Chapter 10

To say the firefight in the helicopter landing area hadn't gone to plan would be a grievous understatement. It had fallen to pieces from the first shot, and although that shot had been his, Gin really hadn't seen any way around that.

The imbecile carrying Elaine had been covering both her mouth and nose, and her body strained with the very dregs of its remaining fight. Gin had more than his fair share of firsthand experience with suffocations, and so had a feel for the more subtle cues of the process. But mostly, he just wasn't an idiot. His initial plan had been to wait for Elaine to be seated in the cabin so he could properly cut off their access to her, but whether the yakuza holding her was a sadist or just that incompetent, it wasn't safe to wait that long.

The severity of the disabling shot served as Gin's only compensation. A clean shot through his shin probably would have been sufficient to subdue him, but the special agony of severing his Achilles' tendon better suited Gin's mood.

It left Gin on the far side of the helicopter from where Elaine fell however, and relinquished his small advantage of surprise all at once. These obstacles he might have been able to overcome were it not for the rather untimely arrival of security personnel. Who were headed by an old enemy, taller now, and a full-fledged detective, but no less a brat.

What ensued was messy, as the uninvolved and uninformed became the dominant force. Chaos and confusion can be useful tools in a fight, but in this instance, they had played against him, as the new arrivals favored the would be kidnappers garbed in worker's uniforms over Gin who was trying to stop that attempt. Every step forward toward Elaine's yakuza assailants left him triply open to the group closing in on his back; every victory was steeped in allowing some vulnerability.

By the time Gin downed the first yakuza carrying her away he'd already passed her to another a level down, and men he had no inclination to kill flanked all sides of his would-be-cover.

Ridding himself of that predicament had cost time, most critically the time between when he first noticed an opening at the last remaining yakuza and when he was free to take the shot. During which time the yakuza made his way to the edge and strapped Elaine and himself to the repelling rig there. Gin held only a handgun, his beretta. The shot would be risky with a rifle; it was downright foolish with a mere handgun.

By then they weren't the only ones on that level of the roof, Kudo had found a way down as well and nearly slid with reckless abandon across the sloped surface toward them. But he was nearly as far away then as Gin; merely in length instead of height.

The yakuza sat with Elaine on the very edge and prepared to step off. Out of time, and out of options, Gin willed a steady hand and precision he supposed may have made him a fine surgeon in another life

But mastery of a skill was found only in practice, and in this life that was here. His finger on the trigger of a gun, this gun.

The man tipped back, the back of his skull no doubt in pieces. Gin could only thank fate that he hadn't tipped over the edge and taken Elaine with him. The equipment would have prevented a large fall, but Gin doubted dangling with a corpse was anyone's version of unscathed. It was bad enough that she would have to face the sight just behind her. Gin watched Elaine turn back with agonizing slowness, wishing he could have spared her from it. But, impossibly, someone did stop her, a neon arm caught the light as it reached up from the edge of the roof and stopped her from twisting to look properly behind her.

Then a little neon hood popped over as well, a very little hood. Gin had never even noticed another child on the roof until that moment. His only guess was that the kid was already down there, or had otherwise edged his way around the perimeter of the landing pad area, just over the lip to remain out of sight.

Kudo was nearly to them now, but it didn't seem to matter as Elaine and the mysterious neon-clad child dropped over the edge, leaving behind the disconnected corpse of what should have been the final yakuza kidnapper.

...

Kudo dropped to his chest at the edge of the roof in a final bid to grab Elaine before she dropped out of reach, but the two children had already repelled two or three arm spans down the glass face of the building. Only one line had been secured here, and Kudo had no feasible means of repelling down it after her. He had seen how tenuous a harness that window cleaner had fashioned for her and couldn't chance anything he might do to halt their progress. Additionally, the flow of wind off the building's face prevented anything he might shout to Elaine from reaching her ears as well. It took only an instant for him to realise all of his options here had come to an end.

It was hard to tell from this angle but it appeared the line only went a quarter way down the building, meaning they would have to reenter at some point.

Kudo backed away from the edge, noticing as he did so the now untucked portion of the body's uniform had risen up to reveal tattoos on the window cleaner's stomach. Many new yakuza members didn't get the distinctive tattoos, but the ink of these ones was slightly faded revealing their age. It was possible he was only a former yakuza, membership had greatly diminished in the past few decades. Still, it was an interesting bit of information to consider.

Added to all the other observations he'd made to that point regarding them, their motivations in all save the abduction of Elaine could be deduced. Which might have been clarified if they had seemed to be aiding Gin. But the missing back of this man's skull spoke contrary to that.

The helicopter started up once more, thwaping away any extra sound in the vicinity. He took only a moment to text Sonoko instructions to call the police and lock down the building before sprinting back up to the landing pad.

He arrived to find the restarted blades now sputtering along at a moderate pace, their rotation carried only by their momentum. Gin was nowhere to be seen, along with the majority of the security team that had been cornering him. Two guards remained on this level, tending to a severely injured window cleaner sprawled flat near the edge of the landing pad. Kudo didn't waste time conferring with them. The ploy of drawing him back up here so Gin could gain distance in his escape became immediately apparent, redundantly confirmed by the empty fuel gauge. However, the story deepened with only a cursory blood spatter analysis Kudo couldn't help but piece out as he walked alongside it toward the stairs.

The distinct drag pattern of a limp both came and departed from the helicopter door, but quickly the gait of the steps and drag direction of the droplets shifted to a side and then backwards step as it approached the stair.

Likely, Gin had used the second injured window cleaner as hostage to back away cleanly from the security guards closing in on him. When, not a minute later, Kudo came up on another knot of guards tending to the injured window cleaner in question, it became clear that leaving both of these men alive, but critically wounded, had been a strategic choice, rather than happenstance. Corpses didn't require immediate attention. Whereas these men had. Gin had successfully picked off the majority of his pursuers not by killing them, but by leaving behind a trail of living victims for them.

In the end, it had given Gin enough of a lead to get away. Whether with Elaine in tow, in cahoots with her kidnappers, or in pursuit of them, Kudo couldn't say at that moment.

Kudo himself remained one step behind her abduction at every point. Finding the childrens' point of reentry too late; their discarded harness and reflective gear too late; the kidnappers' final means of escape too late. Yakuza or not; having a plan or not; those window washers had been working at this building for some time and were familiar with its layout. Pairing that with the fact that the vast majority of the building's limited security team had been left several floors above them, it was no surprise the measures Sonoko had tried to put into effect were insufficient.

Kudo found one additional curiosity in his scramble to prevent Elaine's kidnapping; one more body, the window cleaning team manager, who also had extensive yakuza tattoos. The man had been murdered execution style, on his knees, through the back of the head, on the service vehicle level of the underground parking garage. Knowing how recent the murder was, from typical indicators on the body, he ran out the exit, hoping to catch a glimpse of an exiting vehicle, to only the limited success of the hum of an engine and screech of tires as it sped out of the lot. He found that the boom gate had automatically lifted, meaning the car must have had a pass for the lot. Immediately he contacted the company that operated the gates to get vehicle information for the last registered pass holder to trigger the gate so he could pass on the information to the cops and they could add it to the bulletin. It all took so much longer than he would have liked. He paced back and forth on the street in front of the building as he was given the run around about the legality of them passing on such privileged information to him. All the while losing out on the only thing that mattered in a case like this, time.

When Kudo first found the body in the parking garage he had pegged Gin as the most likely culprit, supposing he might have caught up with the last of the window washers there and finally took Elaine. When he came back to investigate the scene later, this was proven not to be the case. The CCTV footage had record of who entered the underground parking and when, although it lacked any direct angles on the murder scene. The first to arrive had been the two children led by the window cleaning manager, followed some minutes later by Kudo. Then only twenty eight seconds later another camera recorded a van of indeterminate contents leaving the garage, followed immediately by Kudo on foot. Last to arrive was Gin, who had the longest period of time between when he was pictured entering and when he was believed to have left. As twelve minutes later a vehicle, registered to one of the night janitors still on shift at the time, was pictured leaving by the second camera, contents indeterminate. Kudo had seen the body before Gin had even arrived, which, allowing for unexpected tricks, would rule him out as a suspect.

There was an answer to the riddle of what exactly had happened here, a reality in all these threads of possibility, and whatever that answer was, Gin was caught up in it. He had to tell Shiho; he would have to tell her everything. For her safety, and for Elaine's.