Volume 2, 3: Uchimaku Hayabusa @ Shibuya Girl A(5/7)
“Is there any chance you will change your mind?”
“I have no reason to change my mind.”
“Fine then.” The department chief slowly stood up. “No matter what assignments I give to the other detectives, you will be stopped somewhere. I will arrange a means for you to leave from here.”
“...How?”
“Do you really have time to worry about that? Until you arrest Toujou Miyabi and clear your name, you will be viewed as a dangerous criminal who fired inside the headquarters of the Tokyo police. ...Uchimaku, do you remember Chief Superintendent Mishima?”
“The guy who set up that painful night of drinking?”
“Yes, that monster who should have nothing to do with the likes of us. He is neither an evil man nor a good man. In other words, he does not go easy on his enemies or his allies. He is the sort of person who would deem it an appropriate response to shoot you in a situation such as this. Do you understand what I am saying? If you do not want to be shot by your own colleagues, you must escape Tokyo as quickly as possible.”
Part 18
I have no idea what kind of connections or influence he used, but the department chief led me out of the interrogation room. We headed to the underground parking lot where the usual guard from the front entrance was waiting.
“Nakada-san?”
“Over here. Use this scooter. Here’s the key.”
But isn’t this Nakada-san’s? I’m about to be an escaped dangerous criminal who fired a handgun in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, so won’t it be a lot of trouble for him if I use his scooter?
The department chief must have sensed my concern because he said, “It will of course be treated as stolen. This will increase your list of crimes, but do not worry about it too much.”
“...I see.”
How much of a villain am I becoming on paper?
I put on the borrowed helmet while thinking seriously about the situation.
Nakada-san then added, “Oh, and this is my cell phone. Use it however you wish. Don’t forget to turn your own phone off. Take this handgun, baton, and handcuffs as well. I took them from the storage room.”
“...”
Wait, wait, wait!! I’m about to be treated as a dangerous criminal who fired in the middle of the police department and then escaped the interrogation room. If I’m carrying this around, won’t I end up shot by a Special Assault Team!?
And I’m pretty sure that look on the department chief’s face is saying “I didn’t tell you to go that far”!
“Uchimaku, a search across Tokyo is sure to begin soon. Focus on driving safely. Avoid the major roads. Be especially careful when crossing rivers. All the roads focus in on the bridges, so they make excellent checkpoint locations.”
“U-understood.”
“Uchimaku-san, good luck. We cannot leave the rails, so please show that the justice the police claim to protect does indeed exist. That is likely what this missing girl needs the most.”
“That was my plan from the beginning,” I said before opening up the scooter’s throttle and shooting out of the underground parking lot.
Midnight had already passed and the trains were no longer running. Tokyo had long been called the nightless city, but the government district of Sakuradamon had relatively little light and was wrapped in darkness.
I could no longer rely on the organization known as the police.
I needed some other power to search out Toujou Miyabi and Tsumada Mio who he was after.
“I almost feel like I’ve already lost...”
For the time being, I stopped the scooter near the entrance of a park and operated Tanaka-san’s cell phone with my thumb. I was of course calling the twintailed mystery freak, Hishigami Enbi.
Before I could explain anything, she said, “Since you’re using a different number, is this an emergency?”
“Pretty much. I am about to be a wanted man around the country. But what I must do remains the same. I need to find out everything I can about Tsumada Mio so I can find her. I need your help.”
“Oh, I see... Well, fine. You owe me one, though. A big one. Be prepared to at least give me a swimsuit oil massage.”
“Don’t say such indecent things to a police officer!!”
“What are you talking about? Oil massages are good for your health and beauty. They aren’t indecent at all.”
Dammit.
I could almost see her grinning face.
“Anyway, where are you?” she asked.
“Sakuradamon.”
“Then you can use my base in Kudanshita. It has all the tools and funds you might need.”
“Where’s the key?”
“You just have to enter a number. Today is Friday, so...enter all of the digits in the first 100 digits of pi that create a multiple of 7. Three errors and you’ll be permanently locked out.”
“What a pain in the ass!!”
“If it wasn’t a pain in the ass, it wouldn’t be a very good key. By the way, detective, you can use any of the tools I have prepared, but do you know where you will begin your investigation?”
“I was almost killed in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. I’m going to start by investigating the guy who did it.”
“I see. I just received some new information too, so you can look into that while you’re at it.”
“What is it?”
“Tomoe has disappeared,” she said as if she was fed up with all of this.
And yet I was the one who most of everything was happening to.
“Tomoe’s mother just called me. It seems she is calling everyone she can for information. Her mother thinks Tomoe might have run away from home, but I bet she’s chasing after Tsumada Mio.”
“Before, she had at least been following her curfew. Why would she suddenly break that rule?”
“The odds are good she found some information on Tsumada Mio ahead of us. You might find something if you search Tsumada Mio and Tomoe’s rooms.”
I pictured Hachikawa Tomoe’s face in my mind and I remembered something else.
“Come to think of it, who was ‘that person’ Tomoe-chan kept mentioning?”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot to explain that.” The mystery freak hesitated for a moment. “Tomoe’s mother got remarried, so she is not blood related to her current father.”
“...”
So is this new father “that person”?
But my guess was wrong.
“Tomoe’s real father is a police detective. It seems he would get so lost in his work that he ignored looking after her or even speaking to her, so they did not even possess the bare minimum of familial bonds. Hence why he is just ‘that person’. But he was the first person she asked for help when Tsumada Mio disappeared, so I think she really did trust him deep down.”
That must have been why she hated the police.
He had not been able to find Tsumada Mio and therefore had not lived up to his daughter’s trust.
But now that I was isolated from the police and could use all the help I could get, it might be worth seeing if he might help me.
“By the way, what was this detective’s name?” I asked.
“...”
“Answer me, mystery freak. What was his name!?”
When I asked again, Enbi nervously spoke a name.
It was the last name I had expected.
“Toujou Miyabi. Do you know him?”
I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing for a few seconds.
“Ha...ha ha.”
“Detective...?” asked the mystery freak in puzzlement.
The Toujou Miyabi she had just mentioned was likely not the same person that had attacked me.
The man using Toujou’s name had said the real Toujou Miyabi was buried in a mountain.
So that’s it.
It all fits together so nicely, dammit!!
“Hey, mystery freak. You work to find Hachikawa Tomoe-chan. That’s your top priority! Being even a second too slow could be the difference between life and death!!”
“What do you mean?”
“I know why she disappeared. She is likely with someone she believes is her father, but this Toujou is someone else! Given the situation, Tomoe-chan probably realized something due to being so close to Tsumada Mio. And she has given that hint to Toujou. Toujou thinks he can use her, so he is tricking her so she will lead him to the missing girl. And once that is over, he will have no more need for her!!”
“Understood. What will you do, detective? Since you are only interested in the living, I thought you would focus on Tomoe.”
“That does suit me better, but I have something I have to do first.”
I ended the call and sat down on the scooter’s seat.
I started by travelling to the mystery freak’s base.
My plan was to grab a complete set of the forensic kits she liked to use and then head to Toujou Miyabi’s residence.
Part 19 (3rd person)
Hachikawa Tomoe was sitting in the passenger seat of a 4-door domestic luxury car.
Toujou Miyabi sat in the driver’s seat.
He was someone claiming to be her father.
“I have learned that Tsumada Mio-chan has been spotted in the area you just told me about, Tomoe.”
“...”
“She is most likely relying on her grandparents. A girl with no financial foundation will ultimately rely on her relatives rather than some stranger trying to pick her up on the street. Since she was not with her parents, her grandparents or other relatives seem likely,” said Toujou as he merged onto a major road.
“Wouldn’t her relatives have been the first place the police checked?”
“She is not a suspect of any crime. If her family covers for her, there is nothing we can do. We can only write up a report saying they said she was not there. And even if we had done a search of her grandparents’ home, I doubt we would have found Tsumada Mio-chan there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Her grandparents own quite a lot of land. They own several mountains. And according to a neighbor, they built small huts all over their land during the 0-yen lifestyle boom that was big on TV shows for a while. I cannot search private land without a warrant and I would have a hard time finding her hideout in all those mountains even if I did.”
“And so you relied on me?”
“You said you had seen some photos, right?
“...Yes. Mio said she had gone on a bit of an adventure while over at her grandfather’s house over summer break.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Generally. She drew out a map while bragging about it. But the map was not to scale or anything.”
“That is fine. As long as you can tell me which way to turn, that is enough.”
Hachikawa Tomoe secretly glanced over at the man holding the steering wheel.
He was focused on driving, so she could only see the side of his face.
“...You’re finally acting like a father.”
“I have not done anything yet. When we reach the mountain, I will make sure to find Tsumada Mio-chan.”
The man calling himself Toujou Miyabi secretly gave a slight smile.
Hachikawa Tomoe did not know the meaning of that smile.
However...
“Grr...”
She thought she heard what sounded like a large dog growling.
And it did not seem to be coming from outside.
It seemed to come from within the car.
It sounded as if something in the backseat directly behind her was growling so closely she should have been able to feel its breath on her.
Part 20
In one corner of Kudanshita’s lines of tidy office buildings, a room in a short and worn-down multi-tenant building functioned as one of the mystery freak’s bases.
I could almost see the mystery freak proudly puffing out her chest as she had bragged about how she could easily live there with the convenient store and laundromat on the first floor as well as the leisure spa only a 100 meter walk away.
However...
“It would be really depressing to live here...”
The area around all four walls was filled with piles of files on unresolved cases. That was all that was in the room. There was a table in the center of the room, but it did not even have a chair to go with it.
A balled up sleeping bag had been left below the table, so it looked like about the worst possible place to try to get some sleep.
The room had no refrigerator or sink, much less an actual kitchen, but for some reason it did have a storage area below the floor. I opened it up and found a few bags the size of toolboxes.
I pulled them out and looked through them. They were all divided into sets for different tasks. For example, one held a laptop and a few USB memory sticks, one contained several types of reagents, and one was filled with bankbooks and cards.
I grabbed the bag containing the set that looked useful for forensics. I returned the others to the storage space under the floor.
I left the building, tossed the bag into the luggage area below the scooter’s seat, and headed for Toujou Miyabi’s residence.
The mystery freak had apparently previously learned the dead Toujou Miyabi’s address from Tomoe-chan.
The mystery freak had said the following over the phone:
“It’s in Ichigaya. It’s actually quite a nice house, but its size may have emphasized the loneliness after his family left.”
If the current Toujou was using that same house, something might remain there. He would have at least eliminated any information the real Toujou Miyabi had found, but the current Toujou’s scent might still remain there.
I drove the scooter to my destination.
The value of land anywhere within the Yamanote Line was incredibly high and high-rise buildings were used to make efficient use of the limited space...or so I thought. It turned out there were exceptions. It was no match for an old house in an Intellectual Village, but it must have taken a lot of effort to build a house of this size in the city.
“Detective, how are you going to get inside?” asked the mystery freak over the phone.
“I don’t have many options.”
“If you break a window, you’ll probably set off an alarm.”
“I’m not going to go that far.”
For one, I doubted any obvious evidence would remain inside the building. Any traces of the Toujou Miyabi who was buried in the mountains would have been eliminated by the Toujou who had taken on his face.
“Do you think Toujou Miyabi was suddenly attacked one day?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say.”
“If he began to catch a glimpse of the person behind all this while he was investigating the whereabouts of Tsumada Mio, I do not think he would leave the data he had collected where it would be easily found. He would hide it in some difficult-to-find place. ...But still somewhere nearby.”
I stopped the scooter in front of the house and climbed over the wall and into the yard. At this point I was illegally trespassing, but I could not guarantee Hachikawa Tomoe-chan’s survival if I did not find any hint to Toujou’s whereabouts.
Now then.
If I was a police detective, where would I hide data other than in the archives room?
Depending on the scope of the enemy, there could be a risk of having your entire house burned down.
Which meant...
“He needed a way to ensure it could not be destroyed even if the house was burned to the ground.”
I opened the bag I had borrowed from the mystery freak and pulled out the forensics kit. It could gather data from fingerprints, hairs, and bloodstains.
Forcing my way into the locked house would be a last resort. First, I would slowly investigate around the outside of the house while focusing on the yard.
If my thinking was correct, he would not have used anything wooden that would burn away in a fire. Concrete seemed more likely.
“Bingo.”
As I used a special device to spray a chemical, one spot gave off a pale light.
This was at the manhole located directly beside the hot-water heater. A single portion of the ground there was hardened with concrete and I found a bloodstain on the underside of the small manhole lid.
Technically, this was the trace of something being written with blood and then washed away by water.
I was seeing a luminol reaction.
Most people have heard the term in dramas or movies. Bloodstains could not be completely erased just by washing them away. No matter how much it was washed, the stain would remain and it would stand out too much if the entire manhole cover was thrown away. A replacement lid could not be ordered from a hardware store and the manhole could not be left open. The stench would gather the attention of the entire neighborhood.
What it had written was...
“A 20-digit number and a string of 11 alphanumeric characters? Is this for an online data storage site?”
The 20-digit number would be the ID and the 11 characters would be the password. The ID number resembled the ones used by a major company.
The data storage itself could be accessed from a normal cell phone. I opened up the login page and entered the number and alphanumeric string from the luminol reaction.
It worked.
I found a large number of reports.
I could view them, but a different password was needed to delete or edit the data.
Most of it was text and low resolution photos. It seemed Toujou Miyabi would use any break in his work to input any information into his phone and add it to the storage.
“...”
As I skimmed through the text, I could see him start searching for Tsumada Mio and slowly discover the link to the SNS murders.
I also found a list of all reports of sightings of someone who may have been Tsumada Mio.
Seventy to eighty percent of that sort of information was always useless, but it seemed Toujou Miyabi had diligently pursued each and every one of them.
From what I could see, he had a very methodical personality.
After enough useless leads, people tended to grow more lax and write less detailed reports, but that was not the case here. Every single report was filled with detail.
Why had he been so dedicated to his job?
Working for the organization known as the police meant you had to face death. A normal person would be unable to withstand it. To face it calmly, they needed to construct a “mental detour”.
For a similar example, think of doctors.
They cut open several people with blades every day. They must have grown used to doing so. But if you gave a doctor a knife and ordered him to go kill someone, he would refuse. Some of them might even vomit if they were holding a blade for the purpose of killing someone.
That was their “mental detour”.
They were not hurting anyone; they were saving them. That was why they could do it.
That was how humans worked.
For me, it was helping the relatives of the victim and anyone else who was still alive. For the mystery freak, it was figuring out why the victim had died.
That was how people were able to face things that could not be looked at directly.
So what had it been for Toujou Miyabi?
The answer to that was hidden in this methodical text.
“...I see,” I muttered.
The data stopped being updated at the end of May.
That was when the SNS murders had been solved. That was when the person behind the project had moved on. That was when the Jinmensou project had begun and Toujou’s interest had turned toward Tsumada Mio and the person behind it all. That must have been when something had happened.
“All of this evidence was ignored and sealed away for various reasons. Was it your doctrine to gather up every last piece of it?”
If that was the case, these overly methodical reports made sense.
The thick report in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s archives room was amazing, but this was something else entirely.
He had not simply investigated Tsumada Mio because his daughter had asked him to.
The detective named Toujou Miyabi had been the type to head to the depths of hell so that he could hear the cries of those too deep in the darkness to be reached just by stretching out an arm.
“And this is what became of him?”
Even as his family had left him because he failed to hear the voices of those closest to him, he had continued to pursue the case and had stepped on a landmine he should have avoided at all costs. And as a result, his daughter’s life was now in danger from someone with the exact same face and the exact same voice.
Could this really be allowed to happen?
Could the dead be dishonored any more than this?
“Dammit...”
I returned the manhole cover and left Toujou Miyabi’s house.
It was not like me to work for the sake of the dead like this.
“Dammit!!”
I boarded the scooter, put on the helmet, and called the mystery freak.
“I found some data from Toujou Miyabi’s personal storage. Tsumada Mio’s grandparents’ house is in Okutama. The police went to the grandparent’s house to question them, but Tsumada Mio was not there. However, those grandparents own a mountain. If they have a small cabin somewhere, it wouldn’t be difficult to hide a single child.”
It was not unlikely that grandparents would tell a lie or two to protect their granddaughter who had lost her place at school and home due to the Jinmensou. This was another “mental detour”. Even if they could not lie to deceive the police, they might be able to lie to protect their granddaughter.
“Where exactly is it?” asked the mystery freak.
“I don’t know. But Toujou made his move because he thinks he has a chance. And he brought Hachikawa Tomoe-chan with him. To be honest, I don’t see why he would need Tomoe-chan here. Which means...”
“Tomoe knows the answer?”
“You’ve made your way into Hachikawa Tomoe-chan’s house as her classmate, right? Make sure you find something. I’ll be heading for Okutama.”
“How are you going to catch up to them!? If he has Tomoe with him, they must be in a car. Plus, they have a large head start. No matter how fast you move, Toujou will get there first!!”
“True. But the police are searching for me, so they’ve set up checkpoints throughout the city. He’ll get through just fine because they look like father and daughter, but he needs to stop and put on a smile at each checkpoint. That should slow him down a good bit.”
“Tomoe disappeared an hour ago.”
“If he is strictly following the legal speed limit and stopping at each checkpoint, I can catch up. I just need a way of heading straight to Okutama at almost 100 kph.”
“The police are on high alert. If you drive that fast on a normal road, they’ll catch you right away. And they will almost certainly have checkpoints set up on the highway.”
“If I use normal roads, yes. And I can’t use the highway with this scooter anyway.”
“Then what are you going to do? The trains have already stopped.”
“The freight trains haven’t. They also don’t stop at the intervening stations. They head straight to the last stop at Okutama.”
I called up a map on the cell phone and displayed the points where overpasses crossed over the train tracks.
And I found the perfect spot.
It was right near a curve where the train would lower its speed.
“But...”
I’ve seen it in plenty of dramas and movies, but will I really be okay if I jump onto a freight train? It isn’t going to rip off my arms and legs, is it?
Part 21 (3rd person)
“Over there. I think it’s to the left of that big tree,” said Hachikawa Tomoe while needlessly pointing.
The road was so narrow a single car covered it over entirely. The mountain road was pitch black due to the lack of streetlights and a passenger car drove along it at the legal speed limit.
While holding the steering wheel, Toujou said, “This area wasn’t designated an Intellectual Village, was it?”
“The village at the base of the mountain was, but Mio’s grandparents were opposed to the change. They could do nothing to change the view of the entire village, but they were able to keep their private property from being included.”
“Do her grandparents have a phobia of electromagnetic waves or something?”
“I don’t know. But even if they do-...Oh, it’s there. Once you make this turn, it should just be a direct path there.”
“I see,” muttered Toujou as he slowly stepped on the brake.
The car came to a stop on that empty mountain road.
“? Wait a second. What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“...”
“Did an animal dart across the road up ahead? Oh, or did you blow a tire?”
“Tomoe-chan,” muttered Toujou. He let out a heavy sigh and then smoothly reached for the side of his waist with his right hand. “You are an interesting girl in a lot of ways. For one, you came out to this remote area with no suspicion whatsoever.”
“Eh...?”
For an instant, Hachikawa Tomoe did not know what to think.
Her entire mind was focused directly forward.
She was trying to grasp what it was that was being held out toward her.
It was a shiny black hunk of metal.
It was a handgun.
“W-wait. What are you-...?”
“Get out,” said Toujou, cutting her off. “Get out. If you do not, I will drag you out.”
Overpowered by that gun barrel, Hachikawa Tomoe slowly opened the passenger-side door and stepped out of the car. She thought she was being abandoned in that dark mountain, but she was wrong. Toujou then stepped out from the driver’s seat. He pointed the large handgun at her once more.
“...What are you doing?”
“I no longer need you, Tomoe-chan,” said Toujou with a thin smile. “By the way, this is not my first time to kill. I’m quite used to it, so please don’t pointlessly try to persuade me, resist, or beg for your life. I do not have time to deal with such annoyances.”
“...!!”
Hachikawa Tomoe had no idea what Toujou was saying, so she simply tried to run away.
But she never even managed to turn around.
She froze in place before she could move.
“Grr,” came a bestial growl.
Something was only 30 cm behind her. As soon as she heard it, sweat poured from Hachikawa Tomoe’s entire body. Something huge and overwhelming was there. This was not just a large dog. This was something that could easily break through a cage at a zoo.
“Do not turn around,” said Toujou as he grinned and continued to aim the gun at her. “It will probably be easiest for you if you die without learning anything.”
“Why...?”
“Do not worry. I do not need to make this look like suicide. If a body is found here with a bullet through the head, the police will probably assume you just happened to come across someone who was here to bury another corpse. The same thing happens all across Japan. No one will think I did it.”
Something was directly behind Hachikawa Tomoe.
But an obvious gun barre-->>