Year of the Demon

the chairs around, and sat opposite Mariko. “So, you know, seriously, are we cool?”

“Han, I don’t know. I don’t like you cutting it so close to the edge.”

“This is narcotics, not beat cop stuff. We work with dirty people. Sometimes we need them to dime each other out, and we have to get out of their way and let them do it.”

“And sometimes we need to put them on their way to doing it?”

“Now and then, yeah, we do. Mariko, I know where the lines are. I might get close to them sometimes, but I promise you, I’m never going to cross them. Not while we’re partners. Okay?”

Mariko looked at the floor and took a moment to think. Then, with a weary sigh, she looked back at Han. “Fine. But the coffee and donuts are on you.”

“Extra coffee in your case. You look like you could use it.”

30

Mariko insisted on doing the driving, needing to feel at least that much control over how things were going. She had to admit that if Han hadn’t strayed so close to the edge, they’d have no leads at all. Kamaguchi Hanzo had already given her everything he knew. National Health Insurance had an address on Akahata, but until Mariko could charge him with something, there was nothing she could do with it. The same went for the address and phone number on Hamaya Jiro’s business card: there would be no wiretaps and no stakeouts without probable cause. If it weren’t for Han’s CI, they’d have nothing.

“Tell me again about this CI of yours?”

“Name’s Shino,” Han said around a mouthful of danish. “Weird kid. Totally obsessed with basketball.”

“What’s weird about that?”

“He’s not even your height. The kid couldn’t palm this coffee cup. But man, he sure likes wearing those jerseys. When you meet him, don’t call him Shino. Call him Shaq. Or LeBron. He’ll love you for that.”

Mariko laughed and shook her head. Her world was full of nicknames. Kamaguchi Hanzo was the Bulldog. Shino was LeBron. Han’s real name wasn’t even Han. It was Watanabe, but four or five years ago Sakakibara saw his floppy hair and long sideburns and called him Han Solo, and everyone had called him Han ever since. Mariko assumed she’d be wearing the Frodo badge for at least that long.

She found it strange how important naming a thing could be. It was illegal for her to keep tabs on the house Shino was staking out for them, but she was well within her rights to check up on a CI and make sure he was okay. Han seemed to look at his decision to deploy Shino the same way: perfectly fine if you called it this, against regulations if you called it that, clearly illegal if you called it some other thing.

She didn’t like the thought of Shino sitting out there exposed, so she decided to shave some time off their drive by running code. There was no getting to him quickly; as ever, half of the drivers never noticed the lights and siren, and even if they had, the text from Shino said he was all the way out in Kamakura.

“Call him,” Mariko said. “Make sure he’s all right.”

“He said he’d call if—”

Mariko shot him a look that other women might have reserved for a cheating husband who asked for a lift to his floozy’s apartment.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll just go ahead and make that call, then.”

“Good idea.”

Shino didn’t respond to calls or texts. Mariko had half a mind to ask Kamakura PD to send a squad up to check on him, but by the time she got patched through to them and explained her request, she’d almost be at her exit, and from there she’d probably reach her destination before they did. She kept the lights running hot all the way there.

The there wasn’t what she was expecting. They reached a ritzy neighborhood on a quiet street running the length of a ridge that overlooked Kamakura. In the gaps between houses Mariko could see the ocean, glinting in the morning sun. Some of these backyards would give an overlook on the Great Buddha. The bare fact that they had backyards meant that these people made more money than Mariko would ever see in her lifetime. The hot tubs in this neighborhood were bigger than her kitchen.

“Are you sure this is the place?” she said.

“You want see the same text I showed you a minute ago? He’s got to be right around—oh, got him. The shitbox.”

Mariko looked where Han was pointing, and sure enough, there was a beat-to-hell Toyota Cressida parked along the curb. There was a maxim in police work: shitheads drive shithead cars. Given the choice of two vehicles that were having trouble staying between the lines, you pulled over the beater. That was where a highway patrolman was going to make his lucky drug bust, and that was where a narc was going to put his GPS tracker.

“Hey, LeBron,” Han said, getting out of the squad to approach the vehicle, “you were supposed to stay awake, buddy.”

Mariko pulled up on the opposite side of the Cressida. It was empty. “Han, what the hell?”

“I don’t know. Maybe . . . maybe he got out to take a piss or something.”

“Where? Look around you.” It was a sunny morning on a beautiful lane bordered by flower gardens, manicured lawns, and trees trimmed by professional gardeners. There was no sign of a public restroom, a Porta Potty, or Han’s CI.

“You said he’d be okay. You said you told him to stay away from danger.”

“I did. Come on, help me look for him.”

Canvassing the area houses went quickly. Han rang the doorbells while Mariko circumnavigated the premises, checking windows. It was on the tenth house that she found something suspicious. “Han, did you say this kid likes basketball?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there’s a guy in this basement wearing a Lakers jersey.”

Mariko knocked on the back door, waited all of two seconds, then kicked it in. With Han she cleared the place room by room until they found the way downstairs. The guy in the yellow jersey lay facedown at the foot of the stairs. His skin was bright red, almost as if he’d been sunburned. He was small, just as Han had described Shino, and he wasn’t moving.

Something about the redness of his skin stirred deep in Mariko’s memory, but she didn’t have time to go fishing for it. She waited only long enough for Han to check Shino’s pulse. “Dead,” Han said, and he and Mariko moved swiftly through the house, clearing it room by room. If the kid’s killer was still on the premises, their first duty was to find him.

The house was weird as hell. Every room said cult, though not a single aspect of it matched what Mariko imagined they’d be getting into. A cult that pushed ice on its members to “liberate” them conjured images of a meth den in her mind, but this was no sunless, stinking fleapit. If anything, it was too clean, not like a hastily wiped-down crime scene but like an iPod fresh out of the box. Not a speck of dust to be found. OCD clean. Cult clean.

The basement was huge, a wide, open space of white walls and soft white light. Round cushions stacked in the corner were probably for meditation. Judging by the stack and the floor space, thirty people could sit in seiza down here. Posters adorned the walls: charts of what looked like yoga poses, an arcane calendar based on planetary cycles, paintings of demons and prints of demon statues. Han took pictures of everything with his phone.

The rooms on the ground floor looked like they belonged to another building entirely. Cute, quaint, lots of floral prints; Mariko’s grandmother could have decorated them. They had a model home sort of feel, more to be seen than to be lived in. And the second floor felt completely different again, as if the whole house were schizophrenic—or, more likely, as if the house was a cult headquarters whose owners intended it to seem perfectly normal to anyone peering in through a window. The master bedroom was clearly well used, designed to serve as part-time opium den, part-time sex dungeon. The paraphernalia amassed there suggested orgy-level participation in both activities. The doors fit so well to their frames that Mariko could feel the air pressure shift