10.14 Heinous
Once the testimony is printed up, Ozawa tells me to read through it and sign it.
“Take your time,” he says. “If there’s anything you don’t understand, you can use my dictionary here or ask Kojima-san.”
Kojima sits up in his chair. Palms on thighs, the tips of his fingers fidget excitedly.
“Y-yes, y-yes,” the useless interpreter chimes in. “If there’s anything y-you don’t understand, p-please ask me.”
“Thank you. I will.” You fucking moron.
I go over the testimony and am disappointed to learn that after over a week in jail, and many hours of interrogation the damn thing reads pretty much like the report Ozawa and Nakata drew up last Monday and presented to the Prosecutor.
This time, however, there is more detail about the nature of the so-called crime which has been committed. One line in particular stands out: “This is a heinous crime in which the drugs had been cleverly and deliberately hidden to avoid detention by Customs.”
Oh boy. Sign this and I tie the very knot they’ll hang me with.
“Do I really have to sign this?” I ask.
It’s a legitimate question, and, yet, Nakata freaks out as if I couldn’t have asked anything more unreasonable. “Of course you have to!” he shouts. “This is what you’ve been telling us this whole week! Have you been lying?”
“Nakata-san . . . ”
“Boncoeur! Just sign it!”
“How do you expect me sign something if I don’t agree with it one-hundred percent?”
“You’re wasting our time, Boncoeur!”
“Nakata-san, this says here that this was a, this was a . . . a heinous crime, that the drugs were cleverly and deliberately hidden to avoid detection by Customs. How on earth am I supposed to know that? I wasn’t the one who put the package together . . . ”
“You saw how they were hidden . . . ”
“Yes, and I’ve agreed that they were hidden, and I would agree cleverly so. But, deliberately to avoid detection by Customs? A heinous crime? I’ve said this so many times already I really don’t need to remind you, but I didn’t have contact with my cousin for a year or more, so there’s no way for me to tell what her intentions were.”
The Customs man looks like he’s going to go postal on me when Ozawa raises his hand.
“We can rewrite that,” he says calmly. “If that’s the only sticking point, we can rewrite it. Suppose we change that one line, would you object then? Let’s say we change it to, uh, “The drugs had been hidden. If they had been done so with the intention of avoiding detention by Customs, then a serious crime has been committed.”
This new wording is only slightly less offensive than the original, but at least it gives me some wiggle room.
*
As the revised police report is being printed up, I ask what I consider to be a fair question: “When are you guys going to let me go?”
Nakata looks up over the monitor of his notebook computer and says, “Just a little longer.”
“Just a little longer? What does that mean?”
Ozawa explains that it isn’t for them to decide: the prosecutor has the last word on how long someone is kept detained.
“We have to submit this report to the prosecutor by this afternoon. And then, you’ll have a meeting with her tomorrow morning.”
“She’s coming here?”
“No, you’re going there,” Ozawa replies.
After signing the paper and affixing my fingerprint beside my name, I’m escorted back to the cell.
_____________________________________________________
No. 6 is now available on Kindle.
注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.
The first installment of No.6 can be found here:
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Aonghas Crowe
No.6 