When Hiroshi got to his office, Akiko was in her seat at work on her computer. He was so pleased she was back, he shut his eyes and stood by the coat rack for a moment.
“You missed the morning meeting. The chief called. Ishii is waiting for you. And check the notes on the back of your computer…” Akiko rattled off a list, a delight just to hear her.
Hiroshi tried not to look immensely relieved as he hung his coat on the rack and disinfected his hands. “How did you manage to escape?”
“Sakaguchi said I’d contribute better from here. He’s making more decisions. It’s great he’s going to be chief, isn’t it?”
“I hope he doesn’t get chewed up by the bureaucracy.”
“I think it’ll go the other way. Would you want to go up against him?”
“Wouldn’t ever think about it.” Hiroshi headed for the espresso machine—a double for him and a double for her—to celebrate her return.
Akiko clicked away on the keyboard. “Look at all these unanswered emails. Did you read any of these while I was gone? And I still need to finish calling a couple more hotels and ports. Ueno wants me to translate for him.”
“Translate?”
“Sakaguchi wants to have another go at that American guy, Tim. He’s the one who saw Patrick last.”
Hiroshi finished his espresso. “Where’s Ishii?”
“She’s at Nine Dragons.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Hiroshi remembered Sakaguchi told him that on the phone.
“The chief arranged with the Chinese Embassy officials to let us sit in on interviews with clients. Special privilege, he said. You weren’t here so she went on her own.”
“I better catch up with her.” Hiroshi headed to the coat rack.
“I think she can handle it.” Akiko scowled.
“That’s not what I meant.” Hiroshi put his coat back and called Ishii. It took a few rings.
Ishii whispered when she answered. It sounded like her hand was cupped over the phone. “The chief insisted I go ahead without you.”
“Isn’t Sugamo or Osaki with you?”
“They were busy. Takamatsu didn’t answer this morning. There was something strange in how Sugamo and Osaki put me off. They must be covering for him.”
“Takamatsu is trying to find Nozaki. I should have stopped him.” He checked for a reply from Takamatsu, but there was nothing. He texted him again.
“These interviews are a waste of time. It’s just apologizing to clients for screwing their accounts up.”
“We better find Takamatsu. I’ll meet you.”
“Text me when you’re near and I’ll leave. I’ve had enough of listening to rich investors whining.” Ishii hung up.
Hiroshi put his coat on.
Akiko looked up. “Where are you going?”
“To find Takamatsu.” Hiroshi hurried downstairs and out the front door to grab a taxi.
In the taxi, Hiroshi called Sakaguchi.
“I didn’t send Ishii there,” Sakaguchi explained. “It was the chief. It’s his last case, but he’s acting like it’s his first. Coroner narrowed the time of death down. Not sure that helps any. The grandmother was choked. No sighting of the girls or the father.”
“They could be anywhere. Nozaki could be anywhere.”
“I’m stuck in a meeting for another hour. It’s starting now.”
“You don’t know where Takamatsu went?”
“He said he’d be with you,” Sakaguchi whispered and hung up.
Hiroshi called Takamatsu but got no answer. Takamatsu screwed up following his hunches a few times before, putting himself and the case in danger. Settling an old score with Nozaki wasn’t likely to improve his judgment this time, either. When Tim bent his wrist, it was the first time he’d seen Takamatsu get hurt in a fight.
Hiroshi put his phone away and watched the flow of traffic. The road south was wide enough that taxi drivers could park along the curb to take a nap, a rare chance on Tokyo’s cramped roads. New apartment buildings loomed on either side, forming a corridor of affluence down the center of moneyed Minato Ward. The elite names of the areas alone jacked up real estate prices. The buildings, tall and solidly built, stored wealth in their floorspace, upper-floor views, elegant construction, and prestige.
When Hiroshi got out of the taxi, he called Ishii. She sounded relieved and said she’d be right down. He called Takamatsu again. No answer. When he hung up, his phone rang. Akiko. “Give me some good news,” he begged her.
“I think we might have found something.” Akiko hummed pleasantly. “We talked to that American guy, Tim.”
“Already? You went alone?”
“Already. Ueno was right beside me and two guards stayed inside the room. All I did was translate.”
“And...?”
“We didn’t ask him anything. Ueno just stared at him. Even I was getting uncomfortable. Finally, Ueno had me tell Tim, in English, that if he didn’t give us something, we’d make sure he was deported by the end of the day.”
“He believed that?”
“He did. And then he whined and asked a lot of questions.”
“Americans love questions.”
“Ueno didn’t reply. He just sat there while Tim tried to bargain, debate, demand a lawyer. Finally, our silence drove him insane.”
“Americans can’t stand that.” Maybe he should bring Akiko with him on interrogations. She could be sweet and she could be vicious. Hiroshi pitied her boyfriends, past, present, and future. “So…?”
“So…Tim told us he dropped Patrick and the girls at an expensive hotel in Shinjuku. He couldn’t remember the name, but he described it well enough we narrowed it down. And sure enough, they had a father with two daughters there the night before.”
“Why didn’t they say something when you called the first time?”
“They said the mother was going to join them, so technically it wasn’t a father and two daughters. It was a family. Only the mother never arrived. The hotel apologized. Innocent enough mistake.”
“Innocent if nothing happens to the girls. We’ll head there.”
Ishii pulled out of the parking garage and stopped by the curb. Hiroshi got into Takamatsu’s usual front seat and they headed back to West Shinjuku.
Sakaguchi called.
“I thought you were in meetings all morning.”
Sakaguchi grunted. “I used this excuse to get out. We finally heard from the local koban.”
“Whoever is in charge of police box reports needs to speed things up.”
“Not their fault. Several local koban did report seeing foreign fathers with two daughters, but the chief wanted to announce it at the meeting.”
“So he’d get credit for it? Didn’t he understand this is urgent? Who let him keep it quiet?”
“Police commissioner I guess. I’m not cut out to be chief if that’s what I have to deal with every day.”
“You wouldn’t do that. Where were the sightings?”
“Most credible one was at Tokyo Station.”
“All right. We’ll head to Tokyo Station instead of the Shinjuku hotel.”
Without a word, Ishii changed lanes and took the next right.
Sakaguchi continued. “I told the koban inside the station to give this top priority. Ask at the outside gate. They’ll be waiting. I told the hotel to send their security footage. So take a look. We might not be too far behind. Any word from Takamatsu?”
“Not yet. I hope he didn’t… but I know he did.” Hiroshi hung up. Nothing to do about Takamatsu but wait for him to emerge. He’d call Osaki and Sugamo and work on them.
Ishii pulled in front of the old brick edifice of Tokyo Station that sat like a fancy brick dollhouse over the vast nexus of train lines, Shinkansen platforms, subways, and shopping arcades that stretched in all directions below.
Hiroshi hopped out and ran to the small door of the koban, his badge held out to the officer on duty. “I’m Hiroshi Shimizu, detective, homicide. My chief, Sakaguchi, said you had a sighting of a father and two daughters.”
The officer in charge picked up the phone and spoke for a few seconds. “The officer who helped will be here in a minute. We pulled all the footage for that time period. Is there anything else we can do?”
“Any idea which way they were heading?”
The officer spoke into his walkie-talkie. He turned to Hiroshi. “They told one of the officers Disneyland.”
Hiroshi wondered vaguely why they were heading there as if on vacation. But there must be some other reason than the rides.
A young officer ran up, stood rigidly, and waited.
Hiroshi pulled out the photos. “Were these the three you saw yesterday?”
The officer examined the photos carefully. “Hai.”
“Why didn’t you call us yesterday? We had this out everywhere.” Hiroshi closed his eyes.
The first officer picked up a stack of papers, printouts, faxes, and notes. “All these are requests to keep a lookout for someone. Every koban, city office, and worried mother in Japan sends them to us, as if everyone who comes to Tokyo goes through Tokyo Station.” He bowed deeply in apology.
There was nothing to do but let it go. “And where’s the video footage?”
The young officer waved them inside the small police box. He pulled out a laptop and set it on a file cabinet. He opened the video files, found the footage, and scrolled ahead to the right time stamp.
The video showed Patrick in front of the koban looking very nervous. An older Japanese woman talked to him. He held onto an overstuffed bag and shook his head. The officer fast-forwarded to the girls arriving. “The girls got lost. It happens more often than you’d think. You can see these two young women who found them, and I escorted them back to their father. If I’d known…”
“Any footage of where they went after that?”
“We found that too.” The young officer checked his notepad for the time, rolled forward, and a different video showed Patrick and his daughters heading into the Keiyo Line, the girls looking up at their father and trying to help carry the bags as they got on the express train to Disneyland.
“We called ahead to the koban and train station by Disneyland. They’ll have the video footage prepared when you arrive and stand ready to assist.” The officer bowed deeply and apologized again.
As he hurried back to the car, Hiroshi’s phone rang again. He listened, hung up, and ran to the car waving for Ishii to get the car started.