The two glanced at each other, then shot him a sharp look.

"I know her, but I don't have anything to do with what happened."

Hayashi let them come in and shut the door. The cramped entrance was littered with shoes and the three hulking men stood there awkwardly, trying not to step on them.

"I knew you'd be coming. You found out about me on her cell phone, right? About her and me having a, what should I say? A friendship."

Hayashi spoke without any hesitation. Ever since he heard about the murder he'd been thinking about what he should say. The two crew-cut detectives listened silently, exchanging an occasional glance. Their faces were expressionless and it was hard to tell whether they believed him.

"I met her online about three months ago," Hayashi went on. "We went out on one date, but that was it."

"A date?" the detective with the polka-dot tie asked, smiling wryly.

"There's nothing illegal about it. She was an adult and it was consensual.... And the money was ... something I earned on the stock market and I just gave it to her so she could have some spending money, that's all...."

Spittle flew out as Hayashi spoke. One of the detectives stepped way back, crushing a discarded sneaker. "Take it easy," he said, trying to calm him down while looking around for a better spot to stand.

As he looked up at the two tall detectives, Hayashi began to suspect that he wasn't the first man they'd questioned who knew her.

"Let's not get into the question of this spending money right now. But I do want to make one thing clear: we don't know the contents of e-mails and conversations from cell-phone numbers we've retrieved."

The polka-dot-tie detective finally pulled out his notebook, flicking it open in front of Hayashi. "Where were you this past Sunday? At about ten p.m.?" The detective, for some reason, rubbed his eyebrows as he asked this.

Here we go, Hayashi thought, and let out a deep breath.

"I was at work then. I teach at a juku juku, and finished my last class at ten-thirty. For an hour after that I worked with some colleagues writing a supplementary curriculum for the winter break. Then I went out to a bar and left there at three-thirty. On the way home I stopped by a video-rental place. I still have the video here."

They finished in under ten minutes. The detectives smiled and left, and without realizing it, Hayashi sank to the floor where he stood.

He'd been bold enough when he told them about his alibi for Sunday, but when the detective told him because of the nature of the crime they'd have to investigate his workplace, Hayashi pleaded with them not to. "Look, I've worked there twenty years," he said. "It will put me in a real spot if you do that. Can't you look into it in secret? Like, ask the owner of the bar, or use some other excuse to question my colleagues?" He nearly broke down in tears.

The detectives gave a noncommittal reply and left. It didn't look as though they really suspected him, but neither did they seem to care about how this might affect his future.

Everything he'd told the detectives was the truth. But he'd never realized how hard it was to tell the truth. Telling a lie would have been so much easier on me Telling a lie would have been so much easier on me, Hayashi thought. But he was late for work. He'd just focus on doing his job, and if any of this happened to leak out, he'd apologize and promise never to do it again. And there was one other thing he could most definitely swear to. That he never, ever ever, had any sexual interest in the elementary school girls who studied at his juku juku.

He found he could talk again, though he was still frozen, slumped to the floor.

The detectives hadn't given him an exact number, but had indicated that they'd questioned other men who'd had a relationship with the girl. These men had signed on to an online site for fun and had got to know her, and now they were at their wits' end. It was the same with him-he couldn't believe any of them had hooked up with her in order to kill her. But the fact remained: she'd been murdered.

A hooker having an evil customer and getting killed sounded like a stereotypical story line. But the girl in this case wasn't a hooker. This was a young girl who hid her secret life, who worked hard every day as a salesperson for an insurance company. A girl who wasn't a prostitute, but liked to pretend she was.

When they were in the love hotel Hayashi had complimented her. "Your body is so supple," he'd said. Dressed only in her underwear, Yoshino had bent forward proudly to show him.

"I was in the rhythmic gymnastics club. I used to be much more flexible than this."

Her spine showed through her white skin as she turned and smiled at him. He could never have imagined that just three months later that smiling face would be lying beside a road, dead.

On the morning of the same day, outside Nagasaki City and about a hundred kilometers from Fukuoka, Yuichi's grandmother Fusae had bought some produce from the truck that came to peddle vegetables once a week, and was stuffing it into her refrigerator, all the while rubbing her throbbing knee. She'd bought some eggplants, thinking she'd pickle them, but then regretted it, remembering that Yuichi wasn't fond of the dish.

She thought a thousand yen would be enough, but the total had come to 1,630. The peddler had knocked off thirty yen, but Fusae had been left with so little in her purse that she knew she couldn't wait until next week, as she'd been planning, to withdraw some cash from her postal account.

She planned to take the bus that day to visit her husband in the hospital. If she went to see him, he was sure to say something mean to her, but if she didn't go he'd complain about that, so she knew she had to. The insurance covered all the costs of the hospital, but she had to pay for the daily bus fare herself. From the nearby bus stop to the stop in front of Nagasaki station cost 310. Then she'd transfer to another bus that would let her out in front of the hospital and that would cost another 180. A round trip every day set her back 980.

For Fusae, who was trying to keep their expenses for vegetables every week to 1,000, spending 980 every day on bus fare made her feel terribly guilty, as guilty as if she had been staying in a hot-springs inn, being waited on hand and foot.

After she'd put the vegetables away in the fridge, she took a pickled plum out of a plastic container and popped it in her mouth.

"Fusae-san, are in you in?" a man's voice at the front door said, a voice she recognized.

Chewing on the pickled plum, she went out to the entrance, where she found the local patrolman and another man she didn't know.

"Oh, having a late breakfast, are we?" the plump policeman asked with a friendly smile.

As Fusae removed the plum pit from her mouth, the policeman went on, "I just heard that Katsuji is back in the hospital?"

Fusae hid the pit in her hand and glanced at the man in the suit. His suntanned skin looked leathery and she noticed that the hands dangling at his sides had very short fingers.

"This is Mr. Hayata from the prefectural police. He has a few questions for Yuichi."

"For Yuichi?" As she said this, her mouth suddenly filled with a sour burst of flavor from the pickled plum.

Whenever she stopped by the police box to chat and have a cup of tea, the pistol at the patrolman's hip never bothered her, but now she couldn't take her eyes off it.

"Did Yuichi go out this past Sunday night?"

They were in the entrance to the house. The patrolman, seated on the step up to the house, had to twist around to ask her this. The detective, standing beside him, put his hand on his shoulder. "I'll ask the questions," he said with a stern look.

As if nestling closer to the patrolman, Fusae sat down formally next to him.

"It seems that the girl killed at Mitsuse Pass was a friend of Yuichi's," the patrolman said, ignoring the warning.

"What! Yuichi's friend was killed?"

Still seated formally, legs tucked under her, Fusae leaned back. Pain shot through her knees and she groaned.

The patrolman hurriedly took her arm and helped her to her feet. "Having trouble standing again?" he said.

"If it's one of Yuichi's friends, you must mean someone from his junior high school?" Fusae asked.

Yuichi had attended an all-male technical high school, so it must be someone from his junior high, she thought. Which would mean that a girl from this neighborhood had been murdered.

"No, not from his junior high. A friend he made recently."

"Recently?" she asked. She'd always been worried that there weren't weren't any girls in her grandson's life. When it came to friends, not only did she know of zero girls, but she also knew that he had, at most, only one or two close male friends. any girls in her grandson's life. When it came to friends, not only did she know of zero girls, but she also knew that he had, at most, only one or two close male friends.

The detective seemed upset with the talkative patrolman, and said, frowning, "I told you I'd ask the questions here.... I'd like to ask you about last Sunday, whether ..."

Before the detective's overbearing voice had even finished, Fusae replied. "On Sunday I'm pretty sure he was at home."

"Ah, so he was at home," the patrolman interrupted, obviously relieved. "Just before we came here," he went on, "we stopped by old Mrs. Okazaki's. When Yuichi goes out he always takes his car. She lives right next to the parking lot and she told me she can hear whenever a car goes in or out. But according to her, on Sunday Yuichi's car never left the lot."

Neither Fusae nor the detective said anything as the patrolman rattled on. But Fusae noticed a slight softening in the detective's harsh eyes.

"I told you to be quiet, but you never listen, do you," the detective said, warning the talkative patrolman again. This time, though, there was a hint of warmth in his voice.

"My husband and I go to bed early," Fusae said, "so I'm not sure, but I think Yuichi was in his room Sunday evening."

The patrolman turned to the detective. "With what Mrs. Okazaki told us, and what his grandmother here says, I think it's certain he was."

"Yes, but actually I ..." the detective began where the patrolman left off, finally taking control of the conversation. Fusae suddenly noticed the pickled-plum pit in her hand.

"On the call list of the cell phone of the woman found at Mitsuse Pass, we found your grandson's number."

"Yuichi's?"

"Not just his. She apparently knew a lot of people."

"Is she from around here?"

"No, from Hakata."

"Hakata? Yuichi has friends from Hakata? I had no idea."

The detective figured if he explained things one by one he'd have to deal with endless questions, so he quickly outlined what they knew about the murder. Since it now seemed certain that Yuichi had been home all that night, his explanation came off sounding more like an apology for the sudden intrusion.

The dead girl was a twenty-one-year-old named Yoshino Ishibashi, a salesperson for an insurance company in Hakata. She apparently had a wide circle of friends-people from her hometown, colleagues, and other casual friends-for, according to her phone records, in the week before the incident she'd been in contact with nearly fifty different people. And Yuichi was one of them.

"The last time your grandson e-mailed her was four days before the murder, and the last message she sent to him was the day after that. She got in touch with nearly ten other people as well after that."

As the detective went on, Fusae pictured the girl who'd been killed. If she had so many friends, Yuichi couldn't have anything to do with it. It was a horrible crime, of course, but there was no way she could believe that Yuichi was connected to it.

Once the detective finished his summary, Fusae suddenly recalled what Norio had told her, how the day after the murder Yuichi had had a hangover and vomited on the way to work. These had to be related, Fusae concluded. Yuichi must have heard about the girl's death on TV or somewhere and felt sad about losing a friend, and that's why he got sick. The instinct she'd developed over twenty years of raising him told her that this had to be true.

The detective seemed in a hurry, and after he finished he added, gently, "Anyway, I don't think you need to worry."

Fusae wasn't worried, but her face was still grim. "You think so?" she asked.

"What time does Yuichi come home from work?" the detective asked.

"Usually around six-thirty," she replied.

"Well, if I have any more questions, I'll get in touch. Thanks for your time."

Fusae stood up to see him out. "Thank you," she said, and bowed. The detective's words about getting in touch again seemed more like a formality.

After they'd seen the detective out, the patrolman sat back down in the entrance and said, a comical look on his face, "Boy, I bet you were surprised by all this, huh? When I heard they wanted to see Yuichi as a material witness, I was shocked. But Mrs. Okazaki just happened to be in the police box when the call came in, and she said that Yuichi's car never left the parking lot on Sunday. I was so relieved. Just between you and me, it looks like they already know who the criminal was. They just have to check out everybody else."

"So they know who did it?" Fusae gave an exaggerated look of relief. "I just couldn't picture him having a girlfriend in Hakata," she added.

"Well, he's a young guy, so what're you going to do? Seems like that girl had lots of boyfriends she made on dating sites."

"Dating sites? What're those?"

"Well ... it's kind of like being pen pals."

"I had no idea Yuichi was exchanging letters with a girl in Hakata."

Fusae remembered the pickled-plum pit in her hand again, and tossed it outside.

The Wonderland pachinko parlor was set down in an unexpected spot on the highway. Just as the highway along the sea curved sharply to the left, there first was a huge, garish sign and then the place itself, a cheap imitation of Buckingham Palace. The gate into the mammoth parking lot that surrounded the parlor was supposed to look like the Arc de Triomphe, while next to the building entrance sat a miniature Statue of Liberty.

It was a gaudy eyesore of a building by any standard. Compared to the pachinko places in the city, however, the machines paid off better, so the parking lot was packed with cars, like bees swarming over sugar, not just on the weekends but during the week.

On the second floor by the slot machines, Hifumi Shibata shoved in the last dozen or so coins he had. The slot machine he'd had his eye on was occupied, so he had to choose another and decided he'd just play it until the coins he had in his pocket were gone.

Thirty minutes before, Hifumi had e-mailed Yuichi.

I'm at Wonder. Can you stop by on the way back from work? To which he soon received a short reply: To which he soon received a short reply: Sounds good Sounds good.

Hifumi and Yuichi had been friends since they were children. Hifumi and his parents once lived in the same school district as Yuichi, but half a year before he graduated from junior high, Hifumi's parents sold their small house and their land to rent a condo in the city. Naturally Hifumi's parents hadn't expected to sell their land for very much-it was near the little harbor whose seacoast had all been filled in-and on top of that his father had gambling debts that took up most of what they earned. So when they moved to the tiny apartment in the city it almost felt as if they were skipping out in shame over their past.

After they moved, Yuichi was the only friend who contacted him and they'd kept in touch ever since.

When they were together, Yuichi never lightened up. He wasn't much fun to be with, but still, for whatever reason, Hifumi kept on seeing him.

Some three years before, Hifumi had taken his then girlfriend for a drive to Hirado, and on their way back his engine died. He didn't have the money to pay for a tow truck, so he called a couple of his friends, but they all turned him down, either too busy or simply unwilling to come to his aid. The only one ready to drive out to give him a tow was Yuichi.

"Sorry about this," Hifumi had apologized.

As Yuichi, a blank look on his face, attached the tow cable, he replied, "I was just lying around at home anyway."

Hifumi didn't want his girlfriend to be in the towed car so he had her ride with Yuichi in his car instead.

They towed the car to a garage that Hifumi often used, and then Yuichi left with barely a word. As the girlfriend waved goodbye, Hifumi asked her a leading question: "Nice-looking guy, huh?" But she replied, laughing, "He didn't talk at all in the car. When I thanked him he just nodded and curtly said, 'Um.' I felt like I couldn't breathe." That, indeed, was the kind of guy he was.

The slot machine finally began to pay off. Hifumi looked around the pachinko place for one of the miniskirted young attendants who brought complimentary cups of coffee.

As he turned toward the entrance, he saw Yuichi climbing the spiral staircase. Hifumi raised a hand and Yuichi spotted him and made his way over, down the narrow aisle.

Yuichi was on his way home from the construction site and his navy blue trousers were dirty. His jacket was the same navy blue color, but from the open zipper you could see a swath of the pink sweatshirt underneath.

Yuichi sat down next to Hifumi and popped open a can of coffee he'd no doubt purchased on the first floor. Yuichi pulled a thousand-yen note from his pocket and without a word started to play the slot machine in front of him.

As Yuichi had come close, Hifumi could smell him. It wasn't the sweaty smell he had in summer, but more the dusty cement smell of a deserted house.