The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel

by Taylor Stevens

  “I was several places this morning. What time specifically?”

  Tone dry, sarcastic, as if he deigned to humor her just once but wouldn’t tolerate insubordination, he said, “Seven-twenty-eight, specifically.”

  Munroe’s stomach clenched again, data reordered again, yesterday’s phone call to Dillman replayed in her head:

  I’ll be here early, he’d said. Let’s go for coffee.

  I’ll get there as soon as I can.

  He’d believed she’d be there.

  Someone else had believed she’d be there, too.

  “I was in Hiroshima at seven-twenty-eight this morning,” she said.

  The detective glanced up, his face such a betrayal of thought, that the words when they came were merely déjà vu. “Your access badge shows you in the facility at seven-twenty-eight,” he said.

  “I have tickets, receipts, and a traveling companion.”

  “Why were you in Hiroshima?”

  “Research as a consultant.”

  “No one in the company could confirm your location. Why were you in Hiroshima?”

  “Research as a consultant,” she repeated.

  The detective glanced up.

  Munroe made direct eye contact and reached for her wallet. She placed one of the shinkansen ticket stubs on the table.

  In her head she said, I wasn’t here when Makoto Dillman was murdered.

  In her head he said, No one said anything about a murder.

  And in her head she’d just admitted to having knowledge of the crime and increased her chances of arrest.

  Out of her mouth she said, “I was in Hiroshima this morning.”

  She knew the risks of talking and had rolled the dice.

  The detective picked up the ticket stub, looked it over, jotted notes on his paper, took her passport, and stood. “Don’t leave the facility without authorization,” he said, and then he and her passport and a portion of her alibi walked out the door.

  Munroe sat in a chair in a commandeered conference room, hands behind her head and face toward the ceiling, thoughts unspooling, rage simmering.

  Her passport and paperwork had been returned shortly before nine.

  Effort and manipulation thereafter had gotten her furtive snippets from a security team who’d been afraid to speak. This much she knew: Dillman had been found in her office with his throat slit and burn marks on both arms.

  She blew a long exhale of manufactured calm and gained another minute tethered to rational control. Dillman, for all his faults and quirks, hadn’t deserved to die any more than Bradford deserved to be sitting in jail.

  The investigators had finally left at nine-thirty, and by then most of the employees, released individually after questioning, had been sent home.

  There’d been no arrests.

  One murder, with an easy scapegoat, had been easy to solve. By a fortunate circumstance she’d had a rock-solid alibi and so deprived them of another. Without her as the guilty party, this second murder changed everything, creating suspects out of any number of employees and turning the facility’s atmosphere, already thick with guardedness, into witch-hunt paranoia and suspicion.

  A knock on the door interrupted the brooding.

  The handle moved, then Okada’s head peered in. He slipped inside and shut the door. Munroe cut her eyes toward him. “The investigator,” she said. “Tadashi Ito. Was he the same one running things last time?”

  “Yes,” Okada said.

  Munroe went back to staring at the ceiling. Okada took a seat one over and they both sat in silence for a long, long time.

  “It’s also the same as before,” Okada said. “The footage has been altered. There’s no evidence of what happened.”

  Munroe closed her eyes. “Whose security pass was that done under?”

  Okada whispered, “Yours.”

  Anything less would have been too easy.

  Munroe motioned for paper and a pen and Okada handed her both. She scribbled a note and a list of names and slid the page over.

  Two trackers. Two sets of players. She’d given Dillman busywork to keep him out of her way. He’d wanted to discuss the files he was working on—names she’d culled from Bradford’s list of suspects—and died before he could.

  Possibilities chased their tails in circles:

  Dillman had been the intended target and she the patsy.

  Or Dillman’s murder, mirroring the Chinese woman and Bradford, and like the incident of the car’s grille with its headlights pushing her toward manslaughter, was an attempt to remove her from the facility.

  Or, perhaps two for the price of one, covering both options.

  Munroe wanted the contents of Dillman’s files, suspected they’d been with him when he died—were possibly the reason he’d died—and needed new copies.

  “It’s not a problem,” Okada said.

  “Remember your concerns on the train yesterday?” she said. “The reason you made that phone call?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “That’s the problem.”

  “I understand,” Okada said. “I will find a way.”

  She offered him another out. “I can get someone else to do it.”

  “No,” he said. He stood and walked to the door and then remained there, hand on the hardware, unmoving. He turned back and made eye contact while seconds dragged on in silence. “The databases and log files have also been edited,” he said. “We don’t know who was here when that happened.”

  In what was unspoken he’d told her he had her back, trusted no one but her, and expected her to guard his in kind. When he’d gone, Munroe closed her eyes again.

  “Dillman,” she whispered. “Dillman, Dillman.”

  She breathed the anger in and shut all emotion down.

  Personal feelings had no place here.

  This death was merely new data, meant to be sorted with the same clinical manipulation as everything else, but she had no cornerstone for it: that single piece of certainty upon which she could build. Every fact, every name on her web of connections had more than one fit, and Dillman’s death didn’t correspond to any of them.

  This felt like a larger planet wobbling in the gravitational pull of a smaller neighbor.

  Something she hadn’t seen yet, hadn’t found.

  Frustration poked finger holes into the dike of logic and control, wiggled in and buried inside her brain, taunting her with the only facts she knew without doubt: Bradford was still behind bars, the prosecutor could formally charge him at any time, and she’d not yet found the lever for release.

  She was running out of time, wasting resources, expending energy she didn’t have to stay free of the traps and machinations set against her by players she couldn’t see, all of whom knew who she was and where she was, while she was left groping in the dark.

  Munroe stood. One foot in front of the other, she paced the few steps across the room, back and forth, animal in a cage. And then she stopped and slammed her forehead into the wall. The pain was instant and calming: partial relief to the addict’s need, methadone in place of heroin, pathway to clarity.

  The hotel room, with its wall of facts and its bed and the promise of sleep, called to her, but Munroe diverted first to Bradford’s apartment to return the Mira and collect the bike with its easy to find and remove trackers.

  She turned down into the garage to discover that trouble, in the form of four men, had already come for her. They were a mixture of young and middle-aged in buttoned-up dress shirts and loose slacks like the clothes worn by the men outside the bars in the drinking district.

  They loitered by the Ninja, haloed in cigarette smoke, but with only a few butts at their feet, they couldn’t have been waiting long. Seeing them, Munroe’s pulse quickened, the inner war drum signaling impending battle.

  The rawness of Dillman’s death burned beneath the surface. The desire for pain rolled through her, a craving to inflict and feel it, and to fight to win, because in seeking blood she had contro
l.

  They straightened when the car rolled in, all of them attuned to the Mira’s approach, and although they didn’t go so far as to form a line between her and the Ninja, the impression of a line was there.

  Munroe backed the Mira into its space and they stood watching.

  She left the engine running and the lights on, and they squinted to see beyond the glare. The oldest dropped a cigarette to the pavement and ground it with his foot. Beneath his rolled-up sleeves the bare edges of a tattoo crept out.

  Strategy flowed into battle formation and instant assessment.

  Logic, like a parent, soothed against what instinct, a toddler in full meltdown, screamed for: She was weaponless, and they wouldn’t have come unarmed. Not after what she’d done in the hotel room.

  But the adrenaline uptick had already begun. The fight called to her, compelling her toward the rush where time separated from reality and hurt ceased to exist because all that mattered from one heartbeat to the next was whatever it took to stay alive.

  Munroe gripped the wheel tight against the tingle in her hands.

  Jiro’s men tracing her to an apartment in the middle of the city, waiting in the right place at the right time, spoke of deliberation and knowledge.

  Two sets of players; two trackers.

  These were Jiro’s men, but Jiro hadn’t installed the trackers.

  Just like Jiro hadn’t invited Bradford to the hostess club.

  The men in the headlights stepped away from the Ninja.

  In slow motion she watched them, two heading for the garage exit to block her way out and block residents from entering. The others strode toward her.

  She felt their bodies inside her head, the way they would rotate and heave and bend. The chemical flood coursed through her veins.

  Munroe revved the engine.

  The men in the headlights twitched, giving away strength and strategy in that instinctive reaction. This group of four had arrived with a single semiautomatic. Gun out and now exposed, the man holding it changed tactics.

  He aimed at the Mira’s windshield and headed for the driver’s side. His unarmed partner took the left.

  In a country where handguns were nearly impossible to obtain and police pursued violators so relentlessly that even criminals lived in fear of gun laws, firing the weapon would be enough for him to face life in prison.

  The weapon was for threat, pulling the trigger a last resort.

  By their footfalls she timed them, focus burned on the man with the gun and the finger that rested outside the guard, watching his eyes, not his hands, watching his posture and the tension that ran in the lines along his neck.

  Footfall to footfall she waited, hand brake released, vehicle in gear, breathing out long with a predator’s patience, footfall to footfall, weapon coming ever closer and then.

  Munroe lurched forward, gas and wheel and brake working in microbursts, speed and calculation, car spinning, tires screeching.

  The Mira’s rear curved toward the man with the gun.

  He fired in response, the weapon’s report a cavernous boom in the underground.

  The back passenger window shattered.

  Skin and bone thumped and thudded off the side of the hood.

  Munroe reversed and hit soft flesh.

  She yanked the emergency brake and was out the driver’s door, legs in motion before her feet hit the pavement.

  Half seconds mattered. Quarter seconds mattered.

  In the gap between shock and reality, the time it took for the brain to register what had just happened, she had already reached the front of the car.

  The man without a weapon turned a fraction before she hit him.

  She twisted midstride. Kicked his knees out beneath him and charged into him. He landed hard on the pavement with her on top, and she grabbed his hair and slammed his head against the concrete, again and again, while he struggled and then struggled less.

  The gun was on the ground, three meters behind her, thrown when she’d reversed into its owner. Beneath the car she saw hands and knees crawling for it.

  In the garage exit, the other two men were missing.

  The handgun had discharged. They would run as far and as fast as possible to prevent being looped in as accomplices and spending equal time in prison.

  Munroe pounded her knee hard into the man’s chest: leverage to get to her feet. She grabbed his collar and pulled him.

  “Stand up,” she said. “If you want to escape this, stand up.”

  Dazed, he blinked and struggled to his feet.

  “The police are coming,” she said, and she pushed him toward the car. Without letting go she swung backward into the open driver’s door, scooted over the console, legs twisting and tangled, and dragged him in after her.

  He didn’t fight; he understood.

  She reached over him, yanked the door shut. “Drive,” she said.

  He was aware now, not as alert as he should have been, but enough that he reached for the seat belt. She ignored hers; she needed her hands.

  She released the hand brake. “Drive!” she said again, and in the vanity mirror the man behind the car got to his feet, weapon aimed toward her again.

  What difference did another discharge make now?

  The garage echoed loud with the clap of thunder.

  The bullet punched through the rear door and spit-popped into the backseat. The driver hit the gas and the car fishtailed. Munroe leaned over and with both hands on the wheel she pulled.

  The hood straightened in relation to the exit.

  Then came another deafening roar and another shattered window.

  The Mira careened up the ramp and Munroe leaned hard against the wheel in the opposite direction. The car wailed into the street, between a moss-covered stone wall and parked cars, then sped through an intersection.

  “Slow down,” she yelled.

  The streets were mostly empty and that saved them, but still they plunged on, through another intersection, the driver’s foot solid on the gas while the blank look of shock filled his face.

  Munroe took one hand off the wheel, shoved it beneath his thigh, and tugged hard. The lead foot slipped off the pedal and the car slowed.

  His eyes widened as if in the sixty seconds that had passed between her pulling him into the car and the third intersection, he was only just now starting to make sense of things.

  She hadn’t realized she’d hit him that hard.

  She slapped his cheek—not enough to hurt, but enough to get his attention. “Focus,” she said.

  He nodded and she let go of the wheel and the drive smoothed out.

  He glanced at her once, the same way he would have had he discovered himself in an enclosed space with a wild boar. He was a tough guy, tattooed and scarred, but weaponless, alone with the enemy, and still shell-shocked and dazed.

  “Just drive,” she said.

  Putting him behind the wheel had been the lesser of evils. With his hands busy, his eyes busy, he’d find it harder to attack her. Exactly the opposite of what would have happened if she’d put him unrestrained in the backseat and attempted to take him with her.

  He stopped at the light, waiting for the turn signal, his coordination seemingly impaired to the equivalent of three beers.

  “Turn left,” she said.

  He’d been the oldest of the four and that was to her advantage. Life experience would have already taught him that he wasn’t invincible; made him less likely to see fighting as the only way out; would make him more prone to listen to reason.

  Munroe glanced back.

  Two shattered windows were going to draw a lot of unwanted attention and having the police discover bullet holes in the car would be as bad as if she’d simply stayed in the garage and gotten shot.

  The car was registered to ALTEQ. She’d not been in the driver’s seat for any part of this, which would help when law enforcement analyzed traffic camera data. She’d report it stolen in the morning.

  They drove in sile
nce, Munroe scanning the streets for police while Mr. Mafia kept a death grip on the wheel, his eyes never leaving the windshield. He followed her turn-by-turn directions and the car wound outside the city along the same route she’d followed the night Bradford had vanished and Okada had led her to a place where they could talk.

  Population density thinned and the road signs pointed to smaller cities. In the passing signage Munroe recognized the kanji and said, “Is that for a train station?”

  Mr. Mafia nodded.

  “Find parking at the station.”

  He did as she instructed, and when at last he’d pulled to a stop, Munroe reached over and removed the key from the ignition.

  Eyes still fixed ahead, hands still gripping the wheel, he breathed irregular and jagged.

  “I only want to talk,” she said. “Give me your wallet and phone.”

  His eyes flickered toward the door handle.

  “If you try to run, I’ll be forced to stop you,” she said.

  He went back to staring out the windshield.

  “I can take your things by force if I have to,” she said.

  Still staring forward, he reached a hand for his pocket.

  —

  His name was Hideki Kimura and Munroe knew this, not from his license, which she couldn’t read, or from his phone, which would take time to learn to navigate, but because, still disoriented from the blows to his head, he wasn’t sober enough to engage in mental battle.

  She emptied his wallet and he watched wordlessly as she searched through each piece of paper, business card, and bank card, looking for something to connect him to the person at the facility who had sent him.

  “Do you know who I am?” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Tell me.”

  “You’re the man who stole women from the club to ruin business.”

  “One woman,” Munroe corrected. “She was there illegally and against her will. Do you know my day job? The company I work for?”

  “I don’t know anything,” he said.

  “You do this often? Go out hunting and hurting people?”

  Kimura didn’t answer, didn’t shrug.

  “I kill people for a living,” she said.