Nagano and Matsushita had narrowly eluded him. He stepped inside their prep school and peeked into their classrooms.

A middle-aged man barging into a place where young people congregate. Granted, nobody was particularly suspicious of him. However, no matter which room he looked in, they were nowhere to be seen.

The emergency exit door was open. Running from the prep school to the station, he followed their trail.

He crossed all the stores. Arche at the west exit, Lumine and Sogo in the station building, and then Loft through the shopping district at the east exit. Many times he stopped girls of similar stature, which drew suspicion. At the very least, the little princess Nagano had experienced stimulants. Or was experiencing them, present tense. He didn’t see any track marks, but the arm wasn’t the only place. Not to mention injection wasn’t the only way to do it. It was just a hunch, but he was almost certain. He’d surely find out from her eventually.

5 o’clock. The strong western sun pierced his eyeballs. He lowered his sun visor. The dirt on the front window stood out and blocked his view. Even with the A/C turned up to maximum, he still had no escape from the sharp heat rays.

A sticky traffic jam. The traffic was slow and sluggish as it headed toward Saitama Shintoshin. He drove through the man-made architecture and parked his car on the street. Opening a piece of paper torn from the Town Pages, he double-checked. There was a large ad space for Tsujimura Neurology Clinic. A map of the area and clinic hours. Located on the second floor of a brand-new building at the east exit of Shintoshin Station.

The clinic was thriving. The lighting was warm and soft, and the walls wood-grained. It was decorated with houseplants and an aquarium with tropical fish. The room was lukewarm, and the air conditioning was neutralized with sweat. Bowls of candy were placed on tables, and the chairs surrounding them were nearly full. The room was filled with office workers on their way home from work, housewives, and young boys looking down at their handheld game consoles.

At the reception desk, Fujishima presented a business card. He asked about a patient who had been visiting the hospital. The business card was that of the chief of the Life Safety Section of the Omiya Police Department, with whom he had worked together many years before. Little known fact, he already retired.

With some hesitation, the clerk suggested a chair in the waiting room.

He spent what seemed like an eternity in contemplation and observation. What was Kanako thinking, as she sat in this chair? One of the patients was staring into a glass bowl with a vacant expression on his face. What had Kanako looked at, as she waited her turn? Many patients received their medications and left one by one. More patients were being admitted, and there was no end in sight. After nearly an hour of waiting, he was taken to the examination room.

Tsujimura was a forty-something-old man with a protruding belly. For a doctor, his accessories were quite the statement. He wore thick-framed light-blocking glasses and a ring that looked like a golden seal. A Bulgari wristwatch, too. He was looking over his medical charts and business cards when Fujishima announced himself and slumped into a round chair.

“Kanako Fujishima. Is she the one you’re asking about?”

“Her family has reported her missing.”

From his second bag, he pulled out a paper bag that contained the medication. The date and time clearly marked was exactly one week ago.

“We’re starting her search from both tracing her footsteps and her circle of associates, but we’d also like to look into her medical history.”

Tsujimura checked his medical chart against the medications.

“Doctor.”

“I prescribed anti-anxiety medications and some light sleeping pills.”

“What did she discuss with you here?”

Tsujimura shook his head in astonishment.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t discuss anything that involves patient privacy.”

“We believe at this point in time that she is in danger. There’s no time.”

“It’s been three months since she visited me for a checkup. A week ago, she must have come to pick up her meds. I didn’t see her at that time.”

“How many months ago it was isn’t the problem.”

Tsujimura rubbed his eyes in exasperation.

“Please. Someone’s life is at stake.”

“Her father was a policeman.”

“That’s right.”

“But that’s not the case any more. She told me that a long time ago, he attacked his unfaithful wife’s lover, injuring him for three months and squandering his job. Months went by, and then a man approached me with a business card, wanting to know about his daughter’s medical care..”

“..”

“‘What shall I do?’ I thought to myself.”

His throat and mouth were dry.

“Could I see your police identification, please?”

“You think I’m falsifying my identity?”

“People do come to me asking me to tell them about my medical practice. Hyena-like people, trying to sniff out people’s secrets. It’s better that we’re cautious.”

Tsujimura lifted the receiver.

“Could I see it?”

“Just hang on a sec.”

Tsujimura slammed the phone down hard in a somewhat dramatic fashion. He raised his eyes from behind those dark-rimmed glasses.

“Just leave. I’ll pretend this exchange never happened.”

“Wait-”

“Please, give it a rest.”

“..You’re right. I am her father. But I wasn’t lying about her disappearance.”

Tsujimura shook his head in pity as he looked down at his chart.

“I haven’t heard of any such thing. In any case, you’re not a police officer, so there is nothing I can tell you. You’ve already resigned from your position. The custody of the child has been transferred to her mother. In other words, you are not qualified to ask about Kanako Fujishima.”

“You don’t care if my daughter dies?!”

“Someone!”

The door to the examination room opened almost immediately after Tsujimura called out. An elderly nurse, who appeared to be the head nurse, entered with a pale face. Patients stretched out their necks and looked curiously in her direction. Fujishima looked back and flinched.

Pushing through them, he left the room. He could not calm his excitement. He thought back to what he had said to his wife.?Oh, you’ve suddenly decided to act like a mother?

Don’t act like a father now.?That’s what he felt Tsujimura had told him. He turned around and shouted.

“If something happens to her, it’s your damn fault!” Tsujimura was already looking through another medical record. His hand holding the chart appeared to be shaking. Fujishima pushed through the clinic’s glass doors, stomping as he did so.

It had been a while. A while since he had been emotionally distraught, and to this extent. He hit the steering wheel so hard that the car shook. The base of his little finger began to swell. That son of a bitch knew something. That was the only possibility. There was something in that chart that pointed to the answer. That was why he refused Fujishima. Breaking into the clinic and stealing it.. would be impossible. All it would take was one phone call from Tsujimura, and he would have a headache on his hands.

Identity fraud by an ex-cop. The force cared about prestige and face. They were also very cold to the officers who quit. He popped two tablets of etizolam and prayed that his composure would return. Then, he drove back to Omiya on National Route 17.

Something’s not right.?He growled low and pounded the steering wheel intermittently. He was supposed to be a detective.

What’s with this half-assed outcome? No, it wasn’t just the exchange that was wrong. Everything was wrong from the beginning. He had no solid organization, no associates. He was reminded that he was nothing more than a vulnerable civilian. All of a sudden his footing was unstable and he felt uneasy, as if he were groping in the dark.

While gripping the steering wheel, he checked his cell phone. There was a mountain of missed calls. Kiriko’s voice sounded as if she was desperate. ‘Kanako hasn’t come home yet.’

“And over there? Have you found anything?”

“Not yet.”

She bombarded him with questions. The call turned from discouragement to ridicule, and when it turned to cursing, he hung up the phone. It was already the third night since his daughter had disappeared. He called the homes of Matsushita and Nagano, claiming to be a clerk at the prep school. Their mothers answered and said they were both out of town. Both began to chafe when he asked them where they had gone.

He had the smell of two days’ worth of body odor. So he drove to his place. It was a wooden mortar apartment surrounded by fields, a 20-minute walk from Toro Station. Even so, the rent was not unreasonable. The room had become an impromptu sauna, with beer cans and liquor bottles standing in a forest in the small one-room apartment. Dirty magazines, gekiga, and garbage bags covered the floor.

He took off his sweaty shirt and showered in the moldy unit bathroom. While washing his hair and wiping his face, Kanako flickered in his mind. Flustered by the smell of death, where none existed, he slammed the back of his head against the wall of the bathtub. Kanako and an overweight middle-aged man, entangled together. He pretended not to see his bloodshot groin.

He pulled his travel bag out of the closet. A cowhide favorite from his days as a detective. In it he put his shirts and toiletries. In addition, he put in the weapons he had confiscated when he was a detective. A folding knife with a blade of about 15 centimeters and a folding baton with a special blade. He figured he would need them in case he eventually came across the real owner of the meth.

Fujishima escaped from the scorching mess. As he descended the stairs, he realized that he had forgotten to lock the door to his room. He got into his Corolla and slipped the knife onto the dashboard.

At nine o’clock, he called his daughter’s childhood friend. This was the third person his wife had called last night. Akemi Kaminaga spent her daytime working part-time at a supermarket. Apologizing for the late hour, he asked if he could talk to her outside; she replied in a low tone of voice that she could talk to him after the TV drama was over. It seemed that everybody, no matter who, was out to screw with him. His body, which had been cold like a corpse after taking a cold shower, was now burning up.