the second bomb went off. I saw the people you murdered. Some of them . . .”
She clenched her jaw and blinked hard against the tears. She’d never experienced grief so violently as this. But she’d be damned if she would let this bastard see her cry. “There was so little left of them that you couldn’t tell where one body ended and the next began. Their families didn’t even have enough to cremate. A hundred and twelve people, all dead, all because of you.”
“That was Koji-san’s doing.”
“No.” In two strides she crossed the room to an antique rolltop writing desk with an old-fashioned rotary landline phone. Her pistol sights never left center body mass. “Not Joko Daishi. Not the Divine Wind. You. You trained him. You set him loose. So the only question left to me is, which one do I pick?”
She swept up the phone in her right hand. “I can call for backup or I can shoot you where you stand. One way or the other, you’re middle management in a terrorist organization and I will see you burn.”
24
“What do you mean?” Captain Kusama Shuichi asked his secretary. “He just walked through the front door?”
“Yessir.” Junko, his secretary, was a joyless golem who nonetheless took great care in doing her job, and was therefore extremely good at it. She was the only person in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department who outshone Kusama in personal grooming. He’d never seen a fleck of lint on her uniform, nor the smallest smudge on her shoes. But whereas Captain Kusama took pleasure in looking his best, with Junko it was as if her operating system didn’t support messiness software.
“When?” said Kusama.
“Thirteen minutes ago, sir.” This was one of the longest sentences she’d ever spoken to him. She did not need to consult her watch.
“Thirteen minutes? Why didn’t you tell me immediately?”
She blinked at him.
Damn it all, he thought. Junko was nothing if not punctilious. If he told her to hold his calls, then that was what she would do, even if the cause for the interruption was capturing the most wanted man in the country.
“All right, Junko-san. That will do. Thank you for alerting me so . . . scrupulously. Oh, what floor—?”
“Eleven.”
Narcotics Division. That was strange. Given the nature of the Divine Wind cult, Organized Crime was the more natural fit. Not that it mattered. In the end, Kusama would put the man wherever he damn well pleased—at the end of a rope, soon enough, but this morning he’d allow Sakakibara’s boys to handle him.
Captain Kusama donned his jacket and cap, then gave himself a quick inspection in the mirror on the backside of his office door. He knew what the rank and file would have whispered about him if they saw him straightening his tie. Vain. Hungry for the spotlight. Gunning for elected office. Sometimes the rumors stung—Kusama wasn’t immune to the judgment of others—but he found he could take comfort in being so thoroughly misunderstood. His obsession with public image had not the slightest thing to do with vanity.
Too many cops never grasped the simple truth: effective policing was first and foremost a matter of public perception. If the average man on the street believed the police were corrupt, he would live in fear. If he believed they were incompetent, he would live in fear. And the surest way to inspire belief in a department’s integrity and dependability was consummate professionalism. That was why the squad cars were waxed and the helmets were polished. That was why an officer in a dirty uniform was sent home without pay. Most cops in the rank and file thought all of this had to do with discipline. If they had been soldiers, they would have been right. But this was a police force, not a military unit, and everything they did was done in the name of public safety.
It was true that being in the spotlight had its perks. Kusama couldn’t deny that. There were days—maybe even most days—when he enjoyed being the department’s point man with the press. When a Tokyo cop did something heroic, something to warrant his picture in the paper, Kusama was happy to be in the background of the photo. But when he spoke at a commendation ceremony, it was because honoring officers with medals and awards reinforced that all-important public perception that the police were an omnipresent force for good. It had nothing to do with one man’s public image. The pictures in the papers