The Gate of Sorrows by Miyuki Miyabe Read Free Book Online Page A

need your advice about something during the break.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “It’s about somebody close to the family. I think she’s having problems with an unofficial school site.”
    Kenji pushed his emerald-green glasses up the bridge of his nose and cocked his head. “You have a sister in middle school, right?”
    Kotaro couldn’t even remember if he’d mentioned Kazumi, but Kenji hadn’t forgotten. A good memory seemed to be a common trait among Kumar employees.
    “Yeah. Luckily it’s not her. It’s a friend of hers from the neighborhood. It looks like somebody’s bullying her.”
    “Got it. More later.”
    They settled down to work.

    Kotaro had no experience dredging textboards, but he had a vague notion that there would be a fair number of threads devoted to criminal activity. He found many more than he expected, and the threads were constantly being updated.
    Seigo had suspected from the beginning that there would be more murders, but Kotaro overrated his nose for criminal activity. The textboard threads were full of posts from people with noses even more sensitive. They were more passionate about the case than Seigo was, and had been following the Toe-Fetish Killer closely from the start, debating their own theories and hypotheses.
    Before the second killing, in Akita, people were arguing intensely about where the next murder would occur. They were even trying to profile the next victim. Profiling victims before they were killed was something Kotaro hadn’t heard of, but he soon discovered that it was a recurring theme in American crime dramas.
    The identity of the first victim was quickly established, but one victim was not much of a basis for profiling. Some of the posters seized on the man’s unusual name and insisted that the killer would go on to claim another victim with a rare last name.
    There were also aggregators who summarized the gist of these exchanges, the leading hypotheses, and other points that had to be considered. The killer had been christened Toe-Cutter Bill, after the psychopath in a popular crime novel that probably every one of these amateur detectives had read.
    Indeed, most of them were like fans waiting for the next installment of a novel or a TV series. Before the second murder, they’d debated whether it would be committed in Hokkaido or, like a burning spark, jump to somewhere else in Japan. When the second killing was announced, there was a huge response. As he scrolled down the dozens of excited messages and emojis, Kotaro couldn’t help picturing the scene at the end of a horse race, where bettors throw their losing tickets to the ground and the winners jump and cheer with excitement.
    Dredging also meant reading through masses of content that would turn out to have nothing to do with the case. That was the nature of textboards. At first Kotaro found it challenging to stay alert when reading something he knew would probably not be relevant. But then again, after hours reading debates between profilers and criminal psychologists, it was a relief to turn to something that had nothing to do with murder. Criticism of politicians, celebrity scandals, book and movie reviews, etc., etc.
    He checked his phone. Two hours until the dinner break. He decided to send his mother a message. He wouldn’t need dinner, and he might pull an all-nighter, but she shouldn’t worry about his classes for today and tomorrow. SEND . He hesitated, then decided to text Kazumi too.
    This might sound weird, but has Mika mentioned any problems recently? Her grandmother mentioned something might be going on.
    As Kotaro and the rest of the team kept dredging, more news flashes appeared about the killing in Mishima, but there were no new details. The victim was still unidentified, and there was no information about the mutilations.
    The Internet and TV news programs, on the other hand, were starting to put the pieces together. The media hadn’t made the connection between the first two