DIRTY BLOND

by Mark Terry

  Before stepping through, I pushed the door open and we stood there for a moment, sniffing the air like suspicious dogs, and listening for any sounds.

  Satisfied, at least for the moment, I reached in with one hand, found the light switch and flicked it on.

  Still nothing. No bombs. No hissing gas. Nothing.

  Not that there had been any real indication like that in the other booby trapped abodes.

  Glancing at Orville, I saw his face glistening with sweat. “You stay out here—“

  “Nothin’ doin’.” And with reckless abandon, he pushed in front of me.

  “Orville!”

  I plunged after him.

  It was wildly anticlimactic.

  It was a one-bedroom apartment with hardwood floors, a tiny kitchen, and large, overstuffed furniture that looked quite comfortable. A flat-screen TV approximately the size of the state of Nebraska dominated one wall.

  Stonewell had decorated it with Early American Single Guy, which is to say, not much. There were two framed posters on one wall, one of Greece with blue water and white buildings, and one of the Eiffel Tower in France. Apparently Stonewell wanted to get away from it all, or did before he was murdered.

  The bedroom had a king-sized bed, unmade, an oak armoire, a tiny closet, and two end tables with reading lamps. There was a Kindle and an iPad on one of the end tables.

  “What’s missing?” Orville said.

  “Computer of any kind. Except the iPad.”

  I picked up the iPad and clicked it on. It looked like an assortment of apps—games, utilities, informational. He also had email and Microsoft Office for the iPad. Both the iPad and the Kindle were coming with me.

  I didn’t think he would have used the iPad for the type of number crunching he did for Maeda Photonics, but what did I know? I barely understood what he did.

  The kitchen was a bit of a surprise. I had expected pizza and Chinese takeout boxes, but there was a nice set of copper pots and pans, a dozen cookbooks ranging from The Joy of Cooking to Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, volumes one and two.

  The refrigerator was still filled, but was going to be going bad soon. I wondered if there was family somewhere who would clean this out.

  My phone rang and I answered it.

  “Lieutenant Sandy Beach?”

  I admitted that I was.

  “This is Chief Dan O’Keefe with the Chicago Fire Department.” He asked me if I had an apartment in Wrigleyville, which I did.

  “Lieutenant, I’m afraid that there’s been an … incident … at your apartment.”

  “An incident?”

  “Well, we’re still investigating, but it looks like someone set a firebomb off in your apartment.”

  I hadn’t been living there in a while. Chicago PD requires its cops to be citizens in the city, but I’d been living with Mom out in the ‘burbs, pissing and moaning about the commute and the fresh air and the lower crime rate. I kept the apartment with some of my belongings, but not much.

  “Did you have a roommate, Lieutenant??”

  I had lost track of what he was saying. “What? No, no roommate.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Of course,” I snapped. “Nobody was there.”

  “There’s a body, ma’am. Male. Burned pretty badly. Did somebody have your key?”

  20

  Ronin

  Someone had been following him in the cab, but he didn’t know who.

  Stillwater should have been dead, but he didn’t think he was. Somehow the man had survived the push in front of the train.

  He thought a woman. But not the lieutenant. This was an Asian woman. He’d noticed her in the train station. Not that she stood out, not really. Even with her punked hair, she just came off like a hip Asian college student.

  But he was pretty sure she had gotten into a cab that had followed him. He’d offered the driver a hundred bucks to lose the cab and forget all about it. The Ronin had climbed out three blocks later, caught a different cab a half mile or so away, getting off randomly, walking back toward an L Station, catching the first train and getting off two stops later, walking around a bit and getting back on the next train back in the direction he had come from before finally deciding he was no longer under surveillance.

  He had two addresses for Beach. He’d taken care of the apartment. Now he needed to deal with the house.

  But a cab just wasn’t going to do.

  He had a rental car, a Toyota, that he was currently parking in a long-term garage. It was six blocks away. He walked there, taking a circuitous route, and crouched down next to the car, pretending to tie his shoe.

  He had left the key with the car in a magnetized box he’d clipped beneath the driver side door. It was there. In a minute he was out headed toward a house apparently owned by Mary Frankke, mother of Lieutenant Sandy Beach.

  The Ronin drove by the house several times. It was quiet, no streetlights, and as night dropped, the street seemed very isolated and dark. The street was lined with ancient elms and oaks, making everything even darker. Only a few of the lights in the houses were on. Clearly many of the homeowners were not yet home.

  It wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where a strange man could sit around in a parked car and not be noticed.

  It was a two-story colonial with a porch and a two-car garage. A light was on in the kitchen and on one pass he saw a shadow move past the window. An older woman, probably the mother.

  The Ronin considered his options. Only a few blocks away was a strip mall. He could park the car there without anyone noticing, and when it was full dark, return to the house, set up in the shadows near the shrubs, and wait for Beach.

  And if Beach took too long to show up, he just might have to go inside and make himself at home.

  21

  Derek

  Yoshiki Mori’s title was Deputy Director of Science, Technology and Health. Derek was unconvinced. Mori wore a dark suit and tie. He was older, maybe closing in on sixty, but the way he moved and the way he looked at Derek made him think: security, intelligence, spy. Maybe it just took one to know one.

  Mori met him at the elevator. He was short, maybe five-feet-five, with graying hair, a broad craggy face and a hand that felt like it was chipped out of concrete. Derek noticed hard calluses on the man’s knuckles. An old-school martial artist, one who pounded a makiwara board to toughen up his hands. Derek remembered one of his senseis saying, “Got problems? Go pound a makiwara for a while. All your other problems will seem insignificant.”

  “Thank you for seeing me tonight,” Derek said.

  Mori nodded his head. “You believe Itsunori Sato’s death was intentional, that he wasn’t a random target of the so-called Chemist.”

  “It’s definitely starting to look like it.”

  Mori led him down a corridor lined with photographs of Japan—Mt. Fuji, cherry trees in bloom, the neon lights of Tokyo, a Shinto Temple. Mori used both a keypad and a badge to unlock the door to his office. Stepping in, he waved Derek to a chair in front of a desk made out of some shiny black acrylic-like substance. A large computer dominated. There was a couch, some lamps, and a safe. No filing cabinets.

  No windows.

  Yeah. Spook of some sort.

  Derek leaned forward and placed his Department of Homeland Security credentials on Mori’s desk. “If at all possible I’d like to cut the crap. I don’t know exactly what your real job is here, but you and the Consul have had plenty of time to run a background check on me and determine that I’m for real, that I’m not screwing with you guys, and that I do, as a matter of fact, have real reasons to investigate Sato’s death.”

  “That is very American,” Mori said with a smile.

  “Since I’ve spent most of the day listening to people lie to me or withhold information, and had one really legitimate attempt on my life by someone presumably invol
ved with this case, yeah, I’m not going to apologize for cutting through the protocol and cultural stuff.”

  “Someone tried to kill you?”

  Derek held up a disk. “Maybe you can take a look and see if he seems familiar.”

  Mori turned the monitor of the computer sideways so Derek could see it. Then he inserted the disk into the drive. Mori watched the video with an attentive, but otherwise neutral expression. When he had watched it to the end, he turned to Derek. “How did you survive that?”

  “Fast reflexes and some luck. If I was a little fatter I’m not sure I would have. If some part of the train had caught my jacket I probably would have been dragged or pulled under.”

  “I do not recognize the man.”

  “He would have been at Molly’s Diner.”

  “That was several weeks ago.”

  “Were there a lot of Asians at Molly’s? Besides you and Itsunori Sato?”

  Mori shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

  “Was lunch just you and Sato?”

  “Yes.”

  Derek leaned forward a little bit. “So maybe you got lucky.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Why were you and Sato at that restaurant?”

  “We were eating lunch.”

  “And discussing business?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “What would that discussion have entailed, Mr. Mori?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  Derek sighed. “Perhaps I can refresh your memory. I imagine that the two of you, at least for a while, discussed the project that’s going on between your Ministry of Defense and Maeda Photonics.”

  “Clearly you believe so.”

  “You’re denying it?”

  With his own sigh, Mori shook his head. “No. I’m not denying it. And although you have a very high security clearance with your own government, you do not have one with my government.”

  “What can you tell me about this project with Maeda Photonics?”

  “As you no doubt have determined, it involves missile guidance systems.”

  “Why would someone want it stopped?”

  “Any of our enemies would want it stopped.”

  “Our enemies being Japan’s or the U.S. and Japan?”

  With a nod of his head, Mori said, “They are typically the same. And in this case, because Maeda Photonics is a U.S. company, we are sharing.”

  “Maeda Photonics, the Japanese Ministry of Defense, the Makatashi Corporation and a professor with Northwestern.”

  “I believe Professor Stonewell was a consultant for Maeda Photonics.”

  “What is the Makatashi Corporation’s role?”

  “Manufacturing, should it come to that. If the technology is fully developed and works the way everyone wants it to, Maeda Photonics developed the technology with funding and support from the U.S. and Japanese governments and Makatashi Corporation. Makatashi has a commercial development deal in place.”

  “So there is a great deal of money involved.”

  Mori was quiet for a moment. Finally, he said, “This is a complicated subject, Dr. Stillwater. Since World War II, Japan has been very restricted in building and selling weapons. After seventy years, it has become something of a default position. The government is loosening those restrictions, trying to ‘normalize’ our research and development and manufacturing of military weapons, but it is both an economically and culturally complicated topic.”

  “So, let me get less cultural and ask a hypothetical question. Who would want to stop this deal, whatever it is, from going through?”

  “Competitors, certainly.”

  “For example?” Derek asked, leaning forward.

  “Many American military companies, as well as others in the world, if they are concerned with the competition. Examples would include Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumann, General Dynamics, DynaCorp, Raytheon. There are quite a few others in the United States alone.”

  “What about in other countries?”

  Mori tapped his fingers on the desktop. “From Russia, Rosoboronexport controls all defense-related exports. Similar to Maeda Photonics, there’s a French company, Thales Optronics, a division of Thales Group. In the U.K., BAE Systems.” He shrugged. “The list goes on and on.”

  Derek pointed to the computer screen. “I apologize if this is culturally insensitive, but do you think that guy there is Japanese?”

  “Because all Asians look alike, Doctor?”

  “Let’s just say that I don’t have the sensitivity to necessarily distinguish between someone who is Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Malaysian.”

  “It may not be possible for me, either.”

  “But?”

  “I think he is probably Japanese.”

  “So, on a completely hypothetical level, if a major organization, or an unscrupulous person within a major organization, wanted to hire someone to kill several people in this deal, do you think companies outside Japan would hire a Japanese assassin?”

  Mori stared at Derek. “That’s not a question I have ever been asked before.”

  “Nor one I’ve ever asked before,” Derek said. “It’s pure speculation. I’ve run into a couple mercenaries, professional killers for hire, if you will, and I don’t think in most cases they would care about the ethnicity of who they were killing or who hired them, just as long as the money was right. I’m just trying to narrow the suspect pool from everyone on the planet to maybe some nationality.”

  “I have no idea. But if it were a government that hired this person, I would guess they would choose from inside their own culture, at least in most cases. I’m not sure that helps you very much.”

  “I don’t suppose it does, no.”

  Derek thought for a moment. “You really can’t tell me what you and Sato discussed before he died?”

  Mori shrugged again. “It was not a business lunch. We were colleagues and friends. We did not talk about business.”

  “Was there a bidding process for this entire arrangement?”

  Mori nodded.

  “Who were the other bidders? Or specifically, who was the number two bidder?”

  “The top three bidders after Makatashi were Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and DynaCorp.”

  Derek thought about that for a moment. “I don’t suppose you’d have a list of the major players in the bidding process.”

  “I can provide that, although I don’t know how complete it would be.”

  “I’m pretty certain that I can expand on your list with my own contacts in my government.”

  Mori provided a tight smile. “I’m not optimistic about your chances of narrowing down your suspect list in a meaningful way.”

  Derek shrugged. “Got to start somewhere.”

  22

  Sandy

  There was still a fire truck out front of my building, as well as two patrol cars, a Crime Scene van and a car I recognized as belonging to one of the medical examiner’s investigators, Sharon Reynolds. I double-parked and hurried over, badging my way past the patrol officers.

  At the door to my apartment I took a deep breath, afraid of what I would find. Although I had moved in with my mother out in the ‘burbs, it never completely felt like home. This apartment, this one, despite half of my belongings having been moved, still felt like home.

  I stepped in and sighed. I had been expecting it to be a total disaster, charred beyond recognition.

  Instead, the ceiling was singed and there seemed to be smoke damage. My old sofa was a charred hulk.

  Sharon Reynolds was a brassy redhead in her late-forties with a broad heart-shaped face and stocky build. She was crouched over a crispy-critter, what had once been a human being before he—presumably a he—had stood too close to a firebomb.

  Sharon wore Tyvek overalls and booties, hands encased in blue Nitrile gloves, a mask over her nose and mouth, goggles over
her eyes. It was not a flattering look.

  Muffled through the gauze mask, Sharon said, “Gave me a start, thinking this was you.”

  “Glad it wasn’t, but who is it? What do you know?”

  “African-American male. I’m estimating age from about 17 to 30. Burned to death.”

  A ruddy-faced bald man who must have stood six-five and looked like he could bench press a Buick trundled out of the bedroom. “Who’re you?”

  I showed him my badge. He introduced himself as Bob Walker, an arson investigator. “You missed the bomb squad. They took out the last two devices.”

  “There was more than one?” I swallowed.

  “Three devices. IEDs, basically. Two-liter bottles with a mix of gasoline and black powder with a fuse linked to a switch. Sort of a Molotov cocktail that went off if someone sat on the sofa, pushed the kitchen door open or laid down on the bed.”

  “Who’s the victim?”

  “It’s possible it’s the guy who set the bombs, though that’s not my guess. My guess is he’s a junkie who broke in here looking to steal something and tripped the bomb in the living room. Just a theory.” He looked over at Sharon. “You about ready to check for ID?”

  Sharon nodded, putting away a tissue sample she’d taken. She fumbled around and checked the victim’s jeans pockets. They were in tatters, burned and charred, but more or less intact. The bomb must have burned fast and hot and very isolated. I asked Walker about it.

  “Yeah. The lab’ll analyze it, but even though it seems improvised, it seems a little, well … professional. Whoever wants to kill you didn’t want to kill anyone else and seemed to try to minimize the likelihood of burning the building down.”

  “A considerate assassin,” I said.

  “Who would want to kill you, Lieutenant?”

  “It’s a long list, but I have my suspicions.”

  “Someone specific?” Walker probed.

  I quickly outlined the case to date. Sharon stared at me. “Are you even living here?”

  “Um…”

  Walker said, “I suppose I don’t want to hear this.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t repeat it or write it in a report.”