Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📕

“Is it possible that they’ve targeted the victim as an individual?”

“We are not able to determine that at this time.”

“What’s your understanding of the perpetrators’ profile?”

“At this time, I cannot say.”

“I think it’s impossible for an amateur to pull off a crime like this—have you considered that pros, like a crime syndicate, could be involved?”

“We have not come to such a conclusion at this time.”

“No way an amateur would sit and wait in the yard, a stone’s throw from the front door.”

“We can’t know that until we ask the perpetrator.”

“What’s your outlook for the investigation ahead?”

“We will make every effort. That’s all I can say about that.”

After responding to this point, with sweat glistening on his blue-veined forehead, Teraoka put away his notebook. Without waiting for the director of Public Information to announce, “That’s all for now. Next briefing at four,” Teraoka walked out quickly, looking straight ahead with an even more obstinate expression than when he had first appeared in the hall. The reporters also withdrew without a word, but since there wasn’t a single newsworthy item, all of them moved slowly. Whenever a significant incident occurred, invariably the press conference would be peppered with phrases such as, “We’re not able to say,” “We’re not sure,” and “We’re not aware,” but even the same “not” would be uttered with a subtly different nuance each time. Kubo felt that just now, in addition to appearing jittery and pained from beginning to end, Teraoka seemed abstracted as he repeated over and over that he didn’t know. Four and a half hours had already passed since the current president of Hinode Beer had been abducted. If the police didn’t have a clue at this point, Kubo thought—just as the Chief Reporter Sugano had predicted—it could take a while to crack this case.

合田雄一郎　Yuichiro Goda

At three in the morning, the announcement came in from the chief inspector of First Investigation at MPD that, with the exception of the ten members of the Criminal Investigation Division and another two from the Crime Prevention Division who were to be absorbed into Investigation Headquarters, the rest of the department was dismissed for the time being. Since the grounds for mobilizing a large group of investigators had never materialized, MPD decided that the perpetrators were unlikely to make any moves until dawn. The other officers who had been standing by at Omori Police Department since right after the incident occurred were left with nothing but a sense of regret and fatigue from lack of sleep. Although they had been released, it wasn’t as if there were any trains running at that hour to take them home, so a few of the unelected left the CI office to lie down until morning in the dojo on the fourth-floor, while others retreated elsewhere or nowhere in particular.

Remaining in the Omori CI office were four inspectors—Goda from Violent Crime, Noriaki Anzai from White Collar Crime, Takafumi Saito from Organized Crime, and Takuya Osanai from Burglary—as well as six police sergeants from these units, along with Deputy Chief Inspector Dohi acting as the self-proclaimed head of liaison and coordination, which came out to eleven men in total. Everyone but Dohi and Anzai went back to dozing while they waited for the investigation meeting, whose start time remained unknown.

Inspector Anzai, having perked up as soon as he realized he was likely to be called up to Investigation Headquarters, nudged Goda’s shoulder just as the latter had buried his face in his arms on the desk. Anzai whispered, “Think we’ll find out about Hinode’s financial standing?”

Goda thought it was too soon for that but, detecting a whiff of expectation in Anzai’s loaded question, he replied vaguely, “Who knows?”

Anzai had spent the majority of his thirty-three years of service specializing in white collar crime, transferring from one precinct to another every five or six years, but Goda had heard that he had never had the opportunity to take part in a large-scale bribery case or commercial law violation. Goda didn’t know why Anzai, despite being a licensed CPA, had never been called in to work at MPD, but he could easily imagine the kind of work Anzai had toiled over for years: real estate transactions involving unlawful registration and sales contracts, fraudulent promissory notes, scams, a miscellany of complaints and charges that could hardly be distinguished from civil suits, petty election violations over the placement of flyers, and so on and so forth. Over the past year, even the cases occurring within Goda’s scope of vision were mostly along the lines of complaints against door-to-door sales, counterfeit calling cards, unauthorized use of credit cards and loan shark troubles, and creditors rushing in when their debtor had skipped town. Most of these never resulted in prosecution, or were resolved with a minor punishment or a dialogue among the parties involved, so all in all his job was not very different from that of a jack-of-all-trades consultant.

Sitting beside Goda, Anzai had started flipping through the Hinode financial report, which Goda had tossed aside. “You had better get some sleep,” Goda suggested.

“I doubt you’ll understand,” Anzai muttered and flashed him a small, crooked smile. “I’ve been counting money all this time, but the loot in the cases I’ve handled only went up to ten digits. Suddenly dangling thirteen digits in front of me, well, that’s like a monkey that sees a banana—there’s no chance I’m sleeping now.”

As he whispered this, Anzai hung his head over the report spread open on the desk. Given his age and experience, Anzai was likely to be promoted to chief inspector soon, but he must have been anxious—if he wanted to move up to MPD with distinction, this might be his last chance. Goda could relate to this, at least.

Even Goda had been relieved to be whisked up to Investigation Headquarters. If he were honest, he had had enough of lovers’ quarrels involving kitchen knives, drunken brawls, and the dead bodies of vagrants by the roadside. I’ve been desperate for a