Yodobaishi Camera, the largest store in Akihabara, had its own theme song set to the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which played energetically every ten minutes or so. It could be heard faintly through the window of the Ami maid cafe, where a skinny young caucasian man sat beside a skinny, young-looking Japanese man, both sipping coffee. And rising and falling over the music, the rumble of foot traffic, cheerfully babbling voices, the periodic arrivals and departures of the Keihin-Tohoku, Yamanote, and Chuo train lines.
Sasaki wore a dark purple suit, contact lenses, and a false mustache. Reid wore a blue suit, oversized glasses, and a bow tie. There was a practical reason for their cosplay. Ever since Reid appeared beside Sasaki at the press conference, the heroes of Akihabara had to keep a low profile; Reid had been forced to sign several dozen autographs already ("It was like the beginning of A Hard Day's Night," he had explained, horrified, to a bemused Rossi). They were dressed of course like Kogoro Mori and Conan Edogawa, respectively, of Great Detective Conan fame, and customers entering would laugh, calling out: "Hey Conan-kun, where's your soccer ball?" Reid sometimes would look solemn and reply, "shinjitsu wa, itsumo hitotsu," to further amusement.
They had been sitting for over an hour, discussing this and that.
Finally, Sasaki remarked: "It might interest you to know something about Akira Fukui. That last name is usually written to mean lucky well, but in his case, different characters were chosen. Those meaning deep well."
Remembering the dark pit of Sasaki's metaphor, on their arrival only a few days ago (it seemed much longer), Reid nodded.
"What do you think?" asked Sasaki. "Have you learned anything?"
"Plato said that discovering one's own ignorance is the same as acquiring knowledge. Well, actually he didn't say that, but I like to imagine he might have. It sounds like him."
"Then you became aware of your own ignorance?"
Reid stared at the surface of his coffee, long since gone cold. He took a sip. In a discreet voice he said: "Natsumi Kodo's condition made intuitive sense. But describing it in a psychiatric journal, or BAU field manual? It resembled erotomania; it resembled dissociative identity disorder, which some experts argue doesn't actually exist. It felt human, but it's not like anything I've seen before."
"Do you know how the writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa described his feelings in his suicide note?"
"A vague unease."
Sasaki looked impressed. "Bonyari-toshita fuan. I think that sounds so much nicer than depression. Because the clinical diagnosis of depression dodges the metaphysical issue. It may be an honest response to reality. Who is to say the depressives aren't right? We can't be sure."
"Anyway," said Reid, "it sounds trite, but I think I'll leave with more questions than answers."
"Very wise, Daniel-san.-Another coffee?"
"I ordered that parfait. I think I'll stop there."
"Also wise."
Outside, the yellow-striped Chuo train pulled up to the elevated platform, roughly on level with the window. The light was beginning to fade, deepening, painting in somber red and yellow.
"Akihabara, Akihabara desu. Ohashimoto, gochuuin kudasai."
"Any word from Toyoda?" asked Reid.
"Quiet as a mouse. I think he's embarrassed."
"And the officers Kodo attacked?"
"Tsuji is still in intensive care. Matsumura is back on his feet. Small mercies."
Sasaki emptied the last of his cup. Gazing out the window he said: "There are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Not be outdone, Reid countered: "Poor lady, she were better love a dream. Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness, wherein the pregnant enemy does much."
"Twelfth Night," said Sasaki, smiled, and continued the speech: "Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we! For such as we are made of, such we be."
"It's been a pleasure working with you, Captain."
"Mine, likewise. Keep in touch, will you?"
A maid in a large hoop skirt stopped decorously at their table, placing a fluted glass before Reid. The parfait was huge. Sticks of pocky and waffle cookies bordered five scoops of vanilla ice cream, beneath which layers of strawberries, fudge and whipped cream lay like a geological stratum.
"This um, looked much smaller on the menu. What was I thinking?"
"I asked them to make your friend something a little special," the maid whispered to Sasaki, smiling. "Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me."
She winked at Reid, who blushed, then moved away with the grace of a trained professional.
Garcia clicked down the hospital corridor in her high heels. She held a bouquet of flowers, mostly hyacinths, and wore a concerned expression. A nurse led her to a windowed door, bowed, and silently retreated.
Hotch was sitting up in bed. He looked stoically cheerful, and gave a smile of considerable warmth when he saw Garcia. His right shoulder was bandaged where, last night, the stray bullet from the sniper rifle had torn through it. Blood had spattered everywhere; she couldn't believe he seemed fine.
"Sir!"
"Don't worry. It's barely a scratch. They told me not to lift this arm over my head anytime soon."
"Oh, thank god. These are from everyone, and the tiger lily is Sasaki's…tell me they're feeding you."
"It's better than the food on the plane."
"He tells a joke! Will the miracles never cease."
She placed the flowers in a jug of drinking water, quickly realizing her mistake, but Hotch only laughed.
"There is fine."
Given the confusion over who had been insubordinating whom, neither Sasaki nor Hasekura faced any charges over the fiasco. Hotch had made it understood he considered it an accident.
"It's nice of you to come and see me," he told Garcia, "but get out and enjoy yourself. If anyone deserves it…"
"Sir…?" Garcia lowered her voice, then cast a glance over her shoulder. She shut the door.
"What is it?" All at once, Hotch's professional manner gripped him.
"I…found something out. Maybe I should have minded my own business. But you know me, Harriet the Spy, and I just couldn't leave it…"
"The truth is more important than politics," said Hotch.
"Oh. H-how did you know?"
"Agent Garcia, there's only one mystery I can think of at the moment, and one solution to that mystery that would make you hesitate to tell me. You found out who redacted Natsumi Kodo's records, didn't you?"
Biting her lip, she nodded.
"It would have to be a powerful law enforcement official…wouldn't it?"
She nodded again.
"Say it, Garcia. I want to be sure. But if it's what I think, we owe it to the dead girls, their families…and Akira Fukui and Natsumi Kodo."
She leaned forward and whispered in his ear. The trace of a smile completely gone from his face, he nodded.
"Lend me your phone." She pressed it into his hand; he dialed. "Dave? This is Hotch. Where are you?"
"Oh," came Rossi's contented voice, "I got some paperwork to finish up before we…"
In the background, a shrill female voice: "Rossi onii-chan, king me! Boy, you sure suck at checkers."
Hotch half-smiled, but looked deadly seriously again as he said: "I need to ask your advice on a sensitive issue…"
Although he faced no criminal charges, there was no question Gentarou Hasekura's career was over. Not even his powerful connections could save him from loss of face, contrasted with his subordinate's brilliant success. Rather than fight it out, he was surreptitiously packing the diplomas, awards, and scrolls of calligraphy from his office walls into cardboard boxes. It would be good to disappear into the country for a while. He had friends in rural prefectures who could install him in some minor civil service post, until a decade or so, when people forgot as they always did…
Hasekura studied a particularly handsome Chinese painting of lions before, with a heavy sigh, depositing it in a box. Someone knocked on the inside of his open door. He turned around slowly.
"Ah! Agent Rossi…so glad to see you…"
Rossi didn't look glad to see Hasekura. In fact, he looked angry. The big man shrank back.
"You and I need to have a little talk," said Rossi, shutting the door behind him.
"By all means…sit down."
"I'd prefer to stand." Rossi paced a few steps, hands behind his back, and said with a reflective attitude: "Let me tell you two stories, superintendent. Fictions, you understand. Supposing, once upon a time…maybe when you were serving as a high court judge…you came across a file. The file of a young lady in a mental institution. You believed she was cured, and you felt sorry for her. So you decided to expunge her record, along with enough other relevant facts that anyone could find out about it, ever again. Months passed, and you forgot all about this young woman…"
Hasekura watched him, totally impassive.
"Yes. A most interesting story."
"Certainly a plausible one. The media might believe it. You are, after all, in spite of this…misunderstanding, a public servant with a long and outstanding record." Rossi turned on his heel, pacing the other way, and Hasekura's eyes followed him. "But I don't believe that story. I believe another one. I believe that you are responsible for one of the most audacious, reprehensible false flag operations in history." Now he faced Hasekura head-on, and pointed one finger at the center of his chest. "You wound that young lady up and set her loose. You knew she would break down, and I think you knew she would kill. Why? To create a moral panic. To discredit what you saw as a stain on Japanese culture. An embarrassment in the eyes of foreigners. Maybe you wanted to drive land prices down, so your rich, developer friends could gobble up a little more of Akihabara, one of the few places in this goddamn workaholic city where people are free to be themselves…"
"Please," said Hasekura faintly, shutting his eyes. "There is no need for profanity."
Rossi now looked more disgusted than anything. "You were our unsub all along. I should have seen the signs. I thought it was cultural, but you? You're a sociopath. You only care about ideas, abstracts; not human lives. Men like you often do well in politics. But they're responsible for wars, governmental neglect, the worst disasters in human history. You understand how to play the game, Hasekura, but you don't know, you've never known, what it's all for. Am I right?"
Hasekura was silent. Rossi advanced on him several steps, but he didn't shift an inch.
"Am I right?"
"Supposing your fiction were true," Hasekura replied, at last, speaking slowly to keep his English precise, "I would answer, that I love my country. And an American like you…a citizen of the richest country on earth….who never had to worry about anything…will never, and can never, understand what that means."
"You know what?" said Rossi, raising his finger again. "You know what? I don't think you deserve your country."
But Hasekura's smile, as if carved out of stone, answered him, and it was the final word. Rossi was helpless in front of it. It was the same face he'd been confronted with all his life: the face of madness.
"Agent Rossi. Will you be telling anyone about these little fictions?"
"You bastard. You know as well as I do, there's insufficient evidence. You can rest easy tonight. And somehow? I have no doubt that you will."
He began to leave. Hasekura called him back.
"Agent Rossi."
"Yes?"
"Please tell Agent Hotchner, I admire him. He has the face of a Japanese man. He doesn't show pain or fear. He does the necessary thing. You, on the other hand, have the face of a pig."
"Is that so? You know, Hasekura-san…we have a little saying in America. It goes a little something like…I am rubber, you are glue. What bounces off me, sticks to you."
Rossi went out the door, slamming it behind him.
Garcia left the hospital with the weight of a secret lifted from her shoulders. She almost skipped, mentally going over the pages of the guidebook, remembering the faces of her team as Sasaki yelled: Clear!
It had been, and was going to be, a vacation to remember.
She passed a door marked Ward Eleven, not giving it a second glance.
Past the door was a single bed. At either end of the bed, an armed policeman stood at attention. Beside the bed was a plastic chair. A young man sat on the chair, a clean-cut young man in a suit, recently shaved, an expression of deep sadness on his face.
On the bed lay a young woman, her right arm and leg both encased in bulbous casts. What was visible of her skin, above and below her pale blue hospital gown, was covered with bruises and long, red scrapes. A respirator snaked over her chest, between her small breasts, and clamped parasitically over her mouth. Only the skin around her eyes looked smooth, and the eyes themselves blinked, alive, curious and lonely.
"I came," said the young man.
Painstakingly, she brought up her left arm and gestured for a police officer to take out the respirator. He looked to his partner, who nodded.
"Akira-san?" she said, in a tiny voice.
"That's right! That's right."
"I'm…so glad you came. I feel like I haven't seen you in so long."
"I'm here now. That's all that matters." Delicately he added: "How are you feeling?"
She tried to laugh, and ended up coughing. The officer moved to reattach the respirator, but she waved him off.
"No…please. Let me talk to him."
"It's alright," said Fukui. "Please don't strain yourself."
"But you came…all this way…just to see me. That was so kind of you…you're so kind."
There were tears in her eyes, and before he realized, a single tear traced its way down Fukui's cheek. He brought up one hand and wiped it off.
"But Akira-san…I feel like I did something bad. Something really terrible."
"Don't be ridiculous," he said. "If you had, wouldn't I have known about it?"
"Akira-san. You'll stay with me, won't you?"
"Of course I will."
"For how long?"
He reached out and put his hand over her small hand, where it lay on her belly.
"For as long as it takes."