4
Little Bighorn
Nikki wasn’t sure if having a psycho fan was a good thing. Actually she was fairly certain it was a bad thing, but at least it meant she was off the hook for the murder of Gregory Winston. At least, that’s what she assumed for a few minutes. The police, however, showed no signs of letting her go.
Just as it was becoming clear that they meant to hold her, the door opened and a female police officer stepped into the room. She bowed, apologized for interrupting with “Gomenasai.” The reason for her interruption was hovering right behind her, a man in a hand-tailored, pinstripe suit whose appearance screamed “American.” He was tall and broad as only a steak-fed male could be.
The American went through the elaborate formal introduction with Tanaka and Yoshida. Business cards were exchanged and carefully studied.
Nikki knew a handshake was coming—politicians lived on their handshake—so she tucked away her stolen pen and braced herself.
“Miss Delany? I’m Terrence Walcott.” He bowed first, out of habit, which meant he’d been in Japan for a long time. He had a very faint Southern accent, which was ironic, because Osaka natives had a similar slight drawl to their Japanese. He held out his hand. She gave him a “we are close allies” firm shake that ended with her left covering their joined hands, just for a few seconds, enough to imply a warmth and intimacy of close association. She read it striking home with a slight shift in his face.
“I’m with the consulate here in Osaka,” he said. “I’m sorry we have to meet under such circumstances. We had a call—” He paused to change what he was going to say. “I understand you were arrested in the murder of Gregory Winston?”
Miriam must have found out that there was an actual murder attached to Nikki’s arrest. Only something as serious as Nikki being railroaded for murder would have made Miriam call the American embassy. What exactly had Miriam told them? Not the whole truth, or the man would have addressed Nikki as a senator’s only child, not as one of the questionable masses. Judging by what he almost said, Miriam only told them enough to get him to the police.
Nikki doubted that she could keep Walcott from finding out who her mother was eventually, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell him at this point. She kept to what he needed to know to get her released. “I’m a published author researching a novel already under contract that is set in Japan. I never met Gregory Winston. I was never in the building where he lived. I have an alibi for the time of his death. I was in Otemae at the time of the murder. I’ve already presented proof of that.”
He nodded along with her bullet points. “Please, Ms. Delany, let me get caught up and then I’ll see about getting them to release you.”
Walcott and Tanaka engaged in an epic Japanese conversation with occasional tangents with Yoshida riddled with English computer terms. Obviously they were telling Walcott about her website. They didn’t actually tell him the url or her pen name. She took out her stolen pen and clicked it quietly, trying not to think of standard embassy protocol that basically would fire off a signal flare through the US State Department with her present location.
At the end, Walcott turned to her and asked, “Miss Delany, have you had previous problems with stalkers?”
Only my mother. “No.”
“The police say Gregory Winston’s neighbors called 119 before he was actually killed. There was a fight that started with someone coming to his door and ringing his doorbell. The call has his screams recorded in the background. The police know the exact time of his death, and you were in Otemae during this time. Officer Yoshida says that the attacker was much taller than you.”
It never even occurred to her to ask anything about the actual murder. She simply assumed they wouldn’t tell her. Then again, they probably wouldn’t have told her.
“And I’m still here—why?”
“They’re not discounting that you might know the attacker.”
“I don’t know anyone in Japan.” Wait, Yoshida and Tanaka had seen Miriam. “Except for the girl I was having lunch with.” Shit, she couldn’t let them think that Miriam had anything to do with this. “And she’s only an inch or two taller than me.” And could totally kick ass when it came to fighting. “I’ve been posting information on my character George for three weeks. If some nutcase reads my blog, they could have already picked out Gregory as the closest matchup to my character a long time ago. One of the reasons I put George in Umeda was because of the number of expats living there. The police said I posted that snippet four hours before Gregory Winston was killed. That would give this psycho fan enough time to get to George’s—to Winston’s apartment and murder him.”
“Do you have any fans that may be that crazy?”
She stopped and gave it a long, honest consideration. She was writer; written words revealed more to her than to the normal person. Had she ever read any blog comments that even suggested homicidal tendencies? Any off-the-wall remarks on her twitter feed? Nothing came to mind. “No. I don’t know who is reading my blog here in Osaka. I honestly wasn’t aware of the number of hits. I used to compulsively check my stats before my first novel sold; it was a way to stroke my ego. I stopped needing that kind of egoboo when I got my first check.”
Walcott nodded and turned back to the policeman and the discussion continued in Japanese. Nikki closed her eyes, and thought of tropical beaches, and clicked her stolen pen. She needed to write soon or she was going to explode. Maybe she should ask to go to the bathroom and . . .
Oh damn, this was Japan; public restrooms didn’t have toilet paper or paper towels. She flinched as the “OMG” baseball bat of cultural shock hit her.
Walcott turned back to her, his face warning her that she wasn’t going to like what he was about to say. “If you cooperate, the police will let you go. I recommend that you cooperate fully.”
“And what exactly is cooperating?”
“They’ll need your DNA and fingerprints to compare with unknowns found at the murder scene. And they want your password for your analytical software so they can track hits to your blog. And they want you to take down the scene.”
They weren’t going to find any matches to her fingerprints because she’d never been in any of the private buildings in Umeda. Same with DNA. Giving away her password was annoying, but she kept all her websites carefully compartmentalized so discovery of one wouldn’t compromise the others.
Most importantly, a real man was dead and chances were good that someone with very violent antisocial tendencies had been following her every move.
“Okay. I’ll cooperate.”
Dusk was falling when she and Walcott finally walked out of the police headquarters. She was starving, and she desperately needed to write. For the last half hour, between chewing on her fingernails, she’d been madly clicking her pen and cycling through every single deserted-island fantasy she’d ever constructed. She needed to scrape off Walcott, find something to eat before the need to write completely took her, and then let the muse run loose.
Rush hour was starting, filling the streets with tiny cars and miniature trucks and office workers on town bicycles. The subway station was down the hill, the same direction as her apartment building, so Terrence walked with her. They were the only non-Asians on the street. Everyone moving purposely around them was short, slim, dark haired, and dark-eyed.
“Are you going to be safe?” Mr. Walcott asked.
It was hard not to be angry with him; he was about to unknowingly bring her mother down on her. Nikki reminded herself that he did get her away from the Japanese police. Play nice with the man; he could be an ally in the coming war.
“Yes, I’ll be fine. I’m very capable of taking care of myself.” I’d been doing it off and on since I was eight.
He looked down at her, worry written all over his face. “It’s just that you’ve posted a lot of personal information.”
Nikki laughed. “Not really!” Of course she hadn’t; her mother had trained her well. “It only seems like it. Yes, I talked about getting my apartment. How small it is. That it doesn’t have an oven. That it has an on-demand hot-water heater. I even posted pictures of the interior. I didn’t mention that I was in Otemae neighborhood, that I’m in a building that caters to gaijin, or that I’m on a monthly lease. None of the photos showed the exterior of the building or even the view from my balcony. When I post that I’ve gone someplace—like the Hanshin department store that’s in Umeda—I don’t say if I took the subway or just walked across the street.”
Nor could anyone trace her via her apartment IP address—as she always used an anonymous proxy service that masked her location.
“I see. That makes me feel better. Please, be very careful.” He shook her hand firmly and then went down the steps into the subway.
She went to the corner. There was a rare break in the traffic, but no one moved to cross the street until the walk light came on. She had discovered quickly that the Japanese always waited for the walk light and always crossed at the corner. She had seen people stop in the middle of the night and wait on deserted street corners for the walk light to give them permission to cross. Jaywalking was simply not done. Terrence Walcott was getting on to a subway train full of people texting like mad because talking on cell phones was against the rules. No one would be eating or drinking. There was no graffiti on any of the walls, all posters were carefully placed in accordance with the law, and people carried little portable ashtrays for their cigarette butts.
How did she find—in this city full of obedient, lawful people—a person looking for inspiration to kill?
Despite her screaming need to write, she stopped at Family Mart to pick up dinner. She had learned the hard way that the hungrier she was, the longer her hypergraphia took to burn out.
News that the strange American woman was linked to a murder must have filtered through the employees. The male cashier startled visibly when she came through the door. He watched her nervously as she picked up a basket and walked to the ready-made meals. She picked up a pre-cooked okonomiyaki to make up for the one left behind with Miriam. The rice balls looked good, so she got three of those. She added two of her favorite filled buns to her basket before she realized that hunger and stress was nose-diving her into a major pig-out.
But if being stalked by a killer wasn’t justification for a pig-out, nothing was. Generally she avoided alcohol, but she was feeling the need for some medicine-induced calm. She studied the alcohol selection. Between her lack of experience in drinking and the labels in Japanese, she had no clue if she would like the liquid inside.
Miriam picked up on the first ring. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
“What is decent to drink here?” She turned her cell phone’s camera on to the wine selection.
“Oh, good, they let you go!” Miriam said. “You would like the stuff in the little dark green bottles. It’s a plum wine. It’s very sweet and mild.”
“Yes, I’m free.” Nikki picked up the miniature bottle of wine. The label claimed that it held two hundred milliliters; she probably could down it in three swallows. Not really enough, it seemed, for self-medication. She added a second bottle to her basket and headed for to the check-out counter. She picked up a Snickers and Kit Kat bar as she passed through the candy aisle.
“I’m so sorry,” Miriam said. “I called the consulate. I was really worried that you would end up in prison.”
“It’s probably the only reason I’m free.” Nikki watched the clerk scan her purchases with shaking hands. What had the police said to the employees? Had they explained the blender? “They really didn’t want to let me go.”
“I shouldn’t have teased that salaryman. I had no idea that he would take us so seriously!” Miriam cried. “I’m really, really sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” Nikki tucked her phone under her chin, dug out her change purse, and counted out thirty thousand yen to cover the major splurge. “This is more than a run-of-the-mill murder. There’s a shitload more.” The clerk’s eyes had gone huge. Apparently he spoke English enough to understand the word “murder.” “Just hold on a minute.”
Nikki collected her change. She unwrapped a rice ball, took a big bite. and headed out onto the street to get the automatic door between her and the listening clerks. “I’ve got a psycho fan that killed a man using a blender in the apartment building that my character lived in! Get this: a Gregory Winston instead of George Wilson.”
“Shit!” Miriam said. “What about the others?”
“Others?” Nikki asked.
“Well, you’ve killed like three men and two women so far, right? Four men if you count the Brit.”
Nikki jerked to a halt, and her stomach did a sickening flip. “Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!”
“Nikki?”
“Oh shit!”
“You did talk to the police about the other characters. Didn’t you?”
“No! Oh shit!” The police were bound to find out. They were crawling all over her website when she left. “Wait! I didn’t blog about them!”
There was a clicking of keys from Miriam’s side. “Hmm, you’re right. It doesn’t seem as if you did. So you’re good—unless . . .”
“Unless what?”
“Well—unless your psycho fan did something like hack your computer.”