Koji Suzuki - Edge

Kitazawa could never have done it alone. One of the cornerstones of detective work was approaching people for information, but any source he accosted would run terrified from his hulking form. Instead, Chieko became the face of the agency. She had the uncanny ability to put almost anyone at ease. Her magic even worked on animals — guard dogs wagged their tails at Chieko and neglected to bark.

They were quite the pair. Chieko got the ball rolling, encouraging clients to open up. Once they found themselves speaking with Kitazawa, they realized he was a genuinely good man. The impression was all the stronger after overcoming the initial fear.

Saeko had recognized Kitazawa’s heart of gold almost immediately.

“You know, I’ve always wondered something. How come you’re so formal and polite with other people, and so rude to me?” Kitazawa demanded.

“Because that’s what you deserve,” Saeko shot back, instantly overcoming the four-year blank in their relationship. It was something of a mystery to her that she could always relax so completely and speak her mind so openly with Kitazawa.

“The first time you showed up here, you brought your daddy’s bankbook, didn’t you? When my wife got a load of the account balance, she was completely dumbstruck, remember? Oh, the look on the old lady’s face when she saw those numbers!” Kitazawa opened his eyes wide and puffed out his cheeks in an imitation of Chieko.

Saeko burst out laughing. Chieko had been five years older than Kitazawa, and he’d frequently referred to her as “the old lady.”

“Excuse me for being so naïve,” Saeko laughed.

“You gave us a bit of a shock, that’s for sure. We figured we’d better look out for you or you’d be in big trouble.”

The first thing Kitazawa had done eighteen years ago when Saeko had hired him was to create a file containing the basic details of Shinichiro Kuriyama, the missing person. Name, age, date of birth, blood type, family tree, registered address, current address, educational history, employment history, physical description, social ties, driver’s license, passport, overseas travel history, hobbies, spending habits, religion, health insurance, frequent haunts, usual hospital, health condition, attire and possessions at time of disappearance …

Kitazawa and his wife weren’t the only detectives who worked on the case. They had deemed it necessary to hire three other detectives they sometimes employed, and the team of five had traveled to Takamatsu to conduct a thorough canvassing and to distribute flyers emblazoned with Saeko’s father’s picture and characteristics.

They had vetted the passenger lists at nearby airports and the ferry that served the nearest port, but Shinichiro Kuriyama’s name was nowhere to be found. He could have used an alias, so they combed over every facility where he might have stayed, including all of the hotels and motels in Takamatsu City and neighboring hot springs resorts. They found nothing. They questioned the staff at restaurants and department stores he might have visited, but to no avail. The entire search failed to unearth even the tiniest shred of information.

After returning to Tokyo, the team looked into other areas, tracing every destination reachable from Narita and gathering updated information at regular intervals. But in the end, Saeko’s father’s trail had gone cold on August 21, 1994.

In early September, eighteen years ago, Kitazawa had sat at the sofa across the table from Saeko and shown her the report based on the team’s ten-day investigation. It was the same office where they sat now, though the ashtray that had once occupied the table had outlived its usefulness.

The content of the report had been straightforward: Kitazawa was throwing in the towel. It pained him deeply, but the scenario of a lone traveler vanishing mysteriously for no apparent reason presented more difficulties than any other type of missing persons case.

The investigators had confirmed only that Shinichiro Kuriyama had stayed in the N Hotel at Narita Airport on the night of August 21st. Beyond that, they were completely unable to determine whether he had actually reached Takamatsu or gone elsewhere. The word “unknown” appeared repeatedly in the report.

He was loath to say so to Saeko, but Kitazawa had a strong feeling, based on his many years of experience in the business, that Shinichiro Kuriyama was no longer among the living. When he worked on a case, Kitazawa sometimes experienced a flash of inspiration that told him the person he was looking for had ceased to be. And often, it wasn’t long before those subjects’ bodies turned up. Accidents aside, the vast majority of these cases were suicides. In such cases, the client was usually frantic to locate the missing person as quickly as possible to avert the tragedy.

Five years into his private detective concern, Kitazawa had been hired to locate a man who had been wracked with shame after a blunder he’d made at work caused major problems for his company. On a whim, the man had failed to show up at work one day and flitted hither and thither before randomly boarding a northbound train.

The man had left behind a wife and two small children. Those who knew him reported he’d always had a meek, retiring personality. Kitazawa couldn’t help but think that the man’s inability to get over his mistake exceeded the bounds of earnestness into the realm of cowardice.

With the family’s breadwinner gone, the man’s wife had found her way to Kitazawa’s office and tearfully pleaded for help. “Please, find my husband. If you don’t find him soon, he’ll take his own life!” After hitting the road, the man had left a message on the family’s answering machine hinting at the possibility of suicide.

By the seventh day of his investigation, Kitazawa had tracked his target down in Sendai City. The man’s funds were almost depleted and he was wandering about in search of a place to kill himself. Using strong-arm tactics, Kitazawa escorted the man home to a tearfully overjoyed wife. She was so appreciative that Kitazawa was moved to shed tears of his own.

The satisfaction of being a private detective varied dramatically based on whether or not the investigations were successful, even though the fees were more or less the same. That was all part of the game.

When he’d set about to find Saeko’s father, Kitazawa imagined her joy should he succeed, and it drove him to do everything he could. But the case was simply unsolvable. Oddly, the circumstances of the case were different from anything he had seen before.

The subject had none of the usual involvements associated with a missing persons case — debt, a love affair, ties to illicit activities — that might serve as the motive of an intentional disappearance. Kitazawa could only imagine that Saeko’s father had wound up at the bottom of a river or steep cliff through some sort of freak accident or perhaps fallen victim to a random criminal act. In either case, the implications were the same. Unless Saeko’s father was being held captive somewhere, it was unlikely that he was still alive.

On top of everything else, Shinichiro Kuriyama was completely devoted to Saeko, his only child. The closeness of their relationship was the reason Saeko had been aware of his disappearance at such an early stage.

Based on Saeko’s own account, her determination to find her father, and the testimony of her father’s friends and acquaintances, Kitazawa was positive that Saeko had meant the world to Shinichiro and that the man would never have dreamed of abandoning her. The more clear it became that Shinichiro had no motivation to disappear, the more likely it seemed that he had met with an accident and that his body merely remained to be recovered. Kitazawa knew the possibility was absolutely unacceptable to Saeko, but he couldn’t convince himself otherwise.