In that case, we could probably cross any areas with a railway crossing nearby off our search list.
“How long could you hear each passing train for, do you recall?” I asked.
“I really don’t at this point, but I want to say it was more than five seconds, at least? Maybe even closer to ten?”
“They must’ve been going pretty fast, then.”
“Yeah, it definitely didn’t seem like they were slowing down to pull into a station or anything—just speeding right on by.”
That meant we could presumably remove anywhere especially close to a station from the list as well. It would make sense to focus our search near long straightaways with few crossings where trains were free to go at full speed. Additionally, the fact that she thought it may have even been audible for a full ten seconds seemed to suggest that these were likely not just one- or two-car trains, but fairly long ones.
“I guess it’s possible that they buried you in a ditch on some unused plot of land adjacent to the railroad,” I posited.
“Yeah, or maybe the driver just lived near the train tracks and buried me on his own property,” said Ayane. “Believe me, I’ve done my fair share of searching too—and I had the same thought as you. Went around indiscriminately checking underground in the backyards of houses along the railways, but to no avail. There are just too many different places to look, so I gave up.”
This was a fair point—Japan was littered from top to bottom with rail lines. It would be preposterous to suggest that we check the immediate vicinity of each and every one. But we should’ve been able to narrow down the search area at least a little bit more as we knew the killer could have only driven so far from Ayane’s neighborhood with her in his trunk…though exactly how far depended entirely on just how long she was passed out after the initial impact and before regaining consciousness. If it was only ten short minutes or so, then we could establish a pretty solid search radius from the scene of the accident.
“I know this is a huge shot in the dark,” I said, “but do you have any idea how long you were out, by chance?”
“I really don’t, unfortunately,” said Ayane.
“Do you recall if the blood from your injury already dried?”
“No idea.”
“Well, do you at least remember approximately what time you had that argument with your mother and ran out of the house?” I asked.
“Around 9:30 at night, I think. God, that was so stupid of me…”
She cast her gaze down to the ground; her regret was palpable. After all, had it not been for that fight, she would most likely still be alive today.
“And how much time passed between you leaving your house and you getting hit by that car? Any idea?” I asked.
“About fifteen minutes, maybe,” she said.
This would mean that she’d been run over sometime around 9:45 p.m. In which case, it seemed unlikely that she would’ve been unconscious for several hours as the trains only ran until about midnight in this area. It also seemed like she was hearing them periodically, so it couldn’t have been only the very last train either. Additionally, unless the driver had a giant travel suitcase in his trunk for whatever reason, it would have taken him some time to procure one and shove her body inside. That would have taken more time, obviously, which meant that at the very most, he could have only driven about two hours from the scene of the crime—barring the possibility that she had been unconscious all night, of course. If she had, and the trains she was hearing were actually from sometime the next day, then we’d have to dramatically expand our search area…so I prayed that hadn’t been the case. In any case, your average unintentional murderer would likely be in a frantic state of mind and would simply want to get the suitcase buried under the cover of night. They would not want to risk being seen in the morning light, especially if they didn’t have a disposal plan thought out well in advance.
After getting the approximate address from Ayane, I drew a map of the surrounding area in my head. It was awfully inconvenient that I couldn’t just plug the coordinates into a smartphone app while in soul form. But in any event, I mentally mapped out a rough circle around the scene of the accident and picked out a few initial candidates for places to search in that area that were near train lines. In general, I picked out straightaways for longer multi-car trains with no railroad crossings nearby that were within a two-hour drive of the scene. That narrowed things down quite a bit, but there were still a huge number of places to check—and with no other leads, we had little choice but to search them all one by one.
We flew through the night sky over to Ayane’s neighborhood and began our search there, moving outward. We descended to the railroad tracks and let our bodies sink beneath the gravel-covered earth. There was no physical resistance to stop us while in soul form, of course, so it hardly felt any different from being submerged in a deep body of water.
“This is just a hunch,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure he couldn’t have buried you all that far underground either.”
“True,” said Ayane. “If he dug the hole himself with only a shovel, he couldn’t have made it more than a meter or so deep.”
Just to be sure, I asked if she happened to hear anything that sounded like heavy machinery at the time, but she said no. So, we only really had to look as deep underground as, say, your average public pool. This was helpful as, like before, our vision was fairly obscured and indistinct while underground. We could tell where nearby manmade structures and building foundations were, for instance, but couldn’t clearly make out anything beyond our immediate vicinity. It really did feel like swimming through a lake full of murky water.
We looked around under the ground for what felt like two hours, diving into gardens and ditches and abandoned lots and farmlands straddling the railroad where someone could have feasibly buried a suitcase. Occasionally, while zooming our way through the ground, one of us would end up lost in an underground parking garage, or in the basement of some random person’s house. In those cases, we would head back above ground, call out to the other person, and regroup to regain our bearings.
But there were no suitcases to be found anywhere we looked. Although searching in soul form like this took no toll on our stamina, after a while, Ayane suggested we call it quits for the night.
“How come?” I asked. “I’m good to keep going if you are.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “Our worlds can’t stay overlapped for much longer. We have to get you back in your own skin before they pull apart.”
“And what happens if we don’t?”