Ratio: A Leopold Blake Thriller (A Private Investigator Series of Crime and Suspense Thrillers) (31 page)

JUNE PICKED HERSELF up and left the bedroom, forcing herself not to look at the mess on the bed. Shutting the door, she collapsed onto the sofa, her stomach in knots. She grabbed a glass of water from the kitchenette and downed it, feeling a little better before slumping back onto the couch, her mind spinning. She felt her cell phone vibrate and picked up the call. Jerome came on the line, the same clattering noises as before going on in the background.

“What’s going on?” June asked. 

“We think we’ve found a friend of yours,” Jerome said. “Japanese guy, missing a finger. Ring any bells? We’ve linked him to the suspects who planted the device in the ventilation system.” 

“There’s more,” June said. “My uninvited guest just had a little accident.” She tried not to think about it. “Someone stuffed the pillows with explosives. They just went off. He was on the bed at the time.”

“He alive?”

June felt her stomach roil. “Not exactly.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. For the time being, anyway.”

There was a commotion on the line.

“Jerome?”

“I’m still here. Listen, we don’t have time to go into any detail, but I think our Japanese friend might be behind this whole thing.” 

June sat up a little straighter. “Can he stop this?”

“We think so. But he’s not feeling particularly cooperative.”

“And you want me to speak to him?” June listened, trying to make sense of what was going on downstairs. It sounded like there was a scuffle, followed by Jerome’s phone being dropped, and a struggle with a lot of grunting.

“Only three more minutes!” a woman’s voice called out. 

“Jerome?” June shouted down the phone. “You there?”

Leopold’s voice came on the line. “Sorry about that,” he said. “We’re having to resort to a little physical persuasion.”

“Leopold, rip that guy’s shirt off. Are there cherry blossom tattoos on his shoulder or down his arm?”

“Yeah. That’s Yakuza, right?” Leopold said.

“Yeah. Put the phone up to his ear. I want to talk to him.”

Leopold obliged. There was another howl of pain from a fourth voice. A scuffling noise and she heard breathing on the line.  

“
Ne, pansuke ka?
” a male voice said.
Is this the little whore?
The words were filled with hatred, the speaker almost spitting them down the phone.  

June gritted her teeth. “You’re Oguchi Clan?” she asked, in Japanese.

“Go to hell.” There was another noise and the man screamed out. 

“Why are you doing this?” June said. “You came for me? You’re here to kill me?”

The man laughed hoarsely. “You can’t run from Oguchi this time.”

“You came for me? All this is to kill me? You put a bomb in my room to kill me, put toxic gas in the ventilation system, knowing others would die too?”

“Two minutes!” The woman’s voice again. 

“Those damn bombs in your room are nothing,” the man continued. “Just a distraction, something for the police to obsess about. Once the gas is released, nobody’s getting out of here alive. The whole world will think the North Koreans had something to do with it, trying to take out your President. The Yakuza and Oguchi won’t even come up in conversation, and the only people who know the truth are going to die in this room.” 

June gripped the phone tighter. “You’re insane.”

“Nobody will ever suspect you were the one that was meant to die. Nobody else matters to us, as long as you’re dead.” He laughed again, a high-pitched squeal. “You should’ve died a couple years ago when you had the chance.”

“I almost did.”

“Now you get a second chance to do it right,
yariman
.” Another scuffling noise and the man howled again. 

June could still hear him breathing on the phone. “The detonator for the sarin bomb is down there with you?” she asked.

“Yeah, and in two more minutes, the convention center and hotel will fill with gas. What do you think of that, Miss
Go-run-do Rei-shoo
?” 

June sucked in a deep lungful of air, her brain whirring. She knew she was missing something. “What’s the combination to the detonator?” she asked. “Save your life and tell me.”

“Well, the burnt ratio woman’s body is disagreeable,” he said back, cryptically. “A shame you never got to give your speech.”

June heard him get slugged again, but she was done talking with him. It was pointless to ask for the combination to the safe from him. He’d only give a hundred false numbers before giving the correct one, even if he stopped talking in riddles. She knew the Yakuza’s methods well, especially their fondness of mind games.

Mind games
. The thought lingered with her, nagging at the edge of her mind.
They must have tracked me here, studied my movements. They knew I was due to give a speech next door.
She stood up, phone still in her hand.  

“What did he say?” Jerome asked her.

“Just keep quiet for one minute,” she said back.

“We might not have that long.”

June ignored him.
Somehow, they figured out who I was. Somebody must have told them about my alias. They followed me to Seattle. But why here? What’s significant about this conference? 

June paced the room. She knew the President would make it easy for the authorities to believe the North Korea story. Everyone would assume he was the target. But it wasn’t like the Oguchi family to resist the urge to put their personal stamp on their work. Somehow, there was still something she wasn’t seeing. 

The conference,
she thought.
Something about the conference.

Something tugged at her consciousness, but June just couldn’t hold on.

“One minute!” the woman’s voice again, getting louder. 

It was no use. There wasn’t enough time. June collapsed onto the sofa, set the phone down in her lap. The smell of blood and burnt flesh hung heavy in the air. She had a decision to make, and needed to call her sister, possibly for the last time. Even if rescuers made it upstairs in time, she would never get out of the building, especially with a bruised ankle. 

Time to say goodbye
, she thought, lifting up her phone. One quick phone call to Amy. The last call she’d ever make. Whatever secrets the Yakuza
bakayaro
had, he was taking them to his grave. 

Secrets. 

The word danced around in her brain. 

Really secret
. 

She froze. 

Fibonacci. Goro-awase, or Japanese word play.
Her mind spun, connections forming.
Zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight. Ma, hi, hi, fu, mi, i, ya. Ma, hihifumi, iya! Well, the burnt ratio woman’s body is disagreeable! 

June’s breath exploded from her chest. She pressed the phone up against her ear and jumped off the sofa.

“Leopold, Jerome,” she said, frantically pacing the carpet. “Where the hell are you?”

A voice came back on the line. “Forty-five seconds, doctor. Make it count.”

June kept pacing. “Leopold, what kind of numbers are on the keypad?”

“There’s no time for guessing. We’re gong to try our luck just shutting the damn thing off, cut the hard line. Take our chances it isn’t rigged to detonate the gas. We figure –”

“I don’t give a shit about the wiring,” June said. “Just tell me about the damn keypad.”

“Basic keypad, rigged from a cell phone. All single digits, zero to nine.”

June smiled. “I know the combination.” 

“How?” 

“Never mind that now. Try these numbers…” She listened as Leopold got someone’s attention. “Try zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight.” 

There was a pause.

“Well? Did it work?” she screamed down the phone.

She heard Leopold sigh. “Nope.”

“Shit.” June was certain the sequence would work. The pronunciation of “really secret” in Japanese rhymed with the first seven numbers of the Fibonacci sequence, and was the last thing the Yakuza suspect said before he was belted again. It would’ve been the perfect mind game, to hint at the combination. A typical Oguchi calling card. But she had been wrong. 

“Twenty seconds!” the woman’s voice shouted in the background. 

Leopold came back on the line. “We’re out of options. We’re going to have to cut the line.”

June felt her knees buckle. There was no time left to call Amy, the only family she had left. No time for anything, except to sit and wait for the inevitable. She glanced around the room. Her eyes settled on a selection of takeout menus spread across the coffee table. She smiled grimly. An order of
Udon
noodles would go down pretty well as a last meal. 

Wait a second…

She lifted the phone to her ear again. “Leopold, the suspect’s Japanese, right?”

“No time, Doctor,” Leopold said, his voice barely audible. 

“Just listen. We were looking at this all wrong. In Japanese, words and numbers should read right to left, not the other way round. In English, that would look backwards. Just the kind of shit the Oguchi would pull. Try the same numbers again, just reverse the order.”

Leopold paused. “Read them about again, I’ve got you on speaker. Make sure you shout so we can hear you over this damn noise.”

June took a deep breath “Eight, five, three, two, one, one, zero,” she said, as loud as she could. 

She heard someone shout “hurry up” and she agreed. It felt as though time had crawled to a standstill, and she had no way of knowing whether the code had worked. Gas might stream up through her room at any second. She could take cover, maybe last a few minutes, but rescue efforts would focus on the crowded areas downstairs and next door, not on her. There was nothing she could do but wait and wonder.

Another rustling noise on the line. June flinched, snapping out of her thoughts. She listened hard, trying to hear past the clattering noises. There was someone on the other end, breathing heavily. 

That’s it
, she thought.
It’s all over. They won
. 

The breathing slowed and June heard voices. She strained to hear what they were saying. 

“What’s going on?” she said, shouting down the phone. “Where the hell did you go?”

“Doctor Kato,” a woman’s voice said. “My name is Joanne Harper.”

“Yeah, that’s great,” June said, her voice still raised. “But what about the frickin’ detonator?”

A pause. 

“Are you going to give me a Goddamn answer or not?”

Another pause. “The code worked,” Harper said. 

June’s breath caught in her throat. She fell back against the sofa cushions, vision spinning.
It worked. 

“Congratulations,” Harper continued. “You saved a lot of lives today.”

“Yeah, thanks.” June hung up, exhaustion washing over her. Unable to form any more words, further attempts at conversation seemed pointless. She let the phone drop to the floor and closed her eyes, letting the darkness fall over her.

Chapter 58

THE LOBBY WAS still half full when Leopold emerged from the basement and headed for the main entrance. The sidewalk was packed full of people, and the police were trying their best to keep them contained while IDs were checked. Several police cruisers, ambulances, and fire trucks parked nearby, lights flashing silently, casting a blue and red hue throughout the building. 

While Jerome raced upstairs ahead of the bomb squad and paramedics, Leopold set his sights on the Yakuza prisoner. Harper had him cuffed and was walking him toward the doors, pushing through the rabble with her badge held high. The crowd parted slowly, worried expressions on the people’s faces. A few called out as she pushed past, but Harper didn’t slow her pace. Outside, two plainclothes agents approached, holding up their IDs.  Both male, a little over six feet tall. Dark hair, regulation haircuts, they were the spitting image of every agent Leopold had met so far. He followed through the doors, taking a deep breath as he hit the sidewalk, grateful for the chance to taste fresh air again.

The suspect spat on the ground as the other agents drew close.

“Getting anything from him?” one of the agents asked. His ID badge read “Jameson.” 

Harper shook her head. “Let’s get away from this mess,” she said, pointing down the street. “The Seattle PD have enough on their plate. Get a car to come pick us up.”

The agent nodded and pulled out his cell phone. Harper set off away from the hotel and Leopold followed, the others taking up the rear. 

“Does your department have someone that speaks Japanese to work on him?” Leopold said. “In my experience, some suspects conveniently forget how to speak English once they’re holed up in an interrogation room.”

“We’ll find someone,” she said. “With the President and Melendez wrapped up in all this, we should be able to keep jurisdiction. Not that the FBI and CIA won’t want answers. But they can wait until I’m finished with this son of a bitch.” 

Harper reached a deserted street and shoved the suspect up against the wall. They were far enough away from the commotion to ensure a little privacy.