Azabu Getaway

Chapter 3

To stop the buzzing, Detective Hiroshi Shimizu grabbed his cellphone, swiped it on, and fumbled it to his ear. He listened to Sakaguchi, head of homicide, and managed to mumble, “Hai, hai,” a couple of times before he realized Sakaguchi had already hung up.

HaihaiHe had not been called out to a murder scene for several months, so there wasn’t much he could say. Sakaguchi said this case had his name on it, financial crimes and in English. He repeated the address three times.

As he swung his legs out of bed, he felt his heart pumping. Hiroshi hated crime scenes. He preferred his work as a forensic accountant. Numbers didn’t bleed. Or smell. Even seeing the spot where a dead body had been made him queasy. He visited the pathology lab once, and nearly fainted.

He set his cellphone back on the bedside table and reached behind him for Ayana, but she wasn’t there. It was the middle of the night, but when she worked late, she often fell asleep on the sofa. He lumbered into the shower and jazzed himself with hot water.

He usually told the other detectives he was too busy tracking down the money angle on cases to go to crime scenes, but refusing Sakaguchi was hard. He only asked when needed.

Hiroshi’s best argument against crime scene work was reminding them that he was the only person in the department who understod Excel or English, so they should let him focus on that, preferably from his office. It usually worked.

Hiroshi turned the water temperature down to cool off before getting out and toweling off. His current case was the murder of a fish company owner squeezed by the yakuza. His wife had stabbed him while he slept. That much was clear. In the gray zone were his high-interest loans, gambling losses, and total lack of business acumen.

That was the kind of case he liked. Contracts in English with foreign companies and a visible trail of accounting crumbs. He could work those from the safety of his office. He would have to put that case off now that Sakaguchi had called. Maybe the new case would be clean, white-collar crime so he could leave the physical forensics for everyone else in the department.

Were that the case, though, Sakaguchi would have called at a reasonable hour.

Hiroshi dressed and walked out to the kitchen. Ayana was right where he suspected—on the sofa in a tumble of papers, computers, blankets, and long black hair. An empty glass of wine rested by her laptop. He didn’t want to wake her. He’d grab coffee and calories at one of the carryout places for harried businesspeople in Shinagawa.

He picked up his coat from the back of the stool and tiptoed out.

“Don’t forget,” Ayana muttered.

“I won’t,” he said. “Go back to sleep.” He walked over and leaned down to kiss her. He pulled the wool comforter over her shoulders. He loved her shoulders. He let her burrow back to sleep and hurried out.

It wasn’t until he hailed a taxi at the large street near their apartment in Kagurazaka that he realized he didn’t know what not to forget.

Outside, most cars still had their headlights on. With no traffic, the taxi zipped past Ayana’s workplace at the National Archives, the Imperial Palace and the Nagatacho Ministries, and then south to Shinagawa.

Hiroshi got out in front of the office-residence-retail tower near the station. The office complex stretched to the sky, its green glass reflecting images of the canyon of new buildings. Apparently, the urban plan was to continue developing both sides of the Yamanote Line until the entire inner circle of Tokyo was one solid loop of unending skyscrapers.

He got out of the taxi, rode the street-to-walkway escalator, and headed for the entrance to the building. The lobby’s coffee stand was not yet open. He stared at it for a minute in the echo-y lobby, trapped by the desire for caffeine and the desire to get the crime scene over with.

His espresso machine waited back in his office. Waving his badge to the police guard, he headed to the elevator.

On the twentieth floor, the doors opened onto an entryway lined by a mural of nine dragons. The sprawling ceramic work must have cost a fortune. The colors were muted but it was impossible not to stare at the menacing claws, sinuous curves, and rough scales. Their eyes glared with courage and control. Dragon-like success waited at the end of the right investment plan.

The head of the last dragon, though, was chipped off, leaving dust and chunks on the carpet below. The other dragons’ eyes, large and black, seemed to follow him, questioning him, as he ducked under the yellow tape stretched across the propped-open doors.

Inside, the tech staff bustled around in all directions. The office was orderly, untouched, and ready for a day of work, with a panoramic view of the sky and neighboring buildings through the multiple glass dividers. No wealth would be managed there today, though.

Hiroshi fastened on to Sakaguchi’s huge hulking figure at the far end of the space. His ex-sumo wrestler’s size stuck out through the glass. He towered over most of the other detectives.

Was that the room where it happened? The thought of a body—mangled, contorted, bloody—made his eyes throb. If he had secured coffee and a pastry downstairs, he would at least have something to throw up.

Most of the other detectives, he suspected, enjoyed the gruesome side of their work. Takamatsu, his mentor, said as much. He lingered over the smallest bloodstain with an old-school glee that Hiroshi couldn’t fathom. They tossed around details about corpses that made Hiroshi shudder. Takamatsu had told him that violence was part of life and the human body was vulnerable to violence. The best detectives, he claimed, thought and felt like criminals did.

Paint, or something, was splattered across the window of the office where Sakaguchi stood giving orders. A technician in a white bodysuit knelt on the floor. Another bent over splotches of blood on the carpet tiles. The paint splashed across the window was blood. The victim slumped over with his head facedown on the desk. The room stank of s**t, ammonia, and sanitized equipment.

The flash from the photographers made Hiroshi blink. One of the technicians held up the head of the victim for another photo. The victim’s face was smashed and the nose crushed level with his cheeks.

Hiroshi looked away, his chest thumping so hard it turned all sound into a loud whisper. He wiped his forehead and directed his gaze outside. The crime scene crew was talking loudly, asking questions, clicking photographs, opening equipment, all of it a mush in Hiroshi’s mind.

“Can everyone shut up!” Sakaguchi shouted, something he never did. Sakaguchi had been promoted to provisional head of the homicide division a year before. His position did the actual work and handed the results to the chief, who took the credit. Unlike the chief, though, Sakaguchi had earned the trust of every detective in the squad. His manner was slow and steady, thoughtful and powerful. Behind that manner was the explosive force of his years in sumo, a combined mental and physical force that could be focused where and when he wanted. “Can we work more quietly, please?”

The technicians hushed and bowed their heads. The photographers stood back. Sakaguchi reverted to his usual calm voice and the crew busied themselves with their tasks in a quieter mode. The techs drifted off to examine the rest of the office.

Hiroshi was tall compared to most Japanese but he still had to look up to Sakaguchi’s full moon of a face.

Sakaguchi shook his head. “They don’t have a body bag long enough for him.”

Hiroshi shifted his gaze outside the windows. He didn’t want to think about that.

“They’ll have to cut one open for his feet, and then slip a second one over, tape it all up.”

“Body bags come in sizes?”

“I better get mine pre-ordered.” Sakaguchi pulled at his mask. “These damn masks barely cover my mouth and nose.”

The crime scene crew assembled two body bags for the victim, but his feet still dangled over the end of the gurney.

Hiroshi turned his gaze to the desk. Below the transparent top spread an all-black wood carving of mountains, streams, paths, itinerant monks, and boats in a harbor. The details were finely done. In the sky, magnificent dragons soared through thick clouds. Hiroshi counted nine of the beasts. The top was cracked and a thick pool of blood was drying, blocking the traditional scene below.

Sakaguchi took a phone call and signed papers from a young detective Hiroshi didn’t recognize. He hung up, and turned to Hiroshi. “Can you talk to that guy over there? Name’s Mehta or something. He’s the one who found the body. Looks as weak-kneed as you and he doesn’t speak Japanese.”

Through the blood-splattered glass, he saw a young Indian man standing anxiously in a space a couple of glass dividers away.

Osaki and Sugamo hurried in, blocking his way. Both detectives worked hard with no fuss and little comment. They stood as tall and wide as Sakaguchi, but were younger and more fit. Their size drew joking from the older, smaller detectives, though no one joked about Sakaguchi. Hiroshi trusted them completely. Whenever Osaki and Sugamo were there, things went more smoothly.

“Where were you guys?” Hiroshi asked.

Sugamo slipped around him into the office. “We went downstairs to check the video footage from security.”

Hiroshi stepped outside the door to let Osaki in.

Osaki shook his head. “One guy in a black mask. That’s it. Could be anybody. With a mask on, they can evade any face recognition software.”

Hiroshi frowned. “What about their car?”

“Parked outside, so they never entered the garage.”

“No cameras on the streets outside?”

“Black sedan, but they covered their license plate. They’ve done this kind of thing before.”

“Did you see the victim?” Sugamo reached for his nose. “I had mine broken once. Took forever to heal.”

Osaki nodded at the body. “His nose is broken for good now.”

The technicians raised up the gurney and wheeled the body out of the office.

Everyone stopped talking and put their hands together as the body passed, standing with their heads bowed until the body was gone.

Hiroshi wanted to unsee all he’d just seen. He studied the Indian employee from a distance, sighed, and walked off to talk with him. Maybe the guy even had something to say.