Chapter 13: Doi
Three days into his preparation for the Watanabe operation, Kaito received a phone call from a number he didn't recognize.
He almost didn't answer it.
He answered it.
"It's Doi," said the voice.
Kaito stood up from the desk in the Honmachi workspace. "Where are you calling from?"
"A phone I bought this morning from a convenience store in Tennoji," Doi said. "Not my usual area. I took three trains." A pause. "I've been trying to reach you through the normal channels for two days. They don't connect anymore."
"I'm not using the normal channels," Kaito said. "I'm in the middle of something."
"I know you're in the middle of something," Doi said. "That's why I called. Kaito, listen. Someone came to my room last night."
Kaito went still. "Who?"
"I don't know. Two people. They knocked on my door and when I opened it they were already halfway in." A pause, and in the pause Kaito could hear something he had never heard from Doi in eleven years of working together. Fear. Actual, physical fear in the way Doi was breathing. "They asked about you. About your identities. They had a list. Not just the names. The documents. The paper trails. They had everything."
"What did you tell them?"
"Nothing. I told them nothing. I told them I didn't know what they were talking about." Another pause. "Kaito, they didn't believe me."
"Are you hurt?"
A silence that lasted three seconds, which was its own answer.
"My left hand," Doi said. "Two fingers. They were very calm about it. They didn't raise their voices. They just." He stopped. "They just did it. Very efficiently. Like it was something they'd done before many times."
Kaito sat back down. He put his forehead against the desk. He stayed like that for five seconds.
"Doi," he said. "I need you to go somewhere right now. Not home. Not anywhere connected to any name I've ever used. Do you have somewhere?"
"My sister in Nara," Doi said. "She doesn't know anything about my work."
"Go there. Today. Don't tell anyone else where you're going. Don't use your regular phone after this call. Buy another one when you get there and send me the number." A pause. "I'm sorry. I am genuinely sorry."
"I know," Doi said. "That's why I called you instead of anyone else." A pause. "Be careful, Kaito. These people. They're not like the people we usually deal with."
"What do you mean?"
"The people we deal with are afraid of consequences. These people don't seem to have any relationship with consequences at all." A pause. "Like consequences are something that happen to other people and they're just watching."
He hung up.
Kaito sat in the workspace for a long time.
Doi's two fingers. The efficiency of it. The calm.
He picked up the phone and called Sable.
"Someone got to Doi," he said. "Broke two of his fingers asking about my identities."
Sable was quiet for a moment. "When?"
"Last night."
"Did they get anything?"
"No. He's solid. But that's not the point." Kaito looked at the wall. "The House aggregate my identities weeks ago. That's how this whole thing started. So who else is asking about them?"
Another silence. Longer.
"Come in," Sable said. "Now."
Kaito put on his jacket and left the workspace and walked out into the Honmachi afternoon. Bright day. Cold. The business district moving around him at its particular pace, people going between buildings with their particular purposeful expression of people who know exactly where they're going.
He thought about Doi's breathing on the phone.
Doi, who had made six of his identities with genuine craftsman's pride. Who had said *I'm sorry* at four in the morning the night the letter arrived. Who had spent twenty-three years being meticulous and had now been visited by people who broke fingers efficiently and felt nothing about consequences.
He thought: *This is my fault.*
He walked faster.