Laura Rowland - The Assassin's Touch

Detective Marume lifted the entrance curtain and called, “Hello! Is anyone in there?”

A samurai emerged. He was a gray-haired man with thin, precise features, his air of dignity compromised by flushed cheeks from drinking too much. He courteously greeted Sano, then said, “I’m Lieutenant Oda, Colonel Ibe’s chief aide. You must have received the message I sent.”

“Yes,” Sano said. “Thank you for alerting me so promptly.” He and his comrades entered the vestibule, where the watchman sat. Voices murmured inside the building. “Where is Colonel Ibe?”

“I’ll show you.”

Lieutenant Oda led the way down a corridor. On the left were two rooms. One contained a group of samurai; in the other, a flock of women, dressed in bright kimonos and made up with rouge and white rice powder, huddled with a few men and older women who looked to be the brothel’s owner and servants. Sano glimpsed resignation or impatience on some faces, fright on others.

“I’ve detained everyone who was in the house when Colonel Ibe died and kept everyone else out,” said Lieutenant Oda.

“Your cooperation is most appreciated,” Sano said.

Oda slid open a door on the opposite side of the corridor. Sano entered a parlor. Its floor was littered with cushions, musical instruments, sake decanters, and cups. Lacquer trays held plates of half-eaten food that suggested a banquet interrupted. Colonel Ibe knelt alone and immobile, his upper body flopped across a tray. Sano, Hirata, and their detectives stood gazing down at the corpse. Colonel Ibe was in his fifties, his topknot streaked with gray. Sano had met him some months ago, at a meeting, but found him almost unrecognizable now. His neck was twisted sideways. His eyes were open but glazed; his moonlike face wore a surprised expression. Chewed food was visible in his open mouth. His stout body was naked except for a red-and-gold-striped dressing gown that had been tied around his waist and shrugged off his shoulders, leaving his top half bare.

“This must have been a wild party.” Detective Marume picked up a man’s loincloth and a woman’s white under-kimono from the floor. More clothing lay strewn about.

“Which is fortunate for us,” Sano said, aware of Oda listening by the door and glad that he and his men needn’t improvise a way to examine the corpse without breaking the law. “Right there is the sign of dim-mak.”

He pointed at Colonel Ibe’s back. A faint bruise, shaped like a fingerprint, nestled between two vertebrae. Lieutenant Oda came over and stared at the bruise in consternation.

“Then he was killed in the same manner as the metsuke chief?” Oda said.

Sano said, “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Then it’s true. There exists someone who has the power to kill with a mere touch.” Amazed, Lieutenant Oda glanced around, as though afraid for his own safety. “Who can it be?”

“That’s what I must determine,” Sano said. After five murders, his mission was more urgent than ever: Another man was dead because he hadn’t caught the killer. Crushed by a sense of failed responsibility, Sano hid his emotions behind a stoic expression. The odor of death mingled with the smells of wine and stale food. Sano felt the presence of evil, although the killer was far removed in space and time. He walked to the exterior door and flung it open, admitting fresh air from the garden, then turned to Oda.

“I need your help.”

“Of course.” The lieutenant appeared shaken sober; the flush had paled from his complexion.

“Tell me everyone that had contact with Colonel Ibe, starting two days ago.”

“I know some of the people, but not all-I didn’t go everywhere with him,” Oda said, “but his bodyguards did. They’re in the room across the hall. Shall I fetch them?”

Sano assented, and Oda brought the two young samurai into the parlor. They recited a long list of family members, colleagues, and subordinates whose lives had intersected Colonel Ibe’s during the critical period. When they’d finished, Sano glanced at Hirata, and they shook their heads: As far as they could recall, none of the people mentioned were the same as those who’d had contact with the four other victims.

Sano addressed the bodyguards: “Was there any time when Colonel Ibe was out of your sight?”

The men looked at each other, clearly ashamed because their vigilance had lapsed and horrified that the lapse might have resulted in their master’s death. One blurted, “It was just for a moment.”

“Last night, at Sanja Matsuri,” said the other. “We lost him in the crowd.”

Sano thanked the bodyguards and Lieutenant Oda for their information, gave them permission to take their master’s body home, and told them to let the brothel resume its business. He and Hirata and their men walked down the street toward the gate.

“That festival turns Asakusa Temple into a wild mob scene,” Hirata said. “It would have been a perfect place for the assassin to stalk Colonel Ibe and give him the touch of death.”

“With no one the wiser until now,” Sano said.

He paused at the gate, turned, and looked down Naka-no-cho. He saw the bodyguards carrying out the shrouded corpse of Colonel Ibe on a litter. As people gathered to watch, Sano heard the buzz of excited conversation and saw the crowds in the street group into clusters, spreading the news. Courtesans pressed their faces against the bars of their windows and revelers spilled from the teahouses, eager to learn the cause of the commotion.

“Do you think it was Captain Nakai?” Hirata asked.

“We need to find out where he was last night,” Sano said. “And we’d better go back to Edo Castle and report this latest murder to Lord Matsudaira.” Trepidation filled him as he imagined how Lord Matsudaira would react.

The teahouse was the fourteenth that Reiko had visited since she’d left the Court of Justice.

She’d already searched for Yugao’s onetime friend in all the teahouses near the Hundred-Day Theater, but none of the customers, proprietors, or servants at them knew Tama. Extending her search into the outlying neighborhoods, Reiko stepped from her palanquin in front of this teahouse on a street lined with tenements above shops that sold preserved vegetables and fruit. It was almost identical to all the others she’d seen. A curtain hung from the eaves halfway down an open storefront. A maid leaned, downcast and bored, against a pillar at the edge of its raised plank floor. The room behind her was vacant except for the proprietor, a middle-aged man who squatted beside his sake urn, decanters, and cups. She spotted Reiko’s guards, and her face brightened.

“Hello, there,” she called to Lieutenant Asukai. She was past her youth, but her figure was voluptuous. Her eyes gleamed at the prospect of male company and big tips. “May I serve you and your friends a drink?”

“Thank you,” Asukai said. “By the way, my mistress has some questions that you will please answer.”

Curious but wary, the maid beheld Reiko. “Whatever you like.”

The proprietor poured sake, and while the maid served the men, Reiko said, “I’m looking for a woman named Tama. She works at a teahouse around here. Do you know her?”

“Oh, yes,” the maid said. “We used to work together, here. Tama’s father used to own this teahouse.”

Reiko’s spirits leapt. “Can you tell me where I can find Tama?”

But the maid shook her head. “Sorry. Haven’t seen her in, oh, two years. She and her family moved out of the neighborhood. I don’t know where they went. Her father sold the teahouse to him.” She waved at the proprietor, who sat with Reiko’s escorts, engaging them in polite chat. “Hey, what ever became of Tama?”