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

victim’s home, while the second squad would be assigned to the 103—each included six SIT members working in three shifts. The Search and Inquiry Squad would consist of one group leader and five teams, ten members total that included three members of the Mobile CI Unit along with five members of the ninth unit of Violent Crime and two officers from the precinct. The Evidence and Vehicle Investigation Squad would be made up of fourteen members of the Mobile CI Unit and seven officers from the precinct, including Osanai and Goda. The head of the ninth unit of Violent Crime would be squad leader. Since no evidence had yet surfaced, they would all commence with vehicle searches.

When his name was called, Goda felt a little shudder, but he consoled himself with the fact that he would be working with inanimate objects. He automatically thought, First stolen vehicles, then rental cars, then reminded himself, Patience, patience, patience, emptying his mind of all distractions. The director of First SIT had designated the Communications and Report Commanders, and Director Miyoshi of Third Violent Crime Investigation had been named as the contact person for the Evidence and Vehicle Investigation Squad. Goda had met him some five years ago, back when Miyoshi was chief of CID at Shinagawa Police Department, during a murder investigation in which an old man who liked to wander had been struck in the head with a golf club and killed. Even though both he and Dohi were self-made men who had climbed the ranks, Miyoshi gave a different impression, that of a man who took pride in being a cop, to the marrow of his bones.

Thus the first investigation meeting ended at 7:30 in the morning, and each squad broke off for their own short meetings. The majority of SIT dispersed immediately, followed quickly by the Search and Inquiry Squad and then the Crime Scene Squad, which was interviewing company employees, but the remaining three squads were faced with armfuls of documents to review, and the directors of both fourth unit of White Collar Crime from Second Investigation Division and Special Violence and Organized Crime from Fourth Investigation Division continued to give out instructions in a low voice.

Goda and his cohort gathered in a corner, away from them.

“First, we’ll go down the list of stolen vehicles and rental cars,” Abe, the head of the ninth unit of Violent Crime, said tersely to Director Miyoshi.

“That’s fine.” Miyoshi nodded, and their meeting was over within five seconds.

As they waited for a fax of the list of stolen vans and RVs from the Criminal Information Management System, they divided up the string of tasks: calling the dealerships of car rental companies, requesting yesterday’s rental records from each office, addressing formal documents of inquiry related to the investigation to each dealership under the name of the superintendent of Omori Police Department, administering the superintendent’s seal, and faxing them out. Since they didn’t know the type of car or the license number of the vehicle connected to the crime, they had no choice but to eliminate, one by one, each and every stolen vehicle or car rented in the city, with only the color and the shape seen by a seventy-six-year-old man as clues. If this led nowhere, next they’d have to cast their net wider to neighboring prefectures, to the entire Kantō region, and then to the whole country. And if they still came up empty-handed, they’d have to go to every parking lot in the city on foot, and if that failed, they’d have to check each of the hundreds of thousands or even millions of vans registered at the District Land Transport Bureau.

The time was now 7:40 a.m. The radio connected to the victim’s home and the staging points remained silent; Chief Inspector Kanzaki and the other directors looked like nothing more than figureheads on a tiered doll stand; and outside the window above Goda’s head as he continued to write out his documents, the light snow was starting to accumulate.

根来史彰　Fumiaki Negoro

The MPD’s fifth press conference at 8 a.m. stuck to the same script: “No contact from the perpetrators. Situation remains unchanged.”

At the same time, over on Toho News’s Metro section, the slot editor for the evening edition, who was named Murai, had just taken his regular seat and shouted out, “Better get moving.” The evening edition for Saturday, March 25, had to be put together as usual, provided no sudden developments such as the rescue of the president of Hinode Beer occurred before the final deadline at 1:30 p.m. Murai had already been in the office by three in the morning after receiving a report of the incident, but once he had skimmed through early editions of the other morning newspapers to confirm that they had not missed any scoops, he had managed to fall asleep on the sofa despite the utter chaos swirling around him. He woke up before eight, in time to hear the outcome of the MPD’s press conference and, agreeing with his colleagues that there was, in fact, “Nothing we can do,” he planted himself in front of his desktop computer and cracked open the notebook with takeover instructions from the slot editor before him. Next to him, the rim editor on duty echoed the words, “Nothing we can do,” and took his own seat.

Once he had shifted into gear, Murai started barking out instructions even to Negoro, who sat half-asleep over in the Reserve section. “If this keeps up, we won’t have much to fill pages, so make those articles on the two credit associations and the candidates in the gubernatorial election on the longer side. You can even run each candidate’s self-recommendation remarks.”

“Yes,” Negoro replied, but instead of turning on his computer, he stood up to go to the lavatory and devoted ample time to washing and shaving his face.

A pale seamless gray filled the world outside the windows of the news room, as if they were ensconced in a cloud, and large snowflakes continued