Rising Sun: A Novel by Michael Crichton Page B

said.
    “How do you know?”
    “I gave up a perfectly good pen to find out,” he said. “Now come on.” He started walking toward the stairs leading down to the garage. I followed him.
    “You see,” Connor said, “when Phillips first explainedthat simple system of rotation, it was immediately clear to me that there might have been a switch. The question was how to prove it.”
    His voice echoed in the concrete stairwell. Connor continued down, taking the steps two at a time. I hurried to keep up.
    Connor said, “If somebody switched the tapes, how would they go about it? They would be working hastily, under pressure. They’d be terrified of making a mistake. They certainly wouldn’t want to leave any incriminating tapes behind. So probably they’d switch an entire set, and replace it. But replace it with what? They can’t just put in the next set. Since there are only nine sets of tapes all together, it would be too easy for someone to notice that one set was missing, and the total was now eight. There would be an obvious empty drawer. No, they would have to replace the set they were taking away with an entirely new set. Twenty brand-new tapes. And that meant I ought to check the trash.”
    “That’s why you threw your pen away?”
    “Yes. I didn’t want Phillips to know what I was doing.”
    “And?”
    “The trash was full of crumpled plastic wrappers. The kind that new videotapes come wrapped in.”
    “I see.”
    “Once I knew the tapes had been replaced, the only remaining question was, which set? So I played dumb, and looked in all the drawers. You probably noticed that set C, the set Phillips removed when he came on duty, had slightly whiter labels than the other sets. It was subtle, because the office has only been active two months, but you could tell.”
    “I see.” Somebody had come into the security room, taken out twenty fresh tapes, unwrapped them, written new labels, and popped them into the video machines, replacing the original tapes that had recorded the murder.
    I said, “If you ask me, Phillips knows more about this than he was telling us.”
    “Maybe,” Connor said, “but we have more important things to do. Anyway, there’s a limit to what he knows. Themurder was phoned in about eight-thirty. Phillips arrived at quarter to nine. So he never saw the murder. We can assume the previous guard, Cole, did. But by a quarter of nine, Cole was gone, and an unknown Japanese man was in the security room, closing up a briefcase.”
    “You think he’s the one who switched the tapes?”
    Connor nodded. “Very possibly. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this man was the killer himself. I hope to find that out at Miss Austin’s apartment.” He threw open the door, and we went into the garage.

A line of party guests waited for valets to bring their cars. I saw Ishiguro chatting up Mayor Thomas and his wife. Connor steered me toward them. Standing alongside the mayor, Ishiguro was so cordial he was almost obsequious. He gave us a big smile. “Ah, gentlemen. Is your investigation proceeding satisfactorily? Is there anything more I can do to help?”
    I didn’t get really angry until that moment: until I saw the way he toadied up in front of the mayor. It made me so mad I began to turn red. But Connor took it in stride.
    “Thank you, Ishiguro-san,” he said, with a slight bow. “The investigation is going well.”
    “You’re receiving all the help you requested?” Ishiguro said.
    “Oh, yes,” Connor said. “Everyone has been very cooperative.”
    “Good, good. I’m glad.” Ishiguro glanced at the mayor, and smiled at him, too. He was all smiles, it seemed.
    “But,” Connor said, “there is just one thing.”
    “Just name it. If there is anything we can do …”
    “The security tapes seem to have been removed.”
    “Security tapes?” Ishiguro frowned, clearly caught off guard.
    “Yes,” Connor said. “Recordings from the security cameras.”
    “I don’t know