Lisa Atkinson - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 5. Whole No. 801, May 2008

He checked the names of the night-duty officers and the times they were out of the station according to each incident and accident. It was more complicated than he had expected. It was more than he could keep straight in his mind.

Kaise used scissors to cut the writing paper to make thirteen rectangles. He filled in the name of each night-duty officer on each piece of paper. He set the right side of the table as “inside U Station,” the left side as “outside station” and “sleeping quarters,” and reenacted the events in the night-duty report.

He spent two hours working on the puzzle-like task. He was still in the midst of it when his hand stopped.

For twenty-three minutes, from midnight on, there were only two slips of paper, “Masukawa” and “Totsuka,” in U Station.

Totsuka K — oichir — o. First Criminal Investigations Section, Burglary Section Police Officer. Age 25. He was directly subordinate to Masukawa.

An accomplice...

If that were the case, it would explain why the IDs were not with Masukawa. He had ordered Totsuka to take them out of the station.

Three a.m. Calming down his excitement, Kaise went to the bedroom. He crept in quietly, but, as always, Aiko opened her eyes.

“I’ll be a little late.” Kaise put in his call to his section first thing in the morning. Flustered, Subsection Chief Ioka transferred the call to the section chief. Section Chief Kosuga didn’t ask the reason for Kaise’s tardiness. He told him perfunctorily to hurry up and hand in the draft for the press conference. It would be held the next day at one p.m.

I still have a day.

Nine a.m. Kaise visited the singles dormitory for U Station. Announcing himself to the dormitory caretaker, he went up to the second floor.

Room 203. Just as he expected, Totsuka K — oichir — o was dead asleep in his bed. The time allowed for sleep by night-duty officers was only four hours. His day off, yesterday, was taken up with questioning by Internal Investigation, so he was sleeping as long as he could today.

“Officer Totsuka, please get up.” Kaise shook his body. Mumbling a few senseless words, Totsuka opened his eyes halfway, then suddenly sprang up.

“Good morning, sir!”

He had been posted to U Station after police-box work and had spent one year as guard of the holding cell. It was from this spring that he had joined the burglary group. He was in the midst of a three-year training period to become a detective. His round face and buzz cut reminded one of a potato. But looking close, Kaise saw narrow eyes that looked unyielding and a mouth clamped shut in a straight line.

“I’m being questioned by Internal Investigations in the afternoon. I cannot reply to your questions.” Sitting formally on the floor with his legs tucked under him, Totsuka refused point-blank.

“You don’t have to be so hard-headed. All I want to know is what the station was like night before last.”

He got no replies no matter what he asked. Totsuka kept repeating that he couldn’t answer. Although it was impossible to make a seasoned detective like Masukawa talk, Kaise had hoped that he might make a greenhorn give something up. It seemed, however, that the blood of the Criminal Investigation Department flowed all the way to the nerves of the lowest-ranking officers.

Show me your real feelings, Kaise thought in frustration.

“Then let me hear your opinion. This isn’t an interrogation.”

“...”

“Do you think this crime was committed by an outsider?”

“No, sir, I don’t,” Totsuka’s firm voice answered immediately.

“Why is that?”

“We were on night duty. We didn’t let anyone in, not even a cat.”

“So that means it was an inside job?”

“That, I wouldn’t know.”

“If it wasn’t an outside job, then it would have to be an inside job, wouldn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Kaise’s leading questions also reached a dead end.

He put his final question to Totsuka. “What do you think of the collective storage of IDs?”

“Well...” There was a pause. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

Kaise stood up. “Sorry to bother you. Go back to sleep.”

“Sir...” Totsuka started. His face was flushed red.

“What is it?”

“I think the collective storage of the IDs leads to a significant decline in police-officer morale.”

Kaise gazed at Totsuka as if looking at something that was too bright, then he looked around the room. The thirty IDs might have been here for a while. Just outside the window was the U Station building with the national flag fluttering in the wind.

Kaise went to the Headquarters Police Affairs Department. Totsuka hadn’t leaked any information. But this was a course he had embarked on, so he would confront Masukawa again this evening. As he was so thinking, he received a telephone call from Masukawa himself, saying he wanted to talk to him.

What had made him do that?

With a sense of caution, Kaise climbed the stairs of U Station.

The third floor. First Criminal Investigation Section. His hand on the door, he hesitated a moment. He had never entered this section, even when he was posted at U Station.

So what?

Opening the door, he was surrounded by a particular scent and heaviness to the air inside the room. The overlapping faces of the detectives. Their eyes. Their way of breathing.

“Thank you for coming over.” A voice sounded from a seat deep inside the room, and Masukawa came forward. His loping movement was the same as the night before, but his face looked entirely different. The dullness of the night before was replaced by a sharp light from eyes that dominated his entire face.

Masukawa opened the door to the interrogation room. “Let’s do it in here.”

Masukawa sat his large frame down on the flimsy chair readied for the suspect on the other side of the steel desk. He crossed his legs with an exaggerated motion.

“Why don’t you start off first? The Internal Investigations questioning has finished. So I can reply to any of your questions.”

What is he up to? Kaise was troubled by the phrase “start off first.” But Masukawa had also said he would answer any question he had. He would be foolish to let this opportunity pass. Sitting down in the chair, Kaise promptly began.

“During the night duty, there were no intruders from the outside. That means it’s an inside job, doesn’t it?”

“Probably,” Masukawa stated readily.

“Who do you think it was?”

“Army Sergeant would be the most likely. Because he was the one who opened and closed the storage safe.”

That was most logical. However...

“Does Police Sergeant — Owada have a motive to steal the notebooks?”

“Right. That is where we hit a dead end.”

“If not him, then who is suspicious?”

Masukawa rolled his neck around in a circle. “I guess it would be me. Since the storage-safe key was hanging right in front of my eyes.”

There was a breath-long pause. Kaise looked into his eyes.

“Do you have a motive?”

“I certainly do. I’ve wanted to quash this crappy system of collective storage.”

“What do you mean by crappy system...?”

It was Masukawa who first showed his anger.

“Isn’t that enough? Now, you listen to what I have to say. Aren’t you playing dirty, barging in on Totsuka when he was asleep?”

Was that the issue? Now that he realized what Masukawa really felt, Kaise’s tension relaxed.

“I don’t think it was dirty. I just want to get the stolen documents back.”

“You mean, Totsuka and I did it. That’s what you want to say?”

“You have motive. You said so yourself, didn’t you?”