Chapter Fourteen

Six thirty, and Mamoru was not the first man in their office. Noboru was already sitting at his desk, head buried in his arms, his whole upper body slumped over open files, and snoring soundly.

Mamoru moved past him, and threw his coat in the corner. This morning, he had actually remembered to put on a scarf. He had gotten up around five after a night of little sleep and watched the news channel for a while. The weather guy had predicted another cold day, the temperatures dipping precariously below the freezing point. Turning on the coffee maker, he had set out and prepared a Thermos for him and Noboru. When he filled the steaming black coffee in the silver bottle, he remembered the embarrassing instances when he had to take on of his wife's Thermos to work with him because he had forgotten his own at a crime scene or in the office. Without fail, all of Usagi's Thermoses had been pink. They had burnt with her in their home, leaving him with nothing but ashes and pain. With these dark thoughts, he had hurried out of his flat, and drove to work, careful of the thick layer of snow and ice coating the still empty streets.

Noboru didn't wake until Mamoru had left and re-entered the office bearing two ugly mugs from their coffee room. Rubbing his hands over his eyes, he groaned. "What time is it?"

Mamoru checked his watch. "6.37. When did you come in?"

"I didn't leave," Noboru said and sniffed his shirt only to wrinkle his nose. He opened one of the drawers of his desk and pulled out some crumpled but clean clothes. He had learned to always keep a set of those in his office after his very first murder case. In his job, you never knew when you got home and when you had to look halfway presentable to talk to the family of a victim. He grabbed the clothes, nodded to Mamoru, and disappeared out of their door. There were a few locker rooms with showers in the basement of the station, and this was where he was headed now.

When he returned ten minutes later, he had showered and changed, feeling more alive already. Rubbing a hand over the stubble on his chin, he remarked "Remind me to bring a razor sometime," and reached for the mug Mamoru offered him. "Thanks."

"Was your night shift at least successful?"

"Only seven folders left, but no, nothing interesting yet," Noboru said truthfully. "When shall we bring in Koutani for questioning?"

Dropping the file of the grand theft auto in one of his drawers, Mamoru smiled. "We can't bring him in."

"Right, right. I'd forgotten about that. But I doubt Koutani will talk unless you're there."

"Then we can't question him here."

"We could take him to Kino's café. Perhaps the setting will make him uneasy enough to give something away. Or one of the waitresses might recognise him."

Mamoru nodded. "Good idea." Opening the laptop computer, he clicked his way to the missing persons report of Hotaru Tomoe. Seeing her name brought back the memories of Katsurou cracking her body open. "Do you think we should ask Hanzo to come with us?"

"They seemed chummy yesterday night."

"Yeah."

"What was up with that?"

Mamoru had spent the better part of his drive to the station what exactly was up with that, but he still had no idea. "Hanzo looked upset."

Noboru snorted. "No, he looked like a statue. Perhaps a statue with angry eyes," he conceded.

"Can you make sense of what Ace was saying?"

"No, I have no idea who the woman is that Katsurou didn't get this time. Do Ace and Hanzo know each other?"

"I don't think so, otherwise he would have been able to identify him in the alley pictures, and I know he saw those."

"What if he just didn't tell you that he knew him?"

Instinctively, Mamoru waved this idea off. "No, I'm sure he would have told me."

"Just like you're sure that Jirou Koutani is not the killer?" Noboru pointed out, looking doubtful under his scruff.

Setting his mouth in a hard line and straightening his back, Mamoru stared at his partner. "Just like you were sure that Nigoshi was just a witness and not a suspect. How's your back these days?"

All colour vanished from Noboru's face, and his eyes clouded over.

Feeling ashamed of himself, Mamoru turned his attention on the computer again.

Around ten, he left their office without comment to attend the daily briefing with the Chief and Haruka, looking even less forward to it than he usually did. Mamoru remained behind, and continued to feel like crap for a while. Finally, he too got up and left the cramped room, his steps leading him down the stairs and into the basement until he found himself facing the heavy steel door of the morgue. After a second's hesitation, he pushed it open and walked in. Katsurou wasn't there.

The Chief had a stern look on his face. "You've got to give me something. The mayor called me yesterday, and he's not exactly happy that we have a serial killer on the loose."

Haruka examined her nails. "Neither are we, but there's precious little we can do about it."

"Do we have an ID on the girl from the temple?"

Noboru handed the Chief the printed missing persons report of Hotaru Tomoe. "DI Chiba was the first at the scene, so he naturally felt an interest in finding out who the girl is." The Chief was unimpressed. "I'm sure he did, especially seeing how she was killed in almost the same way as his wife's friends."

Surprisingly, Haruka backed his defence of his erstwhile partner. "He found her within hours."

"Are we 100% sure it's her?"

Noboru shook his head. "DNA analysis and dental records still pending."

"Okay, hold off contacting her family."

"She doesn't have any. Her father died in a car crash."

"Mother?"

"During birth."

Straightening his tie, he grumbled, "not sure whether this makes it better or worse," before turning his attention to Haruka. "What about Aino's lover? Any news there?"

"He's crazy, and that's all the news you will ever get about him. He saw Katsurou Hanzo yesterday evening when I escorted him through the foyer after the interview, and he began shrieking and shouting like a madman."

The Chief looked interested. "How did Hanzo react?"

Haruka snorted. "The way he reacts to everything: not at all."

"So Ace is a dead end?"

"Yes."

"Do you have anything?"

Noboru and Haruka exchanged a dark look, for once on the same page. "Not really," Noboru eventually offered. "I'll continue to look into Hisaya Nigoshi's life, I'm sorting through the pictures one by one."

Looking sceptical, the Chief crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Are you sure you're up for it? Your reaction to the body wasn't exactly professional."

"Won't happen again," Noboru said firmly. Beside him, Haruka shifted in her seat, drawing the attention to herself. "I'll take over the Hikawa shrine body, and I'll also double our efforts to find the Hino girl. She's a potential victim, if she's still alive." The Chief nodded, just as Haruka said: "But it would be good if I could keep Chiba on the case as well. It's getting too much work for just Sanjoin and me."

"No," the Chief said immediately. "I'll arrange for some constables that can help you. Chiba is out."

The meeting was at an end, and the two detectives left. Once they were in the hallway, Noboru turned to Haruka.

"Talk about unexpected."

"Contrary to what you may think, I'm a good cop," she answered acidly. "So is Chiba, personal involvement or not. He would be an asset to this investigation, and we need all the help we can get. Five dead women, another one missing, and a tortured man, and we still have nothing. This will not be my first unsolved case," she declared with determination and stalked off, ready to release another batch of pictures to the press and everyone on patrol to find Rei Hino before the killer did.

When Noboru returned to their office, Mamoru stood leaning against his desk, staring at the large blackboard.

"What did the Chief say?"

Noboru answered with a shrug, a movement that was still a little uncomfortable because of the healing cuts and welts on his back. They had begun to itch like crazy. Even though Mamoru had his back to Noboru, he didn't repeat his question, knowing his partner well enough to guess that the silence meant a negative answer.

"I called Koutani, we're meeting him after he gets off work today. He was eager."

Noboru tugged at his red lumberjack shirt in attend to smooth the wrinkles out. "Who is eager to meet the police?"

Ignoring this, Mamoru picked up a battered notepad. "Let's make a list of things we should ask him about. He sure knows more about the whole Endymion thing, he practically said so in Nigoshi's flat."

"We should ask him why he wanted a look at Aino's diary. You said that he wanted to go buy Aino's place to pick it up before he talked?"

"Yes," Mamoru said. "I didn't even think about it at the time, but it's certainly odd. Even with their relationship and friendship in mind, what business does he have looking at the diary? I doubt Aino let him read it, so it must have been to find out something she'd written in it."

"Then we need to know what precisely it was that he was interested in."

Taking a deep breath, Mamoru voiced a question that had been chewing at him ever since he found out that Koutani had known Aino. "Did he know Usagi, too? What about Rei, Ami, and Makoto?"

Noboru tossed his partner a pen, and Mamoru began to jot the questions down, his handwriting almost illegible.

"Do you think he knew Hisaya?" he asked and Mamoru shook his head. "I don't think he's ever been to his flat."

Noboru shook his head. "Not what I asked."

"Fine, I'll put it on the list."

"Have you told McCreepy when and where we'll meet?"

"He's not here, perhaps he took the morning off."

"Does he seem like the sort of person who takes mornings off?"
Mamoru shrugged. "Honestly, I have no idea what sort of person he is. Every time I think I figured him out, something changes. For someone so quiet, he's quite unpredictable, you know?"

Mulling the statement over in his head, Noboru eventually nodded. "Yeah, I do."

The rest of the day passed slowly. None of them had much to do. Mamoru left the office around three to go get them something for a belated lunch, and Noboru took hold of the opportunity to check the last remaining folders. He hit gold when he opened the third one, and quickly took the pictures out, folded them, and shoved them in the back pockets of his jeans. The part of him that had finished police school with the best grade of the whole class winced in protest at the removal of the all important piece of evidence, but he just shoved the sentiment aside. Finally, the pieces were beginning to fall into place and Noboru wondered how he could have been so blind as to not see it from the start. He knew that he should tell Mamoru, owed him the truth, but then he remembered the night when he had found Mamoru high up on the Rainbow bridge. Usagi had just died, and Mamoru had been intent on following his wife into death. Noboru had no idea why he had ended up on the bridge himself, it had been a complete coincidence. He had been driving around without paying attention, yet again unable to sleep. And as he crossed the bridge, he had seen his partner standing on the railing, ready to jump. Perhaps it had been fate that led him there that night, perhaps it was his destiny to protect Mamoru. Clinging to this thought, Noboru put the now empty folder back into the box. No, this was a secret he couldn't share.

When Mamoru returned to the office, dropping some dubious looking sandwiches from the cafeteria on Noboru's desk, his partner was deep in thought.

"Anything happen while I was gone?"

Noboru's look brushed the blackboard with the pictures of the victims once, and then he shook his head.

"No, nothing. But I've given the Koutani thing more thought, and I think you're right. He's not our guy."

"Huh. Where does that revelation come from?"

"Been thinking about it, and it wouldn't make sense."

"Because he's seeking contact with the police? A lot of murderers do that, it's a cat-and-mouse game. Makes them feel more powerful," Mamoru added, even though he was convinced that it didn't apply to Koutani. The younger man was looking for something when he had stumbled over the body in the shrine, and perhaps he had been looking for something when he met Minako in the bookshop, but that didn't necessarily make him a murderer.

"Why are you playing devil's advocate now?" Noboru asked, an annoyed look on his face. "Koutani isn't the one we're looking for."

"We'll talk about after we've interviewed him again, okay?"

Noboru nodded, and pushed the last folders in an empty cardboard box next to his desk. "Sure."

The café was almost empty. A smiling waitress handed them a menu, and Mamoru and Noboru ordered some coffee and a piece of blueberry cake each. Jirou Koutani hadn't arrived yet. Outside, the sky was a velvety blue, and the streetlights cast small pools of light on the snowy street.

The coffee arrived quickly, and Noboru took a quick survey of the room. He noticed the picture of Makoto Kino behind the bar, carefully framed and hung right next to the calender and work schedule over the till.

"That's a nice idea," he said and nodded in the direction of the framed photograph.

Mamoru - two bites into his cake - made an agreeing sound. "Here, you can have mine, too," Noboru said and pushed the white plate with the cake on it over to Mamoru. Gulping his cake down, Mamoru looked surprised. "You never share food." "I'm not sharing, I'm giving you the whole thing."

The small brass bell over the door jingled, and Jirou Koutani stepped in, once again clad in his red windbreaker. He looked around, spotted the two detectives, and moved over to them, dragging a chair with him rather than sitting next to either Mamoru or Noboru in their booth.

"Hi," he greeted awkwardly, and began to shimmy out of his jacket.

The other two men inclined their heads in greeting.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" Jirou said, cutting right to the chase.

It was Mamoru who answered him, mirroring the blonde man's frankness. "Did you know a woman named Usagi?"

There was no hesitation in Jirou's answer. "No, I didn't. Minako mentioned her once or twice, she died in a fire." Based on the guilelessness of the answer, Mamoru knew that Koutani was either a brilliant liar or simply didn't know that he was talking to the husband of the deceased woman. The waitress reappeared, and took Jirou's order.

They only resumed their conversation when his cup of hot coffee stood in front of him and they were sure not be interrupted again. Noboru took over, his voice smooth and interested. "What is that you hoped to learn from Minako's diary?" Warming his hands against the mug, Jirou sighed, and it was obvious that he was torn between another lie and the truth. "That's complicated, but on a basic level, I was hoping to find information leading me to Minako's murderer. I have to know why she was killed." He fell silent, and none of the detectives hurried him to continue. Jirou carefully lifted the mugs to his lips, only to put it down again.

"Minako was my only friend."

"She was more than a friend," Mamoru corrected, remembering the relevant passages from the diary.

"There's no thing such as being more than a friend," Jirou replied stubbornly, and deep down, Noboru agreed with him.

"Will you find the one who did this to Minako?"

"Yes," Noboru said clearly, and Mamoru realised that his partner wasn't expressing a hope, but making a statement.

"When you do, let me know," Jirou said quietly and his blue eyes met Noboru's brown ones in silent understanding. Noboru knew without the shadow of a doubt that Jirou Koutani would not hesitate to kill Aino's murderer. It might not be solely to avenge the dead singer, but right now, Noboru didn't really care about the man's motives as long as the end result was the right one. And to his surprise, Noboru was fine with that. Prison was too good for someone who burned holes into women.

Mamoru asked the next question, but Jirou didn't shit his focus from Noboru. "Why didn't you want to talk in front of Haruka?"

Jirou met Noboru's eyes. "She wouldn't get it."

"Get what?" Mamoru persisted, but Noboru subtly shook his head. "Did you know the dead man in whose flat you were yesterday? His name was Hisaya Nigoshi, he was a paparazzi following Miss Aino around." There it was, the kind but calm manner that made Noboru so good at talking to bereaved and grief stricken families.

Jirou leaned back in his chair; it made him look younger. "No, not personally. Again, it was someone Minako mentioned occasionally. She did want me to meet him, but she died before we could arrange it."

"Do you know why she wanted the two of you two meet?"

"I have an idea, but it's just a hunch, so I'd rather not talk about it." Noboru smiled; it was warm, inviting, decidedly friendly. "You can't say that to the police." Jirou returned the smile, and actually chuckled. "I can say it to you though."

Feeling that there was an entire conversation going on right over his head, Mamoru blinked. He knew when to not interrupt an interview to satisfy his own curiosity, and he decided to simply ask Noboru later. Excusing himself, he got up, phone in hand, and stepped out of the café into the biting cold. He had the number of the morgue on speed dial, but no-one picked up. Either Katsurou had his arms elbow-deep in Hisaya Nigoshi, or he still hadn't shown up, or he'd already finished for the day, miraculously always having missed Mamoru's calls and his one visit. Or he was avoiding him.

Looking through the café's windows, he could see Jirou talking, and Noboru nodding with a thoughtful, but surprised look on his face. Mamoru was so focused on the two man behind the window that he almost missed the fact that his phone was ringing. Not checking caller ID, he picked it up, sure that it was Katsurou who was calling him back.

"Where have you been?" he asked, wondering where the panic in his voice came from.

"DI Chiba, this is Constable Yokashima. A jogger called the station a minute ago, and he was sure that he had seen Rei Hino in the Juban park. Do you want us to sent some patrol officers over and pick her up?"

Blood began to rush to his head. "No, DI Sanjoin and I are in the area, we'll go over there right now." Slamming the phone shut, he shoved it in his pocket with this left hand while beating against the window with his right. He impatiently gestured to Noboru to come out, and ran over to their car, ready to jump in the driver's seat when he realised that Noboru had the keys. "Fuck, " he cursed and then Noboru was beside him, opened the door and within seconds he was on the passenger seat, Noboru had started the engine, and Jirou had slid in on the back-seat.

"Where?" Noboru asked simply.

"Juban park."

They arrived at the park, and Mamoru realised that he didn't have to worry about finding Rei Hino in it. He could see the fire from his position, and remembered how Katsurou had told him that the holes had been burnt into the women. The murderer had finally caught up with Rei Hino, he thought, and banged his door open, running towards the light as fast as he could, Noboru on his heels. Hitting the right button on speed dial, he pressed his phone against his ear, and shouted into it the second he heard the operator's voice.

"This is Inspector Chiba, I need an ambulance and fire fighters in the park near the Juban high school!"

He closed the phone and ran on, until they finally reached the girl standing in the centre of a large meadow in the park. It should be snow-covered like the rest of the area, but it wasn't. Not anymore. To his surprise, she was alone. "What... where is he?" he shouted, and turned around, scouting the area for the murderer while making a move towards the burning girl. The fire was on the ground around her, effectively trapping her in its circle. Rei Hino was wearing her miko uniform, and she was crying. Without thinking, Mamoru rushed towards her, but an iron grip held him back just as the flames expanded. It was Noboru. "Don't," he said sharply. "It's too dangerous." "But where is all this fire coming from?" Mamoru asked, panic and incomprehension enveloping his mind. "He must have soiled the area with gasoline. Noboru, we have to do something, or she'll die!"

Suddenly Jirou burst through the bushes, running towards the burning girl as fast as possible, coming to stop inches from the ring of fire.

"DON'T MARS, DON'T!" He was roaring, and yet his voice was breaking. He tried to distract her, sway her, but it seemed that she barely heard a word he said. Only when he reached into the circle of fire to grasp her hand did she look at him.

All she did was laugh, and she didn't even sound human any more. It was the saddest thing Mamoru had ever heard.

The heat was intense, stealing the cool evening air right from their lungs. Mamoru watched her and Jirou in silent despair, still trying to figure out where the fire had suddenly come from and how to save the girl, but Noboru's grasp was unrelenting. A large tree caught fire just then, sending angry red sparks in their direction before crashing down inches from their feet. Noboru dragged Mamoru back just in time. It was a burning barrier that separated them from the event in front of them.

At long last, Rei Hino was still. Her purple eyes were blazing and found Jirou's in what both knew was her last minute in this world. The fire was liking at her red skirt, tracing its way upwards in an unerring path. She would die, she would die tonight.

"Jadeite..."

"Mars!"

"I couldn't let them take you from me again," she whispered against the flames and reached to grip the white top of her miko uniform. Jirou shouted and raged, but the fire seemed to be as solid a wall as brick. He didn't stand a chance. Mamoru didn't even notice that the other person shouting was himself.

When the flames swerved to the side, Mamoru could see that she wasn't gripping her shirt, but reaching deeper and deeper instead until both detectives and Jirou could see the blood and fire on her hands. Noboru's mind flashed to the images of the photos hidden in his back pocket: two women in a familiar, seedy bar, talking to each other. He had been able to identify both on the spot. The one smiling was Beryl, the one vacantly staring into space was Rei Hino.

Finally, Rei Hino cried out once and ripped her own heart from her chest.

And then there was a fountain of fire, and the girl was no more.

END of Chapter Fourteen