I WAS SHOCKED WHEN KIMI KUROBASHI opened the door and stepped back outside the house ten minutes later. I hardly recognized her. The threadbare Levi’s, Western shirt, and down-at-the-heel boots had disappeared. She was wearing a well-tailored gray suit with a high-necked, pleated white blouse, and a pair of black, high-heeled pumps. The ponytail had been replaced by a complicated knot of hair, held in place on the back of her head by an oversized pearl-handled comb. She looked like a model fresh from the pages of Nordstrom’s latest dress-for-success catalog.
I’m always dazzled when women pull off wizard changes like that, and I’m equally sure that dazzled is just what women want men to be. It’s like they all have Fairy Godmothers stashed away that they can pull out at a moment’s notice. Men are pretty much stuck with being the way we are, warts and all. Big Al Lindstrom, caught pushing the lawnmower in his yard on a Saturday afternoon, is still the same guy I work with every day.
Kimiko, emerging from her mother’s house, was so transformed as to be almost unrecognizable. She bore little resemblance to the grungy ranch hand who had gone inside a few minutes earlier. I found myself gazing at her appreciatively. A sophisticated butterfly had been concealed in the faded work shirt and the grubby Tony Lama boots.
“Should I take the Suburban?” she asked as she came up to where Al and I were waiting with her mother. “It’ll only take a few minutes to unhitch it.”
I did my best to camouflage the lecherous stare. You can’t hang a man for looking.
“No,” I answered quickly. “We’ll take you over and bring you back when we finish. It’ll go a lot faster and give us a chance to talk to you on the way.”
She nodded, spoke briefly to her mother in Japanese, and then started toward the car. Out front we found that George Yamamoto’s car was gone and in its place sat a huge North American Van Lines truck with a crew of three loading boxes into it as fast as they could. Kimi walked past them with her eyes downcast, not acknowledging their existence.
Wincing at the pain in my fingers, I helped her into the backseat of the Reliant. It might have been more gentlemanly to put her in front, but I needed the extra legroom a whole lot more than she did.
It was silent in the car as we started back toward the freeway. I was hung over and half sick. It felt as though my pores were sweating pure champagne, and I reminded myself never to drink the stuff again.
Trying to take my mind off both my headache and my throbbing fingers, I began a mental review of what we had learned since arriving at Tadeo Kurobashi’s office early that morning. Reflexively I reached for my notebook, wanting to consult my notes, but of course I hadn’t taken any.
“Let me look at your notebook, Al.”
He did, handing it to me carefully enough that it didn’t fly out of my hand. Big Al’s handwriting, a haphazard combination of printing and cursive, was difficult to make out. Remembering what Kimi had said about relabeling her mother’s boxes, I thumbed through the pages until I reached the place where Al had laboriously copied down the Japanese words from the computer screen.
“Can you read Japanese?” I asked. When she didn’t answer, I turned around and looked at her. Lost in thought, she was staring blankly at the back of Big Al’s muscular neck. She jumped when she realized I had spoken to her.
“Excuse me?”
“Can you read Japanese?” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“What about this?” I passed her the notebook.
Looking at the words, she held it in front of her for a long moment, long enough that I began to wonder if she had been mistaken and wouldn’t be able to translate it after all. Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the seat, letting the notebook drop into her lap.
“Well?” I asked.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I can read it.”
“What does it say?”
She recited the verse in a leaden voice without opening her eyes, without once having to glance at the text:
“‘A child is still one more hope
Even in this careworn world.’”
“You recognize it then?”
“Yes. It’s a verse from my father’s favorite poem, “A Child,” written by a man named Shuntaro Tanikawa. How do you know about it? Where did you get it?”
“It was on his computer screen this morning when they found him. Detective Lindstrom here copied it down. We thought it might be important.”
She seemed more visibly shaken by this than by anything else that had happened. “On his computer screen? He had typed it there?”
“Over and over,” I replied. “Why, does it mean something to you?”
She still didn’t open her eyes. “I was that child,” she answered softly. “I was supposed to be that child. I heard that poem a million times while I was growing up.”
Ten points for George Yamamoto. He had called that shot. Tadeo Kurobashi’s message had indeed been meant for his daughter, not for his wife.
“Have you ever heard of the too precious child?” Kimi asked finally, her voice heavy, devoid of all animation.
Big Al shook his head. So did I. “Not that I know of,” I said.
“It’s the latest psychological buzzword,” Kimi said, “but I think I am one. Or was.”
“Too precious? What does that mean?” I asked.
The events of the morning and of the last two days had taken their toll. Her voice was barely audible above the road noise of the freeway.
“I was a change-of-life baby,” she said. “My mother was forty-four when I was born, and she had long before given up on the idea of ever having children. When I was born, both she and my father thought it was a miracle. They gave me everything, pampered me, wanted me to be smart, have fun, do it all.”
“That sounds like a lot of pressure.”
She nodded. “It was. For everyone. Since my mother didn’t drive, my father was the one who had to make arrangements for rides and car pools to get me to music lessons and riding lessons and soccer. He did too much, invested too much.”
Kimi fell silent. I wanted to reach around, grab her by the shoulders, and shake her until her teeth rattled. What did she mean, her father did too much! He sounded like a helluva guy to me. Aren’t parents ever right? They either do too goddamned much or too goddamned little, but they’re never right, at least not as far as their kids are concerned. Count on it.
Not trusting myself to be civil on that particular subject, I took the notebook from her and went back to reviewing it, eventually reaching the part where we had been questioning Machiko outside her daughter’s presence.
“Did you know that your father talked to your mother by phone yesterday morning?”
Kimiko shook her head.
“It must have been close to the same time he talked to you,” I continued. “He didn’t happen to mention to you where he was calling from, did he?”
There was no immediate response. I glanced back to see if Kimi was listening and found her frowning in concentration. “He said something, but I can’t recall exactly what. I remember asking him if I could check with the people at work and call him back. He said no, that he was out of his office and wherever he was, he wouldn’t be there long. Port something. Port Townsend, maybe. Port Angeles. Something like that.”
“And he didn’t give you any idea what he was doing there?”
“None whatsoever.”
We made good time crossing Lake Washington. Big Al wheeled the car into a police vehicle parking place outside the medical examiner’s office at the south end of Harborview Hospital. I got out, held the door open for Kimiko, and reached inside to help her out of the car. Once upright, she still clung to my hand. Her whole body was shaking.
“Am I going to have to identify him?” she asked, her voice small and tremulous.
“No,” I said. “George Yamamoto already gave us a positive ID. That won’t be necessary. All you’ll need to do is sign the papers.”
She sighed with obvious relief. I thanked George Yamamoto for sparing her that. After nine years of not speaking, it would have been a tough way to see her father again.
Doc Baker’s receptionist ushered us straight into the medical examiner’s messy private office. His chipped blue vase, half filled with paper clips, sat in the window, but for once he didn’t spend the entire interview trying to make baskets. He was solicitous and concerned as he shoved one piece of paper after another across his desk for Kimiko Kurobashi to sign.
“Have you scheduled the autopsy?” I asked when she finished.
He nodded, taking the last of the sheaf of papers and straightening the edge by bouncing it sharply several times on the hard surface of the desk. “This afternoon. Four o’clock.”
“You’ve told George?”
“I’ve left word for him.”
“Is an autopsy really necessary?” Kimiko asked.
Doc Baker peered at her, dropping his chin so he could see her through the part of his glasses where the bifocals weren’t. “Yes, it’s necessary, miss. In cases like this, the law demands it.”
She flushed. “Will we have to pay for it?”
“No.”
She nodded, relieved again. “And my mother wanted me to ask you about the sword. What will happen to that?”
“It’s in the crime lab right now, being examined. It will be kept in the property room pending a determination of whether or not it needs to be held as evidence.
“But it will be returned to her?” Kimi insisted.
“Yes,” Baker replied. “Eventually. Assuming she’s the rightful owner, of course. And you’ll have to handle that through the police department. They’re the ones who are in charge of physical evidence. I understand you know Mr. Yamamoto over at the Crime Lab.”
“Yes,” she replied. “He was a friend of my father’s.”
“I see. Talk to him about it then. He can help you work your way through the bureaucracy, but you can plan on it taking quite a while. The wheels grind wondrous slow around here at times.” He paused long enough to check through the papers before placing them in a manila file folder.
“This is all in order, then,” he continued. “We’ll release the body directly to the mortuary when the time comes. You should stop by and see them too, as long as you’re over here. They may require full payment in advance, but I suppose you already knew that.”
Kimi shook her head. “I didn’t know, but I’ll take care of it,” she said, rising. The muscle in her cheek tightened over her narrow jawline. “Is that all?”
“Yes, Miss Kurobashi.”
“And will we hear from you about what you find—in the autopsy, I mean?”
“The detectives here will keep in touch. You can ask them.”
“All right,” she said. Kimi walked out of the room with Big Al following her. I waited long enough for the door to close behind them.
“Would you mind giving George a message when he shows up here this afternoon? He is still coming, isn’t he?”
Doc Baker nodded. “What kind of message?”
“Tell him that I think the sword was made by a student of Masamune.”
“By who?”
I repeated the name Kimiko had given us and spelled it out for him while Baker wrote it down on a notepad.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Baker asked impatiently.
“According to the daughter, it’s probably very valuable.”
“That pretty much clinches it, then, doesn’t it?” the medical examiner said.
“Clinches what?”
“That it was suicide instead of murder.”
“Why?”
“Because if you had just offed somebody and had a clear shot at stealing a very valuable sword which also happened to be the murder weapon, would you be so stupid as to walk off and leave the damn thing lying there on the floor?”
“No,” I answered. “I suppose not. Unless you wanted it to look like suicide.”
Baker pushed his reading glasses up on his nose and glowered at me. “Get the hell out of here, Beaumont, and let me go back to work.”
When I came out of Baker’s office, Kimiko was using the phone at the receptionist’s desk. She was speaking in low tones, but two bright red flush marks showed prominently on the otherwise pale skin of her slender cheeks.
Putting the phone down, she turned to me. “I’ll need to go to a bank,” she said.
“A bank?”
“I just talked to the mortuary. Since there isn’t going to be a service of any kind, I’ll have to pay with a cashier’s check before they’ll agree to do anything, and I’ll have to pay for it myself. As far as I know, my mother doesn’t have any money or even access to a checkbook. Besides, they told me they won’t take an out of town check anyway.”
Big Al drove her to a Seafirst branch on First Hill, and we waited in the car while she went inside.
“That’s pretty shitty of the mortuary, if you ask me,” he said as the glass door of the bank closed behind her. “Making her pay in advance like that. You think there is some insurance?”
“Beats me. That’s anybody’s guess. If there isn’t, those two women are going to be in a world of hurt.”
Grim-faced, Kimiko came back out of the bank a few minutes later, clutching a cashier’s check, and we drove her to the mortuary, an old dilapidated one off Jackson. I offered to accompany her inside, thinking she might need an ally in fending off what I figured was the inevitable round of up-selling.
In theaters they try to get patrons to take a larger-sized drink or butter on their popcorn. In mortuaries, the high-priced spread is a snazzy, upscale, satin-lined coffin, and they sell them to grieving relatives when they are at their lowest ebb and most susceptible to high-pressure tactics.
Kimi ignored my offer and went inside by herself. While she was gone, Big Al and I bet lunch that they’d do a job on her even though no service was planned or wanted. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen often enough.
“How’d it go?” I asked cautiously when, still tight-lipped and grim-faced, she returned to the car.
“They asked about insurance,” she answered. I caught Big Al’s slight knowing nod.
“I told them he didn’t have any,” she added. “Naturally, Mother wants the very best, but I gave them the check and told them that was it. It’ll have to do. There’s no more where that came from. It’s money I was saving for a stud fee.”
With his worst mortician suspicions confirmed, Big Al shoved the car into gear and backed out of the parking place.
“Do you think maybe he did carry insurance?” she asked hopefully after a silence. Kimi Kurobashi was grasping at financial straws.
“Maybe,” I said.
“And do policies pay off in case of suicide?”
“That depends,” I said. “You’d have to have the policy itself in hand and talk to one of their claims people in order to find out. Have you seen any policies?”
“No, but everything at the house was packed. I’ll have to ask Mother if she remembers packing any papers. Of course, there’s always the possibility that he left them at the office.” Her voice drifted away.
I turned and looked closely at Kimiko Kurobashi. She was wound tight as a coiled spring. For her mother’s sake, she was doing what had to be done, trying up the loose ends, and keeping herself under control while she did it.
“Would you like to go there and look?” I asked gently.
“Please,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
I knew how much it cost her to ask us for help. No way in hell could we have turned her down. At least I couldn’t have.
“No trouble at all,” I replied.
As he turned the car in the direction of Fourth Avenue South and Industry Square, Big Al Lindstrom made only the slightest grimace, one that was invisible to Kimiko Kurobashi riding in the backseat. He didn’t approve, but he kept his mouth shut about it.
The crime scene team had completed their work and gone away. I figured we’d have to go find Bernard Rennermann to let us in. When we got to the complex, Big Al dropped us off and took the car to the next building to find Rennermann while Kimiko and I went inside to wait. We were standing talking in the hall outside the MicroBridge office when the door was opened by a tall scarecrow of a woman with a beaked nose and heavily hooded eyes that were red with weeping.
“I’m sorry but we’re not—” the woman started, breaking off at once as soon as she recognized Kimiko Kurobashi.
“Oh, Kimi, you did come. I’m so glad. It’s so good to see you after all these years.”
“Hello, Mrs. Oliver,” Kimi said.
“How is your mother? I wanted to call and talk to her and tell her how sorry I was, but the police wouldn’t let me. They told me I shouldn’t until we knew for sure that she had been properly notified.”
“Mother’s fine,” Kimi responded. She stepped into the reception area and looked around. No one else was in evidence. “What are you doing here? I understood the place was shut down, out of business.”
Mrs. Oliver shook her head and pressed a damp hanky to her nose. “I told your father that I’d stay until the end of the month, and I will, no matter what. Someone should be here to answer the phones if nothing else, to let people know what’s going on. I don’t know what to tell people though. The records are all gone.”
“What records?” I asked quickly.
Mrs. Oliver gave me a quick, hostile look.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Oliver,” Kimi said. “He’s a police officer, one of the detectives.”
“The records. The customer lists, the sales records, the specifications and parts lists, his most recent design work. They’re gone, all gone. Everything.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Of course I’m sure. When I came in this morning, I opened my file cabinet, and the drawers were empty. So were his. So was every file drawer in the place, here and down in engineering, and in the comptroller’s office as well. Oh, there are still a few things left, your father’s personal papers, some pension and tax records, that kind of thing, but the bulk of the company records, the important ones, are gone. I thought maybe the police had taken them, but they said no, that nothing had been removed except the…”
I could see Mrs. Oliver cringed at using the word body in Kimi’s presence. She chose instead to leave the sentence hanging unfinished.
Mrs. Oliver was a woman in her mid to late sixties who walked with a stately, unbowed step. Leaving us standing, Mrs. Oliver went back over to her desk and eased her angular frame primly onto the rolling chair behind it.
“I was here on time this morning,” she said, “but the officers wouldn’t let me in. They finally allowed me inside my own office on the condition that I stay out of Mr. Kurobashi’s.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what, stay out? Of course, but I did go as far as the doorway and look around.”
“Did you notice anything out of place?”
“His ashtray is gone. Maybe it just got knocked down behind the desk. I couldn’t see that far.”
“What kind of ashtray?”
“A marble one. I gave it to him at Christmas, but then he quit smoking in June.”
I remembered that Kimiko had mentioned an ashtray, but I had no recollection of its being in the room, much less on the desk.
“Anyway, to go back to the files,” Mrs. Oliver continued. “I didn’t worry about them that much. After all, we were moving by the end of the month, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Why not? What do you mean?”
“And look at this.” She gestured toward her computer, and Kimi hurried around to where she could see the screen.
“That’s the index,” Mrs. Oliver continued. “That’s all that’s there, in every file and in every backup file on every computer in the place. I can’t even read it, to say nothing of make it work. Your father had his fill of paperwork when he worked for Boeing. He preferred computer files to hard copy wherever possible, and we made archive files of every hard drive in the place, but all those floppies are gone, and this is all there is in the computer itself.”
Kimi straightened up and met my questioning gaze.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A virus,” she answered, her face hard beneath a sudden pallor.
“A virus? What are you talking about?”
“A computer virus.”
I hurried around the desk to see for myself. The index showed a long list of files with the amount of disk space each occupied, but there was only one file name, written in Japanese and repeated over and over.
Kimi stepped away from the desk and leaned heavily against the wall.
“The poem again?” I asked.
She nodded. “The first few letters.”
“What poem?” Mrs. Oliver asked, looking back and forth between us. “What are you two talking about?”
“Someone fed a virus into the computer system,” Kimi explained. “When the virus program is activated, it works like a cancer, destroying all the files, filling it up with junk, in this case the first two lines of my father’s favorite poem. Why would he do that?”
“Your father?” Mrs. Oliver was outraged. “He wouldn’t do such a thing, Kimi. Never in a million years. Your father wasn’t like that. He had worked too hard. We all had. For years. How can you even suggest such a thing!”
She broke off, again lifting the hanky to her face, sobbing inconsolably.
“It’s all right,” Kimi said, reaching out and laying a comforting hand on Mrs. Oliver’s shoulder. “I’m sure you’re right. There must be records somewhere. There was a guy here from a moving company last night when I came to talk to my father. I saw him carrying files in and out. All we have to do is find out which company he works for and where he took them. They’re probably all stacked in a warehouse somewhere.”
And that’s when I remembered the bill, the invoice on Tadeo Kurobashi’s desk. In my mind’s eye, I could see the yellow sheet of paper from DataDump as plain as day. What I saw most clearly, though, was the cute little company logo that ran across the top of the page: Have shredder. Will travel.
Shit, I thought. It took real effort not to say it aloud.
Kimi was looking at me. The unspoken reaction must have registered on my face. Maybe I choked. That’s easy enough to do when you’re busy biting your tongue.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“We may have a problem with that,” I said. “I don’t think that guy you saw was from a moving company.”
“He wasn’t? What was he doing here then?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
Big Al appeared at the open doorway with little Bernard Rennermann nipping at his heels.
“I guess we don’t need you to let us in after all,” Al said over his shoulder. “Looks like everything’s under control here.”
Which was, in fact, something of a misstatement.