Arai had eleven minutes to fit between two red pushpins.
With his elbow, he moved a coffee cup threatening the laminated subway map and planted the first pin at Shinjuku’s west exit. 9:52 p.m. The second went onto a photocopied street map lower on the board: the service staircase where Masaru Ibuki had been found with a broken neck. 10:04 p.m., according to the call from the taxi driver who discovered the body.
Eleven minutes at a brisk walk. Nine through the alley behind the hotel. Arai had done it twice.
“You’ll wear out the sidewalk,” Sakamoto said behind him.
She placed a clear bag on his desk. Inside, Daigo Hori’s transit card looked as harmless as a loyalty card: gray edge, rounded corner, a white scratch across the logo. The label gave the seizure time, the seal number, and the officer’s signature.
Arai checked the label first.
“Did the history come back?”
“West exit at nine fifty-two. Same as yesterday. Same as the day before. The data didn’t change overnight. Reassuring.”
He ignored the irony. On the neighboring workstation’s screen, the voicemail transcript occupied four lines.
10:11:08 p.m.
*It’s over. He won’t speak to me again. I’ll call you tomorrow.*
The recipient was Hori’s brother. The phone had time-stamped the message; the carrier’s server confirmed receipt within eleven seconds. Ibuki and Hori had argued in front of three colleagues that morning. Ibuki had threatened to report the misappropriation of equipment at their company. At 9:52, Hori’s card had left the subway. Twelve minutes later, a man was dying in a passage Hori knew. Seven minutes after that, Hori was saying Ibuki would not speak to him again.
Arai traced the line between the pins with his finger.
“We request a search warrant.”
Sakamoto did not move.
“On what grounds?”
“This.”
“‘This’ isn’t a field on the form.”
End of excerpt. Discover the other stories in this universe.