Flashback

“There was all that newsblog blather about a locked-room mystery,” continued Nick, “but the goddamned room wasn’t even locked when the murders happened. Keigo unlocked the lower door, climbed the stairs, unlocked the upper door, and came out here. Wherever you were—a van, command post RV, a goddamned blimp—the remote door alarms showed you he’d opened them and you must have phoned Keigo to check that everything was all right.”

Sato grunted. But this time Nick needed more than that.

“Did you phone him? Or contact him some other way?” he demanded.

“How do you say it,” growled Sato, “when you interrupt static on an open line without speaking?”

“Breaking squelch,” said Nick. At least that’s the way he and a lot of former-military Denver cops had said it. Breaking squelch—just clicking to interrupt the carrier static—was as old as radios. When he’d been a patrolman, the guys out in their patrol cars had an entire code of breaking squelch—ways to tell each other things that no one wanted the dispatcher to hear or record.

Sato grunted again.

“So you broke squelch and Keigo broke squelch back and you knew he was okay when the doors opened,” said Nick. “One interrogative break and two back?”

“Two interrogative and three back, Bottom-san.”

“How many times did you do that before he quit answering because he was dead?”

“Twice.”

“How long before he quit answering was the second query and answer… how long before you had Satoh break the door down and check on him?”

“One minute, twelve seconds.”

Nick rubbed his chin again, hearing the scrape of whiskers.

“You said you had solved the murder,” said Sato.

“Oh, yeah. Keigo didn’t have sex with the girl because he was waiting for someone. Someone to arrive on the roof.”

“Without tripping the perimeter and pressure sensors?”

“Exactly. The person arrived by helicopter and just stepped out onto the patio boards here. No sensors there.”

“This was a busy night on Wazee Street, Bottom-san. Many people coming to and leaving this party alone. You think that they would not have noticed a helicopter hovering above the building?” Hericopter.

“Not if it was a stealth ’copter with that whisper technology that your dragonfly chopper had when you got picked up yesterday. What do you call those machines?”

“Sasayaki-tonbo,” said Sato.

“And what does that mean?”

“Whisper-dragonfly.”

“Okay,” said Nick. “So you’d been holding back, running the security from the background before that night, letting your cutely named Satoh-san appear to be running the show—just for purposes of later interviews should things go south, which they did—but that night you told Keigo that you wanted to meet him at one-thirty a.m…”

“One twenty-five it would have to be,” said Sato.

Nick ignored him. “So Keigo kills some time with his sex toy, who doesn’t even bother to get undressed for the heir apparent, and then comes up on the roof to meet you. You step out of the whisper-dragonfly, which probably goes up to hover until you are done with what you have to do, Keigo unlocks the door to lead you back down into his apartment, and the second you enter the room you shoot the girl in the forehead and then use a big knife on a very surprised Keigo.”

Sato seemed to be considering the explanation. “How did I get back out to the roof, Bottom-san? Only young Mr. Nakamura could open the doors.”

Nick laughed at that. “I don’t know how you got out. Maybe you had an override code on those goddamned doors…”

“Then I would not have required arranging a meeting with young Mr. Nakamura to open them, would I, Bottom-san? I could have surprised him at any time.”

“Whatever,” snapped Nick. “Maybe you just propped the doors open with two of those rocks in the dead planter there. But you had plenty of time to kill both of them and then be airlifted off the roof again—without the whisper-dragonfly tripping any of the alarms up here.”

Sato nodded as if convinced. “And my motive?”

“How the fuck should I know what your motive was?” Nick laughed again. “Sibling rivalry. Something that happened in Japan that we’ll never find out about. Maybe you were sweet on little Miss Keli Bracque…”

“Sweet on her,” repeated Sato, “so I shot her in the head.”

“Yeah,” said Nick. “Exactly.”

“And then murdered young Mr. Nakamura out of some sort of jealousy.”

Nick held up his hands. “I said I don’t know the motive. I just know you had the opportunity and the access to weapons and the technology to get you in and out of Keigo’s apartment.”

“The technology being the Sasayaki-tonbo,” said Sato.

“Yeah.”

“You should really look into whether there were any Sasayaki-tonbo in America six years ago,” said the security chief. “Or in Japan yet, for that matter.”

Nick said nothing. After another minute of looking at the depressing rooftop and depressing low clouds, he said, “Let’s go down and get out of the fucking rain.”