CHAPTER 23 #2
Keiko and Tamura floated down in front of Shinji.
“No sign of her yet,” Keiko said. “We might be too late. There are already two bodies in that house.” Keiko pointed to their left at a quaint one-story house with a small fence.
“And I heard some officers saying there are two more a few houses down.”
“She killed four people already?” Shinji gasped.
“No, the other victims down the road have been dead for a while,” Keiko explained. “I heard one was the spare extractor who was initially unaccounted for. I don’t know about the other.”
Shinji rubbed a hand over his face. That was possibly one of the judges based on Takeda’s M.O. “Keep searching. Widen the area because there are already enough ghosts around here.”
“Too many,” Teruo cut in. “It’s like winter in September.”
“He’s right,” Keiko said. “Can you sense anything with so much ghostly aura?”
“No, which is a big issue.” Shinji opened his mouth to say more, but Tamura spoke over him.
“I’m staying here with my daughter!”
“That’s fine by me,” Keiko said. “Let him stay. He’s driving me crazy.” And with that, she floated up and continued searching.
Shinji shook his head at Tamura, but didn’t stop him. It was easier to handle him if he remained with Mariko. From the front door of the house Keiko had pointed at, Nakagawa exited and raised her arm.
“The commissioner is here,” she said when they reached her.
“Found anything?” Teruo asked.
Nakagawa drew a reluctant breath. “Uh… she won’t really let us search, sir. I think she was waiting for you?”
Shinji figured Horiuchi was worried non-supernatural officers could find something supernatural. The usual game of ‘you’re gonna help us, but on our terms and conditions.’
Nakagawa tilted her head and gave Mariko a confused look.
“This is Mrs. Kawasaki,” Teruo explained. “She helped Takeda. Now she’s helping us. Would you mind keeping an eye on her while we check the situation?”
Nakagawa nodded, then her eyes focused on Mariko like a hawk.
Shinji entered first but had to stop in the hallway as two forensic techs were setting the body of a woman in a bag.
She seemed mid-forties, wore a blue shirt, knee-length linen pants, and still had her shoes on.
She must’ve rushed in and then was attacked.
Streaks of blood had fallen from her eyes and nose, where veins burst, and painted her face and her shirt.
Horiuchi appeared from around the corner and waited until the techs took the body away. She offered Shinji and Teruo shoe covers, then spoke, “That was the leader’s wife. A lay judge.”
“Let me guess: at Tamura Hiroshi’s execution?” Shinji asked.
Horiuchi nodded.
“Isn’t that a conflict of interest?” Teruo inquired. “The leader being married to one of the judges?”
“Not quite,” Horiuchi said. “Leaders have administrative roles. They just make sure everything runs smoothly and don’t interfere in the trials. But…” She let out a deep sigh. “These two have been covering a lot of illegalities.”
Teruo frowned. “A lot? You mean besides the seals?”
They all stopped themselves when Dr. Suzuki appeared. Shinji hadn’t expected to see her here, but Horiuchi likely wanted an expert’s opinion on the times of death.
Suzuki bowed to them, then looked at Horiuchi. “You sure you don’t want autopsies?”
“No need,” she said. “The pattern’s clearly the same. Just leave me your preliminary report and then check out the others.”
Suzuki nodded but then turned to Teruo. “And you’re okay with no autopsy?”
Shinji noticed with satisfaction that Horiuchi’s lip twitched a little. She was the commissioner, but Suzuki was asking for Teruo’s opinion anyway. Shinji had a feeling that if Teruo said he wasn’t okay, Suzuki was ready to go over Horiuchi’s head with no hesitation.
“Yeah, it’s all right,” Teruo replied, sounding resigned. He likely knew more autopsies weren’t needed since the cause of death was obviously supernatural.
“Well,” Suzuki said, “if you change your minds, you know where to find me.”
Horiuchi called a police officer who took Suzuki to where the other victims were. Then she turned her attention back to Shinji and Teruo, gesturing for them to follow her. They went into the living room where the leader of the extractors was being placed into a body bag as well.
He was sprawled in between the TV stand and an upside-down coffee table. The TV was cracked, a flower pot had fallen, and the soil was spread on the floor. Underneath the man, the wooden floor had deep nail marks.
“They fought,” Teruo said. “The wife happened to come in just as it happened?”
“My guess is after it was done,” Horiuchi said, and pulled up a picture on her phone. “We found her leaning down against the wall.”
“Takeda caught her when she came inside,” Shinji said.
He looked at the leader as the techs zipped up the bag.
He seemed to be in his early fifties, with gray-streaked hair and the beginning of a stubble on his chin.
The veins in his eyes and nose had blown up from pressure, blood coloring the white hairs of his head.
But the collar of his light gray shirt was dirty from something else—likely vomit judging by the sickly yellow color and the rancid smell.
Shinji had never met this man in his life. He had no interest in extractions and avoided the area of the castle where it happened like it was the plague. But this man alone had put in motion a terrifying domino of death.
“Did he really do everything Takeda said he did?” Shinji asked.
Horiuchi exhaled a long sigh. “And then some.” She waited until the techs took away the leader’s body before continuing. “I have reason to believe Tamura Hiroshi might not be his only unfair extraction.”
Shinji stared at her. “You mean he extracted the energy of other innocent supernaturals?”
“To cover his tracks, yes.” Horiuchi went to the TV stand and opened one of its large-sized drawers.
“Each has a fake base. Low enough to give the impression that it’s the drawer’s normal depth.
Look what I found.” She pushed the base and placed it aside on the floor, then grabbed a handful of papers.
“Seals!” Shinji exclaimed.
The papers had one or multiple kanji written on them in blood: protect, shield, hide, lock, endure. The words were generally blunt and clear for such seals, as they literally declared their function. They shimmered in hues of purple and gold.
“Paper because it’s a good spiritual energy conductor,” Teruo said.
Horiuchi arched a brow at Shinji who shrugged. “Yes, I taught him that.”
“Which is now coming in handy, isn’t it?” Teruo added. “But how do they get from paper to the actual object?”
“They’re not actually impregnated into the page,” Horiuchi explained. “The person who creates them uses their power to take the seals off the paper and set them onto the right place. The paper is used more as a means of transportation. Since it’s a good conductor, the energy preserves well.”
“Okay.” Teruo nodded. “And these seals are so valuable that it’s worth killing a man for?”
Shinji picked up the ‘hide’ seal. “We can put several of these in strategic points around the TMPD, and no one will be able to see it anymore. It’ll disappear overnight.”
“Oh. Convenient. And rather dangerous.”
“Precisely,” Horiuchi said. “It’s worth killing for if you sell them to the wrong people. However, these aren’t actually the worst of them.” She opened another drawer and pulled out a new set.
They had smaller seals, lined like bracelets on the paper: control, obey, kill, were some of the words written on them.
“These are for humans,” Shinji said. “Blood contracts.” He turned to Teruo. “The kind my ex put on his ghost, Nobue.”
Teruo looked at the red lines of writing. “Yeah, she had them on her arms.” He glanced from Shinji to Horiuchi. “But she got rid of them.”
“That’s dependent on the strength of the one who created the seals plus the power of the one they’re trying to control,” Shinji said.
“Back then, she ended up stronger than Ueda and cut off the flow of the blood contract. But imagine putting these on supernaturals who aren’t trained, or worse, on non-supernaturals who can’t even see them.
” His voice lowered. “It’s enslavement…”
Teruo’s lips parted, and he stared at the batch of papers. It likely seemed peculiar to him how some writing could do this much damage. But the seals combined with blood and a powerful person’s spiritual energy could do a lot of harm if they wanted to.
His eyes fell on several envelopes at the bottom of the drawer.
He opened one and pulled out a stack of money.
Along with the money, there were notes about the types of seals to be sold, to whom—although there were no names, just vague details that likely only the extractors’ leader understood—and some numbers that may have referred to the amount of seals due to be sold.
Teruo leaned in and read the notes. “Given the fact that Tamura Hiroshi was authorized to create such seals, isn’t selling them legitimate?”
“It’s not,” Horiuchi said. “These are meant to be used by the Onmyōryō, and their designated areas of use are clearly established. The Onmyōryō does, occasionally, sell them to outside businesses, but they’re few in number and well known among the shamans and Onmyōji who create these seals.”
“So, Tamura Hiroshi was right in his suspicions?” Teruo asked.
Horiuchi nodded. “A hundred percent.”
Shinji’s teeth gritted and he threw the pieces of paper back into the drawer. “How could you let it get this far? What on earth are you all doing? How did he manage to get so many seals done? And these are just the ones we’ve found right now.”
Horiuchi didn’t reply and just blankly stared at the drawer full of seals.