11
If a person should spurn faith in the Black Lotus,
He will be plagued by many ailments.
He will find himself plundered, robbed, and punished
As he walks the evil path through life.
– FROM THE BLACK LOTUS SUTRA
Hirata splashed through the puddles in the courtyard of police headquarters, peering from beneath his umbrella at the crowd huddled in the dripping rain. He wondered what had brought so many people here in such bad weather. Under the eaves of the main building, he handed his umbrella to a servant; then he entered the reception room. It was packed with more people standing against pillars and seated on the floor, some puffing tobacco pipes, amid a loud babble of conversation. The warm, stuffy air was thick with smoke. Several doshin stood guard. Hirata elbowed his way up to the platform where the clerks sat elevated above the crowd.
“Why are all these people here?” he asked the chief clerk.
Uchida grinned. “They’re responding to your notice asking for information about the dead woman and boy at the Black Lotus Temple.”
“All of them?” Hirata, who had come to check on whether the notices had gotten any results, gazed around the room in astonishment.
“Every one,” Uchida said, “and the folks outside, too.”
The nearest bystanders spread the news that the man who’d issued the notices had arrived. The crowd surged toward Hirata waving hands and shouting pleas.
“Quiet!” Hirata ordered. “Stand back! I’ll see you one at a time.”
Doshin coaxed and shoved the mob into a line that snaked around the room, while Hirata sat atop the platform. He saw the shaved crowns of samurai among the many commoners. He tried to count heads and stopped at a hundred. Surely all these people couldn’t be connected with the two mystery victims.
The first person in line was a frail, stooped peasant woman. Looking anxiously up at Hirata, she said, “My grown son joined the Black Lotus sect last year. I haven’t seen or heard from him since, and I’m so worried. Is he dead?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know,” Hirata said. “The people in the fire were a woman and a little boy. That was explained in the notice.”
“I can’t read,” said the woman. “I came because I heard you were looking for anyone with family members who disappeared at the temple.”
“No. My inquiry doesn’t include adult males.” Hirata realized that his message had been distorted while spreading through the largely illiterate populace.
“Maybe my son is still alive, then.” Hope brightened the woman’s wrinkled face. “Please, will you help me find him?”
“I’ll try.” Hirata wrote down the woman’s name, where she lived, and her son’s name and age. Then he stood on the platform and addressed the crowd, explaining the purpose of his notice and describing the victims. “Everyone who’s here about missing persons who don’t fit those descriptions should come back later and make a report to the police.”
Rumbles of disappointment stirred the crowd, but no one got out of line. A man with the coarse appearance of a laborer stepped up to the platform. “My daughter is missing,” he said.
“How old is she?” Hirata asked.
Before the laborer could answer, a burly samurai shoved him aside and said to Hirata, “I refuse to wait any longer. I demand to speak to you now.”
“Get in line,” Hirata ordered. “Wait your turn.”
“My three-year-old son disappeared in the spring.” The samurai, whose garments bore a floral crest that marked him as a retainer of the Kane clan, stood firm. “His mother took him shopping in Nihonbashi. She lost him in the crowd. Storekeepers saw three Black Lotus priests putting a little boy into a palanquin. They stole my son.”
“They stole my daughter, too,” said the laborer. “She was playing outside. The priests and nuns are always in our street, inviting people to join the sect and giving the children candy. When they left that day, they took my girl with them.”
“How do you know?” Hirata asked, intrigued by the accusations.
“Other children have disappeared after the Black Lotus visited. Everyone knows the Black Lotus steals them,” said the laborer.
Shouts rang out along the line: “They took my child, too!” “And mine!” “And mine!”
Amazed consternation jolted Hirata. It hardly seemed possible that the sect was involved in so many disappearances. Had mass delusion infected these people?
“When I went to the temple to look for my son, the priests threw me out,” said the samurai. “I went to the police, and they said they would look into the matter, but they’ve done nothing. I came here hoping you could help me.”
Hirata took pity on the samurai, whose son’s age fell in the range Dr. Ito had specified for the dead boy in the cottage. He wrote down the samurai’s name and information, then turned to Uchida. “This is going to take forever. Will you help out?”
“Of course,” Uchida said.
Hirata announced, “Everyone who’s here about missing children and the Black Lotus sect, form a new line.”
A general shift divided the crowd in two roughly equal portions. Hirata remembered the story that Sano had told him this morning, about a novice monk who’d accused the Black Lotus of imprisoning followers. Sano should be interested to hear of this new development.
Hirata and Uchida spent the next several hours on interviews. Many people wanted to talk about missing relatives who bore no resemblance to the murder victims, just to register complaints about the Black Lotus sect.
“With so many incidents, why didn’t the police begin investigating long ago?” Hirata asked Uchida.
“Maybe they didn’t know about the situation,” Uchida said. “It’s news to me, and I thought I knew everything that happened around town.”
Upon questioning the citizens, Hirata learned that most had reported the disappearances to local doshin instead of coming to police headquarters.
Perhaps the higher officials hadn’t yet reviewed the reports and discerned the magnitude of the problem or a connection between the incidents. But Hirata, who knew about the rampant corruption in the police force, suspected a cover-up.
By noon, Uchida had compiled forty listings of missing young boys. Hirata amassed even more possibilities for the dead woman, but no one had recognized the jade sleeping-deer amulet found on the body. The line seemed endless; as people left the room, more streamed in from the courtyard. With a sigh, Hirata greeted the next person in line.
It was a carpenter in his thirties, who carried a box of tools. His eyes and mouth turned down at the corners in a permanently sad expression; wood shavings clung to his cropped hair. He took one look at the amulet and began to weep.
“That belongs to my wife. It was made by her grandfather, who was a jade carver.” The carpenter wiped his eyes with a calloused hand. “Chie used to wear it on a string around her waist for good luck.”
Hirata experienced a thrill of gratification, tempered by pity. “My sincere condolences,” he said, climbing off the platform. “Please come with me.”
Over the crowd’s protests, he led the carpenter to a small vacant office with a barred window overlooking the
