The next day arrived under largely usual circumstances at the police department, with the exception of Devin not entering the conference room with the rest of the Harashima investigation team. Josh wondered who out of the three remaining officers would be the first to inquire about his absence. His money was on Jenn. She had always been a bit of a worrier, especially when it came to team dynamics. Josh’s only hope was that the in-evitable question wouldn’t turn into a conversation about moral codes and competing views of justice. There were things far more pertinent to the case that needed to be settled.

He watched his team take their seats and caught Jenn looking around the room, as if scanning for one particular face that she felt was missing. And then she asked the question Josh was not-so-eagerly waiting for: “What happened with Devin?”

“Devin is off the team for the time being,” Josh replied earnestly. “He confessed to being responsible for the cabin leak.”

A series of nods followed from the other officers. Josh couldn’t quite decide what each nod conveyed individually. “Well,” Shinji sighed the beginning of a comment, “I’d be lying if I said I was surprised.”

“If nothing else, that settles the matter of the internal investigation,” responded Goro.

Josh could tell from the way Jenn looked at him that her concern was more personal. “Is he off the team permanently?” she asked.

“Maybe. Depends on how he conducts himself from here on out.” Then Josh cleared his throat, so as to convey that he hadn’t called the meeting to discuss Devin and his future in the team. “Anyway, over to you, Officer Walters.”

With a nod, Jenn stood up and walked over to the whiteboard, doing her usual finger dance in its vicinity and pasting the information she’d acquired from her latest con-versation with Miss Harady. A transcription of the interrogation and two new files, one Jenn had decided to place right next to Yoshiro Busujima’s. Then she moved over to the other side of the whiteboard.

“Hisako Busujima and Nichiho Amano,” she began her recital while pointing at the fresh files on the whiteboard. “Both former coworkers of Miss Harady’s. Went missing about three years back. Harashima was a client to both of them, and Miss Harady suspects he’s the reason they disappeared.”

“Is that why she stabbed the guy?” Goro inquired. “Pay-back for the girls that went missing?”

“No. The stabbings were self-defense. That’s what she told me anyway.”

Shinji leaned forward in his seat and presented an obser-vation: “You said Busujima was the other girl’s last name?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you suspect she was related to our other murder victim?”

“She was. Her record in the population database con-firmed as much. Father and daughter.”

“How does this help the case, though?”

“I mean it’s evidence. Crucially, evidence against Hara-shima. The girls have legally been announced dead. And if he really did kill them as Miss Harady believes, that’s a piece of the puzzle we’d be stupid to ignore.”

Shinji brought a finger up to his chin and nodded. “Can’t disagree with that.” Referring in particular to the closing sen-tence of Jenn’s statement, Josh figured.

Goro piped in with a comment at that point: “So we have our first piece of evidence about Harashima’s supposed wrongdoings, but how far does that get us? Can we paint a picture about the killer’s potential motive?”

“I don’t think we can,” Josh responded. “But for what it’s worth, we have a start on that now too. Even if I personally don’t believe that the murderer offed Harashima as revenge.”

“Why’s that?” Jenn asked Josh, turning her gaze to him.

“Because looking at the files, I don’t see a connection between her and the two girls. I’m leaning towards a different theory.”

Jenn tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “And what is that theory?”

“Nothing I can say with full confidence. I’m just in-clined to think she wanted Harashima dead for a different reason. The two missing girls are more likely just collateral damage. Largely irrelevant unless their names pop up elsewhere later on.”

Jenn looked at the whiteboard with a slight squint in her eyes and a finger on her chin, nodding subtly. “Not a fan of how you refer to them as collateral damage, but you have a point.”

Then it was Shinji’s turn to speak again. “I notice parts of Miss Amano’s records are missing,” he pointed out.

Jenn looked at the whiteboard again with widened eyes, as if she hadn’t realized to review the file thoroughly before grabbing it. Josh followed suit. Shinji was right in a sense – a few parts of Miss Amano’s file appeared corrupted. How that had happened, Josh couldn’t help but wonder. The population database records were supposed to be tamperproof, but then again, someone had managed to wipe the murderer’s entire record from the system.

“Shit,” Jenn whispered.

“A corrupted population database record?” Goro ex-claimed in equal shock. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

“Exception confirms the rule, doesn’t it?” Shinji com-mented in response. “That is interesting, though.”

“Any chance it’s just regular file corruption?” Jenn managed to ask.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Josh muttered in response. “The government’s servers are proofed against that. Someone is deli-berately tampering with the files in there.” He grunted in frus-tration and shook his head. “This case is getting too big.”

“Tell me about it,” Jenn replied, mirroring the tone of Josh’s voice. “We’re going to have to start outsourcing. Ask another team to go talk to the government’s server maintainers. Workload’s enough for a team of four as it is.”

“Could be a team of five,” Goro interjected with a hand in a position as if he was holding up an invisible platter.

Josh shot a pragmatic gaze at Goro and presented a response: “Even if I brought Devin back on the team, our man-power wouldn’t be adequate to offset the workload. Besides, I kicked him off for a reason.”

“Trust me, I get that. I’m just saying five is better than four.”

“Goro’s got a point,” said Jenn. “I know you two don’t see eye-to-eye on everything, and punishing him was the right call, but the more people we have on the team, the sooner we can solve the case. And Devin if anyone is conscientious. He’ll make up for his mistake.”

Josh had to admit they were both right. He nodded and let out a nasal sigh. But he didn’t want to cave in just yet. He had a standard he’d set for himself ages ago and wanted to uphold. A thought came to him in that moment, so he let loose with it. “Tell you what. Devin can be on the team that handles the population database investigation. And if he pulls his weight there, he’s back on our team.”

The other officers in the room nodded. This wasn’t the first time Josh and Devin had clashed, though it was the first time it’d reached a point where Josh felt it necessary to put Devin into timeout. But they knew Josh could be fair. And he knew Devin would do his best to earn his place back in the Harashima team.

The door to the conference room opened suddenly. It was Koji. “Pardon the interruption,” he said while waving a finger at Josh. “Josh, you’re going to want to come take a look at this.”

Josh followed Koji out of the conference room, nodding to his team apologetically as he exited. The two of them walked down the corridor for a few seconds, eventually greeted by the sight of Miss Harady accompanied by her nurse, the former pale and hyperventilating as if she’d seen a ghost, weak and ready to collapse had the nurse not been holding her.

“Sorry to bother you like this,” the nurse said to Josh. “Miss Harady has something urgent to share with you. I tried to tell her we should just call you to drop by the infirmary, but she insisted on seeing you here.”

“It’s fine,” Josh responded with a subtle nod. Then he turned his attention to Miss Harady and asked her: “What’s on your mind, Miss Harady?”

The poor girl tilted her head to one side, revealing a mark on her neck that she didn’t have the last time Josh had seen her. A mark that had appeared twice before, on the corpses of Yoshiro Busujima and Yosuke Harashima. A discrepancy in the pattern.

“I was told you’d know what this means,” Miss Harady said in a raspy, scared half-whisper while pointing to it.

Josh simply stared at the golden lip mark on Miss Harady’s neck for a moment, almost failing to register that she said anything at all. But when he finally did register it, he gave her a confirmatory nod. “You okay to come to my office?” he asked.

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Great.” He turned his attention to the nurse and in-structed her: “You can go ahead and escort her to my office. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Thank you, sir,” the nurse responded and started guiding Miss Harady to Josh’s office. In the meantime, Josh backtracked to the conference room and hollered to his team from the doorway: “Meeting’s over. Something urgent came up. Jenn, my office. Shinji and Goro, you get to assign tasks among yourselves.”

The group produced a series of nods and left the room, Jenn behind Josh, Goro and Shinji headed elsewhere.

“What did I do wrong?” Jenn inquired sarcastically as they walked towards Josh’s office.

Josh ignored her attempt at humor and addressed her with all the seriousness he could muster: “You’re fine. I just figure this’ll be of interest to you. You’ll see what I mean.”