In the early hours of the night, with the lights and billboards of Neo-Tokyo painting the city with splashes of neon against an otherwise dark gray backdrop, Maria and Yuriko sat down at the same table in Dan’s Dojo they had the other day, each holding a pint of the cheapest beer the bar had on offer. Maria had felt it necessary to update her best friend on the progress of her mur-der investigation despite the relative lack of it, and Dan’s Dojo felt like the perfect place to do so. Less so because its decrepi-tude mirrored her mental state this time around and more so for some kind of continuity that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She hoped there were no police officers around to eavesdrop on them this time.

“So the cop that interrogated you at the station…” Yuriko began an inquiry as they sat down. Maria had already filled her in on some of the events while they were ordering their drinks. “How did you know it was the same guy that gave you the call about your dad having been killed?”

“It was the voice,” Maria explained. “Though it did take me a while to connect the dots.”

“Uh-huh.” Yuriko paused to sip her beer, then shifted the conversation to Maria’s failed cabin excursion. “Interesting choice to try and hail a cab to the cabin.”

“Well, there’s no public transit going that way like ever, so I didn’t have a whole lot of options. And you would’ve re-fused to drive me.” Then Maria gulped down a dose of her own drink.

“Yeah, but I’m still offended that you didn’t even ask.”

“Sorry in that case,” Maria replied with a humorous smirk. Yuriko responded by producing a similar smile and lean-ing back in her seat.

“Anyway,” Yuriko said after a few seconds of silence, “if the police hadn’t caught you, what did you hope to find?”

Maria sighed. “Not sure, honestly. Devin told me—”

“Devin?” Yuriko raised an eyebrow.

It occurred to Maria that she hadn’t told her the interro-gating officer’s name. “The officer that interrogated me,” she clarified.

“Right.” Evidently Yuriko was struggling with how Maria knew his first name but didn’t interrupt further for now. “Go on.”

“So he told me that I wasn’t gonna find any clues re-lated to Dad’s death at the cabin. That it’s been cleaned up. But even if it is, I still wanna see it with my own eyes.” She sipped her beer again.

“You’re dead-set on getting there, aren’t you?” Maria wasn’t quite sure if Yuriko’s tone conveyed worry or admiration at her persistence.

“Yeah.” Even if it lands me in jail.

Her nerves spiked at the thought. She took another sip in an attempt to calm herself down.

“How’re you gonna do that, though? You’re surely on a watchlist. And I can’t imagine the cops are gonna be as gene-rous if they catch you trying to leave again.”

Maria hunched over slightly, looking off to the side in contemplation. “That’s a good question. Can’t possibly rely on a cab ride working again.” A thought occurred to her. She looked back to Yuriko.

Yuriko’s eyes widened. She raised her hands in the air and shook her head while hollering: “Nuh-uh. Girl, no. I’m not partaking in this.”

In all fairness, Maria knew that was going to be Yuriko’s answer. And she also knew pleading was useless with her. In a sign of immediate surrender, Maria shrugged and muttered: “I thought so.”

Then her phone bleeped in her pocket, catching her off-guard. Yuriko was usually the only person that’d text her at this hour, but why would she when she was no more than two feet away? Maria dug her phone out and glanced at the notification on the screen for what felt like hours, her eyes widening at a steady pace.

It was a text from an anonymous sender, simply saying: “Eastside underpass, 11pm. Come alone.”

Maria tried to come to a conclusion about the impli-cations of the request but abandoned that train of thought within the minute. She looked around frantically, trying her best to de-termine if the sender was someone at the bar. That was the only way she figured the timing of the text could have been this per-fect, if someone was eavesdropping on her and Yuriko. But no patron gave her the impression of having been the sender.

“What is it?” she heard Yuriko inquire but found herself unable to formulate a response.

She looked up the location of the eastside underpass. A twenty-minute car ride away. She looked at the time. 10.36pm. If she left now and caught a free cab in three minutes, she’d make it in time. She had to admit she was curious to find out exactly what the mysterious message meant.

“I gotta go,” she informed Yuriko and got up.

“Why? What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you when I find out,” Maria hollered from the door and dashed out to the street.

Maria stepped out of the cab she had hailed exactly where the mysterious message had told her to appear. She scanned her im-mediate surroundings for another person in the underpass. No one. Instead, she saw another car, alarm bells going off in her head as soon as she laid her eyes on it. Even in the near-total ab-sence of light, partially owing to the overcast night sky, she could tell it was a police car.

She froze. Had she walked into a trap? Was she going to actually get arrested this time? But she hadn’t even done any-thing wrong. Not since her previous run-in with law enforce-ment.

A figure stepped out of the vehicle. Approached her. Its features became clearer with every step. A man. Looked young, no older than 35. His jaw was lined with slightly overgrown stubble. The closer he got to Maria, the more familiar he look-ed. And when he was right up in her face, she almost squealed. Probably would have if she didn’t clasp a hand over her mouth.

It was Devin. No, Officer Nichols.

“No one followed you, I assume?” he asked as his way of greeting Maria.

Maria let her hand fall off her face and replied while glancing around, as if to make sure: “Not as far as I could tell.” Then she turned her focus back to Devin. “What do you want?”

“To help you. Take you to the cabin.”

Maria’s eyebrows shot skyward. “Take me to…?” She stuttered. The rest of her shocked inquiry turned into something else halfway. “Why?”

“I already answered that question.”

“Is that allowed? For the police to act as a taxi service?”

“It is.” Devin paused. “With some caveats.”

“Uh-huh. And what are those caveats?”

“First, I had to fake a charge to get a warrant. Se-cond…” One of Devin’s hands came forward from behind his back, a pair of handcuffs dangling from it. He almost looked sorry as he produced them. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“Buy me dinner first, then we’ll talk.”

Devin looked wholly unamused by the comment. “Look, there’s only one way we’re getting in. And it’s if this looks like a real arrest.”

Maria sighed. “Alright. You’re the boss.”

Devin nodded. “Alright, turn around.”

Without another word, Maria obeyed. As one of the handcuffs clicked around her wrist, she asked: “Are your co-workers not gonna wonder what you’re doing?”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Devin replied as the other cuff clamped shut around her wrist. “Technically, I’m off the clock.” Then he opened the car’s backdoor and gently pushed Maria inside, followed by him taking the driver’s seat and starting the car.

Maria didn’t say anything for the first few minutes. In-stead, she settled to look at the scenery from the sideview win-dow as skyscrapers and billboards flew past them. A question was on her mind when she turned her attention back to Devin. “Can I ask you why you’re doing this?”

“Because I believe in a different version of justice.”

“Different as opposed to your colleagues?”

“Yeah.”

Maria nodded, turning her gaze off to the side, looking at nothing in particular. She was quiet for a moment before ask-ing something different. “Would it be weird to say you remind me of my husband?”

The way Devin’s gaze shifted slightly in the rearview mirror told her his answer leaned towards “yes”. “How so?” he asked with what sounded like genuine curiosity.

“You look sort of similar to him. And he also believed in a different version of justice. A trait that sometimes preceded his intelligence.”

“Is that a compliment or an insult?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a bit of both.” Maria’s response was accompanied by a smirk.

Silence followed for a few seconds. Then Devin changed the course of the conversation. “I notice you talk about your husband in the past tense.”

Maria’s smirk turned into a look of pained reminiscence. She produced a subtle nod, looking off to the side again. Devin’s eyes shone with sympathy in the rearview mirror. “Mind if I ask what happened?” he inquired.

“Maybe I do,” she muttered. “You know what they say.”

“What do they say?”

“Trust is a volatile currency.”

“You’re trusting me enough to take you to the cabin,” Devin pointed out.

Maria couldn’t argue with that. “Point taken,” she mum-bled, grasping the knuckles of one hand with the other behind her back as she dug out the memory of the incident from the archives. “He died trying to stop a robbery two years back. We’d just had a date night and were on our way home. Just so happened to walk by an active crime scene. Bunch of goons were robbing a store, one was threatening the cashier with his gun out. He walked in, started to wrestle the guy at the register and…” A pause. A tear escaped her eye. She shuddered. “And took a bullet to the head.”

Devin nodded, a visible heaviness to the motion. “Sorry for your loss,” he muttered.

“Thanks.”

Devin’s next question surprised Maria slightly. “Have you thought about dating anyone else since he died?”

“No, because to me, he’s still here. Maybe not physic-ally, but in spirit.”

“Fair enough.”

The two of them said nothing more for the remainder of the drive to the cabin.