Clocktower Read online

  “We should hurry,” he finally said after pulling himself together. “When I was here last, there was a man standing guard in front of the morgue. I only got through because Dr. Tonimura got him to stand down.”

  “Seems like they’re going through a lot of trouble to hide me away here,” Mari said, stepping out of the elevator. They proceeded down the hall until they got to the T intersection that led to the morgue.

  “Wait here,” Mari said. Johnny nodded and leaned against the wall, putting the mask back on as he did. Mari rounded the corner, then returned a few seconds later.

  “There’s a guard,” she said.

  “Bald guy? Burly?” Johnny asked.

  Mari peeked around the corner again. “Yeah,” she confirmed. “I don’t see any other way around. What are you going to do?”

  Johnny looked down at the bandage on his swollen left hand. It still throbbed, but bearably so. “I’d rather avoid confrontation,” he said. “But sneaking in is out of the question.”

  “I don’t suppose you could just ask him nicely to take a hike, could you?” Mari looked up at him and gave a small smile.

  “Hmm,” Johnny said, tugging on his Dr. No name badge. “That might work.”

  “Wait, really? How?”

  Johnny shook out the last of his jitters and straightened his coat. “Jack Amano might be a sickening deviant, but he’s got good advice. Walk around like you own the place, and no one will question it. I just have to convince him that I’m higher on the totem pole.”

  Mari raised a doubtful eyebrow at him.

  “Watch and learn, kid,” Johnny said. He cleared his throat, and rounded the corner himself.

  “You there!” he shouted at the guard. “What are you still doing here?”

  “Excuse me?” the guard said, straightening up and looking Johnny square in the eye.

  Johnny continued to walk forward. “Haven’t you heard? Mr. Yama and two of his men got thrashed by the investigator. They’re in the emergency room in critical condition!”

  The guard raised and lowered his shoulders nervously. “Did they catch him?” he asked.

  “No, you dolt,” Johnny scolded. “Every available man is scouring the town, looking for that terrorist Tokisaki, or whatever his name is, and you’re here standing in front of a room full of corpses!”

  Johnny was nearly face-to-face with the guard now, who was clearly unnerved by the sudden news.

  “I can’t just leave my post,” he fumbled.

  “Have you heard a word I’ve said?” Johnny pointed a finger at him. “There’s a dangerous man on the loose in our city. And last I heard, it was a man you’ve had personal experience with, isn’t that right?”

  “Well, yes, but . . . ”

  “And wouldn’t it be interesting if the Grand Luminary was to find out that you were the one who let him pass through these doors? I don’t think that would reflect very well on your performance, do you?”

  The guard gulped down the lump in his throat and nodded.

  “Very good,” Johnny said. “One of First Index Hanekawa’s men should be upstairs along with the injured. Find him and he’ll give you further instructions. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Good. I’ll be here until you get back. Find this insurgent. Protect our fair city. Go!”

  “Yes!” the guard affirmed before sprinting down the hall and disappearing around the corner. Mari, who had been following behind Johnny the whole time, had her jaw planted on the tile floor in disbelief.

  “How did you do that?” she asked.

  Johnny shrugged. “I got lucky,” he said. “Besides, for all I know there really are search parties being organized to capture me. He might be gone for quite some time.”

  “I wish I could be that confident,” she said.

  Johnny put his hand on the doorknob and gave it a turn. “Being confident is just a game. No one’s ever truly sure of their decisions, but if you can make someone believe they’re doing the right thing, they’ll eat up anything you feed them.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Mari said.

  The pair stepped through and closed the door behind them. Johnny searched for the light switch on the wall with his hand and gave it a flick, flooding the room in white fluorescent light.

  “Do you remember anything from your time here?” Johnny asked as he made his way over to locker 006.

  “No,” Mari said. “I don’t remember anything after Ayano . . . ” She trailed off, and looked away.

  Johnny put his hand on the locker, but stopped short of opening it. He looked over at her and waited.

  “Everything went dark,” she said. “It didn’t hurt. It didn’t feel like anything. Then the music started. A rhythm I’d never heard before. When I opened my eyes again, Dr. Tonimura was looking down at me. She said something to me, but I can’t remember what. After that, everything went dark again for a long time.”

  Mari took off her blazer, then began to undo the top few buttons of her shirt until the window above her breast was exposed. “Why did they do this to me?” she asked, covering the rotating gears with her hand.

  Johnny exhaled softly. “I don’t know for sure, but maybe they were trying to save your life. Like they saved Ayano. There’d be no need to cover up a murder if there was no murder to cover up.”

  “I guess so,” Mari nodded unenthusiastically.

  Johnny sensed something buried just beneath the surface of her brave facade. Something critical that he needed to know.

  “Mari,” he said. “Why did you kill Ayano? What happened between you two?”

  “I didn’t,” she stuttered. “I didn’t try to kill her. I was just defending myself.”

  “She attacked you?”

  Mari nodded. “That day,” she said. “I went to study hall like I always do. I was the only one there, which was just the way I liked it. A place I could be alone. But when I opened my school bag, there was a giant knife inside, with a note wrapped around it.”

  “A note?” Johnny asked. “What did it say?”

  “Just two words,” Mari said. “Defend yourself.”

  Twenty-Fifth Movement

  Disaster

  “You’re telling me that you didn’t bring it yourself? Someone placed that knife in your bag without you knowing?” Johnny shook his head in disbelief.

  Mari nodded. “At first I thought it was someone pulling a prank. The last thing I expected was Ayano to walk through the door to the study hall with a knife of her own.”

  “Did she say anything to you?”

  “No,” Mari said, holding her left arm with her right. “She just laughed. The entire time, she never stopped laughing.”

  Johnny rested his hand on locker 006 and shut his eyes. “Nothing about this makes sense,” he said. “If someone knew you were in danger, why not go to the police? Why go through the trouble of arming you unless . . . ” Johnny paused and his eyes opened wide. “Unless they wanted you and Ayano to kill each other.”

  Half of the answer was there. Someone had set these events in motion, but to what end, Johnny still could not glean. The more he tightened his grip on the truth, the more it slipped through his fingers.

  “We can’t linger on this here,” he said, shaking the speculation from his mind and returning his focus to the task at hand.

  “You’re right,” Mari said. She crossed the room and came to his side.

  He opened the door to locker 006 and pulled the slab out with as much respect as he could afford. When it was out as far as it could go, he moved to the zipper at Mari’s head and began pulling.

  “Oh,” Mari said, the color draining from her face. She balled her hands into fists and began shaking.

  Johnny pulled the zipper down to the top of her breasts, revealing the only feature that was different betw
een them.

  “I didn’t think much of it when I was first here,” Johnny said, pointing at the round-shaped scar over her chest. “When I asked Dr. Tonimura about it, she told me it might have been self-inflicted, and that it couldn’t have been caused by the struggle with Ayano.”

  Mari touched the same part of her chest, letting the subtle vibrations of Ninomiya’s handiwork beat through her hand.

  “Something must have gone wrong,” Johnny said. “But what?”

  “Maybe,” Mari said, coming face-to-face with her own lifeless body. Johnny took a step back, and let her take a moment with herself. Two Maris were together now. One dead, yet corporeal. The other, as alive as anyone Johnny had ever seen, but as ethereal and meaningless to the world around her as the wind from a butterfly’s wings.

  “It’s so strange,” she said, running her fingers through her body’s long, black hair. “I’m . . . she’s so cold. Is this really me?”

  Johnny had no answer. He had hoped that by some miracle, coming in contact with her body would have provoked some response. A quickening of the soul to its host’s flesh. But the longer he watched, the more he became convinced that the solution to Mari’s deathlessness was not so easily ascertained.

  Still aware of his task at hand, he searched the morgue for a stretcher, finding one almost instantly in the far corner. He set to work unfolding it and getting it ready to transfer Mari’s body, then pulled it up alongside locker 006. It was a worn-down, rickety thing with a loose wheel, but it was all he had to work with.

  “Do I exist?” Mari asked, her eyes still locked on her body.

  “I think so,” Johnny said. “I can see you. I can hear you. I can touch you. And I’m not the only one, right?”

  “That’s true,” she said. “But what happens once you’re gone? What will happen to me then?”

  “I don’t know,” Johnny admitted. He wanted to say more to comfort her, but a quick look at his Casio convinced him it was time to go.

  “Come on,” he said. “We need to get out of here.”

  Mari ran her hand down the face of her pale cadaver and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”

  Once she had stepped back, Johnny zipped her body bag up, and lifted her onto the stretcher. Her body was surprisingly light, and after stealing a few sheets from one of the closets, he covered her up as best he could.

  “It’s not exactly inconspicuous,” he said. “But we just have to get out the door and into Jack Amano’s car.”

  He pushed the slab back into locker 006 and shut the hatch, then opened the door to the morgue and began his exfiltration. The halls were deserted, and after rounding the corner, he was back in front of the elevator. Mari kept to herself and followed behind him until they were securely inside the lift. But just as he began to move his hand to the button for the first floor, she grabbed his arm and pulled it away.

  “Stop,” she whispered, looking above.

  “What is it?” Johnny asked.

  Mari put a hand up to her lips and quivered. “She’s here. She’s here. We can’t go back that way.”

  The doors to the elevator started to close, but Johnny quickly moved his hand between them and forced them back open.

  “We don’t have a choice,” he said. “I can’t just sling your body over my shoulder and expect to walk out of here without anyone noticing a dead person on my back.”

  “No!” Mari shouted. “We have to find another way. An emergency patient elevator, any elevator except this one.”

  “Shit,” Johnny cursed as he pushed the stretcher back out into the hall. The corridor to the right split on the way to the morgue, and the straight path seemed to dead end not far after. To his left was a similar set of branching halls that appeared to extend out farther than the alternative. His mind set, he spun the stretcher and pushed forward.

  “How do you know Ayano’s here?” Johnny asked as they sprinted down the hall.

  “I can hear her. The sound of her movement. I think she can hear mine too.”

  Johnny spent only as much time as he needed at each intersection. The first crossing led south to an emergency stairwell, which he made a note of before pressing on. Before he got much farther though, the phone in his pocket began to blare.

  “Tell me you’re in the car.” Jack Amano’s voice was instantly recognizable.

  “I’ve got the body,” Johnny said. “But I’m still in the basement.”

  “Shit. I think we’re in trouble. Four cars just pulled up out front. It’s Hanekawa’s men. Has to be. They’re here for Mari’s body.”

  “Where are you?” Johnny asked, pushing the stretcher past a second intersection.

  “I’m on the top floor. Someone forgot to tell the good doctor to head home for the night. She’s still in her office. Listen, if you’re still in the basement, stay there. Hide. They’re flooding in as we speak. There’s no way you’ll go unnoticed if you try to go back through the first floor.”

  At the third crossing, Johnny spied a sign marking another elevator down the hall to his right. He banked hard, nearly dropping the phone as he did, and shot down toward it.

  “I’m coming up to you,” Johnny said.

  “Wait, what? Are you—”

  Johnny snapped the phone shut and shoved it back into his pocket.

  “What are you doing?” Mari asked.

  “Gambling,” Johnny said. “Alone, he might leave us for dead and run back to The Lugs. But if he’s stuck with me, well, let’s just say our chances of survival increase considerably.”

  “Thank you,” Mari said as they came to the emergency elevator.

  Johnny looked at her quizzically.

  “You said our, not just your. Thank you.”

  The door opened to an empty lift, much to the relief of Johnny. He gave the stretcher one final push, then turned and pressed the button for the twelfth floor. The doors shut, and they began their agonizingly slow ascent.

  “Do you have a plan for once we get up there?” Mari asked after they had passed the fifth floor uninterrupted.

  “Hmm.” Johnny tapped on the rails of the stretcher. “I don’t think the doctor is going to take very kindly to me showing up with a stolen dead body, and in the company of Mutsumi Baba’s little broodling.”

  Mari cracked a small smirk, and an even smaller laugh escaped her lips. It was the first time Johnny had seen her really smile. The pair said nothing more for the rest of their short journey, until the door opened to an almost pitch-black twelfth floor.

  Johnny’s unease suddenly grew. It was silent. Gravely so. Even as he pushed the stretcher out into the hall, the only illumination he could see was the faintest glow of streetlights from outside. The elevator doors closed behind them, leaving them in this unfettered limbo.

  “Where is everybody?” Mari asked.

  Johnny didn’t answer. He quietly drew his .38 and held it at his side as they made their way forward. After less than half a minute of walking, they emerged from a side hall into a large, bureaucratic area filled with long, slender tables topped with Macintosh II computers. He stopped here for a moment, letting his eyes adjust further to the dark.

  To the left, he could see down another wide hall that led back toward the main elevators. Ahead of him, however, was a small staircase leading to a huge set of frosted glass double doors, with the roman numeral XII written in bold print upon them. Jack Amano was nowhere to be found.

  “Wait here,” Johnny said. He left Mari and the stretcher behind, and began a cautious approach toward Dr. Tonimura’s office. The air was cold and still, and the hairs on the back of his hand stood erect as he placed it on the giant, silver door handle.

  He held his breath, and gave it a push.

  Johnny Tokisaki had an office, or at least something that could be called such. On 1st Street, smack in the middle between San Pedro an
d Central. The walls were stained yellow from the cigarettes he smoked, and the chipped desk he had was filled mostly with bottles of whiskey and old case files he had never gotten around to throwing away. There were windows, of a sort. Cracked and old, that gave his third-floor workroom a view of Little Tokyo.

  But where he stood now was nothing like that office. It was an impossibly elegant space, with bookcases fifteen feet tall that lined the walls, and a deep crimson carpet that stretched unimpeded from front to back. An L-shaped leather sofa sat at one side, and a large antique globe, three or four feet in diameter, sat at the other.

  At the very end was a wall made entirely out of glass, beyond which stood the cathedral and the clocktower at the edge of Sonnerie. In front of those windows was a long, snakewood desk, with a single executive leather chair whose back was facing Johnny.

  “I was wondering who would get to me first,” a voice said from the other end of the room. Johnny watched the chair swivel around, revealing Dr. Tonimura. “But I never imagined it would be the investigator. Running around with Mutsumi Baba’s heir, no less. You can quit skulking around, Jack. I know you’re here.”

  Johnny heard the sound of footsteps coming from his side, and turned to see Jack Amano approaching from the corner.

  Dr. Tonimura stood and bade her uninvited guests approach with one gracious motion. She wore her white lab coat over a white blouse and long white pants. The very picture of purity. Johnny holstered his pistol before exchanging glances with Jack and moving forward.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said, turning to the clocktower. “Looking at it every day makes you appreciate everything that has gone into making Sonnerie. All the blood, sweat, and tears. It wasn’t always easy, but back then, we did what we had to do to survive. During the war, and after it.”

  Johnny straightened his tie and approached her slowly. “Does it make you feel better then? Knowing you’ve given a second life to a murderer? All for the sake of Sonnerie, wasn’t it?”

  “I did what had to be done,” she said.

  “You experimented on children.”