Stephen White - Cold Case

I perceived a natural break in his narrative and opened my mouth to ask a question about Tami and Miko. But he continued before I had a chance.

"I was here, right here, when I learned she was missing."

Confused, I asked, "In Vancouver?"

"Yes. In Canada. In Vancouver. In this airport. I'd just completed a business trip to Whistler Mountain. I wasn't there with my family when she disappeared.

My wife, she is silent, but she blames me I think. For not being there to help."

He shrugged.

"What could I have done? But at the time…"

I felt a familiarity with Hamamoto right then. It calmed me. It was as if our interview had become psychotherapy. I did what I do best. I said nothing and tried not to get in his way.

"Work. I was here for work. The company? We were negotiating then to buy Whistler Mountain. You know Whistler? The ski resort?"

I shrugged. Whether or not I knew Whistler Mountain wasn't the point. He knew that, too.

"A beautiful resort. It is my assignment, now. Whistler. For a different company, though, not Japanese. The economy in Japan in the late nineties was… so fragile. So much of what was gained in the eighties was lost in the nineties.

It has seemed to me that whenever Japan begins to feel strong that is when Japan is most weak. That is our history. Are you a student of history, Dr. Gregory?"

"Personal history."

"Ah." He appraised me warmly.

"My Mariko? Her personal history? Yes, I think I see. From her confidence, too, perhaps came her vulnerability. But she was never arrogant, like Japan. Even like Tamara. Mariko was young, had the self-assurance of the young."

"Her vulnerability?"

"To influence."

"From friends?"

"Yes. From friends."

"Including Tami Franklin?"

"Of course."

He stared at me in a manner that I found disarming. He said, "You know, of course, that my daughter was arrested?"

I did my best to try to not act surprised. I thought I did a pretty good job.

But not good enough.

"You didn't know?" Hamamoto said.

"I'm disappointed."

"I've read the investigative reports thoroughly, Mr. Hamamoto. That information is not there."

"No?" He shrugged.

"Her record was eventually cleared. And now, it doesn't really matter. It is not relevant to finding who killed her. Only to knowing her and her-what did you say?-personal history. It is because of the arrest we came to know Dr. Raymond Welle." Marijuana," he explained.

"In case you are wondering." I waited for him to go on. He seemed embarrassed by his admission and was content to allow the word to hang in the air for as long as possible, as though it were a cloud that would dissipate with the wind.

Finally, I asked, "Possession or sale?" I immediately regretted my bluntness; I needed to encourage Hamamoto, not assault him.

As I feared, my question appeared to offend him.

"Possession. Mariko and Tamara and two boys… men, really. Tourists, skiers.

They were from Chicago. They attended Northwestern University. The sheriff arrested them all. This was in March. We were… devastated. My wife, she…" Hamamoto bowed his head.

The hair on his crown was thinning.

"There was much shame. It was my fault. Mariko should not have been granted the. the… oh, oh…" He snapped his fingers twice. "… the license… the the… freedom. That was my fault. Mariko should not have been free to be there then with those… men who we did not know. That was my doing. My responsibility. My error in judgment. As her father, I failed."

He looked up and examined my face, wary. I assumed he was trying to assess whether my infelicitous frankness was likely to continue.

"But my daughter was smoking the marijuana. She admitted that to me honestly.

And that was Mariko's responsibility. That was her error." He closed his right hand into a fist and struck his chest lightly with the side where his index finger and thumb united.

I was wondering what was so grave about what I had heard. A sixteen-year-old girl experimenting with dope, hanging out with college boys? Not exactly earth-shattering behavior.

"They were at one of the hot springs. You know about the hot springs in Steamboat? At Strawberry Park?"

"Yes. It's where Tami told her parents that she and Mariko were going the night they disappeared. It's become overrun by tourists. They charge admission now."

"Really? I suppose that I am not surprised that the tourists have discovered it.

Your other statement is true as well. Mariko did not tell her mother that she and Tamara were going to the hot springs. Mariko knew she was prohibited from returning there."

"You are concerned that Mariko lied to her mother?"

Taro Hamamoto's face flushed.

"When the sheriff" arrested my daughter, she was. " He averted his eyes.

"She was… naked." He corrected his posture and touched his collar with the fingers of both hands.

"Mariko was in the hot springs without clothing. She was with two young men she had just met that afternoon on the gondola. She was smoking marijuana. And you think that she would not lie to her mother about a plan to return there? The shame."

I considered the facts I was hearing. When I was sixteen I hadn't done what Mariko had been caught doing. But I'd done it when I was a little older.

Different hot springs, in the Sangre de Cristo Range above Buena Vista. Older girls, graduate students at Arizona State.

The memory warmed me now as the experience had then.

But the difference was, I hadn't been caught.

"I was at a meeting that night at the resort. I came right home. My wife, Eri, she was in shock, and was not sure how to proceed. I went to the police station and retrieved Mariko. She was released to me without…" He snapped his long fingers.

"Bond? Is that the right word?"

"Yes."

"Good. At the police station I saw Mrs. Franklin, Cathy Franklin. Tami's mother.

I was upset, more upset than she. I told her I was afraid that Mariko would now need to go home to Japan. The influences, I explained. We, her parents, were failing. We couldn't control her.

"Cathy tried to calm me down. She explained that the kids were just being kids.

Experimenting, she said. Spreading their wings, she said.

We argued a little about that. We discussed grounding. She said maybe we should keep the girls apart for a while but she thought sending Mariko to Japan was… rash? Is that the right word? She gave me a name of someone who could help settle Mariko down." I said, "Dr. Raymond Welle."

"Yes. That is when I heard for the first time of Dr. Welle."

I remembered Lauren telling me that Cathy Franklin wasn't fond of Mariko.

Tami's mother thought the friendship wouldn't last. That she referred to Mariko as one of Tami's projects.

Taro Hamamoto stood and excused himself to the rest room.

The pieces didn't fit together with any grace.

Our time together was running out. I felt it burning away like the wax in a candle. I decided I needed to be more assertive with the remaining minutes available to me. I doubted that I would ever be face-to-face with Taro Hamamoto again.

"You went to see Dr. Welle together? As a family?"

"Not right away, no. Eri, my wife-the shame was too much of a burden for her right after the arrest. She felt that everyone in the town was judging her because of what Mariko had done. She begged me-she wanted to take the girls and leave Colorado. Return to Japan. It was, for me, a difficult time."

Taro was silent long enough that I felt it necessary to prod him.

"Difficult?

How?"

He paused.

"Selfishness." The solitary word was spoken as an almost-question.

"Not one of my most proud traits. I am vain, and I can be selfish. I was loving my work at the resort. I knew that it would not look good for me in my employer's eyes for my family to leave Steamboat and return to Japan. The company would be… unsympathetic to our problems. They would be critical of my inability to control my daughter. And as to that solution?" He shook his head.