There is nothing as relaxing as a hot bath, and tonight I appreciated it more than usual. My meal, a boxed thing I picked up on the street, had been good, but I was feeling uneasy. After I had packed my bag for tomorrow’s journey (and deposited my client’s check in my account) I needed to do something to kill time. I relaxed into the hot water, sighing with relief. Several fellow bathers shot me tight smiles and returned to their conversations. My conversation with Tobei had been a surprise, to say the least. When he had answered the phone, it seemed like he had been expecting my call. "Yeah, hey." He was always informal to the point of rudeness. One of the things I loved about him when we met. I told him of Miss Himemiya’s visit, her request, the useless dead end in the info she sent me, and my suspicion that something had happened to the missing girl. He made a rude noise into the phone. "Nah, you know, we investigated that angle." They did? "Yeah – when Miss Himemiya came to town. An executive order was received. We were to open a case – missing person’s believed murdered, no habeas corpus, or anything, but like a Jane Doe case." I nodded, just what I was thinking. "Well you know how it is, there’s more pressing things that take up your time – we put out the APB, and asked for help from the NPA…of course we turned up nothing." "No candidates at all?" There had to be *someone* who fit the bill. "Nope." I could hear him shrug over the phone. "Houou’s pretty far off the beaten path." "What about the lure of the big city and all that? Maybe she left school and got in trouble in Tokyo." "Unh-uh. All the bodies we had were poorer, bad physical condition, bad teeth – ya-chan, illegals, foreigners, you know the rap. This girl was strong, healthy, athletic. No way they could be her." It was my turn to shrug. "So what happened?" "Well, we sent all that we got to the higher-ups. A week later we get an order that we can drop the case. Next day, that robbery on the train hits and we’re off to new pastures." I made a noncommittal noise. "You know," Tobei finished up, "I kept wondering who your Miss Himemiya is…someone important enough to get our brass to open a new case for her." Yeah, I wondered that too. We chatted a bit, reaffirming our next night for dinner together, then hung up. Long after I returned from the bathhouse, I lay there on my bed and thought about Himemiya Anshi and her friend, who had disappeared off the face of the earth not quite ten years ago.
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