Mariko looked back down for a minute, then found his gaze again. “Thank you, sir.”
“You know what happens now?”
“Sir?”
“The same thing that happens in any other sport with a goalkeeper. The other team gets the ball back and they try to score again. Now, are you ready to do your damn job?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Let’s go to your partner’s hearing.”
Mariko glanced at Sakakibara’s huge black diver’s watch. “We’re running late for that, sir. Do you think they’ll let us in after—”
“They haven’t started yet. I told them to hold off until I got there.”
Mariko was glad he’d already started walking so he couldn’t see her jaw drop. She knew her lieutenant had some swat, but she didn’t know his arm reached that far. It made her wonder if IAD would allow him to get involved in their decision too, made her wonder whether Sakakibara would push to get Han off or see him hang.
True to his word, it was Sakakibara who unofficially began the hearing when he walked through the door. Mariko found it embarrassing, seeing Han being deposed, and she could only imagine what he was feeling. She thought of Saori, who, somewhere along the way of her Twelve Step program, had to make a list of everyone she’d every wronged while she was using, and then had to go out and apologize for each offense. It was no easy thing, admitting you were wrong. It took a kind of strength not a lot of people had. Saori didn’t have it; she’d had to build it from scratch. It made Mariko proud to see Han push ahead, explaining everything he’d done and leaving nothing out. He held no one else to blame, nor did he shield anyone else from blame. If IAD found reason to investigate Mariko as well, it would start with Han telling them the truth as plainly as he could.
For an event that would see Han’s whole career hang in the balance, the hearing was surprisingly brief. The review board adjourned after only an hour, sequestering themselves to make their judgment. Mariko found herself sagging back into her seat, and until then she hadn’t even noticed she’d been sitting forward, hands gripping her knees, waiting for the board’s ruling. Now she wanted to know how long review boards generally took to make their decisions—or, more precisely, how long she’d have to be waiting on the edge of her seat, tense as the skin of a drum.
And since she lacked anything even approximating the proper sense of decorum for a woman of her rank and station, she asked. The chair of the review board, a commander she hadn’t met before, gave her the same kind of frown he’d have given a Tokyo Disney mascot walking into the room, a blend of puzzlement and offense. “Fifteen minutes,” he said, making it clear that he was doing her a great honor even in recognizing her existence, and closed the door behind him.
Mariko found herself immediately at Han’s side, which surprised her. The part of her that was still pissed off at him still had a loud voice, but it had lost its majority. “Fifteen minutes?” she said. “You’d think they’d take longer than that for something this important.”
“Yeah,” said Han. “You’d think your partner wouldn’t say anything to ruffle their feathers before they made their ruling, too.”
She blushed for a second, but he winked at her and even gave her a little grin. “You look awfully relaxed,” she said.
“What’s there to be nervous about? The worst part’s over.”
Mariko hadn’t realized that was true, but now that she thought about it, it was almost self-evident. Working up the courage to make a full confession was agonizing work. After that, taking your licks was easy. Han had just looked his own guilt full in the face; he knew he deserved punishment and he’d already resigned himself to accept it, however harsh it might be.
A few minutes later the review board returned to render its verdict, and again, paradoxically, Mariko found herself more nervous about it than Han. The chairman sat down with what looked like a sheet of prepared notes that he didn’t bother looking at, making Mariko so curious she wanted to jump out of her seat to see what it said.
His ruling was short and to the point: Han had violated Akahata’s right to freedom from unlawful search and seizure; he had transgressed the boundaries of probable cause, though not the boundaries of reasonable suspicion; he had placed his CI, Shino, in a situation that might have become dangerous. All of that was clear. But there was no indubitable proof that he had directly endangered Shino’s life. He would not be charged criminally, and that meant he’d get to keep his badge. But the board found him guilty of violating eight general orders regarding the proper handling of covert informants, and that meant his life in Narcotics was over. The review board busted him back down to general patrol, where every time he walked into a roomful of cops it would be like showing up to a black tie affair with a nice tuxedo and his pants around his ankles. Sooner or later things would get back to business as usual, but for years to come there would be stares and whispers everywhere he went.
As the members of the review board packed up their things, Sakakibara offered Han his stern congratulations; Mariko thought he seemed grimly pleased with the ruling. Afterward he offered to buy Mariko and Han a cup of coffee—or rather, he ordered them to sit down to coffee with him; lieutenants did not offer invitations to their subordinates. All the same, sitting down to coffee outside of their post felt like Mariko’s father taking her out for ice cream after she’d run hard in a track meet and still finished second. That marked it as another fatherly gesture from Sakakibara, both the second Mariko had seen from him this morning and the second one she’d seen from him, period.
They sat down and Mariko and Han waited for Sakakibara to speak. Coffee shop or not, this wasn’t exactly a social call. “Han, I don’t want you coming in to clear out your desk until second shift. Wait until the unit’s down to a skeleton crew. Save yourself that embarrassment, all right? Hell, save me the embarrassment.”
Han swallowed. Mariko gave him an “it’s okay” sort of nod, the kind no one really meant, the kind oncologists everywhere gave their patients when the news wasn’t good but the prognosis wasn’t terminal. “I worked general patrol for a long time, Han. It’s a good job. An important job.”
“And it’s not Narcotics.” He sighed and gave a defeated shrug. “At least one of us still has a spot in the lineup, neh? I’m really, really glad they didn’t drag you down with me.”
“I am too,” said Sakakibara. “I’m shorthanded enough as it is. But you two need to learn a lesson from this whole fiasco. When you do the right thing and you break the rules, sometimes you need to ask yourself what that says about the rules.”
“Sir?” said Han.
“Sometimes you admit you’re in the wrong. Like your hearing today. You did your job. You did the right thing. But sometimes the rules aren’t what they should be.”
Han’s eyes flicked between Sakakibara and Mariko, and Mariko felt her face go sour when she met his gaze. “What?” Han said. “Oh, hell. You went to Joko Daishi’s indictment, didn’t you?”
Mariko had a decent poker face, but not for Han. She tried to hold his stare but couldn’t. “No,” he said, and in that incredulous, angry tone it came out as a curse word. “He’s going to walk?”
“On most of it,” Mariko said. “They didn’t even bother to charge him with Shino’s murder.”