been taken during their time in the States, the only one Mariko had from before he got sick.
The station had one small evidence locker left, on the ground floor next to the arsenal with its little rack of pistols and single box of 9-millimeter rounds. Mariko would have checked her stun gun back in to the arsenal if its allegedly shatterproof plastic hadn’t exploded against the concrete after bouncing off the back of Bumps Ryota’s head. She didn’t know what Tasers cost, but she was sure she’d find out when she saw the deductions on her next paycheck.
Walking past the locked door of the arsenal, Mariko felt her cheeks redden. Even little errors loomed large in her eyes, and she didn’t know the range officer well enough to know how big a deal he’d make of the broken Taser. Though she was proud of all her little precinct house could do, and proud of her own accomplishments within it, her feet always seemed heavier here. The pressure for perfection weighed on her like a backpack full of bricks, and that pressure was more intense here than anywhere else. Some days she felt it might sink her into the wet ash carpet.
There were days when she asked herself why she worked here. Not this precinct, not even the TMPD—she wondered why she stayed in Japan at all. Her English was good enough; she could have applied to a department back in the States, or in Canada—hell, anywhere but here. Anywhere she could just worry about being a good cop, and set all the misogynist bullshit aside. The days she entertained thoughts of leaving were the days she had to remind herself of the last promise she’d made to her father. She told him she’d make him proud. Moving halfway around the world, abandoning her mother and sister after they’d already lost so much—it just wasn’t the way to earn his pride.
And she had to admit there were days she was proud of herself. Even when the pressure made her want to throw her badge out the window, she could look at that badge and see TOKYO METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT. It was the most elite police unit in the country, and in that unit she’d made detective sergeant. Of course that was the very source of all the pressure. All she had to do was settle for being a meter maid and she could have made all the stress disappear. There were days she asked herself that question too: Why not go easy on yourself? Why do you always have to pick the hardest road?
Mariko had never been able to answer that question. Even in junior high she’d picked cross-country, not the fifty-meter dash. In high school she made it worse and chose the triathlon. She still ran a tri every summer. There was no reason to it. Nobody needed to run a triathlon. Nobody needed to run anywhere anymore. The world no longer required it. She told herself that she did it to stay in shape, that so long as she knew she had another race on the horizon, she could not let her body fall into disrepair as so many cops proved all too willing to do. But then the tri only made sense because she was a cop. What if she had taken up chess instead of track and field? What if she’d joined the computer club instead? How much easier would her life have been? She would have been richer, more comfortable, less frequently injured, more normal —and bored out of her mind. That was the sole logic of the triathlon, and the sole logic of police work as well: no matter how wearisome it became, the difficult life was her sole inoculation against terminal boredom.
Mariko turned left at the coffeemakers and electric teapots and gave a nod to Mishima, who sat at a desk with the night’s paperwork arrayed before him like cards in Solitaire. “Is he in there?” she asked.
“Yep. He’s all set.”
Mariko opened the white steel door and closed it behind her. Bumps Ryota was pacing, handcuffed, along the back wall, and he gave a startled quiver when she closed the door. He bowed to her, then hurried to the nearest of the two old wooden chairs and half