A Cop's Eyes Read online

  The transparent excuse rubbed Shinichi the wrong way. Natsume must have been tailing him or checking his alibi.

  “Coach me, will you?”

  Natsume pulled some coins out of his wallet and started playing. No matter how many times he tried, the doll slipped off the crane. Unperturbed, he kept playing again and again.

  “This is the one you gave Mai yesterday, right? Momo-chan. So you played here,” asked Natsume, staring at the dolls in the case.

  Really? A man your age saying “Momo-chan” like that? Shinichi spat inside, but said, “Yeah, I did.”

  “Yesterday, while we were questioning her, Mai was hugging hers the entire time.”

  Picturing the scene tore Shinichi up. He slapped Natsume’s hand, which was over the button, hard the next instant. The crane descended and grabbed a doll.

  “Wow!” cried Natsume, just about springing for joy as the doll fell into the chute.

  “What’re you gonna do with it?” Shinichi pointed out coldly.

  “I’m giving it to my daughter.”

  Natsume held the doll with a happy smile.

  Come to think of it, at the juvenile detention center, Natsume had talked about his family just once. Shinichi seemed to recall a daughter who’d been three or four at the time, which meant she was in middle school by now.

  “Middle schoolers these days wouldn’t want one, you know,” warned Shinichi.

  “I’m sure, in most cases. But my daughter’s been lying on a hospital bed for nearly ten years now. I wanted to put one by her pillow.”

  Shinichi thought he saw the fond face of a father peeking through Natsume’s faint smile. “Is she sick or something?”

  Natsume didn’t answer the question. “Would you like to get some coffee nearby, as my way of saying thank you?”

  “An interrogation, huh?” Shinichi responded with sarcasm.

  “No. A genuine thank you.”

  Putting the doll in his bag, Natsume began walking. Shinichi followed after him, not seeing much of a choice.

  The doubt Shinichi had from the night before grew as he watched the man’s back.

  Why was he here? Most judiciary technical officers were qualified clinical therapists, pros in the field of psychology. When they’d first met, Natsume looked to be in his late twenties. That man was walking in front of him now as a detective.

  Had he gotten fed up with having to face bad apples and changed jobs? No, entering the police force meant confronting greater evil.

  As Shinichi wondered, the man’s slim back began to look ominous and intimidating.

  “It seems that you quit your job yesterday,” Natsume said after taking a sip of coffee.

  Shinichi mentally clicked his tongue as he faced the man.

  Of course Natsume—that’s to say, the police, had been duly investigating him. How was this a genuine thank you? Apart from using a cafe rather than a gloomy interrogation room, they were grilling him all right.

  “Have you decided on your next job,” Natsume asked.

  “I’m looking right now. And you, detective work seems to leave you with plenty of spare time. A murder close by, and you play at an arcade and chat at a coffee shop.”

  “On duty at that. You see, I was able to confirm a few things.”

  “That a ‘person of interest’ is sitting in front of you, for one? Investigations can’t be too hard when someone who has killed lives right nearby, yeah? It’s always like this. I try to live honestly, but my record gets in the way. Everyone looks at me through a tinted lens.”

  In response to Shinichi’s bluntness, Natsume patiently gazed into his eyes. Shinichi hated that look.

  “Come on,” the detective said, “not everyone in the world looks at you weird.”

  “Dunno about that,” Shinichi threw out. “The fact is, whenever there’s a case, police flock to me. It’s true that I quit my job yesterday. You probably looked into it already, so hell, I didn’t quit, I was dismissed. For no reason. Just like you saw and felt, we don’t have extra money lying around. I bet you can come up with a storyline where I wanted money and snuck into the Yokoses’ as a burglar.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not the storyline I’m thinking of,” Natsume said, his chin on his hand, pensive.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s zero evidence that anything of monetary value was stolen from Mr. Yokose’s residence. The perp seems to have gone through the living-room cabinet and closets, but the wallet in Mr. Yokose’s pants was left behind, and no bankbooks or cards seem to be missing. True, maybe there was some expensive item that neither we nor Mai are aware of.”

  “Weren’t there fingerprints or something?”

  “Nope.”

  Shinichi was disappointed. If there were any fingerprints, he’d be in the clear.

  “Mr. Yokose must have come home when the burglar was going through the living room. Looks like the perp found a nearby video camera and lay in wait by the door. Striking Mr. Yokose’s head with it as soon as he entered, the perp then took off. Mr. Yokose was found collapsed by the door, with a bloodstained video camera close by. It wasn’t your usual small one for families, but a heftier model for pros.”

  Shinichi recalled Haruna saying that Mai’s had a large television and an expensive-looking video camera.

  “Are you allowed to blabber to someone like me about this?”

  “You’re right.” Natsume grinned wryly. “Keep this conversation between us.”

  Natsume discussing operational secrets so readily almost made Shinichi worry about the safety of his neighborhood. The man was fairly unimpressive as a detective.

  “When did you change jobs?” Shinichi tried asking.

  “I quit being a judiciary technical officer ten years ago, and when I was thirty, I took the police employment exam. After graduating from the academy I served at police boxes for nearly six years, but recently, I transferred to my current section.”

  Why had Natsume gone as far as to abandon his juvie job to join the police force? Even Shinichi could imagine that taking up an entirely different line of work at thirty posed considerable difficulties.

  “Why did you become a cop?”

  “I wonder … Maybe it was those police dramas.”

  Shinichi immediately recognized that as an evasion.

  “If I could give one reason, I must have wanted to do it for my family.”

  “But you don’t seem cut out for it,” Shinichi told him.

  “That might be true …” Natsume stood up, bill in hand. “But cut out for it or not, you hurry and find a job too. In order to live, and to protect your dear ones, you need to work.”

  With that, Natsume left the coffee shop.

  “Haruna, clean up your own messes!”

  Shinichi could hear Naoko’s reproach from the other room. Usually it ended with this one shout, but today she went on to lecture her daughter at length. In time, he heard Haruna blubbering.

  He put his can of beer down on the table and went to check the situation in the other room.

  Haruna’s eyes were red from blubbering. Naoko was bending down to catch her gaze as she lectured her.

  “Sis, could you leave it at that.”

  “You stay out of it!” Naoko shot back.

  Shinichi, who’d never seen her look so severe, backed down.

  “Hey, Haruna …” Naoko admonished in a calmer tone. “You’re big now so you have to start being able to do things for yourself. You can’t just rely on others all the time. Do you understand?”

  Haruna nodded, wiping her tears with her hands. “I’m sorry …” she apologized, looking at Naoko.

  “Good girl,” Naoko stroked her daughter’s head. “I’ll brush your hair. Over here.”

  Naoko went to the vanity and placed Haruna on her knee. As she gently combed Haruna’s hair, the girl’s expression rapidly turned into a smile.

  Watching the scene, Shinichi couldn’t but admire what a great big sister Naoko was.

>   Neither of them knew much about the love of a parent. After they lost both and were adopted by Kimura, their days were filled with abuse. It was often said that people who faced abuse as kids repeated the cycle with their own kids; that was probably because they didn’t know an adult’s love and had no idea how to show it to their own children. But Naoko, who’d been thoroughly abused by Kimura, showered Haruna with love. She raised her daughter as though her life depended on it. She was an amazing person.

  How about himself? If he were to start his own family, would he be able to treasure it like Naoko?

  Shinichi had never been in love. Or rather, he always gave up on love. Even if he did come to like and date someone, how she might respond to his past when she found out scared him. And if he ended up marrying a woman he loved and had kids, he didn’t know whether he’d be able to shower them with love, and that scared him.

  To protect your dear ones—

  He recalled what Natsume had said to him at the coffee shop.

  Was he ever going to meet someone that dear to him? Would he ever start a family he’d protect no matter what?

  On the next day too, Shinichi made calls throughout the morning, job magazine in hand. Every time he was turned down, he crossed out the wanted with a red pen. By lunch, the pages were very red. Even so, he was able to schedule interviews with two firms. One was a restaurant in Shinjuku, and the other was a construction-related business in Nippori. He was heading out to Shinjuku where the restaurant was; his visit to the company in Nippori was arranged for the next day.

  The restaurant interview, as expected, did not go well. This time too, when he honestly told them about his reformatory past, they chose their words carefully to avoid incurring a grudge, and rejected him.

  It was understandable. But he couldn’t give up. The other company interviewing him tomorrow might hire him, he kept on encouraging himself on his train ride home.

  By the time he got off at Otsuka station, however, he was feeling as worthless as a pebble.

  When he glanced toward the gaming arcade by the station, his legs froze. Natsume was playing a crane game at the storefront.

  The man had taken on the machine next to the one he’d tried the day before. Absorbed, he was glaring at the case’s contents.

  Shinichi decided to move along so Natsume wouldn’t notice, but as he passed by the man’s back, the crane’s movement caught his attention, and he looked. The arms picked up a doll and dropped it in the chute. At that moment, Natsume cheered and leapt for joy.

  The man turned Shinichi’s way, and their eyes met.

  “O-Oh. Hello,” Natsume said with an embarrassed laugh.

  “What sort of grownup …” Shinichi muttered, and almost laughed too.

  “I’m ashamed.” In Natsume’s hand was a different doll from the day before, a bear.

  “Did your daughter like the Momo-chan you won yesterday?” Shinichi asked.

  “When I put it at her bedside, her eyes responded a bit. Well, I thought they did. So I wanted to get more kinds.”

  Natsume smiled. Shinichi thought it was a smile that betrayed loneliness.

  “Is your daughter’s condition that bad?”

  “A head injury left her in a vegetative state. Although as her family, I don’t like her being called a vegetable. My daughter is my daughter.”

  Maybe that had something to do with Natsume becoming a police officer, because his gaze, which had been calm, seemed to take on fire for a moment. But Shinichi chose not to dig deeper.

  “Great timing. I had something I wanted to ask a local resident such as yourself. Walk with me for a bit,” Natsume said and sauntered ahead.

  “Like what?” Shinichi asked, following him.

  “Were you close to Mai?”

  “Not really. She’s my niece Haruna’s classmate, so when I see her I at least say hi.”

  “Interacting with Mai, did you notice something?”

  “Nah … just that she’s quiet or maybe a little gloomy for a kid. Why?”

  “Apparently, there’d been anonymous calls to child services from several months ago that Mai was being abused by her father.”

  “Abused?” The word cast a dark shadow across Shinichi’s heart.

  “It wasn’t just one or two calls, but frequent. Each time, a staff member from child services met and talked to her father, but he adamantly claimed that there was no such fact and chased them off.”

  “Are you saying it has a bearing on the case?”

  “No, I’m not sure. But looking into things that might not falls on us the police, too.”

  “Why not just ask Mai?”

  “She isn’t talking. Maybe the shock of seeing her father dead was too intense, but she won’t talk to us no matter what we ask her,” Natsume said, looking straight into Shinichi’s eyes.

  “Mr. Koide, it says here you graduated from middle school in 2000, but what have you been doing from then until now?” a man in overalls who’d introduced himself as the chief asked, his eyes on Shinichi’s resume.

  Shinichi, sitting across the man for the interview, clenched his fists. When the chief stared at him, he felt an urge to look away, and his head began to bow. His gaze fixed on a spot on the desktop right in front of him.

  “Were you what they call a ‘freeter’? No set occupation, as a lifestyle choice?” the chief asked.

  Shinichi made up his mind and looked into the chief’s eyes. “When I was in my third year of middle school, I killed someone and spent two years in a reformatory …”

  He went on to lay bare his personal history. That he’d finished middle school while so detained. That after leaving the reformatory, he’d worked many jobs but never for long. That he had a sister and a niece who were his dear family and wanted more than anything to work. That he hoped to acquire specialized skills that would keep him employed.

  The chief spent some time alternating between looking at Shinichi’s face and his resume. “Are you healthy?” he asked.

  “Yes …”

  “We do very hard labor. Early mornings good with you?”

  “Yes, I am fine with them,” Shinichi answered.

  “Then could you come by at seven the day after tomorrow?”

  “Mom, what’s going on?” Haruna said, surprised at the dishes lining the dining table.

  No wonder—compared to their usual fare, this parade was mindbogglingly luxurious.

  After the interview today, Shinichi had emailed Naoko that he’d landed a job. Immediately, he’d gotten a call from her.

  Congratulations—she’d sounded like she was crying.

  As they surrounded the table as a family, Haruna said with her cheeks stuffed with sushi, “It’d be nice if every day could be like this.”

  “Today is special,” Naoko nipped it in the bud, laughing.

  “It seems to be tough work, but the salary isn’t bad. So maybe not every day, but we could have a meal like this once a month,” Shinichi declared with some pride.

  “Thank you,” Naoko and Haruna politely bowed, then spurt out giggling.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Coming!” Naoko called out and made to stand up, but Shinichi said, “I’ll go,” and headed to the front door and opened it.

  When he saw Natsume standing outside in the hallway, a sigh escaped him.

  He didn’t want to see this man’s face now. For once, they were sitting together happily, and he felt aggrieved that the mood was being spoiled.

  “What do you want?” he lashed out.

  “I apologize about the late hour. I was hoping to speak to your older sister and Haruna a bit.”

  “Concerning?”

  Hearing Natsume’s words, Naoko came to the front door with Haruna.

  “It’s about Mai …” Crouching there at the front door, Natsume looked into Haruna’s eyes. “Listen, Haruna … Did Mai ever tell you anything about her father?”

  Perhaps feeling nervous in face of a stranger, the girl remained silent.


  “For instance, that she was picked on by him?”

  Haruna looked up to Naoko.

  “Haruna, did you hear about anything like that from Mai?”

  The girl shook her head in response to her mother’s question and said, “Nope, nothing.”

  “How about you, ma’am, did Mai ever share anything of the sort?”

  “Nothing that comes to mind …” Naoko replied, sounding worried. “Why do you ask?”

  “It seems Mai had been abused by her father. There had been anonymous accusations phoned in to child services, so I thought you might have heard about it from Haruna and made the reports …”

  “It wasn’t me. Why did you think it was me?”

  “You spoke to Mai fairly often at the park according to one of your neighbors.”

  “She’s Haruna’s friend, so I do when I see her, but I didn’t notice anything like that.”

  “You mentioned that you work, ma’am, but on a few occasions you were seen with her on weekday afternoons.”

  “Yes. My shop does bike deliveries, so I often pass by here, too.”

  “I see. Sorry for disturbing you so late.” Natsume looked at Shinichi. “Did you decide on a job, Shinichi?” he asked.

  Shinichi nodded glumly.

  “Ah. Good luck. Well, if you happen to notice anything, please contact me.” With a light bow, Natsume started to leave.

  “Excuse me,” Naoko called out. “How is Mai?”

  “She’s in the protection of child services.”

  “I see …”

  With Natsume gone they returned to the dining table, but all three of them had lost their appetites for the rare feast.

  “Shin, is there anyone you like?” Naoko asked abruptly while he was in bed staring at the dim ceiling.

  “Wh-Why, that’s … sudden.”

  It was the first time Naoko had addressed the issue, so Shinichi was flustered.

  “No reason. I just wanted to ask.”

  “Unfortunately, no. I’m not interested anyway.”

  It was a lie. He couldn’t tell her that he was afraid of loving someone because of his record.

  “I’ll think about it if you find someone good for you, sis.”

  “Thanks, but I’m okay … as long as I have Haruna,” Naoko said, a hint of loneliness creeping into her voice.