Rising Sun: A Novel (19 page)

“Shit,” Graham said.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll see him in a minute. If not this camera, another camera. But I think we can say this is not somebody she just met. This is somebody she already knows.”

“Not unless she’s
real
friendly. Yeah, look. This guy isn’t wasting any time.”

The man’s hands slid up the black dress, raising her skirt. He squeezed her buttocks. Cheryl Austin pressed against his body. Their clinch was intense, passionate. Together they moved deeper into the room, turning slowly. Now the man’s back was to us. Her skirt was bunched around her waist. She reached down to rub his crotch. The couple half walked, half stumbled to the nearest desk. The man bent her back against the desk and suddenly she protested, pushing him away.

“Ah, ah. Not so fast,” Graham said. “Our girl has standards, after all.”

I wondered if that was it. Cheryl seemed to have led him on, then changed her mind. I noticed that she had changed moods almost instantaneously. It made me wonder if she had been acting all along, if her passion was faked. Certainly the man did not seem particularly surprised by her sudden change. Sitting up on the desk, she kept pushing at him, almost angrily. The man stepped away. His back was still to us. We couldn’t see his face. As soon as he had stepped back, she changed again: smiling, kittenish now. With slow movements, she got off the desk and adjusted her skirt, twisting her body provocatively as she looked around. We could see his ear and the side of his face, just enough to see that his jaw was moving. He was talking to her. She smiled at him, and came forward, slid her arms around his neck. Then they began kissing again, their hands moving over each other. Walking slowly through the office, toward the conference room.

“So. Did she choose the conference room?”

“Hard to say.”

“Shit, I still can’t see his face.”

By now they were near the center of the room, and the camera was shooting almost directly down. All we saw was the top of his head.

I said, “Does he look Japanese to you?”

“Fuck. Who can tell. How many other cameras were in that room?”

“Four others.”

“Well. His face can’t be blocked in all four. We’ll nail his ass.”

I said, “You know, Tom, this guy looks pretty big. He looks taller than she is. And she was a tall girl.”

“Who can tell, in this angle? I can’t tell anything except he has a suit on. Okay. There they go, toward the conference room.”

As they approached the room, she suddenly began to struggle.

“Oops,” Graham said. “She’s unhappy again. Moody young thing, isn’t she?”

The man gripped her tightly and she spun, trying to twist free. He half carried her, half dragged her to the room. At the doorway, she spun a final time, grabbed the door frame, struggling.

“She lose the purse there?”

“Probably. I can’t see clearly.”

The conference room was located directly opposite the camera, so we had a view of the entire room. But the interior of the conference room was very dark, so the two people were silhouetted against the lights of the skyscrapers through the outer glass windows. The man lifted her up in his arms and set her down on the table, rolled her onto her back. She became passive, liquid, as he slid her skirt up her hips. She seemed to be accepting, moving to meet him, and then he made a quick movement between their bodies, and suddenly something flew away.

“There go the panties.”

It looked as if they landed on the floor. But it was hard to tell for sure. If they were panties, they were black, or some other dark color. So much, I thought, for Senator Rowe.

“The panties were gone by the time we got there,” Graham said, staring at the monitor. “Fucking withholding of evidence, pure and simple.” He rubbed his hands together. “You got any Nakamoto stock, buddy, I’d sell it. ’Cause it isn’t going to be worth shit by tomorrow afternoon.”

On the screen, she was still welcoming him, and he was fumbling with his zipper, when suddenly she tried to sit up, and slapped him hard on the face.

Graham said, “There we go. A little
spice.
”

The man grabbed her hands, and tried to kiss her, but she resisted him, turning her face away. He pushed her back on the table. He leaned his weight on her body, holding her there. Her bare legs kicked and churned.

The two silhouettes merged and separated. It was difficult to determine exactly what was happening. It looked as if Cheryl kept trying to sit up, and the man kept shoving her back. He held her down, one hand on her upper chest, while her legs kicked at him, and her body twisted on the table. He still held her on the table, but the whole scene was more arduous than arousing. As it continued, I had trouble with the image I was seeing. Was this a genuine rape? Or was she play-acting? After all, she kept kicking and struggling, but she wasn’t succeeding in pushing him away. The man might be stronger than she was, but I had the feeling that she could have kicked him back if she had really wanted to. And sometimes it looked as if her arms were locked around his neck, instead of trying to push him away. But it was difficult to know for sure when we were seeing—

“Uh-oh. Trouble.”

The man stopped his rhythmic pumping. Beneath him, Cheryl went limp. Her arms slid away from his shoulders, dropped back on the table. Her legs fell slack on either side of him.

Graham said, “Is that it? Did it just happen?”

“I can’t tell.”

The man patted her cheek, then shook her more vigorously. He seemed to be talking to her. He remained there for a while, maybe thirty seconds, and then he slipped away from her body. She stayed on the table. He walked around her. He was moving slowly, as if he could not believe it.

Then he looked off to the left, as if he had heard a sound. He stood frozen for a moment, and then he seemed to make up his mind. He went into action, moving around the room, looking in a methodical way. He picked up something from the floor.

“The panties.”

“He took ’em himself,” Graham said. “Shit.”

Now the man moved around the girl, and bent briefly over her body on the far side.

“What’s he doing there?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see.”

“Shit.”

The man straightened and moved away from the conference room, back into the atrium. He was no longer silhouetted. There was a chance we could identify him. But he was looking back into the conference room. Back at the dead girl.

“Hey, buddy,” Graham said, talking to the image on the monitor. “Look over here, buddy. Come on. Just for a minute.”

On the screen, the man continued to look at the dead girl as he took several more steps into the atrium. Then he began to walk quickly away to the left.

“He’s not going back to the elevators,” I said.

“No. But I can’t see his
face.
”

“Where is he going?”

“There’s a stairwell at the far end,” Graham said. “Fire exit.”

“Why is he going there, instead of the elevator?”

“Who knows? I just want to see his face. Just once.”

But now the man was to the far left of our camera, and even though he was no longer turned away, we could see only his left ear and cheekbone. He walked quickly. Soon he would be gone from our view, beneath the ceiling overhang at the far end of the room.

“Ah, shit. This angle’s no good. Let’s look at another tape.”

“Just a minute,” I said.

Our man was moving toward a dark passageway that must lead to the staircase. But as he went, he passed a decorative gilt-frame mirror hanging on the wall, right by the passage. He passed it just as he went under the overhang, into final darkness.

“There!”

“How do you stop this thing?”

I was pressing buttons on the player frantically. I finally
found the one that stopped it. We went back. Then forward again.

Again, the man moved purposefully toward the dark passage, with long, quick strides. He moved past the mirror, and for an instant—a single video frame—we could see his face reflected in the mirror—see it clearly—and I pressed the button to freeze the frame—

“Bingo,” I said.

“A fucking Jap,” Graham said. “Just like I told you.”

Frozen in the mirror was the face of the killer as he strode toward the stairwell. I had no trouble recognizing the tense features of Eddie Sakamura.

“This one is mine,” Graham said. “It’s my case. I’m going to go bring the bastard in.”

“Sure,” Connor said.

“I mean,” Graham said, “I’d rather go alone.”

“Of course,” Connor said. “It’s your case, Tom. Do whatever you think best.”

Connor wrote down Eddie Sakamura’s address for him.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate your help,” Graham said. “But I’d rather handle it myself. Now, just so I have my facts straight: you guys talked to this guy earlier tonight, and you didn’t bring him in?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, don’t worry about it,” Graham said. “I’ll bury that in the report. It won’t come back to you, I promise you.” Graham was in a magnanimous mood, pleased at the prospect of arresting Sakamura. He glanced at his watch. “Fucking A. Less than six hours since the original call, and we already have the murderer. Not bad.”

“We don’t have the murderer quite yet,” Connor said. “I’d bring him in right away, if I were you.”

“I’m leaving now,” Graham said.

“Oh, and Tom,” Connor said, as Graham headed toward the door. “Eddie Sakamura is a strange guy, but he’s not known to be violent. I doubt very much that he’s armed. He probably doesn’t even own a gun. He went home from the party with a redhead. He’s probably in bed with her now. I think it would be advisable to bring him in alive.”

“Hey,” Graham said. “What is it with you two?”

“Just a suggestion,” Connor said.

“You really think I’m going to shoot this little shithead?”

“You’ll go out there with a couple of black and whites for backup, won’t you?” Connor said. “The patrolmen might be excitable. I’m just giving you the background.”

“Hey. Thanks for your fucking support,” Graham said, and he left. He was so broad, he had to turn slightly sideways to go through the door.

I watched him go. “Why are you letting him do this alone?”

Connor shrugged. “It’s his case.”

“But you’ve been aggressive all night in pursuing his case. Why stop now?”

Connor said. “Let Graham have the glory. After all, what has it got to do with us? I’m a cop on extended leave. And you’re just a corrupt liaison officer.” He pointed to the videotape. “You want to run that for me, before you give me a ride home?”

“Sure.” I rewound the tape.

“I was thinking we could get a cup of coffee, too,” Connor said. “They make a good one in the SID labs. At least, they used to.”

I said, “You want me to get coffee while you look at the tape?”

“That would be nice,
kōhai
,” Connor said.

“Sure.” I started the tape for him, and turned to leave.

“Oh, and
kōhai.
While you’re down there, ask the night duty officer what facilities the department has for videotapes. Because all these need to be duplicated. And we may need hard copies of individual frames. Especially if there’s trouble about Sakamura’s arrest as Japan-bashing by the department. We may need to release a picture. To defend ourselves.”

It was a good point. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll check.”

“And I take mine black with one sugar.” He turned to look at the monitor.

The scientific investigation division, or SID, was in the basement of Parker Center. It was after two in the morning when I got there, and most of the sections were closed down.
SID was pretty much a nine-to-five operation. Of course, the teams worked at night collecting evidence from crime scenes, but the evidence was then stored in lockers, either downtown or at one of the divisions, until the next morning.

I went to the coffee machine, in the little cafeteria next to Latent Prints. All around the room were signs reading
DID YOU WASH YOUR HANDS? THIS MEANS YOU
and
DON’T EXPOSE FELLOW OFFICERS TO RISK. WASH YOUR HANDS
. The reason was that the SID teams used poisons, especially Criminalistics. There was so much mercury, arsenic, and chromium floating around that in the old days, officers had sometimes gotten sick by drinking from a Styrofoam cup that another lab worker had merely touched.

But these days people were more careful; I got two cups of coffee and went back to the night-duty desk. Jackie Levine was on duty, with her feet up on the desk. She was a heavyset woman wearing toreador pants and an orange wig. Bespite her bizarre appearance, she was widely acknowledged to be the best print lifter in the department. She was reading
Modern Bride
magazine. I said, “You going to do it again, Jackie?”

“Hell, no,” she said. “My daughter.”

“Who’s she marrying?”

“Let’s talk about something happy,” she said. “One of those coffees for me?”

“Sorry,” I said. “But I have a question for you. Who handles videotape evidence here?”

“Videotape evidence?”

“Like tape from surveillance cameras. Who analyzes it, makes hard copies, all that?”

“Well, we don’t get much call for that,” Jackie said. “Electronics used to do it here, but I think they gave it up. Nowadays, video either goes to Valley or Medlar Hall.” She sat forward, thumbed through a directory. “If you want, you can talk to Bill Harrelson over at Medlar. But if it’s anything special, I think we farm it out to JPL or the Advanced Imaging Lab at U.S.C. You want the contact numbers, or you want to go through Harrelson?”