went into slow motion. Kusama sprang up from his chair. He sprawled across his desk, pawing for the pistol, for Joko Daishi, for anything. But the desk was too wide. He couldn’t reach.
Thunder and gun smoke filled the room. Something sharp and hot lacerated Kusama’s cheekbone. He expected blood spatter, not bullet fragments. Then he saw the truth: it was Sakakibara, not the SWAT operator, who had fired. Now the SWAT cop twisted and fell, almost as if through water.
Everything happened so slowly. Kusama saw him level his pistol as he fell, training it on Joko Daishi. Kusama couldn’t help but admire him for that; he wouldn’t give up, not even after Sakakibara put a round in his flak vest. Even now, Sakakibara’s pistol followed the man. Why wasn’t he still shooting?
Now Kusama saw it. The other SWAT operator loomed over his buddy, intent on smothering the weapon, but he seemed to hang in the air. The world still moved in slow motion. Kusama leaned farther across the desk, reaching for Joko Daishi. Even as he did it, he wasn’t sure if he meant to pull the man out of the line of fire or push him into it. It didn’t matter. He was too slow. He couldn’t reach.
Sakakibara shifted his aim a couple of millimeters. Somehow he snaked in a shot right between the two SWAT cops. Two pistols roared almost in unison. Their reports stabbed Kusama in the eardrums. He watched as the bullet meant for Joko Daishi splattered bits of Hamaya Jiro all over the windows.
Then the world zoomed back to normal speed. “Down, down, down!” the second SWAT cop bellowed. He flattened his partner and wrapped both hands around his gun arm. The man on the bottom howled in pain. Kusama, flat on his desk like roadkill, saw no blood down there. He assumed Sakakibara’s second round also hit the bulletproof vest. If so, that was one hell of a shot.
On the other side of the room, the wind whistled through a little bloody hole in the window. Gray matter containing Hamaya’s law degree oozed slowly down the glass. The attorney himself lay on the carpet, gaping at the ceiling. He seemed to have grown a second mouth in the side of his head; the hollow-point left a hideous crater in its wake.
Sakakibara paid the body no mind; his weapon was trained on Joko Daishi’s center body mass. For his part, the cult leader just looked around, much like a little boy trying to decide which animal to watch at the zoo. That more than anything told Kusama the man was out of his mind. He’d narrowly survived an assassination attempt, his friend took a bullet to the head, and the look on his face never changed. He didn’t even seem to notice the ringing in his ears, a ringing Kusama was damn sure he heard, because his own ears blared with a steady blast like a distant car horn.
Captain Kusama finally managed to haul himself off his desk. He scrambled around and helped the SWAT operator disarm and handcuff his one-time comrade. “You were thinking the same thing,” the shooter said as the cuffs clicked shut around his wrists. “I know you were.”
You’re right, Kusama thought. Damn you, you’re right. That was why he’d started to tell Sakakibara to arrest Joko Daishi: because it was a better plan than gunning him down.
His office door flew open. Junko kicked it aside, a little.32 revolver in her hands. Behind her, so many voices were shouting that Kusama couldn’t keep count. By now every cop on the floor had heard the shots and come running. Faces and the muzzles of pistols appeared in the doorway, one after another. Joko Daishi watched them with an air of expectant joy, like a child watching the carp come flocking to the surface after the first chunks of bread hit the pond.
When he stood up, Sakakibara clamped a hand on his shoulder and slam-dunked him back into his chair. “Hey, Bullet Magnet, sit the fuck down.”
“Why?” cried the handcuffed cop on the floor. “Why save him?”
Because the law demands it, Kusama thought. Sakakibara answered differently: “Because I’m standing next to him, dumbass. When people get jumpy, sometimes their shots wander a bit. Which, you know, you might have noticed already.”
He fixed his furious glare on the gun-toting crowd clustered in the doorway. “What are you, a firing squad? Holster your weapons. Now.”
They did as they were told. Kusama and the other SWAT