Tokyo Traffic

Chapter 4

Chapter 4LED balloon lights whitened everything from the ceiling to the backs of the three-walled sets. Specialists in lab coats moved gingerly—the floor was a hopscotch maze of blood pools, chalk marks, and taped-off zones. Small numbered markers rose up beside cameras, chairs, props, and lights scattered across the floor.

Hiroshi let his mind follow the numbers on the markers, fifty-six pieces of evidence in view. It kept his mind off the body outlines chalked on the concrete floor. Hiroshi was glad he missed the bodies. Unlike the other detectives, the only thing he got from examining a corpse was nausea.

Sakaguchi’s huge sumo wrestler bulk was lit from behind at the corner of one of the sets. Sakaguchi turned and nodded as he signed a form from one of the young detectives.

Hiroshi sniffed the air. “Did someone vomit? One of the young detectives?”

“No, that was here when we got here,” Sakaguchi said.

“What is this, a film studio?” Hiroshi asked.

“Porn film studio,” Sakaguchi answered.

Hiroshi surveyed the scene. Taking photos and gathering evidence would take twice the usual time in the sprawling warehouse space. Each of the dozen film sets potentially held a clue.

“I’d have thought Takamatsu would take lead on anything salacious like this.”

“He’s sorting out the shooting of some gang member. Confiscated a lot of guns. Paperwork on that takes forever. He’ll be here soon.” Sakaguchi signed another form from a technician in white mask and white gloves stained by blood.

Hiroshi looked away and crooked his head up at the ceiling. “So, who were the dead bodies?”

Sakaguchi walked Hiroshi over to one set of chalk marks. The head was only partially drawn, as a pool of blood made it impossible to chalk the concrete. “He was a director. Mid-twenties. From a rich family, good school. Ryota Noguchi, not a famous name. He’d done several features, then turned to soft porn, then harder stuff. Trying to find who to contact.”

They stepped over to a larger, half-chalked outline. “Whoever did this didn’t think of stripping away the ID. Bureaucrat in the Ministry of Finance. Chief’s already called about him.”

Sakaguchi walked around the side of the set and paused at a thinner outline with less blood. “This was a young girl, not Japanese. Southeast Asian maybe. I guess she was the… um…”

“Central character?”

“Central victim.”

“How young?”

“Teenager, judging by the size of her wrist.” Sakaguchi growled deep in his chest.

Hiroshi looked away at the numbers on the evidence markers, adding the numbers, and subtracting them, to keep his eyes from the chalk outlines, which looked like ghosts waiting to haunt him.

“Can you go take a look at the files? Half are in English. Office is around back.” Sakaguchi pointed the way.

Hiroshi walked carefully past the three-sided walls of the sets—a convenience store, a high school locker room, an elevator, a massage room, a hospital, a train car—each perfect in itself. The single-room sets pointed in random directions, as if tossed away from a troubled dollhouse. Were those the most common scenes, the most commercial fantasies? Behind the rooms, the set walls were made of cheap plywood with angled braces held down by bags of dribbling sand.

Shibaura’s office was crowded. Detective Ueno’s tall, fit body and Osaki’s ex-rugby forward’s weight seemed to fill the room. They stood looking at what two young detectives handed them from the U-shaped, leather-covered desk, deciding what to bag and how. Sugamo, who was almost the size of Sakaguchi, was turning over everything on the shelves with prim white gloves.

“You’re here,” Ueno said. The two young detectives bowed and got out of the way.

Hiroshi had written to the National Police Agency training center to demand they include English in their coursework and training. And even though money trails extended like spokes from every murder, few of the detectives could grasp financial statements, bank records, or spreadsheets. They couldn’t speak the world’s two most common languages—English and numbers.

Hiroshi sat down at the desk to translate both. After looking through them for a few minutes, Hiroshi turned to one of the young detectives waiting to the side. “There will be a second set of books someplace. Operations like this always have different internal and external records.”

“Where would those be?” the young detective asked.

“There’s no safe?” Hiroshi nodded at the wall with glass shelves of liquor and a rack of video equipment.

The young detective nodded, perplexed, but started checking the walls, floor, and ceiling.

Hiroshi pulled open a folder of receipts, everything labeled and ordered impeccably. It was strange that the accounting for a porn studio would be organized with such care, but in terms of numbers, it was a business like any other. In terms of product, it was like no other.

“Someone can start gathering computers, laptops, tablets, cellphones, whatever electronic devices you can find,” Hiroshi said. “Photograph them, fingerprint them, bag them. I’ll start on those once they break them open at headquarters.”

Ueno said, “Any ideas?” Osaki stood beside him.

Hiroshi stood up and shook his head. “Porn’s a business that’s very, um, connected.”

“Too connected,” Sugamo said from the back wall.

Hiroshi looked around the office. “Maybe we can find that one special file that explains all the others. There’s always one that’s the key.”

Hiroshi left them to it and went back out to talk with Sakaguchi. Hiroshi found him staring at the chalk mark where the girl died. Her outline glowed under the LED lights.

“Find any files?” Sakaguchi asked.

“The only meaningful thing the chief ever said to me was that money and murder go together.”

“That’s why I called you.”

“You sound like Takamatsu.”

“And there he is.”

Takamatsu was looking at one of the sets, a high school classroom, talking with one of the crime scene specialists. He walked over, straightening his yellow tie over a yellow shirt and popping the cuffs with a snap. “My first kiss was in the back of a classroom,” Takamatsu said.

“I don’t think there’s much kissing in these films,” Hiroshi said.

“Au contraire,” Takamatsu said, in badly accented French.

Hiroshi wondered where he picked that phrase up. Some French-speaking hostess in Roppongi, no doubt.

“Kissing is its own fetish, always at the beginning, sometimes in the middle, and always at the end, depending,” Takamatsu said.

“It’s good we have a specialist here,” Hiroshi said.

Takamatsu laughed, lit a cigarette, and twirled his cigarette lighter before slipping it back inside his tight-fitting jacket.

Sakaguchi interrupted. “As a connoisseur, do you have any thoughts on what went on here?”

“The guys outside told me blunt trauma for the two men. Hand wounds and head wounds. They didn’t find anything on the girl.” Takamatsu smiled. “So, maybe amphetamines. They load them up, I’ve heard.”

“An S&M scene that got out of hand?” Hiroshi wondered out loud.

“There was blood on everything, and pieces of scalp on the tripod,” Sakaguchi said.

“Robbery,” Takamatsu said. “They probably run the business on cash.”

“You’re thinking nineteen-sixties. They’ll have a lot of electronic files,” Hiroshi said.

“See. That’s why we hired you. To keep us up to date.” Takamatsu smiled, blowing smoke up toward the high ceiling.

“Was there any video?” Hiroshi asked. “Maybe the film was rolling when—”

“If there was, someone took it,” Sakaguchi said.

Takamatsu said, “They record straight to computer these days, don’t they?”

“There were computers in the office,” Hiroshi said.

Takamatsu put out his cigarette in his pocket ashtray. “Guess who’s here?”

Hiroshi groaned, knowing it would be the chief. It was. His Borsalino fedora and gray worsted wool suit caught the white lights. Making an appearance seemed his main job.

The chief strode over with his coat draped over his shoulders, careful to not step on anything. He sniffed the air and frowned. “Some newbie lost it?”

Sakaguchi shook his head no. “It was here when we got here. It’s evidence now.”

“Who called this in?” the chief asked.

Sakaguchi shrugged. “We’re tracking the call. Anonymous, but enough details to send the local cops. Front door was open.”

“Why didn’t anyone find this earlier? This has been sitting here all day?”

Sakaguchi sighed.

“A person’s conscience works on its own schedule,” Takamatsu said.

The chief ignored him and pointed at Hiroshi’s chest. “Hiroshi, you’re on the financials here, right?”

Hiroshi nodded.

“Good, good. And Sakaguchi, you’re on the bureaucrat. I’ve already got calls to keep things quiet. The Ministry of Finance doesn’t like scandals, even though some of our detectives do.” The chief looked at Takamatsu.

Takamatsu lit another cigarette, against crime scene rules.

“He was important in the ministries,” the chief said, smug about his inside knowledge of bureaucrats. “If this guy was caught up in this, then the ministries will be. And our work will be a lot harder.”

“However high he was in the hierarchy, his hobby of taking photos at porn shoots wasn’t so elevated,” Takamatsu said.

“And no pushing buttons to get a result.” The chief stared at Takamatsu, who stared at the cigarette smoke dissipating into the expanse above. “And Takamatsu—”

Hiroshi cut him off. “I’ll keep an eye on him, even though he’s taught me everything.”

“You’ll have to unlearn most of that. No mistakes with this one.” The chief resettled his overcoat on his shoulders. “Well, things are well underway here,” the chief said, giving the scene a satisfied once-over before picking a path through the evidence to the door.

Hiroshi said, “Is this studio well known?”

Takamatsu smiled. “Jack and Jill Studios. Very famous.”

“You watch that kind of stuff?”

Takamatsu shrugged. “No, I read most nights. Can’t get to sleep otherwise.”

Hiroshi couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

The two young detectives who had been searching the office navigated toward the three main detectives. The first held out a laptop in a plastic evidence bag. “We found the safe. The safecracker’s working on it.”

Hiroshi sighed. “I’ll wait around to see what’s inside.”

“We also found these,” said a young female detective who had just joined homicide. She held out an accordion folder filled with passports.

Hiroshi looked through them. Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia. “All women?”

The detective nodded.

“The embassies open in a few hours,” Sakaguchi said, nodding at Hiroshi.

“And one more thing.” She held up several plastic bags filled with women’s clothes.

“What’s this?” Hiroshi asked.

“Women’s clothes. Expensive. All different sizes.” She hesitated, then went ahead. “They couldn’t be for the same girl.”

Hiroshi asked, “So, two girls?”

“Three, I’d say,” the young detective said.

Takamatsu said, “No killer would be going for a bureaucrat, a film director, and foreign girls at the same time. So, who was the target and who was the collateral damage?”