Fixation

Chapter 20


There was nothing sneaky about poking around someone’s room if they had given you permission to do so. It was not devious, unethical, illegal, or anything else the little voice in Jou’s head kept insisting that it was. It was not betrayal of Yugi’s trust and friendship. It was not a betrayal of Seto’s trust and love. He really did intend to borrow a video game, so it wasn’t like he was there under completely false pretenses, after all.

He found the closet of video games just where Yugi said it would be. And closet did not do the collection justice. Every wall of the gigantic walk in closet was covered in shelves, and each of those shelves was covered in well-loved video game boxes. Jou found Resident Evil Five among the games for the Playstation 3 and set it down on a small roll top desk that had been set against the window, much like the desk in Seto’s bedroom.

He checked each of the other doors. The bathroom was a mess. Either Mokuba or Yugi must have banned the housekeeping staff from entering it, because it looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned in months. The counter was littered with clothes, leather straps and various sex toys that had been laid out on a towel on the bathroom counter, and several stacks of martial arts magazines sat on the floor. Jou was glad that he was alone. If Mario had been searching the room with him, he would have died of embarrassment.

The dining room looked like in had been converted into a workroom. A small round table still stood in the center, with dining chairs around it, but two computers had been set up on opposite sides of the table, and stacks of paper covered every inch of the wood between them. Jou saw everything from stock reports to marketing reports and design sketches strewn across the table. There was even a scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings lying open on top of the stacks of reports. The left page was covered with a newspaper clipping detailing the arrest of Hiroshi and Kaede. The photo with the article showed Kaede being dragged out of Kaiba Corp with her breasts hanging out for all the world to see. It looked like she was growling through the black mesh spit hood.

It had always amazed Jou that people would resist arrest so aggressively. Logically, they had to realize that there was no way hitting, kicking, and biting your arresting officer was going to go over well, but people did it anyway. The LAPD detention centers had mastered dealing with uncooperative people. The first time Jou and Esme had brought in a drunk woman in a bikini who was determined to resist any way she could, Esme had told Jou to stand back out of the way and let the detention officers handle it. Five female officers had been waiting for them in a secure sally port, with a black plastic chair that had straps and hand-cuffs everywhere. When Esme opened the back door, the five women had grabbed the bikini clad woman by each limb and pushed her back into the contraption. Her head was held in one position while a spit hood was slipped over her head, and then her chest was strapped down and her arms and legs handcuffed to the chair. The entire process took about twenty seconds. When Jou asked what was going to happen to the woman, one of the detention officers had smiled sweetly and told him that she didn’t book people in until they were willing to be polite, and until then the girl would sit, in a maximum security cell, and be allowed to rant and scream and resist until she wore herself out. Esme told Jou that it was the only way to keep people from hurting themselves or someone else when they were enraged—and it was the only way for the department to ensure they would be able to calm down without being hurt. It was a rude awakening for most people, who assumed the police had overstepped their bounds by simply arresting them, much more putting them in what looked like some medieval torture device for the night. They were even more surprised when their attorney laughed at them when they described the incredible civil rights violations they were sure the police would be punished for.

Jou wondered what the Japanese police did with uncooperative inmates. Would Kaede still be in a solitary max cell screaming and ranting? Probably not, but the idea brought a small grin to Jou’s face anyway.

The garbage can was filled with empty paper coffee cups, and a buffet table on the side of the room looked like it hadn’t been used in ages. It was covered in a layer of dust so thick that Jou was tempted to write his name in it. He didn’t. He liked to think that he was a bit more grown up than that.

From the dining room, Jou found the door that led to the second bedroom. While Seto’s current room was the height of opulence, this bedroom was as stark and plain as a room in a monastery. A single bed protruded into the center of the room, covered in a dust cloth, and a small wooden school desk stood a few feet in front of it. There was nothing on the desk, and no other furniture in the room. Jou glanced under the bed, ran his hands over the dust cloth where it covered the mattress, the hoisted the mattress to look between it and the box spring. There was absolutely nothing.

In the empty stillness of the room, Jou jumped three feet when his cell phone buzzed at his hip and Esmerelda’s ring tone echoed through the emptiness. He let it ring a couple more times, waiting for his heart rate to calm back down to normal, then answered. “Hey Esme,” Jou said immediately.

“Hi Joey,” her voice sung. “I have good news for you!”

“Are we back in business?”

“Back in business and we have a waiting list for new clients! We’ve set up shop in a hotel for now, while we’re waiting for the insurance money to come through. But you would not believe what little miss bitchy has done! She’s been on every talk show she can book talking about how terrifying it was to get shot at, and how she wouldn’t be alive if not for our gallant service! We’re never goi ng to be out of work again, Joey!”

“Sounds great, Esme! I can’t thank you enough for taking care of all this for me.”

“Yeah, yeah… I’ve got stock options, you don’t need to thank me at the moment. Luke and I just paid off our mortgage and both cars this week, thanks to you.”

“Yeah, that kind of surprised me, too.”

“So, when are you two coming home?”

Jou hesitated, his grip on the phone tightening.

“Joey, are you there? What day are you flying back?”

“Ah,” Joey wished he’d had more time to think about that. “Probably next Monday. Cheaper than flying on the weekend.”

“Like you need to worry about money now!”

“And then I’ll be coming back here to Japan…”

“What?”

“I…” Jou took a deep breath. “I promised someone I would try to stay… And there’s… There’s something….”

“You’re staying for a boy, aren’t you?” Emse laughed in his ear.

“It’s not just that!” Jou insisted. “I’ve actually gotten a job offer, too. Head of security for Kaiba Corporation, if you must know.”

“The Kaiba Corporation? The bigger than Disney and Toyota combined Kaiba Corporation?”

“That’s the one. But it’s here in Japan, and it would mean that I would need someone to run Ally for me, or that I would need to sell my stake in it.”

Emse whistled low. “That’s a tough call. Ally is finally getting to be a major player in private security, and to be offered a job like that… What’s the pay?”

“It comes out to about three hundred a year.”

“Three hundred thousand dollars?”

“Yeah. Plus, it’s a hell of a job. I’d have a virtually unlimited budget when it comes to new toys.”’

“So you’re not coming back…”

“I didn’t say that. I just said I had to chose…”

“You said you’ve promised to stay there,” she reminded him.

“And I have,” he agreed. “What do you think? Wanna be CEO of Ally?”

Emse chuckled. “What about Mario? He’d be a bit put out by that, wouldn’t he?”

“No, I don’t think so. You do the taxes for his dojo every year, so I think he’d agree that you’re the best for the job when it comes to actual business sense. He just stands around looking pretty.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. “You’re thinking forever, then?”

“I don’t know. It’s… It got complicated.”

“What’s going on?”

Jou shook his head, trying to find some way to explain what he and Mario had found. Some way to explain that he might be addicted to having sex with a serial killer.

“Hey, you were a psychology major, right?”

“Eight years ago, yeah. Why?”

“What’s Asperger’s Syndrome?”

“Asperger’s… You mean Asshole Syndrome? No,” she giggled, “That’s not fair. That’s what my old partner used to call it. You know most people who end up in and out of jail are suffering from some form of mental disorder. Ninty-eight percent, according to some experts. Of course, any detention officer will tell you most of it is a con, and that may be true, but I’m no expert, either way. Asperger’s is one of the few that police don’t see that often, but when you do, they’re often violent. They’re usually socially inept, so they don’t understand a lot of social cues. They might think someone wants to have sex when the other person is just trying not to be mean about saying no, and they don’t get the hint until things have gone too far.”

“I know the statistics,” said Jou, feeling a bit put down. “But you wouldn’t see someone with Asperger’s killing people or anything like that?”

“Ah… My old partner called it Asshole Syndrome because everyone he met with it was usually an asshole. You remember Thomas?”

Jou felt his stomach clench at the memory. “Shane Thomas?”

“That’s the one. You remember the first time you arrested him?”

Jou remembered very well. Shane Thomas was a nineteen year old who liked to play with drugs, but who didn’t know when it was appropriate to hurt someone and when it wasn’t. The first time Jou had arrested him, he had ended up using a taser on the boy four times before he stopped resisting enough to get a pair of handcuffs on him. When Jou had inquired about what became of the charges, he’d been told that they were on hold pending a mental health assessment. Shane Thomas went on to beat two mental health workers to death when his cigarette order arrived with a brand he didn’t like.

“It’s hard to forget something like that,” Jou said softly.

“He was high functioning Asperger’s Syndrome. Perfectly smart, no intellectual or speech issues like you get with some mental illness, but no sense of empathy. He had no concept that other people felt anything, no sense of right or wrong. And he was damn smart. Smart enough to know that if he reacted violently as a teenager, people would give in and give him whatever he wanted. Most people with it aren’t like Thomas, though. Most of them are scrupulously law-abiding, even anal about sticking to the rules. It’s got quite a range, as far as severity goes. What I remember from school is that it usually presents itself in kids and adults as a very limited number of interests—an obsessive focus on two or three things in life, and nothing else. And social problems. They usually don’t have friends, and most are socially isolated. For some, though, being obsessed with things is the only sign. Like guys who collect hundreds of thousands of baseball cards. They can go into autistic meltdowns when they get out of normal routines, but they’re usually less violent than regular autism. They shut down instead of acting out.”

“Narrow interests like being so obsessed with martial arts that someone would forget to eat?”

“Mario is obsessed with having a smaller waist that me, not with martial arts. Just smack him in the back of the head. But Asperger’s is different. If you talked to someone with Asperger’s, you’d know what their fixations are within a few minutes. Thomas’ was food and playing the guitar, if I remember correctly.”

“Is it associated with premeditated crimes? Like multiple murders?”

“No!” she laughed. “People with Asperger’s usually only commit assaults out of frustration, or because they’re pursuing some other interest and take things to an extreme. But they’re all different people—you have a community of people who have something in common, but you’ll get everyone from ethical world leaders to scumbags within that community.”

“ What if hurting people was one of their fixations?” Jou asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Esme. “You sound like you’re talking about a serial killer or something. These guys are usually just socially inept. They commit sexual assault because they misunderstand social cues. Sometimes they commit violent assaults because they can’t communicate the way they feel, or can’t understand what someone else is feeling. If they do fixate on a person, they’re usually the freaky stalkers who keep showing up at their girlfriend’s job six years after they break up, that sort of thing. They’re the type of guys who live with their parents at age forty and spend a lot of time in their bedrooms. They’re usually not dangerous. Some are even gifted. They get by in daily life just fine, but usually by analyzing other people instead of relating to them.”

“Hu…” Jou was going to have to do some research on his own to learn more about this. Socially inept stalker certainly summed Seto up fairly well, and if that was true than looking into the disorder could give Jou a lot more insight into why Seto was the way he was. “I’m going to have to look this up… In the mean time, I think Mario’s probably going to fly home Monday, but there’s something going on I’ve got to sort out.”

Esmerelda was silent. Sorting things out was how they had always described walking into an explosive situation. It had become a code among their team while they were both police officers, and it had become habit for both of them. “Call if you need any help,” she said at last. “You’ve got a lot of friends who would rush around the world if you needed them, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. And I’m grateful.”

“Alright, then. Call me when you know what you’re going to do.”

“I will.” Jou said goodbye and hung up the phone.

He sat down on the bed and stared at the generic wallpaper on his phone. He had a hard time imagining Seto being socially inept. But then, Seto had never tried to make friends. Jou always assumed that it was because the other boy was too stuck up to socialize with other people, but it was possible that the other boy simply had no idea how to do it. It was also possible that Seto had no idea how to pursue a relationship with Jou without stalking him.

His relationship with Seto suddenly felt much more fragile than it had that morning, and somehow more precious because of the difficulty the other man had gone through just trying to get close to him. For a brief moment, Jou felt like the luckiest man on earth, to have someone like Seto obsessed enough with him that he would stop at nothing to get his attention. And then he felt like a complete ass, digging around and searching Seto’s home as though he was a suspect rather than his boyfriend.

He had to find Seto and talk to him. He would go to Kaiba Corp, barge into Seto’s office if he had to, and find out what had happened. He would take Mario’s advice and give his lover the benefit of the doubt.

As Jou headed back through the small dining room, he stopped to stare at the newspaper clipping of Kaede again. It was the most recent clipping pasted into the gigantic scrapbook. Jou flipped back through the earlier pages, marveling at how many articles had been cut out of the paper. Every game Kaiba Corp released, every press conference Seto spoke at, and every article about upcoming holiday toys was there. As Jou neared the middle of the scrapbook, he found articles about Mokuba’s accomplishments in school. Getting top grades, a science prize, graduating to go on to a career at Kaiba Corp, and so on. The scrapbook seemed to be an anthology of every mention of Mokuba or Kaiba Corp that had made the newspaper. A little obsessive, Jou reflected, but not dangerous.

A name printed in bold caught Jou’s attention. It was a name Jou had read before. As he scanned the newsprint, he realized he was looking at the obituary of one of the old Kaiba Corp security guards. Jou turned through the scrapbook again, looking at each page carefully. Mixed in with stories about donations to art centers and orphanages, Jou found a total of sixty three obituaries. All of the Kaiba Corp security guards were there, along with several others who had worked for Kaiba Corp through the years.

One whole page as devoted to articles about a male secretary who had trapped Seto in a sex scandal years earlier. In quotes, the man came across as a hurt young boy, someone who had been deceived by his boss and forced into a homosexual relationship against his will, then tossed aside when his boss was satisfied. The articles said Seto never denied the allegations, but that he didn’t seem to see anything wrong with his behavior. The last article on the page was the man’s obituary. It said he died in a rock climbing accident in New Zealand, almost a year after the date of the original articles.

Jou flipped back through more pages. The first page contained a picture of a stern looking man in a crisp suit, followed by the headline: Billionaire Entrepreneur Commits Suicide. The article was a coldly written account of the death of Kaiba Gozoboro, detailing how security footage showed him throwing himself off of a balcony on the top floor of the Kaiba Corp building. It gave a brief history of how Kaiba Corporation had grown from a small parts manufacturer to a leading engineering firm, designing missiles, armored vehicles, and explosive devices for various military applications. The article ended with a paragraph detailing the future of Kaiba Seto and Kaiba Mokuba, who were to be placed with a legal guardian until the age of majority and their inheritance held in trust for them until they were old legally adults. The future of Kaiba Corporation apparently looked bleak. A handwritten note was scribbled across the bottom of the page. All it said was I’m sorry.

The next page contained a picture of Seto, wearing his classic smirk and his trademark trench coat, standing before a podium at a press conference. Behind him stood the men of the Kaiba Corp board of directors, minus the Big Five who had supported Gozoboro even after death. A younger but somehow more disturbed looking Roland stood just a few feet behind Seto, scanning the crowd of reporters from behind a pair of sunglasses. The headline read: Stepping Into His Father’s Shoes.

The articles went on to detail Seto’s rise to power, he emancipation, his assumption of the job of CEO, and how he got custody of Mokuba. Jou turned through the scrapbook slowly, this time looking at every article. Everything the Kaiba brothers had done since Seto took over was in this scrapbook, and everything Mokuba had accomplished in school and college. Along with every single obituary.

Jou calmly turned the scrapbook back to the most recent page and left it as he’d found it. He returned to the room Yugi and Mokuba shared, grabbed the video game he told Yugi he’d borrow, then hurried out of the room. He put on the only suit he had that was still clean and in one piece, then practically sprinted downstairs. He tossed Resident Evil onto the sofa in the game room, then headed for the garage. He drove the same BMW he’d borrowed yesterday, heading for Kaiba Corp as quickly as traffic allowed.

He debated heading upstairs, but he didn’t know what he would say to Seto, so he lingered in the lobby, looking lost and uncertain. That was how Nakamura Tenchi found him. The doctor had a small boxed lunch in his hands and was strolling through the lobby as though he spent a lot of time there.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Katusya-kun,” the doctor said by way of a greeting.

“Hi doc. What are you doing here?”

“Sakura forgot her lunch. She’s been working more hours than usual, trying to clean up Kaiba-sama’s newest mess. I’m working on a textbook at the moment, so I had time to bring it by.”

“Oh, what are you working on?”

“I’m writing a chapter on honesty and bedside manner for medical students. Patients seldom appreciate having their physician beat around the bush to try and soften a blow, but it’s everyone’s first instinct to try anyway. You look like you’re recovering well. How’s your arm?”

“Better, thanks. It’s still stiff and I don’t quite have a full range of motion yet, but I think in another week or so I’ll be good as new.”

“And no new bruises, either. Does that mean Kaiba-sama has finally given up on you?”

“No,” Jou blushed and rubbed the back of his head. “No, we’ve kinda worked stuff out.”

“Glad to hear it. I saw your picture in the paper, arresting that foul woman, and I thought that you and Seto might have found a way to get along after that.”

“I hope we do,” Jou agreed. “I was actually just trying to work up the nerve to go talk to him. Hey, Doc…” Jou took a deep breath. “You’ve been his doc since he was a boy, right? Since before his step-dad got killed?”

Jou said nothing when the doctor caught himself half-way through nodding.

“Yeah, I thought you were. But I shouldn’t even ask you the sort of questions I’m thinking, cause you can’t tell me anyway. You’re a doctor, after all.”

“Well,” Nakamura looked around at the crowded lobby, then met Jou’s eyes. “You can always ask. I might not be able to answer, but you can always ask.”

“Did Gozoboro hurt both of them? I’ve seen the cell in the basement of the Kaiba mansion,” said Jou, slipping more into cop mode than he would have liked. “Did he hurt both of them.”

Nakamura said nothing. He shut his eyes, trembling slightly, but he didn’t move. That was all the answer Jou needed.

“Did you know about it?”

The doctor took a shaking breath. “Many of us who began our careers working for Kaiba Gozoboro have stayed on here at Kaiba Corp because we have a great deal to atone for,” he said softly.

“How long? How long did it go on?”

Nakamura met his eyes. “Years,” he whispered. “I have done my best to make amends for my lack of action during those years,” he continued. “Kaiba Gozoboro was a dangerous man. Everyone who worked for him lived in terror of him, giving in to his every demand out of fear that they would come home and find their loved ones raped or killed. Kaiba-sama was the only one in the world who ever had the courage to stand up to him. It was disheartening, seeing a fourteen-year-old boy with the courage to do what so many of us should have done… Roland and I have done our best to take care of Kaiba-sama since that day.”

“Roland knew?”

“You said you’re a bodyguard, Katusya-kun. Do your clients do anything on your watch that you are not aware of?”

“How many others has Seto hurt?”

For the frist time, Nakamura looked puzzled.

“I know about the security guards, and the secretary who betrayed him. How many others has he hurt?”

“To the best of my knowledge, Kaiba-sama has never hurt anyone else. What security guards, what secretary?”

“If you don’t know, than Roland will,” said Jou with certainty. A bodyguard protected their principal, and their principal never did anything a bodyguard wasn’t aware of. Jou headed passed the elevators to the small hallway that housed the security offices of Kaiba Corp. Roland had given him a tour, after the whole Hiroshi fiasco.

Jou found Roland sitting at a desk, watching several monitors. Two showed Seto and Mokuba’s offices and one was currently displaying a scene from the Kaiba Corp lobby.

“I take it you’re here to turn down the job?” Roland asked with a smile. “You were pacing out there for a long time.”

“I… I don’t know… In order to decide, I need to know what type of man I’m going to be working for. And I think you might be the only person in the world who can answer a question I have about Seto.”

“Fire away,” said Roland, leaning back in his desk chair.

“How many people has Seto killed, besides Gozoboro?”

Something in the desk chair cracked and Roland tumbled backwards. He jumped to his feet, righted his chair, and sat back down, leaning forward to face Jou. “That is a grave accusation, young man. I hope you don’t go around upsetting Mr. Kaiba with that nonsense.”

“I can understand why you wouldn’t want to say anything,” said Jou, keeping his voice calm. “All those years of watching what that bastard did to them… Never having the balls to do anything about it… I would feel awfully guilty, if I had let something like that happen. Worse yet, knowing each of my subordinates let it happen, too… Knowing that some of them sat there and jacked off while they watched…”

Jou was worried that last bit might have been going a bit far, but from the look on the other man’s face and the way he paled, Jou knew he’d hit it right on.

“Did you make him take care of the security guards, too, or were you finally man enough to do it yourself?”

Roland pushed a small button on his desk. Three large men rushed in a moment later. “Escort Mr. Wheeler out of the building. Confiscate his Kaiba Manor transmitter. He is not to be allowed on any Kaiba property again.”

Jou stared at the old bodyguard, not sure if he should argue or just go along with the dismissal. “You really think Kaiba’s going to allow that without an explanation?”

“I think,” Roland stood up and straightened his suit, “That there are times when a client must trust their bodyguard’s judgment. Get him out of here.”

Jou didn’t resist as two of the men goose-necked his wrists and held his arms behind his back. The third carefully plucked Jou’s transmitter from the collar of his undershirt. They pushed him out of the security offices and back passed the bank of elevators.

“Jou!” He heard a concerned voice shout after him. In the lobby, Yugi and Mokuba ran up to them. “Jou, what’s going on?” Yugi asked, out of breath.

“I pissed Roland off, I’m afraid. He says I’m no longer welcome on Kaiba Corp property.”

“Like hell,” Mokuba hissed. “Release this man at once,” he ordered the security guards. “Come on, we’ll go up to my office and fix this.”

“Transmitter,” Jou held out his hand to the third guard. The man glared but reluctantly dropped the small pin into Jou’s hand.

Both of Mokuba’s eyebrows rose at the sight. “This is serious, isn’t it. Jou, why don’t you come with me. Yugi, would you mind going to lunch without me? I’ll try and smooth everything over quick and meet you there.”

“Alright,” the smaller man nodded. “See you later, Jou!”

Jou waved as Yugi left, even though his wrist hurt.

Mokuba growled at the linger guards. “Get lost! This man is welcome here and in my family’s home. This is a misunderstanding with your supervisor and I intend to correct it immediately. You have ten seconds to walk away before I fire you for your insubordination.”

The men exchanged nervous glances. “But Mr. Roland was very clear,” one of them said. “He wouldn’t have ordered the man removed if he wasn’t a threat to the safety and security of Kaiba Corp.”

Mokuba sighed. “Perhaps at your next job you will all learn to count. You are all dismissed! You will turn in your badges, access cards, and uniforms within twenty minutes or I will tell Human Resources to deduct the costs from your last check. Now, get out of my building.”

Jou shivered at the icy chill in Mokuba’s voice. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure that being rescued by Mokuba was all that it was cracked up to be. The obituaries he’d found were in Mokuba’s scrapbook, after all.