Black Bullet - Volume 6 - Chapter 3.01

BLACK BULLET 6

CHAPTER 03

HOTARU KOURO

1

It was with an overwhelming sense of chagrin that Shigetoku Tadashima, inspector from Magata Station, eyed Atsuro Hitsuma as he opened the interrogation room’s door. Tadashima nonetheless gave his direct superior from police HQ a dutiful salute.

“How are things going?” Hitsuma asked, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his middle finger.

“Well,” the barrel-chested Tadashima replied, “why don’t you see for yourself?”

On the other side of the room’s one-way mirror, they could see an elderly man in the interrogation room, answering questions. His face was darkly tanned, and his hair was a salt-and-pepper mix. The puffiness of his face made his eyes appear deeply sunken in their sockets. Tadashima knew through years of detective experience that a person’s personality and life experiences were often written on their face, and judging by this man’s, he surmised the man had led a tough, hardscrabble life.

“Who’s he?” Hitsuma inquired.

“Yuuki Iwama. Fifty-six; taxi driver. An eyewitness said he let a couple who looked like Rentaro Satomi and Hotaru Kouro into his cab, so we have him in for questioning at the moment. He swears he doesn’t remember taking a fare from anyone like that.”

“There’s no kind of record on the taxi’s computer about where he went, or when?”

“Turns out he didn’t have one,” Tadashima replied. “It looks like his taxi firm engages in some pretty drastic cost cutting in order to keep their fares the lowest in Tokyo Area.”

“What’s your gut telling you about him, Inspector?”

“Ah, he’s probably got something.”

Hitsuma crossed his arms together. “Do you think we can get it out of him?”

“He’s just a person of interest at this point. We can’t press him too hard. But did you visit the apartment with the body yet?”

“I stopped by for just a bit. It was…a heartbreaking scene.” Hitsuma shook his head in an expression of sorrow, but his words rung hollow, like an unpracticed actor reading a script for the first time.

After all, the word heartbreaking tended to be thrown around a lot, in contrived displays of empathy.

Tadashima had been first on the scene. The high-rise apartment complex that Gastrea forensic pathologist Ayame Surumi called home was the picture of hell itself, the survivors breathing wild tales of tire-shaped monsters attacking them. The police had found two of the wheeled machines as they cased the place, both with its innards destroyed. He shook off the thought before his mind could flash back to the grisly sights that remained tattooed to the backs of his eyelids.

“The doctor Rentaro Satomi visited was killed in her bathroom,” Tadashima began. “She had been dead for a fairly long period of time, so he couldn’t be the guy for that one. Immediately after, those crazy machines started their building-wide rampage—and, once again, Rentaro Satomi started coming to people’s rescue.

“What I really don’t get, though, is the body in the elevator. We found it in the car after the cable snapped and it fell to the second-level basement. It was so badly dismembered that we haven’t been able to get an ID yet, but the body had some kind of electronic parts infused within it. I mean, this is crazy. Why are there all these bodies wherever Rentaro Satomi goes?”

“What do you think, Inspector?”

Tadashima looked up to find Hitsuma gauging him carefully, his face serious. Tadashima felt something cold behind that stare as he tried to assemble his thoughts.

“It’s pretty clear to me there’s some nonpolice entity pursuing him. What I don’t understand is what kind of motive Rentaro Satomi could possibly have. Given that they made contact with Dr. Kakujo posing as the victim’s relatives, they must have some kind of mission or goal in mind. They might even be trying to clear their name, for all I know.”

“……”

“Do you think it’s time,” Tadashima continued, deliberately trying to fight off Hitsuma’s eerie silence, “that we made this a public investigation?”

“We can’t do that,” Hitsuma replied, his tone indicative of how ridiculous the idea was to him. “The news already reported that Rentaro Satomi fell off the Magata Plaza Hotel and drowned in the river. If people find out he’s been shrugging off police pursuit and skipping around Tokyo Area scot-free this whole time, it’s going to be an absolute embarrassment. All we have to do is secretly arrest him and say that we plucked him out of the river earlier.”

That’s “all” we have to do? Tadashima found himself wondering. Hitsuma, whether he knew of the inspector’s doubts or not, turned his eyes to the one-way mirror, taking in the interrogation.

“This would be a lot easier,” he whispered in a monotone, “if that cabbie would just tell us what he knows already.”

His release from police custody ultimately had to wait until two in the morning.

The moment taxi driver Yuuki Iwama left the front entrance, he was greeted by the sticky summer night air. The high humidity raised his discomfort level off the charts. Brooding over his stressful day, he turned the car’s ignition. They said they’d let him know if they needed anything else, but given how they had acted, they’d no doubt be calling his company’s office again soon. He was exhausted to the core and not particularly enthusiastic about running a night shift now, so he simply drove home instead.

He texted his wife as he did, figuring there was a chance she was still awake. No answer. To him, it was both a disappointment and a relief. It was easy for him to imagine the torrent of questions she’d unleash once he confessed where he’d been. She may have been the love of his life, but there was no way he could reveal who had climbed into his taxi hours earlier.

Soon, he pulled up to his home, in a quiet neighborhood outside the main city. His eyebrows arched up as he did. The lights were on, and he sensed there was activity inside. He pulled into the driveway to park the car in the garage, wondering what she was doing at this time of night.

Then he noticed that the lawn mower was still out in the yard. That wasn’t normal. His wife was so picky about that sort of thing. The moment she spotted so much as a speck of dirt on the kitchen floor, out she came with the dustpan and broom.

The door was unlocked, emitting a soft creak as he pushed down on the lever to open it. The front foyer was littered with shoes and mud tracks, as if something heavy had been dragged through.

It was like…like someone had attacked his wife while she was doing yard work and dragged her inside. Wasn’t it? Yuuki cursed his own overactive imagination as he reached back outside and pushed the doorbell. A pair of shrill tones echoed across the house.

There was no response. No, hang on—he could just barely hear something coming from the living room down the hall.

His pulse started to race, his breathing quick and shallow. There was no doubt in his mind that something bad was going on. He grabbed the ceramic flower vase by the front door, spilled out its contents, and held it by the neck to use as a weapon. He didn’t bother to remove his shoes as he stepped back in.

As he approached the living room, he realized that the sound was muffled groaning. Once he was at the doorway, Yuuki resolved himself, then jumped into the room.

The sight shocked him.

“Izuho!”

His wife was lying on the living room floor, hands and legs bound with tape, blindfolded and gagged. She looked like the cocoon of a bagworm moth as she groaned.

Yuuki ran to her in a panic, only to find his arms restrained from behind and something sharp and cold pressed against his neck. A knife blade, probably.

“Don’t turn around,” a low, threatening voice intoned. His body tensed up, sweat running down his forehead.

A home invasion?

“Who—who are you…?”

“I could tell you,” the voice replied calmly, “but if I did, there’d be no saving you or this woman.”

It was clear from the tone that the owner of the voice was uninterested in further questioning along these lines.

“I want to ask you one thing. Where did you drop off Rentaro Satomi and Hotaru Kouro?”

This is no robbery at all. This guy’s in pursuit of that freaky civsec pair. Yuuki was too intimidated to make any kind of reaction.

“You have two choices,” the voice continued. “Give me the location, or give me the location after I hurt you.”

“After you hurt me…?”

“I’ll start with the nails. Twenty of them. Not yours—the girl’s. Once I’m done with that, I’ll take off the fingers next. You can speak up anytime if you feel like talking.”

Yuuki let the vase fall out of his hand. It shattered loudly against the floor. He shook his head, not minding the shallow cut the knife made against his neck. Tears poured from his eyes.

“No… Stop. Anything but that.”

“Okay. So you know what you have to do, right?”

In his mind, Yuuki brought his hands up to Rentaro’s. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.

“District 18. Nagatoro City. The illegal-immigrant slum.”

“Right.”

The knife lowered, and the darkness behind him lessened.

A sharp silence descended as he gingerly looked over his shoulder.

Not a trace of the home invader remained.

The moment Yuuki realized he was safe, he immediately fell to his knees on the floor.

After what seemed like the millionth investigation meeting at Magata Station, Hitsuma was eating a not so palatable catered box lunch when the phone rang. Looking at the name, he stood up, walked to an empty part of a nearby hallway, and answered it.

“Swordtail? Why didn’t you go through Nest? Is it that important?”

“I found out where they got off the taxi. It’s in Nagatoro City, District 18. The illegal squatter camp.”

“Nice work. I’ll get an operation together ASAP. Is that all?”

His conversational partner, for some reason, was oddly silent. After a moment, though, he continued, his voice low and emotionless.

“Is it true Hummingbird got killed?”

Hitsuma hesitated for a moment.

“…Yes.”

“Well, it figures, what with how she swaggered around all the time. Pfft. Wish she realized how much work this put on me before she went off and died like that.”

“You better watch yourself, too. This isn’t any normal job.”

“No worries.”

Hitsuma stared at his phone for a few moments after the call ended. If his next move failed on him again, he’d have no choice but to deploy Swordtail himself. He didn’t want to go that far—not for a single target like this—but he nonetheless had zero doubt that the man would make short work of Rentaro Satomi and his accomplice.

He walked back to the office snickering to himself, carefully hiding the smile of joy trying to make its way to his face.