Lady Joker, Volume 1 Kaoru Takamura (ereader ebook .TXT) 📖

doing? What had been the president’s schedule that day? What had he been wearing? What was the writing like on the note they found? Has there been any contact from the perpetrators? Had anyone seen a strange person or vehicle? What was the progress of the Crime Scene Unit? Any footprints? Evidence left behind?

A bold crime, deftly executed. Are they pros?

Kubo hunched over his laptop while his colleagues passed documents back and forth behind him and, according to their assignments on the chart Deputy Kagawa had made, the beat reporters filed out of the nook one by one. The phone kept ringing and terse retorts—“I’ve got nothing,” “Not yet,” and “What about you?”—volleyed through the air. Chief Sugano was on the phone discussing whom to deploy where once the embargo was lifted. Kubo added another line—Has there ever been any threat, blackmail, or harassment made against Hinode in the past?—and gazed at the can of Hinode Oolong Tea on his desk.

As his eyes again traced over the trademark seal of a golden phoenix, which he had never really looked at carefully before, the gravity of the situation sunk in at last.

合田雄一郎　Yuichiro Goda

By half past midnight, a total of twenty-three officers from Criminal Investigation—not counting the two standing watch at the crime scene, three from the crime scene team who had gone there for backup, as well as the chief inspector and deputy chief inspector—had assembled in the CI office at Omori Police Department. Per instructions from the MPD, they had created a large sketch of the vicinity of the crime scene and a current survey map that included the premises of the victim’s home, but once that was complete they ran out of things to do. In the back lot of their building the 103 SWAT vehicle was parked, and there were at least two officers encamped inside, but in regard to what was happening at the scene and who was doing what where, there was very little information coming in over the investigation radio, and on the third floor they had very little read on the situation at the scene. The same was true for the superintendent and vice commander, and Chief Inspector Hakamada and Deputy Chief Inspector Dohi were pacing back and forth between the superintendent’s office, the CI office, and the control room with rather bewildered expressions.

As of 12:40 a.m., there were no witnesses, no suspicious vehicles, no evidence left behind, and no movement or contact from the perpetrators.

Having been the first one on the scene, Goda had explained the situation to his fellow officers, but that hadn’t taken more than five minutes. Next, Inspector Anzai from White Collar Crime pulled out Hinode’s comprehensive asset securities report from the previous year from a forgotten corner shelf and had started reading out an overview of the company from page one but, once he got to the summary of their specialized facilities with a catalog of their twelve factories, fifteen branch offices, and research labs, he tossed aside the pamphlet and concluded, “So basically, in terms of assets, sales, operating income, and equity, there’s about a three-digit difference between Hinode and your typical local business.”

Someone else then picked up the pamphlet and leafed through it, and it was passed around a few hands, but before long that stopped too, and without any other idle chatter, the team was once again engulfed by silence. Every one of them looked melancholy, torn between the desire to get a little shut-eye before work tomorrow and dismay over their misfortune that a VIP had been kidnapped within their jurisdiction, of all places.

The CI office was not designed to accommodate a full turnout of their team. There weren’t enough chairs, and no personal space to speak of. Aside from the chief inspector’s and the deputy chief inspector’s spots by the window, there were four rows of steel desks belonging to no one in particular, five desks to a row arranged close together, while along the wall were file cabinets and shelves of the same steel, and blackboards covered with various flyers and posters. When twenty-three grown men filed into the room, it was nearly as stifling and gloomy as the area around the betting windows at the racecourse. Goda found this to be an unacceptable work environment given the mountain of investigation documents they were required to produce day after day, and the only solution that he had ever come up with was to get outside as much as possible, and to use one of the unoccupied interrogation rooms to write up his case files.

On the steel desks, there were eight phones for internal use and four phones with an outside line, four computer terminals connected to the mainframe that managed all inquiries and two word processors that were dirty and discolored from use. There were also several string-bound MPD telephone directories, a worn-out copy of the White Pages, ballpoint pens and pencils, official directive paperwork and newspaper flyers with notes written on the flipside, ashtrays, and a few heavily stained tea mugs.

Goda was sitting with his back to the wall in a spot close to the door. In his shirt pocket was a detailed, minute-by-minute record of officer activity prior to the incident, which he had gotten from the police box by Omori Station before coming here, but his instinct had not yet managed to clearly work out what each emergency call or command from the department might signify. The excitement he had felt when he had first arrived on the scene had dulled, but now it circled slowly around his instinct. Was the president the target, or the company itself? Why Hinode Beer? Were there troubles within Hinode that would provoke a crime? Did they have any connections to extortionists and organized crime? When he had spoken with the Vice President Kurata on the phone, something about the man’s forceful tone and the way he cautiously chose his words seemed out of balance to Goda’s ear—did Hinode already know something about