21

After that, we made swift progress. We knew, without a doubt, that the tapes had been altered and the identity of the killer had been changed. We watched as the killer came out of the room, and moved toward the exit, with a regretful look back at the dead girl.

I said, “How could they change the killer’s face in just a few hours?”

“They have very sophisticated mapping software,” she said. “It’s by far the most advanced in the world. The Japanese are becoming much better in software. Soon they will surpass the Americans in that, as they already have in computers.”

“So they did it with better software?”

“Even with the best software it would be daring to try it. And the Japanese are not daring. So I suspect this particular job was not so hard. Because the killer spends most of his time kissing the girl, or in shadow, so you can’t see his face. I am guessing they had the idea very late, as an afterthought, to make a change of identity. Because they saw that they only had to change this part coming up… . There, where he passes the mirror.”

In the mirror, I saw the face of Eddie Sakamura, clearly. His hand brushing the wall, showing the scar.

“You see,” she said, “if they changed that, the rest of the tape could pass. In all the cameras. It was a golden opportunity, and they took it. That is what I think.”

On the monitors, Eddie Sakamura went past the mirror, into shadow. She ran it back. “Let’s look.”

She put up the reflection in the mirror, and step-zoomed in to the face until it broke into blocks. “Ah,” she said. “You see the pixels. You see the regularity. Someone has done some retouching here. Here, on the cheekbone, where there is a shadow beneath his eye. Normally you get some irregularity at the edge between two gray scales. Here, the line is cleaned up. It has been repaired. And let me see—“

The image spun laterally.

“Yes. Here, too.”

More blocks. I couldn’t tell what she was looking at. “What is it?”

“His right hand. Where the scar is. You see, the scar has been added, you can tell from the way the pixels configure.”

I couldn’t see it, but I took her word for it. “Then who was the actual killer?”

She shook her head. “It will be difficult to determine. We have searched the reflections and we have not found it. There is a final procedure which I did not try, because it is the easiest of all, but it is also the easiest to change. That is to search the shadow detail.”

“Shadow detail?”

“Yes, We can try to do image intensification in the black areas of the picture, in the shadows and the silhouettes. There may be a place where there is enough ambient light to enable us to derive a recognizable face. We can try.”

She didn’t sound enthusiastic about the prospects.

“You don’t think it will work?”

She shrugged. “No. But we might as well try. It is all that is left.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

She started to run the tape in reverse, walking Eddie Sakamura backward from the mirror toward the conference room, “Wait a minute,” I said. “What happens after the mirror? We haven’t looked at that part.”

“I looked earlier. He goes under an overhang, and moves away, toward the staircase.”

“Let’s see it anyway.”

“All right.”

The tape ran forward. Quickly, Eddie Sakamura went toward the exit. His face flashed in the mirror as he went past it. The more often I saw it, the more fake that moment looked. It even seemed as if a small delay, a tiny pause, had been added to his movement. To help us make the identification.

Now the killer walked on, into a dark passage leading toward the staircase, which was somewhere around the corner, out of view. The far wall was light, so he was silhouetted. But there was no detail visible in the silhouette. He was entirely dark.

“No,” she said. “I remember this part. Nothing here. Too dark. Kuronbō. What they used to call me. Black person.”

“I thought you said you could do shadow detail.”

“I can, but not here. Anyway, I am sure this part has been retouched. They know we will examine the section of tape on either side of the mirror. They know we will go in with pixel microscopes and scan every frame. So they will have fixed that area carefully. And they will blacken the shadows on this person.”

“Okay, but even so—“

“Hey!” she said suddenly. “What was that?”

The image froze.

I saw the outline of the killer, walking away toward the white wall in the background, the exit sign above his head.

“Looks like a silhouette.”

“Yes, but something is wrong.”

She ran the tape backward, slowly.

As I watched, I said, “Machigai no umi oshete kudasaii.” It was a phrase I had learned from one of my early classes.

She smiled in the darkness. “I must help you with your Japanese, Lieutenant. Are you asking me if there has been a mistake?”

“Yes.”

“The word is umu, not umi. Umi is ocean. Umu means you are asking yes or no about something. And yes, I believe there may have been a mistake.”

The tape continued backward, the silhouette of the killer coming back toward us. She sucked in her breath, in surprise.

“There is a mistake. I cannot believe it. Do you see it now?”

“No,” I said.

She ran the tape forward for me. I watched as the man walked away in silhouette.

“There, do you see it now?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

She was becoming irritable. “Pay attention. Look at the shoulder. Watch the shoulder of the man. See how it rises and falls with each step, in a rhythmic way, and then suddenly… There! You see it?”

I did. Finally. “The outline seemed to jump. To get bigger.”

“Yes. Exactly. To jump bigger.” She adjusted the controls. “Quite a lot bigger, Lieutenant. They tried to blend the jump into the up-step, to make it less conspicuous. But they did not try very hard. It is clear anyway.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means they are arrogant,” she said. She sounded angry. I couldn’t tell why.

So I asked her.

“Yes. Now it pisses me off,” she said. She was zooming in on the image, her one hand moving quickly. “It is because they have made an obvious mistake. They expect we will be sloppy. We will not be thorough. We will not be intelligent. We will not be Japanese.”

“But—“

“Oh, I hate them.” The image moved, shifted. She was concentrating on the outline of the head, now. “You know Takeshita Noboru?”

I said, “Is that a manufacturer?”

“No. Takeshita was prime minister. A few years ago, he made a joke about visiting American sailors on a Navy ship. He said America is now so poor, the Navy boys cannot afford to come ashore to enjoy Japan. Everything is too expensive for them. He said they could only remain on their ship and give each other AIDS. Big joke in Japan.”

“He said that?”

She nodded. “If I was American, and someone said that to me, I would take this ship away, and tell Japan to go fuck itself, pay for its own defense. You didn’t know Takeshita said this?”

“No…”

“American news.” She shook her head. “Such nothing.”

She was furious, working quickly. Her fingers slipped on the controls, the image jumped back, lost definition. “Shit fuck.”

“Take it easy, Theresa.”

“Fuck, take it easy. We’re going to score now!”

She moved in on the silhouetted head, isolating it, then following it, frame by frame. I saw the image jump larger, distinctly.

“You see, that is the join,” she said. “That is where the changed image goes back to the original. Here on, it’s original material on the tape. This is the original man walking away from us, now.”

The silhouette moved toward the far wall. She proceeded frame by frame. Then the outline began to change shape.

“Ah. Okay. Good, what I hoped for…”