But, as was true of much of the food that Keigo Nakamura had eaten at home while he was in the States, Ms. Keli Bracque had been brought over from Japan. The orphan daughter of two American missionaries there, the girl had more or less been raised by the entertainment-and-relaxation branch of Nakamura Heavy Industries. In the old days, Nick knew, Japanese businesses had sent their execs on sex holidays to Bangkok… not to the Patpong sex district that men from other nations flocked to, but to a more rigidly monitored sex district catering only to the Japanese. Even then, the HIV problem had gotten serious enough there that the big Japanese corporations had given up on Thailand and raised their own hookers. The dossier on Keli Bracque that Nakamura’s firm had finally—reluctantly—surrendered hadn’t said it outright, but odds were great that Keli had been sexually satisfying top execs there since she was a pre-teenager.
Or, thought Nick as he studied her dead face, maybe not.
Maybe this one had been saved for the boss’s son. Or the boss and his son.
“She’s half-dressed; he’s still naked,” he said aloud.
“Yes,” said Sato.
Nick waited for the derision that such a statement of the obvious by a trained detective deserved, something along the lines of No shit, Sherlock, but Sato let the single flat syllable suffice.
“My point,” Nick said finally, “is that Keigo and Ms. Bracque were up here alone for—what?—thirty-nine minutes? Forty?”
“Thirty-six minutes and twenty seconds before Mr. Satoh broke down the door after young Mr. Nakamura did not respond to his page,” said Sato.
“Long enough to have sex,” said Nick. He knew that “broke down the door” hadn’t been quite accurate since the door at the head of the stairs could have resisted any number of battering rams. Security man Satoh had carried a tiny but powerful shaped charge, no larger than a kneaded eraser, for just such entry emergencies. But that was irrelevant.
“But,” continued Nick, rubbing his stubbled cheek and looking through his glasses at the two dead bodies, “both autopsies showed that they hadn’t had sex, even though that was the reason Keigo said he wanted the privacy up here during the party. Hell, I don’t think Keli was getting dressed after some messing around between the two. I don’t think she ever got undressed, except to take her blouse and boots off.”
“Perhaps young Mr. Nakamura and the young lady were chatting,” said Sato.
Nick snorted. “Are NakamuraCo living sex toys famous for their conversational abilities?”
“Yes,” said Sato. “Like the geisha, all Nakamura employees in the recreational division are trained to please by intelligent conversation, the playing of musical instruments, by knowing the proper technique of preparation and pouring in the Tea Ceremony… a wide range of abilities beyond mere… gratification of physical pleasure.”
Nick was barely listening to the security chief. He pointed to the open paperback. “I think Ms. Bracque was reading her book when the killer entered the room. She only just had time to set it facedown, marking her place, when the assailant shot her.”
Sato waited.
“Whoever it was, she wasn’t alarmed by his or her sudden arrival,” mused Nick. This was old ground for him, but he was rediscovering it as he went. It had been years since he’d mulled over the details of this murder. “You don’t take time to mark your place in a book when someone who frightens you suddenly looms up in your bedroom.”
“Bottom-san, you are saying that Miss Bracque knew her killer.”
Nick was too lost in thought even to nod. Taking off his tactical glasses, he walked to the window nearest to the bed, nearest to the blood on the tatami and headboard, and touched the glass that wasn’t quite glass. Sealed. Bulletproof. Blastproof for all but the most intense blasts. When Nick had read the specs six years earlier, he’d had the image of a major bombing event where the building here on Wazee was rubble but the windows remained, hanging in air like transparent Druid stones.
Since they couldn’t be opened, the third-floor rooms were constantly refreshed by the whisper of forced air from ventilators. Tiny ventilators. A tiny ninja-assassin mouse might get in through those ventilators if it weren’t for all the layers of active filters and screens. Nick held his hand close. The air was moving so the central system was still active.
“So Keigo and his hired girlfriend weren’t up here screwing,” Nick said to himself. “Maybe Keigo was just waiting for someone.”
“Waiting for whom?” Sato asked in low tones.
Without putting on his glasses to look at the victims a last time—but carefully steering wide of the bloodstained tatami and the invisible corpse of Keigo on the floor—Nick said, “Let’s go up on the roof.”
In the foyer, Nick paused to study the door to the stairway to the roof. Except for little black boxes at both top corners and one on the side where a card-swiper would be, it looked like any other metal door. But Nick knew that the damned thing cost more than he earned in ten years. It not only checked retina and fingerprints—how many movies had Nick seen where the good guy or bad guy just brought along someone’s hand or eyeball to defeat those simple security checks?—but scraped and sniffed the person’s DNA, measured his brainwaves, and performed about a dozen other acts of identification that would only work with a living, breathing person. Six years ago this coming October, all that technology had been keyed on Keigo Nakamura’s retina, prints, DNA, brainwaves, and all the rest.
Now it seemed to be keyed on Hideki Sato. At least the heavy door clicked open after Sato had leaned close to one of the black boxes, scraped his thumb against it, and made his other contacts and magical passes. At the top of the stairway, he did the same thing with the magic door there.
Nick asked the same question he’d asked six years ago. “How do the maids and janitors get in and out of this apartment?”
There had been no answer from anyone six years ago and Sato did not answer now.
1.06
Wazee Street, Denver—Saturday, Sept. 11
It was raining harder but the clouds and fog had lifted. To the east rose the shrouded towers of downtown Denver; to the west the condo towers clustered along the river; to the south the large masses of the Pepsi Center and Mile High DHS Detention Center; to the north more low buildings and the two-hundred-foot-tall spike that anchored a pedestrian overpass connecting LoDo to the river region over train tracks. West of everything, just visible through the low clouds, were the foothills. The high peaks were absent this morning.
There was nothing special about the rooftop of Keigo Nakamura’s three-story building here on Wazee Street. A patio/garden area was delineated by a slightly raised wooden floor and vined latticework on two sides to give some privacy to the hot tub. On that October night six years ago, Nick knew, the hot tub had been burbling and preheated to the proper temperature—but unused by the victims, the coroners stated—but this mid-September morning it was cold and covered by a mildewing yellow tarp. The garden part of the rooftop was represented by several long planters lining the edge of the patio area and made of the same light wood, but no one had been gardening up here in recent years. There were a few weeds still growing and the desiccated skeletons of nobler plants.
Sato grunted as he leaned over to tie his polished black shoes.