Read Online The Gate of Sorrows by Miyuki Miyabe - Free Book Online

coming up would be similar, with a different name and a different panel of experts. Still, there might be some new developments in the case. Shigenori left the television on.
    The first reports of a corpse dumped in the woods in Mishima had aired in the early afternoon the day before. By late evening, the victim was confirmed to be a transsexual female. She had had her breasts augmented. One toe from the right foot had been severed. Those were the only details. The morning paper had nothing to add, but the eight o’clock news had the victim’s identity, adding that she’d been strangled, likely with a belt. The third toe of the right foot had been severed after death with a sharp implement, probably shears.
    The deceased was now officially a victim. Not only that, she was the “third” victim.
    Every day was Sunday for Shigenori, and he devoured the morning and evening papers front to back. He’d been following the murders since the one on June 1 in Tomakomai, Hokkaido. He was thoroughly familiar with the second murder, in Akita on September 22; after the murder, he’d started a scrapbook. He knew instinctively that the two killings were related, and that there would be more.
    His instincts had proven correct, though this hadn’t given him any satisfaction. The first two killings had been buried in the back pages of the newspapers. Now the same papers, and the news shows that specialized in celebrity love affairs and political scandals, had given themselves over totally to the story, hooting about serial psycho killers. Shigenori was appalled.
    The latest victim was Masami Tono, thirty-five. She’d owned a small bar near Hamamatsu Station called Misty. Masami was popular with her customers, who called her Mama. Regulars knew about her transition—the cosmetic surgery and female hormone replacement therapy she was undergoing. Masami also belonged to a group that advised young people coping with gender dysphoria.
    A local news team sought out a handful of regulars at Misty. All of them reacted to the news of Mama Masami’s death with shock and sadness. One young woman broke down as she spoke. “She was a wonderful person.” “Always so cheerful and full of energy.” “She could drink you under the table, and her cooking was amazing.” “Mama wasn’t the kind of person anyone would want to hurt …”

    The interviews were off-camera, but after years of sizing people up for a living, Shigenori could tell that the emotions were genuine. Masami Tono had been surrounded by people who loved and needed her. She was part of their lives. She hadn’t been in a relationship when she died, but she’d often said she was “dreaming of finding the right person.”
    She had last been seen outside Misty on December 14, just past 1 a.m., as she waved goodbye to the last two customers of the evening. A college student helped out at the bar, but only until ten. Every night, Masami closed up the bar alone and drove home. The old rented house where she lived with a pair of cats was about ten minutes away.
    From then until the next morning at just past ten, when her body was found in a storage trunk in the woods outside Mishima, her movements were unknown. The prefectural police had assembled a special investigation unit and were searching her house and bar. She was probably killed in one of these locations, or in her beloved yellow Volkswagen, her pride and joy. She’d always referred to it as her “yellow submarine,” and told everyone it was her good luck charm. Now it was missing.
    Masami was a native of Mishima. Her parents still lived there. She’d moved to Tokyo after graduating from the local high school, but returned to Shizuoka just before her thirtieth birthday to open Misty. Her decision to live and work in her home prefecture, but not her hometown, seemed connected to a lingering conflict with her parents, who refused to have anything to do with the media. When a reporter leaned on the intercom call button at