he next day wasn't much different than the previous. In the morning the three of us reassembled in the interrogation room over a silent breakfast of coffee and bread. Then Bookish loaned me an electric razor, which was not exactly sharp. Since I hadn't planned ahead and brought my toothbrush, I gargled as best I could.

Then the questioning started. Stupid, petty legal torture. This went on at a snail's pace until noon.

"Well, I guess that about does it," said Fisherman, laying his pen down on the desk.

As if by prior agreement, the two detectives sighed simultaneously. So I sighed too. They were obviously stalling for time, but obviously they couldn't keep me here forever. One business card in a dead woman's wallet does not constitute sufficient cause for detention. Even if I didn't have an alibi. They'd have to strap me down — at least until the fingerprinting and autopsy yielded a more plausible suspect.

"Well," said Fisherman, pounding the small of his back as he stretched. "About time for lunch."

"As you seem to have finished your questions, I'll be going home," I told them. "I'm afraid that's not possible," Fisherman said with fake hesitation.

"And why not?" I asked.

"We need to have you sign the statement you've made."

"I'll sign, I'll sign."

"But first, read over the document to verify that the contents are accurate. Word by word. It's extremely important you know what you're signing your name to."

So I read those forty-odd sheets of official police transcriptions. Two hundred years from now, I couldn't help but think, they might be of some value in reconstructing our era. Pathologically detailed, faultlessly accurate. A real boon to research. The daily habits of an average, thirty-four-year-old, single male. A child of his times. The whole exercise of reading it through in this police interrogation room was depressing. But read it I did, from beginning to end. Now I could go home. I straightened the stack of papers and said that everything looked in order.

Playing with his pen, Fisherman glanced over at Bookish. Bookish pulled a single cigarette from his box of Hope Regulars on top of the radiator, lit up and grimaced into the smoke. I had an awful feeling.

"It's not that simple," Bookish spoke in that slow professional tone reserved for elucidating matters to the unordained. "You see, the statement's got to be in your own hand."

"In my own band?"

"Yes, you have to copy everything over. In your own handwriting. Otherwise, it's not legally valid."

I looked at the stack of pages. I didn't have the strength to be angry. I wanted to be angry, I wanted to fly into a rage, I wanted to pound on the desk and scream, You jerks have no right to do this! I wanted to stand up and walk out of there. And strictly speaking, I knew they had no right to stop me. Yes, but I was too tired. Too tired to say a word, too tired to protest. If I wasn't going to protest, I'd be better off doing what I was told. Faster and easier. I'm wimping out, I confessed to myself. I'm worn out and I'm wimping out. Used to be, they'd have to tie me down. But then again, their junk food and cigarette smoke and razor that chewed up my face wouldn't have gotten to me either. I was getting weak in my old age.

"No way," I surprised myself by saying. "I'm going home. I have the right to go home. You can't stop me."

Bookish sputtered something indecipherable. Fisherman stared up at the ceiling and rapped his pen on the desk. Tap-tap-tap, tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap.

"You're making things difficult," said Fisherman succinctly. "But very well. If that's the way it's going to be, we'll get a summons. And we'll forcibly hold you here for investigation. Next time won't be such a picnic. We don't mind that, you know. It'll be easier for us to do our job that way too. Isn't that right?" he tossed the question over to Bookish.

"Yes sir, that's going to be even easier in the long run. That's what we should've done earlier. Let's get a summons," he declared.

"As you like," I said. "But I'm free until the summons is issued. If and when the summons comes through, you know where to find me. Otherwise, I don't care. I'm outta here."

"We can place a temporary hold on your person until the summons is issued."

I almost asked them to show me where it said that in Statutes of Law, but now I really didn't have the energy. I knew they were bluffing, but it didn't matter.

"I give up. I'll write out my statement. But I need to make a phone call first."

Fisherman passed me the telephone. I dialed Yuki's number.

"I'm still at the police station," I said. "It looks like this'll take all night. So I guess I won't make it over today either. Sorry."

"You're still in the clink?"

"A real drag." This time I beat her to the punch.

"That's not fair," she came back. There's a lot of descriptive terms out there. "What have you been doing?"

"Nothing special," she said. "Just lying around, listening to music, reading magazines, eating cake. You know."

The two detectives tried to listen in again.

"I'll call you as soon as I get out of here."

"If you get out of there," said Yuki flatly.

"Well, okay then, lunchtime," announced Fisherman, soon as I hung up.

Lunch was soba, cold buckwheat noodles. Overcooked and falling apart. Hospital food, practically a liquid diet. An aura of incurable illness hovered over it. Still, the two of them wolfed the stuff down, and I followed suit. To wash down the starch, Bookish brought in more of his famous lukewarm tea.

The afternoon passed as slowly as a silted-up river. The ticking of the clock was the only sound in the room. A telephone rang in the next room. I did nothing but write and write and write and write. Meanwhile the two detectives took turns resting. Sometimes they'd go out into the corridor and whisper.

I kept the pen moving. At six-fifteen I decided to make dinner, first taking the yam cake out of the refrigerator.

By evening I'd copied twenty pages. Wielding a pen for hours on end is hard work. Definitely not recommended. Your wrist starts to go limp, you get scribe's elbow. The middle finger of your hand begins to throb. Drift off in your thoughts for a second and you get the word wrong. Then you have to draw a line through it and thumbprint your mistake. It could drive a person batty. It was driving me batty.

For dinner, we had generic take-out food again. I hardly ate. The tea was still sloshing around in my gut. I felt woozy, lost the sense of who I was. I went to the toilet and looked in the mirror. I could barely recognize myself.

"Any findings yet?" I asked Fisherman. "Fingerprints or traces or autopsy results?" "Not yet," he said. "These things take time."

I kept at it until ten. I had five more pages to go, but I'd reached my limit. I couldn't write another word and I told them so. Fisherman conducted me to the tank and I dozed right off.

In the morning, it was the same electric razor, coffee, and bread. The five pages took two hours. Then I signed and thumbprinted each sheet. Then Bookish checked the whole lot.

"Am I free to go now?" I asked hopefully.

"If you answer a few more questions, yes, you can go," said Bookish.

I heaved a sigh. "Then you're going to have me do more paperwork, right?"

"Of course," answered Bookish. "This is officialdom. Paperwork is everything. Without the paper and your prints, it doesn't exist."

I pressed my fingers into my temples. It felt as if some loose object were lodged inside. As if something had found its way into my head and ballooned up to where it was impossible to remove.

"This won't take too long. Be over before you know it."

More mindless answers to more mindless questions. Then Fisherman called Bookish out into the corridor. The two stood whispering for I don't know how long. I leaned back in my chair and studied the patterns of mildew on the ceiling. The blackened patches could have been photographs of pubic hair on dead bodies. Spreading down along the cracks in the wall like a connect-the-dots picture. Mildew, cultured in the body odor of the poor fools ground down in this room the last several decades. From a systematic effort to undermine a person's beliefs, dignity, and sense of right and wrong. From psychological coercion that fed on human insecurity and left no visible scars. Where far removed from sunlight and stuffed with bad food, you sweat uncontrollably. Mildew.

I placed both hands on the desk and closed my eyes, thinking of the snow falling in Sapporo. The Dolphin Hotel and my receptionist friend with glasses. How was she getting along? Standing behind the counter, flashing that professional smile of hers? I wanted to call her up this very second. Tell her some stupid joke. But I didn't even know her name. I didn't even know her name.

She sure was cute. Especially when she was working hard. Imbued with that indefinable hotel spirit. She loved her work. Not me. I never once enjoyed mine. I do good work, but I have never loved my work. Away from her work, she was vulnerable, uncertain, fragile. I could have slept with her if I'd felt like it. But I didn't.

I want to talk to her again.

Before someone killed her too.

Before she disappeared.