Clear Skies Page 3

  She took a sip of her drink. “I knew Chloe from college in Seattle. We took classes together for three years but never met again after graduating until last year. So I can’t tell you much.”

  Slade looked up. Isa called her employer Chloe, not Carol. He made a mental note to revisit this observation. His brow furrowed. “You worked for her. You must have learned a few pertinent details.” He reached out for his coffee and added, “Isn’t an employer-maid relationship odd for old college friends? Surely you were more deeply involved.”

  “Chloe was a private person, even in college. We weren’t close friends.” Isa paused, and Slade’s skin tightened as she bristled, sending a shower of invisible needles in his direction. “It looks like you’re trying to point the finger at me.”

  Abe entered the room before he could respond.

  Slade stood and stepped toward him. “What can you tell me?” he asked.

  “Taking the heating into account, I am even more confident now that she died near midnight last night.” Abe took out his large handkerchief from his pocket again to wipe away persistent sweat running down his face and neck. “But like I said earlier, I can’t be sure until I do an autopsy. There is no sign of a struggle, no skin particles under her nails, nor any visible injuries or bruises, so she did not offer any resistance. I will have to do more tests to rule out sexual assault, but I would be surprised if we get results that show it took place.”

  Slade nodded. “I agree.”

  “Makino says there are no signs of a break-in, so at a rough guess, I’d say she opened the door and let him or her in. The slit dress might be a red herring, staged to make the scene look like sexual assault, but you most likely deduced that already. Call the lab later today, and I’ll let you know if I find anything else. And put a bomb under Makino to send the corpse over right away so we can get started.”

  “Thanks. Will do.” Slade faced Isa when Abe left. She was one of a rare breed of women whose beauty intensified with anger. Her eyes seemed even more compelling with her cheeks flushed.

  “I gave you the wrong impression before,” he said. “You’re not a suspect—not for now, at least.” He went on to avoid another complaint. Clearly, she was not easily intimidated. “Look, several things don’t add up, and I’m hoping you can supply answers to the questions I’m asking myself.” He held her gaze until she turned away. “You found a corpse at the scene of a crime. You knew the victim, which means you know a lot more than I do. At this stage, you’re my primary source of information.” He sat down again. “So can we go on now more objectively?” he said more forcefully than intended.

  Silence followed, and in it, Slade felt a tinge of remorse. He’d expected her to make another defensive response, but she appeared contrite. Most murders involved family members or close acquaintances, and Isa had one foot in that category. He needed her cooperation.

  She looked up at him, and her mouth eased into a smile. Her eyes, though, left him with a fleeting impression of many hours spent staring through a long-range rifle scope at some stage in her life.

  He became aware of her perfume, and the man within the detective wanted to get out. Subtle, yet insistent, it gave him a charge. Another time he might have responded, but her residual antagonism sealed off that avenue. In any case, until proved otherwise, Isa remained a potential suspect.

  “Bear with me for a couple of routine questions—I need to eliminate you as a person of interest in this crime before we move on,” he said. “Where were you the night before last?”

  “Visiting friends in Kyoto. I can give you their contact details.”

  “And last night?”

  “Traveling back to Tokyo by Shinkansen. The ticket receipt is in my bag somewhere. I got home around eleven.”

  If the victim had been killed near midnight last night as Abe predicted, Isa was almost out of the frame.

  Slade refocused. “How long has Mrs. Palmer lived here?”

  “A little more than twelve months I believe.”

  “What was her full name when you were students?”

  “Harris. Chloe Harris.”

  Slade thought the discrepancy between the names in the passport and the brochure in the living room might be easier to explain than he’d expected. “Do you know why the name in her passport is Chloe, but the name on the mailbox is Carol?”

  “I asked her the same thing. I mean, about the name she was using here. I never saw her passport.” She paused, then seemed to realize she hadn’t answered his question. “Chloe changed her first name because she operated a modeling agency here. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Chloe pronounced with Japanese phonetics sounds like kuroi, which means black or dark. She thought it was a bad omen for business, and that’s why she called herself Carol in Japan, or so she told me.”

  “When did she change her name?”

  “She married just over a year ago, right before she came here to start up her agency, so probably from around that time.”

  Slade recalled that Chloe Harris’s passport dated back eight years and was valid for two more. This timing tied in with the information from Isa, if Palmer had not bothered to update her passport until it expired or legally change her first name and family name.

  The discrepancy in the names might turn out to be the least of the anomalies screaming for an explanation in this case.

  CHAPTER 5

  (Thursday Morning—Tokyo)

  Her perfume reached him again when she crossed her legs, making him more aware of her visceral effect on him. In his view, leg movement was a way women bring one of their chief assets to a man’s attention, often as a distraction. He looked at her toned, shapely calves and thought she was physically fitter than most women of her age, suggesting a dedicated exercise regime. Or maybe she’s trained in the martial arts. She’s coiled like a spring.

  “Where is Mr. Palmer now?”

  “He doesn’t live in Japan and never visited when I was working here. I’m not sure where he is. Chloe didn’t take me into her confidence on personal matters.” She tossed back the rest of her drink. “But I think he might spend most of his time in the UK, as she traveled to London quite often.”

  He looked at her legs again and noticed her toenails, painted the same plum shade as her fingernails, and there was no ring on either hand. At first, he’d thought her attractive. I got that wrong. She’s just a notch away from stunning. Some vestige of his diminishing sense of propriety reined in the urge to give the thought voice.

  Isa tucked her feet under the stool. Had she read his mind again? God forbid.

  “If her husband rarely visited Japan, what did she do in her free time? She must have socialized with friends.” Especially with male friends, given her striking looks—men would’ve been lining up at the door. “Do you know who they are?”

  “I can’t help you there. I only worked here a few hours a day, two or three times a month—two months on when she stayed in Japan and two months off when she traveled. It was a set routine. I wasn’t her regular maid.”

  Slade raised his eyebrows. Makino’s questioning had overlooked this detail.

  “If you were not her regular maid, what did she ask you to do?” he asked.

  “Wash dishes, tidy up, and put things in order after dinner parties. Judging from the mess throughout the apartment, her parties must have been pretty uninhibited affairs. Chloe wanted her regular maid out of here as soon as the meal ended. She let her go at nine-thirty or ten on those nights and gave her the next day off. I would come in the morning after the party and tidy up.”

  “Is that all she asked you to do?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Slade drained the remaining coffee from his cup. “I can’t see you enjoying that type of work.”

  “She paid me a generous monthly retainer and ten times the usual hourly rate for part-time workers, so I didn’t mind.” Isa paused, stared at the floor, and then looked up. “Chloe paid for my discretion. I agreed not to talk to anyone about
her activities or what I did for her. I thought she was overreacting, but the money was good, so I agreed.”

  “How did this arrangement come about?” Slade asked.

  “I ran into her about twelve months ago at a Tokyo runway show of the Japanese couturier, Erika Ono. I’m trying to establish myself as a freelance fashion designer and have a short-term contract with her house.” Isa looked at Slade’s blank expression. “You must have heard of her. She’s one of Japan’s most successful dress designers, with Paris, New York, and London runway shows every year.”

  Slade tapped his fingers on the bench, waiting for Isa to continue.

  “I recognized Chloe. She asked what I was doing in Japan, and when I told her I look for extra jobs to support my fledgling design career and make ends meet, she promised to give me work. It turned out to be ridiculously well-paid, infrequent, domestic work, so I accepted.”

  “And not a long-term arrangement, I presume.”

  “Actually, Chloe just ended my employment with her. She was halfway through her usual two-month stay in Europe, and under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have been here today. But her plans changed, and she flew back to Tokyo a few days ago for last night’s business dinner. She messaged me with explicit instructions—come in on Sunday after one o’clock to clean up, and my employment would terminate after that until further notice.”

  Almost as though Palmer knew she would die on the weekend, Slade thought.

  “You arrived early, though.”

  “It suited me better to come here at ten. I have to finish my designs for Ono this afternoon.”

  “The place looks pretty tidy. Not much for you to do.”

  “Yes. I’m surprised. It must have been a more sedate affair than usual.”

  “Do you know her regular housemaid? Did Mrs. Palmer terminate her employment too?” he asked.

  “I’ve no idea. I never met her. She’s a Filipino named Cora Martinique. That’s all I know.” Slade made another mental note to follow up with the Filipino maid later in the day.

  “Who came to dinner?”

  “I understood they were always the same people—a few high-profile Japanese clients invited for an intimate dinner with several of her models. Chloe invited the women to provide a sociable atmosphere. Usually, eight guests in total, I think she said. But I have no idea who they were.”

  They shouldn’t be too difficult to pin down. All the Department had to do was call Palmer’s agency for the names of the models and interview them to ID the Japanese guests.

  “What do you mean by sociable atmosphere? Were the women prostitutes?”

  “I don’t know. Those were Chloe’s words, not mine.” After a moment’s reflection, she said, “I will say that after most of the dinner parties, I made up beds in the guest bedrooms. I never asked her about it, and she never gave me an explanation. I drew the obvious conclusions.” Isa spread her hands out on the table in front of her and examined her manicured nails.

  “How do you clean with those nails?” Slade asked.

  “I manage,” she said, curling her fingers into the palms of her hands. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Nothing. Just curious.” Hardly the hands of a worker.

  Slade stood up and walked to the door when he heard Makino shuffling down the passage toward them.

  “You’ll want this agency portfolio of photographs and the victim’s passport.” Makino handed them sealed in plastic bags to Slade. “We’ve taken prints from them already.” He nodded in the general direction of the front door. “The body’s going over to Abe’s lab now. The ambulance will leave in a moment.”

  “When you get back to the squad room, ask your guys to find out everything they can about the Palmers here,” Slade said. “The usual stuff—friends, employees, details of the leases of this apartment and the premises of her model agency, phone records, credit cards, and so on—a full workup, plus contact Palmer’s agency to track down the models who came to dinner. Every piece of information will be critical if we’re to put the pieces of this puzzle together.” Slade walked with Makino to the kitchen door, still talking. “In the meantime, I’ll follow-up on the international side. Brief me as soon as you can.”

  “Right.” Makino showed his displeasure at receiving instructions from a foreign colleague by giving him the merest hint of a bow.

  Slade got the message. I’m at a lower level in the department’s hierarchy, even though my rank in the FBI is higher.

  Makino moved off with uncharacteristic agility before Slade could say he’d missed far more than he’d found.

  Slade faced Isa and again failed to look anywhere but her legs. Sounds of the ambulance’s rear doors closing and the transmission grinding when the vehicle backed out of the drive jolted the detective part of his brain back into action.

  “Isa, you’re free to go now, but give me your residential address, email address, and telephone number. I need you to be available for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. I’ll want to ask you a lot more questions.” Slade knew the best time to interview a witness to a crime or someone who stumbles upon a corpse is within two days of the incident. People forget details over time, and creeping doubt dulls memory further.

  She smiled and handed him her name card. “No problem. I’ll be home finishing designs for Ono. The deadline to submit them to her is tomorrow evening, and I’ll be pushing it to get them done.”

  He guided her past the group of hustling reporters and into a cab. The door closed with a flash of her butterfly tattoo, and she was gone, leaving Slade in a whirl of unexpected emotion. He felt a stir of pleasure at the thought of questioning her again.

  He turned back to the press and told them a statement would be issued later in the day, after they’d informed the victim’s next of kin.

  After a final, cursory inspection of the apartment, Slade circled the perimeter for the next ten minutes, searching for signs of a forced intrusion. He found no disturbances in soil patterns, broken shrubs, jimmied locks, broken glass, or footprints, confirming Abe’s assessment that whoever killed the woman living here went through the front door. He or she might have known the victim, plied her with a convincing story, or used a key.

  He went back inside and made his way to the home office to power up the laptop. It gave off a high-pitched tone, and the screen lit up deep blue, covered with white letters and numbers—the blue screen of death. The computer had crashed, or its contents had been wiped. Slade picked it up on his way out for computer forensics to see if they could recover anything.

  He’d just opened his car door when his cell phone buzzed.

  “Slade, are you still in the Minato district?” It was Takeshi Hirota, his assistant, and the timbre of his voice sounded like he was juggling five plates with his left hand and taking notes with the right.

  “Yes. What’s up?”

  “We’ve got another dead foreigner in your area. Looks like the time of death was in the small hours of this morning. CIB wants you over there.”

  “What are the circumstances? Can you go instead?”

  “I don’t know the MO yet. But the first officer at the scene called it in as murder. The victim was a Filipino employed as domestic help according to her housemates.”

  Slade stiffened. “Was her name Cora?”

  “Yes. Cora Martinique. How did you know?”

  An acute pain shot through Slade’s chest.

  “I’ll explain later.” He looked at the name card still in his hand and texted Isa’s address to Hirota. “Listen. This is top priority. Get a local unit over to Akasaka immediately. I just sent the address to your cell phone. A woman called Isa Kato lives there and could be at risk from the same person who killed Palmer and the Filipino maid. The Filipino worked as Palmer’s regular maid.”

  He started his car and drove off, rear tires smoking, while holding the phone to his ear.

  “Kato’s in a cab heading home from here, and I’m on my way there now. Get over to th
e Filipino’s residence and supervise the work. I want to know every detail. These cases are connected.”

  He turned right out of Palmer’s tree-lined street and right again onto Roppongi Street. He then barreled left to snake through the labyrinth of one-way streets making up Akasaka, a central business district neighboring Roppongi to the north and a heavily frequented entertainment area, with one of the highest densities of watering holes in the city. His car’s navigation system droned out directions in a slow-speaking, disembodied voice at odds with the urgency of the situation.

  Whoever killed the Palmer woman was covering his tracks and trying to put out every light that might shine on his identity. And it was possible Isa Kato could do just that.

  CHAPTER 6

  (Thursday Midday—Tokyo)

  Fronting a thirty-story office building in Akasaka, a covered rectangular plaza gave only token relief from the oppressive humidity as the day’s heat reached its midday peak. Trickling from circulating water, overflowing into a shallow channel from a man-made pond, went unnoticed by a sentinel figure standing beside it.

  He grasped a rolled newspaper in his left hand and appeared to be waiting for someone to come out of the building. Around forty and heavier than an average Japanese man of his age and height, he looked like a third-rate businessman who’d overindulged in business lunches and dinners every day of a deskbound working life. He’d cultivated the image over the years to conceal the true nature of his chosen job, or profession, as he liked to think of it.

  He barely noticed a group of office workers hovering in a designated smoking zone ten meters away, behind a sparse clump of vegetation. A stream of people at midday did not distract him as they jostled past in their quotidian treck to restaurants whose sole purpose was to churn out affordable lunches for sararīmen, Japan’s corporate rank and file.

  Every few minutes, he wiped away rivers of sweat before they trickled under his collar, yet despite his obvious discomfort in the lingering post-summer heat, he wore gloves.