Shibata stood by the bus window and read aloud the fat brushstroked characters on the pages of her book: "The more it spins to that extent, the quieter it becomes... of course, naturally." She looked up pensively, lost in her own thoughts until her attention was stolen by the two young men in the seat before her. They spoke in a dialect, asking one another to comprehend the information in their textbook, voicing the fear that their legal exams would perhaps be too difficult. Shibata leaned forward quite easily to speed read the text, letting the formulas fly in her brain as they would, and quickly arrived at the solution. "The answer," she stated, "is that a claim to vacate land dwelling space is possible per the Supreme Court civil ruling on 8 February of the sixth year of the Heisei." She promptly returned to her own book. The shocked young men exclaimed simultaneously in amazement at the accuracy of her deduction.

When the bus finally rolled to a stop, she was seated, explaining the text to the two young men. When the driver announced to his only three remaining passengers that this was the final stop, Shibata looked around the otherwise empty bus in surprise. "Excuse me, but where are we?"

"This is Sarukuiyama," the driver replied.

Shibata turned quickly to the young men. "Er, where is Sarukuiyama?"

"A university graduate, and she doesn't know that?" said one young man to the other in their dialect. Shibata saw by her wristwatch that it was nearly nine, and hurried to the front of the bus in a frenzy. "I didn't make it!" she cried. "I didn't make it!"

Inside the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, Nonomura stood frowning over Kondoh's computer, while Kondoh lifted the lid of the scanner to upload the image of one more butchered cadaver. Taniguchi sat settling some sort of dispute on the telephone, and Mayama thumbed through a manga comic of a police story. Nonomura looked at his wristwatch once again and mumbled, "She's late. Damn, it's already two hours into the work day..."

Aya sauntered into the office with an armload of heavy, data-stuffed binders, wondering where Shibata was. "Not here yet," said Kondoh, and Mayama added, "Didn't she resign or something?"

In response to a surprised sound from Nonomura, Kondoh remarked, "It's been rough, maybe the training period in this sort of career has been disagreeable for her..."

"The kid's gotta take responsibility for herself," drawled Aya, as she made her way into the bookshelves.

"Not good at all," mused Nonomura unpleasantly. "How would this reflect on her father's good name..." But this worry was interrupted by the apologetic cry of Shibata's voice as she rounded the corner and hurried into the office, and Nonomura became suddenly exuberant. "Ah, Shibata! Excellent, the day is saved!"

"She's two hours late!" said Mayama incredulously.

Shibata hurried to remove her tote bag and coat. "I'm very sorry. I'll definitely be here ten minutes early from tomorrow onward," she promised, offering an apologetic bow to the rest of the office.

"Not to worry, not to worry," said Nonomura as he happily shook a handful of party mix into Shibata's little palm. "You're on your way to your career, and you've got your three months of training to grow accustomed to the Police Headquarters environment."

Aya swung her body into a seated position on the desk and leaned forward between Kondoh and Taniguchi. "Favouritism," she pronounced, drawing a simultaneous concurrent nod from those two men.

At the sound of the entering greeting of the police woman in the corridor beyond her back, Shibata turned toward the office entrance. "A gentleman has come for a consultation regarding a case from thirteen years ago," said the police woman.

Nonomura was a bit taken aback, and a burly, crew-cut man in a security uniform stepped in to turn to the police woman in annoyance. "What the hell did you bring me to the basement for?"

"This is the department now in charge of that case," she said, and Nonomura stepped in to indicate the sofa, inviting the man to come in and discuss the matter with them.

"Who the hell are you?" was the man's response.

Nonomura found himself quite at a loss for words. Shibata, standing behind him, made a very brief survey of her circumstances, and shot her hand up with a wide smile. "We're detectives!"

Nonomura filled the dish on the coffee table with a healthy serving of party mix and replaced the lid on the jar, having secured a seat for the man, whose name was Hashimoto, opposite himself on the sofa. "The truth is," the man explained, "I'll be undergoing coronary bypass surgery soon." Nonomura gave an understanding grunt, and Hashimoto continued. "It's a difficult operation, and the chances of success are very low. I may not survive. In light of my situation, there's something I need finished before I die."

"What is that?" asked Nonomura, the eyes of the whole office on the client.

Hashimoto fingered his glasses and looked at the ground intently. "This thirteen-year-old murder case," he said.

"That one is so old," Nonomura chuckled resignedly, but Hashimoto stood up angrily and shouted, "Are you the police, or what!" shaking a thick finger at them. "I've been honest and worked hard all my life, and I was taken to task for it, treated like I was the killer! This thing has been the bane of my existence for my entire life!"

Nonomura and Kondoh quickly rose from the sofa. "I'm terribly sorry," said Nonomura, with a bow and his palms facing Hashimoto.

"I don't want to hear any apologies. I just want you to arrest the real killer before I'm dead. Now, why not investigate? Somehow I've been turned over to this section, this..."

"Continuation," pronounced Nonomura.

"Continuation?" echoed the perturbed Hashimoto.

"The eager continuation of past casework, that's our duty," Nonomura said, with the smiling faces of the others behind him echoing his sentiment.

After a moment's reticence, Hashimoto sighed and began his story. "Thirteen years ago I was a security guard for a warehousing company. As usual, at three AM they were bringing the last of the deliveries into cold storage. There was only one entrance. There was only one key for that storage shed. From my position, I was able to see everything that entered or left the warehouse. At six AM, about the fixed time for inspection of the freezer, I opened the door and looked inside..." Hashimoto recalled his entrance into cold storage that morning, and finding that sheet-covered body laid out on that altar of ice, a knife blade sticking straight down into the back where crusted blood had stained the white cloth. Hashimoto shouted and ran outside, and before long the police arrived. The cloth was lifted, and Hashimoto recognized his boss laid out on the ice.

"The homicide victim was the president of Mizutani Storage, Mizutani Yuuichi, aged 51," Shibata read softly from the casebook. "Cause of death was stabbing. Also reasonably strong evidence of strangulation. It is inferred that at the time of death the body was in the cold storage facility, placed on dry ice and surrounded by additional dry ice." She envisioned the scene of the body's discovery and the arrival of the authorities to question Hashimoto about his activities between 3 AM and 6 AM, and she stepped toward the sofa with wide eyes. "The so-called Secret Room Homicide!"

"Don't get all worked up about it," called Mayama from behind his desk.

"In a case from thirteen years ago," Nonomura explained to Hashimoto while Shibata stood before the coffee table apprehensively, "It will be awfully difficult to even search for the persons concerned. Any eyewitness information would be lost and scattered..."

"Don't you people even want to do anything!" shouted Hashimoto. He then sighed, adjusted his glasses, slumped his shoulders, and explained more calmly, "That night, I was the only one who opened or closed the door to the warehouse. When I closed the door, there was nothing there, and when I opened it, there's the body on an ice altar. There was no one who entered or left the warehouse in between. Before the incident, I had sincere hopes of becoming professional in my line of work. Now, all I ask is that before my eyes close for good, you please solve this case. That is my last wish," he concluded, bowing his cubelike head.

Kondoh looked over at Nonomura, who sighed helplessly. Shibata walked over to the office door with her hand placed thoughtfully on her chin and meditated on the event, substituting the door at hand for that of Mizutani Storage. "When the door was closed, there was nothing. And when it was opened again, there was the dead body.

"Wonderful!"

"Shibata," Mayama warned.

Hashimoto pulled open the great iron doors to the vast refridgeration facility at Mizutani Storage. "Why the hell did I have to come, anyway?" Mayama grumbled as he followed Shibata through the entrance.

"It's not still in use, is it?" Shibata asked about the cold storage warehouse.

"Since the time of the incident, not so much," said Hashimoto in a voice that echoed in the vacant darkness. "Of course it's been emptied of all the cargo..."

"No evidence remaining, is there?" said Mayama, cutting him off. Shibata craned her neck to look up at the top of the goliath plastic curtains that had once served to seal the cold in. "This bulky door," she mused, "Is it normal for such a freezer?"

"Well, it is a bit outmoded," explained a squinting Hashimoto. "Compared to the modern thirty-below-celsius freezers--"

"Ah, don't worry about it," said Mayama, interrupting again to indicate Shibata. "Just let her do her thing." Hashimoto nodded, and Mayama continued, "By the way, is the freezer still operable?"

"Sure it is," said Hashimoto, stepping outside to turn on the power. Fleecy columns of cold steam began to gush toward the floor from the vents behind the ceiling lights and bathe the warehouse's visitors in a dissipating white vapor. Shibata stepped throught the thickening fog toward the center of the room. "Nothing here when the doors were closed at three AM," she reflected, waving her arms dramatically. "And he opened them again at six AM, to find a corpse laid out on an altar made of ice." She bustled about in the freezer's interior. "The location was near the northwest wall... Which way is northwest?"

Hashimoto and Mayama pointed, and Shibata jogged toward the wall in that direction, her overcoat and skirts rustling with each wide step. She took five steps at a metre's breadth each, measuring the distance from the wall to approximately 5.75 metres. "Right here, I think..."

Hashimoto was about to point out a slightly different place, but Mayama cut him off again, telling him not to be concerned with it. Shibata lay on her stomach on the cold concrete floor, lifting her cheek slightly to ask, "Something like this?"

Hashimoto agreed, bending over to her to adjust her position slightly, "A little--yeah, just like that."

"So what was it about?" asked Mayama, standing beside Hashimoto over the bundle of layered clothing that was Shibata's curled-up body on the floor. "That hexagonal bed you talked about."

"Ah, it represents the ice sword, the symbol of Shitsurugi. This place was their origin, and this was the location of their original shrine, however..."

Shibata shifted onto her back and gazed toward the cieling, and related building's history in the stead of Hashimoto. "December of 1982. That religion's founder had contributed this plot of land, but soon became bankrupt. The land was then resold to president of Mizutani Storage, one Mizutani Yuuichi, for five hundred million. There was also an adjacent shrine, which was torn down and replaced with this warehouse."

Mayama pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Hmm, so the president's murder would seem to be an act of revenge for tearing down Shitsurugi's shrine. What's Shitsurugi, anyway?"

"It's a religion that worships ice and snow," stated Hashimoto.

"Oh, that supernatural cult! Naturally, they'd be the first suspects," Mayama supposed.

"No, it wasn't only them who were suspected. All of us security personnel and all Mizutani's employees received intense interrogation. But it's strange. No matter how long and harsh an investigation they made, they couldn't force a confession from anyone, even telling us 'I know you did it' over and over. Eventually, it almost began to seem even to me that I did it myself." Mayama started, and Hashimoto quickly added, "No, I didn't do it."

Shibata got up and strolled to the front of the warehouse. Leaving the two men with their backs to her, she knitted her brow slightly and dragged the heavy sliding door into a completely shut position with a dull thud. The lights went out instantly.

"What the hell are ya doing! We can't open that again!" Hashimoto shouted.

Shibata apologized and attempted to pry it open with her fingertips. It wouldn't budge.

"It's broken?" she said softly. Mayama ran to the door, cursing her, and she took a step back as he made his own futile attempt to pry the doors open. "Shibata!" he screamed at her.

Hashimoto clutched his chest in pain. "Oh. Oh, bloody hell," he said, and Shibata apologized once more. Mayama cried out for the location of the emergency telephone, and, following Hashimoto's pained instruction, dashed over to desperately hit the receiver in the darkness. "It's disconnected!" he cried.

"I guess all the circuits are disconnected, then," uttered a doubled-over Hashimoto. Shibata ran over to her bag to press the buttons on her cell phone, but only got an "outside range" message. "It's disconnected, too..."

"These walls are covered with a double layer of iron," explained Hashimoto.

"Whatta we do?!" cried Mayama.

"I'm sorry," whined Shibata.

"Sorry, my ass!" Just then the refrigeration apparatus switched on and began blowing a gigantic gust of frozen air through the room, knocking Mayama over. "What, what the hell?! C-cold, damn, damn cold!"

"It's the automatic refridgeration system," asserted Hashimoto. "Oh, this is bad..."

Shibata looked around in the darkness, hearing a repetitive sqeak like the distant voices of so many electronic rodents hidden in bowels of the warehouse.

The little cartoon man on Kondoh's computer screen popped up to signal the end of the work day. "Aah, still no progress," was Taniguchi's closing remark as he slapped his palm on the desk and got up to don his overcoat. Nonomura smiled dismissively and thanked his men for their work, and thanked them on behalf of the victims of homicide. Kondoh excused himself, adding that he had Japanese dance practise to attend. The men said their evening greetings, and Nonomura was left alone in the office for a moment. "But those two are certainly late," he said to himself, thinking of Mayama and Shibata, but his thought was interrupted by the electronic song of his cell phone.

"Yes, Nonomura here. It's me. Tonight? Hm, sounds great. Sure, see you there. Well, till then," he said, closing the instrument and putting it back in his pocket. "They must be alright," he said to himself of his two absent detectives, "If something were wrong they would've called." He put on his coat, and left the office.

Mayama, Shibata and Hashimoto were presently sitting against the wall on the icy floor of the freezer with their hands thrust into their coats and their scarves and lapels drawn up over their faces, watching the waving of the ribbons of the freezing system high above heralding the dramatic drop in temperature. "We're in trouble, aren't we," mused Shibata through her shivers.

"The gas from the automatic refrigeration system is hexane monoxide, and is poisonous to the human body," said Hashimoto. Mayama asked why such a gas would be coming out the system, and Hashimoto explained, "It usually doesn't, but closing the doors activates the switch. You know, people don't usually close them from the inside," he added pointedly, turning his face to the others. Mayama shot Shibata a stern look, and she apologized again.

"At least death by poisoning'll be fast," said Mayama. Hashimoto uttered a grunt of agreement.

"But the rats are sqeaking," mused Shibata.

"No, that sound's got a uniform pattern. Gotta be the machines creaking," said Mayama.

"If we die here, we'll be eaten by rats," said Shibata, burying her face in her scarf.

"Stop talking shit," said Mayama, slapping Shibata on the shoulder. Just then Hashimoto suddenly clutched his chest and cried out in agony, rolling over onto the floor.

"Mr Hashimoto!?" Shibata cried, going over to him. "Mr Hashimoto, are you alright?"

Mayama grimaced and leaped up to run to the door. He stripped off his jacket and flung it to the floor, snarling madly. "We're gonna die! Gonna die! Fuckin' hell!" He flung himself at the iron doors, using the side of his crazed body as a battering ram.

Shibata's cell phone rang, and Mayama halted his exercise in futility with the door to hear her answer it.

"Shibata, sorry, where you at?" said Aya's voice from somewhere in downtown Tokyo.

"In the warehouse!" Shibata cried.

"I was gonna go drink in Roppongi, but I don't have any money. Could you loan me a couple bucks?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't do that from here!" Shibata cried in desperation. Mayama ran over and tackled her, grabbed the phone and attempted to hear Aya, but he lost the signal when he scrambled away from where Shibata was sitting. "It doesn't work! What the hell happened?!"

"Let me have it back," Shibata squealed, moving the phone back to where the signal came through. "Hello? Aya?" Mayama snatched the phone once more and barked the directions: "We need an emergency rescue! The location is Mizutani Storage..."

Hashimoto lay on the hospital bed and slowly came to, opening his eyes and looking up to find the standing figure of Shibata by his bedside, asking if he was alright. The doctor, a slight young man with wire-rim glasses, rushed in through the door behind Mayama and Aya. "We were worried about you, Mr Hashimoto! You ought to not strain your heart so much before surgery."

"I have no shame," said Hashimoto. He raised his head with some difficulty to indicated the party that had brought him there, and they bowed in turn. "The detectives, Miss Shibata, Mr Mayama, and..." Having been unconscious during Aya'a arrival, he had not met her himself.

"Kido Aya of the First Investigation Department," she finished for him with a bow.

"I'm Shimodaira," said the young doctor. He turned to Hashimoto to ask, "Then this is about that case..."

"Yeah, that's the one," said Hashimoto, with closed eyes and his head resting on the pillow.

"Eh, you know about it?" Mayama asked the doctor.

"Shimodaira here is now one of Japan's finest heart surgeons," explained Hashimoto, "But he put himself through school by working at the warehouse."

Mayama groaned approvingly, as Shimodaira placed his fingertips on Hashimoto's neck and Shibata ruminated, "Japan's finest..."

She leaned close to where the doctor was examining Hashimoto on the bed, holding a stethescope to Hashimoto's chest with fingers bearing the conspicuous scarring of flesh that had been torn open many years ago and sealed over in hard, dead white scar tissue. "Shibata?" said Aya. "Shibata? Whattaya doing?"

"I was wondering what that is on Japan's Finest's fingertips," she said ineptly.

"You're embarassing!" Mayama hissed through his teeth.

"I'm sorry," said Shibata, pressing her lips closed.

"So, you must have felt pretty helpless trapped in the darkness of the warehouse like that," said Shimodaira, walking abreast through the hospital's hallway with the three from the police department.

"Absolutely!" said Shibata. "You've been there, right? It's too eerie! And you could hear that sound like animals crying, it gives you the creeps--"

Mayama attempted to brush her off by saying, "Don't lie, you were totally cool the whole time," but she shoved him on the arm and refuted emphatically, "I was not at all!" making an exaggerated display of shivering in fear and frost.

"Okay, okay, that's enough, we get the picture!" said Mayama.

Shimodaira smiled. "I hate rats, too. They're filthy," he said.

"They are, aren't they," Shibata intoned. "By the way, will Mr Hashimoto's operation be as difficult as expected?"

Shimodaira clicked his tongue and suddenly looked very serious. "It's said that the chances of success are one in a hundred."

Shibata sputtered. "That's just about zero!" declared Mayama. "And that's if he's lucky!"

"I'll make the operation a success," promised Shimodaira. "Mr Hashimoto is like a father to me."

"Speaking of which, your own father died accidentally in the warehouse on 7 December 1980, didn't he?" said Shibata.

"I was sixteen at the time. From then on, Mr Hashimoto and Mr Mizutani both treated me like a son."

"Of course," said Mayama over Shibata's shoulder.

"Please find and arrest whoever killed Mr Mizutani. I'll help you any way I can," Shimodaira pronounced.

"Yes, sir," said Shibata. "I already know who the culprit is." Mayama and Aya turned to her in anticipation, and she looked the young doctor in the eyes.

"The culprit is you, Mr Shimodaira."

Mayama instantly got Shibata in a headlock and shoved her aside, quickly apologizing to the doctor, "The shock made her a little unstable." Aya offered a string of smiling apologies, and the doctor excused himself.

"Shibata!" Aya reprimanded when Shimodaira was gone, and Mayama added, "What's the hell's the idea, anyway, saying that guy's the killer?"

"I'd like to go back to the warehouse," said Shibata, turning to go back through the corridor.

"Hey, wait!" called Mayama. "I don't get it! I don't get you at all!"

At the entrance to the warehouse, they turned on the cold steam and bundled up for their entrance. Aya was to wait at the door and open it after five minutes; she and Mayama spent a minute or so engaged in argument as Mayama made doubly and triply sure that Aya absolutely understood the importance of opening the door after only five minutes. "Jeez, leeme alone, man," Aya said as she slid the doors closed.

Inside, the automatic refridgeration system blew its familiar ribbons and emitted its trademark mechanical ratlike noises. Shibata walked around for a moment reflecting that her cell phone wouldn't work in one place but would in another. "Hey, why'd you say Shimodaira was the killer before?" Mayama finally asked.

"Do you remember what happened in the hospital?" Shibata said, walking up to him. "Usually, at the mention of an eerie crying sound, one tends to associate that sound of 'whoo, whoo,' with a woman's crying voice," she said, pausing at the sound to emulate sobbing. "However, Mr Shimodaira made the association with a 'choo, choo,' like the sqeaking of a rat. Now, we hear that 'choo, choo' sound," she said with a falsetto imitation of the machinery as she moved her eyeballs from side to side, "as it occurs after the doors have been completely sealed. Mr Shimodaira knows that sound. Only someone who's been sealed inside this warehouse would know that sound: the killer who shut himself in and hid here."

Mayama had digested Shibata's hypothesis, and nodded. "Let's go." He jogged over to the doors and pounded his palm against the iron, shouting for Aya to open up.

The next day, Nonomura, Mayama, Kido, Kondoh and Taniguchi peered down into a box Shibata had set on the desk cluster. "What sort of thing is this?" wondered the assistant section chief.

"This sort of thing," said Shibata, wielding a dainty pair of black dolls with the characters for "culprit" and "victim" in white paint in place of faces. "The perpetrator, before the last of the deliveries was brought in at three AM, had strangled and asphyxiated the victim, Mizutani Yuuichi, and slipped the latter and himself into the warehouse to be concealed among the cargo." Shibata spoke nearly in a whisper as she placed the dolls in appropriate positions in the box. "The perpetrator is dressed in protective clothing against the cold. He constructs an altar from pieces hidden amid the cargo. Here is the killer dressing Mizutani in religious clothing. Mizutani awakens. As if waiting, the culprit stabs him to death. Hashimoto then discovers the corpse. Hashimoto becomes disoriented and exits the building. The perpetrator siezes the opportunity and escapes. The face of that perpetrator is, undoubtedly, Shimodaira."

The office groaned in sudden enlightenment. Nonomura stood with his hands clasped behind his back. "Well done!" he exclaimed. "Shibata, you're excellent, peachy keen."

" 'Peachy keen'?" said Aya.

"I guess that puts an end to this epic," said Kondoh. "This oughtta shock the bejesus outta those jerks in Chapter One."

" 'Bejesus'?" said Aya.

"Come on, what the hell kinda evidence do we have?" said Mayama.

"That's okay. Just knowing the killer's technique is progress enough," said Nonomura, replacing the dolls in the demo box and picking it up by its handles, then galloping out of the office. "Can't wait to report this to the section chief, it'll knock his ass down."

" 'Knock his ass down'?" said Aya.

Nonomura carried the box up several flights of stairs, getting some strange looks from the uniformed officers in the stairwell along the way. In the conference room, he eagerly presented the findings to stern-faced Saotome and the others. "We have discovered the technique used by the perpetrator in the incident at Mizutani Storage thirteen years ago."

Saotome agreed that this was momentous information, and allowed Nonomura to continue. "The killer," said Nonomura, wielding the first doll. He proceeded to recite Shibata's speech nearly to the letter. He got only as far as the part where the culprit slips himself and his victim into the warehouse to be concealed amid the cargo.

"Will it be alright if I interrupt?" said Nagao, standing by the wall.

"What is it?" said Saotome.

"Are you not aware that the evidence we've obtained indicates that Mizutani was with his mistress at four AM, Assistant Section Chief Nonomura?"

Nonomura nearly choked.

"I'm afraid that the evidence of the victim having been alive somewhere else at four AM weakens your inference, Assistant Section Chief Nonomura," added Hayashida.

Saotome gave a dour agreement, and a very embarassed Nonomura gathered his box and scooted out of the conference room, laughing in humiliation.

"That's true," said Kondoh back in the office. "There is a written account of that. I'm sorry. I should have seen that in the file system. I apologize."

Shibata sat with her face buried in her hands, weeping and apologizing with tears running through her fingers and over the backs of her hands. Mayama found her quite ridiculous and made no effort to hide his laughter.

"Nah, don't you worry about it," Nonomura told her. The computerized man on Kondoh's computer screen popped up to give his squeaky announcement that the day had ended. Taniguchi and Mayama said their goodbyes and scooted out of the office as quickly as they could. Kondoh made another cursory, embarassed apology, and beat a hasty exit.

After she had dried her tears, Shibata paid a visit to the hospital to apologize to Shimodaira for accusing him. He was not unpleasantly surprised to see her, and seemed to take in stride, relating that he hadn't taken her accusation seriously from the beginning. Shibata apologized vigourously and excused herself.

Aya came home to find her new colleague lying face down on the kitchen floor, moaning that she was a worthless human being. Aya began to yell at Shibata for intruding in her apartment, but then calmed and took her to a crowded ramen shop to try to cheer her up. "Dude, moping around about it won't do any good," she said.

"I suppose not," said Shibata. They had gotten seats at the counter, and were surrounded by a throng of others waiting their turns.

"Y'know, back in the day, I used to make plenty of mistakes at the crime scene."

"You went to the crime scenes?" asked an intrigued Shibata.

"What, you think I was always Second Chapter's gopher girl? I was in covert operations."

"Then how come now you're..." Shibata looked away.

Aya waved her chopsticks defensively. "My face ended up on TV, that's why they pulled me off the team," she said. "So I was thinking about going into orthopedics for awhile. So I guess this is how I'm making my comeback."

"That really moves me," said Shibata, growing excited. "That's the old cop spirit, isn't it?"

"Hah?" said Aya stupidly.

"That's it. The old cop spirit... Aya, let's go!" Shibata wouldn't even wait for her, and dashed out through the curtained doorway of the shop with Aya hurrying to catch up, and the server, having just brought their orders, nearly running after them with bowls of steaming noodles in his hands.

The two young women made their way through a garbage-strewn alley bereft of streetlamps, and rounded the corner of a ruined wall against which junked kitchen appliances and piles of offal and debris were crowded. Aya asked if Shibata was planning to go interrogate someone, and groaned at the affirmation she received in response. "Speaking of which, why was the murder set up in the manner of Shitsurugi?"

"That's easy," said Aya, stepping over another trash heap. "To make it look like the crime was the fault of one of Shitsurugi's followers."

"Was it really--" said Shibata, looking up just in time to avoid running right into a dumpster. "First, we should hear it from Shitsurugi."

Aya kicked a lump of trash out of her way, swearing at it.

They arrived at the old house where the cult's founder supposedly lived, but the house was now inhabitated by an elderly woman with whom Shibata was presently exchanging apologetic bows. "Of course he moved, the founder of Shitsurugi," said Aya after the door was closed.

"It's certainly difficult following a case from thirteen years ago, isn't it," Shibata brooded, standing on the doorstep.

"Hmm, maybe we gotta try the regional office or the health care center," said Aya with arms folded over her chest.

Shibata turned suddenly. "Oh yeah--the Setagaya regional office! I have a friend there."

"Huh? You have friends?"

Just beyond the shrubs of Setagaya's regional office, Mayama lurked in the shadows of the leaves. He waited there diligently night after night for Asakura, and would follow him home after he left his office. So Mayama was a bit disconcerted at the sight of Shibata and Aya stepping across the yard and entering the building where Asakura worked, but he remained hidden, watching those two trudge across the lot into the front hall.

Inside the entryway to the office, a group of elderly women were practicing traditional dance, dipping and rising to the stylized directions of the group leader. The young woman in the red sweater behind the counter cheerfully called Shibata's name and beckoned her toward the desk. Shibata smiled at the sight of her old friend, and pointed her way around the dancing women, and Aya followed, looking rather out of place.

"So, you're on a case here, huh?" asked Shibata's old friend Maiko.

Shibata stood with the thickness of investigation data in her hands. "How did you know it?"

"What do you think? The regional office hears about everything that goes through investigations..."

"It's been so long!"

Asakura, who had been at his desk in the alcove, had reacted to the mention of a police detective in the area and stepped toward the desk. "What's up, Maiko?"

"Ah, Asakura--this is Shibata, a friend from my student days."

"Pleased to meet you," Asakura smiled, lowering his head congenially.

Aya stepped right up to the suave young man and made an attempt at flirtation. "I'm Kido Aya, very nice to meet you," she chimed. He gave little more than a hello in return, and peered down into the case data in Shibata's hands. "Shitsurugi is based in a luxury apartment in this neighborhood." He took a few steps toward a ledge behind the desk and lifted the phone book. "It should be easy to find in the telephone directory," he said, handing the thick, flimsy tome over to Shibata.

"Thank you very much," she said, eagerly flipping through the pages.

"Just doing a citizen's job," said Asakura, as Aya watched him with longing in her eyes.

They prepared to part at the door, saying their goodbyes again, and Aya stepped up to the man again, saying, "Thank you very much," and waving a cutesy goodbye. He bowed and Maiko slipped her arm through his, and they stepped away together. Aya's eyes followed after him wistfully, and she sighed. "Man, we're just surrounded by good men. That surgeon was alright, but that wouldn't work, he wouldn't go out with a detective. Huh, Shibata. Huh?"

Aya suddenly realized that Shibata was already walking briskly away rather than listening to her soliloquy. "Jeez, there she goes with that old cop spirit shit. Shibata! You never listen to nobody! Hey, Shibata, wait up!"

Mayama waited in the bushes for Aya to pass, and then stepped out to trot after Asakura and Maiko.

"My husband is dead," said the bitter widow of Shitsurugi's founder, sitting on the floor before an altar that held the man's photograph. "Because of the police investigation his life was thrown open, he was roundly condemned by the media, and he committed suicide eight years ago."

Aya made a low sound, standing beside Shibata and looking at the altar and the sundry icons that decorated it. "I have nothing more to say to you now. Please leave me alone," the widow pronounced squarely.

Shibata stepped lightly toward her, squatting down close to her and speaking gently. "I'm sorry, but--"

"If I've said it once, I've said it a million times," the woman growled, "The killer was not one of our devotees! Shitsurugi is a religion that reveres water, ice, snow and the beauty of the hexagonal crystal, and no one of us would make an altar from dry ice!"

Shibata was reaching into the glass jar filled with ice cubes on the altar, but the widow startled her hand away. "Don't touch! You'll get it dirty!"

Shibata apologized, cowering slightly.

"Approximately, the body was dressed in vestments such as that of our religion, but white is the highest class colour one could wear. If the criminal dressed him in white vestments, he wasn't one of us!"

"So that's how it is. Those were my thoughts exactly. Say, if you happen to have any literature on Shitsurugi, I would like to peruse it," Shibata said, pushing her face toward the woman with an intimidating peculiarity.

In the elevator, Shibata consumed the information contained in the pamphlet given her by the widow.

Mayama had been trekking invisibly behind Asakura and Maiko, keeping a silent pace with them for quite a distance. But Kee suddenly stepped out in front of him and blocked his way. "It's no use being so persistent," he said.

Mayama stopped and watched wordlessly, letting Kee come to him. Kee took only a few steps forward, meeting Mayama at a place where he could speak audibly in a quiet voice. "I wanna hear a bit about what happened with your little sister," he said.

Mayama blinked, and flashbacks of his sister's dead body floating on it's back in shallow water hit him so hard he became violently nauseous, and he was unable to speak.

Shibata kept the lights on in the bookstacks in Second Chapter's underground office and ambled back and forth in between the shelves in meditation, holding aloft the two little black dolls and conversing with herself in the solitude of the wee hours. "White garments are the high class colour. The ice table for punishment. The corpse was strangled and stabbed with a knife in the back. Strangled, and that knife..." The visions conjured by her own powers of deduction swam through her fading mind and the room shrank in tunnel vision. She blanked out. In the morning, Nonomura turned on the lights and soon noticed Shibata's bag on the desk; he looked around and found her lying face down on the floor between the bookshelves with a black doll clutched in her fist.

"Hey, Shibata, you okay, Shibata! Shibata!?"

Shibata slowly roused, lifting her saliva-moistened face from the linoleum. "Oh, I'm sorry..." she rasped to an anxious Nonomura. "I forgot to eat..."

Shibata sat stuffing her face with the mixed lunch and happy-faced rice in Nonomura's bento box, chewing hard with weak jaws and wincing as her mouth adjusted to the forgotten sensation of food. "Well, Shibata, you're a detective through and through," Nonomura said with a proud grin. "You work just like your father, Councillor Shibata Junichiroh, used to." Taniguchi and Kondoh intently watched her as she ate, but Mayama just sat with his face in his book, arcing the kinks out of his neck.

"How he solved all those cases, one after another, that legend?" said Kondoh.

"Yep. He used to just take a copy of the data home with him, and the next day he'd have arrived at a splendid solution."

Shibata forced herself to swallow and said with tofu-filled cheeks, "But my father never even looked at the data he brought home," sticking the chopsticks back into her mouth.

Nonomura leaned forward. "Eh?"

Shibata swallowed hard again. "Oh. Well, sometimes I was allowed to read it. But they were all cheap cases and were never much of a challenge, if I recall," she said with a brief self-deprecating smile on her stuffed cheeks.

The men stared at her, stupefied. Nonomura stood mute for a moment. "You were solving them?" he asked at length.

"Sure, from the time I was nine years old."

Nonomura watched her in disillusionment as she shoveled in his lunch. "Uh, you just take your time eating. Don't mind me," he finally said.

Mayama looked up with a smirk and said tauntingly, "Well, then, have you come up with a better solution than the worthless one you had last night, Miss?"

"Mm. I think so," Shibata nodded with a full mouth.

Mayama smiled up at Nonomura. "That's a good thing, right?" said Mayama, and the rest of the men chuckled merrily while Shibata polished off the remainder of the rice.

Dr Shimodaira stood at the front of the cold storage warehouse, just inside the big open doors which allowed sunshine into the vast sepulchural cell. "This sure brings back some memories from my school days," he mused.

"I must apologize for calling you here while you're busy," said Shibata, stepping up beside him in the shadowy cold.

"Not at all, I'm just reminiscing about the hardships of my adolescence."

"Regarding the incident that happened here thirteen years ago," Shibata continued, keeping her gaze straight ahead, "I'd like to discuss something about which only you would know."

"What's that?"

The doors slammed shut, and both Shibata and Shimodaira turned around in surprise. "How'd that get closed?!" said Shimodaira, running over to try to open it. "No good!"

Shibata removed her cell phone from her bag and explained, "I can get reception from over here. I'll call for help right now." Shimodaira was relieved as she walked to the area to the right of the doors, where Mayama had shouted to Aya for their emergency resuce, and attempted to place a call. Her jaw dropped when she saw the illuminated screen. "Agh! The batteries are dead!"

"Lunchtime, everyone," said Nonomura, chopsticks in hand, as he opened a small bento box on his desk.

"Yes, sir," said Kondoh and Taniguchi, taking out their lunch sets. Then Kondoh gawked at his boss, stopping him before he could raise his chopsticks. "Wait, Chief--why have you brought two lunches?"

"It's my wife's," said Nonomura.

"Then--the one before was..." Kondoh began.

"Let's eat," said Nonomura, bowing his head and lifting the first mound of rice into his mouth.

Mayama suddenly marched into the office, yanking off his gloves and looking rather apprehensive. "Hey, Mayama, where've you been," said Nonomura.

"There's something goin' down," Mayama said, shoving his gloves into his coat pockets and shaking his head back and forth around the office. "Where's Shibata?" he asked pointedly, while digging in his pockets, piquing the curiousity of the other men.

At the same time, in the warehouse Shibata noticed that breathing was becoming painful, as Shimodaira battled against the unforgiving iron doors with the fat of his fists. "Somebody! Open the door!!"

"It's impossible. I know because I've had the experience of being locked in here once before," said Shibata. "Your voice won't carry to the outside. I suppose we're really going to die this time."

"Don't say that!"

"If you last longer than I do, Mr Shimodaira, if you're the only one who gets out of here alive, I have only one request."

"What's that?" he said, panting.

"The incident thirteen years ago. I know who the culprit is. When the police arrive from outside, please allow them to arrest that person."

"Of course."

"You are the culprit, Mr Shimodaira. It was you all along."

"You're saying that again? I thought it was settled that the killer was one of Shitsurugi."

"That's highly unlikely."

"Why?"

"Dry ice. Shitsurugi concerns itself with snow, ice, and so on: water frozen by nature. Their creed maintains that freezing of carbon dioxide would cause nature to suffer, and is therefore an act of heresy. They would not commit such an act."

"I'd say that for an ice table for execution, they might've used dry ice to protect their own interests."

"That's not the only thing. There's the religious clothing in which the corpse was dressed. Would the culprit have tried to show his victim's splendour by dressing him in white vestments of the highest order, do you suppose? And one more thing. The victim was strangled and left in a state of suffering, then stabbed in the back with a knife. Why do you suppose the culprit would have gone to such trouble? The clothing had to be white. And the blood had to be smeared at the knife wound in such a way as to make it obvious that it was a dead body. It was because that day, the first body that Mr Hashimoto would see when he opened the door was not to be the Mr Mizutani at all; it was you pretending to be his corpse.

"That day, before Mr Hashimoto closed the doors at three AM, you concealed yourself inside the warehouse. Then, after Mr Hashimoto had made his rounds, from the time the doors were shut, you were secluded inside, building an altar and bed of dry ice. Then at six AM, when Mr Hashimoto came to perform the routine temperature inspection, you were here lying on that bed. The scars on your hand are the result of the necrosis of your skin during your attempt to support your body weight while lying on top of the dry ice."

Shimodaira was silent.

"You used the clothing of Shitsurugi to substitute yourself for the body of President Mizutani, and you had constructed the punishment table of dry ice in order to falsify the impression of President Mizutani's rapid freezing at the time of his death."

"That's very interesting," said Shimodaira at length. "But do you have any sort of proof at all that I did it?"

"No, none at all," said Shibata, squinting a bit.

"Eh?"

"I'm afraid all the evidence is gone."

Shimodaira laughed and began to cough, the frigid air burning his lungs.

"All this talk made me sleepy," sighed Shibata, sinking to a fatigued sitting position. Shimodaira watched her with narrow eyes for a moment before grabbing her and forcing a cloth over her mouth to suffocate her. She struggled for an instant, and fell senseless on the warehouse floor. Shimodaira dropped her body and hurried over to the wall, to pry away a sign that was covering the portion of concrete where he had drilled an airhole as a teenager. He gasped fresh air from the relative warmth of the winter outside, and panted for a second.

Then a shadow obscured the sunlight, and the happy faces of Kido Aya and Mayama Tôru peered inward through the hole. "Hi hi there," Aya waved from the other side. "We've been waiting for you," grinned Mayama. Shimodaira fell backward in astonishment.

The iron doors were flung open, with Taniguchi and Kondoh blocking the way as Mayama and Aya entered. "Why--" the doctor fumbled.

"That hole there, that's the one you made thirteen years ago? To protect yourself against the poison gas while you hid in the warehouse for so long, huh?" said Mayama. "Too bad you didn't make it big enough to escape through." He looked over at Shibata's limp body on the floor beside her bag. "Shibata, it's over," he said. "Shibata?"

Kondoh and Taniguchi jogged over to her. "It's all right to get up now," said Kondoh, attempting to rouse her. "Huh?"

"Detective Shibata!" said Taniguchi, shaking her shoulders. He turned to the others with an unpleasant face. "I don't think she's acting."

Aya ran toward them and shoved Taniguchi out of the way. She took Shibata in her arms, shaking her, and directed a rapid volley of slaps to her cheek. "Shibata, Shibata, hey, c'mon, Shibata!"

Shibata winced a little after the ninth or tenth strike of Aya's palm, and opened her squint eyes. Aya sat back as Shibata came to and lifted her head. "Oh, everyone..."

"Shibata, make the arrest," said Mayama.

Shimodaira turned his head. "What was I supposed to do. I'll tell you what the real murder was! Eh! Eighteen years ago my father died in what they called an accident. But it wasn't an accident, it was that bastard's fault."

In Shimodaira's mind was a clear picture of that night, when a security guard out with a cold left Mizutani to patrol, and after everyone else had he shut the doors on Shimodaira's father, declaring it useless for anyone to be doing overtime. "But my father was ordered to do overtime..."

Mr Shimodaira would have been trapped in the warehouse, begging to get out, pounding on the walls as Mizutani walked away. "Mizutani told the police, 'I confirmed when no one was in there. Mr Shimodaira went in without permission. We were taking a precaution against burglary.' And he said to me..."

Shimodaira conjured the image of Mizutani telling him that he would pay the young man's tuition until he became a doctor. "I put my trust in the sincerity of his words. I was crying when I thanked him for his kindness. And then, one day..." He remembered overhearing the conversation between Mizutani and his wife in their kitchen, as she asked him what made him decide to pay young Shimodaira's tuition. Mizutani had replied that he had made a mistake and killed the boy's father.

"I wouldn't let the lies I believed in go on like that!" Shimodaira snarled angrily. "He killed my father, and made himself look like such a good guy, that son of a bitch!"

"Bullshit," said Mayama. "You knew all along pops was murdered. And you knew how much money you could get out of it, too."

"That couldn't be," said Shibata in disbelief.

As it had happened, the young Shimodaira had confronted Mizutani and demanded a wage of three times that of his father on the agreement that he would pretend Mr Shimodaira's death had been an accident.

"That's a lie!" Shimodaira shouted, his hands on his head.

"I checked up on your bank account," countered Mayama, walking toward him and producing a rumpled reciept from his coat pocket. "You weren't no self-supporting student. A matriculation fee of more than one million, school fees of more than five million a year, more than five hundred thousand a month for living expenses. All of it transferred from President Mizutani's account. Why was it necessary for Mr Mizutani to pay so much over the limit of what was essential?" Shimodaira pulled off his glasses mechanically and stared ahead with a glazed expression. Mayama put his arm around the doctor's shoulder. "Because you demanded it, man. You threatened Mr Mizutani that you'd expose the truth. Shibata, the arrest."

Shibata nodded and dug into her bag for her cell phone.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" said Shimodaira.

"Why?" said Mayama, just before Shibata's cell phone began to ring in her hand. "It's from the hospital. Mr Hashimoto's condition has taken a sudden turn for the worse. They request you come immediately."

Shimodaira threw off Mayama's arm and stormed halfway toward Shibata, pointing with his glasses and grinning menacingly. "You got that? Arrest me, and Mr Hashimoto dies! Not just Mr Hashimoto, but the tens of hundreds of others waiting for their operations, you'll be killing them all!"

Mayama kicked Shimodaira in the side and punched him in the stomach, leaving him grimacing on the ground. "Murder is murder," said Mayama.

The three men lifted Shimodaira to his feet to drag him outside. The voice from the hospital called out on Shibata's cell phone, and she lifted it to her face once more. "Mr Shimodaira is unable to come. We've just arrested him," she said quickly. She closed her eyes tightly and hung up.

The motorcade of patrol cars screeched to a halt with blaring sirens outside. "Hey, hey!" shouted Hayashida, with Saotome and the others running after him. "Why didn't you coordinate this with us earlier!" He flipped his chin at Kondoh, who was standing at attention. "We gotta apprehend the suspect."

"Knock yourself out," Mayama mumbled, sticking a cigartte into his mouth as he leaned against the warehouse wall.

"Are you Dr Shimodaira Kunihiko?" said Saotome. "May we trouble you to accompany us to the office?" Shimodaira sat blankly with an arm captured in Taniguchi's grip. "Take him away," said Saotome. Hayashida and Nagao yanked the doctor to his feet and led him toward the motorcade.

Shimodaira turned around to gaze toward Mayama and Shibata. "That's murder," he smirked, meeting Shibata's somber expression. Hayashida and Nagao forced the doctor forward as he sneered behind him, repeating, "That's murder! That's murder!"

Shibata stood in silence and looked away. Mayama puffed on his cigarette and gazed toward the horizon while Taniguchi, Aya and Kondoh faced the retreating motorcade as its sirens faded into the distance.