within his expertise. In fact, he’d built one already; Mariko and Han had stumbled across it out in Kamakura. It was a bona fide sex dungeon that doubled as a hermetically sealed suicide chamber for the Great Teacher and his closest disciples. Could that have been just a maquette? Was the full-scale model lying in wait? Or—she could hardly forgive herself for thinking it—was it already jam-packed with frightened kids?
The mental image sickened her, but it also gave her an idea. “What if we’re going about this the wrong way?” she said. “We’ve been thinking about finding someone who saw something. What if we turn it around? He can’t keep these kids just anywhere. He needs a hell of a lot of space.”
“And?”
“He needs to minimize exposure, neh? That rules out a bunch of smaller locations. He’ll want one big location, two at most. Somewhere remote, but easily accessible for vehicle traffic.”
“Not remote. We’re already looking at schools.”
“What? Why?”
“Hiding in plain sight, Detective. It’s his way—or rather, it’s our way, and he learned it all too well. This country has been coping with negative population growth for decades. We’ve closed over a hundred schools in Tokyo alone. Every one of them is specifically designed to contain large groups of children.”
“Come on. Aren’t the locals going to notice a bunch of screaming kids at a school that’s been deserted all year?”
“Dead children don’t scream.”
The thought froze Mariko’s heart. What a perfect image for Joko Daishi’s next sermon: an ordinary school, ordinary classrooms, ordinary little desks, with a dead child sitting at each one. Then logic kicked in: how would he move the children there? Toss the bodies in the back of a van? One of those police choppers would have spotted them by now: a logjam of vans leading straight to an abandoned school. No, don’t go there, she thought. Don’t try to figure it out. Joko Daishi thought all of this through already. You don’t need to understand his logistics; you just need to find the kids.
She started the car. “I’m in Ebisu. Text me an address and I’ll—”
“Don’t bother,” said Furukawa. “We’ve already eliminated all the schools in your area. Continue to work your contacts. What did you hear from Kamaguchi, by the way?”
“Nothing useful. He doesn’t give a shit. Not his kids, not his problem. That’s what he said.”
“Hm. Disappointing.”
“That’s it? ‘Disappointing’?” Mariko picked up the phone and turned it off speaker. “Why don’t you have insiders in the Kamaguchi-gumi? You’re in the king-making business, neh? The yakuzas have kings too. Why don’t you make another magic phone call?”
“Oh, but I have. Detective Oshiro, if you think I am sitting back enjoying a fine whisky and waiting for you to solve all my problems, you’re very much mistaken. You are not alone in this. You are not even very important in this. Please, do your part and I will do mine. Are you certain you can glean nothing more from Kamaguchi?”
“Yes. He left.”
“Then I suggest you visit whoever is next on your list.”
He hung up, leaving Mariko with a dead phone. Not very important, he said. She’d see about that.
42
Despite being a general scumbag, Bumps Ryota had a special place in Mariko’s heart. He wasn’t the first perp she’d converted into a confidential informant, but he was her first narcotics CI, and since Narcotics was her dream job, he was a merit badge of sorts. He’d also leaped to the defense of Mariko’s sister, Saori, in a desperate attempt to prevent the yakuza enforcer Fuchida Shuzo from taking her hostage. Bumps got only partial credit for that; it was brave, but it didn’t offset the fact that he’d sold meth to Saori for years. That said, he’d taken a through-and-through to the gut from Fuchida’s sword, and since Mariko had suffered an identical wound, she supposed that made them scar buddies.
With all of that in his favor, it still had to be said that he lived in a shithole. Mariko found him just as he was leaving a dingy elevator in the dingy lobby of his dingy apartment building. The instant he saw Mariko, he turned and ran. Since he was tweaking, he didn’t think it through, which didn’t work out all that well for him. He spun face-first into the elevator door just as it was sliding shut. Mariko saw blood and guessed he’d broken his nose. Not to be daunted, and capitalizing on the fact that the impact with his face triggered the door’s retraction reflex,