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Authors: Miyuki Miyabe
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their front door, her father snapped in a gravelly voice, “We’ve had nothing to do with Masayoshi for a long time.” That was his first and last comment on the murder of his child.
Did the killer who stuffed Masami’s body into a trunk know about this family conflict? Shigenori suspected he did. That would be why the body was dumped in Mishima. Masami was born and raised there; she’d probably left because she had no choice. When her parents cut her off, she’d had no home to return to. Stuffing her corpse in a trunk and dumping it in the forest near her old home like a load of worn-out clothes seemed an act of spiteful mockery.
As he put the clipper away and balled up the newspaper, Shigenori shook his head. He was thinking too much again. Reading too much into things. It was a habit he’d had as a professional, and his bosses and colleagues had often warned him about it.
Shigenori had been a cop all his working life. Born in Tokyo’s old town, he’d joined the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department straight out of high school. After more than twenty years in uniform, patrolling neighborhoods out of one of Tokyo’s hundreds of police boxes, he’d became a detective at the Osaki Police Station in Shinagawa.
That was the start of a new period in his life, years of almost pure detective work, transferring every few years from one station to another. Just before his fiftieth birthday he was transferred to Section One of the Criminal Investigation Division at MPD headquarters. It was another step up, but not because of his performance as a detective. The section chief knew Shigenori as a man who never lost his cool, even in the tensest situations. He also had a genius for dealing with people and looking after young patrol officers, who sometimes struggled with the pressures and regimentation of police work.
With the new century, Tokyo’s violent crime rate started falling, yet this only made people more sensitive to perceived threats to their safety. The face of violent crime—shameless, cruel, and callous, often senseless and absurd—stoked the public’s worst fears. The general atmosphere of media-stoked hysteria made investigating such crimes even more trying for law enforcement and tended to put the detectives on edge about everything. To Shigenori, the younger men on the force seemed to need more psychological support than had the men of his own generation. This was why the section chief had reached out to him. His job was to be a mentor and role model.
Shigenori was assigned to Division One, Section Three, Squad Two. Everyone called it the Edano Squad, after its leader. He expected to be rotated to another squad in due course, but he never dreamed that, in the end, he would be the one to request the transfer.
In his sixth year on the Edano Squad, Shigenori started noticing occasional tingling and numbness in his legs. At first it only happened when the seasons changed or when there was a marked difference between the day’s high and low temperatures. But over time it became a constant problem. Eventually the tingling became a stabbing pain in the back of his left thigh that made it hard to walk.
Shigenori’s annual police physical didn’t cover orthopedic problems. He hated hospitals anyway, and didn’t have time to fool with doctors. He chalked his symptoms up to advancing age. Many of his fellow detectives were suffering from herniated disks. Lower back and knee pain were part of life for men who spent hours on their feet. There wasn’t a man on the force who wasn’t coping with, or more often ignoring, some kind of physical complaint. Shigenori visited a massage therapist whenever he could. Otherwise he made do by plastering his legs with medicated patches.
Gradually the pain increased to the point where massages and patches didn’t help. When winter’s cold deepened toward the end of each December, Shigenori could barely climb out of bed in the morning. Now the pain was constant, not only
Did the killer who stuffed Masami’s body into a trunk know about this family conflict? Shigenori suspected he did. That would be why the body was dumped in Mishima. Masami was born and raised there; she’d probably left because she had no choice. When her parents cut her off, she’d had no home to return to. Stuffing her corpse in a trunk and dumping it in the forest near her old home like a load of worn-out clothes seemed an act of spiteful mockery.
As he put the clipper away and balled up the newspaper, Shigenori shook his head. He was thinking too much again. Reading too much into things. It was a habit he’d had as a professional, and his bosses and colleagues had often warned him about it.
Shigenori had been a cop all his working life. Born in Tokyo’s old town, he’d joined the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department straight out of high school. After more than twenty years in uniform, patrolling neighborhoods out of one of Tokyo’s hundreds of police boxes, he’d became a detective at the Osaki Police Station in Shinagawa.
That was the start of a new period in his life, years of almost pure detective work, transferring every few years from one station to another. Just before his fiftieth birthday he was transferred to Section One of the Criminal Investigation Division at MPD headquarters. It was another step up, but not because of his performance as a detective. The section chief knew Shigenori as a man who never lost his cool, even in the tensest situations. He also had a genius for dealing with people and looking after young patrol officers, who sometimes struggled with the pressures and regimentation of police work.
With the new century, Tokyo’s violent crime rate started falling, yet this only made people more sensitive to perceived threats to their safety. The face of violent crime—shameless, cruel, and callous, often senseless and absurd—stoked the public’s worst fears. The general atmosphere of media-stoked hysteria made investigating such crimes even more trying for law enforcement and tended to put the detectives on edge about everything. To Shigenori, the younger men on the force seemed to need more psychological support than had the men of his own generation. This was why the section chief had reached out to him. His job was to be a mentor and role model.
Shigenori was assigned to Division One, Section Three, Squad Two. Everyone called it the Edano Squad, after its leader. He expected to be rotated to another squad in due course, but he never dreamed that, in the end, he would be the one to request the transfer.
In his sixth year on the Edano Squad, Shigenori started noticing occasional tingling and numbness in his legs. At first it only happened when the seasons changed or when there was a marked difference between the day’s high and low temperatures. But over time it became a constant problem. Eventually the tingling became a stabbing pain in the back of his left thigh that made it hard to walk.
Shigenori’s annual police physical didn’t cover orthopedic problems. He hated hospitals anyway, and didn’t have time to fool with doctors. He chalked his symptoms up to advancing age. Many of his fellow detectives were suffering from herniated disks. Lower back and knee pain were part of life for men who spent hours on their feet. There wasn’t a man on the force who wasn’t coping with, or more often ignoring, some kind of physical complaint. Shigenori visited a massage therapist whenever he could. Otherwise he made do by plastering his legs with medicated patches.
Gradually the pain increased to the point where massages and patches didn’t help. When winter’s cold deepened toward the end of each December, Shigenori could barely climb out of bed in the morning. Now the pain was constant, not only
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