The morning sun broke over Tokyo, but it brought no warmth to the basement morgue of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. The light that filtered through the high windows was pale and clinical, illuminating dust motes dancing in the sterile air.
On the stainless steel table, the body of Councilman Ryosuke Takeda lay covered by a sheet. The smell of burnt meat had been scrubbed away by industrial cleaners, but the memory of it lingered in the back of Kenji's throat, tasting like copper and ash.
Dr. Kaori Sato stood over the microscope. She looked up, her face pale.
"I've finished the autopsy on Takeda." she said, her voice tight. "Cause of death was systemic thermal shock. His organs cooked inside his body. But Sano... the precision is terrifying."
Kenji leaned against the wall, a paper cup of cold coffee in his hand. "Go on."
"The water temperature wasn't random." Kaori adjusted her glasses. "It was maintained at exactly 98 degrees Celsius. Just below a rolling boil. If it were hotter, he would have died of shock in seconds. If it were cooler, it would have taken hours. This temperature... it was calculated to maximize pain duration while ensuring fatality. Takeda was conscious for at least eight minutes."
"He wanted him to feel every second." Manjiro said from the corner, looking nauseous.
"No," Kenji said, staring at the sheet. "He wanted him to understand."
The door to the lab opened. Chief Inspector Hideo walked in, looking like a man marching to his own execution.
"The Mayor is holding a press conference in an hour." Hideo said, his voice flat. "He's declaring a State of Emergency. He wants a name, Sano. Do we have a name?"
"We have nothing." Kenji said, pushing off the wall.
"Nothing?" Hideo's voice rose. "We have three bodies! We have tags! We have a pattern!"
"We have a ghost." Kenji snapped. "We ran the DNA from the tunnel. Clean. We ran the prints from the hotel room. Clean. We checked the security cameras he knows exactly where the blind spots are. He doesn't exist on any database."
"What about the Chiba connection?"
Manjiro asked. "Kurosawa evicted hundreds of people. One of them must have a grudge."
"We checked them all." Kenji shook his head, frustration radiating off him. "We interviewed every farmer, every tenant, every activist who protested that construction site. They're all accounted for. Most of them are just broken people trying to survive. None of them have the training, the money, or the psychological profile to pull this off."
Kenji walked to the whiteboard mounted on the wall. He picked up a marker.
"This isn't revenge, Chief. Revenge is messy. Revenge is emotional. This?"
Kenji pointed to the photos of the bodies. "This is a routine."
"A routine?"
"Look at the methods," Kenji circled the three crime scenes.
* The Pit (Greed)
* The Raincoat (Oppression)
* The Boiling (Theft)
"I spoke with Professor Yamashita at Tokyo University." Kenji continued. "The tags correspond to the Ten Kings of Hell (Ju-O). In Buddhist folklore, the dead are judged by Ten Kings, each punishing a specific sin."
Kenji wrote the numbers 1 through 10 on the board.
"Our killer doesn't see himself as a victim getting payback. He sees himself as a King of Hell. He believes he is a force of nature."
"So he's insane." Hideo summarized.
"It's worse." Kenji said grimly. "He's rational. He has classified these men as 'vermin' - as rats eating the grain of the city. He doesn't hate them personally. He hates what they are. He's exterminating them with the same lack of emotion that an exterminator kills a cockroach."
"But the torture." Manjiro shuddered. "Why the torture?"
"Because to him, the pain is the cleaning agent." Kenji said. "He believes the modern law is too soft. He's bringing back the Kujigata Osadamegaki - the old Feudal Penal Code. He's showing the city that if you act like a rat, you die like a rat."
Hideo stared at the board. "So we're looking for a sociopath with a history degree and special forces training?"
"We're looking for a phantom," Kenji said.
"Someone who can walk into a five-star hotel, boil a man alive, and walk out without leaving a single hair strand behind. He is disciplined. He is wealthy enough to buy high-end equipment. And he is completely, utterly dismissed empathy."
"Three down." Hideo looked at the list. "If there are Ten Kings... and Ten Sins..."
"There are seven left." Kenji said.
"Who fits the pattern?" Hideo asked. "We have the Money (Suzuki). The Land (Kurosawa). The Law (Takeda). Who else?"
Manjiro flipped open his notebook. "We've been digging into the Future Tokyo Solutions shell company. Takeda was the signatory, but the contracts... the language in them was airtight. It was designed to bypass every environmental regulation in the book."
"A lawyer?" Hideo asked.
"Or a Judge," Kenji said. "Someone who validated the lies. The sin of Falsehood."
"And the punishment for Lying in the Edo period?" Hideo asked, dreading the answer.
Kenji closed his eyes. The ancient texts scrolled through his mind.
"For those who used words to deceive the public... to shame the community..." Kenji opened his eyes. "The punishment involves public exposure. Shaming."
"Does it have a name?"
"Nokogiri-biki," Kenji said. "TheSaw."
The room went silent.
"Sawing?" Manjiro whispered.
"They buried the criminal in the ground up to his neck." Kenji explained, his voice cold.
"They left a wooden saw next to the head. Passersby were invited to take a cut. It was a slow execution designed to let the community participate."
"He's going to invite the public to kill for him." Hideo realized, his face draining of color.
"He's already invited them." Kenji walked to the window and opened the blinds.
Down below, a crowd had gathered. It was larger than yesterday. They held signs.
THE SHOGUN IS RIGHT.
CLEAN THE CITY.
BURN THE RATS.
"Look at them." Kenji whispered. "They love him. He's tapped into their anger. They don't see a murderer. They see a hero."
"That's because they haven't seen his face." Manjiro said.
"They never will." Kenji turned back to the room. "He wears a mask because he is the mask. He has stripped away his humanity to become this symbol."
Hideo straightened his tie. "I'm authorizing the Task Force. Sano, you're the lead. Tenken, you're his second. But Sano... if we don't have a suspect..."
"Then we have to find the victim." Kenji said.
"We can't stop the Shogun. We don't know who he is or where he sleeps. Our only chance is to find the next rat before he does."
"Find me the liar." Kenji commanded the room. "Find me the Judge who signed off on the Chiba deal. Because right now, that man is walking around with a target on his neck."
"I'll run the court records." Manjiro said, grabbing his laptop. "But Kenji... does this guy ever make a mistake?"
Kenji looked at the photo of Takeda's boiled body. The perfection of it. The lack of struggle.
"No," Kenji said softly. "Humans make mistakes. This guy? He's barely human anymore. He's just raw malice in a human shape."
Kenji grabbed his coat.
"Let's go. We have a Judge to find."
Chapter 8 End - Search begins!!