Chapter 55

While I ate the vast majority of the pastries that had been set out for us, I told Lane everything that had happened since I’d arrived in Japan. He didn’t interrupt, but let me talk at my own pace, in between bites of gooey mochi sweets. I sat back on a floor cushion and waited for his reaction.

“You realize we never properly made up,” he said.

“What do you call that performance in the doorway?”

“Saying hello.”

“Our relationship can’t be our highest priority right now,” I forced myself to say.

“I know. Someone is about to get away with a valuable piece of history.”

I leaned over the tatami mat and kissed him.

“What was that for?” he asked.

“For being the only person I know who would say that.”

On the soft matted floor of the room, he pulled me into another kiss. I ran my hands through his wavy hair, but he stopped me when I tried to take off his glasses.

“About that missing netsuke collection,” he said, “we’re wasting time.”

“I know. A killer is out there trying to steal this piece of history, and we don’t know what he’ll do. We need to get the pages of the diary Hiro sent me translated—”

“What I meant,” Lane said, “is that you already know who it is.”

I shook my head. “I already explained to you that it’s not Hiro—”

“Jones, you already told me who it has to be.”

“I didn’t.”

“I’ve been running on adrenaline for the last day and a half, so I could be wrong. To be sure I’ve got the facts straight, I’m going to repeat back to you what you told me about individual people’s alibis and motives, not grand ideas about the impossible Indian Rope Trick and the Dutchman of Dejima that were obscuring things. I’m not going to say anything you haven’t already said, but I’ll organize it differently, around people rather than in chronological order. I think that’s why you can’t see it. Because you’ve been living it in real time. Tell me if I get anything wrong.”

Though I trusted Lane, I was skeptical. “If you think it’ll help more than translating the diary…”

“I do. First we have Hiro Matsumoto, Sanjay’s friend who hates magicians who claim to perform real miracles, because of his sister’s death at the hands of a cult. He especially despised Akira, whose fans called themselves followers, which Hiro felt was leading people down a dangerous path. He wanted to find proof Akira was a fraud. Hiro was the ninja who chased you through a temple in Arashiyama but didn’t try to hurt you. He broke into Akira’s workshop in search of the diary, which he found, but which Akira didn’t want to admit was stolen. Akira claimed he still had the diary, since it was an important prop to make his show believable, and Akira also took the opportunity to destroy the workings of an illusion he was afraid of performing—a water escape, because he’d previously been maimed in a different water escape. Sébastien gave Hiro a misguided alibi, because he correctly believed Hiro wouldn’t stoop to sabotage that could hurt someone. Another jealous magician might have, but Hiro admitted he was the thief at Akira’s workshop. That means we can stop looking for another magician who either wanted Akira’s secrets or to cause him harm.

“Then there’s Yoko,” Lane continued, “who pretended to be both a kitsune and an assistant, neither of which she was. You believe she’s smart enough to create any misdirection to steal the diary and kill Akira, but there’s no reason for her to have taken the actions the killer took. Which I agree with. She could have easily killed him in their act if she wanted to, and she had the diary long before Akira. She’s dedicated to magic, and has the intelligence, skills, and looks to pull it off. But she’s not interested in a treasure. She’s also not a man or a foreigner, descriptions from the witness to Yoko’s break-in. And I don’t know why you’re grinning at me.”

“I don’t know how you took the mess that poured out of me and turned it into these coherent ideas.”

“I told you,” Lane said, “you experienced all this packed into just a few days, with everything jumbled together. You’re too close to it.”

“No, I think it’s because we fit well together.”

“If you count distracting me as fitting well together.” He couldn’t suppress a smile. He tilted his head and his lips hovered next to mine. His lips parted, and mine responded accordingly. But instead of following through on the kiss, he pulled away from me and cleared his throat.

“Next,” he said, “there’s Akira himself. An arrogant man who claimed to perform miracles, who died shortly before revealing the secret of the Indian Rope Trick to Sanjay. Akira changed plans and called Sanjay asking you both to meet him earlier than Sanjay expected. Why? One theory is that he isn’t dead at all, planning to rise from the grave as more proof of his miracles.”

“Which he hasn’t done,” I said, “although his body has disappeared. Which could have been a crazed follower who wanted to be close to him. I’d think it was far-fetched except for the fact that I saw the body. I don’t know how he could have faked it.”

“We know Sébastien well enough that I think we both agree to rule him out as a suspect. Which brings us to the end of our list of magicians. Now on to Dr. Nakamura. The history professor got in touch with you before you left for Japan. Like everyone else here, he saw the posters and media push for Akira’s Indian Rope Trick show. The professor thought he’d use the show to get his students interested in history. He was smart enough to know when he needed an expert. You came through, helping him make sense of conflicting Japanese documents by realizing a historical Dutch trading ship was actually two ships—which is simply brilliant, Jones.”

“You’re the one who showed me how much art history can tell us about subjects unrelated to art.”

“From that dank little basement office…But we’re getting off track again. You and Dr. Nakamura wanted to continue your joint research once you arrived in Japan. You initiated trying to meet up, and he called you back when you were chasing the ninja. Over dinner, you put your research together and realized you were on to something, though you didn’t yet know it was the Dutchman of Dejima’s ship, and that the boat had enabled Casper Van Asch to smuggle gold pagodas to Japan. He helped you translate the photographed page of Casper Van Asch’s diary, which a Dutch librarian translated similarly. But with a cursory search he couldn’t find further information on Casper Van Asch in Japan.

“That leaves us,” Lane continued, “with ‘X,’ the unknown actor who broke into Sanjay’s hotel room, Yoko’s apartment, and Hiro’s home, in search of the diary that Hiro had the whole time. What have I just told you?”

“That nobody we know could have killed Akira and be after the treasures,” I grumbled. “Hiro already had the diary so he didn’t need to take risks to steal it. Yoko didn’t have to go to these lengths if she wanted Akira dead or to read the diary. And Professor Nakamura has me as an alibi.”

“Does he?”

“He left me a voicemail message while I was chasing our ninja—” I broke off and sank back onto the tatami mats. I put my hands over my face as the awful truth hit me. Lane was right that I was too close to the situation. I hadn’t taken a step back to see the truth.

“Exactly,” Lane said.

“Hiro was the ninja,” I said, opening my eyes, “but he’s not the killer. I originally crossed Professor Nakamura off my list because we thought the ninja and the killer were the same person, because of the throwing star at the crime scene. But Hiro was the only person dressed as a ninja. The witness to Yoko’s break-in said she saw a man dressed in black and had a vague impression he was a gaijin. I’m the one who asked if he was dressed as a ninja—and I’m the one who drew the conclusion of him being a foreigner ninja.”

Lane nodded.

“But even if he had a motive,” I said, “which I can’t see, especially since he came to me in the first place—he’s not a foreigner. You are, which is why Sébastien suspected you of being in Japan to look out for me.”

“That’s where I can help. Japan was one of the places my father worked for a short period of time. I was young. But old enough to understand Japanese culture about who’s considered a foreigner. You said you thought the professor might have a mixed heritage. He speaks English and Dutch in addition to Japanese, and he had English-language books in his office.”

“Because he studies foreign populations in Japan’s history,” I said. “Those things make him a good professor.”

“They also make him sound a lot like a foreigner. Being able to teach in English and possessing a collection of English-language books is a double-sided coin: prestigious, but at the same time always separating you as ‘the other’ and not Japanese.”

“He’s Japanese, though. He told me he was born in Nagasaki.”

“Even Korean families who’ve lived in Japan for generations are still considered foreigners. In Japan, where context is everything, subtle distinctions are easily missed by those of us who are truly foreigners.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if you’re up for it, I know one way to find out.”