End of the Innocence: No Brave New World

   "I am calling in all my favors and ask you to do something personal for me," I said over the phone.

    I was speaking with Micheal Anderson, a retired FBI agent who taught homicide and crime scene profiling at Harvard.  I had studied under him for three years when I pursued a degree in Criminal Psychology to make my transition from private practice to government.  

    "Favors? You bought me a couple of cups of coffee and maybe lunch, one time."

    "That's more than enough," I said.  "Are you able to take some leave and come to Tokyo to look at a case with me?"

    "All the way there just for a second opinion?"

    "The case read like a text book, but I know there's something else to the whole picture I am just not seeing," I said.  "I don't have much hands-on experience on discerning important or irrelevant details, and from what I know so far, it felt like a very bad mix of both.  This case is extremely sensitive, so I am rather handicapped on getting the help I need on it here."

    "I did tell you to work for the Bureau for a couple of years before you head back," he said.  "You would have gotten a good admin position with your pick of your field team.  One of the co-directors really liked you."

   "The thought of coveting anyone's wife makes me nervous."

    "If you lived in the States for just a few more years to be properly corrupted,  the conservativeness would have rubbed right off you," he said.  "Anyway, what's this case about?"

    I told him what I could summarize from the victim files but I didn't tell him about Aoshi, except he was the sole survivor of the attacks.

    "I think the best bet is for you to ask the Bureau for help on this.  They've got the database and the lab."

    "That's not an option.  Let's just say, they would probably look for ways to terminate my career if they found out I discussed this case with anyone else that's not already involved.  Never mind bringing in foreign assistance into this."   

    "How many years did the police manage to bury this case from the media?"

    "A little over five," I said.  "And they intend on breaking it just as quietly as they have investigated."

    "Instead of putting the pressure on you to squeeze out the information on an already broken man, I would press the police to release some information on this to the public so at least the potential victims would be aware that they are potential victims."

    "The police's inadequate as it is on something like profiling a criminal case.  It is far more inadequate to handle mass social hysteria."

    He was quiet for awhile.  

    "What do you want me to do?" He finally said.

    "I would like for you to read the files and notes and see if you can spot what I am missing.  Consider it a working vacation."

    "I am in middle of a semester," he said.  "Give me a couple of days to find a substitute I can trust not to undermine my schedule, then I'll see when I can get down there."

   "Good enough.  Thank you."

   After I placed the call to Anderson, I cancelled my meetings and met with Utsuki at his office.  I had wanted to look at Aoshi's family history files he had compiled.  However, he had stipulated that I come to his office to read them instead of sending them to me at my office.  I suspect he had wanted another chance to convince me to wring the information he wanted from Aoshi.  However, it didn't matter if I would have agreed.  While I was on my way there, I got a call from Aoshi who told me he wanted to cooperate with the police and do whatever they wanted to do.  When I asked him what Utsuki had said to him, he didn't answer.  By the time I reached Utsuki's office, I was furious.

    He was leaning over one of the desks looking at a map spread out at one of the detective's desk when I walked in.  He immediately noticed me and straightened.  One corner of his mouth clung onto his unlit cigar and the other corner curled up and smiled at me.

    "Doctor Kanoe," he said in a cheerful voice.  "Wonderful to see you."

    All eyes were fixed on him and me.  After a few awkward silence passed, Utsuki gestured for me to follow him, and I did, into his office. 

    "Take a seat," he said as he closed the door behind me and closed the blinders that looked out to the main office where the other detectives worked in an open area.  

    "What did you tell him?" I said in a low voice to hide my anger.  

    He shrugged and took a seat behind his desk. 

    "What he need to know.  Don't say another word, sensei.  Let me lay everything out on the table for you,"  he said.  He took out his cigar and tossed it into an empty mug on his paper-cluttered desk.  

    "You and I are both merchants in misery.  Our profession exists solely because our society's raised on violence."

    "Maybe so, but you and I will never be the same.  I would have never thrown back the few that survived the violence just to lure the culprits out from the dark corner."

    "Violence is essential in everything we do, especially when we are confronted by the face of evil." he said and waved his hand dismissively.  "Sometimes small sacrifices are inevitable."

    "Using violence to protect is admirable.  Using violence to exploit is intolerable.  You've broken that thin line that divided the two, Detective.  Did you show him the pictures? Told him the details of how those men were murdered? Told him he'd have blood on his hands if any more victims turned up?"   

    "The end justifies the means, doctor," he cut in.  "Just for a moment, put a face and name to the victims that will follow Shinomori, just as you had put a face and name to him."

    "You obviously haven't applied that theory yourself, if Shinomori had become as expendable as you have made him."

   "Ah yes, the thing with us all being God's children," he said and slid out his drawer and took out a cheap plastic cigarette lighter.  "Don't bother trying to lecture me about morality.  I gave up defining that long ago when I did my first homicide case.  I think it was the moment when I first became acquainted with the smell of death.  Not the clinical, medicinal smell of the dead that you are familiar with.  But the real stench of death."

   I didn't say anything.  Utsuki tapped his lighter against the cigar.  He continued.

    "He was a thirty-four year-old man who was killed for three thousand yen that was in his pocket.  A couple of kids dragged him into the woods and beat his head in with bricks for three fucking thousand yen.  Fucked up way to make your exit in this world, 'eh? To know you are only worth three fucking thousand yen," he said with a weak smile.  "The body was found a couple of days later.  I was quarter mile away from the crime scene and I could smell the body.  The scent stayed with me for days.  Then one of my supervisors gave me my first cigar.  "Just light one up whenever the smell comes back," he said.  I smoke about five of these a day."

   "How nice," I said dryly.  "I didn't think someone like you had human emotions."

   He laughed.  "Not just human emotions, doctor," he said and held up his bitten cigar.  "This the sum of my fears."

   "When you are ready to discard that cigar and face your fears, then we can continue this conversation.  For now, I'd rather see Shinomori's files please," I said.  

    I didn't want to argue with him anymore and I found myself wanting to leave as soon as I could.  Utsuki's words had profound logic to them but I was not willing to accept them.  He couldn't be right.  If he was, then the core of my belief would have meant nothing.    

   He pulled out the lower drawer and took out a small stack of brown folders.  He placed them on his desk in an unkempt pile on top of the scattered papers.

   "Nothing more than you already know," he said.  "He didn't have much of a history."

   "His parents?"

   He shook his head.

   "A flood wiped out a lot of records that were archived in the City Hall."

   "Not even from Shinomori's own family?"

   He shrugged.  "They were not required to keep anything or surrender any information about them.  And they didn't care to discuss it either."

   "There must be police reports on the fatal accident that killed his parents."

   "The department's not required to archive those information after ten years," he said.  "Only unnatural deaths, crime related accidents or incidents' kept on file.  That police department in that particular town wasn't big nor was its system set up to house case histories."

   "So there's no way you can verify who his parents were and how or when they died."

   "Of course there is.  But I'd rather put my men following live leads rather than something that has absolutely no value to this case."

   "You don't know what information has value," I said and gathered the folders into neat stack.  "The more details you can verify, the more concise I can work."

   He didn't say anything.  He stuck his cigar into the corner of his mouth and chewed on it.

   "I would like to know why the family's guarding the identity of Aoshi's parents.  I would also like to know the extent of abuse Aoshi suffered in that house when he was a child."

   "You believe his story?"

   "He has no reason to lie to me."

   "I don't think he is.  But so far, what he's been telling you didn't make much sense."

    "What he had told me made perfect sense," I said, and pressed the folders into my briefcase.  "There should not be any reason why the identity of his parents were not disclosed to you or to him, unless there were some kind of scandal attached to the accident.  If there was an accident."

    "Meaning...?"

    "Aoshi had been told he and his brother were "born in sin" when they were brought into the household.  That meant they were born out of wedlock.  According to the adoption papers, Aoshi was taken in when he was five.  This was most likely some time past the period when he and his brother suffered the abuse.  Let's assume Aoshi did have a brother, it would have been after the brother's death.  Aoshi certainly did not enter the household as an infant, so he must have been at least three  or four years old when he was given over to the Shinomori's home.  The abuse happened over the course of a year, more or less."

    "Or the parents did die in a car accident.  The children went to the next of kin--the grandmother."

    "Which does not explain why the parents name were crossed off the family ledger," I said.  "But the act of exclusion of their names from the family ledger does explain the abuse of the children.  The boys bore the sins for the parents."

    Utsuki looked amused.  "It would have been easier for the grandmother to put the children in the orphanage, if she had that much hatred for her son's misdeed."

    "Her son?"

    He gestured at my brief case.

    "It's all in there. Kind of.  Aoshi's father was his grandmother's youngest son."

    "Who was the mother?"

    Utsuki shrugged.  "Don't know. There's no record of marriage or even birth certificate.  Kyoto's Headquarters did confirm that a death certificate was filed for him by a local doctor.  That was it."

    "The grandmother would not have given up the children," I said.  "It would not have been...proper."

    Utsuki squinted at me.  "Proper?"

    "For someone immersed in religion as this woman had, to have her own child commit a sin and produce the poisoned fruits--she would sooner kill the tainted children herself than let someone take them.  It would have been like for someone to raise her mistake and that error will always exist.  The 'mistake' which had part of her bloodline.  Her God, in her mind, would have never tolerated it."

    "Interesting theory," he said and propped one of his foot up on his desk.  "I still have a hard time with a grandmother beating her own grandchildren for sake of atoning someone else's mistake."

    "Man had done worse to another man in the name of God and religion," I said.  "That is why I never believed in God." 

   I read Aoshi's files on the train, on my way to see him at the safe house.  As Utsuki had said, the files didn't reveal any enlightening information.  He had been a good student, from grade school to college.  He did well on tests and rarely missed any classes.  He wasn't the "trouble child" his relatives had accused him to be.  At least, not in the traditional sense of the meaning.

   Aoshi was finishing his late lunch when I arrived.  He wasn't wearing a bathrobe, but a dark blue, pattern-less kimono.  Around his throat, was the band of white gauze.  I joined him for coffee in the living room.

   "Utsuki shouldn't have done what he did," I began.

    "I don't mind," he said and stirred some sugar into his coffee.  "Besides, I don't expect I would get my former life back until this case breaks."

   "You do have the right to refuse," I said. 

   "I know.  But there's no point in refusing.  They'd keep me here until they solve this case."

   We sipped our coffee in silence for a few moments. 

   "I'm sorry," I finally said. 

   He smiled weakly.  "Don't be.  I'm sure you wanted to be here just as much as I wanted to be."

   I refrained from saying what I had wanted to say, and instead asked him to tell me about the job he had held before he was kidnapped.  He explained he had been doing secretarial duties for the vice president of a modest-sized company, but received a manager's wages.  The VP liked him.  A lot.  And often the fondness which exceeded the professional limits became clear in the annual personnel reports I had read from Aoshi's files.

   "I bet you want to know if I had slept with him," he said after I told him I read his company performance reports.

   "You don't have to tell me anything," I said.

   "No, I don't," he replied. 

   He pushed his coffee cup away from him and leaned back against the chair. 

   "When I first got here to Tokyo, I started out working as a waiter at a night club.  The kind that you had to put up with being groped while you served drinks, but you didn't have to sleep with the customers unless you wanted extra money.  I met Yutaka-san there.  He got me out of there and gave me a proper job in his company.  He never asked any questions on where I came from or who I am.  He was the first person in my life who liked me as I am and didn't ask for anything in return for his kindness."

   "You are also very attractive," I said.

   "He never suggested I sleep with him to repay the favors.  Yutaka-san was married and had children who were my age.  He was like a father to me.  The thought of a sexual relationship never entered my mind.  For awhile..." He paused.  "I owe him everything, yet I can't give him anything.  A couple of years ago, he took me along to a conference in Paris."

   He was quiet for a while.  I sipped my coffee and waited for him to continue.

   "He was my first man," he finally said.  "Yutaka-san told me he had always loved me and I knew he meant it.  However, deep inside I had grown to loathe him.  I don't know why.  I was the one who initiated the sex and told him I wanted it.  He was the reluctant one, but he eventually gave me what I asked.  The moment he touched me, I felt this hatred and contempt I had for him that I never knew I had.  After the sex, I stood in the shower and cried.  I've never felt dirtier in my life."

   "It could be the religious oppression you had endured programmed you to feel dirty when you are receiving pleasure." I suggested.  "Social conformity forces one to react according to its interpretation of consequences, instead of natural human instincts."

   He shrugged.  "I don't know.  From then on, whenever Yutaka-san touch me--even an innocent brush against my arm,  my stomach would tie up into knots.  I would become physically ill if I stayed in the same alone room with him  for too long."

   "What about leaving for another job or ask for a position that would require considerably less contact with him?"

   "I couldn't," he said.  "I owe him everything.  A few months after our first time, he tried to have sex with me.  I broke down completely.  I couldn't stop crying and shaking.  It scared the hell out of him.  He never touched me again."

   "Yet you still feel the way you did when you are around him."

   "It's like learning to live with a condition," he said.  "I got used to it."

   "Were you able to be intimate with anyone else after Yutaka?"

   He shook his head.

   "You must think I am off center," he said, his smile grew.

   "Not at all.  It's not uncommon to fear intimacy.  Things might have been different, if Yutaka had been a stranger and never told you he loved you.  Especially when you are quite fond of him."

   He laughed.  It wasn't a laugh to ridicule my theory.  Rather, it was a lively laugh that was full of amusement at his own thoughts on my statement.  I could not help but return his grin.

   "Not to ride on the issue of sexuality or intimacy," I said.  "May I make a bold request?"

   His smile remained.    

   "Can I ask you to take off your kimono for me?"