The House in Which Nightmares Dwell 12.2

[touchturnfly]

2

In the end Hirota remained completely silent regarding this incident as well. First of all, Hirota was unable to believe what he had seen even if his conscience hurt him. It's not like he wanted to smother the clues. He wanted to believe that he hadn't seen anything.

He practically found himself unable to handle himself, so he covered himself with blankets and pretended to sleep. He woke up at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, because Yasuhara came running in.

"I found it."

That was the first thing Yasuhara said when he greeted Midori and entered the base.

"You found something?"

"About this house?"

Yasuhara nodded at Mai's and Takigawa's voices.

"It fell to the trap of town name revisions after all. Furthermore, I hadn't the slightest expectation that it was such a major incident."

Takigawa teasingly laughed at him.

"Even the genius Yasuhara himself?"

"There's a saying that goes ‘Even Koubou Daishi's calligraphy is sometimes at fault’. Because the town names changed twice here."

"Yeah, yeah. -- And?"

Yasuhara took out a binder with photocopies and a notebook from his bag. He placed the photocopies on his lap and opened the notebook.

"The incident happened in year 49 of the Shouwa era, otherwise 1974. At that time the 40 years old Kawanabe Yasuhiko owned this house. Kawanabe Yasuhiko lived together with his father Yasuhisa, his 37 years old wife Toshiko, his 12 years old daughter Hitomi and his 9 years old son Minoru."

"It was a five person household?"

"Indeed. The one who lived next door was Sekiguchi Kazuo, 45 years old. This was a five person household as well, because he lived together with his 44 years old wife Mitsue and his three children. The incident was discovered in the evening of October 12 in the year 49. Upon returning from visiting relative's house, the children of the Sekiguchi family found out that their father and mother died. The father committed suicide and the mother was murdered, at a glimpse it appears to be a forced double suicide."

Takigawa grimaced.

"You're setting my expectations high. What about the neighbors?"

"Now, now. -- Still, the police went around to ask about the circumstances from those living in the neighborhood, but there was no response from the neighboring Kawanabe family. They thought it was suspicious. After entering the house they discovered the family's corpses."

"All five of them?"

"All of them. The ones who died from October 10 later in the night until October 11 in the morning were the Kawanabe family as well as Sekiguchi Mitsue. However, it is estimated that the daughter Hitomi died just before noon on the 11th and Sekiguchi Kazuo around the evening of the 11th."

"So only Kazuo committed suicide, not to mention he was the last one to die."

"Indeed. According to the results of the investigation, the ones who killed the Kawanabe household were probably Sekiguchi Kazuo and Mitsue. The two broke into the Kawanabe house in the late night of the 10th, killed four of the household and returned to their own home for a moment. There, Kazuo killed his wife Mitsue. Kazuo returned to the Kawanabe house and cut the bodies there into pieces."

"Wait a minute. One person's missing."

"That's right. Actually that day only the daughter Hitomi, who was a 6th grader in primary school, was absent due to a school trip. She returned to her home the next day and that's when Sekiguchi killed her. Sekiguchi returned to his own house after that and committed suicide."

Naru spoke with a cold voice.

"The motive of his crime?'

"The Kawanabe family and the Sekiguchi family were in a dispute over the problem of the lot's boundary lines. It occurred to Sekiguchi, who was at a loss over this, to kill the Kawanabe household, excused his children from school and sent them off to a relative's house. It seemed that the neighbors talked to the relative about this," Yasuhara said and presented the copies to Naru. "Like I said before, the town's name and house numbers were revised several times. I found this incident after searching with the keyword 'a family of five people'. I went to the National Diet Library and was able to collect the evidence from an old map. I have no doubt that it's this house."

"I see --."

"However, as the main offender of the case was discovered within a day, there were hardly any follow-up reports in the newspapers. I tried looking at magazines at the National Diet Library as well, but I found nothing more than this."

"Is that so... ..."

Naru slowly turned over the copies. Hirota was unable to stay composed while watching him.

-- There really was a case.

On the one hand to his own surprise, he himself thought 'It's just like I expected'. On the opposite, there was his self that insisted that they just knew about the case from long before and were finishing up the investigation.

Yet, when a telephone call came from Saki in the evening, Hirota strengthened one decision.

---

Back to Chapter 12.1 | Forward to Chapter 12.3

Notes

Koubou Daishi was a Japanese monk, civil servant, scholar, poet, and artist, founder of the Shingon or "True Word" school of Buddhism. He was famous as a calligrapher and engineer. The saying "Even Koubou Daishi's calligraphy is sometimes at fault" is similar to "Even Homer sometimes nods."

National Diet Library is the national library of Japan. The National Diet Library (NDL) consists of two main facilities in Tokyo and Kyoto, and several other branch libraries throughout Japan.