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blood on it.”
    “It
sounds like maybe someone disposed of it in the perfect place for a variety of
suspects: some of them martial artists, some of them vagabonds.”
    “That’s
what I’m beginning to think.”
    “Why
now? What brought you here after all this time?”
    Lucas
pushed through the curtain and crashed into Desmond’s lap. “Daddy, I’m hungry.”
    “Okay,
buddy. We’ll go soon.” Desmond tousled Lucas’s hair. It was stiff. The kid was
overdue for a bath. “Would you please go get Peter’s ball and bring it back to
him?”
    “I
can do it!” Lucas ran out of the room, and Desmond almost wished he could
afford to enroll him in classes. The change of scenery seemed to have done him
some good.
    “He’s
a good boy,” Salerno said.
    “Yeah.”
Desmond flashed a rueful smile. “Looks like time is short, but if I could
squeeze in one more question: you mentioned fencing armor? Do you guys ever use
samurai face masks?”
    Salerno
looked confused. “Not sure what you mean. The Kendo helmets have a wire
grille.”
    “So
nothing like a wrathful face plate?”
    “No.
I think I’ve seen what you’re talking about in books, but no, we don’t have
anything like that, why?”
    “I
get the feeling you and I will talk again.”
    “My
door is always open to you.”
    “To
be continued? Gotta feed the boy.”
    “To
be continued.”
    At
the front door, as Desmond and Lucas stepped out into sunlight, Salerno handed
Desmond a business card. “Call me anytime. And, you know, Sensei Masahiro might
be able to tell you more about those masks. He is Japanese. His number’s
on the back. Super nice guy. Very approachable.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 6
     
     
     
     
     
    The wooden
guard tower was the only landmark on the road to indicate that the site had
once been an internment camp. Agent Drelick pointed through the dusty
windshield. “That’s it,” she said, “pull over.”
    Pasco
eased up on the gas and pulled the government-issued Crown Vic to the side of
the road where it churned up a cloud of yellow dust that was immediately
shredded by the wind. The tower was separated from the highway by a four-strand
barbed-wire fence running along galvanized T-bars. The fence was mostly for
show, the wires spaced far enough apart that the agents could have climbed
through if they didn’t mind tearing a few holes in their clothes. Someone had climbed through last night.
    Pasco
parked behind a police cruiser that had been posted to keep the traffic moving.
The local law hadn’t shut down U.S. 395, but Drelick thought they probably
should have. She shielded her eyes and looked up, saw a young man moving around
on top of the tower. There was an aluminum ladder inside the x-braced frame of
the structure, propped up against a wooden ladder built into the tower but that
didn’t extend low enough for anyone to reach from the ground. The top of the
tower was a simple cube: a guardhouse made mostly of windows, the roof
constituting a platform surrounded by a 2 x 4 railing. The figure she’d spotted
moving around up there was the forensics photographer, now leaning back against
the railing to get a wide shot of the area where the bloodstains must have
been.
    A
young officer with a pockmarked face climbed out of the cruiser and came to
stand beside Drelick as she stared up at the tower. Pasco stayed in the car
with the engine idling.
    “Are
you with the FBI, ma’am?” the officer asked, appraising her black trench coat
and polished shoes, and thinking, no doubt, of some X-Files episodes he’d seen
on Netflix. She knew her haircut didn’t help, but fuck it; she wasn’t going to
change what looked good on her just because of some actress who wasn’t even on the
air anymore.
    She
nodded, flashed her ID, and read it to him, “Special Agent Erin Drelick.” She
tilted her chin toward the tower. “Was that ladder here before today?”
    “No,
ma’am. When they reconstructed the guard tower they only