Malice

4 PURSUIT ^{KYOICHIRO KAGA’S NOTES}

Four days have passed since I arrested Osamu Nonoguchi. Though he admitted the crime, his lips remain tightly sealed on one matter: his motive. Why did he kill a man who was his childhood friend and a benefactor? The chief has made it clear that, without a clear motive, we can’t bring this case to trial. Nonoguchi might recant his confession, and his lawyer might poke enough holes in our circumstantial evidence to create reasonable doubt. The chance that everything could fall apart in court is too great.

Yet despite repeated questioning, all he would say was “I just got angry and killed him in the heat of the moment. That’s all.”

This wasn’t nearly enough for us to establish motive, but I did have an inkling of the real motive. My first clue was the manuscript for The Gates of Ice.

I should mention that we did find the manuscript as I’d expected, on the hard drive of Mr. Nonoguchi’s word processor. Also, in his desk drawer, we found the disk he’d brought to the Hidakas’ on the day of the murder, which was, indeed, compatible with the disk drive of the computer in Kunihiko Hidaka’s office.

Yet I don’t believe this was a premeditated murder—an opinion shared by the entire investigation team. Which raises the question of why, that very day, Mr. Nonoguchi just happened to be carrying the next installment of The Gates of Ice on a disk in his pocket. And before we ask even that question, we need to know why Mr. Nonoguchi had written a manuscript for a work that was supposed to be Hidaka’s.

I had a working theory about this point in particular, even before I made the arrest. I was convinced that if I could trace this theory back to its logical origins, I would find the motive for this murder.

All that remained was to get Mr. Nonoguchi to corroborate my theory; but he proved uncooperative. Regarding the manuscript for The Gates of Ice, he said, “I wrote it on a lark. I brought it to Hidaka’s to surprise him. I told him if he wasn’t going to make his deadline, he could always use my version. Of course, he took it as the joke it was meant to be.”

I need hardly point out that this story was unconvincing. Yet when pressed further, the suspect simply said that it was my choice whether to believe him.

My team searched Mr. Nonoguchi’s apartment again, having examined only his desk and the word processor’s hard drive the first time around.

The second search resulted in eighteen pieces of evidence, including eight thick, spiral-bound notebooks, eight double-density floppy disks, and two file folders containing short, handwritten manuscripts. All of these contained numerous pieces of fiction, both short stories and novels. We confirmed that the handwriting in the spiral-bound notebooks and on the handwritten manuscripts all belonged to Mr. Nonoguchi.

What was of particular interest was the content of the writings. One of the floppies contained something startling—though if my theory is correct, entirely expected. This was a manuscript for The Gates of Ice. Not just the latest installment, but every installment that had been published so far.

I showed the manuscripts to Mr. Yamabe, Hidaka’s editor at Somei Monthly. His opinion:

“This is, without a doubt, a manuscript for The Gates of Ice as published. That said, even though the story is more or less the same, there are a few things in here that weren’t in the manuscripts I received from Mr. Hidaka. And others seem to be missing. Again, the word use and sentence structure is slightly different.”

In other words, these earlier installments showed the same differences from the printed version as the manuscript Nonoguchi attempted to use as part of his alibi.

The investigation team then obtained copies of every printed work of Kunihiko Hidaka’s, divided them up, and read them. (Several people on the team commented that it had been a long while since they’d read so much, and there was bellyaching all around.)

We discovered that the five full-length novels written in the spiral-bound notebooks in Osamu Nonoguchi’s apartment all closely matched works published by Kunihiko Hidaka. Despite slight differences in the titles, characters’ names, and settings, the general story lines were practically identical.

The floppy disks contained three more novels and twenty short stories, of which all the novels and seventeen of the short stories matched works by Mr. Hidaka. The three short stories that didn’t match were children’s stories that had been published by Mr. Nonoguchi.

As for the two short, handwritten works, no corresponding publications were found in Mr. Hidaka’s output. Based on the age of the paper, these appeared to have been written some time ago. Perhaps if we expanded the scope of our investigation, we might find something.

Finding so many manuscripts for works by another author was highly unusual. Moreover, the manuscripts were not identical to their published versions. The stories written in the spiral-bound notebooks had several notes in the margins and corrections had been made, making them seem more like works in progress than something finished.

My theory is that Osamu Nonoguchi had been working as Kunihiko Hidaka’s ghostwriter. I suspect that something in that relationship soured, leading to the present situation.

I proposed my theory to Nonoguchi in the interrogation room, but he flatly denied it: “You’re wrong.”

When I asked him about the stories in those spiral notebooks and floppy disks, he closed his eyes and fell silent. The investigator in the room with me tried to badger it out of him, but he wouldn’t talk.

That was as far as we were able to get—day after day, session after session—then today, in the middle of the interrogation session, something unexpected happened.

Osamu Nonoguchi suddenly put a hand to his stomach and complained of a sharp pain. The attack was so sudden and so severe, I was afraid he’d somehow smuggled in some poison and taken it.

He was taken to the police hospital immediately and given a full examination. The chief called me in shortly after with startling news: Osamu Nonoguchi has cancer.

I went to visit him in the hospital the day after he collapsed in the questioning room, first speaking briefly with the physician in charge of his case.

According to the doctor, the cancer had spread to the membrane around his internal organs. This was a dangerous phase of his cancer, and if he was to have any hope of surviving, it would require immediate surgery.

When I asked the doctor if the cancer was new or a recurrence after a remission, he told me that it likely was a relapse.

This news wasn’t a surprise. In our investigation, we’d learned that, two years prior, Osamu Nonoguchi had to have a portion of his stomach removed due to cancer and been forced to take several months off from his teaching job.

Nonoguchi hadn’t been back to the hospital until now, after he was arrested, even though, as the doctor told me now, he had probably known about the return of his cancer for some time.

I then asked the doctor if surgery would save Nonoguchi’s life. The doctor pondered this for a while, then finally shrugged. “I give him a fifty-fifty chance.”

That wasn’t the answer I wanted.

I took my leave of the doctor and went to visit Osamu Nonoguchi.

He was in a private room. “I feel bad that I get to lounge about here in the lap of luxury instead of going to prison,” he said with a weak smile, from his hospital bed. I realized it was more than just years that had aged his thin face since the time we’d been colleagues.

“How do you feel?”

“Not good, but considering the nature of my illness, I’d have to say I’m doing pretty well.”

I sat silent, next to his bed, for a while, until he turned to me and asked, “When will I be put on trial? If it takes too long, I might not make it.”

I was unsure if he was joking, though he had clearly already accepted that his death was inevitable and fast approaching.

“The trial won’t happen for a while. We don’t have enough evidence and detail to start.”

“Why not? I’ve confessed, and you have proof. Put me on trial and you’ll get a guilty verdict. Isn’t that enough? I promise I won’t change my story when I’m on the stand.”

“Actually, I wish you would change your story. Right now, it lacks a motive.”

“That again?”

“I’ll happily stop asking you about it if you tell me.”

“Like I said, there wasn’t any motive. It was an impulsive act, done in the heat of the moment. That’s all. I got angry and I killed him. There’s no reason or logic to it beyond that.”

“People typically don’t get angry for no reason.”

“Well, whatever reason I had, it wasn’t anything important. To be honest, I have no idea why I lost my head. I guess that’s why they call it ‘losing your head.’ Even if I wanted to explain it to you, I couldn’t.”

“Do you really think I’m going to accept that for an answer?”

“I don’t think you have a choice.”

I looked at him and he again met my gaze, his eyes full of self-assurance.

“I’d like to ask you again about the notebooks and disks we found in your apartment.”

He looked disappointed. “Those have nothing to do with your case. Please stop trying to tie everything up into one neat little package.”

“Then help me set them aside by telling me what they are.”

“Nothing. Just notes and disks.”

“Notes and disks containing the text to Kunihiko Hidaka’s novels. Or, to be precise, text extraordinarily similar to Mr. Hidaka’s work. One might even call them rough drafts.”

He snorted. “What, do you think I was his ghostwriter? That’s rich. You’re overthinking this.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“How about I give you an answer that makes even more sense. Those notes you found were my homework. People who want to become writers have to work at it, you know. I practiced by copying Hidaka’s works, trying to learn the rhythm of his writing, the manner of his expressions. It’s nothing new or unusual. Lots of would-be authors do the same thing.”

I’d been expecting him to come up with something along these lines. When I’d spoken with Kunihiko Hidaka’s editor, he’d made exactly the same conjecture. However, the editor had pointed out that, even if that was the case, it still left three questions unanswered. The first was why the manuscripts we’d discovered contained slight variations from Kunihiko Hidaka’s work. The second was that, although it wasn’t unthinkable that someone might copy an entire novel, it certainly was unusual that someone had copied so many by the same author. The third was that, while Kunihiko Hidaka was a bestselling author, his prose wasn’t so amazing that another writer would look to it as a model.

I raised these same points now to Osamu Nonoguchi himself.

Without flinching, he told me, “As for that, there are perfectly rational reasons for all of them. In the beginning, in fact, I did simply copy what Hidaka had written word for word, but eventually I got tired of that. Eventually, whenever an expression popped into my head, or a different way of saying something came to me, I would try writing that down instead. You understand? I was using Hidaka’s work as a starting point, but was trying to write something better. That ultimately became the whole point of the exercise. As far as the number of novels I rewrote, well, all I can say is that I kept at it for a long time. I’m single, and there wasn’t much else to do when I got home, so I wrote. It’s as simple as that. As for your last point, it’s true that Hidaka’s writing isn’t all that great, but I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. His writing is good. It might not be the most technically advanced, but it’s simple, easy to understand, and solid. I’d argue that the simple fact that so many people read it is proof enough.”

Osamu Nonoguchi’s explanations made sense. Yet they raised another question. Why, if all this was true, hadn’t he said so earlier? Instead, he’d refused to talk about the writings we’d found at his apartment at all until now, after he collapsed in the interrogation room. I wondered if he hadn’t used the break in his interrogation that resulted from his collapse and subsequent hospital stay to make up a suitable story. Of course, even if this was true, it would be exceedingly difficult to prove.

I decided to change tactics and bring up another piece of evidence we’d discovered: a collection of several memos found in Osamu Nonoguchi’s desk drawer. The memos added up to the outline of a story, and the characters’ names in them proved they were an outline for The Gates of Ice. However, it wasn’t an outline of the parts already serialized. It was an outline for the remainder of the story, the part not yet written.

His explanation: “That was just more practice. Even readers like to guess where a story is going, right? I was just being a bit more hands-on about it.”

“But you’d already given up your teaching career and were working as a full-time professional writer, no? Why spend so much time copying another writer’s work when you could have been writing your own stories?”

“Don’t be silly, I’m nowhere near what one might call a ‘pro.’ I still have a lot to learn. And I have plenty of time to practice, since I wasn’t getting much work.”

I was unconvinced.

He must’ve seen it in my face, because he went on, “I know you want to make me out to be Hidaka’s ghostwriter, but you’re giving me too much credit. I don’t have that kind of talent. Besides, if it were true, I’d be shouting it from the rooftops: ‘Those were all my novels! I’m the real author!’ Unfortunately, I didn’t write them. If I had written them, believe me, I’d have done so under my own name. Why use his? Didn’t you wonder about that at all?”

“I did indeed. That’s why it’s all so strange.”

“There’s nothing strange about it. You’ve just made an erroneous assumption and it’s leading you to strange conclusions. You’re just thinking about it way too much.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I wish you would think so, and I really don’t want to talk about this anymore. Can’t we just get on with the trial? Who cares about my motive? Just make up a plausible one and I’ll write my confession however you please.”

He sounded as though he truly didn’t care.

I reflected on our discussion after leaving his hospital room. No matter how you looked at it, too many things didn’t add up. Yet clearly, also, as he’d insisted, my reasoning had a flaw.

If he had really been Kunihiko Hidaka’s ghostwriter, I had to wonder why. Had he thought the novels would sell better because Mr. Hidaka was an established author? That didn’t make sense because the book that had kicked off Mr. Hidaka’s career—the one that had made him a bestselling writer—was one likely written by Osamu Nonoguchi himself. He had no reason at that stage to publish it under Hidaka’s name. So why not make it his own first novel?

Perhaps he’d withheld his name because he was still working as a teacher then? But that didn’t make sense either. I couldn’t think of an instance where a teacher had been fired for moonlighting as an author, so what would have been the purpose? And if he’d been forced to choose between professions, I was sure that Osamu Nonoguchi would have chosen author over teacher.

Finally, as Mr. Nonoguchi himself said, if he was Mr. Hidaka’s ghostwriter, why deny it? Being recognized as the true author of Kunihiko Hidaka’s many works would be a feather in his cap.

So maybe he wasn’t a ghostwriter. Maybe the notebooks and disks found in his apartment were nothing more than what he claimed them to be.

Except, that couldn’t be true.

The Osamu Nonoguchi that I knew was prideful, confident in his abilities. I couldn’t conceive of him copying so much of someone else’s work, even in the attempt to become a better writer.

Back at the station, I related my discussion with Mr. Nonoguchi to the chief. Detective Sakoda listened to my report with a sour look.

When I was finished, he commented, “Why would Nonoguchi want to hide his motive for killing Hidaka?”

“I don’t know. What secret could be worse than the fact that he killed someone?”

“You think Hidaka’s novels are somehow involved?”

“I do.”

“And that Osamu Nonoguchi was the real author? Even though he denies it?”

The department clearly didn’t want to spend any more time on this case than it had to. People from the press had already started asking questions about the ghostwriter theory, though I had no idea how they’d caught wind of it. We’d avoided saying anything about it, but the papers would probably start printing stories about it, possibly even as soon as tomorrow. That would in turn mean another flood of phone calls.

“So he’s claiming he just got mad and killed him?” Detective Sakoda shook his head. “That makes it sound like there was an argument, but if we don’t know what that argument was about, then we don’t have a place to begin. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if he just used his authorial talents to make something up. Of course, then he might contradict himself on the stand and we’d be back to square one.”

“I don’t believe he impulsively kill Hidaka as the result of an argument,” I said. “If Osamu Nonoguchi left the house through the front door, then went around to the garden and snuck in through the window, he already had intent to kill before the deed was done. My guess is that his motive for killing him emerged during that first meeting with Hidaka.”

“So the question is, what were they talking about?”

“Nonoguchi’s own account of the meeting doesn’t mention anything of consequence. What I think is that they were discussing how to continue their working relationship once Hidaka moved to Canada. Maybe Hidaka said something that didn’t sit well with him?”

“Maybe so.”

We’d already looked into Osamu Nonoguchi’s bank records, but we found no indication that money was being regularly received from Kunihiko Hidaka. That didn’t rule out the possibility of cash transactions, though.

“It looks like we’re going to have to dig deeper into their past,” the chief said.

I agreed.

I decided to pay a visit, along with two of my fellow detectives, to Rie Hidaka. She’d left the house where her husband was killed and was staying at her family home in Mitaka, a suburb in the western part of Tokyo. This was the first time I’d seen her since Osamu Nonoguchi’s arrest. The chief had called ahead to break the news. He avoided mentioning the ghostwriter theory, but she’d likely heard something from the press, who were probably calling her around the clock. I imagined she had as many questions for us as we had for her.

After arriving and briefly explaining all that had happened, I told her about the manuscripts we’d found in Mr. Nonoguchi’s apartment. She was surprised.

I asked her if she could think of any reason why he’d be in possession of manuscripts closely resembling her late husband’s work.

She insisted she had no idea: “I don’t think my husband was getting his ideas from anyone else, let alone copying someone else’s work. Writing, and coming up with new ideas, was always a struggle for him, but he wasn’t the type to hire a ghostwriter.” Though her voice was calm, fire was in her eyes.

I had trouble believing that. She’d only been married to Kunihiko Hidaka for a month. I was sure there was much about her late husband that she didn’t know.

She must have picked up on my hesitation because she went on, “If you’re thinking about how long we were married—not very long, I admit—allow me to point out that before I was his wife, I was his editor.”

I already knew this. Rie had worked at one of Hidaka’s publishers, which was how they’d met in the first place.

“When I was his editor, we spoke at great length about the novels he might write in the future. In the end, I was the editor for only one of his books, but it’s a novel that never would’ve existed without our discussions. I don’t see how Nonoguchi could’ve been involved at all.”

“Which novel was this?”

“Sea Ghost. It was published last year.”

It wasn’t one I’d read, so I asked one of the detectives with me if he knew anything about it. In our investigation, many of my fellow detectives had become experts on Kunihiko Hidaka’s work.

His response was intriguing. Sea Ghost was one of the novels lacking a counterpart in Osamu Nonoguchi’s notes and disks.

Nor was Sea Ghost alone in this. All of the novels Mr. Hidaka had published in the first three years of his career appeared to be originals. Even after that point, nearly half of his books had no counterparts in Nonoguchi’s apartment. This made sense if we assumed that Mr. Hidaka continued some of his own writing, even while using Mr. Nonoguchi as a ghostwriter for other works.

If that assumption was correct, then even if there was a work that, as Rie Hidaka claimed, “never would’ve existed without our discussions,” it didn’t disprove my theory.

I tried a new angle to see if Rie had any idea what might drive Osamu Nonoguchi to kill her husband.

She said, “I’ve been thinking about it ever since he was arrested, but I just don’t know. To be honest, I still can’t believe he did it. They were such good friends. I don’t think I ever saw them fight or argue. I worry that this might all be some horrible mistake.”

I believe she was sincere. Nothing in her manner suggested this was just a performance for our benefit. I asked a few minor follow-up questions, then I thanked her for her time.

As we were getting ready to leave, Rie Hidaka handed me a book with a gray jacket, speckled as though with gold dust—a copy of Sea Ghost. I think what she had in mind was that I read it and then stop doubting her late husband’s talent.

I began reading it that night, recalling that Osamu Nonoguchi had recommended this very book to me when I asked him if Kunihiko Hidaka had ever written a mystery. I wondered if there was a deeper meaning behind Nonoguchi’s choice of book. Was he suggesting I read a Hidaka novel that he had nothing to do with?

Sea Ghost was the story of a man of advanced years and his young wife. The man was a painter, the wife his model. The painter began to suspect that his wife was cheating on him, a typical theme for the genre. However, the wife had two distinct personalities, and the real action kicks off when the husband discovers her secret. One of her personalities is his loyal wife who seems to love him from the bottom of her heart. The other personality has a lover, and it becomes clear this personality is plotting with her lover to kill the painter. As the painter agonizes over whether he should bring her to a hospital for treatment, he finds a memo on his desk:

“Who will the drugs kill? Me? Or her?”

The memo had been left by his wife’s “other” personality, and the message was clear: even if treatment could fix her multiple-personality disorder, there was no guarantee that the personality who loved him would be the one that remained.

Deeply troubled, the painter begins having nightmares. In these dreams, his wife comes into the room with an angelic smile on her face and opens the bedroom window, through which a man enters. As the intruder lifts a knife to attack the painter, the intruder’s face changes to become that of the wife—at which point the painter wakes in a cold sweat.

In the end, a real attempt is made on his life, and defending himself, the painter accidentally stabs his wife. She dies in his arms, but the way she looks at him makes him believe that, just before the end, her personality shifted back to that of the good wife. So, did he kill the angel or the demon? The painter is doomed never to know.

That’s the general outline, though I’m sure a more discerning reader might have come away with a higher-level interpretation. Themes such as lust in old age, and ugliness in the heart of an artist, were probably there for the taking if one read between the lines, but I was never much for literature in school. Nor am I particularly qualified to pass judgment on the quality of the writing itself. That said, with all due respect to Rie Hidaka, in my opinion it wasn’t a very good book.

Let’s consider the careers of the two men: killer and victim.

Kunihiko Hidaka joined a private high school attached to a university and climbed up that ladder into the university’s Department of Literature and Philosophy. After getting a degree, he worked first at an advertising company, then at a publisher. Roughly ten years ago, a short story he’d written won a small literary magazine’s new-author award. This started his career as a novelist. For the next two years, none of his books sold all that well, but the book he published in the fourth year, An Unburning Flame, won a major award for literature. This began his march toward being a famous author.

Osamu Nonoguchi went to a different private high school from Hidaka’s and, after taking a year off, began studying in the literature department of a national university. His major was in Japanese literature. He got his teaching credentials and after graduation took a job at a public middle school. He worked at three schools before he retired from teaching earlier this year. The school where we worked together was the second of those three.

Nonoguchi made his own authorial debut three years ago with a short story published in a biannual children’s magazine. To date, he hasn’t yet published a novel.

Though they took different paths, according to Osamu Nonoguchi, the two met again about seven years ago. He claims to have seen Hidaka’s name in a newspaper and reached out to reconnect with his old friend.

I believe this is the truth because roughly half a year after they supposedly reconnected, Hidaka won the literature prize for An Unburning Flame, which is the first of his books with a version found in Nonoguchi’s manuscripts. It seems safe to assume that Hidaka’s reunion with Nonoguchi brought a change in his fortunes.

I went to speak to the editor of An Unburning Flame. A short fellow by the name of Mimura, he was currently serving as the chief editor of a literary magazine.

I asked him if he could imagine Kunihiko Hidaka writing An Unburning Flame based on what he had written before.

Before he answered my question, Mr. Mimura had one of his own: “Are you investigating that ridiculous ghostwriter theory that’s been making the rounds?”

Clearly, Mr. Mimura wasn’t a fan of my theory. Nor did his company have anything to gain by besmirching Kunihiko Hidaka’s work, even after his death.

“I wouldn’t call it a theory, there’s not enough evidence to call it that. I just need to make sure we have all the facts straight.”

“Well, it seems like a waste of time to follow up on baseless rumors, but you don’t need me to tell you how to do your job.” Then he answered my question: “When you get right down to it, An Unburning Flame was a turning point for Mr. Hidaka. He showed tremendous growth as a writer in that novel. Some might say he transformed overnight.”

“Would you say it was considerably better than what he had written before?”

“It was, but for me—and this is critical—it wasn’t all that unexpected. Hidaka was always a powerful writer. But his earlier work was always a little too rough at the edges, and he lost readers because of it. They couldn’t grasp the message through the noise, if you follow. However, An Unburning Flame was very streamlined. Have you read it?”

“I did. It was good.”

“I agree. In fact, I think it’s his best work.”

It was the story of a salaryman who, enchanted by the beauty of the fireworks he sees while on a business trip, changes professions and becomes a fireworks maker. The story was good, but the descriptions of the fireworks in particular were well done, I thought.

“And he wrote that novel all in one go. It wasn’t serialized?”

“That’s correct.”

“Did you talk about the work before he started writing it?”

“Of course. We do that with every author.”

“What did you talk about with Mr. Hidaka at that time?”

“We discussed the plot a little. We also talked theme, story, and his main character.”

“Did you make all of the big decisions together, then?”

“No. Naturally that’s left to Mr. Hidaka to do by himself. He’s the author, after all. I just help him talk through his ideas and offer my opinions.”

“Was it Mr. Hidaka’s idea to have the main character become a fireworks maker?”

“Of course.”

“What did you think when you heard that?”

“You mean did I like it?”

“Did it seem like his kind of idea?”

“Not particularly, but it certainly wasn’t a surprise, either. He’s not the first person to write about fireworks makers.”

“Would you say that there was anything in the final book that was the direct result of your advice, Mr. Mimura?”

“Nothing big. I looked at the finished manuscript and pointed out a few things, sure, but it was up to him to decide how to fix them.”

“One last question. If Mr. Hidaka had rewritten someone else’s work using his own words and expressions, do you think you could tell by reading it?”

Mr. Mimura thought a while before answering, “Honestly, no. Word usage and turns of phrase are the best way to tell who the writer is, so, no, I suppose not.”

But he didn’t neglect to add, “Detective, An Unburning Flame is without a doubt Mr. Hidaka’s work. We met several times during its writing, and he was truly struggling with it. Sometimes I thought he might have a breakdown altogether. If he was using someone else’s novel as a basis, I doubt he would have had to struggle quite so much.”

I refrained from venturing an opinion on this and instead thanked him and left. However, I had already worked out a rebuttal in my mind. Namely, that while it was difficult when times were hard to pretend to be happy, doing the reverse was relatively simple. Nothing he’d said shook my confidence in my ghostwriter theory.

When one man kills another, often a woman is involved. However, we hadn’t yet looked deeply into the possibility of there being a woman in Osamu Nonoguchi’s life. The feeling in the department was that it wasn’t one of “those kind of murders.” Or maybe it was just the impression we had of Mr. Nonoguchi himself. He wasn’t unattractive, but it was hard to picture the woman who would choose him.

However, our instincts were wrong. He had had a special relationship with at least one woman. The investigation team that performed the follow-up search of his apartment found the first evidence of this, three clues.

The first was an apron with a checkered pattern and a feminine design, found neatly ironed and folded in one of Osamu Nonoguchi’s dressers. Our working theory is that a woman who occasionally visited would wear it when she cleaned up around the apartment or perhaps cooked meals.

The second clue was a gold necklace, still in its case, and neatly wrapped. The necklace came from a famous jewelry store. It looked like a present waiting to be given.

The third clue was a filled-out questionnaire, folded neatly and placed in the same box as the wrapped necklace. The questionnaire came from a travel agency and concerned a trip to Okinawa Mr. Nonoguchi had apparently been planning. The date at the top of the questionnaire was May 10, seven years ago. The trip was planned for July 30, neatly coinciding with a teacher’s summer break. However, since the questionnaire had never been turned in, it seemed that the trip never happened.

At issue were the names of the travelers: Osamu Nonoguchi, and right next to that, a Hatsuko Nonoguchi, age twenty-nine.

We looked into it, and no one with that name ever existed. At least, not among Osamu Nonoguchi’s relatives. Our assumption is that Hatsuko Nonoguchi was an alias, and Osamu was intending to take a trip to Okinawa with a woman pretending to be his wife.

From this we can assume the following: at the very least, seven years ago, Osamu Nonoguchi was in a close relationship with a woman, and though the current status of that relationship was unknown, he still had feelings for her—enough that he kept the relics of their relationship close at hand.

I asked the chief for permission to investigate further. I had no idea whether Hatsuko was connected to our case; however, seven years ago was the year before Kunihiko Hidaka broke out with An Unburning Flame. I felt that, were I able to meet the woman Nonoguchi was with at the time, I might learn something of value about what was going on then.

I first tried asking the man himself. He sat up halfway in his hospital bed when I told him we’d found the apron, the necklace, and the travel documents.

“Could you please tell us whom the apron belongs to, to whom you intended to give the necklace, and with whom you were planning on going to Okinawa?”

Unlike my previous questions, these clearly troubled him. “What does that have to do with your case? I realize I’m a murderer, and I have to pay for my crimes, but does that mean I have to divulge private matters that have nothing to do with my crime?”

“I’m not telling you to make it public knowledge. You only have to tell me. If we find that this has nothing to do with the murder, I won’t ask you about it again, nor will the media hear about it. I can guarantee that we won’t bother the woman.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but she has nothing to do with the case. You’ll have to trust me on that.”

“Then why don’t you just tell me? If you refuse, you’ll be forcing us to investigate, and I guarantee you that we’ll find out everything there is to know. Once our detectives start looking at this, there’s a good chance that the press will catch wind of it. I imagine that’s not something you particularly want.”

But no matter what I said, Osamu Nonoguchi wouldn’t tell us the woman’s name. He even took issue with our continuing to search his apartment: “I’d prefer you stopped rooting through my things. Some of my books were gifts from friends, and they’re very important to me.”

At that point, however, the doctor intervened. I’d reach the time limit he’d placed on my visit and I was forced to leave.

I felt I had achieved what I needed that day, for I was now convinced that looking for this mysterious woman would be a meaningful step in establishing Nonoguchi’s motive.

I began by speaking with Mr. Nonoguchi’s neighbors, asking if they’d seen a woman in his apartment or heard a woman’s voice there. People who are normally reluctant to answer most questions from the police frequently become overly eager to help when it comes to their neighbor’s relationships. In this case, however, my questions didn’t yield much. Even the woman who lived next door to Nonoguchi, a housewife who was often home, said she’d never seen a woman visit his apartment.

“It doesn’t have to be recently. In fact, it might have been several years since she last visited.”

The neighbor told me she had been living there almost ten years, meaning she’d moved in around the same time as Nonoguchi. It seemed likely she’d have seen anyone he was dating.

“Maybe there was a woman,” she said at last. “But that was some time ago, and I’m afraid I just don’t remember.”

I tried taking a fresh look at all of Osamu Nonoguchi’s relationships—personal and professional. I started by visiting the middle school he’d quit back in March. However, I found that few people there knew anything at all about his personal life. He’d never been much for socializing, and he’d never spent time with anyone from the school outside of work.

I next went to the middle school where he’d taught before that. This was where he was working when the Okinawa trip was planned. I wasn’t eager about visiting that school because this was where I’d once taught as well.

I waited for classes to finish before going. Two of the three school buildings had been renovated, but that was about the only difference. Everything else looked exactly as it had ten years before.

Suddenly lacking the courage to walk through the front gate, I stood there and watched the students leave school. Then a familiar face passed in front of me, an English teacher named Mrs. Tone. She was about seven or eight years older than me. I went after her and called out to her. She turned, recognizing me with a surprised smile.

I said hello and asked how she was before telling her that I wanted to talk about Nonoguchi. She nodded, her expression growing serious.

We went to a nearby coffee shop, a place that had opened since I’d worked at the school.

“We were all surprised by what happened, and no one can believe that Mr. Nonoguchi was the killer,” she told me, then added excitedly, “And to think that you’re on the case! What a coincidence.”

I told her that this coincidence was making it hard for me to do my job, which she said she understood. Then I got down to the matter at hand. My first question was whether there ever was a woman in Osamu Nonoguchi’s life.

She said it was a difficult question. “I don’t know for sure, but my feeling is there wasn’t.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Intuition?” She laughed. “I know, I know. ‘Intuition’ is usually dead wrong. But… I think some objective facts make this likely the case. Did you know that Mr. Nonoguchi had a bunch of people set him up on blind dates?”

“No, I didn’t. He doesn’t strike me as the dating type.”

“It was less random dating and more like he was looking for a potential spouse. I’m pretty sure our headmaster at the time set him up at least once. If he was so desperate to get hitched, I can’t imagine there was a woman in his life.”

“How many years ago are we talking?”

“It wasn’t that long before he left the school, so maybe five or six years ago?”

“What about before then? Was he getting set up then, too?”

“I don’t remember exactly. Should I ask some of the other teachers? There are still quite a few who were here in those days.”

I told her that would be a huge help if she would check around with her colleagues.

Mrs. Tone pulled out a PDA and wrote herself a memo.

I moved on to my second question, asking if she knew anything about Osamu Nonoguchi’s relationship with Kunihiko Hidaka.

“Oh, that’s right,” she said, “you’d already left the school by then.”

“By when?”

“By the time Kunihiko Hidaka won that new-author award.”

“I’m not sure if I was here or not. I’m not the sort who keeps tabs on literature awards.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have known about it myself if Mr. Nonoguchi hadn’t brought the announcement to school and showed it to everyone. He seemed very excited that his old schoolmate had won.”

“Do you know if Mr. Nonoguchi was in contact with Mr. Hidaka at that time?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think so, not at that point. He did eventually meet up with him, I know, but that was some time after that.”

“How long after? Could it have been two or three years?” That would mean his reunion with Hidaka was seven years ago, as he’d claimed.

“Sure, that sounds about right.”

“Did Mr. Nonoguchi ever talk about Mr. Hidaka in detail?”

“What kind of detail?”

“Anything at all. Maybe he commented on what kind of person his old friend was, or maybe he said something about his novels.”

“I don’t remember if he said anything about Mr. Hidaka as a person, but he was a little outspoken about not liking his writing very much.”

“He didn’t think his novels were good? Do you remember anything specific?”

“Oh, he would always say more or less the same things. That Mr. Hidaka didn’t understand literature, or he couldn’t write people, or that his books were too lowbrow.”

This sounded nothing like what I’d heard about Hidaka’s writing from Osamu Nonoguchi. Nor like the words of someone who had held up Hidaka’s books as a model for his own writing.

“But he still read Hidaka’s books even though he didn’t like them? And he went to visit him?”

“He did. Honestly, I think he only said those negative things about Mr. Hidaka’s work because of his own mixed feelings.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you see, Mr. Nonoguchi always wanted to be a writer, and his childhood friend beat him to it. But he couldn’t just ignore what his friend was doing. Of course he thought, ‘What’s so great about these? I could write better.’”

Now that, I could picture.

“Do you remember how Mr. Nonoguchi reacted when Kunihiko Hidaka won the award for An Unburning Flame?”

“Well, it’d make a better story if he’d been wracked with jealousy, but actually, I don’t think he was. In fact, he sounded pretty proud of it.”

I could interpret this a number of ways, but it was good information. Though I wasn’t able to find out anything about a girlfriend, I wasn’t leaving empty-handed. I thanked Mrs. Tone for her time.

That business behind us, Mrs. Tone asked me how I’d been since I left teaching, and how my new job was going. I said something harmless, mostly avoided talking about my departure from the school, which wasn’t my favorite topic.

I believe she understood this and she didn’t press too hard. Except at the end when she said, “You know, bullying is still a problem.”

“I don’t doubt it.” I had spent years noticing every time bullying was mentioned in the news. Mostly because the guilt over my own failure hadn’t ever left me.

We left the coffee shop, and Mrs. Tone and I parted ways.

The photograph turned up the day after my meeting with Mrs. Tone. Makimura discovered it during yet another search of the Nonoguchi apartment.

We’d come back again hoping to find a little more information on the woman, Hatsuko. Our main goal was to find a photo. I was certain that someone who so carefully stored mementos such as the apron was sure to have a photo around somewhere, yet none had turned up. There were some albums, but none of the photos in them were of women of the right age. This seemed odd.

“Why wouldn’t Nonoguchi keep a photo?” I asked Makimura during a break.

“Maybe he didn’t have one? People usually take couples shots if they go somewhere together, but assuming they never made it to Okinawa, maybe the opportunity never presented itself?”

“Really? This is a man who kept old travel documents in his dresser. Surely he would’ve taken at least one photo.”

The apron suggested that the woman had come to the apartment regularly. We knew he owned a camera and could’ve taken a picture of her during one of her visits.

“Well,” Makimura said, “if there was a photo and we haven’t found it, it’s because he’s hidden it.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. But why hide it? He certainly wasn’t expecting a police search.”

“Another mystery.”

I was looking around the room again when something Mr. Nonoguchi said to me the other day popped into my head, something about his not wanting us to root through his things anymore—his books, in particular.

A bookshelf ran the length of his office wall. I divided the books up between myself and Detective Makimura, and we searched each one, cover to cover, checking for any photos, letters, or notes stuck between the pages.

This took over two hours. As one might expect of a writer, he owned a large number of books. As we searched, the piles towered around us like miniature Leaning Towers of Pisa.

Eventually it occurred to me that I might have gotten it wrong. Why keep a photograph if it was so well hidden you couldn’t take it out to look at it? It made more sense for him to have it in a place where he could easily grab it and quickly put it away again.

Makimura went to the table with Mr. Nonoguchi’s word processor on it. He sat down, pretending to be the author at work. “So, I’m working on my latest masterpiece, and my thoughts drift to her. I suppose he could put a photo right around here.” Makimura indicated the blank space directly next to the word processor.

“What about a place you can’t see, but is always within reach?”

Detective Makimura looked around, spotting a thick dictionary with gaps in between pages where Nonoguchi had left bookmarks. He smiled and reached for it. His guess was on the mark. Five bookmarks were inside the dictionary, one of them a photo of a young woman standing in front of what appeared to be a roadside restaurant. She was wearing a checkered blouse and a white skirt.

It didn’t take long to find out who she was. Rie Hidaka identified her immediately. She was Hatsumi Hidaka—Kunihiko Hidaka’s late wife.

“Hatsumi’s maiden name was Shinoda,” she told us. “They were married for twelve years, which lasted until she died in a traffic accident five years ago now. I never met her. She’d already passed away when I met Hidaka. But I knew her face from the albums he still had at home. That’s definitely her.”

I asked if we could see those albums, but she shook her head. “I don’t have them anymore. Right after we got married, he sent them and everything else of hers back to her family. There might be something left in the stuff we sent to Canada, but I’m not sure. I’ll take a look though. Our things are being returned and they are supposed to arrive back in Japan any day now.”

I asked if she thought he’d sent the albums back to the family out of respect for her.

Rie frowned. “Perhaps he was doing it for my sake, but I honestly didn’t mind having her things there. After all, they were married a long time. I thought it would be only natural if he’d wanted to have some keepsakes of her around. But he didn’t keep anything and he never once spoke about her to me. Maybe it was too painful for him? For my part, I never brought it up. It wasn’t out of jealousy or anything, there just never was a need.”

It seemed to me that Rie was going out of her way not to sound too emotional, though nothing in what she said struck me as unusual or suspicious. Incidentally, she did appear curious as to why we had a photo of her husband’s late wife. She asked whether it had anything to do with the case.

“We’re not sure yet,” I told her, then added vaguely, “The photo came from a rather unexpected place, so we thought we should look into it.”

“What do you mean an ‘unexpected place’?”

I regretted saying it immediately. “I’m sorry, but I can’t say any more at this time.”

However, her intuition was already working overtime. A shocked look came over her face. “You know, I think it was at my husband’s wake, but Mr. Nonoguchi recently asked me a strange question.”

“What’s that?”

“He wanted to know where our videotapes were.”

“Videotapes?”

“I thought he was talking about the movies my husband had been collecting. Except it wasn’t that. He was asking about the videos Hidaka took for research.”

“You mean, your husband took videos when he was doing research for a novel?”

“Yes, particularly when the subject he was researching was something living, or moving, he would bring a video camera along with him on his research trips.”

“What did you tell Mr. Nonoguchi?”

“I told him I thought the tapes had been sent on to Canada. When we were having the house packed up, my husband handled all of his work-related things, so I honestly wasn’t sure.”

“What did Nonoguchi say to that?”

“He asked me to tell him when our things were returned from Canada. He said he’d loaned some tapes that he’d used in his own work to Hidaka, and they were probably mixed in with Hidaka’s.”

“He didn’t say what the tapes contained?”

Rie shook her head, then looked back at me. “You think maybe she’s on one of the tapes?”

She meant Hatsumi Hidaka. I didn’t comment on that, but I did ask her to let us know when the tapes arrived back from Canada.

Then I asked a final question, not really expecting an answer. “Did Mr. Nonoguchi say anything else to you that struck you as odd?”

She hesitated at first, but then said, “It wasn’t at the funeral, it was a few months ago. Mr. Nonoguchi mentioned Hatsumi just once.”

“In what context?”

“It was about the accident.”

“Oh? What did he say about it?”

Rie hesitated again, then it seemed she’d made up her mind. “He said he didn’t think it was just an accident.”

That was quite a statement. I asked her to elaborate.

“That’s the thing, he didn’t say any more than that. This happened when he was over at our house and my husband had left the room for a moment. I don’t even remember how it came up, but I couldn’t forget those words.”

I didn’t blame her. It was quite the thing to say to a man’s fiancée.

“If it wasn’t ‘just an accident,’ what was it? What did you say to him?”

“Well, I asked what he meant. Then he looked like he regretted having said anything and told me to forget about it and not mention it to my husband.”

“And did you talk to your husband about it?”

“Actually, I didn’t. Like I said, we didn’t talk about his late wife in the first place, and that certainly wasn’t the kind of thing one could lightly mention.”

On this point, I had to agree.

Just to be sure, we showed the photograph to other people who knew Hatsumi Hidaka well: editors that used to visit Hidaka’s house, and people in the neighborhood. Everyone confirmed that she was the woman in the photograph.

The only question remaining was, why did Osamu Nonoguchi keep a photograph of Hatsumi Hidaka hidden on his desk?

There didn’t seem to be much room for interpretation here. The woman who owned the apron found in his apartment, the intended recipient of the necklace, the would-be traveling companion to Okinawa, had been Hidaka’s late wife. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that Hatsuko was an alias for Hatsumi. She had been married to Hidaka, which meant that her relationship with Nonoguchi was an extramarital affair. If this was true, the relationship had to have developed during the two years between Osamu Nonoguchi’s reunion with Kunihiko Hidaka seven years ago and Hatsumi Hidaka’s death.

I grew increasingly convinced that this relationship was related to Nonoguchi’s motive for killing Hidaka. Let me return to my theory that Osamu Nonoguchi was working as Kunihiko Hidaka’s ghostwriter. All the evidence clearly points to this except, once again, Nonoguchi’s motive is unclear. There was no sign of any monetary arrangement—no paperwork or evidence of money changing hands. Furthermore, after speaking with several editors on the topic, it appeared that writers just aren’t inclined to sell off their work without any recognition—especially not work that might earn them critical acclaim.

But what if Nonoguchi owed Hidaka some immense debt?

This is where, I believe, Hatsumi Hidaka comes into the picture. It’s not a big stretch to think that Kunihiko Hidaka had caught on to the relationship and was forcing Nonoguchi to write for him in exchange for his silence. But that wouldn’t explain why Nonoguchi continued to write for Hidaka even after Hatsumi’s death.

Clearly, the answer was to be found by looking deeper into what had happened between Osamu Nonoguchi and the Hidakas. This would be a lot easier to do if two of the three people involved weren’t already dead.

And then there was what Rie said about Nonoguchi’s confiding to her that Hatsumi’s death hadn’t been a simple accident. Why say that to her? And if it wasn’t an accident, what was it?

I decided to look more closely at the events surrounding Hatsumi’s death. A check of the database showed that Hatsumi Hidaka had died in March, five years ago. She had been on her way to buy something at a nearby convenience store at eleven o’clock at night when she was hit by a truck. The accident occurred where the road had a sharp curve with poor visibility, it was raining, and there was no crosswalk.

The opinion of the judge who heard the case was that the truck driver was guilty of negligence for not paying enough attention to the road, a typical judgment in accidents involving a car and a pedestrian. Yet according to the record, the driver never admitted wrongdoing. He said that she jumped out into the road suddenly. With traffic accidents when drivers hit pedestrians, the drivers nearly always blame it on the pedestrian. Traffic cops hear that same story time and time again. In this case, if it was true, then unfortunately for the driver there were no other witnesses.

I decided to pretend that what the driver had said was accurate. If, as Osamu Nonoguchi had hinted, it wasn’t a simple accident, that left two other possibilities: murder or suicide.

Murder would have to mean someone pushed her, which would place her killer at the scene. Yet someone in a position to push her far enough into the road to be hit would surely have been visible to the driver, making it unlikely that he hadn’t mentioned that person in his testimony.

The logical assumption was that Osamu Nonoguchi thought Hatsumi Hidaka had committed suicide by throwing herself in front of that truck.

Why would he think that? Was there any physical evidence? Had she sent him a farewell letter? Or did Osamu Nonoguchi know of a reason Hatsumi Hidaka would have wanted to kill herself? Perhaps their affair was such a reason.

Possibly her husband had discovered her infidelity. Had she decided to kill herself because he was going to abandon her? If that was the case, then what she’d had with Nonoguchi was nothing more than a passing dalliance.

Either way, I needed to know more about Hatsumi Hidaka.

With the chief’s permission, I took Detective Makimura with me to visit her family. The Shinodas lived in Yokohama’s Kanazawa Ward, in a traditional house with a well-kept garden, high up on a hillside.

I’d heard both of her parents were alive and well, but her father was out that day, so we met with her mother, Yumie Shinoda, a diminutive, well-dressed lady.

She didn’t seem terribly surprised by our visit. To the contrary, she wondered why we hadn’t come earlier. Apparently, she’d been expecting us ever since she’d heard Kunihiko Hidaka had been killed.

We asked her for her impression of her son-in-law.

“Oh, he had a difficult temperament, like anyone else in his profession. Hatsumi told me once that he could get on your nerves when he was having trouble with his work. Yet I think he was a good husband most of the time. A very thoughtful man.”

It was difficult for me to tell whether she was being honest or just saying something safe. It’s always hardest to tell what older people, particularly women, are really thinking.

According to her, Kunihiko Hidaka and her daughter had met when they were both working at a small ad agency. While they were dating, Hidaka had moved to a job at a publishing company, and they had gotten married shortly thereafter. Not long after that he won the new-author award and left his job in publishing to become a full-time writer.

“My husband and I were a little worried about giving our daughter away to someone who changed professions so frequently, yet they never seemed to have money trouble. Of course once Kunihiko became a bestselling author, we were very happy and knew we wouldn’t have to worry about our daughter being provided for. Then the accident… I’m afraid all the money in the world can’t help you after something like that.”

Though Mrs. Shinoda’s eyes teared up, she didn’t cry in front of us. I believe she’d had time in the intervening five years to make peace with what had happened.

“I understand that the accident occurred while she was on the way to the store?” I asked.

“That’s what Kunihiko said. She’d gone to buy bread to make a midnight sandwich.”

“The truck driver claims that she jumped suddenly out onto the road.”

“So I heard. But she wasn’t the kind to do anything so reckless! That spot she tried to cross, that’s a bad spot. The visibility is poor and she was probably hurrying too.”

“Do you know how the Hidakas were doing as a couple prior to the accident?”

Mrs. Shinoda seemed surprised by the question. “They were fine. Why do you ask?”

“No reason in particular. Just that many people who get into accidents have worries on their mind and aren’t paying attention to their surroundings,” I explained quickly.

“As far as I remember, everything was going well. Kunihiko had just started a new novel, so she was a little lonely.”

“She told you this?” I wondered if that loneliness might not be the key. “Did you see her much before the accident?”

“No. Her husband was busy with his work, and she didn’t come back here very often. We would talk on the phone now and then, though.”

“Did you sense anything different about her voice, anything at all?”

The old woman shook her head, then hesitated before saying, “Is there some connection between my daughter and what happened to Kunihiko?”

I told her no, probably not, and explained that when there’s been a murder, it is a detective’s duty to look into everyone the victim or the perpetrator knew, even those who’d passed away. I’m not sure she entirely bought my explanation.

“Did your daughter ever talk to you about Osamu Nonoguchi?” I said, bringing the discussion around to the key point.

“I heard that he sometimes visited. He was a friend of Kunihiko’s who wanted to be an author?”

“Anything else?”

“Well, it was a long while ago, and I don’t remember things as clearly as I used to. But I don’t think she talked about him that much.”

It occurred to me that, especially if they were having an affair, the last person she would mention him to was her mother.

“I heard that most of her personal belongings were sent back here. Would it be possible for us to have a look?”

Hatsumi’s mother seemed taken aback. “We don’t have much.”

“Anything would be helpful.”

“Well, I don’t see how…”

“Did she keep a diary by any chance?”

“No, nothing of that sort.”

“Any photo albums?”

“Well, yes…”

“Could we see those, please?”

“They are just filled with pictures of Kunihiko and Hatsumi.”

“That’s more than enough. We’ll be able to tell quickly if there’s anything helpful in there.”

She must have wondered what I was talking about. I knew things would go more quickly if I mentioned her daughter’s potential connection to Osamu Nonoguchi, but the chief hadn’t given me permission to mention that yet.

Though she still seemed suspicious, she went into the back and brought out some albums. These simple things, plastic folders with sleeved pages, were all stuffed into a box.

Detective Makimura and I looked through each one. The woman in them was without a doubt the same one in the photo from Osamu Nonoguchi’s apartment.

Since most of the photos had a date stamp, it wasn’t difficult to find ones from the time when she was supposedly in contact with Nonoguchi. I looked at these carefully, trying to find some hint that might suggest a connection.

Again, Makimura found the photo we were looking for. He handed it to me in silence. I understood immediately why he had picked it out.

I asked Yumie Shinoda if we could borrow that album for a while. She gave me a dubious look but agreed.

“Do you have anything else of Hatsumi’s around?”

“Just some jewelry and clothing. I don’t think Kunihiko wanted her things around the house, since he was getting remarried.”

“Nothing written? Letters or postcards?”

“I don’t think so. I can take a closer look.”

“How about videotapes? Small ones, about the size of a cassette tape?” Hidaka had used 8 mm tapes when he did his research.

“I don’t think I saw anything like that, no.”

“Could you tell us the names of anyone who was close to Hatsumi, then?”

“People close to her?” She frowned, thinking for a moment, then excused herself and went into a back room. When she reappeared, she was carrying a thin notebook.

“This is our address book—it has the names of some of her friends.”

She picked three names out of the book. Two were classmates from her school, and one was a colleague from the advertising agency. All three were women. I took down their names and contact information.

We started contacting Ms. Hidaka’s friends as soon as we got back to the office. The two from school hadn’t seen her much after she got married. However, her friend from work, a woman by the name of Shizuko Nagano, had remained close, even talking to her on the phone only a few days before she died.

She told us, “I don’t think Hatsumi noticed Mr. Hidaka much at first. But he came on to her pretty strong, and eventually she got sucked in—you know how it goes. Mr. Hidaka wasn’t the kind to take no for an answer, either at work or in his personal life, and Hatsumi was always a little shy. She wasn’t someone who wore her emotions on her sleeve. If you ask me, I think she had second thoughts when he proposed, but in the end, Mr. Hidaka won out.

“Not that she wasn’t happy. She seemed like she was doing well, though maybe a little on the tired side after Mr. Hidaka became an author. Having your whole routine tossed in the air can do that. Still, I never heard her complain.”

Regarding the phone call just before the accident: “I was the one who called her, though I didn’t have anything in particular to talk about. She was the same as always, I’d say. I don’t remember the details of our conversation, but I think we talked about restaurants and places to go shopping. That’s pretty much all we ever talked about. I was really surprised when I heard about the accident. I mean, I couldn’t even cry it was such a shock. I was there for the wake and the funeral.”

Regarding Mr. Hidaka’s bearing at the funeral: “Guys like that tend not to show much emotion in public, but it was clear to everyone he was despondent. I can’t believe that was five years ago.”

Regarding Osamu Nonoguchi: “Who? Was that Hidaka’s killer? I don’t remember whether he came to the funeral or not. There were a lot of people there. Why are the police asking about Hatsumi now, anyway? Does it have something to do with the murder?”

Two days after we visited Hatsumi Hidaka’s family home, Detective Makimura and I went to see Osamu Nonoguchi in the hospital. We spoke first to his doctor.

The doctor was troubled. He was ready to perform the surgery, but the patient wouldn’t give consent. Apparently, Nonoguchi was saying that, if his chances were slim anyway, he might as well skip the operation and live a little longer.

“Would the surgery hasten his death?” I asked the surgeon.

He told me it was certainly possible. However, the potential for a good outcome was enough that he felt strongly they should undertake it anyway.

With that in mind, we went to Nonoguchi’s room, where we found him sitting up in bed, reading a book. He looked thin, but his complexion was good.

“I was wondering what was up. Haven’t seen you around in a while.” Though he sounded well enough, his voice lacked spirit.

“I have another request,” I said.

Osamu Nonoguchi looked a little disappointed. “You are unusually persistent. Or does that happen to everyone when they become a detective?”

I didn’t respond, instead showing him the photo of Hatsumi Hidaka we’d found in his dictionary.

Osamu Nonoguchi’s face froze, his mouth twisted slightly askew. I could hear his breathing become labored.

“Yes?” he croaked at last. I got the distinct impression that saying just that one word was all he could manage.

“Why were you in possession of a photograph of Kunihiko Hidaka’s former wife? And why keep it in such an unusual place?”

Osamu Nonoguchi looked out the window, thinking. I stared hard at his face in profile.

“So what if I had a photo of Hatsumi?” he said at length, still gazing out the window. “It’s got nothing to do with your case, Detective.”

“Again, that’s for us to decide.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“Then please explain this photograph.”

“It’s nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. I took a photo of her at some point and forgot to give it to Hidaka.”

“And used it as a bookmark?”

“It must have been lying around. I don’t know.”

“When was this picture taken? And where? It looks like a roadside restaurant.”

“I forget. I occasionally went out with the two of them—cherry-blossom viewing, or to see some festival. It was probably one of those trips.”

“But the picture only shows her. I think it’s a little odd to go on a trip with a couple and only take a picture of the wife.”

“It was a restaurant, maybe Hidaka was in the bathroom when I took it.”

“Do you have any other pictures from that trip?”

“How can I tell you that if I don’t know when it was taken? They might be in an album, or I might’ve thrown them away by mistake. Either way, I don’t remember.”

Osamu Nonoguchi’s distress was obvious.

I pulled out two more photos and placed them in front of him. Both prominently featured Mount Fuji. “You remember these, don’t you?”

He looked at the photographs, and I caught him swallowing.

“We found them in your photo album. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten these.”

He shook his head. “I wonder when those were taken,” he said, his voice weak.

“Both were taken in the same place. You don’t remember where?”

“Sorry.”

“Fuji River. To be precise, the Fuji River highway rest area. The same place as the other photo we just showed you. Notice the staircase in the back—it’s the same one.”

Osamu Nonoguchi was silent.

Several of the investigators on my team had recognized the rest area from the photo of Hatsumi. Armed with that knowledge, and with the help of the police department in Shizuoka Prefecture, where the rest area was located, we identified two other photos taken there.

“If you can’t remember when you took the photo of Hatsumi, perhaps you can tell me about these photos you took of Mount Fuji? Why is it that they were in your album, but Hatsumi’s photo wasn’t?”

“Sorry, I didn’t even remember I had those.” Apparently he had made up his mind to play dumb to the very last.

“I have one last photograph.” I pulled a single photo out of my jacket pocket. This was the photo we’d borrowed from Hatsumi’s mother. “Something in this one must look very familiar to you.”

I watched him as he looked at the photo, which was a picture of three women standing together. It was slight, but I saw his eyes widen.

“Well?”

“I’m sorry. I have no idea what you’re getting at.” His voice was hoarse.

“Really? You recognize the woman in the middle, though, don’t you? Hatsumi Hidaka?”

I took Nonoguchi’s silence as a yes.

“How about the apron she’s wearing? The yellow-and-white-checkered pattern? It’s the same as the one that we found in your apartment.”

“So what?”

“So you can try to explain away keeping a photo of Hatsumi however you like, but how do you intend to explain her apron being in your possession? Did you or did you not have a relationship with Hatsumi Hidaka?”

Osamu Nonoguchi moaned softly.

“Please, tell us the truth. I’ve said this before, but the more you hide from us, the deeper we have to dig. It’s only a matter of time before the press catches on and somebody writes an article filled with conjectures. I guarantee that is something that you wouldn’t want to see in print. Tell us everything now, and we can help prevent that.”

I wasn’t sure how much of an effect my words had made on him. The only thing I could pick up from Nonoguchi’s expression was painful indecision.

At last he said, “What happened between me and Hatsumi has nothing to do with this. I want to be clear about that.”

Finally, we were getting somewhere. “So you do admit to having a relationship with her?”

“I wouldn’t call it a relationship. It was just a moment when our feelings might have moved toward each other. But it faded quickly, for both of us.”

“When did this start?”

“I don’t remember exactly. Maybe five or six months after I started visiting Hidaka. I caught a bad cold and was bedridden for a while, and she came to check on me every now and then. That’s how it started.”

“How long did it last?”

“Two, three months? Like I said, it wasn’t long before the heat went out of it entirely. We just went crazy for a little while, that’s all. It happens.”

“But you continued seeing the Hidakas after that. Most people would stay away after something like that happened.”

“It’s not like we parted on bad terms. We talked about it and agreed we should stop seeing each other. I can’t say that we entirely succeeded, that there wasn’t a meaningful glance or two when I would visit. But for the most part whenever I dropped in, she would be out. I think she was avoiding it. Avoiding us. I believe that if she hadn’t had that accident, I would have stopped seeing either of them before long.”

Once he got going, Osamu Nonoguchi spoke easily, the fear and hesitation he’d shown moments before now gone. I watched his expression, trying to determine how much of this I could believe. Though there were no telltale signs that he was lying, it was strange that he was suddenly so calm.

“In addition to the apron, we found a necklace and travel documents.”

He nodded. “We thought about taking a trip together. We went so far as the planning stage. But it never happened.”

“Why not?”

“Because we called it off. Isn’t it obvious?”

“And the necklace?”

“As you suspect, I meant to give it to her. Of course, that got called off, too. Along with the rest of it.”

“Did you keep anything else of Hatsumi Hidaka’s?”

Osamu Nonoguchi thought a moment. “There’s a paisley necktie in one of my drawers. That was a present from her. That, and the Meissen teacup in the cupboard. She used it whenever she came to visit. We went to the shop together and picked it out.”

“What was the name of that shop?”

“Some place in Ginza, but I don’t remember the name or the exact location.”

I made sure that Detective Makimura had made a note of that before asking, “Would it be safe to say that you still haven’t forgotten Hatsumi Hidaka even now?”

“I haven’t forgotten her, but it was an awful long time ago.”

“Then why store those mementos, those memories of her, so carefully?”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘carefully.’ You’re overthinking things again. I just never threw them away, and time passed.”

“The photos, too? You just forgot to throw out that picture of her you were using as a bookmark in your dictionary?”

Nonoguchi had a difficult time answering that one. Finally he managed, “Imagine what you will. Just… it’s not related to the murder.”

“Not to sound like a broken record, but that’s for us to decide.”

One more thing I needed to bring up before we left: the accident. I asked him what he thought about it.

“What do you mean what I thought about it? It was sad. And a shock. That’s all.”

“You must’ve been angry with Mr. Sekikawa?”

“Sekikawa? Who’s that?”

“Tatsuo Sekikawa. I’m sure you’ve at least heard the name.”

“Nope. Never heard it.”

I waited for that denial before telling him, “The truck driver. The man who hit Hatsumi.”

Nonoguchi looked truly taken aback. “Oh. So that’s his name.”

“Should we take the fact that you didn’t even know his name to mean that you weren’t upset with him?”

“No, I just didn’t remember his name. Of course I’m upset with him. Not that me being angry will do anything to bring her back.”

“Is the reason you’re not mad at the driver because, at the time, you thought it was suicide?”

Nonoguchi’s eyes went wider. “Why would you think that?”

“Because you told someone you thought it was.”

Apparently I wasn’t vague enough, as he seemed to know immediately to whom I was referring.

“Look… it wasn’t the most prudent thing to say, but you shouldn’t take it too seriously. It was just something that popped into my head.”

“Even so, I’d like to know why.”

“I forget. You try explaining every little thing you’ve said over the last five years—I doubt even you would be able to give clear answers!”

With that, we wrapped up our conversation. I promised Nonoguchi that we would talk again soon, and we left the hospital room.

Personally, I was elated. I had as good a confirmation as I could hope for that Osamu Nonoguchi did believe Hatsumi Hidaka’s death was a suicide.

No sooner had we returned to the office than a call came in from Rie Hidaka. Her things had arrived back from Canada, and she’d discovered several of Kunihiko Hidaka’s videotapes among them. We left immediately.

“These are all the tapes I found.” She’d arranged seven 8 mm videotapes in a line on the table. Each of them represented an hour of recorded time. I picked up each tape in turn. The cases were numbered one through seven, with no other noticeable titles. Either Hidaka had some system for keeping them straight, or he just remembered their contents.

I asked Rie if she had watched any of the tapes.

She hadn’t. “It just didn’t feel right.”

I asked if we could borrow the tapes for a while and she nodded in agreement.

“There was one other thing I thought you should see. Here.” She laid a square paper box about the size of a lunchbox on the table. “It was in with my husband’s clothes. I’ve never seen it before, so he must have been the one who put it in there.”

I pulled the box toward me and removed the lid. Inside was a knife wrapped in plastic. It had a sturdy-looking handle, and the blade was at least twenty centimeters long. I picked it up without taking it out of the bag. It was heavy in my hand.

I asked Rie if she knew what the knife had been used for. She shook her head. “I’ve no idea, that’s why I wanted you to see it. Kunihiko never mentioned it to me.”

I examined the surface of the knife through the bag. It was not considerably worn, but it definitely wasn’t new. I asked if Kunihiko Hidaka ever went mountain climbing, but she replied that, to her knowledge, he hadn’t.

I took the knife back with us to Homicide, along with the tapes. We split the videotapes up between us and began watching. The one I got showed some traditional arts in Kyoto, in particular the production of Nishijin textiles: endless footage of craftsmen weaving, their ancient techniques, and snippets of their daily lives. Occasionally a hushed voice would whisper commentary over the image—a voice I assumed to be that of the late Kunihiko Hidaka himself. Roughly 80 percent of my hour-long tape contained footage. The remainder was blank.

When I compared notes with the other detectives, I learned that all the other tapes were pretty much the same thing. Nothing was in them other than research footage for Hidaka’s writing. Just to be sure, we traded tapes and looked through each other’s on fast-forward, but our impressions remained the same.

I had assumed that Osamu Nonoguchi wanted the videotapes from Kunihiko Hidaka because something on them was of particular importance, something he didn’t want us to see. Yet nothing on the seven tapes seemed to link them to Nonoguchi at all.

A dark mood spread through the office: we had missed our mark. That was when word came from forensics that they had finished examining the knife.

They reported, “Slight wear was found on the blade, showing it had been used at least a couple of times. No traces of anything resembling blood were found. There were several fingerprints found on the handle, which we have identified as belonging to Osamu Nonoguchi.”

This was something. Why would Kunihiko Hidaka have a knife bearing Osamu Nonoguchi’s fingerprints tucked away like some valuable treasure? And why did he keep this a secret from his wife, Rie? A possible scenario occurred to me at once, but it was so outlandish, I hesitated to voice it without further evidence.

I thought about asking Nonoguchi about the knife, but I rejected that summarily. Without anyone’s actually saying it aloud, we all thought this knife would be the trump card we needed to finally break him—we just had to be careful about how we played it.

The next day, we got another call from Rie Hidaka. She’d found another tape. We quickly went over to retrieve it.

“Take a look at this.” She held a book out to me—a paperback copy of Sea Ghost, the same book she’d given me before.

I gave her a curious look.

“Open the cover.”

I lifted the edge of the cover. Detective Makimura gasped. The inside of the book was hollowed out, creating a compartment in which a videotape was concealed. It was like something from an old spy novel.

“This book was packed in a different box from the other books, which I thought was curious. So I took a closer look at it,” Rie Hidaka told us.

I asked if she had a video player at the house. When she said yes, I decided to watch it there. Taking it back to the office felt like a waste of time.

The first thing that appeared on the screen was a familiar-looking garden and window. It was the Hidakas’ backyard. The video had been taken at night, and it was dark, except for the bright square of the window in the middle.

In the corner of the screen, numbers showed the date and time the video had been taken. It was December, seven years ago.

I leaned forward with anticipation. But the camera only showed the same garden and window. Nothing happened. No one walked into the frame.

“Shall I fast-forward it a bit?” Detective Makimura asked.

Then a lone figure appeared on-screen.