Year of the Demon

peacemaking gesture, or at least an I-won’t-press-the-fight gesture. The other two cops lowered Joko Daishi back to a seated position against the wall. Han didn’t loosen his grip. “I’m serious,” he said, whispering in her ear. “That shit I pulled before, ignoring probable cause, it’s going to make it hard enough to land a conviction. You just ripped this dude off a motorcycle, Mariko. If he’s got short-term injuries, okay, he was assaulting you. But if jerking him around like that causes—”

“Long-term injuries. It’ll sink our case. I know, Han. I’m cool.”

Cautiously, he relaxed his hold. She could tell she’d taken him by surprise, pouncing on their suspect like that. In truth, she’d surprised herself. She hadn’t realized the affection she felt for her city—a city that would never run short on garbage to heap on a female police detective. COs who treated her like a girl, subordinates who treated her like an equal, newspapers that hungered to make her an item, slavering for every exploit, spoiling any chance she’d ever have for doing undercover work, all to boost their sales for a couple of hours. How many times had she asked herself why she didn’t go take a job in some Canadian police department, or an American one? Someplace where the pay was better, where the rent wasn’t so high, where she might find a boyfriend who wasn’t intimidated by her profession? And yet the mere mention of a bomb threat in her city was enough to bring her blood to a boil. Joko Daishi had threatened her home. She hadn’t felt at home in a long time, maybe not since she was a little girl. No wonder she’d reacted so violently; no wonder she’d surprised herself.

“Okay,” Han said, and she could see his wariness recede. “Tell me what you got from him.”

“A bunch of crazy cult bullshit.”

“Come on, Mariko. Get your head in the game.”

“Nothing, okay? He says his goal is to destroy order and harmony, whatever the hell that means. The guy’s out of his mind, Han, and that means we’re out of leads.”

“That sounds like quitting,” Han said, “and you don’t quit.” He took her by the elbow and turned her around, leading her on a slow march away from their suspect. He was right to do it; just having Joko Daishi out of her field of vision was enough to slow her pulse a little. “Come on, now. Help me think.”

Mariko frowned, ashamed of herself. Han was right: she needed to get her head together. But it was hard when her whole investigation had just been one frustration after another. First they had an upside-down drug buy. It got even loopier with the introduction of top-quality Daishi. Following up on that led to a pair of thefts that could have been drug related, except for the tiny little detail that the thief had no interest in selling the sword or the mask to buy drugs. Tie in a yakuza connection, a needless murder in the suburbs, and a domestic gas chamber and what did she have? Only the weirdest narcotics case she’d ever heard of—and that was before anyone mentioned the word cult.

In three days they’d uncovered more arcane secrets than Mariko would ever have thought possible, and every last one of them raised more questions than it answered. Mariko didn’t want to give up. She wanted to push harder, but she didn’t have anything solid to push against. Her whole case was made of smoke.

“What if we got everything wrong from the beginning?” she said. “What if the whole crazy cult thing is just a con?”

“Seriously? We’re in midgame here, Mariko. You want to forfeit and go back to batting practice?”

“No, I’m just asking if he’s playing the same game we are. What if we’ve got it all wrong? What if the Divine Wind is just a front operation for the Kamaguchi-gumi?”

Han gave her a quizzical frown. “Where is this coming from?”

“I don’t know. Desperation. Just work with me. Who gained the most from that dumb-ass drug buy with the Kamaguchis?”

“The Kamaguchis.”

“Exactly. They corner the market on the Daishi, and all they have to give up is a stupid mask.”

Han shook his head. “How does that explain everything with the Bulldog? Every speed freak in town wants what he’s selling; what’s he got to be pissed about?”

“I told you, I don’t know. I’m just spitballing—”

“And I’m all in favor, so long as it gets us closer to figuring out where those bombs are going to go off. So? Does it?”

Mariko didn’t have to think about that for long. She didn’t even have to answer; a resigned sigh was enough.

“Look, maybe you’re right. Maybe he’s been throwing us curveballs all along. But maybe you had it right from the start. You profiled him as a whack-job cult leader, neh? So let’s stick with whack-job cult leader. What does that tell us?”

Mariko nodded. Han had a point. “If he’s not playing us—if—then he really believes he’s preaching the truth of the Divine Wind.”

“And that is?”

She put her hands on her hips and looked at the ceiling. “Something about structure and order suffocating the mind. He wants chaos. He wants to shake people up.”

“Finally something that actually makes sense.”

“Huh?”

“The Daishi deal. If you look at it as a narc, the whole thing is a fiasco. World’s dumbest dealer delivers top-quality product and forgets to call ahead to see if anyone wants to pay him for it.”

Mariko nodded. “And walks right into a sting too.”

“Exactly. But what if we look at it like a loony-tune cult leader?”

“Then kicking hornet’s nests is some kind of spiritual exercise. Who cares about giving away a fortune in Daishi if you can flip the whole speed market on its head? It knocks the balance of power out of whack.”

“That’s it,” Han said, giddy with the discovery. “It’s got to be.”

Mariko felt something relax in her mind, the way her body would relax if she peeled herself out of a skirt and slid into some old jeans. She and Han were back to their old repartee, the shooting back and forth, bouncing ideas off each other, the ideas getting clearer, not breaking apart.

“But then what?” she said. “Economic chaos? Collapse the black market and see how many legitimate businesses fall with it?”

“Why not? Let’s face it, yakuzas run a lot more front companies in this city than we like to admit.”

Mariko waved him off. “I don’t buy it. Take one look at that guy and tell me if the words mad bomber economist spring to mind.”

Both of them looked at their perp. They’d been pacing back and forth as they talked, working out nervous energy, but even from a distance Joko Daishi’s mask was creepy as hell—all the more so because the guy wearing it was sitting contentedly on the floor, a childlike grin playing at the corners of his mouth. Somehow Mariko thought he’d look more natural with a bloody ax in his hand.

As if he’d heard her thoughts, he looked at her. Locking eyes with him gave Mariko chills; her mind automatically conjured an image of him standing over her bed while she slept, watching her from behind that mask.

Han noticed it when she flinched. “Okay,” he said, “we’ve got to change things up. All of this speculating isn’t getting us any closer to finding those bombs.”

Mariko noticed he’d changed too. His gait was different. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet. Jittery. She’d seen him like this in the SWAT van too, right before go time.

“Han, don’t even think it.”

“I don’t want to, but we’re desperate. Give me two minutes alone with him and I’m telling you, I can get him to tell us where the bombs are.”

“Two minutes? Two minutes ago you were the one talking me down. What happened to not sinking our case?”

“What happened is this asshole is going to murder hundreds of innocent people. Sakakibara said it himself: who cares if we don’t get a single conviction, so long as we save lives?”

“He wasn’t talking about beating information out of a suspect, Han.”

“Look, I’ll be the one to take that hit, okay? My career is fucked anyway. We need to know where Akahata’s going with those bombs.”