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

“Hey, keep it within limits, why don’t you? If detectives who catch thieves become thieves, it’s the end.”

“You were alone with Totsuka from midnight, weren’t you?”

“Don’t bother. Forget about lording it over and playing at interrogating when you’re an inexperienced Police Affairs guy.”

“What are you calling me...?”

“I don’t have any interest in a castrated management type. Go back to Headquarters and kiss the ass of the career executives.”

Anger shot through the core of Kaise’s body. He charged at Masukawa and grabbed his shirt. “Say that again!”

“You want to fight?”

Masukawa grabbed Kaise’s shirt with twice the strength. He throttled him with his powerful grip. The two of them shot out to the side of the desk, still grabbing on to each other.

“Take it back!”

“You take it back! Totsuka is turning in the cold air about now!”

“This is work for me, too!”

“Well then...”

Charged by Masukawa’s massive body, Kaise was smashed against the wall. He couldn’t move.

“Don’t make it sound like you know what you were asking! What kind of work do you guys do, anyway? We’re putting our lives on the line here. We’re protecting the town. What the hell are you guys protecting? The Headquarters Department Head? Yourself? Just give me an answer!”

“Idiot! It’s my family that I’m protecting, of course!”

Masukawa’s grip slackened a bit. Kaise took advantage of this opening and desperately moved his hips aside. Their balance crumbled. They fell against the steel desk.

Hearing the ruckus, several detectives burst into the room.

“Let go!” Kaise yelled, but his arms and hips were pinned down, as he and Masukawa glared at each other. They were both breathing heavily.

“It’s nothing. We were just playing.” Masukawa shook off the hands of the detectives and turned his face toward Kaise. He had lost his will to fight.

“Are we finished, Superintendent?”

“...”

Leaving the interrogation room, Masukawa stopped in his tracks, and after a while turned back. “It’s the same for me, too. When all is said and done, I’m protecting my family.”

This guy is innocent. Kaise realized this when he heard the quiet seriousness in Masukawa’s voice.

Headquarters, Police Affairs Section. Eight p.m.

The only light was at Kaise’s desk. His writing paper was still blank. Kaise didn’t even attempt to take out his pen.

His brain repeatedly checked the facts of the case.

Masukawa is innocent.

His conviction was unwavering. Masukawa had been facing the key on the wall all night. That meant that the other night-duty officers were also innocent. It appeared that way.

Masukawa would have left his seat to go to the toilet. There might be a culprit who had a copy of the key. There might be an outside person who could succeed in committing the crime in a million-in-one chance of timing. But Kaise did not turn his eyes toward such farfetched possibilities. It was because he had forcibly set Masukawa up as a “convenient culprit” that he had lost sight of the true nature of the case and had strayed off course. He was through with choosing a side path and getting lost in a forest with no exit.

He would follow the main branch. If he got rid of the possibilities of the night-duty staff and an outside culprit, what was left was the Police Affairs Section. That was where the perpetrator was.

That evening, he had got hold of Yamazaki Tomoyo and talked with her at a coffee shop. Did anyone in the section have a grudge against — Owada? Tomoyo laughed off the question. “He is disliked, for sure, but it’s overstating it to say he’s hated.” He cast out the name of Officer Kamiya, but she said he was on daytime duty the day of the incident and was not at the station that night. “Besides, young Kamiya isn’t the kind of kid who goes around hating people. He’s never even complained about Police Sergeant — Owada.” Perhaps fed up with Kaise, who continued to persist, Tomoyo said in the end, “You won’t get anywhere suspecting people in the Police Affairs Section. After all, it’s Mr. — Owada who has the key to the storage safe.”

Ultimately, that was what he came back to.

— Owada T — oru.

He was in charge of the first-floor storage safe. He alone took care of the key to the storage safe, and on the day of the incident, he had collected the IDs. Circumstantially, he satisfied all the conditions for being a suspect.

Tomoyo’s face concurred. Masukawa had also clearly stated this. The conclusion that a seasoned detective had reasonably come to was — Owada.

Yet, no one could fathom his motive.

Kaise leaned back in his chair.

Motive...

Nothing came to mind. — Owada stole the notebooks. That “Army Sergeant” whose beliefs were based on strict obedience to rules and regulations.

If he had a motive, it could only be the “season of the devil” so immediately prior to his retirement; that a storm unable to be detected from his outward appearance was raging in — Owada’s heart.

Or might there be an unavoidable circumstance? Some circumstance making him steal the IDs... Kaise couldn’t think there was one. A circumstance that would make him throw away the convictions he had held for forty years and steal his fellow officers’ documents.

Circumstance...

What? Kaise was beset by a strange thought.

I know that circumstance. I’ve heard it somewhere. He had that sense.

Not a circumstance, but a setup. That might be it. He felt he knew something.

He searched inside himself. As if he were following the afterimage of a shooting star. In his heart. Where his memory was lodged. Desperately.

It disappeared. It disappeared and scattered away. Where did it go? What was that strange sensation?

“Excuse me.” The section room’s door opened, and the beam of a flashlight swept across the wall. It was the Headquarters night-duty officer making his rounds.

“Superintendent, is everything all right?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Your face is pale white.”

“Yumiko said she was praised by her teacher today.”

“Oh, for what?”

“For being able to write her name in characters even though she’s only in second grade. She had practiced a lot.”

“Yes, she had.”

Kaise looked at Aiko’s profile as she peeled a tangerine. She’s gotten older, he thought.

“Aiko...”

“Yes, what is it?”

“How about building a house soon?”

In general, transfers meant the entire family moved. But if one had a house, one’s superiors gave tacit approval for a posting unaccompanied by family. Aiko looked intently at Kaise.

“A house...? But you’re not expecting to be transferred for a while. So it doesn’t make sense to build now.”

“But I may be, in the spring.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. So let’s at least be prepared.”

He stood up and went to the toilet as if to escape.

The time limit is near.

A sense of resigning himself to the inevitable spread over him. Two days was just too short a time. Tonight, after Aiko went to bed, he had to write up what would be quoted in the newspapers and on television. With this he would be ousted from his position in his section.

Is this also one of my punishments?

— Owada’s face kept flitting across his mind. He might be the culprit. Even so, there was nothing Kaise could do now. He had no proof. He couldn’t figure out a motive. Kaise didn’t have a strong enough sense of intuition to insist that he was the perpetrator.

It’s over. It’s all...

When he left the washroom, he heard a dry cough. It was worse than the night before.