Chapter 72: “Mr. Ninja”
Yomikawa ordered a black coffee, then produced the small, silver USB drive. She twirled it once between her fingers, a silent, insolent gesture, indicating that the prize Kishida Masayoshi so desperately sought was contained within. “I’ve brought the diary, as promised,” she said. “Now, what of the small matter I asked you to investigate, Officer? Do you have any results for me?”
Kishida Masayoshi’s expression, which had been one of tense anticipation, immediately turned serious. “I suppose you could say I have results, or you could also say I have absolutely no leads. But before we get into that, perhaps you could be so kind as to tell me… why, exactly, did you suddenly develop such an intense and specific interest in a local lottery promotion?”
He could say he has results, or he could also say he has no leads. What is that supposed to mean? A paradox? Or just the clumsy phrasing of a fool? Yomikawa Tsuko’s eyebrow arched slightly as she scrutinized the man with the prematurely graying hair sitting opposite her.
Kishida Masayoshi, for his part, met her gaze without flinching, his own eyes surprisingly firm, resolute, challenging.
An indescribable tension began to build between them, a silent battle of wills across the small café table. Yomikawa Tsuko had no intention of being the first to speak, to reveal her own objectives, to show her hand. And Kishida Masayoshi, it seemed, was equally determined not to be the first to explain himself. They were at a stalemate, two predators in a silent, watchful standoff.
“Your coffee, miss. Please enjoy.”
Perhaps sensing the oppressive, suffocating atmosphere, even the waitress who brought the coffee moved with a quiet, cautious grace. She placed the cup on the table and immediately, with a visible sense of relief, retreated to a safe distance.
“Ōkawa Terakado,” Kishida began, his voice low and deliberate, his gaze never leaving Yomikawa’s. “Male, 36 years old. Employed at a small locksmith company in Mitsuba Ward. On June 18th, Ōkawa Terakado, by a supposed stroke of chance, won a designated travel grant of five hundred thousand yen in a lottery promotion.”
He wasn’t explaining the results of his investigation into the lottery. He was, in fact, escalating, laying out his own, far more disturbing set of facts.
“Last Sunday, that is, June 24th, Ōkawa Terakado, accompanied by his wife and child, took a ferry to Mie Island for a family vacation. Three days later, on June 27th, a beautiful and remarkably well-informed young woman calling herself Yomikawa Tsuko visited the locksmith company where Ōkawa Terakado was employed. And through a series of leading and rather specific questions, she obtained the details of Ōkawa Terakado’s travel plans.”
At this point, Kishida Masayoshi paused, the silence in the small café stretching, taut and uncomfortable. Then he asked, his voice sharp, direct, the question of a detective, an interrogator. “Why? Why were you investigating Ōkawa Terakado? Why did you care about his supposed lottery win? What do you know, Yomikawa-san? Or rather, what do you think Ōkawa Terakado knows?”
Yomikawa Tsuko’s lips tightened into a thin, hard line, her expression cold, unreadable. Under the table, hidden from his view, her slender fingers were clenched into a tight, white-knuckled fist.
Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!
This bumbling, incompetent fool of a cop… how dare he question me with such insolence? Such… competence?
But… what has happened to Ōkawa Terakado? If not for some extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances, this fool would never have the courage, or the ammunition, to be so… aggressive. So confident.
If I had known it would come to this, I would have hired a proper, reliable private detective agency, not relied on this… this variable.
At that thought, a fresh wave of cold, sharp anger washed over Yomikawa Tsuko.
What a pathetic, cowardly thought. So what if it’s this fool of a cop? Even if I have, for a moment, aroused his suspicions, he is not, and never will be capable of uncovering anything of real, substantive value.
“My reasons for investigating Ōkawa Terakado…?” Yomikawa Tsuko’s eyes narrowed, a cold, almost amused light in their depths. She took a slow, deliberate sip of her coffee, watching the look of baffled confusion spread across the detective's face. Only then, when his discomfort was palpable, did she continue. “I’m surprised that an officer of the law, a trained detective, would need me to confirm something so... simple.”
She paused, letting the silence stretch, before delivering the obvious, damning clue.
“Ōkawa Terakado’s profession is a locksmith,” she stated, as if explaining something to a small child. “My investigation into him, Officer, was, of course, related to his profession.”
“His… his profession? What does his profession have to do with anything?” The answer was so completely unexpected that Kishida Masayoshi couldn’t help but ask, his own carefully constructed line of questioning momentarily derailed.
“After the… unpleasantness… at the hot spring inn, I confess, I was a little… concerned about living alone in such a large, empty house. And so, on the morning of June 9th, I decided it would be prudent to have the locks on the villa changed. The man who came to perform the work that day was Ōkawa Terakado.”
“Of course, at the time, I didn’t know his name. I only remember that he was a middle-aged man, a little overweight, and only a little taller than me.”
“After the locks were changed, I did, of course, feel a bit more secure. But then, after a few days, I began to notice… that someone had been secretly, and with a terrifying regularity, entering my home while I was away.”
Kishida Masayoshi was stunned. “You discovered someone had been breaking into your house? When did this happen? Why on earth didn’t you report it to the police?”
Excellent. I have successfully engaged the fool’s emotions. His professional indignation, his protective instincts. Under the influence of these predictable, sentimental reactions, he will be much, much easier to deceive. Knowing the power of emotion, of narrative, all too well, Yomikawa Tsuko proceeded to embellish her story, to weave a tale that was both chillingly strange, and terrifyingly plausible. “At first, I wasn’t certain. There were just… small, unsettling things happening in the house. Objects I had left in a specific place would be… moved. I would hear strange, inexplicable noises, but when I went to check, there was never anything, or anyone, there.”
“Until one night, I fell asleep while reading in the living room. When I woke up, in the dead of the night, I discovered that a section of the rug in the entryway was wet. And there were dark, ominous red stains on it, like… blood.”
Hearing this, Kishida Masayoshi couldn’t help but swallow hard, his own mind instantly, and against his will, flooded with a montage of gruesome scenes from a dozen different horror movies, the sound of eerie, disembodied whispers, the tragic, bloody fates of the unfortunate protagonists. He found it difficult, almost impossible to imagine how Yomikawa Tsuko must have reacted, to have been confronted with such a terrifying and deeply unsettling scene. If she had remained calm and composed through all of that… then she was truly… incredibly brave.
“Of course,” she continued, her voice still maddeningly, unnervingly calm, “upon closer, more rational inspection, it wasn’t blood. Just the dark, saturated color of the red rug after it had gotten wet. And it was, as you may recall, raining heavily that night.”
“But the marks… the pattern of the moisture… they could only have been made by someone opening the security door from the inside, allowing the driving rain to blow in and soak the carpet.”
“And not long before that, I had just had the locks changed by a professional company. The only key to the new lock was in my possession. Not even my parents had one.”
“And more importantly, I did a simple, logical test. The wet patch on the rug was very narrow. Which meant that the security door could not have been opened more than ten centimeters. Otherwise, the wet patch would have been much, much larger.”
“I immediately, and with a great sense of urgency, checked all the windows in the house. The result? They were all securely locked. No signs of entry, by a person or an animal.”
Kishida Masayoshi was now completely, utterly drawn into her story, a cold shiver running down his spine, a vicarious, retroactive fear for her safety. “For something like that to happen… why didn’t you call the police immediately? That’s too dangerous! And a ten-centimeter gap… that’s strange. Who could possibly get out through a ten-centimeter gap? A… a ninja, or something?”
“Your reasoning is, as always, flawless, Officer. It seems that if I had called the police that night, this… ‘Mr. Ninja’… of yours might already be behind bars,” Yomikawa Tsuko said with a soft, almost inaudible snort of laughter, her mood, for some strange, inexplicable reason, suddenly and dramatically improving.
“So what really happened?” Kishida knew he was being mocked again, but he was, by now, almost used to it. And besides, he had to know. “According to your own description, your house was, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly sealed, locked room at that time. How did that person get in, and how did they get out through a ten-centimeter gap in the door, on a rainy night?”
“Simple,” she said, her voice dropping, a conspiratorial glint in her eyes. “The person who entered my house that night… never actually left. While I was checking the doors, the windows, and the rug, while I was trying with my limited resources, to figure it all out, he was hiding. Somewhere in the room. In the darkness. Because the power was out that night, I didn’t do a thorough, room-by-room search. And so, he was lucky. He managed to remain hidden.”
“As for how he got in…” she said, a small, cold smile playing on her lips, “if that person was Ōkawa Terakado, and if, when he was changing the lock on my house, he secretly, and with a professional’s skill, kept a key, or made a duplicate later… then getting in would have been child’s play, wouldn’t it?”
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