Year of the Demon

on sight as a cyanide killing. Are you trying to show me up?”

“No, sir.”

“Why the hell do you even know what death by cyanide looks like?”

Mariko shrugged. “My dad was in plastics manufacturing. Cyanide poisoning is a serious risk in that line of work.”

“Which you know because . . . ?”

“He died when I was in college. We didn’t know why right away, so I did lots of research on the kinds of things that could kill you at his factory. It wasn’t cyanide that got him, but I remember the bit about the red skin. Something about too much oxygen in the blood.”

Sakakibara shook his head. “You must be hell to play in Trivial Pursuit. Now do me a favor and apply that weird brain of yours to this case. What can you tell me about this cult?”

“Not as much as I’d like. We know what their leader looks like but not his real name. We know the names of two associates but not where they are. We know they can cook meth, we’re assuming they can cook MDA, and we know they’ve got no troubles acquiring all kinds of dangerous chemicals.”

“All right. What do we know about the house?”

“It’s rigged to blow,” said Han. When he saw a hazmat guy whip his head around, he quickly added, “You know, so to speak. Jug number one is sodium cyanide, neh? Jug number two is full of hydrochloric acid. You open the valve connecting them with a little knob in the cult leader’s Throne Room of Carnal Pleasures.”

“Excuse me?”

“Bedroom, sir. Oshiro’s the one who figured it out. Open the valve, let the acid mix with the cyanide, and you get a big cloud of hydrogen cyanide gas.”

“Cute.” Sakakibara switched his focus to Mariko. “You remembered all of this from your college chemistry notes, I assume?”

“Google, actually. Looked it up on Han’s phone while you were en route.”

“Aha.” Sakakibara scratched the back of his head, making his hair shift on his head as a single unit, as if it were a helmet. “So you’re thinking what? Crazy-ass cult leader rigs his headquarters so he can stage a mass suicide if a police raid goes Waco?”

“That’s about the size of it, sir,” said Mariko.

“How does that explain the dead kid?”

“Obviously they didn’t kill him with the gas,” Han said, “since we found him in the basement.”

“Which your dumb ass sent him to,” said Sakakibara.

“Yes, sir.” Han tried to stay professional, not morose. “The bedroom’s hermetically sealed. The basement isn’t. We’re guessing only a special chosen few get to die with Joko Daishi. Everyone else probably commits suicide downstairs.”

Sakakibara frowned. “So what, they drag this poor kid into the house and cram a fistful of cyanide down his throat?”

“Probably not,” Mariko said. “We think they’ve got another supply, probably something portable.”

Her LT’s scowl deepened, forming two deep furrows between his thick black eyebrows. “How’s that?”

“Our suspect, the one who calls himself Joko Daishi, he sees himself in the business of liberating souls. When we first got onto the hexamine, we were thinking MDA, so ‘liberating’ means getting people high—bringing them into a hallucinatory state, neh? But lacing the MDA with cyanide, that’s a different story. In that story, ‘liberating’ means inducing hallucinations and then inducing heart failure.”

Sakakibara crossed his long arms in front of his chest and looked at the house. “You find any evidence that they’re cooking in there?”

“No, sir,” said Han. “The house seems to be a base of operations, kind of spiritual headquarters. We’re thinking they must have some other place to cook their meth and MDA.”

“And lace it with cyanide.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sakakibara’s frown returned. “So somewhere out there, there’s a band of nut jobs with another barrel of cyanide.”

Mariko nodded. “We think so, sir.”

“And they’re not a hey-look-at-the-pretty-lights kind of cult, are they?”

“More like a hey-let’s-all-drink-the-Kool-Aid kind of cult, sir.”

“Then you two have your work cut out for you,” said Sakakibara. “Don’t waste your time talking to me; get your asses moving.”

Mariko blinked and looked at him. “I’m not sure we can, sir.”

Sakakibara squinted at her. “Excuse me?”

“Sir,” she said, “we’re onto this house because of the Shino tip, and that violated search and seizure. Because of the house we’re onto the cyanide, but if we follow that lead, we’re still in violation. Anything we find is inadmissible. Isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” said Han, shamefaced, “and I was kind of thinking you were going to suspend me.”

Sakakibara growled, almost like a bear. “Suspend you? I ought to burn you at the stake.” He gazed pensively at the ground and ran his fingers through his wire-stiff hair. After a long, tense, uncomfortable silence he said, “Do we know for a fact that your guy Shino didn’t walk into this house looking to score?”

“Sir?” Han said.

“He’s a junkie, right? That’s how you know him? That’s why he was useful as a CI?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So? Can you say for a fact that he didn’t get bored, figure out your suspects were dealing, and walk into that house looking to score?”

“Well, no, not if you put it that way.”

“Then I don’t have to suspend you. Yet.” Sakakibara turned to Mariko. “If you haven’t noticed, Sergeant, there’s a major case here for you to solve. We’ve got a bunch of crackpots in this city who want to commit mass murder. So go do your job and catch them. We’ll sort out the due process questions after you’re done. Frankly, I don’t give a shit if we don’t get a single conviction, so long as we prevent a string of homicides. And you,” he said, rounding on Han, “I’ll wait until after you’ve closed this case before I skin you alive.”

BOOK SIX

AZUCHI-MOMOYAMA PERIOD, THE YEAR 21

(1588 CE)

32

Daigoro swung his bokken and missed. His target was too damned fast.

“Try again,” said a smiling Tomo, and Daigoro tightened his grip on the haft. Tomo threw the next ball. Daigoro stepped up and snapped at it with his bokken. Another miss.

“I don’t understand it,” he said. “You hit the damnable thing every time and you’ve never so much as picked up a sword.”

“Sir, perhaps all your kenjutsu has been for naught,” Tomo said with a laugh. “At least when it comes to