Chapter 25: A Calamity Out of the Blue

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At half past nine that evening, Shiraishi gently parted the slats of the blinds and glanced outside. There were hardly any reporters left in plain sight beyond the police station.

But...

With his Level 7 Counter-Surveillance ability, Shiraishi easily spotted two bastards hiding outside the window.

Counter-Surveillance and Tracking and Surveillance were highly complementary abilities. For every point invested in Tracking and Surveillance, Counter-Surveillance required only one-tenth as many points to reach the same level.

Of course, although Shiraishi’s Tracking and Surveillance showed as Level 7 on his status panel, its actual effectiveness was Level 7 minus 4.

In practice, it could only produce the effect of Level 3, roughly equivalent to the standard level of a police academy graduate and weaker than the average investigator in the First Search Division.

There was nothing he could do about it. A two-meter-thirty, one-hundred-and-fifty-kilogram giant was difficult to conceal. Even if he did nothing, he was already conspicuous enough.

The fact that he could still produce a Level 3 effect was proof of considerable skill.

The reason he had “wasted” points on this ability was chiefly to support Counter-Surveillance.

“They really are persistent.” Shiraishi curled his lip.

Let them lie in wait if they wanted.

Shiraishi had no intention of leaving work yet. He was not only waiting for word from the Criminal Affairs Division; he was working overtime as well.

A station chief’s usual duties were not easy, particularly at a major police station like the one in Beika Town.

In summary, they consisted of stamping documents, shaking hands, and waving.

Major cases were rare in ordinary times, but the station chief had mountains of paperwork to deal with. Every day, stamping documents alone consumed most of his working hours.

Shiraishi was still relatively lucky. Ebihara had not yet retired, and for now his main task each day was teaching Shiraishi how to sort the paperwork: which documents required close examination, which could be skimmed, and which could simply be stamped the moment they landed on his desk.

This had also granted Shiraishi two new abilities, Document Organization and Rapid Document Reading, though both were only Level 2. If he still had any points left, he would certainly have invested them in those abilities.

Besides this deskwork, the station chief also had to meet regularly with influential figures in the district, handle public relations, and receive their public relations in return—in other words, shake hands.

Then, for the sake of the district residents’ goodwill, he had to organize public events every month and deliberately maintain a visible presence. That was the waving.

...

At present, Shiraishi had no time for either of those last two duties. He was working overtime stamping documents.

After all, he had only just taken office. He did not dare be careless with a single document.

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It was not that he distrusted Chief Ebihara. It was simply that, as a “newcomer,” Shiraishi felt deeply uneasy about stamping something without reading it first.

As a result, it was easy for him to work late into the evening, especially since he had spent the entire day dealing with the case.

Knock, knock, knock—

A knock sounded at the door.

“Come in.”

Aoki entered.

“Good work. Did you find anything?” Shiraishi could immediately tell from Aoki’s expression that he was conflicted.

“We did find something... but I’m afraid it wasn’t us who discovered it,” Aoki said helplessly.

“Oh?” Shiraishi looked at him with interest.

“It’s like this... We discovered that Miki Law Offices seems to have obtained an important eyewitness and submitted the witness directly to the prosecution. The witness has already been questioned by the prosecutors. We wanted to speak with them, but the prosecution...” Aoki’s tone was awkward.

Shiraishi nodded and gestured for him to stop. This was not Aoki’s fault. Shiraishi himself had refused to be ordered around by the prosecution, so naturally they were unwilling to cooperate with him now.

“But this witness should be unfavorable to Tsubakura,” Aoki added, passing on what he had learned.

“Miki Law Offices... If I remember correctly, that was the firm assigned to Tsubakura by the court at the beginning, wasn’t it?” Shiraishi’s Level 7 Memory allowed him to remember not only people, but documents as well.

He had read the case files earlier. After Tsubakura was indicted, he had been unable to afford a lawyer of his own, so the bar association assigned him to Miki Law Offices, which was to provide his defense.

That was standard practice. Those who could not afford a lawyer were generally matched by the bar association with one of the larger firms.

Of course, Miki himself would never personally take on such a thankless case. He had handed it to a junior attorney at the firm.

That “junior attorney” was also an inexperienced hothead. After a disagreement over whether to pursue an acquittal defense or focus on reducing the sentence, he went behind the firm’s back and asked Komikado to take over. According to rumor, the junior attorney had even paid Komikado’s fee out of his own pocket.

It was precisely because they had a courtroom shark of Komikado’s caliber that the doubts surrounding the case had been exposed.

Otherwise, the work of an ordinary court-appointed criminal lawyer generally consisted of persuading the defendant to plead guilty, urging them to show a good attitude, and asking for a reduced sentence.

There was no real fighting spirit in such a defense—just the bare minimum required to get the job done. One could even call it a disguised plea bargain.

Shiraishi had criticized Shirai for this before. The sloppiness in his handling of the case was entirely due to his certainty that Tsubakura had only a court-appointed public defender.

In that respect, Shiraishi still did not know whether Tsubakura had been framed. But Shirai certainly deserved the criticism he had received.

“Miki Law Offices... has an eyewitness who is unfavorable to the defendant? Was that why they refused to pursue an acquittal defense in the first place? No, that doesn’t make sense... Then why would they let one of their own junior lawyers run wild?” Shiraishi felt that Miki Law Offices’ behavior was extremely strange, completely at odds with logic.

Miki Law Offices represented the defendant. They would never voluntarily expose an eyewitness unfavorable to their own client, since doing so would obviously damage the firm’s reputation. Concealing the witness therefore made perfect sense from their perspective.

But what about afterward?

Why had they allowed one of their own junior lawyers to pursue an acquittal defense?

Why conceal it even from their own people?

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Aoki spoke up to explain. “Oh, we looked into that as well. Komikado used to work for Miki Law Offices. The two of them later fell out. My guess is that Miki deliberately wanted to sabotage Komikado. It’s quite possible that Miki arranged for Komikado to take this case in the first place.”

In his effort to locate this “eyewitness,” whom the police had never contacted, Aoki had worked both the prosecution and Miki Law Offices from different angles. Naturally, he had noticed how strange Miki’s actions were and investigated that matter as well.

“What?” Shiraishi was speechless for a moment, then sighed. “That really was an undeserved disaster...”

With his Level 7 Reasoning ability, Shiraishi had already pieced everything together from the clues available.

Miki was an old courtroom shark himself. If he had taken the case seriously, he could certainly have discovered that there were inconsistencies in it and major holes in the indictment.

At the same time, however, he had found an important eyewitness unknown to both the prosecution and the police—one who could prove the defendant’s guilt.

And so...

Miki had most likely used this opportunity to deliberately draw Kenji Komikado into the trap.

Once Komikado had become the defendant’s lawyer and discovered the holes in the prosecution’s evidence, Miki had handed over the incriminating evidence in his possession to the prosecution.

That way, the defense lawyer had already been replaced. Turning the witness over to the prosecution at that point would neither damage Miki Law Offices’ reputation nor prevent them from currying favor with the prosecutors. More importantly...

It would allow Miki to sabotage Komikado, with whom he had a personal grudge.

Seen in that light, Beika Town had suffered a truly undeserved disaster. It had been dragged into a feud between lawyers and ended up taking two solid blows for them.

“Still... if this eyewitness can really prove Tsubakura’s guilt, then it’s good news for us. Let’s hope Chief Shirai was merely acting in haste,” Aoki said, offering Shiraishi a word of consolation.

“Miki Law Offices managed to find this witness, yet Chief Shirai failed to discover them earlier...” Shiraishi’s opinion of Shirai sank even further. “Being in a hurry is no excuse. How can a law firm find a lead that you failed to find? Were you so focused on using underhanded interrogation tactics that you couldn’t see anything else?”

Knock, knock, knock—

Just then, another knock sounded at the door.

Akasaka entered, carrying a laptop.

To Shiraishi’s surprise, Seiko Fuji, dressed in plain clothes, followed him in.

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