I moved inside, using the light to guide my way so I wouldn’t trip over any of the cans or tubs. When I got to the bier I circled it, playing the flash over its surfaces, looking for any signs of tampering there. But the burial crypt was still sealed. The person responsible for the flowers was not a ghoul, at least.
There wasn’t anything else to see in the narrow confines of the vault. And the musty-sweet odor was starting to make me queasy. I followed the light out into the cold, fresh air, shut it off, and then pulled the door shut. I was reaching for the gate when I heard the noise.
It wasn’t much of a noise-a crackling, sliding sound that came from some distance away, but clear in the night-hush that lay over the cemetery. Still, as I swung around toward it, the hackles went up again on my neck. It had come from beyond my car, where the hillside leveled off and there were no more graves, just trees and underbrush lining the perimeter fence. But all I could see up there were thick shadows: tree branches swaying in the wind, nothing that seemed to be moving at ground level.
An animal, I thought. A raccoon or a skunk or something. I let out the breath I’d been holding, took a step toward the car.
The crackling and scraping came again, and this time I saw something move that wasn’t a tree branch- something big, a man-shaped shadow that detached itself from the other shadows for an instant before blending back into them.
Impulsively, I ran over to the car, around behind it so I wouldn’t be illuminated in the headlight glare, and then up a soggy path past a couple of oaks and the last of the crumbling old graves. I could see the fence, then, and more movement on the other side of it, somebody running away into a thick stand of eucalyptus. I kept on going across open ground, through wet grass and rotting humus, switching the flash back on as I ran; but the beam wasn’t powerful enough to penetrate the darkness more than thirty yards ahead, and the running figure was a good fifty yards away from me now.
At the fence I hesitated, thought about climbing over and continuing the chase, and decided it was a foolish idea. I didn’t know those woods; I could blunder around in them and get myself lost. Or ambushed, for that matter. Besides, it didn’t have to have been Chiyoko Wakasa’s belated mourner. It could have been a tramp. Or a kid; kids were always hanging around cemeteries, looking for mischief.
It wasn’t a tramp or a kid, I thought.
I turned around and started back toward the path. And behind me, then, a long way off, I heard a car engine start up and then the faint shriek of rubber on pavement.
No, it hadn’t been a tramp or a kid at all.
Chapter Sixteen
Three-twenty-nine Bassett Street was maybe ten blocks from downtown, three blocks from City Hall and the police station, and half a block from Petaluma High School. The house itself was an old frame job, painted white, with a glassed-in porch to the right of an old-fashioned walled staircase. Lights burned on the porch, and rattan blinds were only partially drawn over the windows; when I went up the stairs I could see a short, thin, wispy-haired old man sitting in there with his feet on a hassock, watching a television program.
I could still see him as I pushed the doorbell. He sat up, swiveled his head around, blinked at me from behind thick glasses, then got to his feet and blinked at me again and disappeared. Ten seconds later the door opened on a chain and he looked out at me warily. He appeared to be between seventy and eighty; his face was as wrinkled as a raisin. He didn’t say anything.
“Mr. Takeuchi? Charley Takeuchi?”
“I don’t know you,” he said.
“No, sir, you don’t. John Hama gave me your name and address.”
His expression softened a little; the grief that came into his eyes gave them a liquidy look, like chocolate pudding. “You know his father was killed?”
“Yes. That’s part of the reason I’m here.”
“Kazuo and I were friends forty-five years. That’s a long time.”
“Yes, it is. I’m sorry, Mr. Takeuchi.”
“Shikata ga nai, ” he said. “Did you know Kazuo?”
“I’m afraid we never met.”
“A good man. A good friend.” His eyes fluttered behind his glasses. “What is it you want with me?”
“To ask you about some people Mr. Hama used to know. Friends of his back in the forties.”
“The forties,” Mr. Takeuchi said. “The war. That was a bad time.”
“Wars are always bad times.”
“But that one, that war…” He shook his head.
“The two men are Simon Tamura and Sanjiro Masaoka.”
He repeated the names, slowly. Then he nodded and made a wry mouth and said, “Oh, those two. They weren’t Kazuo’s friends. He thought they were, but they weren’t. They only got him in trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Trouble,” he said, and shrugged.
“When was this? During the war?”
“Yes, the war.”
“At the Tule Lake camp?”
His mouth pinched up; the look that crossed his expressive face this time was one of pain. “That place,” he said. “Makura moto!”
“I don’t understand, Mr. Takeuchi.”
“A terrible place to sleep. To live.”
“And that was where Simon Tamura and Sanjiro Masaoka got Mr. Hama in trouble?”
“It was. Stealing, making insults, blowing bugles before dawn. Other things.”
“What other things?”
“I don’t know. I never wanted to know.”
“Mr. Hama didn’t speak about them?”
“Not about them, not about that place. He was a good boy after the war; he worked hard with his chickens. I worked hard too. And now I’m old and I have no money and my sister takes care of me.” He shrugged again.
“Did Mr. Hama have a girlfriend at Tule Lake?”
“Girlfriend? No, I don’t think so.”
“Did he know a woman there named Chiyoko Wakasa?”
Mr. Takeuchi was silent for ten seconds or so; he seemed to be searching his memory. “I don’t remember,” he said finally. “I don’t believe I ever knew a woman called Chiyoko.”
“She was about Mr. Hama’s age. She died in 1947, here in Petaluma or somewhere nearby.”
“There was a Wakasa family here once. Yes, Michio Wakasa-a gardener. But they moved away.”
“Did Michio Wakasa have a daughter?”
“I don’t remember.”
“When did the family move away?”
“A long time ago.”
“Could it have been in the late forties?”
“It could have been.”
“Do you know where they moved to?”
“No,” he said. “No.”
“Did you and Mr. Hama talk much recently?”
The question seemed to confuse him. “Recently?”
“Before he died. The past few weeks.”
“Sometimes we talked. He came to visit sometimes.”
“Did he ever mention a woman named Haruko Gage? Or Haruko Fujita?”
“All these names, all these questions,” he said. The confusion was still in his eyes. “Why do you want to
