The Case of the Mad Scientist

Chapter 21: Break-in

“We found nothing to indicate that Dr. Sorren is working at Koriyama Pharmaceutics.”

Blaze was facing all of us the next morning in her hotel room. “I called my boss and he said that they had no further information about where Dr. Sorren may be, so we should continue to check out Koriyama Pharmaceutics. Aiko will help us with the next step.”

Aiko stood up. “Koriyama Pharmaceutics has a manufacturing plant in Koriyama. That plant is regularly inspected because it is producing medicines that are sold around the world. I called the department that does these inspections and established that the last inspection was a week ago. I spoke with the man who did the inspection, and nothing resembling DNA research equipment was found.”

She looked at the faces around the room. “We know that he is probably not at their research labs - those have been checked out by Blaze and Sled. I am trying to locate any additional facilities owned by that company, but it will take time. In the meantime, there is one other possibility that is worth checking out. Blaze?”

Blaze took the floor again. “Thanks to Aiko’s work, we have found that Koriyama Pharmaceutics’ owner, one Janichi Watanabe, has a large house not far from Yoriyama, on a Lake named Hibara Ko. Stella has her first show tonight and, although I would love to attend, I think Sled and Aiko and I should go to check out this house of his.”

I nodded agreement. I was itching to get into action again.

“So we leave this morning and, depending upon what we find, Stella and Tara may come up tomorrow. If we find nothing, we’ll come back.”

Stella had to go on with her show; that was our cover in this country. Besides, she really wanted to help the disaster victims.

Blaze and I packed our overnight bags again, just in case we had to stay up that way overnight. That didn’t sound like too bad an idea with me. Maybe I could talk Aiko into sharing a room with Blaze and me. She was a cute girl and didn’t seem to have a bad figure. I wondered if she knew the French term, Menage a Trois?

could talk her

mind filled with such fantasies, we set out in Aiko’s car. The trip was pleasant enough, covering much of the same territory as our prior trip but turning off before getting to Koriyama and heading west. We stopped for lunch in a city called Kitakata,

seen behind the trees.

find a hotel and check into a room to wait until night, but Blaze beat me to it. Aiko did not object, because she said it would give us a “base of

being better at Japanese than we were, ordered three separate rooms. It

small side but clean and with a western style bed. I waited out the afternoon, hoping that Blaze would drop by for a little escape practice, but she didn’t. I found out later that she and Aiko went

had on her black commando outfit again and, surprisingly, so did Aiko. The two of them giggled and said something about being a pair of ninjas or something. I noticed that Aiko has a short sword in her belt but no gun. I

had not been spotted. Then it was off into the woods. The pines and elms were thick, which gave us good cover but also made it hard to tell where the house was. I finally found it by the noise. Someone was playing music loudly enough to guide us to the house. There was a barbed wire fence but some of the posts had sagged or been pushed up by tree growth. It was not too hard to find a spot where we could slip

tiles, made of wood, and two stories high. I did note, however, that there was a set of stairs leading down to what must have been a door below the first floor, so I figured there was a basement. I

out my set of picks and began working on the keyhole. Either Japanese doors have more complicated locks than American ones, or my skills were getting rusty. After ten minutes of trying, the door still refused to open. At that point, Blaze nudged me aside and reached up to the top of

I brushed the dust off and inserted it in the lock. It was, of course, the right key, and the door obligingly opened for

strange sight. There was a twenty by twenty foot room lit by a single overhead light. Along two walls were jail cells! Three on one wall, and three on the other. Each cell was tiny, no more than

first cell and was staring in at the prisoner. She was a pretty Japanese girl, probably in her late teens. It’s hard to tell with them. She was

that she was kidnapped in Tokyo and

had added a third pair connecting her wrists and ankles behind her: a steel hogtie. The woman looked up at us with a wild look in her eyes. She rolled on her side and struggled to try to get up, which she could not. So hard were her struggles that I was sure she was hurting her wrists and ankles from those steel cuffs. But she didn’t seem to care. The look in her eyes was pure desperation. At first I figured she was simply glad to see someone other than the kidnappers and was eager

Aiko. When I heard nothing, I turned to Aiko. The girl was