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

back of that head entered his view again and, just as the man’s name came to mind, he turned and looked at Goda.

Goda remembered that, when they bumped into each other last year near Kamata Station, the man had mentioned he was now working out of the Kamata Police Department. Handa was his name. A police sergeant from the local precinct who had been at headquarters during the investigation of the murder of an elderly man in Shinagawa in the fall of 1990, neither his personality nor his appearance were very remarkable, and he hadn’t left much of an impression at the time. They were not well enough acquainted to merit the exchange of a greeting, but since Handa had given a slight nod first, Goda returned the gesture. Then Handa’s figure disappeared among the rows of officers crammed into the dojo, and Goda, swept along himself by the throng, forgot about him.

“Attention!”

The command resounded through the hall, and the two hundred or so men fell into line, their feet moving like a centipede. Standing toward the back, Goda couldn’t see what was happening up front—he only realized that the top brass were assembled and Chief Inspector Kanzaki of First Investigation had entered the room when he heard the command, “All bow!”

Then Kanzaki’s voice over the microphone—“Good morning”—reverberated through the wooden floorboards. This was already the fourth time Goda had heard Kanzaki’s voice first thing in the morning.

“As you all know very well already, the case has taken an unexpected turn due to the victim’s release by the crime group and his safe return home. But of course, their release of the victim can only be interpreted as a step toward their next criminal act. I’ll reiterate: this crime is highly premeditated and unusually meticulous.” The excitement in Kanzaki’s voice had been growing with every announcement, so that now his inflections at the end of each word now had built up to a quiet roar. “The crime group demanding a cash payment of six hundred million upon the victim’s release not only indicates the intention to execute their next crime but also that they have some kind of weakness to exploit against Hinode Beer. However, suspecting the victim—the company, that is—of hiding something would be putting the cart before the horse. This morning, some of the newspapers reported on letters and a tape being sent to Hinode in 1990, but I would like you all to ignore any coverage of this sort. The sole mission of the police is to apprehend the perpetrators and prevent their next crime before it occurs.”

Kanzaki went on to say what needed to be mentioned. “It is extraordinary that now, on the fifth day after the incident occurred, there is still not a single eyewitness account. Our first priority is to gather any eyewitness reports in order to determine what vehicle and escape route was used in the crime, so I hope that everyone—especially those joining the investigation today—will put in their best efforts. That’s all from me.”

The briefing was over in three minutes, and after SIT and the forensics teams from Second and Fourth Investigation Divisions left, those who remained were the Search and Inquiry Squad, Evidence Investigation Squad, Vehicle Investigation Squad, and the newcomers—all told around 150 members. The men were promptly divided into new teams, an endless loop playing as Director Miyoshi of Third Violent Crime Investigation conducted roll call and each man responded to his assignment.

As of yesterday evening, Goda’s Vehicle Investigation Squad had completed researching the circumstances at the time of theft of all 350 vehicles that had been reported stolen in the last three months, including having ruled out the three stolen vehicles recorded by a dozen N-system cameras within the neighborhood of Sanno and westward in the timeframe before and after the incident. They were about halfway through the task of reviewing, one by one, suspicious vehicles recorded by high-speed surveillance cameras along the Shuto and Chuo Expressways provided by the Traffic Division. Their next job was to match fingerprints from each of the various cardboard boxes filled with ticket passes collected from highway toll booths.

On the other hand, the victim had said that after regaining consciousness in the moving vehicle, he had not heard the sound of any toll booths, so they were forced to consider the possibility that the crime group had carefully chosen their escape route—passing through the city on roads selected because they would not trigger any N systems and emerging on the Lake Kawaguchiko bypass without using a highway. Thus the Vehicle Investigation Squad expanded the search area, estimating several possible routes from Sanno Ni-chome to Lake Kawaguchiko, and deciding on several intermediary points. Keeping in mind the number of traffic signals and volume of traffic and assuming that the vehicle had been going an average speed of about forty or fifty kilometers per hour, they calculated the approximate time it would have passed these points. They hoped someone had spotted a suspicious vehicle around that time and were set to begin this search today. The specific protocol was twofold: the administrative work required to enlist local police to put up road signs seeking witnesses, and dynamic on-scene investigation and legwork.

Heading toward Fuji, there were a total of six potential origin points for the route that one would eventually have to pass through: the intersection at the entrance to the Ikusabata railway station in the city of Ome; the Juriki intersection in the town of Itsukaichi; the Kawarajuku intersection in Hachioji; the intersection at the entrance to Uenohara High School on Koshu Kaido Road; the Kajino intersection on National Route 413 in the town of Fujino in Kanagawa prefecture; and finally the Higuchi intersection along Route 246 that leads to Gotemba. Driving in the direction of Fuji from any of these intersections would lead to more or less a single road, and since the volume of nighttime traffic on those roads was quite low, if anyone had seen a strange van pass through