by Matt Lincoln
“Don’t sell yourself short, Director,” I smiled.
There was a two-way mirror in this interrogation room as well, so Wallace would be able to watch the interrogation from out here. Through the glass, I could see the suspect. He didn’t look angry or scared. He just looked blank, and I wasn’t sure what angle to approach him from. Otsuka had been easy to figure out, but I hadn’t had a chance to interact with Kimura at all before I’d shot him.
Nevertheless, the clock was ticking, and I needed to get the interrogation started as soon as possible. I entered the room and kept a close eye on Kimura. Even the slightest change in his body language or behavior might give me a clue as to how to get him to crack.
He only looked up at me for a moment before turning his gaze back to the table in front of him.
“Mr. Kimura,” I started as I took a seat across the table from him. “Can you tell me what you were doing at the bus station today?” He met my question with only silence. Aside from blinking, Kimura wasn’t moving a single muscle.
“Alright, what about three nights ago?” I asked. Again, he didn’t so much as look at me. “Can you tell me what happened to Otsuka? Were you the one that killed him? Did you do it to keep him quiet after you heard that he had spoken with us?”
He swallowed nervously but still kept resolutely silent. I was beginning to get frustrated. Normally, I wouldn’t mind taking a long time to wear a suspect down bit by bit, but I didn’t have the luxury of time right now. As soon as Interpol arrived, they would claim to have jurisdiction over the case, and we’d end up in a tug-of-war to figure out whose issue was most pressing. The time it would take to sort it out would be precious time lost. I needed to get him talking now.
“Okay, Mr. Kimura, I’ll tell you what,” I murmured, smiling sweetly at him. “You can talk to me and tell me everything you know about the organization, or you can just walk out of the station right now.” He finally turned to look at me, his expression bewildered.
“I can just leave?” He asked skeptically.
“Of course,” I shrugged. “Right after I hold a press conference thanking you by name for everything you’ve done to assist us in our investigation against a dangerous international human trafficking group.” I could see the color drain from his face as the implication of what I was suggesting sunk in.
“You can’t do that,” he gasped.
“Oh, I most certainly can,” I disagreed, flashing him the same artificial smile as before. “If you really have nothing to hide, then it shouldn’t be a problem, right? Unless, of course, there is something you aren’t telling me.”
“What do you want me to say?” Kimura suddenly yelled. “You know as well as I do what will happen if I talk to you. Hell, I’m probably dead already.”
“Well then, there’s no harm in talking to me, is there?” I asked. “You said it yourself. We have already caught you. There’s no chance they won’t try to come after you, just like you went after Otsuka and Nakamura. You can either leave here and take your chances with them, or tell me what you know, and I’ll offer you every form of protection we can.”
“You can’t stop them,” Kimura scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest.
“We stopped you from getting to Nakamura,” I pointed out. “And we’ll stop anyone else who comes after either of you. Face it. You don’t have any other allies now. The police certainly won’t want you now that they’ve seen your true colors. Your best bet is with me.” I watched as Kimura seemed to mull it over. It was a gamble to threaten to throw him to the wolves like this, but there was truth in what I was saying. They had sent him to kill Nakamura just for being associated with Otsuka. Now that he was in police custody, there was no way they wouldn’t try to kill Kimura.
“Okay,” he grumbled finally. “As you said, I’m at risk the minute I step out of this police station. At least this way I’ll have a fighting chance.”
“Good decision,” I nodded. “Now tell me, were you the one who accompanied Otsuka three nights ago to the home of Agent Gardner?”
“Is that the one whose house we burned down?” Kimura asked. “Yeah, that was us. The boss told him and me to go over there and get rid of her.”
“Who’s your boss?” I asked.
Kimura shrugged.
“Some guy in Japan,” he shrugged. “Never met him personally. He’s pretty careful about not leaving any traces when he communicates with us.”
“And how does he communicate with you?” I asked.
“Mostly through the internet,” Kimura replied. “There’s this online message board he likes because it’s super secure, and all the messages get deleted after a few hours. It makes it harder for the cops to track us.”
“Aren’t you a police officer?” I asked. It wasn’t directly related to the line of questioning, but I couldn’t help myself. The way he was talking made it seem like he had absolutely no concern over breaking the law. I found it hard to believe that a police officer would be so cavalier.
“Seriously?” Kimura asked mockingly. “Do you have any idea what police officers make? It’s nothing. I make more money in a month working for Saito then I do in a year working for the police department.”
“Saito?” I prompted.
“Yeah, that’s the screen name he goes by,” Kimura answered.
“Alright,” I replied, making a mental note of the name. “Did you also attack Chie Nakamura early this morning?”
“Yeah, I did,” Kimura responded. “I told the boss that Otsuka had been compromised, and he told me to get rid of him. Her too, since she was there when the feds arrived.”
“I see,” I glared at him. “How did you find out where she was headed? You got to the bus station just a few minutes after her bus arrived.”
“It’s amazing what you can get away with when you’re a cop,” Kimura sneered derisively. “I knew the fastest way to track her movements would be to watch her spending. No one uses cash anymore, you know? All I had to do was call the credit card company and tell them I was investigating a missing person’s case. They told me what her recent transactions were, and I saw that she’d purchased a ticket at the bus station. Then all I had to do was call the bus station and tell them a runaway teenager had recently purchased a bus ticket using her mother’s stolen credit card. They told me exactly where she was going.” Kimura sounded almost proud of his actions, and I had to push down the disgust I felt.
“Are there other police officers within this organization?” I asked. Kimura’s eyebrows rose into his hairline.
“You mean, you don’t know?” He asked. “Half the people working for him are cops. He does that on purpose so he can get away with it. How do you think people keep turning up dead as soon as they talk without anyone getting blamed for it?” I felt a cold shudder run through me as his words sunk in, but I kept my expression neutral.
“Do you know how we can get in touch with him?” I asked.
“No,” Kimura scoffed. “Anytime he wants something, he’ll call or message us first. I don’t know how to contact him. Oh, but I do have an address, I think.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. An address would be a huge lead.
“He’s sent me stuff a few times,” Kimura shrugged. “Well, maybe not him, specifically, but the group. Guns and stuff to distribute to other members. He always told me to destroy all the evidence and packaging as soon as I unpacked everything, but I’m pretty sure I still have some original packages at home.”
“Okay, we’ll look into it,” I responded. “You said he asked you to distribute the weapons to other members. Do you know how to get in contact with them?”
“Yeah, I do,” Kimura replied, and my heart started to beat faster with anticipation. “I can give you a list of names. I don’t remember everyone’s addresses, though, sorry.”
“The names will do,” I answered curtly. If he was telling the truth, this would be extremely beneficial to us. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”
“No,�
�� Kimura shook his head. “That’s about all I know.”
“Alright,” I replied, standing up out of my chair. I didn’t have anything else to say to him, and I wanted to do a search of Kimura’s apartment as soon as possible.
“Wait,” a voice called from behind me, and I turned in surprise as Wallace strode through the door. He placed a sheet of paper and a pen down in front of Kimura. “Those names, please.”
“Right now?” He asked as he took the pen in his hand. “Fine, whatever.”
Wallace pulled me aside as Kimura began to write.
“We need to move before Interpol does,” he explained. “The moment they take over jurisdiction, we’ll be locked out, and we won’t have access to the evidence anymore. We need to get as much information as we can as quickly as possible.”
“I understand,” I nodded. I’d been right, then. Even though he’d allowed me to take the lead, he was still monitoring my actions. I supposed there was a reason he was the director, ultimately.
“Here it is,” Kimura groused as he held the paper out to me. “All the names I can remember. The package with the address is somewhere in my apartment, in my room, I think. I can’t really remember.”
“Excellent,” I replied as I snatched the piece of paper out of his hand and turned to leave.
“Hey!” Kimura called out as I was walking toward the door. “What about me? What are you going to do to make sure I don’t wind up the same way as Otsuka?”
“Interpol will be here to collect you soon,” I informed him as I turned back around to face him. “I’ll make sure you’re placed in protective custody and given the highest level of security.” As much as I detested him and everything he had done, he had held up his end of the bargain, and I couldn’t just let him get murdered. That wasn’t the way our justice system worked, and I was a federal agent dedicated to upholding the law.
Kimura seemed satisfied by my answer because he slouched back in his chair and resumed staring at the table ahead of him. Wallace turned to me as we left the room.
“Well done, Agent Patel,” he praised. “Now we have a list of names and, potentially, an address. If we leave now, we’ll get to Los Angeles before nightfall. We can get the address to Hills, Chapman, and Gardner by the time it’s morning over there.”
“Let’s go,” I smiled triumphantly. I felt a renewed sense of determination now that we were one step closer to finding the leader of the group. The trio in Japan would be asleep right now, but hopefully, we’d have something new for them by the time they woke up.
28
Junior
I opened my eyes blearily as the shrill scream of my alarm pierced through the silence of the room. It was a horrible, grating noise, but it was the only thing that could effectively wake me up. I’d tried using less abrasive jingles or even normal songs, but I would almost always sleep through them. The caustic noise exploding from my phone’s speakers was the only thing that worked.
“What the hell is that?” Charlie called grumpily from the bed next to mine. “It sounds like an air-raid siren.”
“My alarm,” I groaned groggily as I reached over to pick up my phone off of the nightstand. I flipped the alarm off before taking a second to stretch. We’d gotten to bed late the night before, so I’d only gotten about six hours of sleep, and I didn’t feel very rested.
“That scared me,” Fiona chimed in. She was already awake, and I could see her sitting on the floor, surrounded by all of her analysis equipment.
“Did you get any sleep at all?” I asked. When Charlie and I had gone to bed last night, she’d been in the same position.
“Yeah, a little,” Fiona shrugged. “I couldn’t really relax, though. I kept thinking about how we still didn’t have anything to follow up on. Luckily for us, Naomi came through while we were sleeping.” She picked the laptop up off the ground and stood.
“Look here,” she said as she came to stand between Charlie and me. “Apparently, she and Wallace got a huge lead yesterday. They found the guys who set my house on fire, and one of them gave up an address that he thinks might lead us to a man named Saito.”
“That’s the same name Ueda gave us,” Charlie remarked.
“Yep,” Fiona chirped. “There’s no way it’s a coincidence. This is our guy. They did a search of the guy’s house and found the address. Naomi sent it to us early this morning. I’ve been digging into it as much as I could for a couple of hours now. The address is actually for a casino in Kabukicho. It’s owned by a man named Kiyoshi Watanabe. The packages that Naomi found had the casino as the return address, but the sender’s name didn’t match Watanabe’s. According to what I found, there are a total of seventy-four employees currently working in the casino, including managers, supervisors, and floor attendants. Any one of them could have sent the package.”
“That’s a pretty big number of people,” I commented. Whoever had sent the package had been smart enough to use a fake name, and with such a wide pool of people to sort through, we would have to be careful not to alert the real perpetrator.
“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” Fiona agreed, going back to her spot on the floor. “The name on the package was Nanashi Gonbei, which is basically like signing something ‘John Smith.’ It’s a really obvious fake name.”
“It’s almost insulting,” Charlie scoffed. “It’s as if they thought there was no way they’d ever get caught. Why else would they use such an obviously fake name?”
“About that,” Fiona began as she wrung her hands the way she always did when she was anxious. “Naomi told me that, apparently, there are a lot of police officers working for this organization.”
“What?” I blurted out, shocked by what she had just said.
“That's how they’ve been getting away with this for so long,” Fiona explained. “This Saito guy deliberately recruits police officers so that he’ll be able to cover his tracks. That’s probably why they feel so confident. They know that even if the police catch wind of what they’re doing, one of their own members will be able to sweep it all under the rug. Just like Daichi tried to do when we arrived.”
“Damn,” Charlie sighed. The more we discovered, the more dangerous this mission was turning out to be. We’d have to be extremely careful about who we revealed any information to.
“Well, Officer Hajime should be here in about an hour,” I replied after checking the time on my phone. “We’ll let her know what we found and see what she thinks about it. She might have something to add.”
Charlie went to take a shower then, but I decided to just start getting dressed for the day. I preferred showering at night since the idea of going to sleep with all the day’s dirt and grime still on me sounded disgusting. Fiona left the room to get us all some coffee while I was getting ready. For the first time since we’d switched hotels, I felt a little awkward having all three of us crammed into a single room. Safety was more important, though, and I understood that Nelson might not have been able to find a similarly constructed double room on such short notice.
An hour later, all three of us felt significantly more recharged and ready for the day. I helped Fiona push the nightstands together so that they formed a longer workspace. This way, she could move her computer and tools and wouldn’t have to sit on the floor anymore. Once we had set that up, Charlie and I headed down into the lobby to meet Hajime.
“Good morning, agents,” She greeted us as we approached her. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
“How bad?” Charlie asked gruffly.
“I’m afraid that Daichi Fujioka will be unable to assist us in either of our investigations,” she informed us. “He was attacked last night as he was being transported to jail. He’s alive but currently in critical condition.”
“Was anyone else hurt?” I asked. Honestly, I didn’t care very much about what happened to Daichi. I didn’t think we’d get anything out of him anyway, and his treachery had earned me a bullet and six stitches. I was, however, concerned about the officers who wou
ld have been in charge of transporting him.
“Everyone is fine,” Hajime assured us. “One of the NCB officers who was with him was shot in the leg, but he should make a full recovery. Fortunately for us, the attack occurred right outside the jail, in direct sight of the security cameras. The car he was driving had fake plates, but we did manage to get a clear image of the suspect’s face. We’re currently trying to use face recognition software to figure out his identity, but so far, we haven’t had any luck.”
“Fiona might be able to find something,” I informed her. “She’s managed to trace pretty much everything else we’ve given her.”
“I’ll have my team forward everything we have to her then,” Hajime replied. “Until we find out more information on him, I think our best bet would be to look around Daichi’s typical haunts. We might find something or someone to point us in the right direction.”
“Actually, we might have a lead,” Charlie responded. “One of our agents in Las Vegas found an address in the home of one of the group members. It’s a casino in Kabukicho.”
“There’s also something else you should know,” I interjected. I looked around the lobby before I continued. The only other person here was the front desk clerk. If I spoke quietly, he wouldn’t be able to hear. “We also discovered that Daichi wasn’t the only cop working with the group. Apparently, there are a lot of them. The leader built the group that way on purpose to make it harder for the authorities to catch them.” I could see the horror dawn on Hajime’s face.
“Okay,” she muttered, nodding slowly. “I’ll let my supervisor know that this is a bigger problem than we thought. For now, though, let’s not bring anyone else onto this case. We need to be sure we can trust whoever we’re working with, and the more people we speak to, the higher the chance that something will get back to one of the corrupt officers.”
“Right,” I agreed. “We should head straight for the casino then. The sooner we find them, the better.”
We left the hotel, and Hajime hailed a cab for us, which I was grateful for. So far, we’d been taking the subway pretty much exclusively, and the one time we’d tried to take a cab on the first night we arrived, we’d been unable to communicate with the driver. This wasn’t the first time I’d traveled to another country, but the culture shock I’d experienced upon arriving in Japan had been more intense than I’d expected. It was a beautiful and exciting country, but the language barrier got extremely frustrating to deal with. I was glad Hajime was with us now to help translate, but it made me realize just how vulnerable we’d been to Daichi’s deceit before.