prostitutes more often than not. Usually such places prided themselves on secrecy and discretion, but here, where the typical client came for criminal activities, safety would be the greater concern.
Mariko hoped that might entail a security camera, preferably pointing straight out the door toward the blind spot.
She jogged across the street and into the lobby, where she was greeted by a loud and inevitable “Irasshaimase!” Ignoring the desk clerk who had just greeted her, Mariko scanned the perimeter of the ceiling, and indulged herself with a little fist-pump when she saw the lobby camera was facing the double glass doors that opened onto the sidewalk. She flashed her badge at the clerk—a skinny boy, easily intimidated—and said she’d like to review the security footage.
The kid didn’t know how to operate the CCTV system, but by now Mariko had spent enough time around these things that this one wasn’t too hard to figure out. She successfully cued up the morning of her assault, but her efforts were immediately rewarded with disappointment. The camera was aimed in the right direction, but it was mounted too high, angled too steeply. The little black-and-white screen showed her the lobby, the double doors, and even the legs and feet of a group of schoolgirls walking by. But the blind spot was still blinded.
Strange, she thought, to be able to identify high school girls solely by their legs. These girls had all decided on the same trendy shoes. They all wore scrunchy white socks, all of them pulled up to cover the calf. Mariko glanced at the time stamp again and wondered why these girls weren’t in school at eight forty on a Wednesday morning. Then she remembered: this was the morning after the Haneda bombing. All the city schools were closed.
Then came the next question: why were any of these girls out of bed? They could have slept in, yet here they were, all dolled up at eight forty in the morning. As soon as Mariko asked herself the question, she intuited the answer: they weren’t about to waste a day off of school by spending it with their parents. Better to stick to the routine, get out of the house, find the same group of friends they saw every day. Their city was under attack; they needed someone to talk to, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t do the trick.
Mariko wondered whom she might have turned to if she were their age. By high school her sister, Saori, was already using; she’d have sought consolation in getting wasted. That had never been Mariko’s style. In all likelihood she wouldn’t have had a boyfriend either. Mariko had never been able to keep them very long. Maybe some of the girls on the track team?
She knew the man she wished she could have talked to: Yamada-sensei. He had been so much more than a teacher to her. In some ways he’d been a grandfather, in some ways even a father. He knew exactly what it was like to have your hometown destroyed. He’d been in Tokyo the day the first bombs fell; in fact, some of those bombs were direct hits on the building he was stationed in. He remembered the firebombing in ’forty-five and he’d seen the city rebuild itself from the ashes. He’d have known what to say in times like this.
But he was dead, and Mariko had never fully forgiven herself for her part in that. She should have been at his side and she wasn’t, and maybe if she’d been there she could have stopped his killer. Maybe. That question would never be answered.
Now that whole drama was coming back around. She’d had her chance to put a bullet in Joko Daishi’s brain. Had she done so, a hundred and twelve people would have gone about their business on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. Instead, all those people lay dead. A dark cloud of dread hung over her city, all because Mariko had frozen up when she could have pulled the trigger.
Tonight she had the opposite problem. Instead of having an obvious solution but not enough guts to follow through, she had the will to find this woman in white but she’d run out of options. She had half a mind to find herself a ladder and a drill; if she reset the angle of the camera, maybe next time it could do her some good. There was no solving her problem retroactively, but she wanted to busy herself doing something.