Steve Bein: Year of the Demon

But Mariko wouldn’t let him see the cracks in her resolve. “Too bad you won’t be drawing a paycheck from him anymore. That breaks my heart.”

“I’m sure. No doubt you’re equally heartbroken that Akahata-san is not alive for cross-examination. If not for you and your partner, the case against Joko Daishi would be ironclad.”

Mariko felt herself fuming but refused to rise to Hamaya’s bait. “You’ll wriggle out of a charge here or there, but we’ve got your client dead to rights on the bomb-making factory. We got that from a search warrant on phone records, not from anything Han did. That means we’ve got your client on unlawful use of weapons, and believe me, the DA’s office can turn that into five or six different counts by itself. Then there’s conspiracy, furtherance, public endangerment—and after all that, your client gets to go to federal court, where we’re going to smack him with every last terrorism charge we’ve got a law for. I hope your little cult believes in reincarnation, because Joko Daishi’s looking at back-to-back life sentences from here to eternity. Best of luck with that.”

“The best of luck, indeed,” Hamaya had said, giving her a little bow by way of a farewell. “I have no doubt of it.”

That was nine thirty. Now, at nine fifty-one, Mariko’s frustration hadn’t cooled in the slightest. “He’s going to walk on almost all of it,” she told Sakakibara. “How many charges should we have nailed him on just for the dope? Precursor chemicals, manufacturing, intent to distribute, you name it. Plus the two homicides, plus all the prohibited substances charges . . . I don’t know what you charge someone with for having a gas chamber in his bedroom, but I sure as hell hope we’ve got a law against it.”

“We probably do.”

“And what does it matter?” Mariko clenched her fists, wishing she had a bokken in her hands and something to smash with it. “None of it’s going to stick. I was thinking we had a lock on terrorism and conspiracy, but that cocky bastard Hamaya seems to think otherwise. He’s a slippery little fucker. He’s looking for ways out already.”

“That’s his job,” said Sakakibara. “You know that.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and she told him about what else was on her mind. Kamaguchi Hanzo. The mask. How Hamaya might already be on his way to file some paperwork Mariko had never heard of, something that would release the mask from police custody so he could hand-deliver it to Joko Daishi.

It ended up becoming more of a tirade than an explanation, and at the end of it she felt deflated. She slumped against the side of the HQ building and threw up her hands. “What the hell have we accomplished, sir? Joko Daishi will see some time—I hope. But after that, he’s still got his mask and his cult, and we didn’t even seize all of the explosives. He’s got more people out there. We have no guesses about who they are. He’ll have more targets. We have no idea where. And for all of this, I get my name dragged through the muck and maybe Han loses his badge. So what the hell was the point?”

Sakakibara grimaced at her, his thick Sonny Chiba eyebrows scrunching toward each other like hairy black caterpillars. “We’re cops, Frodo. Not lawyers; not judges; cops. That makes us goalkeepers, and the simple truth is that sometimes the bad guys get one through.”

He took her by the chin—an astonishingly gentle gesture coming from him, almost fatherly—and raised her eyes to meet his. “What did you think when you took this job? That we were going to stop every crime in the city? We stop the ones we can, but some of them are going to get by us. If you can’t live with that, just hand me your badge right now. I’ll fill out the paperwork for you.”

“Sir, you know I can’t—”

“Can’t what? Take a cushy desk job for the same pay? Get off the streets, rest your feet for a minute? Sure you can. You don’t need to be in the dirty little corners where the lines get blurry, where it’s hard to tell right from wrong. Go take a job in a police box in the suburbs, where the worst problem you’ll have for the rest of your career is not knowing the answer when someone stops in to ask for directions. How many COs have you served under who told you to do exactly that?”

Mariko couldn’t help smiling a little. “Actually, sir, the last one told me he’d have me working the precinct coffeemaker.”

Somehow he’d made the shift from concerned father to stern father and back to bitter, grumpy commanding officer. “Fine. Go take his advice. Or stop pitying yourself and recognize you did something magnificent. You saved fifty-two lives. You put a very bad man in the ground and you put another one in a cell. The day that’s not good enough for you, just hand me your badge and I’ll fill out the paperwork.”

Mariko looked back down for a minute, then found his gaze again. “Thank you, sir.”

“You know what happens now?”

“Sir?”

“The same thing that happens in any other sport with a goalkeeper. The other team gets the ball back and they try to score again. Now, are you ready to do your damn job?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Let’s go to your partner’s hearing.”

Mariko glanced at Sakakibara’s huge black diver’s watch. “We’re running late for that, sir. Do you think they’ll let us in after—”

“They haven’t started yet. I told them to hold off until I got there.”

Mariko was glad he’d already started walking so he couldn’t see her jaw drop. She knew her lieutenant had some swat, but she didn’t know his arm reached that far. It made her wonder if IAD would allow him to get involved in their decision too, made her wonder whether Sakakibara would push to get Han off or see him hang.

True to his word, it was Sakakibara who unofficially began the hearing when he walked through the door. Mariko found it embarrassing, seeing Han being deposed, and she could only imagine what he was feeling. She thought of Saori, who, somewhere along the way of her Twelve Step program, had to make a list of everyone she’d every wronged while she was using, and then had to go out and apologize for each offense. It was no easy thing, admitting you were wrong. It took a kind of strength not a lot of people had. Saori didn’t have it; she’d had to build it from scratch. It made Mariko proud to see Han push ahead, explaining everything he’d done and leaving nothing out. He held no one else to blame, nor did he shield anyone else from blame. If IAD found reason to investigate Mariko as well, it would start with Han telling them the truth as plainly as he could.

For an event that would see Han’s whole career hang in the balance, the hearing was surprisingly brief. The review board adjourned after only an hour, sequestering themselves to make their judgment. Mariko found herself sagging back into her seat, and until then she hadn’t even noticed she’d been sitting forward, hands gripping her knees, waiting for the board’s ruling. Now she wanted to know how long review boards generally took to make their decisions—or, more precisely, how long she’d have to be waiting on the edge of her seat, tense as the skin of a drum.

And since she lacked anything even approximating the proper sense of decorum for a woman of her rank and station, she asked. The chair of the review board, a commander she hadn’t met before, gave her the same kind of frown he’d have given a Tokyo Disney mascot walking into the room, a blend of puzzlement and offense. “Fifteen minutes,” he said, making it clear that he was doing her a great honor even in recognizing her existence, and closed the door behind him.

Mariko found herself immediately at Han’s side, which surprised her. The part of her that was still pissed off at him still had a loud voice, but it had lost its majority. “Fifteen minutes?” she said. “You’d think they’d take longer than that for something this important.”