Chosen Path Ch. 03

"There."

"Pillar."

Wakahisa-san advanced one frame and pointed at the screen. "Right there."

"Pillar."

"OK, now watch how she waves her arms around like she's trying to grab something or catch her balance." Wakahisa-san played the video forward again until the train hit.

"Yep."

"The kimono woman totally pushed her."

"Can't see," Shimizu said, looking over Wakahisa-san's shoulder. He wasn't convinced. A structural pillar obscured the best view they had of the platform. Detective Wakahisa was looking for a suicide. She wanted to see the decedent step calmly off the platform, looking straight ahead. She wanted to see a lost soul wander into the station, scan the walls and ceiling as if searching for any other way, then peer down into the trackway like she was staring into her own grave. Wakahisa-san didn't see it.

Detective Shimizu was looking for murder. He almost never looked at the victims. Victims, by definition, aren't doing anything wrong. Whenever he saw someone, he was looking at a suspect. The woman in the kimono was definitely a suspect. She walked straight into the station, right up to the platform and stood perfectly still for more than half an hour. Both of the lines that stopped at that platform had come and gone while she stood there. The decedent walked up next to her and spoke to her, but she remained perfectly still.

The kimono woman stood her ground. It was the decedent who approached, who kept moving the entire time they stood next to each other. Both women were visible in the video, taken by a camera at the end of the platform, on the far side of the tunnel, but a structural pillar obscured the scene of the crime, the concrete right behind them. Shimizu didn't see murder because a pillar obscured his view. The killer needed footing to propel the decedent's body forward. One of them had planted a foot back, away from the track, and used that footing to push.

Neither of the kimono woman's feet were visible under her perfect hem. She walked like she was wearing geta, elevated, wooden sandals, and she clearly wore them all the time. The skirts of her kimono didn't move when the crime occurred, but they didn't move when she walked either. She seemed to float along about a centimeter above the ground. The decedent had dropped her phone and crouched to pick it up, turning toward the camera to do so. In that position only one of her legs was visible. With her center of gravity lowered, the decedent had better control of her balance. She wore flip-flops, rubber flip-flops, recovered from the scene. Shimizu was looking at the decedent's foot, and he only looks at suspects.

Several other people stood in the video, but none of them were close enough to push. Only one witness they interviewed claimed to have seen what happened. He said the kimono woman pushed the decedent. Shimizu looked at the witness's position in the video, and Shimizu only looks at suspects. The witness had entered the station about a minute before the decedent did. He stood almost behind the kimono woman, probably checking her out. Shimizu would have. Blocky surveillance video cannot show you how beautiful a woman is, but it shows how many heads she turns.

Wakahisa-san moved her mouse and clicked, playing the video forward from the moment of impact. "Look," she said, "watch the kimono woman run away."

She did run away, but not soon enough, not fast enough. First, she took three steps backward and collided with the witness. The kimono woman had not intended to kill. "Atrium camera," Shimizu said.

Wakahisa-san loaded the atrium video again and advanced it until the kimono woman appeared on the escalator. "She doesn't want to go through the exit. She must have a PASMO. She knows she's guilty." The much younger detective hesitated for a moment, thinking, then said, "but her PASMO would have been read when she entered."

"Yumiko Itsumoto."

"Wait, what? You know who she is?"

"Yep." Wakahisa-san was right about her PASMO, paid with her credit card, scanned on entry, no exit. They must not teach cadets how to pull transit records at the academy. Shimizu thought the only thing she was supposed to learn from being his partner was alcoholism. "Platform-3."

Wakahisa-san loaded camera 3 and advanced until the kimono woman came back down the escalator. The woman went straight into a bathroom and stayed there. Both detectives watched the bathroom's door. Wakahisa-san got impatient and started accelerating the video. "And she's still in there when we showed up! We should have looked in the bathroom."

"Pervert." They said Shimizu had no sense of humor. Wakahisa-san wasn't laughing. Maybe he didn't.

"What is she doing in there?"

Shimizu knew exactly what she was doing: hiding. She was scared and confused. The only thing he wasn't sure about was exactly what frightened her so much. Up to the moment of the crime, she moved placidly as an angel. Afterward she moved like an animal, thought like an animal. First, she tried to run, then she hid.

When the station closed for the night and the video went black, Wakahisa-san kept staring at the screen. "She could still be there," the young detective mused.

"She's at work."

"Oh, come on, Shimizu-san, how could you possibly know that?"

"Doorman." The kimono woman had arrived home at about 7:45 that morning, changed into her work clothes and departed. The staff at her building liked her. The doorman sounded genuinely concerned when he asked if she was OK. She had arrived wearing a yukata, not her kimono from the night before, and the doorman had thought nothing of it.

She must have calmed down some time in the night. She went somewhere. While she hid, she figured out where to go. Maybe she figured out how to leave the subway; that station would have been locked up for the night while she was still hiding. Maybe the bathroom had another exit. There were too many possibilities. The only thing clear to Shimizu was that the kimono woman had started improvising. She was not afraid anymore.

Shimizu turned back to his desk, grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair and started putting it on.

"Hey, Shimizu-san, where are you going?"

"Her office."

=====

They looked like an odd couple to Amaya, an old, haggard-looking man and a chipper, young woman. The woman did the talking.

"Hello. We would like to speak to Yumiko Itsumoto."

"Miss Itsumoto is currently unavailable," Amaya answered politely. Amaya was always very polite to anyone who came to the firm's office. Otherwise she would not ask questions to which she already knew the answers. "Did you have an appointment?"

"No, but this is a personal matter of some urgency. Will she be free shortly?"

"No." Central booking was only a few blocks away, and arraignment usually happened quickly. Amaya expected her back in the office that afternoon.

The man spoke. "Where is she now?"

"She is out of the office."

He didn't bother asking again, but he clearly was still waiting for an answer. It made the woman uncomfortable. It appeared to Amaya that the pair's poor rapport disappointed the woman, but the man didn't care. She spoke as if in apology for him. "We're detectives with the Tokyo Police Department, and we believe Miss Itsumoto may have witnessed an incident we are investigating."

"Show me your..." The man had his badge in front of Amaya as soon as she began to speak. She clicked a picture of it with a small camera she kept on her desk. Then she answered, "She was arrested this morning."

"By whom?" the man immediately asked.

Checking her notes, Amaya answered, "Detectives Hayabusa and Yoshida."

The woman looked puzzled and started trying to form a question, but the man didn't hesitate. "When?"

The woman started talking, but Amaya answered the man's question. He seemed to be the one moving through his business most quickly. "About 45 minutes ago."

The man said, "Print the photo," but Amaya was already connecting her camera to download it.

"That...that's odd. Who...why...what did they look like?" the woman asked.

Without answering Amaya excused herself to go to the copy room for the printout. When she returned, the man traded her his business card for the image of Yoshida-san's badge and said, "Send the original." Then he immediately turned and walked toward the elevator.

"Can you tell us anything else," the woman began, but then looked back at her partner who was still trudging away. "I'm sorry. Excuse me." She ran after him, caught him quickly and smacked him on the arm. "Hey! Where are you going?"

All he said in reply was, "Video."

Amaya looked down at Detective Shimizu's business card. She slowly set it on her desk and picked up the warrant for Yumiko-san's arrest. Then with her other hand, she lifted the handset from her desk phone and dialed the court clerk's office.

=====

I gave him back his handcuffs as soon as we got in the elevator. He probably expected me to leave them on, but I wasn't in the mood. He recovered from his surprise quickly enough to say nothing as he took the handcuffs and put them away. Both men looked pretty beefy, which was not common for detectives. Their badges looked authentic enough, of course, and the warrant seemed to be in order. I had hoped to turn myself in when I could make time in my schedule for the arraignment, but it had to happen sooner or later.

We walked straight out the building's front door to a car waiting at the curb. One of the detectives opened its rear door. There was already a driver in the car, and I thought detectives came in pairs. It was also unmarked and far too expensive to belong to a public servant. Those facts struck me so suddenly that I stopped in my tracks before devising a plan of action. As soon as I halted, the other man ran into me from behind.

It felt like something bit my lower back hard, and every muscle in my body cramped instantly. He must have hit me with a taser or a stun gun. I had been electrocuted often enough, but only recreationally. Instantaneous, electrical paralysis felt novel, in a way. I wondered if I should learn to use it somehow. While I considered the new sensation, the man quickly wrapped an arm around my waist and brought his other hand around my chest to choke me, presumably so I wouldn't scream. The two of them stuffed me into their car while an indescribable mix of numbness and pain set in.

=====

"Detectives Hayabusa and Yoshida." Shimizu laid a printout from a security camera at the kimono woman's office building on the lieutenant's desk. "And Yoshida-san's badge," he added, laying down the second paper.

"It there a problem?"

"Yep," Shimizu answered.

Wakahisa-san continued. "The witness's assistant called minutes later and stated that the warrant presented at the time of her arrest had not been issued by the court named on the warrant. The department employs two people named Hayabusa: a traffic enforcement officer and a janitor. The only Detective Yoshida on record retired seven years ago at the age of 59, and this," Wakahisa-san said, pointing to the menacing looking fellow on the printout, "is not a picture of her."

"I see," the lieutenant replied thoughtfully. "I'll take it from here. Forward any additional information or inquiries regarding this case to me."

"Yep" was the sound of Shimizu standing up to leave. Wakahisa-san made a different sound.

"Lieutenant, I would very much like for us to remain on this case if possible."

"That will not be possible," the lieutenant answered.

Shimizu had almost made it back to his desk when Wakahisa-san caught up. She was obviously not satisfied with that outcome. "So that's it? We're off the case? Just like that?"

"Yep," Shimizu replied while sitting down and starting to tickle a stack of files, looking for something.

Wakahisa-san's posture deflated and she collapsed into her chair. "What are you going to do?"

"Next case." He was curious too, but after 30 years of police work, he had become accustomed to unsatisfied curiosity. Maybe that was what he was supposed to teach the girl—alcoholism and that. She was bright, but he found her enthusiasm exhausting. Shimizu got a new partner every year. They always put the academy's top graduate with him. The chief had some line about wisdom and experience, but he was pretty sure it was just because no one wanted to be his partner.

Shimizu worked too much. Always, always, some case remained unsolved, some lead remained to chase down. Everyone had to find their own balance between work and family. You had to learn to leave the job at the office if you wanted to have a happy life. Shimizu took the job with him everywhere he went.

Most other detectives, men and women with families, couldn't do that. Their wives and husbands wouldn't have it. Shimizu's wife didn't complain about his long hours anymore. Her new husband was a salaryman: 9:00-5:00, no nights, no weekends. Must be nice. He did miss her in a way, but not with his heart. She never really loved him in the way that made a woman lay awake at night hoping her husband was OK, that he would be able to solve whatever case had called him away. Once he understood that, he had no reason to go home to her.

He missed her with the rest of his body—all the rest of his body, not just the one part. As a detective, he studied the animalistic nature of people: needs and wants, fears and fantasies. He knew the delicate, web-work bridges a person's mind would spin out to bring itself closer to the things it needed to survive. Those rationalizations eventually lead to crime. Under enough pressure, with enough time, anyone would become a criminal.

Shimizu missed his wife as an animal misses its mate. Humans need to be touched by each other. They need to love and to be loved. They need to be told of that love body-to-body, not voice to ear. Otherwise, the animal does not understand. The mind, on some level, knows what it needs, and it begins to reach out for it. It hungers and it thirsts. It starves, sometimes to death.

Wakahisa-san was certainly a pretty girl, but she was just that: a girl, probably about the age of Shimizu's son, maybe younger. Still, sometimes when he looked at her, his gaze would slide along the smooth surface of her cheekbone, out to her ear. She wore earrings sometimes, only studs when on duty, and at first he thought their sparkle was drawing his eyes away from hers. But it wasn't the earrings that drew him up around her ear's outer helix, tracing its gentle curve down to the lobe.

It wasn't an earring that brought his eye down into the quiet recess behind her jaw, down the smooth, perfect skin of her neck. It wasn't sparkle that he saw in the dangerous shadow between the collar of her shirt and her bare skin. The long too-lonely animal saw a female, and it struggled urgently to draw her in as if she were its breath.

Shimizu was an honorable man, of course. He would never so much as touch the girl, never even smile at her. To flirt with a colleague was dishonorable, moreover one so young. He was under enough pressure, but for not enough time. He could keep his wits about him for a year, until his next assignment to another rookie. It didn't help that she seemed to idolize him. People said he was very good at his job. Really he had no more or less skill than anyone on the team. He simply worked all the time.

He did allow himself his thoughts on occasion. Trying to deny one's desires only allows the mind to construct its madness in the shadows. He fed himself a diet of one fantasy each week. In this week's fantasy, she played the damsel in distress. She had been kidnapped by a criminal syndicate, and he, her partner, rescued her.

Their hideout, in this version of the fantasy, was a meat-packing plant. She hung naked from a meet hook on an overhead track, hooked under the ropes that bound her ankles, somewhere in a long line of beef sides that moved slowly but inevitably down the track toward an unnecessarily slow and painful sausage grinder. Shimizu could see her from where he stood on the roof of the old factory building, looking through a window on the side of the roof's elevated ridge line.

He impossibly shot one of the henchmen tending to the facility's nefarious purpose, whatever it was, through the window with his revolver, then he broke out the window, climbed through and ran along the catwalk below the ridge line while bullets ricocheted in the metal grating beneath his feet. By virtue of unspecified, subsequent feats of daring-do, he defeated all remaining henchpeople, then ran to the front of the grinding line, where Wakahisa-san dangled helplessly and precariously close to the grinder's turning jaws.

He had to plant his foot on the grinder's front bezel and transfer his forward momentum into a jump up to where she hung, grabbing her around her waist and pushing her far enough upward to free her ankles from the hook. He landed on his feet with her over his shoulder, legs behind him. Being the gentleman that he was, he brought one arm up under her chest and dropped her aside, down off of his shoulder to catch her knees in his other arm. As she spun into position in his embrace, she threw her own arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder.

"Shi...Shimizu-san," said his fantasy, still addled by whatever drugs her captors had given her, "you saved me." She held him as tightly as her sedated muscles could while he carried her to safety. The syndicate would send reinforcements. They needed a place to hide, to wait out the danger. He ran, carrying her, through the old factory, looking for an exit or a closet or anywhere they could be alone.

He came to a door that lead into offices in the plant's rear corner. It was closed, and he looked down at Wakahisa-san in his arms, thinking whether he could open it without setting her down. He saw, in that instant, her bare and beautiful body, his view only partially obstructed by her tender limbs and realized that he could not bring himself to shift his grip on her even slightly for fear of discomforting her. He kicked in the door.

There was an emergency exit at the end of the long hallway. Offices on the right had windows looking out into the factory, and those on the left had exterior windows. As he walked down the hall, he considered his options. If he took her outside, what then? Was he parked in front of the building, or had he even driven there at all. He realized he had no idea what was outside, so he carried her into one of the interior offices, closed the blinds and locked the door. Hopefully they would be overlooked.

He carried Wakahisa-san over to the desk and lowered her down parallel to it on her back. Then he moved her laterally over its surface, using her body to push its contents off onto the floor. As he set her weight down, her arms loosened around him, and her head leaned back into the crook of his arm. As her hands slid down from his neck, she took hold of his tie and pulled him closer and closer still. She pulled him so low, he had to withdraw the arm behind her until he held her head in his hand and lower her knees, still tucked under his other arm, to make room for his shoulder approaching her chest.

"Please, Shimizu-san," she said in a breathy whisper that tickled his face, "please, I'm so scared." While her lips still moved with her speech, she pulled him down until they touched, and she kissed him. When she released his necktie, he stood, rising away from her kiss. She had swiveled her ankles so they crossed in the lashing around them, and that allowed her to spread her knees apart and pull her knees down even further. As she reached up to hold her feet with her hands, she softly said, "I want you, Shimizu. I want you inside me."

As her thighs had widened out beside her, one came to rest under Shimizu's hand. His hand moved, without his knowledge or intent, slowly along her smooth skin, down toward her hip, where he caressed the big, perfect hemisphere of her upturned flesh. Withdrawing his hand from behind her head and sliding it down over her chest, he moved around the corner of the desk to stand directly in front of her, pressing his own hips against hers through the fabric of his trousers.