The sun's first rays crossed the cold sky. Mayama Tôru found himself stumbling alone over some downtown sidewalk, searching for Asakura's face under the semaphore. In the basement office, Nonomura Koutarou and Kondoh Akio saluted the white flowers which adorned Taniguchi Tsuyoshi's desk space. Somewhere in the streets above, Kido Aya's car carried her and Shibata Jun to the relative safety of the Metropolitan Police Headquarters.
In the darkened conference room, Saotome faced Madarame and spoke in tones of subdued incredulity. "What? Shibata was able to escape? Why couldn't you handle a single young girl dying of a stab wound?"
"It's because I was completely deceived by Tsubosaka and Kido," Madarame defended himself, standing at attention.
"Tsubosaka? That old codger from Maru-boh?"
"Tsubosaka had been an excellent detective," Madarame stated firmly. "He didn't come from Maru-boh, he came from public safety."
Saotome's eyes twitched for an instant, and he brought the sole of his foot up hard into the young man's solar plexus, knocking him backwards to roll moaning onto the floor. Saotome relaxed against the back of one of the chairs and looked down on Madarame as he twisted and groaned, clutching his chest. "For you to not even have known that," the administrator said quietly, "Is abominable."
The Sweep chief propped himself up with his legs, forcing half of his torso up in order to meet Saotome's eyes. "His life as a detective was everything to him," he grunted quickly, his slick hair ruffled and his face full of supplication. "The man gave up money and fame, and lost his family, standing as a detective alone, gave it all up to go to the crime scene and put himself in the way of men who stand above the law. That's why--"
His words were cut short by the blow of Saotome's knee against his face. Madarame was knocked backward again, twisted, pressing his grimacing face to the carpet. Saotome towered above him and barked like a rabid dog, "Don't you dare bring up the past!"
The administrator's cell phone began to ring, and he reached into his jacket to retrieve it as he stepped away and turned his back. "What is it," he breathed irritably, his sullen eyes darting back and forth as he listened to the response. "You found Shibata? Where?" Another pause. "Here at Headquarters?!" He began to grin, his vaguely spastic face twitching at the mouth to reveal his teeth. "Got it. I'm on my way."
He cast a last glance at Madarame, slill lying in a heap on the floor, then walked past him as he returned his cell phone to his inside pocket and headed for the door past the giant cabinets, beside one of the picture windows that stretched from floor to ceiling to offer the only illumination in the room.
Madarame coughed, fighting to take a full breath as the door slammed. At last he raised his face, and found Aya lingering in the doorway in the opposing corner. He lowered his eyes and exhaled, and spoke before meeting her gaze. "You did this to me," he said.
"I never had no plans to betray you," she said, holding her merciful dark eyes on him. "If you were after the truth the same as us, maybe someday everything'd be forgiven."
"And," he asked, "What if that day never comes?"
Aya let her eyes sweep back and forth through the shadows. "Then," she murmured, "Maybe then it's time to just be human and admit you took the wrong path."
Madarame uttered a single low chuckle and pointed his snicker at the ground. He looked up at her again. "You always tell it like it is."
"I'm a woman," she said at length.
He looked hard at her, and inclined his face. "I'm a man," he said.
Aya stepped through the door, letting it close softly behind her, as she brought a little glass of water, beaded with gems of condensation, across the room to place it on the shallow carpet before him. She squatted down in front of him, and rested her chin on her hand and elbow on her knee.
He looked at her for a moment, then drained the cup, tilting his head back, and put the empty glass back in front of her with a solid tap on the floor as he exhaled with the quenching of his thirst. Then he staggered to his feet, walked out the door through which Saotome had gone, and left Aya alone.
In the failing light of the conference room, with the vague, fluctuating patches of sunlight oscillating over the stark and indifferent furnishings, she remained crouched on the floor, and began to weep. She stared into the haze of shadows, her palm pressed to her cheek as the tears streaked down to her hand.
"You bastard," she sobbed, "You stupid bastard..."
Shibata had stood pondering her little police notebook, holding it at arm's length in the corridor, for some time, meditating on the the police insignia, and the children's name tag decorated with a cartoon strawberry on which the three characters of her signature were scrawled. When at last she lowered the notebook, her eyes found Saotome standing very still before her on the chessboard carpet. "I'm glad you're safe," he intoned.
Her melancholic face paled for a second at the sight of him. Then she thanked him formally, and allowed a polite smile to replace her solemn expression. She held her smile steady as she stepped slowly forward in the corridor, and the loose shoulder of her overcoat brushed the sleeve of his jacket as she passed him.
Somewhere between the treetops and the sky, with the crow's dark call in the distance, Mayama stood behind the guardrail of some overhead structure and gazed toward the horizon.
The proverbial hurricane had swept through Keizoku's basement office, leaving every flimsy tome from the shelves open and disheveled, half of them missing from their places and spread to cover the floor and desktops with a haphazard armour of paper. In the midst of that disarray sat Shibata Jun, hunched over and unkempt, fervently flipping toward the final inconclusive pages of the last bound volume on the scarcely-visible floor. She flung the book aside, frowning with frustration. "So strange..."
"Shibata--?" came Nonomura's voice in a tone of surprise and concern. Shibata raised her eyes and found him and Kondoh standing above her amid the clutter. "You're quite alright?"
Shibata's face crumpled sourly as the sensation of the knife hole in her back flooded back to her. "Ah--now that I remember it, the pain's coming back--" she said, drawing a stiff arm around behind her.
"Agh, ambulance, ambulance!" Nonomura cried, waving Kondoh to the paper-laden desk cluster on which only the vase of Taniguchi's white flowers emerged from the wreckage. Kondoh dashed to the other side to dig for the telephone, wondering aloud how in the world he would find anything. Shibata placed her elbows on the desktop and drew herself up to face Kondoh as he made his frenzied call. "Er, about Mr Mayama's shooting incident of seven years ago..." she began tentatively.
Kondoh continued on the telephone, directing the paramedics to a place two floors underground. Nonomura cleared his throat. "If you're asking about the data for that case, there isn't any," he said, waving his arm.
Shibata uttered a little cry of surprise, turning suddenly toward him.
Nonomura shook his head. "Why do you need it?"
"Mr Mayama is attempting a confrontation with Mr Asakura, at the place where he fired on Mr Asakura seven years ago, when he was in high school. I want to know that location." Nonomura made no response, and Shibata raised herself up to a vertical position. "Where is the data?"
"No, I, uh, don't know, either."
"You can't not know!" Shibata cried, rushing toward him and catching her foot on a random binder along the way. "In this room, you once had a conversation with Mr Taniguchi in which you said you had that data with you, didn't you?"
Nonomura turned his sour face away. "Me and my big mouth."
"Aha, I knew you'd know it," she said accusingly.
"Eh?"
"If you know it, then please tell me!" Shibata said, pointing her finger at him.
"Unnh, if I tell you, you'd probably go to the scene..."
"Yes."
"Then forget it!" Nonomura pronounced, shaking his head emphatically. "I won't allow it!"
"But, what if no one goes--" Shibata cried in protest, then softened her tone. "Mr Mayama... will really become a murderer..."
"Mayama is a murderer!"
"Do you truly think so?"
"Didn't I see it myself?" Nonomura cried, shaking an invisible knife, "Mayama stabbing Taniguchi to death!"
Shibata blinked and wrinkled her brow, absently scratching the corner of her face as she looked downward. "Er, Mr Mayama stabs Mr Taniguchi to death... What would be his motive?"
"That," he conceded, "We haven't figured out."
"Wouldn't you say that if he had no motive, there's a possibility that he wasn't the culprit?"
"There are those who can murder even without a motive," Kondoh interjected, causing Shibata to turn a tender face toward him. "It's likely that Mr Mayama is a sociopath. A sociopath's general intention is to murder, so he wouldn't need any particular motive."
"But if Mr Mayama is really a sociopath," Shibata wondered, "Would there be any reason for his allowing Mr Asakura to go on living all this time?"
Kondoh turned his puzzled eyes downward behind his spectacles, and Nonomura remained silent.
Shibata paced slowly as she spoke, wringing her hands absently in front of her. "It's probable that Mr Mayama had been waiting for Mr Asakura to reach adulthood. At the time the incident occured with Mr Mayama's younger sister, Mr Asakura was still in high school. The law would not apply to him," she mused. "Therefore, Mr Mayama didn't shoot him. Mr Mayama's a detective!" she exclaimed, spinning around to Nonomura. "Even in the face of evil, he chose to conform to the law and not judge Mr Asakura for himself. So he counted on the only potentiality there was."
"Which is?" asked Kondoh.
She gazed back at him. "That Mr Asakura is a sociopath, and would once again perpetrate a similar indiscretion," she said.
"Good God..." Kondoh breathed.
"I believe that to be the reason for Mr Mayama's observance of Mr Asakura all this time."
"Well, then why now..."
"I believe it is because Mr Meguro regained his consciousness."
Kondoh emitted a rising groan of the utmost perplexity as his eyelids fluttered behind the thick glass.
"Mr Meguro had been deathly afraid of Mr Asakura. In a comatose state such as he was, the recovery of his senses had been denied. Mr Mayama must have obtained some sort of information concerning Mr Asakura, from Mr Meguro just before he died," Shibata offered as she scratched the back of her hand.
"Then just killed him when he'd filled his purpose," Kondoh supposed.
"No," Shibata said. "I think that he probably committed suicide in compliance with his programming."
"Programing?" Kondoh echoed dubiously.
"A program of suggestion," she said. "He furthermore placed the poison in his own coffee... And Maiko," she said, remembering her friend's fatal leap from the rooftop, "And if Mr Taniguchi could be manipulated so far as to stab me...
"Maiko had been instilled with jealousy toward me. And Mr Taniguchi was a man with a sense of justice far greater than average. Powerful sentiments brought forth by powerful suggestion, and by the power of that suggestion a trap is set for Mr Mayama and myself. A trap in which our very lives are at stake."
Nonomura met her eyes with a grim and wordless stare.
"If we act now, it's not too late. Mr Mayama can still be stopped from committing murder," she said, and the passion rose in her voice, "But only if we act now!"
"It is a terrible presentiment you express," said Nonomura. "If you plunge your neck into this case, you could be the next victim." As if to beg her, he said, "I don't want to lose another comrade."
Shibata stood firm, and her soft face set tight with determination. "I feel the same way," she said.
Nonomura went to her and placed his hands on her shoulders. "If Asakura is the offender, you'll be the first he'll aim at!" he pleaded, shaking her. "If anything should ever happen to you, I'd be to your father--"
"I'm a detective!" she cried. "Perhaps if my father were alive, this is what he'd tell me: Until you draw your last breath and your heart stops beating, seek the truth with all your might. That's what makes us detectives!"
Nonomura watched her with bleak and narrow eyes as she forced a smile while her eyes filled with tears. "Those were my father's last words," she said.
Soon Nonomura's fingers were on the combination lock, and he turned the key in the second lock to open the small safe. From under the pile of assorted sundries, he took a small box of downturned shells and a small black revolver, and held the gun out to Shibata. "Shibata," he said, "You load this gun. That's the condition on which I'll show you Mayama's file."
Shibata looked from him to the weapon, and slowly placed her right hand around the handle. She held the heavy object before her reclining eyes, and swallowed, then placed unsteady fingers around a single shell to cross her eyes at it. Nonomura kept his grim eyes on her as she clumsily opened the magazine and inserted the single bullet into the cartridge. She snapped it into place, and pointed the muzzle at Nonomura's face to show him. "It's loaded," she said.
He grunted affirmatively, stepping back a bit.
"Please show me Mr Mayama's file."
Nonomura turned toward his desk, lifted his jar of party mix, popped the lid, and dumped the entire jar over the desktop. Shibata let out a surprised syllable, and the assistant section chief sifted through the peanuts and pretzels to reveal a silver key on a paper clip. He dangled it before his squint eyes. "It was in there..." Kondoh breathed.
"At last the day has come to use this key," Nonomura pronounced, his eyes fixed dismally on it. Shibata watched uneasily, and Kondoh gulped hard. Nonomura brought himself to a low cabinet against the wall, adjacent to the alcove in which disorganized cardboard boxes held ancient data files. He twisted the key, and pulled open the drawer to lift up a tome by its binding. "It's been in there," Kondoh murmured.
Nonomura ran his finger down the columns of characters detailing the incident. "Hmm, here it is. Minato-ku, Shibaura, fifth district, number eight."
Shibata dug into her pockets for her cell phone. The two burly men in suits, whom Saotome had directed to follow members of Second Chapter at all times, and who had been lurking just outside the office doorway all the while, planted themselves just inside to peer at her through witless eyes set deep in humourless faces atop husky necks. Shibata dialed Aya's number, and as her call went through they took heed of the presence of the two robust escorts.
Keizoku's basement office was empty when the gruff female officer arrived to announce her entrance, wearing a neck brace. "Here are the gentlemen paramedics to escort Inspector Shibata Jun to he hospital. This way, please," she called out, indicating the untidy room with an upturned, welcoming hand. The two paramedics rushed in bearing a folded stretcher, dressed in blue uniforms and bowl-like helmets. The officer moved her torso from side to side to allow herself a panoramic view of the abandoned clutter. "She doesn't seem to be here," she said. Then her eyes found the two giant cocoons propped up against the chairs in the corner. There were the two husky escorts, motionless, enveloped in gauzy white cloth, their black eyes half-shut and unblinking, and their mouths stuffed with party mix. "Looks like Kaziura," the officer mused.
"Is it these men here?" one of the paramedics asked. The officer cast her glance aside, then closed her eyes.
"You're really powerful, Aya," Shibata commented with obvious admiration. She rode beside Aya in the front seat, while Nonomura and Kondoh occupied the back.
"Those guys were just too weak," Aya replied nonchalantly, her hands resting on the steering wheel.
"You're a real monster," smiled Nonomura.
Aya looked back at him in the rearview mirror. "What?" she said with some belligerance.
"What did you say, Kondoh?" Nonomura stammered quickly, humourously attempting to shift the blame to his underling, who uttered a rising gasp of surprise.
"Aw, fuck!" Aya exclaimed as she caught sight of the Sweep vehicle right at her tail. Nonomura turned his ducking head around to see the black car that pursued them at a close distance, just outside the back window. Aya swung the car around suddenly into a Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-through, giving the pursuers no time to follow. They waited at the front of the store, just before the vertical advertisement banners and the life-size plastic statue of Colonel Sanders which grinned stupidly and held out its beckoning hands to the world. After an interval, Aya's car emerged from the drive-through with a screeching of tires, and the Sweep car resumed its pursuit.
Inside Aya's car, Nonomura raised the family-sized bucket of fried chicken he had procured, and wondered aloud what should be their course of action, as he bit into a breaded drumstick.
"Shouldn't we surrender now?" asked Kondoh in the driver's seat. Nonomura made no reply, only continued to munch his drumstick as Kondoh turned expectantly toward him.
Shibata and Aya emerged from the front door of the fast food outlet. Shibata took tentative steps out past the bushes and the Colonel, her keen eyes traveling all across the premises. Aya cradled her bucket of chicken in one hand, chomping on a drumstick in the other, and took a cursory look around. "Hey, c'mon, Shibata, let's get outta here," she voiced through her stuffed mouth, waving the drumstick and marching out on the sidewalk.
Shibata hurried beside her, stammering out the question as to whether Aya had got a receipt. As Aya mumbled out her negation, Madarame slipped out from the shrubbery to conceal himself behind the plastic statue. He darted furtively after the chattering women, keeping himself out of sight as they unwittingly paced onward, preoccupied their dialogue.
In Shibaura, on a semicircular escarpment on the pedestrian walkway at the side of the bridge, the lean figure of Asakura stood waiting with hands thrust into his overcoat, between the lamppost and the gaurdrail, overlooking the rippling waters below. Far in the distance, Mayama's voice shouted his name. The young man turned his handsome face and gazed over his shoulder.
Shibata and Aya hastily approached the bottom of the overpass, where the silhouttes of tall pillars propped up the roadway above and cast cold shadows on the rocky walkway. Shibata, panting, maintained her steady pace, but Aya slowed and dropped out of Shibata's footsteps, and at last lingered back and came to a stop with her hands in the pockets of her slacks.
Shibata noticed her lapse immediately and anxiously went back to her. "Huh, whats wrong?"
Aya looked uncomfortable and gestured into the shade. "Um, Shibata, sorry, you go ahead."
"Eh?"
"Bathroom, bathroom!" Aya said with self-conscious candor.
"Oh, I'll wait for you!"
"No, I'm not gonna have you wait for me!" Aya declared. "Look, I, uh..." She leaned close to Shibata, cupped her hand, and whispered something into her ear that made her utter a grunt of surprised amusement. "Ha, even though you're so young!" Shibata giggled.
"Don't say it so loud!" Aya chided with a playful shove to Shibata's arm.
"Oh. I'm sorry," said Shibata with a bow.
"Well, you go ahead," Aya said with a sweep of her arm, "Go on."
"Right," Shibata said, and toddled quickly off, mumbling, "You should've gone when you had the chance," under her breath as she headed deeper into the shade. Aya watched her colleague's retreating back become a silhouette which merged with the pillars and did not look back.
"Bye bye, Shibata," she said at last.
Madarame's boots knocked on the pavement as he appeared behind her. "Good job," he said. "The rest of the Sweep will be along to show it's true form soon enough."
"Then after you dispose of Mayama, we can slip away from the Sweep together," Aya breathed.
"Yeah," Madarame said.
Aya's features moved slightly in what might have been a nod. "Good," she said.
Madarame uttered a gruff apology, and brushed past her shoulder to head under the overpass. Behind his back, she turned and slipped something out of her collar, then turned back and called out to him. "Kiss me!"
He halted, but did not turn around, his stoic eyes fixed straight on the path before him. At last she ran to him, came to his front, threw her arms around his neck, and planted a deep and passionate kiss on his grizzled mouth. She kissed him for a long time, her white figure clinging to his black-clad form, which stood still, stalwart, with arms straight and motionless, impassive at his sides.
His eyes suddenly sprung open, and he shoved her violently away from him. He bent down, spitting, coughing out the bitterness in his mouth. "What the fuck did you give me!" he shouted.
Aya caught her breath and waved the torn package of poison by her cheek. "What's it like?" she asked coyly. "The taste of the kiss of death."
Madarame bent down, hacking, clutching his stomach, frantically straining to induce vomiting. He spat again and again, until he collapsed into a struggling heap on the ground. Aya panted, and sighed a final goodbye to the man at her feet whose groans soon dwindled into silence. She turned and staggered away, and walked wearily for several metres, dragging her feet toward the sunlight at the edge of the walkway.
She never made it to the end. The bullet from Madarame's gun, with a tiny puff of smoke, tore a gaping hole in the middle of her back. She lost her breath, and sank voicelessly to her knees, then dropped against the low concrete ledge, rocking back and forth in muted agony.
Madarame walked to her with the gun dangling in his hand, and looked down at her as she gasped helplessly for breath, her neck stretched over the low ledge and her contorting face pointed upward. "You of the Sweep," he said quietly, "Who did you think you were fucking with." He moved his jaws and tongue inside his cheek to bring up the capsule, and spat it violently aside, then left her pinned, propped up on her elbows, writhing and twisting on the ground.
She followed him with her dying eyes as she struggled for breath. "Shit," she groaned, gasping out her regret that she didn't finish him off. The electric lights on the ceiling wavered above her eyes, leaving traces in the dank atmosphere. "Shibata... our promise to go on that group date," she gasped, "I guess circumstances won't let that happen..." The lights spun overhead, and blurred beyond recognition as she began to wheeze, her lungs no longer able to hold oxygen. "I'm sorry..."
Aya's head, cradled on the dirty pillow of concrete, rolled to the side and smudged her cheek with thick filth as her field of vision closed. Her breath faded with a quiver of her jaw, and her eyes closed. At last, her head sank down along the side of the ledge, and she was gone.
In a deserted place where heavy square pillars held up a long overpass, Mayama faced Asakura, and a smile of satisfaction spread over his blood-smeared and unctuous face. "I'm happy," he said, and took his pistol from his hip, cocking it with his thumb, and bringing it straight into alignment with the head of his enemy. "I could never forget a damn thing, not for one minute!"
"I didn't do anything," Asakura shouted back. "Do you have any kind of evidence?"
"Nope."
"You've got no evidence, and you're gonna shoot me?"
"Yep!"
"You're strange. Won't this make you a murderer?"
"Guess so!" Mayama clipped with madness in his eyes as he gazed down the sight of the gun.
"And that doesn't bother you," the young man intoned, "Being a cop and everything."
"The evidence," Mayama said, holding the gun firm and still in his outstretched arm, "Is all gone, thanks to you. Your classmates. Meguro. The reportage writer Kee who was chasing me. Taniguchi from Second Chapter. Ôsawa Maiko. Like children throw away the dolls they get tired of, you threw 'em away like chewing gum that lost its flavour. That's how simple it is for you to throw away a person's life. And even though you get rid of all the evidence, the fact that you killed people doesn't ever go away. That's why I'm gonna kill you."
"If you kill me," Asakura asked, with bulging svengali eyes behind his glasses, "Do you know what'll happen to you?"
"Ha! Is that a threat? I don't care if I get slammed by the media, I don't care if the law gives me a fucking death sentence! I'll fucking wipe my ass with it!"
Asakura's face stretched into a strange and sinister grin, and he began to laugh like a demented clown, his arms and chest trembling with the vibration of his amusement. "I never killed anybody," he laughed. "I'm not even Asakura!"
As Mayama looked on him, it was as if he could hear another voice deep behind the young man's face, overlapping the voice that belonged to Asakura. "Three years ago, I had my face changed..."
And it was as if Mayama could see that stranger's face, contorting with desperate pleas beyond the laughing guise of the enemy. The helpless stranger begged for his life as his face, diluted with Asakura's, bled into the distorted mask of the hideous monster that advanced on Mayama, lurching forward with conflicting cries. "Kill me!" Asakura shouted, the trapped stranger pleading, "Don't shoot!" as Asakura seized the muzzle of Mayama's gun and shoved it into his own mouth, "Kill me!"
"Mr Mayama!" came Shibata's scream. Mayama turned, and in that instant the back of Asakura's head exploded under the wild and bloody mess of his long hair, rivulets of scarlet flowing down the collar and shoulders of his overcoat. As he fell backward, the blood spewed from his mouth and flowed down his neck and chin, and he collapsed heavily onto his back under the field of Mayama's gun.
Mayama looked over his shoulder and found Shibata, with the revolver held straight out in both of her extended hands, and he whispered her name in horror.
The next shot echoed out from the distance behind her. "Get down!" Mayama yelled, as Shibata dropped cowering to the ground, her hands pressed to her head. Mayama fired from the ground as Madarame emerged from behind the pillars, blasting richocheting shots toward him; Mayama fired back as he grabbed Shibata and pulled her with him behind one of the columns. He fired his last shot from behind it, then flipped the magazine of his pistol open to discard the empty shells. "Was that you that shot Asakura?" he asked her as he reloaded.
"No, it wasn't me!"
"Run!" he yelled, clutching her shoulder and forcing her hurriedly forward while he twisted his torso backward to exchange shots with Madarame far behind him. They fled together out the promenade, and disappeared around the corner.
"Mayama," Hayashida stated, his hands on his hips in Second Chapter's subterranean office, "Has finally killed Asakura."
"Really?" said Kondoh. His face and Nonomura's both bore abrasions indicative of a recent skirmish.
"As a result of Shibata's involvement in his escape, she will become a target in the Sweep investigation as well."
Nonomura, clutching his empty mason jar, raised his grim and hopeless face. "Shibata is Councillor Shibata Junichiroh's daughter!" he cried.
Saotome strode into the office wearing a faint smile. "It's alright," he said. "There will be no injury to her career. It will be a death in the line of duty. No need to worry."
Nonomura snapped and raised his jar, grimacing as he lunged at Saotome. "God damn you," he shouted, and attempted to smash the administrator's face with the jar, but the younger man deftly caught his hand, and likewise blocked the other arm when it raised up to strike him. He held and twisted the assistant section chief's wrists, bending them backwards until the aging man cried out in pain. He let him go, and walked away.
"Chief..." Kondoh breathed.
"Well, that's youth for you," Nonomura said, catching his breath. "Alas, the years have caught up with me," he smiled. "In the old days, they always said I could plow right through like a man of valour." He laughed with pride and nostalgia. "A great man once said, 'Until you draw your last breath, and your heart stops beating, chase the truth with all your might. That's what makes us detectives!� What excellent words those were. Do you remember?" he asked Saotome.
"Don't know," came the response.
"Really? Can that be? You don't remember? Those were your words."
The flesh once again twitched under the false Saotome's eyes as Kondoh narrowed his own eyes in puzzlement, and Hayashida and Nagao turned suspicious and questioning faces on the administrator. "Is that so," the man mused. "If you say so, it could be that a long time ago, lines such as those did come out of my mouth."
"Yes," Nonomura grinned, and chuckled as the administrator, followed by his two subordinates, silently left the office.
Shibata listened to the unanswered ring inside her cell phone, finally followed once again by the lifeless dialtone. She stood near Mayama in the abandoned theatre, lit by bare light bulbs, where peeling walls and the litter of yellowed newspapers testified to the general effects of neglect in the musty and uncongenial atmosphere. She closed her cell phone.
"What's up?" Mayama asked.
"I'm not getting through, either to Aya or Mr Tsubosaka."
"They're dead," Mayama said flatly.
"Stop it, don't make that kind of omen!" Shibata protested, walking toward where he sat against a rail on the ledge before what had once been the screen.
"I'd bet on it," he said. "They been taken out."
"Why?" Shibata asked at length.
"To erase the facts," Mayama said. "They had the truth in their existence. We're being taken for a ride, takin' advantage of how little we know. All that's left is some vague aggregation of memories in the face of the real deal. So, if you knock out the owner of the memories, you knock out any trace of the truth. Asakura knew that. And so Asakura knocked himself out."
"What for?"
"The guy we thought was Asakura," Mayama said, "Wasn't Asakura."
"Then who was he?"
Mayama rolled his head from side to side with infinite despairing cluelessness, and sighed heavily. "But, look, I got a hunch inside me like it's all over with. The man that had the face of the Asakura I hated enough to kill, is dead." He rotated his face, and coughed once. "If it wasn't Asakura I was aiming at, then he wasn't the one that died. Tsubosaka and Kido, and Taniguchi..."
He bent his neck toward his chest, groped at his side, and wiped his soiled face with an old, crumpled sheet of newspaper, then cast it aside, and did not speak for a long time. "Got any bullets left?" he finally asked.
Shibata offered a soft sound, reaching into her bag, which sat beside her on the crimson upholstery. She raised the revolver to hand it to him, but pointed the muzzle at his face. He smacked her on the head.
"Ow! Ha?"
"Away, away," he motioned.
"S-sorry," she said, turning the weapon in both hands so that the handle was the part which faced him.
He opened the magazine, and found that the single bullet in it was loaded last, preceded by five empty chambers.
"It wasn't me who shot before," she said, "So that shot is still remaining."
"Even though you got it loaded," he told her, rotating the magazine, "You'd have to pull the trigger five times before this shot'll discharge." He snapped the magazine closed in the proper position, and passed the weapon back to her. "Here, this way it'll fire the first time."
She accepted the gun with timid reticence, replacing it in her tote bag, and he stooped before her so that his face was level with hers. "Listen, from here, you go and hide in the nearest police box," he instructed. "And you forget all about Asakura."
"What about you?"
"It'll be only me that the Sweep aims at," he said, then stood up to face the exit. "If they knock me off, this case is all over and done with. There won't be anything left for the press, or anybody in the world, to know a damn thing about," he voiced as he strolled a few paces through the aisle.
"But that's ridiculous!" Shibata protested to his back, springing to her feet.
Mayama took one of his last cigarettes from the pack. "You want me to tell it to you as simple as I can, the way to the absolutely perfect crime?" he asked in quick, ephemeral breath clouds as he stuck the cigarette in his mouth.
"What's that?"
"Kill everybody that knows anything, and put 'em all deep in the ground," he said, and flicked on his lighter. "This case won't even go to continuing investigations," he continued in the wavering plume of smoke that rose upward and dissolved in front of his face. "That's how they'll avoid ever having to deal with a scandal. In the space of one year in Japan, there's maybe a thousand incidents of homicide reported. At the same time, there's shit reported like runaways, you know, and the number of people unaccounted for is in the fifteen thousands. If outta those there's even ten percent murders that aren't reported, it makes for the perfect crime with fifteen hundred people." He turned to gaze at her over his shoulder. "What we know as the truth, is only a part of it. Understand?"
Shibata held his gaze with steady and unblinking eyes.
"See ya," he said at length, and headed for the exit.
"The truth--" she called out behind him, stopping him in his path. "Certainly... there's only one truth," she insisted softly, watching his back, outlined in a mist of vapour and smoke. "Our duty is to find out what that is."
Mayama spoke slowly, keeping his face forward. "You're a wrongheaded broad," he said. "I just want you to stay alive."
As he walked slowly toward the exit, Shibata watched his dark cloaked figure with eyes brimming with tears.
Nonomura and Kondoh rested their elbows on the glossy surface of Nonomura's desk, contemplating the thick and empty mason jar that rested before them. "I think there must not be a thing I don't know about this party mix jar," the assistant section chief said.
"Not without anything on Scandanavian Airlines business class?" Kondoh proposed lightheartedly.
Nonomura chuckled without smiling. He indicated the transparent surface with an open hand. "Here's the Yorkshire Teriyaki Chicken," he said.
"I don't see anything," Kondoh groped, "Er, Marie Antoinette?"
"How does it go," Nonomura said, "Dynamic Dyke..." as he was joined by Kondoh in a singsong unison.
Shibata walked along the white brick walkway along the narrow road that passed the cemetary, and she came upon the funeral party, in its formal garb of black and white, sobbing dramatically as she transected its path. The crowd enveloped and swallowed her, chewed her up, and threw her and her tote bag down heavily onto the ground, scattering assorted sundries over the pavement. Among them was the Sweep radio, from which the grainy voices once again emerged.
"Discovered Mayama," the radio choked, detailing his pattern of flight from one location to the next. "Request immediate backup."
Shibata crawled on her hands and elbows and took the radio in her hands as she sat up.
"Roger. Sniping party en route."
"Approval for dealing of disposal granted. Terminate immediately upon location."
"Roger. Will terminate immediately upon location."
At last, Shibata held the radio to her mouth and depressed the button. "This is Shibata of the Second Chapter of the Primary Investigation Department of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police," she said softly. "I know the entirety of this case and have identified the true culprit. Please discontinue and withdraw mobilization of the Sweep immediately. If you fail to comply, I will reveal the extent of these incidents to the mass media."
She let go of the button, and waited for the reply.
"A formal directive is required for adjudication of discontinuance," crackled the radio. "Wait an hour."
Shibata paused for a moment, then held the button once more. "Understood," she said. "However, if you fire on Mr Mayama in the interim, I will make my move as promised."
"Understood," said the radio.
"Dispose of Shibata, too," Saotome commanded. He stood before the dripping sink in the lavatory, facing Madarame alone.
"Shibata didn't kill anyone," said the Sweep chief. "Wouldn't execution be somewhat extreme?"
"Madarame," said the administrator, peering deep into the other's countenance.
"Yes."
"What's the matter with your face?" Saotome asked, with the characteristic twitching of the flesh under his eyes. "It's all covered in red."
Madarame turned to see his reflection in the mirror. "It looks normal to me, sir."
Saotome slipped his fingers into the waist pocket of his jacket, and produced a small cutter. As he revealed the blade, Madarame's eyes passed from it back to his superior's face. Saotome locked Madarame's eyes with his own, and pushed the blade onto his own trembling hand, and dragged it in a straight and steady incision across the palm. He cut all the way to the side of his hand, then held it out to the Sweep chief's face, and passed his palm from one cheek to the other. Madarame dared not move, and his eyes betrayed the utmost fear of the madman before him, as first one cheek and then the other were smeared with a scarlet caress like war paint on his face.
"Look," said Saotome. "Your face is red, just as I said. There are no mistakes in the things I say. It is I who make the judgments."
Madarame stared back at him, unable to stir.
"It is alright for you to move now," Saotome said. "Go."
Madarame uttered a low affirmation, then turned and headed out the lavatory door, wearing the other man's blood, while the quiet faucet continued to drip.
In one dark room in the bowels of Headquarters, four men hovered over a computer screen, bathed in the striped glow it cast on their faces. "Different fingerprints?" Hayashida said.
As Kondoh, sitting at the keyboard, switched from one image to the next, Nonomura held his empty mason jar as he spoke to Hayashida and Nagao standing beside him. "At the time Administrator Saotome paid his recent visit to Second Chapter," he explained, "He left his fingerprints on this jar. When we superimpose his fingerprints from his time of induction into the police department, and his current fingerprints..."
Kondoh brought the two sets of prints together on the screen, and as they overlapped the red message was produced on the screen: Discrepancy.
"...We become aware that these are two completely different sets of prints," Nonomura said.
Hayashida nodded with a subdued combination of skepticism and intrigue as Kondoh looked up at him.
"Incidentally," Nonomura continued, nudging Kondoh in the shoulder. Kondoh clicked the mouse, and Nonomura pointed to the next image on the monitor. "These are the fingerprints Mayama collected from Asakura at the time of his adolescence."
The two prints merged, and as young Asakura's merged with those of the administrator, they locked together in a complete and indisputable match. "They conform perfectly to Administrator Saotome's current prints," Nonomura concluded.
Hayashida's jaw fell slack as he gazed into the elliptical labyrinth. "Oh, my God..."
The Sweep radio rode on the dash of Saotome's car as it rolled measuredly through the city. "We have isolated Mayama's location. He is in the dry riverbed of the Tamagawa in Otaku."
The imposter gripped the radio, and held it to his face. "This is Saotome. I'll arrive shortly. Stand by awaiting my orders in the interim."
As the day began its slow decline, casting the sky in a nebulous pink, Mayama stood among the tall brown grasses at the shallow banks of the Tamagawa and gazed intently on the limpid surface that reflected the melancholy pastels of the firmament and the old railroad bridge in its ripples. As the afternoon train passed over the bridge under the cloudless sky, he thought of Saori's face the day the cover was drawn from her drowned body resting at the water's edge. He turned away from the river.
Twilight deepened. In the little sunlight that remained as Mayama treaded through the tall and tufted reeds, the faint specks of light that were the windows of the houses on the horizon seemed to poke through as random dots on a jagged silhouette that became one contiguous entity along a fading sky. He marched languidly and unsteadily through the grasses that covered the dry riverbed, and at last all the sunlight was gone.
The points of white light in the distance were the only marker of an impalpable boundary between earth and sky. Mayama continued. He drew his breath, cold, exhausted, his mind airy and mad. He stopped and raised his eyes to the hill, where the five men of the Sweep advanced with the pointed cocking of their pistols. With eyes half closed and unmoving, he watched them.
"We've been waiting," said a familiar voice to his side. He turned his face in its direction, and found Saotome's dour face staring back at him in the blackness. "At last you killed him, Asakura."
Mayama waited, his head loose on his weak neck, before speaking. "It wasn't me that killed him," he said.
"It was you."
"Asakura is still alive somewhere."
"You're delusional."
Mayama's face broke into a smile and he laughed silently, knowing how useless were his words, how unbelievably absurd and utterly improbable was that which he knew for a fact, that no one else could ever be expected to believe him.
"I pity you," the administrator said quietly, nearly but not quite smiling. "I'll give you a little hint."
He gazed hard at Mayama, who met his eyes through the darkness, and the earth seemed to shake as something utterly hideous revealed itself in that space. Deep in the windows of Saotome's eyes, a vision of the red sheep leaped into existence. The red sunset. Blood-red eyes. Mayama's shoulder jerked as the awful truth materialized.
He raised his face up in horror. "Why didn't I realize it..." he whispered. "Asakura is you..."
The false Saotome grinned. "Do you think so?"
Mayama closed his eyes, and the visions flooded to him in a scarlet deluge of hiccuping images. He saw Saori's lifeless corpse floating on her back in the river. He saw Aya face up on a pillow of concrete. He saw Tsubosaka stretched out in his van, his round head streaked with blood. He saw Taniguchi thrusting the blade into his own gut. He saw the discovery of Tagaki Daichi's drowned carcass. He saw Kee on his back, impaled by arrows. He saw Saito Takashi's demolished head bleeding on the concrete stairs. He saw Takeyuki Ichiroh dangling in a noose from the basketball hoop. He saw Osawa Maiko make her fatal leap from the rooftop. He saw the false Asakura's head blasted open in the back, scattering chunks of grey matter through the air. Mayama's head fell back as he whispered, "Why?"
"It's a game," came Asakura's voice through Saotome's mouth. The tears rained down Mayama's filthy cheeks as his enemy continued, "Of all the games I've tried, from computer hacking to murder, this game has been by far the most exciting!"
Mayama's uncontrollable scream tore his throat and twisted his broken face as he sank helplessly toward the moist earth. He reared with dementia and whipped out his cocked pistol, shoving it toward Asakura's face.
The false Saotome held his eyes on Mayama and called out for Madarame. The Sweep chief stepped forward, with his gun set on Mayama. "Forgive me," he said.
"Mr Madarame!" came Shibata's scream, as she came racing from the embankment, the strap of her tote bag slipping from her shoulder as she shoved it on with one hand and held her revolver in the other, aimed viciously at Madarame. "If you fire at Mr Mayama I swear I'll shoot you!"
The false Saotome raised his sliced palm as he bared his teeth, and in the other hand slowly raised his own gun toward Shibata.
Mayama held his gun on the imposter, while Madarame held his on Mayama, and Shibata her own on Madarame, deadlocked in a four-way stalemate. The false Saotome parted his tight lips. "I wonder if you could ever shoot someone, Miss Shibata," he hissed through his teeth, his gun set on her in a quaking hand.
Shibata clutched the pistol in her hands and looked back from Saotome to Madarame. She pressed hard with her thumbs, forcing herself to cock it, bearing down with dread; but nothing happened. The false Saotome pulled his trigger, and with a muted pop the bullet pierced her ankle.
Shibata toppled instantly onto the grass. Mayama held his weapon still in mute amazement as the imposter rotated with a spastic neck sunken between hunched shoulders, sweeping the barrel of his own toward Mayama. Mayama shuddered furiously as he growled Asakura's name.
"Madarame!" the false Saotome shouted. "Fire!"
"That isn't Saotome," Mayama gulped with a gaping mouth, "It's Asakura!"
Madarame's uncertain eyes glanced back at Saotome, who shouted, "Madarame! Dispose of him!"
"Madarame!" Mayama screamed.
"It's my job. I'm sorry!" Madarame cried, and he pulled his trigger, firing one shot after the other at Mayama until the bullets were gone and Mayama tottered in the darkness. Shibata roused from her swoon to see the Sweep cheif lower his empty gun and command his henchmen to fire. They fired in unison, discharging round after round of plastic shells into Mayama's body, with hot flickers of gunpowder flashing in the cold air until the man's face was spattered with blood and he sank to his knees.
Shibata looked on in terror as Mayama's pierced body shifted its unstable position. "Damn you," he breathed, "You bastards..."
Mayama slid downward and collapsed into a heap in the wild grass, and at last was still before Shibata's eyes. The men lowered their weapons.
The false Saotome strode merrily, nearly skipping as he swung his arms at his sides with the gun still in his hand, toward the bullet-riddled heap that had been Mayama. He kicked once at the lump, then kicked harder, and again. "It moved until now," he remarked to himself, as Shibata stirred behind him. "I guess it's broken."
Shibata silently dragged herself unsteadily to her feet as the imposter continued his musings, kicking again at the body. "Where did the life go? Where did..."
He turned to catch sight of the young woman facing him, the Sweep men holding their weapons on her.
"Now I'll have understood what it feels like," she said, with a steady voice and melting eyes, "To kill someone." Slowly, as the subtle breeze tossed her wispy hair about her forehead, she pointed the revolver at him.
He fixed her with icy and unrepentant eyes, and the Sweep men cocked their weapons.
"Asakura," she decreed at length, "Please give yourself up. If you don't, I will fire!"
"I'm shocked!" he intoned ironically.
The tears bled from Shibata's burning eyes, blurring the spectacle of the man who stood before her. "Please surrender!" she screamed.
Saotome's stony visage held no expression.
"I really will shoot you!"
"A schoolgirl like you," he growled, "Could never shoot anyone!"
Shibata's teeth chattered in her tear-streaked face, and she beared down on her thumbs with all her might, but she was too slow. The false Saotome fired two rapid shots into her breast and belly. She reeled backward, her face wry and breaking, and fell to the ground.
He went to where she lay, and she looked up at him determination unbroken in her fading eyes. "Please give yourself up," she breathed.
"Shut the fuck up!" he hissed, and straddled over her to shove the barrel of his gun into her face.
"It's over, Asakura!" called the distant shout of Nonomura's voice from the hill. The false Saotome raised his head, and saw several tens of riot police with their shields and helmets assembled on the hill, alongside a squad of snipers poised and ready, all of them with their weapons raised toward him. Nonomura, Kondoh, Hayashida and Nagao stood stolidly in their wake.
"Your present fingerprints are consistent with those of the adolescent Asakura," Nonomura said. "You cut them off at one time, but fingerprints before long revert to their original form. It seems you didn't take that into account! You forced your face on some other young man, changed your own face, and masqueraded as Saotome. You murdered the real Saotome, and infiltrated the Metropolitan Police Department!"
The men made their descent down the hill to close in on the culprit.
"To figure it out now, you stupid assholes," he called as he stood over Shibata's fallen body, "Is nothing to be proud of!" With the gun drawn in one hand, he seized Shibata's scarf and pulled her body up by the neck like a bundle of luggage as he dragged it across the grass. "I'm different from all of you!" he intoned madly, lugging the young woman, whose eyes were barely open, with him toward Mayama's body. "For me, death is infinite. For you, death is the end of everything!"
Nonomura and the others stared in silent trepidation as the man crouched with his victims. "I won't let you cross over me!" He flailed his leg in a series of brutal kicks that rolled Mayama onto his back. "Broken doll," he breathed to the bloody face. "Rotten meat! Worm bait!" he spat at the men who surrounded him. "Worm bait! Worm bait!"
He erupted into a fit of insane laughter at the scores of his unmoving captors. "Go back to the earth, rotten filth!" he roared, and thrust the muzzle of his gun toward Shibata's skull.
Mayama's eyes sprung open and he seized Shibata from below, gripping his pistol in the other fist, and emptied five shots in succession into the enemy's chest, blasting wide, bleeding holes in the fabric of his trenchcoat. As he hugged Shibata close to him, he snatched Saotome's fallen weapon and cocked it, holding it in an outstretched hand at the tottering madman.
The imposter coughed, a rough strangled wheezing, as he looked down at a palm he lifted from his breast, and the torrent of blood that covered it. He held the hand out before his grimacing face as the blood ran through his fingers, and he choked, "Feels... wonderful..."
"Go to hell!" Mayama screamed, and fired one, two, three muffled, flashing shots into the false Saotome's gut. The imposter staggered, drew no more breath, fell to the ground, and at last was dead. Mayama squinted at the corpse, hesitant, as if expecting it to reanimate by some supernatural force.
Nonomura and Kondoh rushed toward them, Nonomura shouting for an ambulance and Kondoh screaming the same command to the minions behind him. Mayama rolled onto Shibata's body on the grass. "Hey, Shibata," he said, lifting her heavy, limp body and rocking her forcefully to rouse her, "Hey Shibata, you okay?! Shibata!"
Shibata opened her dim eyes. "Ah, Mr Mayama," she breathed faintly, "I thought you'd died just now..."
"I wouldn't die and leave you," he said, cradling her in his arms. "Look. Here. What I was shot with, it was plastic bullets. Not the real thing."
Madarame stood nearby, watching in silence.
Shibata looked up at Mayama, and smiled. "I'm glad," she whispered. He looked away and hoisted her up onto his lap as her breath came in shallow little moans. "Unh, um, Mr Mayama?"
Mayama looked at her questioningly.
"I just have one request," she breathed in a slow, forced rasp.
"What is it," he asked at length.
"Before I die, just once," she swallowed, "I want to know what it's like to be kissed. Will you show me that?"
"Whattayou saying," he said. "Don't make an omen like that." But when he took his hand from her side, he found it covered in the fresh blood that gushed out unstoppably from her broken body. His hand began to tremble.
Shibata was unable to open her salty eyes, and her words wavered in shrinking, declinging gasps. "M-Mr Mayama, where are you?"
"Right here, I'm right here," Mayama faltered. "I'm right here!"
"Don't be mean," she moaned. "Please come out. Mr Mayama, where are you?" she begged. "Mr Mayama..."
Mayama lowered his head, and pressed his mouth to hers. He held it there for a long time, and when at last he raised his face, her eyes finally opened, sparkling with the faint light of happiness. "Oh, Mr Mayama, you're here..."
Mayama smiled. "You shouldn't embarass an adult like that," he whispered.
Shibata held the smile on her lips, and slowly raised her right hand to her forehead. With the last of her strength, she held it to her crown in a final salute. As Mayama's eyes widened in horror, her hand fell away from her face, her head rolled back, and her body sank heavily into his arms.
He stared at her pale visage, then turned away, blinking as the tears welled up in his eyes. He tapped her breast mechanically as she lay stretched across his lap. "Shibata, let's go." Looking down at her immobile face, he fought down the strangled heave that rose from his throat. "You can't sleep forever," he said. "Let's go home." He lifted her and hugged her to him, pressing his chin to her head. "Your hair smells," he sobbed. "It stinks..."
He let her face sink back as he embraced her, staring at her silent and inanimate features. "Shibata. Let's go. Shibata...
"Shibata!"
As the others looked on, planted on the damp floor of the valley, Mayama finally lapsed into silent weeping as he cradled Shibata's lifeless body in the still quiet that remained of the night.
mystery 11 end
