Six Seconds

“And this was in the left shoe.”

Fitzwald tossed a small, slim leather-bound notebook on the desk before him.

“What do you make of it, Dan?”

Graham fanned the pages filled with notes, handwritten in ink. They were cryptic: something about an SSAge, another, see B. Walker. Scores of notations just before the last entry: Meet ‘x’and ‘y’verify link to BlueRose Creek.

“Hard to say if it’s important.”

“It must mean something because it was hidden under the foot cushion. He valued this more than his passport.”

11

Tokyo, Japan

Central Tokyo’s skyline glittered against the night sky.

Setsuko Uchida gazed upon it from the balcony of her fortieth-floor apartment in Roppongi Hills, but her thoughts lingered on her vacation in the Rockies.

Had she really traveled halfway around the world?

She sighed, then resumed unpacking in her bedroom, happy to be home. Tomorrow she would have lunch with her daughter, Miki, near the Imperial Gardens and tell her about the magnificent mountains.

With great care, she retrieved the gift box from her suitcase and slowly unwrapped the tissue paper until a small polar bear, and a second, tinier bear, hand-carved in jade, emerged. A mother and her cub. She knew Miki would love them. The two women had grown closer since Setsuko’s husband had passed away.

Toshiro.

He smiled from the gold-framed photo on her nightstand. He’d been a senior official at the Ministry of Justice and was a kind man. He died of lung complications which had tormented him years after his exposure to the sarin gas attack on the subway system by the Aum Shinrikyo cult.

Losing her husband had almost destroyed Setsuko, who’d been an economics professor at the University of Tokyo. Eventually, she took early retirement then moved from their home in Chiba to Central Tokyo to be nearer to their daughter, Miki.

Miki was angered by her father’s death and had withdrawn from everyone, burying herself in her job. Setsuko had refused to accept Miki’s isolation, never letting her be alone for too long, always calling or visiting. In time, Miki opened her heart and allowed Setsuko back into her life, allowed her to be her mother again.

This happened because Setsuko’s friends, Mayumi and Yukiko, had always encouraged Setsuko not to give up on Miki. She loved them for it. She also loved them for insisting she join them on their recent adventure to the wilds of Canada, a place Setsuko’s husband had dreamed of visiting.

It was a wonderful trip, but it was good to be home.

Setsuko took a break from unpacking.

She went to her desk with her memory cards, switched on her computer and began viewing her travel photographs.

Here they were—the girls—on a mountaintop; in a forest; next to a river; here they were on the Icefields Parkway. Here were elk on the golf course in Banff. A man with a cowboy hat. Setsuko clicked through dozens of images, smiling and giggling, until she stopped at one.

Her smile melted.

Setsuko had taken this one of Mayumi and Yukiko in cowboy hats, laughing, seated at their table in the log-cabin restaurant outside Banff. It was during the last days of their trip.

Something about the image niggled at her.

Something familiar.

Staring at it, she tried to remember.

The people in the background.

She returned to her bags, fished around in the deep side pockets where she’d shoved magazines, maps and newspapers, her fingers probing until she found the copy of the Calgary Herald the attendants had offered on the plane.

She remembered glancing at it before dozing off during the flight to Vancouver where they’d caught the return flight to Japan.

She unfolded it at her desk.

There was the headline, U.S. FAMILY DIES IN MOUNTAIN ACCIDENT, and pictures of Ray and Anita Tarver and their two small children, Tommy and Emily. A beautiful family, Setsuko thought, reading the article.

Having done her postgraduate work at the London School of Economics and at Harvard, her English was strong. According to the report, the authorities had located the bodies of the mother and her children, but not that of the father, Ray Tarver, a freelance reporter from Washington, D.C.

The article concluded with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police requesting anyone with information regarding the Tarver family’s movements in the park area to contact them, or Crime Stoppers.

Setsuko studied the pictures in the newspaper then the people in the background of the photo she’d taken at the restaurant. The man in the background, sitting at the table behind Setsuko’s friends, was Ray Tarver.

Setsuko had no doubt about it.

She checked the dates. The tragedy was discovered one or two days after Setsuko had snapped her photo of her friends in the restaurant.

This might be the last picture taken of Ray Tarver.

It could be of use to the Canadian police. Setsuko reached for her phone and called her daughter, who was working late at her office. After Setsuko explained, Miki said, “Can you send me the news article and your picture now?”

Setsuko scanned the article into her computer then e-mailed it along with her travel picture to her daughter, who was a sergeant in the Criminal Affairs Section for Violent Crime with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Miki would know what to do, Setsuko thought, rereading the terrible story about that poor young family from the United States.

At her desk at the headquarters of the Keishicho, in the Kasumigaseki part of central Tokyo, Miki Uchida studied the material her mother had sent her. She agreed with her mother. The man in the background was the missing American.

Miki glanced at her boss’s office. He’d gone home for the day.

Early the next morning, as soon as he stepped into the office, she told him about the information and how it related to the tragedy in Canada. Sipping coffee from a commuter mug, he looked over her shoulder at the article and pictures enlarged on her computer screen.

“Do the necessary documentation. Then contact the Canadian Embassy and get back to our work.”

Sergeant Marc Larose was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police liaison officer for the Canadian Embassy, which was located along Aoyama Dori. After assessing the tip Miki Uchida at Tokyo Metro had sent him, Larose e-mailed a report, along with the information, through a secure network to Canada.

The file pinballed down through the command structure until it finally arrived in the mailbox of Corporal Daniel Graham, who would come to realize it was more than a random picture of Ray Tarver before the tragedy.

The background of Setsuko’s photo showed Ray Tarver sitting at a restaurant table facing the camera.

He was behind an open laptop.

12

Near Banff, Alberta, Canada