Linnear 03 - White Ninja (69 page)

'Detective Yazawa!'

They both turned to see one of the investigating officers gesturing frantically to Tomi. They went back to where the corpse was being loaded on to a folding stretcher, before being taken away in the ambulance.

'Look at what we found,' the officer said. 'The man's left shoe must have been ripped off when he came to the surface. Look at the space between his big toe and the others.'

Tomi and Nangi bent to look. The Pack Rat, as was his habit, was not wearing socks. His foot was so bloated, one could hardly recognize it for what it was. Taped to the inside of his big toe, lying against the white flesh, was a tiny metal key.

Tomi took out a pocket knife, slit the tape. Carefully she peeled the key off the dead man's flesh, dropped it into Nangi's palm.

'Now,' she said, 'maybe we have another lead.'

.

'There's no time like the present,' Detective Albemarle said. 'How about we locate Senator Howe right now?'

Shisei nodded. 'Anything you say.'

"This is Sergeant Johnson,' Albemarle said, as a big black cop joined them on their way outside.

'I remember him from the interrogation room,' Shisei said.

'You're quite some woman,' Albemarle said as they went down the steps of the precinct house to an unmarked car. It was hot and sticky, with little breeze coming in off the Chesapeake: a typical summer night in the nation's capital. 'Still, you sure you're up to this?'

'You want me there, I'm going. It's as simple as that.'

Albemarle grunted. 'Nothing's ever simple.' He pulled out on to the street. 'Howe's got some rep when it comes to his people crossing him.'

'I'm not crossing him,' Shisei said. 'I'm turning him in.'

That got a smile out of Albemarle. 'I'll say this for you, you've got guts. Ain't she got guts, Bobo?'

'Damned if she don't,' Sergeant Johnson said from his position in the back seat. Shisei got the impression that he was staring intently at the back of her neck.

Albemarle went on, 'I assume you know that Howe has enough juice to pull your career out from under you for what you're doing. Does anything scare you?'

Shisei looked at him in the night.

He drove very fast but not recklessly. Within minutes he pulled up outside Howe's residence on Seventeenth Street in the northwest district.

'Place should be a museum, not a goddamn private house,' Albemarle muttered as they got out of the car. Looking up, they could see lights on on the third floor. Albemarle pointed. 'You know your way around here, I imagine?'

Shisei said, 'I'm familiar with the offices on the ground floor. The senator's private apartment is on the third floor. I've never been up there.'

Albemarle grunted as they went up the stone steps. He rang the bell. They waited. When no one answered, he rang again, this time leaning on the bell. Nothing. He turned the doorknob, and the door opened inwards.

Immediately, Albemarle and Johnson drew their guns. 'For a paranoid like Howe this is decidedly not kosher.'

'I'd better call for a back-up,' Johnson said.

'Nix,' Albemarle ordered. "This is ours. I'm not in a sharing mood tonight.' He gestured to Shisei. 'You stay here.'

'I want to go with you,' she said.

'It's against regs,' Albemarle told her, already inside. Sergeant Johnson glowered at her, then followed his boss into the house.

In a moment, Shisei followed them.

The downstairs offices were dark. She could see that the two cops had found the curving staircase, went slowly upwards. She was a shadow behind them. The second floor was also dark, but now they could see more clearly as light from the-third floor seeped down the spiral stairwell.

'Keep your head down,' Shisei, close behind them, heard Albemarle whisper to Johnson before they began to ascend.

Light flooded the third floor landing, emanating from the open doorway to a room that was obviously Douglas Howe's study. Floor to ceiling bookcases surrounded a pair of facing leather sofas, a matching high-backed chair. A massive antique fruitwood desk and leather swivel chair were set in one corner. A brace of English hunting paintings hung on the deep green walls. Lamps glowed here and there.

An antique Isfahan rug lay behind one of the sofas, but it was now worthless, stained beyond repair with blood and brains.

Senator Douglas Howe half-sat at an unnatural angle on one of the leather sofas. His legs were incongruously crossed at the ankles, as if he were at repose, which, in a sense, was the case.

His arms were flung wide as if in shocked reaction. A.357 Magnum lay just beyond the reach of his right hand. Tfiere was nothing left of the back of his head. Some of it clung to the spines of books in the cases three feet away.

'Jesus,' was all Albemarle said. Then he said to Shisei, 'Don't move and don't under any circumstances touch or move anything.'

He went over to the desk, used his handkerchief to

pick up the phone. He dialled, using his pen to hit the push-buttons. 'Bobby? It's Phil,' he said into the phone. 'Ambulance, full forensics, ME's office and back-up.' Then he gave the address. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Senator Howe himself. He won't be running for re-election, so for Christ's sake let's keep this quiet for as long as we can before the press starts treading all over us, OK? Who can you get to cover this? OK, good. Yeah, yeah. And I want you here five minutes ago.'

Albemarle put down the phone. He studied Shisei for a moment, just to see whether she was taking her instructions seriously. Then he went and knelt beside Johnson, who was staring at Howe. He peered down at the.357 Magnum, then at Howe's right hand.

'What are you looking for?' Shisei asked.

'Usually these handguns aren't used much, but they have to be kept in working order,' Albemarle said.

'There looks to be traces of gun oil on the senator's fingers,' Johnson said.

Albemarle stood up, looked at her. "That's crucial to establish because if Howe fired the gun, it's suicide. If it was put in his mouth, it's homicide. Big difference, especially for me.'

'But not for Howe,' Shisei said.

Johnson barked a laugh.

'You've got some sense of humour,' Albemarle said.

'I wasn't being funny,' Shisei said. 'Just making an observation.'

Five minutes later they heard the sirens, and a commotion downstairs. Detectives, uniformed police, a forensics team, a cadaverous doctor from the Medical Examiner's office all trooped into the room. They worked swiftly, efficiently, taking photographs, prints, measurements, statements from Albemarle, Johnson and Shisei.

Of course, they found Howe's permit for the.357 Magnum. The assistant ME said to Albemarle, 'This is

only a prelim, off the top of my head, Phil, but if this doesn't turn out to be a suicide, I'm a monkey's uncle.'

Shisei looked over the scene with some satisfaction. She knew that the doctor's final report would not note anything out of the ordinary, certainly nothing to point to homicide.

The fact that hours earlier she had driven Howe home, had taken his gun out of the drawer in his desk, put it in his hand, shoved the barrel into his mouth, put her forefinger over his, squeezed slowly, until the report of the explosion cracked the silence of the night, would never be revealed. It was nobody's business but hers.

She stood in one corner, out of the policemen's way, waiting patiently for Detective Albemarle to take her back to the precinct. She wanted to be there when they released Branding.

Her work here was almost done, but there was still the question of Branding. Cook, she thought, have you lost faith in me? Do you still love me?

She was impatient now to find out.

Senjin watched Nicholas and Justine making love with the kind of envy one feels for a peer whose ease with other people makes him the constant centre of attention.

It was the envy, perhaps, that made Senjin want to kill Nicholas now, to forget his vow, to wreak wholesale vengeance of a sort that would appease his growing appetite for chaos.

He was stopped from exercising this self-indulgence by a new element. Reaching out with the projection of his will as he had in Dr Hanami's office, he encountered not that withdrawn, uncertain psyche that had caused him to feel such elation, but a black, featureless wall beyond which nothing was discernible.

Nicholas had ceased to exist, as far as Senjin's gift was concerned.

What had happened? Senjin was certain that he had effectively destroyed Nicholas's one avenue to salvation when he had ritually murdered Kyoki, the tanjian living in the castle in the Asama highlands. But where had Nicholas gone after Asama? He had not immediately returned to Tokyo the broken man, as Senjin had thought he would. Had he gone further into the Alps? And, if so, why?

In the end, Senjin knew, the answers to these questions did hot matter. All that need concern him was this new and wholly unexpected element: Nicholas had somehow come to terms with his being a tanjian. For the featureless wall that blocked out any psychic foray was only possible from a tanjian.

That meant that Nicholas knew Tau-tau. Senjin considered. What hadn't he been told of this? Again, his training told him that this did not matter. He needed to reassess the situation, fashion a new strategy accordingly.

Kshira, the sound-light continuum, teaches: Yang, the First Son, inciting motion, light gives birth to fire, and thought gives birth to light; thunder gives birth to sound, and anger gives birth to thunder. Yin: the Mother, yielding, fluid, the earth is the receptacle for thought, the crucible of idea.

One cannot exist without the other, Kshira teaches. But Senjin knew better, for Yin gave to Yang weakness as well as strength, a weakness Senjin saw as fatal. Thus he had spent so much time in ridding himself of Yin: the Mother, yielding, devoted.

He had sought to stop the cosmic order of Yin flowing into Yang, to still the eternal flux of the two forms of energy. Thus had he become dorokusai, the scourge of tanjian.

As he watched from the rafters like a predatory owl in the crotch of a tree, Senjin assumed the position of repose. He watched Nicholas and Justine asleep, entwined, and he thought of himself, as Justine had said, as a cloud drifting

above the jam-packed earth, separated from the joy, cares and desires of those whom he observed. Kshira allowed him to see this, but his own special philosophy made it so.

He inhaled deeply. Death was not in the air. At least, not yet. There were private hells, degradations of the state of being alive that needed to be traversed before Senjin could allow death to come to Nicholas Linnear.

But there was purpose here, and Senjin's nostrils dilated as if he could scent it. Senjin had come for the remaining emeralds. He had hoped that Justine would be able to tell him where they were. But now that Nicholas had appeared, Senjin saw another path, a powerful attack, both a way for him to know if the emeralds were here inside the house, and the first hell for Nicholas to inhabit on his journey towards his own demise.

With the stillness of the dead, Senjin left his perch and, keeping to the shadows, went about his business. When he was finished, there was light where none had been before, and there was heat, a warping of the atmosphere, sucking the oxygen out of the house.

A moment after Senjin left, Nicholas awoke with a start. He coughed, his lungs already filling with smoke. Flames licked along the floor, devouring the night.

Killan and the Scoundrel stood on a street corner on the seedy outskirts of Tokyo. Across the dark, infrequently travelled avenue they could see the flickering neon entrance to a dive called the Kan.

'Kusunda said that I should come alone,' Killan said for the fourth or fifth time. She stood on one leg, then the other, a sure sign that she was nervous. 'Maybe you shouldn't have come.'

'I-wasn't going to let you do this on your own,' the Scoundrel said, also for the fourth or fifth time. Then, 'Do you think he'll give us what we want?'

'Of course he will,' Killan said, with the wholehearted conviction of the revolutionary. She scanned the sparse traffic in both directions. 'What other choice does he have?'

The Scoundrel said nothing, fingering a bulge beneath his nylon windbreaker.

When Killan had played the tape she and the Scoundrel had created from carefully culled excerpts of the tape the Scoundrel had found in the apartment next to his, Kusunda Ikusa had smiled.

'Where did you get that?' he had said.

'It doesn't matter,' Killan told him, her voice full of authority. 'What matters is I have it. Interested?'

'Naturally.' Ikusa's eyes, half-hidden in his folds of flesh, regarded her with reptilian solidity.

'Don't you want to know what I want for it?' Killan asked, growing impatient.

'Whatever it is, it is sure to be outlandish.' That smile again, as if he did not have a care in the world.

Killan said, 'I want authority. Not just an entry-level job at Nakano, not a job in publicity convincing jerks they ought to buy your new products.'

'I thought - ' Abruptly, Ikusa's jaw snapped shut; he wasn't smiling now.