A Cruel Season for Dying (14 page)

H
anae, ignoring her breakfast, sat turned to the window instead. Something about the pressure of the light that came through
to her this morning was akin to that internal light that beat behind her lids—a harmony of vibration that kept darkness at
bay.

In the two weeks that had now passed since Geoffrey Westlake’s murder, no new victims had been found. But despite, or perhaps
because of, this, the media had chosen to concentrate on a lack of police progress in the case. Jimmy’s newspaper crackled
as he folded it, the sharpness of the sound an indication of his displeasure. Sometimes he would discuss with her what he’d
read that had disturbed him. But today, as with so many days lately, he was silent.

At last she heard the clink of his knife and fork. He was eating his bacon and eggs.

The bacon. The smell of it made her queasy, though less now than when she had removed it from the microwave. She welcomed
the nausea as a sign; then with a gentle act of will, she pushed the sickness away and finished her bowl of miso. The proper
nutrition was important.

“You did not have to get up this early.” Jimmy’s voice.

She smiled, turning her face toward him. “You were not home for supper last night. I wanted you to have a good breakfast.”

It was Jimmy who rose first, taking the empty dishes to the kitchen. She heard him scraping the plates, putting them into
the dishwasher. She got up from the cushion as he came back into the room.

“I’ll try to make it home earlier tonight.” He walked over, bent to place a kiss on her cheek. An American husband.

“I have my class this afternoon,” she said.

“It’s freezing outside.”

“I will be fine. Mr. Romero is picking me up.”

“Good,” he said. Jimmy liked the driver. His fingers, which rested on her shoulder, moved down her arm to touch her hand,
and were gone. The outer door closed. She heard his key turn in the lock.

At her side Taiko stirred, claiming her attention. She reached to pat his head. The dog’s increased protectiveness had been
one more sign that the miracle she’d long awaited was at last happening inside her. She had as yet said nothing to Jimmy.
With the case absorbing so much of his attention, there never seemed a time that was right.

Sakura scanned his notes, then looked up at the members of his Special Homicide Unit who had gathered for this early-morning
meeting in his office. The four detectives who made up his regular team acted as a semiautonomous group, functioning inside
the Major Case Squad of the Special Investigation Division. At present they formed the nucleus of the task force that had
been placed in charge of the triple-murder investigation. Adelia Johnson sat next to Johnny Rozelli, Pat Kelly next to Walt
Talbot. However, the seating arrangement was something of a false readout. Johnson was more comfortable with Kelly; the two
younger male officers more compatible.

Pat Kelly was the veteran of the group. A cop’s cop who’d worked hundreds of homicides, who as a precinct cop had even seen
time on the Son of Sam case. Working homicide, Kelly had once said, scarred a detective for life. Most of Kelly’s scars were
visible.

“Well, Lieutenant, think he’s finished? It’s been two weeks since the last one.” A chain-smoker, Kelly rolled an unlit cigarette
between his blunt fingers.

“Maybe three was all he had in him.” Sakura riffled through his notes, waiting for Kelly to comment. The fifty-six-year-old
had apparently had another sleepless night. The skin under his eyes appeared bruised. Only Kelly’s mind was spared the insults
he perpetrated on the rest of his body.

Delia Johnson spoke instead. “You know you don’t believe that, Lieutenant.” The detective had great instincts.

“Maybe we’re not dealing with a serial.” Sakura’s gaze made a round of the table. “Maybe there’s some connection among the
victims we’re still missing.”

“They’re all queer, Lieutenant,” said Rozelli. “That’s the only connection. This one’s going to kill again. Just give him
some time.” The latest arrival in a long line of Rozelli cops flashed his patented smirk that made even the toughest perps
nervous.

“I agree with Johnny,” said Talbot. “I think we’ve got a bona fide serial who’s cooling off.” Talbot, the junior in the unit,
had made gold shield after the Kasavettes case. He’d been able to sidestep the nasty window dressing and had gone straight
to the heart of the crime.
Creative visualization,
he’d explained when pressed how he’d solved it.

Sakura hoped the killing was over, but he doubted it. Sometimes serials started to feel they were losing control and attempted
to stop acting on the fantasy. Inevitably, they failed and killed again. For the police it became a kind of waiting game.
He checked his notes once more and looked up. “I’m concerned with how much is getting out to the media. I don’t like how they
latched on so quickly to the ritual aspects of the case.”

“Come on, Lieutenant.” Rozelli was standing, fidgeting with the lapels of his designer sport coat. “They’re just guessing.
They got nothing important.”

There was a moment’s silence before Sakura spoke. “We will not allow anyone to take this case away from us.” It was the nasty
truth, but the press could be every bit as dangerous as the killer.

Ms. Nguyen had brought dozens of sculptures for Hanae to feel during the first weeks she attended art class. Some were copies,
like the Rodin. Others were originals done by Janice Nguyen herself. It was a way of orienting her senses, Ms. Nguyen had
said. Hanae complied meekly, not wanting to offend her young instructor’s good intentions. That she had internal vision, that
her fingers had been her eyes from the first, Ms. Nguyen might not understand.

Then there came that moment when the instructor walked to Hanae’s table, saw the cool lumps of clay obeying Hanae’s fingers
like
so many small children. “I’m sorry,” she’d spoken quietly, understanding at last Hanae’s extraordinary abilities. “I was most
foolish.”

Hanae frowned now. The clay had a will of its own this afternoon. She pinched the point where the wing joined the body of
the bird.
Better,
she thought, massaging a loose piece of clay between her thumb and middle fingers.

“I’ve been watching you since I started this class,” his voice came from her right, slightly behind her. “What you do with
that clay is amazing.”

Taiko, at her side, beat a tattoo against the hardwood floor. She turned toward the male voice. “Thank you. It is something
I enjoy.”

“How long …” He stalled.

“… Have I been blind? Since birth.”

“I guess that was a pretty rude question,” he said. “It’s just that what you do is so remarkable. Birds, huh.”

“I have finches.”

“Sorry, name’s Adrian Lovett.”

“Hanae Sakura.”

“Japanese, right?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t figure you for a native.” He laughed. “Well, I better let you get back to work. Nice meeting you, Hanae…. Did I say
that right?”

“Yes.” She felt herself smiling.

Nearly nine
P
.
M
. It had been another very long day. Endless paperwork and countless task force meetings. Departmental feathers to be soothed.
James Sakura shut his computer down and sat in the relative quiet of his office, trying to work up the energy to go home to
his wife as he’d promised.

Three bodies in one week, and now two weeks of hell waiting for the shoe that never dropped. But it would drop. And though
he knew it was foolish to put the extra pressure on himself, he could never get over the feeling in these situations that
with only a little more police work he could prevent a death. That for somebody out
there now who was living and laughing and breathing, the clock was running out.

He sighed. He would leave in a minute. He wanted to be home, in fact, but it seemed so infinitely difficult to pass through
the gauntlet of small tasks that were required to get there. So he reached for his headphones instead and hit the button of
the Discman. The Red Hot Chili Peppers boomed in his head, blotting everything out.

He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

Behind the wall of noise lived an eleven-year-old in the last of his boyhood summers. Darkness gathered at the edge of the
sea and rolled beyond him into blackness. He stood on the shore, listening to the sound of the surf, feeling already in the
cooling ocean breath that first touch of change. Had he, in fact, been its agent? Had there been some fatal magic in his gesture,
when kneeling in the sand, he had set his little handmade boats with their daring candles on their imaginary journey to his
father?

For only a few weeks after, the summons to America had come. His father had at last prevailed upon his wife to bring his firstborn
son into their home.

The story of his father’s second marriage, which had come so quickly after his mother’s death, had been gradually pieced out
through the years. Susan was a nurse whom his father had worked with in the course of his medical studies, and they had become
friendly after his mother’s death. As his grandmother perceived it, Susan had used his father’s loneliness to trap him and
steal his soul. The woman had purposely become pregnant, forcing the honorable Isao to marry her and remain in America with
their child.

His grandmother had been very wise, but her vision of her own firstborn was clouded by love. There was truth in her portrayal
of his father’s second marriage, but it was not the whole truth. His father was no more a victim than was anyone in this life.
If he had strayed from his Tao, was it not his own feet upon the path?

His own belief was that misery was most often self-imposed and certainly contagious. A truth which his eleven-year-old self
had been very soon to learn.

The light from them was everywhere, everywhere he looked, thin yellow auras pulsing in the sodden air. No streetlamps needed
tonight on Christopher Street. Not for him.

The man found a parking space for the Harley, made sure the side compartment that held his equipment was locked, and walked.
The Fallen surrounded him, bumped him, eyed him, but he was alone.