Dismissed With Prejudice (9780061760631) by Judith A. Jance Page A

seen it before?”
    â€œNo. Never.”
    â€œDo you have any idea where it came from?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAnd what did he say to you?”
    For the first time in her narration, Kimiko faltered, pausing to swallow before she answered. “Thank you,” she said.
    â€œThank you for what?”
    â€œHe said thank you for coming home to take care of Mother.”
    â€œAnd you took that to mean?”
    â€œThat he was going to kill himself,” she replied matter-of-factly.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI’m a Japanese-American, Detective Beaumont. I grew up on samurai stories, cut my teeth on them while my friends at school were reading the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. It looked like a samuraishort sword to me. I know all about seppuku , about choosing death over disgrace. It’s a time-honored Japanese custom.”
    â€œBut he didn’t say outright that he was going to do it, did he?”
    â€œNo. In fact, when I asked him, he denied it. I told him he had no right to leave my mother. She’s always been totally dependent on him. Far too dependent. He kept her here in this house, waiting on him hand and foot, but she never said a word against him, never objected to the way he treated her.”
    â€œAnd how was that?”
    â€œLike he was lord and master and she was his servant. His slave. Around the house things were done his way and that was it.”
    â€œWhat about you?” I asked quietly. “Did you always do things his way?”
    â€œUp to a point.” She gave me a shrewd, appraising glance. “You’re a smart man, aren’t you?”
    â€œI try.”
    â€œThings were fine when I was younger. Kids think that whatever they’re used to at home, that however they live, is the way life is supposed to be. They don’t question it. He treated me like the son he never had, took me places, taught me things.”
    â€œIs that why you’re studying engineering?”
    She shrugged. “Probably,” she said. “I’m good at it, but he made sure I was exposed to engineering at a very early age.”
    Lost in thought, she stopped and seemed to drift away. “Go on,” I said.
    â€œBack then I didn’t worry about my mother, didn’t even think about her very much. She was always there but almost invisible, always hovering in the background, always doing things, never complaining. But eventually I grew up and went away to school. I got my consciousness raised in a Women’s Studies program over at Central. When I came home from Ellensburg, I tried to talk to my father about it, tried to get him to see that what he was doing to her was wrong, how he’d made her too helpless, too dependent on him, kept her isolated and cut off from everyone but us. We had a major battle over it, and he threw me out.”
    â€œWhat did your mother say?”
    â€œWhat do you think? She sided with him, as always. She said that I was wrong, that I was too young to understand. That’s the last time I spoke to my father until he called me on the phone yesterday morning.”
    â€œBut you stayed in touch with your mother.”
    â€œYes. Other than him, I was all she had. My father had his work, his company. Without me, she had nothing.”
    â€œSo what happened last night in your father’s office?”
    â€œWe quarreled again. Except for that pitiful little stack of household goods out in the trailer, all my mother’s things were packed up, ready to go to the auction to satisfy his debts, and there he sat holding that damn sword. I don’t know where he got it or how long he’s had it, but I told him that ifshe had to give up all her things, so did he. He told me about it then, bragged that it was made by a student of Masamune. He claimed that it had been in the family for hundreds of years, that it was priceless.”
    â€œBut you had never seen it before?” That seemed strange to me.