Daughter of the Sword by Steve Bein

Author:Steve Bein
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780451464774
Publisher: Roc Trade
Published: 2012-10-02T04:00:00+00:00

42

Mariko was entering data into the Yamada case file when she got the call. “Oshiro,” Lieutenant Ko’s voice said through the speakerphone on her desk, “get in here.”

She clicked SAVE and abandoned her work. A tension headache was already setting in and she hadn’t even set foot in Ko’s office yet. This was the second day in a row that she’d come down to the precinct to find that Fuchida had killed again. It was eerie being the only one who knew Fuchida’s handiwork for what it was. She felt like he was watching her, like he was killing just so she would find a new set of photos on her desk in the morning.

“What were you doing?” Ko asked when she opened his door.

“Reading up on another drug-related homicide, sir. Last night someone gutted a dealer behind Shinjuku station, and not with a knife. Looks like another sword killing.”

“You’re in Forensics now, are you?”

“No, sir. But the slash wound was a single cut, and it opened the vic’s belly like a piñata. ME says the cut came within a few millimeters of the spine. No way you cut a grown man nearly in half with something the size of a kitchen knife. Not in one slash you don’t.”

Ko frowned, then lit a cigarette off the butt end of the one he was finishing. “And this is related to your Yamada case? How?”

“How many sword killers can there be, sir, even in a city this size? I’ve got evidence that the Yamada case is linked to a murder two weeks ago in Yokohama, and—”

“Enough.” Ko stabbed the cigarette to death in his ashtray. “This has gone too far. First you want me to put you on Narcotics, then you start tying your theft case to every murder within a hundred kilometers. And now—now a requisition comes across my desk for a province-wide manhunt? You want me to divert half the department’s manpower for a simple B and E?”

“With all due respect,” Mariko said, “this case is hardly simple. Tokyo usually sees about a hundred and twenty murders a year, neh? Two or three a week? In the last two nights we’ve had three dealers killed by the same MO—the same MO you’ll find in the Kurihara murder, by the way—not to mention the three bodies we’ve got from the break-in at Dr. Yamada’s place. That’s six fatalities, sir, six in one case—”

“If, Oshiro. One case, if this can’t all be chalked up to delusions of grandeur on your part. What’s the alleged link between the Yamada case and these drug dealers?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet, sir. But if you bothered reading my reports, you’d see the Kurihara-Yamada connection. You sent me out to Yamada’s place to follow up on the attempted sword theft, neh? Well, Kurihara-san was the one who sold that sword to Yamada in the first place. And now she turns up dead, killed just like these dealers were killed, by a sword of all things. Come on, sir, you’ve got to see the connection.

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