could have been much worse.
That was no consolation to the six grieving families. In fact it added insult to injury, because while they were left with their pain, the rest of the country actually felt relieved. In any other year, a serial killer overdosing six children would be too horrific for words. The bereft families would find an outpouring of sympathy on a national level. But in the wake of Joko Daishi, popular consensus could actually make sense of the grotesque phrase “only six dead children.”
Tokyo’s Purging Fire, the international media were calling it. Mariko despised them for giving Joko Daishi that much credit, using his term instead of coining one of their own. But these were the same unthinking drones who used the phrase “ethnic cleansing” instead of “genocide,” blithely ignorant of the implied premise that some ethnicities were dirty, or else they could not be “cleansed.”
A hundred and twelve dead at Haneda, four in the intentional head-on collisions, twenty-four poisoned at St. Luke’s, a child and a kidnapper dead in a car crash, six more children killed by overdose. SWAT and HRT shot and killed seven cultists in the course of freeing the children held in Terminal 2—perfect justice, some said, for the seven kidnapped kids who never made it back home. Four more cultists died in Kikuchi Park, along with one of the Bulldog’s enforcers, who took a bullet through the liver and died in surgery. A hundred and sixty all told, with three times that many injured. Koji Makoto was consciously left out of the count. Captain Kusama, in his final public address, said the TMPD would not sully the names of the other victims by including Joko Daishi among their number.
Kusama had almost everything he needed to keep his job. He was well connected, graceful under pressure, and demonstrated a unique capacity for turning ugly truths into flattering semitruths. Striking preemptively, he made Mariko’s demotion and suspension public knowledge, but claimed the department had never lost faith in her. He said she had unique knowledge of the Divine Wind, which was true. He said that if she was to accept a special assignment to investigate the cult, she couldn’t afford the distraction of having other officers report to her—also true, though of course he neglected to point out that there was no such assignment. He also failed to mention that he’d formally barred her from the Haneda investigation. On the other hand, he did highlight her central role in the rescue of the three hundred and sixty-five children in the Shinagawa rail yard. This got Han off the hook for his seemingly miraculous “anonymous tips,” and it absolved Mariko of everything she did while under suspension. She would even be restored to her previous rank. The only cost was that Kusama got to take credit by proxy for everything she’d accomplished.
Yes, Kusama was as slippery as an eel. He even managed to pass off the Jemaah Islamiyah fiasco as a deliberate misinformation campaign, intended to offend Joko Daishi and coax him out of hiding. The only thing he couldn’t overcome was Japanese culture itself. When an organization failed, someone at the head of that organization was expected to fall on his sword. Not so long ago, that was the literal truth. Even today, the top-ranked sumo referees carried a tanto in the ring, the knife traditionally used for seppuku. It symbolized their willingness to commit suicide if they should ever make a bad call. No one expected seppuku of them anymore, but they were expected to commit professional suicide: if one of their calls was ever overturned, they had to tender their resignation immediately. Police work was no different. The TMPD had failed Tokyo. A hundred and sixty people were dead because of it. A prominent leader had to take a fall, and no one had cultivated a more prominent profile than Captain Kusama.
This was the new normal. Captains fell and disgraced detectives got their sergeant’s tags back. Mariko was to be decorated for honor too. Hence the seventy-five e-mails. She ignored them. Sooner or later she’d have to write a blanket reply, but she wasn’t up to it at the moment. Instead, she sent a short message to Lieutenant Sakakibara, asking him to delay the medal ceremony another week. She claimed she wanted her bruises to heal before everyone took photos.
* * *
Another week passed and she sent another e-mail. Terribly sorry, she said, but I forgot all about my class A’s.
It was sort