Clear Skies Page 2

  If he paid more than eighty dollars for that suit, he should walk into one of the CIB’s cells, throw away the key, and eschew legal representation.

  “I had a feeling you’d say that,” Slade said. “Tell your guys to hand over the print and crime scene findings to me as soon as possible. The last time we took over one of your cases, the perp nearly got away before we had enough evidence from your team to arrest him.”

  Makino ignored the comment.

  Resigned to working with him, Slade respected Makino as a hardened professional. He may have had a reputation for the slowest pace of work in the department, but it was always in line with CIB guidelines. If his superiors asked Makino to interview a polar bear, he’d head straight to the Arctic, no questions asked. A man who lives by the regulations. He probably keeps a massive tome on rules for living beside his bed and another on his breakfast counter.

  Worse than Makino’s slow pace of work was his apparent resistance to working with a foreigner, although he’d lost his inhibitions once after a few late-night drinks in one of the nomiya, or watering holes, near the CIB. He’d confided then in Slade about wanting a family, but even the traditional omiai practice of marriage arranged by go-betweens had failed. Slade tried to set him up once with an attractive fortysomething woman from the Lost and Found Section, but that hadn’t taken off either.

  Slade had not pursued many women in recent months given the irregular hours of his job and the ingrained Japanese practice of nomikai, or drinking after work with colleagues, though he knew he appealed to women. He enjoyed romantic encounters, but they usually came to a messy end. With so predictable an outcome, he avoided meaningful relationships and backed off when an affair looked like becoming anything more than casual. All of his liaisons carried a use by date of two months at most.

  Settling down did not figure in Slade’s short- to medium-term plans, nor the long-term ones if he were honest. He didn’t allow himself to think about it. Not with his erratic working life and his father’s dismal example of how to destroy a marriage and family with deception, drinking, and frequent absences. Slade never understood why it’d happened. It’s one of the things he should have asked before his father gave up on life and decided against turning things around. As a kid, he’d yearned for a father figure who was more than a temporary presence armed with the multiple excuses of the unapologetic. His old man had infected Slade with a love of history but never shared his passion, never empathized with him during his life; Slade wasn’t going to make similar mistakes in his own. Solo is safe.

  Makino shuffled into the passage on his way back to the dining room, and Slade saw his face brighten when a stocky figure stepped into the apartment. He recognized the CIB’s popular medical examiner, a veteran of the police service.

  Painstakingly methodical, Jun Abe’s ability to see around corners was CIB legend, and his colleagues claimed he’d never made a mistake in a career spanning forty years. Now approaching retirement, he spent most of his time training recruits.

  Slade appreciated Abe’s efficiency and ability to complete his tasks at a brisk pace. While Makino could teach slow to a tortoise, Abe could teach swift to a peregrine falcon. Abe even talked fast.

  “Great way to start the day. Where’s the body?” Abe rolled an unlit cigarette between his fingers. Slade found himself staring at Abe’s hands. The palms and insides of his long fingers were pale, contrasting with the rest of his hands and wrists, probably the result of forty years of contact with chemicals used to preserve corpses for autopsies. He wondered if Abe could wash the smell of death from his skin and clothes when he went home at night. Smoking would help.

  “Across the passage in the living room,” Slade said. “Seems like she’s been dead a couple of days.”

  “Beginning to smell?”

  “Yes. But she’s a real dazzler, in spite of the initial decomposition.”

  “Well, this year, we still have unseasonal midsummer conditions even in September, so the smell would appear earlier. I swear summer is getting hotter and lasting longer every year. The environmentalists might be right about global warming and depleting resources.” Abe pulled out a large, crumpled handkerchief from his pocket to mop up sweat droplets running down his forehead and neck.

  “One curious thing I noticed right away,” he said. “The heating seems to be on. The temperature is much higher in here than on the street, and I already felt uncomfortably hot out there. Conditions last night and this morning were warm bordering on hot, so why turn on the heat?”

  Slade followed Abe into the living room and checked the setting on the air-conditioning wall panel.

  “You’re right. It’s running and set at thirty degrees, the maximum. The timer’s scheduled to switch off at noon.”

  The smell of the dead body had intensified and coated the roof of Slade’s mouth like rancid animal fat. He covered his mouth and nose with his hand.

  “You were right about her looks,” Abe leaned over the body, unfazed by the stench. “And given her state of undress, I’ll check for semen when we get her back to the lab, but it doesn’t scream rape to me.”

  He examined the corpse and Slade moved to the side of the room where the smell was less intense. A few moments later, Abe called him over to the body.

  “Based on the smell and hourly rate of heat loss from a five-foot-nine body weighing roughly one hundred and ten pounds under normal night and day conditions for this time of year, I would have said she died in the evening between nine and midnight two nights ago.” He paused, appearing to reflect on what to say next. “But with the excessive heat in this apartment, I estimate the time of death much closer to the same time last night or later, maybe even in the early hours of this morning.” He mopped sweat from his face and neck again. “But I can’t say for sure until I get her back to the morgue and take a closer look.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “If I were a gambling man, I’d stake my reputation on someone killing her late last night and turning on the heat to make the time of death seem earlier. In this extended heat wave, the extreme temperature in the apartment could be attributed to the weather. The killer counted on us placing the TOD at a time when he or she could prove his presence elsewhere in a pinch.”

  “This killer knew what he was doing,” Slade said, “but didn’t know a maid would come here this morning and call the police before the timer kicked in and switched off the heating. His first mistake. Let’s hope he made a few more.”

  Slade left Abe with the body and walked into a sparsely furnished home office. An ornate mahogany desk was bare except for a closed laptop. He backed out and moved through the main bedroom into a dressing room, where he saw at least thirty luxury brand designer dresses. A diamond bracelet and earrings lay in full view on a makeup table, beneath an illuminated mirror.

  Slade hurried past. He’d seen his face when he shaved and once today was enough. His bloodshot eyes, framed by the beginnings of hairline wrinkles, spoke of last night’s drinking session with his CIB coworkers.

  At thirty-five, he was less fit and alert than he’d like. He rubbed his abdomen and regretted sleeping that extra hour in the mornings these past few months instead of hitting the gym. He should make a point of scheduling a session at least once a day to take him out of his comfort zone and force himself out of the doldrums.

  Slade’s dark brown hair was longer than the typical cropped style of his colleagues. His regular attire of white shirt, jeans, and creased black jacket, molded to his body shape, more befitted a jaded investigator. But it clashed with the neat, suited image of his fellow Japanese detectives. Maybe it was time to reinvent himself.

  He knew why he’d slacked off: boredom with the relentless routine of mundane crimes and paperwork sent his way. Yes, they could be solved with ease and gave him the highest clearance rate in the department. But where were the head-scratchers? Where were the cases with the illusory progress that transformed into dead ends, destined for cold-case files i
f investigators treated them as ordinary textbook crimes? He’d been trained to handle brain-teasers like that and take both overt and covert action in the field to resolve them, but none landed on his desk in the Tokyo CIB.

  Slade stepped through a doorway at the other end of the dressing room into an adjoining walk-through closet with a creased men’s designer suit hanging on one side. Diamond cufflinks and a matching tie-pin glittered in the pockets of the jacket. A glance told Slade the owner of the suit was well over six feet tall with a large frame.

  The door at the far end of this closet opened to a smaller bedroom. Slade slid open the door of a wardrobe beside the bed, and two smaller, lower-budget suits jumped out at him right away. The owner of these clothes could not be the same man who’d worn the suit Slade had seen in the walk-through closet.

  With the victim of a callous murder stretched out in the living room, the relative normality of the rest of the apartment struck Slade as bizarre. He reviewed what he’d registered so far with hard-edged clarity. He was even more confident now that this homicide was not for sexual gratification, nor was it a burglary gone wrong, and he’d bet his savings on those theories never advancing beyond insentient conjecture.

  The nagging whisper from a sense beyond reason had become a raucous shout. If his premonitions panned out, they’d find something big was afoot, and the death of this woman was an integral part of its menacing underbelly.

  Slade felt a jolt of adrenaline pulsing through his arteries, stimulated by the prospect of a challenging investigation ahead. It was time to talk to the maid.

  CHAPTER 4

  (Thursday Morning—Tokyo)

  The maid’s physical appearance gave Slade pause. At first glance, he saw the East in her cheekbones, the strong lines of her jaw, and the texture of her glossy, jet-black hair. At second glance, he saw more of the West—in her high nose, her full, molded mouth, and body height not far below his own. Both stood out in the shape and hazel-brown color of her eyes. Her shoulder-length hair partially covered a small butterfly tattooed on her right shoulder, an uncharacteristic embellishment for a Japanese woman.

  He took in her skinny jeans and sleeveless, form-fitting, white shirt over a slender yet curvaceous body and put her age at late twenties or early thirties. She lacked the doll-like perfection of the dead woman in the living room, but his first full look left him wishing they’d met under different circumstances.

  His eyes met hers, and for a moment, he felt his life might have changed course permanently.

  “You can take over now,” Makino said when Slade walked into the dining room. He handed over his notes and plodded in the direction of the forensics team still taking fingerprints in the living room.

  “Okay, but talk to me before you leave,” Slade said, addressing Makino’s disappearing back. At least Makino had spared him one of the many standard excuses the Japanese use instead of the word no.

  Slade turned to the maid and flashed his FBI badge.

  “My name is Dan Slade, FBI. I’m attached to the US Embassy,” he said in Japanese. He pulled out his business card case and handed over a Japanese meishi or name card. Anyone without a meishi is no one in Japan, and Slade had several for different purposes.

  She looked at it. “International Liaison Department, Criminal Investigation Bureau, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. There’s nothing on this meishi about the FBI or the embassy.”

  “I didn’t explain properly,” he said, handing her another meishi. “I have more than one role and should have given you this card too. My bad.” Slade steepled his fingers and stared at her. “Most FBI agents attached to an embassy work with the local police on cases related to international terrorism, cybercrimes and general criminal matters concerning American interests. Eleven months ago, I entered a twelve-month exchange program run by US federal agencies and the Japanese government, which means I work fully embedded as an investigator in the Tokyo CIB, but the FBI pays my salary. When I finish the program, I’ll transform into a legal attaché at the embassy and continue doing much the same work for the FBI.”

  Something flickered in her eyes, at the edge of his awareness. Something he couldn’t read. His explanation seemed to have unsettled her for a second until she pulled the errant emotion under control.

  He pointed to the doorway ahead of them. “Why don’t we head to the kitchen and you make us coffee while we talk?”

  People relax and let their guard down when performing familiar tasks, and with the caffeine spike from Slade’s first cup of the day long since gone and the second untouched and now stone-cold on his desk in the squad room, he was ready for another. He eased himself onto a counter stool and watched her move through the room.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Isabella to mōshimasu.”

  When Slade raised his eyebrows at the Western name, she continued in English.

  “Isabella Kato, from Seattle, but everyone calls me Isa. My parents were Japanese and American, so I’m what the Japanese call a hāfu, though I prefer to say bicultural.” She shrugged her shoulders.

  “I’m not half a person.”

  Slade smiled, and before he could speak, she went on.

  “My Japanese name is Isa as well.” She wrote her name on a notepad in kanji——the Japanese written language based on symbolic Chinese characters. “The perfect compromise for my parents.”

  Slade controlled his natural inclination to ogle her while she collected her thoughts.

  “Most people think my looks tilt toward the West,” she said.

  Had she read his mind when he first laid eyes on her? “My body language is American,” she said, handing him a mug of coffee.

  “Which explains your American accent. So you’re bilingual?” Slade switched to English, aware now that it was her preferred language. He also realized she wanted to talk, which could be a sign of a person with something to hide or merely the result of shock.

  “Yes. I went to a Japanese school here in Tokyo for several years and lived with my father’s relatives. But my mother was American, and I’ve spent most of my life in the US, so my first language is English and cultural base American.” Slade noted an uptick in her confidence. She held his gaze and went on. “What about you? You’re bilingual too. What’s your background?”

  Most affluent foreigners in Japan employed Filipino maids. Bilingual Japanese-Americans had higher aspirations and never enter the job pool for domestic helpers. And maids didn’t ask strangers personal questions, unlike Isa. She’d regained her composure, and again, he noted a watchfulness buried deep in her eyes, arousing his curiosity.

  “Similar to yours in reverse,” Slade said. Self-revelation was not one of his usual interview and elicitation techniques, but giving her a snapshot of his personal life might help win her trust. “I was born here even though both my parents were from the States, so I speak Japanese. My father worked out of Tokyo for twenty years as the Asia-Pacific rep for a US trading company, and I went to the American School in Japan.”

  “An international school kid. I can picture you as one of that brash crowd.”

  Slade laughed. “Guilty as charged. In hindsight, I can see we were a gang of rowdy brats. We owned the streets. Thought we owned Tokyo. Thought we belonged. That misconception came to an abrupt end once we left school. We were just another bunch of gaijin—foreigners. Tolerated but not really accepted as part of society.” And here I am, back again, this time acting like I belong in the CIB.

  “And after the American School? What did you do then?”

  “I returned to the States with my mother and brother, James, and studied law before joining the FBI.” Slade paused to drink his coffee, already lukewarm. “After ten years with the Bureau in Washington, DC, I applied for the exchange program to immerse myself again in Japan for a while.”

  “And you like the work?” Isa flashed him a smile.

  “It’s interesting, though I have mixed feelings,” he replied, surprised by her personal q
uestion and even more by the honesty of his answer to a stranger.

  Makino’s idiosyncrasies aside, did he want to spend most of his working days in the shadows, seeing the worst side of every life he touched here? His misgivings stretched way beyond his current work at Tokyo’s CIB. He knew from many colleagues that relationships and family life are unavoidable casualties of work as a covert agent or law enforcement officer. His childhood suffered from his father’s indifference, and he’d also lost friends during his career in the FBI because of the clandestine and fluid nature of the work. Still, he’d learned long ago how to deal with it and turn the pain into a protective wall around his emotions.

  Should I give it up, find a regular job, and live a normal life with a woman I care about? He’d never thought about it long enough to find an answer. With a cavalier attitude to relationships buffering his emotions, he could reflect on this dilemma another time. Right now, he needed to focus on the more pressing problem of a dead woman of uncertain identity lying in the living room of this expat apartment.

  Slade glanced at Makino’s notes to see what he’d learned so far, and it wasn’t much. The Japanese detective had put together a perfunctory list of the minutiae of the maid’s actions from the time she’d left home.

  Isa had arrived at ten o’clock, let herself in with her key, and gone to the living room, where she’d found the body on the sofa. She’d called the police and waited for them in the entrance foyer. During the ten minutes before they arrived, no one else had entered or left the apartment building.

  Not that she’d have noticed. This luxury condominium provided seclusion with private entrances and separate garages for each apartment, and that meant an unsociable tenant could live here for years and never see or hear a neighbor.

  “Here’s another coffee.” Isa sat down on a stool beside him and busied herself with milk and sugar.

  “What can you tell me about the dead woman?” Slade asked.