“Hey!” A voice called out in English behind him.
Quinn looked over his shoulder and felt his heart sink as he saw a familiar man approach.
“What brings you to Japan, Gus Bowen?”
“You know, looking for killers,” the deputy said, a raw edge to his voice. “Shit like that.” His hand was under his sport coat. If he had a gun, he didn’t show it.
“Maybe you came for a rematch on that fight.” Quinn turned, ignoring Bowen to keep his eyes on the line of squid boats that bobbed in the mist along the two sets of docks nearest the pier.
“No sport in that.” Bowen whistled. “You can barely stand up. We need to get you to a hospital.”
“I got things to do,” Quinn said.
“I saw what your friend did to save you.” Bowen’s voice was full of reverence. “Incredibly brave.”
Quinn shook his head, preferring not to discuss someone like Ayako Shimizu with anyone who didn’t know her.
“Come on, Jericho. You’re hurt. What do you say we let the Japanese deal with their own mess?”
“That’s the problem, Gus,” Quinn said. “This is my mess.”
Two piers over, the engine of a speedboat burbled to life. There had been an escape plan all along.
Bowen finally showed the pistol but he let it hang down by his side instead of aiming in. He stood, staring, mulling something over in his mind.
“Let’s go sort this all out,” he finally said, sounding flat and fatigued.
Quinn kept a hand on the throttle, ready to move. He’d seen Bowen shoot and didn’t want to try his hand at being a target. “Can you remember a telephone number?”
Bowen nodded, drilling holes with his eyes.
Quinn gave him Win Palmer’s personal line.
“Jericho.” Bowen frowned. “Don’t make me chase you. You know I will if I have to.”
“I’m not making you do anything.” Quinn revved the engine. “In fact, I’d just as soon you didn’t. Don’t forget that number.”
Quinn sped down the dock on the Blackbird, leaving Bowen, Hase, and the other responding law enforcement to take care of the wounded and terrified children.
August Bowen was about justice — not just the law. Had it been otherwise, he would have never let Quinn leave alive.
Sticky blood from the wound across his ribs matted his shirt to his chest. His head and back throbbed with a sickening ache that went well beyond his bones. But above all the cuts, breaks, and bruises, the deepest wound came from watching Ayako die.
Quinn poured on the gas, weaving in and out of traffic. With all the local authorities at the port, there was no one to try to stop him. He had no idea where he was going. It didn’t matter as long as it was far away. He’d never considered himself an emotional man. But now, physically broken and mentally exhausted to the point he could hardly keep the bike going in a straight line, he thought of what Ayako had done for him and sniffed back a tear. Never before had he felt so hopeless. Never had he been so close to giving up.
And then, he remembered her book.
CHAPTER 66
Marta Bedford coughed. It took Herculean effort to lift her leg and try to move it so it didn’t press on the worst of her boils along the back of her knee. Grunting and hacking like an invalid woman twice her age, she grabbed the metal railing on the narrow hospital bed and maneuvered onto her right side.
Kane County Hospital had never been intended to house this many patients. Green military beds like something out of M*A*S*H crammed each room and lined the halls. Todd had made certain that the Bedfords had a room together, but Mrs. Johnson’s bed ran along the wall inside the door so there were three in a row, leaving just enough room between each of the patients for medical staff to tend them.
Had Rick not been so heavily sedated for the ECMO heart-lung bypass, Marta could have held his hand. As it was, every few minutes she rolled up on her side and bore the pressure on her boils as long as she could so she could watch him sleep.
Todd had told her there was still a chance the bypass would save Rick’s life. That he might be able to fight off whatever caused the boils as long as they could keep his lungs functioning.
From the time she was a little girl, tears had come easy to Marta Bedford. Her father could simply look sternly at her and bring what he called a geyser of repentance. But now, since Rick had gotten sick, she had long since cried herself out. First, she was angry with God for letting such an illness fall on her good husband. Then, she cried from the horrible pain caused by her own boils. Finally, her tears had been from the despair of knowing that she would not live to see her daughters graduate from high school, go to college, marry, or have children of their own.
In the end, she had forgiven God and come to grips with the fact that she’d never see her grandbabies. Though the pain never slackened, and was barely dented by medication, at least it reminded Marta that she was alive. In a macabre sense of competition, she and Mrs. Johnson had taken to counting the number of new boils on their arms. So far, Marta was “winning” but, as Mrs. Johnson pointed out between phlegm-laced bouts of her hacking cough, it wasn’t really fair because Marta was taller and thus had longer arms and more opportunities for boils to grow.
Gripping the bed rail to watch Rick, Marta found a new sore on the inside of her wrist. It was red and swollen with a translucent white dot in the center. They could not be counted until the white appeared.
“Got a new one, Mrs. Johnson,” Marta said. Her voice rattled when she spoke.
She got no response.
Marta began the laborious process of rolling back over to her left side so she could look at her competition.
“That’s twenty-seven to twenty,” Bedford said as she lifted the sheet and worked her way over. “Mrs. Johnson…?”
Snow-white hair lay across the old woman’s pillow. Wrinkled hands folded across her chest. Her jaw hung open, lifeless.
Marta Bedford collapsed back against her sheets. She had a few tears left after all.
CHAPTER 67
Quinn needed a doctor, but he didn’t care. He pointed the Blackbird east. Fifteen miles out of Fukuoka he found a small side road in the mountains that took him another half mile back to a secluded gravel pullout. Giant cryptomeria stood like sentries around the gravel pad. The earth underneath their broad evergreen canopies was at once landscaped and pristine, as if it had been swept by a scouring wind and not by human hands.
Quinn all but collapsed under the tent-like awning of one of the Japanese cedars. He leaned against rough bark and closed his eyes. He tried not to think — to clear his mind and let it rest. Ayako deserved more than a passing thought crammed somewhere in between strategy and battle plan. Though she’d ended up in a vocation that put her at odds with social and even moral norms, there was no way for anyone else to know what had driven her there. She’d said it herself — she wanted to be someone’s wife and feel safe. Prostitute, whore, yellow cab, woman of the floating world… just a woman, pushed by some secret demons — demons that led back to Oda.
Quinn sat in the shadow of the big tree and thought about her for a long time, regretting the lost opportunities and the things he might have said to give her just a little bit more happiness. He wished Thibodaux were there so he could listen to the big Cajun philosophize about womanhood and the fragility of life.
Pressing his injured back against the tree as if the pain might focus his tattered thoughts, Quinn opened his eyes and began to read Ayako’s book.