Chapter 4: Details
Light noticed Aizawa breathe out as he lowered his head and closed his eyes a moment. Didn't he have a wife and daughter of his own? Surely this had to affect him on some level.
"Yes, it's quite all right," said his father. As calm and professionally as expected from the man Light wanted to be like, he addressed the matter very calmly. "We completely understand what you are going through. My son had said you had gone into a panic, when you came around."
Mari smiled a bit at him, and wiped away a few stray tears. "It's safe to say I wasn't mentally prepared for any of this."
"I don't believe anyone would have been. It must have been quite a shock."
"An overwhelming one," she agreed.
"I'll return again shortly," Dr. Suki announced. "Mari-san, do try to relax." She looked to Dad and Aizawa. "Do take care not to ask her anything that will cause her distress."
"We will. We're only here to help," Aizawa assured, and politely moved to the side to allow the doctor to leave.
Light kept mainly focused on the case that had just opened, hardly looking away from his dad, Aizawa, and Mari. No more than two minutes ago, she explained a bit about that strange notebook she had. She must have forgot about it until Light showed it to her. In seeing her wide-eyed look of surprise, he understood that she recognized it. Why she would keep it as a writing journal he knew wasn't really his business, but it struck him as odd when she had asked if he wrote anything on any of the lined pages. She spoke the question with hesitant caution. Why? Why would she worry about something like that? He couldn't understand, because it just looked like a regular notebook set up as some stupid, elaborate prank to scare people—just as Mari had agreed on.
If I were her, I'd just be worried about why I'd be so far away from home, and how I got there... Did she think she wrote something private into it, and didn't want me to see? Maybe this is because the amnesia she's experiencing has disoriented her.
Every page past the rules are blank. Nothing was written, and that's a really strange choice of a notebook to use as a writing journal.
Although, it's not as concerning on, she doesn't remember coming here from wherever it is she lives. Now that she knows the police are here to help, maybe she'll feel better and safer to tell us something.
His dad started to speak, causing Light to look to him directly."Would you be willing to answer some questions right now? You could just say yes or no, if you're too hurt being able to tell us much."
"She did tell Dr. Suki she's in a lot of pain," Light informed. "Making sudden movements and raising her voice seem to trigger the worst of it." Reasonably, he could do everyone in this room the favor of voicing this. His father and Aizawa deserved to know about her current state of health, both mental and physical. He believed Mari wouldn't appreciate it if they started to press her for information either. Light's father he knew was a very reasonable and just man. Aizawa wasn't someone he knew well, but he remembered a time on another case that had taken two months ago. He had been a little aggressive to a very uncooperative guy that was a witness to a murder.
"I think I can say a bit more than yes and no, actually. Just not too much," she said to Dad. Light read her expression as apologetic.
"It's fine," Aizawa told her. He appeared to be calm and understanding. "In knowing that you're having trouble remembering things, we won't hold anything against you. But anything relating to the last thing you can remember might help. The sooner the better."
"Right. Thank you Mr. Aizawa, Mr. Yagami. Your help in this mess means a lot right now..."
His father regarded her calmly. "At any time, if you want, we could stop so you may call your father. Just say the word."
Mari seemed a bit grateful to hear that. She was calm and attentive as she remained sitting up on the mattress, ready to answer their questions.
She trusts them. That's very good. It'll save everyone a lot of trouble by not going into another panic attack, thought Light as he chose to observe for the moment. He watched as Mari moved her blue eyes to him. They both were a bit pink from the tears that spilled earlier. The smile she gave him looked a bit pained and grateful at once. Light assumed that was her way of telling him a silent "thank you".
There's no need to thank me. I just want to see this through, and make sure your kidnapper is brought to justice. No person ever deserves to go through this! Whoever could have done this to you—I'll see to it that he is found and locked away. He can be sentenced to death, even. Who would miss scum like that anyway?
Light scowled slightly in disdain. This world was a cold, cruel, and unjust place. People all over did horrible things to each other. Right now, someone was either looking for Mari, or maybe he believed she had died. It was hard to say, because so far Mari had said nothing about whoever had been so brutal towards her. Well, maybe she'll start remembering things about him now.
"What is your full name?" asked Dad.
"Mari Markham. That's M-A-R-I, then M-A-R-K, H-A-M." She looked to the younger of the two NPA officers. "If you'd like to write that down, Mr. Aizawa..." There was no sarcasm behind the statement. She didn't look as upset or scared; only calm and polite.
Aizawa glanced down to the notepad, and wrote something onto it. Light remembered this NPA officer briefly mentioning to him once about family. There was a little fondness to his words about his wife and five year old daughter. As focused as Aizawa was, Light predicted that concealed beneath the display of detective work and a serious expression had to be a little discomfort about her waking up and being so far from home. In spite of the way he styled his hair to be a big afro (something adolescent about that), and how much of a family man he was deep down inside, he could see why his father trusted Aizawa to come here and help them with this case.
Mari-san's definitely acting different now. Much less coarse in her words. Maybe because she thinks it's rude to speak that way towards to the police...?
His father asked, "And how old are you?"
"Twenty-nine."
The soft sound of pencil on paper was heard in the background as Aizawa wrote down another note.
Light had already assumed her age to be in her late teens to twenties when he first saw her unconscious, but it was nice to know her age exactly if the case may be the need to do any profiling on a sexual predator, or a sociopath. He didn't like to think or believe it was, but he had to keep an open mind about it. Keeping her safe was important, after all.
"Does your father not know where you are," asked Aizawa. "Is that why you feel the need to contact him?"
"Yes. If I wasn't here, I'd be back in the States. At work. When I arrive at work, I usually give him a call to let him know I arrived safely. It's become a routine for the both of us."
"Are you sure? I heard you can't remember anything from the past two months. Do you remember coming to Japan at all then?"
Mari's reply came quick, calm, and very certain. "I don't have any reason to be here. My mom's often too busy with her two jobs..." She winced a little in pain before continuing. "The three of us haven't gone on any vacations outside the U.S." She looked between Aizawa and Light's father seriously. "I have my own part-time business too, and I work mostly all year long."
"Are you trying to say you came here against your will?" Dad offered to suggest.
"Yes."
Light briefly over what she was wearing again, and pondered just how responsible and professional Mari was being self employed. She had a green t-shirt on of a village tribesman in meditation. She wore no socks and shoes; only black and pink flip flops. He didn't know the slightest on what the weather in Maryland was, but he knew it was a bit cold out in Tokyo today.
In what he had seen in her injuries, they were very recent. It looked like she was attacked not too long ago. The blood on her forehead was wet and leaking from the cut, now covered in a bandage. Light could speculate and understand on how she wouldn't remember the attack itself. How much time had been forgotten didn't make sense though—that was just one detail of a few he couldn't understand.
"If that is the case, do you remember anyone forcing you onto a plane, or boat?"
"I don't remember anything about leaving my family's home to come this far," Mari attempted to explain. "If someone threatened me to go with them, I have no idea about who that might be." She frowned. "And that's frustrating."
"Are you telling us the truth?" Aizawa sounded fairly skeptical about that.
"Yes. I honestly don't know what happened to me. I was really freaking out. Light-san, you know what happened."
She glanced to him. Looking her in the eyes, he didn't notice her lying, or trying to hide something from them. Her statement so far and how I found her aren't matching up. The United States is located on the far side of the world. It would take at least a few hours by plane, and a little more time to proceed through customs. Light knew he didn't know a lot about how airport security worked, but wouldn't such people notice anything about a brute forcing Mari to board a scheduled flight? Perhaps he had done it before, and had gotten away-but not this time, not while he intended to find out what had happened to this woman.
Traveling through water would take longer, wouldn't it?
Aizawa glanced to Light. "You told your father that Mari-san here thought today was September Eleventh."
Light nodded. "She was shocked to know the date." He glanced to the witness, regarding how distraught she had been. "It's hard to believe she's lost so much memory, I know. It doesn't make any sense, but I think she's telling the truth." He didn't look away from Mari as he regarded her with much analyzing. His own deductive instincts were hardly wrong when it came to reading people.
There obviously weren't any signs of bad intentions. No; Mari was willing to do anything to know what happened, and to get back to her family—as soon as possible.
"I am telling the truth," Mari said. In hearing her voice and looking at her straight in the eyes, she seemed to be straining a little to remain calm. She was tensing up a little.
"I realize you are," Dad said. His voice came out leveled and calm.
"I get that it's not making any sense," Mari reasoned, and looked from him to Aizawa. "I really do. To me, it's like this. One minute ago I was just standing on the street corner near my house. Then the next, I'm here. In between is this... gap. I'm about as confused as the rest of you. My mind..." She breathed out. "I'm having trouble understanding this too." Her hand raised to touch the bandaged area on her forehead. "Two freakin' months of memory gone. Crazy..."
"This means you don't have any recollection of getting hurt at all," Aizawa assessed.
Light stated his assessment about her injuries. "The long clean cut I saw on her forehead; it's very recent. Whoever did it must have attempted to send her a message."
"I got cut on the forehead?" Light saw Mari beginning to look a little alarmed. Her hand remained on her covered forehead to gently feel for it.
"You weren't losing a lot of blood," he assured her. He kept calm, too. Perhaps if he remained calm about that, she would start to calm down? It worked before, when she first woke up. Please don't go freaking out again. Please don't. None of us want that. "It's not a very deep cut."
Mari swallowed, and became silent. Her gaze at all three men became less steady.
"Could you tell us about what you do remember?" Light proceeded to ask her the next question. Since she had been upset about waking up in a place she didn't recognize, he figured it might be better to try to ask about what she knew, maybe to help lessen the stress she must have been feeling. He remembered Mari elaborating to Dr. Suki on bad her headache was. She won't be up to answering anymore questions or call her father if she feels too hurt to do anything.
"You say the last thing you remembered was waiting for a bus while standing on the street where you lived, on September Eleventh. Correct?"
"Yeah." Her eyes moved to focus on him.
His father and Aizawa looked to him, attentively. Aizawa was already taking more notes as Light continued, indicating to the small table he turned and moved to. "Mari-san has told me some of her belongings are missing; her lunchbox, and canvas bag."
"They're probably back where I once was," Mari assumed.
"Canvas bag?" Aizawa questioned.
"It's a bag made of fabric. It's not really a tote bag, but it's just as endurable," she described, and then paused as Aizawa was writing. Once she gathered her thoughts, she continued. "It's mostly white, with one strap. There's a green eagle on the front. I have CDs, a folder..." Mari, to Light, seemed to be hesitating a little as her speech drifted for a moment. "A manga book, and my blue money pouch are also inside it."
Why did she pause there...? She could have been focusing to remember, but that's not it. Maybe she doesn't want to list every item in there.
No, that doesn't seem right either, his inner practical voice countered. What was she thinking for that second? She did seem a little nervous about something. Why? We're only trying to help her.
The more he was around this woman, the more he realized she wasn't always easy to figure out. There was something she wasn't saying, he felt sure of it. He didn't know what she was thinking then, and he knew there was something she wasn't saying about that notebook of hers, but then again she might have really felt stressed and in pain.
"All right," came Aizawa's calm reply. "And your lunch box? What does that look like?"
"It's one of those big, sturdy plastic ones that can help keep food stay cool for a while. The kind that construction workers would typically bring. It's mostly blue and white, with an orange button on the side to press in order to open it from the top."
Mari didn't seem bothered by her headache for that moment, and there was no hesitance at all during that description. Perhaps that just wasn't as valuable to her as all those things in her cloth bag seemed to be.
Ask her later, when she's calmer and feeling better. There was no clear way of knowing what it was she could be hiding. Regarding his father and Aizawa, Light wondered if they believed there were things she was choosing to omit.
His father leaned forward a bit in the chair by the hospital bed. "What, may I ask, is your occupation? Is it a particularly dangerous one?"
Does Dad believe she's hiding something, Light wondered.
"No, not at all. I have my own used bookstore. I also sell flowers and strawberry plants, and garden statues too."
"Your business is just one location?"
"It's the one and only location. I run it all by myself."
Light raised his eyebrows slightly, unable to not feel a bit impressed at that. From the confidence in her words, it seemed that she was a very responsible person then. However, he was primarily focused on what happened to Mari. If she hadn't been attacked, she mentioned, then she would have been at work after getting off the public bus. "Has there ever been anyone you met that threatened you or your business, in any way?"
"No. Never, and I'm very positive about that," Mari said to him. In his observation, she did indeed appear to be certain on that answer. "I've never met anyone dangerous over there."
Aizawa looked up from his notepad at her a moment, wearing a serious and concerned expression. "What about your family? Do any of you have any enemies, or anyone who may hurt you, or them?"
Mari's seemed to be shaking her head with little movement as possible. "Not at all. We don't really know anyone in our life who would. Even so, my dad is a well respected man of the community we live in, and anyone bad who'd want to get at us for some reason would already be in jail. The same for my mom. And none of us have caused any trouble."
Dad lowered his head in thought. "So it can't be anyone you would know."
"Definitely not."
Light continued to listen, and studied her expressions. Could it be a neighbor or anyone she may have noticed who approached, and brutally attacked her like that? He felt a twinge of disgust at that. Would a neighbor have forced her to come to this country? Perhaps her captor had been watching her for some time before making his move. "How would you describe the neighborhood you live in? What are the people like on this street corner you stand on?"
For a moment, Mari just looked at him. He thought he detected a guarded look in her blue eyes a second as she answered this very calmly. "The neighbors who live closest to the street are nice and don't bother us. The neighborhood itself is a normal suburbia, and there's hardly any crime going on over there. This is out in the country... I know this guy who works as a landscaper and his wife in a house diagonally across from my home are very nice. This man, I can never remember his name, he's given me a ride to work a few times, and his wife had donated some boxes of books to me some weeks ago."
Light felt confused and bothered about that look. Why did she look at me like that...? Is she suspicious of me? For what?
There it was again-something in her behavior he couldn't understand. He remembered once more on how scared she seemed to be, after he told her his name, and he hadn't harmed her in any way. Mari-san trusts me, doesn't she? It looks like it, but there's something about her that's just...off. Her lost memories, the fear I saw in her eyes before I called Dad, her hesitations...
She's calm and cooperative towards Aizawa and my father... but I somehow cause her discomfort? That doesn't make any sense.
"What about the neighbors who live farther away from you?" Dad asked her.
"I don't really know them, but they haven't bothered us over anything... I heard that some of them are into drugs, but my family and I never get involved with those people. They leave us alone, and we leave them alone."
Light made sure to take care and ask her the following carefully. He didn't want to startle her. "Are you sure there isn't anything suspicious about where you live?"
Dad turned his head and looked at him, curious. "You have doubts about what she says, Light?"
"It's hard to say... There's something we need to be sure about," he replied to him, then looked back at Mari. He softened his voice, to make sure he didn't sound forceful. "You have to really think about this, Mari-san. Whether it's a neighbor or a stranger, can you remember anyone approaching you? Did you notice anything suspicious at all?"
"I was by myself... I'm very sure I was, but I..." Mari stopped, nervously lowered her gaze, and collected herself. "I don't remember seeing the bus arrive... I don't remember seeing anyone coming at me."
So, what? She was attacked by ninjas, or something? Light remembered from watching black and white movies at seven years old about how swiftly and silently ninjas were in their approach towards an opponent. In curious self interest sometime a year later, Light looked into that further. The fictional depictions of these dark clothed assassins he watched weren't far off from fact. Also, there were good ninja clans too; not only bad ones.
Light soon ruled out ninjas. For one thing, he couldn't figure out why they would go after a woman that sold books, garden statues, and plants for a living. Whether or not she had might have come across something of value to them, Light knew better than to hang onto that assumption. It just didn't fit with the way she had been abandoned. Assassins of stealth and shadow weren't likely to leave any evidence out in public, and in broad daylight.
Her attacker can't be anything like that at all. He wouldn't have chosen to attack her in front of my school. Whoever he is, he's not an expert at stealth.
She could have been beaten unconscious, offered his practical side. Maybe he didn't want to kill her. Whatever kind of message through harsh violence he wanted to send Mari-san, it had been delivered a bit too harshly for her to recieve.
He soon found his gaze trailing back to Mari, who didn't know anything as to who would want to harm her. Whoever it is, he's clearly a coward, Light soon concluded. Such people who beat up defenseless, harmless people like her set him on edge. He strongly believed them to disgusting, selfish, and cowardly. Whether or not this was out of rape, that didn't make such men any less disgusting and cowardly.
As Light wanted to help bring justice to the violent bastard, the oddities and mystery of how Mari showed in Japan so terribly beaten was proving a truly challenging part to this case. Rather quickly, he understood this wasn't a typical sort of brutal assault.
