closely, Nakata could see that he was bleeding from cut eyelids, and some of his teeth looked broken. Nakata knew this was too much for him to handle by himself, so he hurried back to the restaurant and told one of the employees that a man was lying in the parking lot, hurt. 'You'd better call the police, or else he might die,' he said.
Not long after this Nakata found a truck driver willing to give him a ride as far as Kobe. A sleepy-looking man in his mid-twenties, not very tall, with a ponytail, a pierced ear, and a Chunichi Dragons baseball team cap, he sat there in the restaurant, smoking and flipping through a comic book. A gaudy aloha shirt and oversize Nikes completed his wardrobe. He tapped his cigarette ashes into the leftover broth in his bowl of ramen, stared hard at Nakata, then gave a reluctant nod. 'Yeah, okay. You can ride with me. You kind of remind me of my grandpa. The way you look, or maybe how you talk, kind of off the point… At the end my grandpa got senile and died. A few years ago.'
He went on to explain that they should get to Kobe by morning. He was delivering furniture to a department store warehouse there. As he pulled his truck out of the parking lot, they passed a car accident. A couple of patrol cars were already at the scene, red lights flashing, and a policeman with a signal light was directing traffic. It didn't appear to be much of an accident. A few cars had collided, the side of a minivan was dented, a car's taillight broken.
The truck driver stuck his head out the window and exchanged a few words with a patrolman, then rolled up his window. 'He said a pile of leeches fell from the sky,' he said, unmoved. 'They got crushed by cars, the road got all slippery, and some drivers lost control. So go slow and take it easy, he told me. On top of that some local gang of bikers beat up somebody. Leeches and bikers-what a weird combination. Keeps the cops busy, at least.'
He drove carefully toward the exit. Even going slow the truck slipped a couple of times, and the driver straightened it out with a subtle twist of the wheel. 'Man, it really looks like a whole bunch fell down, and it's damn slippery. But, boy-leeches, that's pretty gross. Ever had a leech stick to you?'
'No, as far as Nakata can remember, I don't think so,' Nakata responded.
'I was brought up in the mountains of Gifu, and it happened to me lots of times. I'd be walking in the woods and they'd fall down from the trees. Go wading in the streams and they'd stick to your legs. I know a thing or two about leeches, believe me. Once they get stuck on you they're hard to pull off. If you pull off a big sucker your skin comes off and you'll have a scar. So the best thing is to burn ' em off. Awful things, the way they suck your blood. And once they're filled up they get all soft and mushy. Pretty gross, huh?'
'Yes, it certainly is,' Nakata agreed.
'But leeches aren't supposed to fall down from the sky into some rest area parking lot. I never heard of anything so stupid! The guys around here don't know the first thing about leeches. Leeches don't fall from the sky, now do they?'
Nakata was silent and didn't respond.
'A few years back a huge number of millipedes appeared all at once in Yamanashi Prefecture, and cars were slipping everywhere. Just like this, the road got all slippery and there were a lot of accidents. They got all over the tracks and the trains couldn't run either. But even millipedes aren't going to rain down from the sky. They crawl out from somewhere. Anybody can see that.'
'A long time ago I lived in Yamanashi. During the war.'
'No kidding,' the driver said. 'Which war was that?'
Chapter 21
Found in Study, Floor a Sea of Blood
The world-renowned sculptor Koichi Tamura was found dead on the afternoon of the 30th in the study in his home in Nogata, Nakano Ward. The body was discovered by a female housekeeper. Mr. Tamura was found facedown, nude, covered in blood. There were signs of a struggle and the death is being treated as a homicide. The weapon used was a knife from the kitchen discovered beside the body.
The police estimate the time of death as the evening of the 28th, and since Mr. Tamura lived alone the body was only discovered two days later. Mr. Tamura suffered several deep stab wounds to the chest from the sharp steak knife, and it is believed he died almost instantly from massive loss of blood from injuries to the heart and lungs. Several ribs were also broken from what appears to be massive blunt force. The police have not announced having found any fingerprints or anything left behind at the scene. It also appears that there were no witnesses to the crime.
Since the house was undisturbed, and valuables and a wallet near the scene were not taken, police view the crime as a personal vendetta. Mr. Tamura's home is in a quiet residential neighborhood, but no one heard anything at the time of the murder, and neighbors were shocked at the news. Mr. Tamura had little to do with his neighbors and lived quietly, and no one noticed anything out of the ordinary around the time of the incident.
Mr. Tamura lived with his son (15), but according to the housekeeper the son hasn't been seen in some ten days. The son has also been absent from his junior high and police are tracing his whereabouts.
In addition to his residence, Mr. Tamura had an office and studio in Musashino City, and according to his secretary, until the day before the murder he was working on a new piece of sculpture as usual. On the day of the incident, there was a matter she had to contact him about, but every time she phoned his residence she got his message machine.
Mr. Tamura was born in Kokubunji, Tokyo. He entered the Dept. of Sculpture at Tokyo Arts Institute, and while still a student completed many innovative pieces that became the talk of the art world. His chief theme was the human subconscious, and his sculptures, which were in a unique style that challenged the conventional, were internationally acclaimed. His best known work was his major 'Labyrinth' series, which explored, through an uninhibited expression of the imagination, the beauty and inspiration found in the meandering contours of labyrinths. He was at present a visiting professor at an art institute, and two years ago, at the exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York…
I stop reading at this point. There's a photo of our front gate, and one of my father in younger days, and they give the newspaper an ominous feeling. I fold it twice and put it on top of the table. Still sitting on the bed, I don't say anything, just press my fingertips against my eyes. A dull sound, at a constant frequency, pounds in my ears. I try shaking my head to get rid of it, but it won't go away.
I'm in my room in the library. It's seven p. m. Oshima and I have just shut the place up for the night, and a while ago Miss Saeki drove off in her Volkswagen Golf. It's just me and Oshima in the library now. And that irritating pounding in my ears.
'This paper's from two days ago. The article came out while you were up in the mountains. When I saw it I thought maybe this Koichi Tamura might be your father. A lot of the details fit. I should've shown it to you yesterday, but I wanted to wait until you got settled in.'
I nod, still pressing my eyes. Oshima doesn't say anything more.
'I didn't kill him, you know.'
'I know that,' Oshima says. 'On the day of the murder you were here at the library, reading until evening. You wouldn't have had enough time to go back to Tokyo, murder your father, and then get back to Takamatsu. It's impossible.'
But I wasn't so sure. I did the math and figured out he was murdered the same night I woke up with my shirt covered in blood.
'But the paper does say the police are trying to locate you. As an important witness.'
I nod.
'If you go to the police and prove to them you have a firm alibi, it'd make things a lot easier than trying to run around avoiding them. Of course I'll back you up.'
'But if I do that, they'll take me back to Tokyo.'
