in a fight or something. Fusae’s crying so much I can’t figure out what’s going on.”

Norio stood up and turned on the fluorescent light. The clock showed eleven-thirty. He took off his pajamas and tossed them on top of the rumpled futon, then reached for the neatly folded work clothes beside his pillow. They’d had the stove on until a short while ago but now, as he stood there in his undershirt, he shivered in the cold.

“I have no idea what happened, but whatever you do, don’t hit Yuichi, okay?” Michiyo said as she helped Norio change his clothes. “We’re supposed to be looking out for him, so you have to be on his side, you hear?”

“Okay! I get it!” Norio growled. Was it a fight? A car accident? Without buttoning his jacket, Norio leaped out of the house. He climbed into his work van and headed for Yuichi’s house. The road was empty of cars at this hour and the lights were green the whole way. Norio felt uneasy. He knew that Katsuji hadn’t died, but the dull agitation he’d felt still had hold of him.

Whether Yuichi had been in a fight or an accident, if he was injured he’d have to take time off from work.
I don’t know the details yet
, Norio thought,
but I’d better get in touch with Yoshioka or Kurami as soon as I can. Tomorrow they’ll have to get to the work site on their own, and I can call them on their cell phones and tell them what they need to do
.

As these worries ran through his mind, Norio arrived at the fishing village where Yuichi lived. The moonlit harbor was calm, the fishing boats still. But there were three or four cars he didn’t recognize on the normally deserted pier and a few people milling about, talking. Norio slowed down and drove onto the pier. His headlights shone on the fishing boats and he spotted some uniformed police and residents who had come out to see what was going on.

Norio parked and switched off his lights. He saw a group of locals milling about like the sea bugs that slither over rocks near the ocean. A shiver went through him and he jumped out of his van.

“Hey, Norio!” The residents’ association head was the first to recognize Norio. “What’s up? Something happen with Yuichi?” he asked as he approached, hunching his neck down against the cold.

Someone else behind him spoke to a policeman, saying, “That’s Yuichi’s uncle there!” and as soon as he heard this the young policeman hurried over. “Didn’t the police just come to your place?” he asked, flustered.

“No,” Norio said, shaking his head. “I just got a call from Yuichi’s grandmother and came over as soon as I heard.”

“I see. Well, I guess you must have just missed them.”

“My wife’s at home, though.”

The policeman turned to a patrol car parked some distance off and shouted, “The suspect’s uncle is here!” The door of the patrol car opened and the sound of the static-filled police radio mixed in with the sound of the waves.

“I need to ask you some questions, okay? I understand that Yuichi works for you?’

Before he knew it, Norio was surrounded by police and local residents.

“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to see his grandmother first,” Norio said firmly, cutting them off.

The next morning Mitsuyo withdrew thirty thousand yen from an ATM at a convenience store next to the road. Since graduating from high school ten years earlier, she’d been steadily saving her money, but most was in a CD and her ordinary account had only what she needed from week to week. So after she withdrew thirty thousand, there wasn’t much left.

She put the cash into her purse, went to the checkout stand, and bought two cans of hot tea and three rice balls. As she was paying,
she glanced outside and saw Yuichi in his car, parked down the road, staring in her direction.

Mitsuyo left the store and hurried over toward the car, the two cans of hot tea in her hands. Yuichi opened his window and she passed him the tea and then pulled out her cell phone, thinking she had to call her store.

The store’s manager, Mr. Oshiro, answered. Mitsuyo had been sure that Kazuko would answer and she was flustered for a moment, but then she said, in an intentionally subdued voice, “Ah, hello, this is Miss Magome. My father suddenly became ill, so I’m sorry but I need to take the day off.” She was able to smoothly repeat the lines she’d prepared.