Joko Daishi kept bleating his sanctimonious bullshit, but Kusama wasn’t listening. He needed a solution, starting with some excuse—any excuse—to hold Joko Daishi. He would not go down as the police captain who let a terrorist mastermind escape twice.
Then it came to him: what he really needed was for Joko Daishi to implicate himself. Interrupting the lecture, he said, “I think you’re a psychopath.”
“No doubt the carcinoma thinks the same of the oncologist,” said Joko Daishi.
Not close enough, Kusama thought. He didn’t quite threaten to cut me with a scalpel, did he? This would have to be perfect; those little microphones were listening. “Was that the point of the ricin? Chemotherapy? Poisoning all the cancers in our society?”
“That is impossible. In this patient there are more tumors than healthy tissue. Very difficult to remove.”
“I see. Better to let this case go, then, neh? Burn everything to ashes in your Purging Fire and start again?”
“I hope not. This is a most unusual cancer; it is one you deluded ones can cure yourselves. The host can reject the tumor. He has only to see the path.”
Damn it, Kusama thought. Joko Daishi may have been out of his mind, but he was disciplined enough never to mention himself or his own goals. Hamaya had coached him well.
“What about me?” asked Kusama. “What if I said the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is the only oncologist this patient needs? Suppose I told you to get the hell out of my operating room?”
Joko Daishi giggled. “You are the most talented physician of a thousand years ago. You know nothing, even at the height of your craft. You see chemotherapy and you mistake it for torture. But I say unto you: you will learn better medicine, whether you will it or not.”
Close and getting closer, Kusama thought. But just like that, Hamaya stepped in. “My client and I must be going. Unless . . . well, do you intend to detain us, Captain?”
Kusama wanted to smack that smarmy grin off his face. In the old days he could have done just that. Disciplined or not, Joko Daishi would probably react to getting hit by striking back. He was violent enough, that was certain. As soon as he threw his first head butt, every cop in the room could pile onto him. No matter what the perp said after that, the cops could refute it. Officer safety first.
Back in the seventies that was business as usual. Strike first, get the story straight later. But today perps could wear tiny fucking microphones. For all Kusama knew, this entire meeting was already streaming live online. There were probably countries out there where that was illegal; too bad Japan wasn’t one of them.
He looked up at Hamaya, whose grin was smeared across his face like two tapeworms laid side by side. Kusama could throw him in a cell, and his client with him. Not legally, not without probable cause, but nothing could stop him from doing it illegally.
He thought about Detective Oshiro and her disregard for authority. For all her flaws, when she had the chance to stand by her partner she’d chosen to stand by the law instead. What would she say if her captain broke the law to do the right thing?
Kusama caught Sakakibara’s eye. The Narcotics LT must have been entertaining the same thoughts, and darker ones too. The heel of his palm rested on the butt of his pistol, as if he were debating whether it was worth his freedom to shoot both of these men in the back of the head. For Captain Kusama, that wasn’t a hard question: of course it was worth it. Joko Daishi was responsible for over a hundred murders. But probable cause was probable cause, and Kusama didn’t have it.
Fuck it, he thought. “Lieutenant Sakakibara, I want you to—”
“Get these men out of your office? Right away, sir.”
That wasn’t at all what Kusama had in mind, and Sakakibara knew that damn well. But he was good police, and this morning that meant he’d obey the law even when his captain lost his nerve and wanted to break it. “I’m giving you shitheads ten seconds to get out of here,” Sakakibara said. “After that I’m going to arrest you for loitering and tresp—”
Kusama never saw the SWAT cop reach for his sidearm. The weapon just appeared in his hand. He reached out with the barrel, intending to press it right to Joko Daishi’s skull before he pulled the trigger.