Chapter 25.3

Park Han Dong and His Dongsaeng (3)

“What’s a cop doing here?”

I went to say something, but instead wordlessly shut my mouth.

I thought I could understand it now.

Her reason for not wanting to report the Spaniel; it was distrust of the police.

On top of that, it hadn’t been long since Park Han-Dong had been thrown in prison.

The dongsaeng growled at me threateningly.

“If you’re trying to fool my brother, I won’t let you get away with it.”

“I’m not- Hey, wait!”

Buzzz- Buzzz-

The dongsaeng suddenly slipped past me and headed into the visitation room.

Then, with perfect timing, my handphone started buzzing.

The caller was Mong-Doo.

He was supposed to be meeting up with his girlfriend, so why the sudden call?

I had a bad feeling about this.

Every time this sort of thing happened…

“Hello?”

-Newbie. What should we do? It looks like we won’t be able to go out for drinks today.

A new case was opened.

I took a deep breath before replying.

If I’m being called in on a day like today, that means it has to be a serious incident.

It looked like I would have to use my paid vacation next time.

“When on earth will we get to rest?”

-When we’re under the earth.

“That’s terrible.”

-Anyway, just get here quickly. A really crazy bastard has just come in…”

“Understood.”

I hung up the phone and took a look back at the visitation room.

But Park Han-Dong’s dongsaeng had already disappeared inside.

That was almost the last time that I ever saw her.

***

When I opened the office door, I got a feeling that something unusual had happened.

This was because all the other detectives were missing, leaving only a skeleton crew behind.

Of course that skeleton crew was made up of our Violent Crime Task Force, Team 2.

“Where have the other teams gone?”

“Turning over trash cans.”

Black returned my question with a curt answer.

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand what that meant.

Why were they out overturning perfectly good trash cans when the sun was about to set?

Black suddenly shot up and started roaring in annoyance.

“Why on earth does our beloved Korea have so many criminal bastards? The ink hasn’t even dried yet on all these damn files for the drug abuse and assault charges!”

“Stop complaining. These are only half of the files, we shared the rest with the Gangnam station.”

Mong-Doo threw cold water onto Black’s fiery rage.

Since the number of guys we had arrested was so high, a lot had to be transferred to each of the nearby stations, creating a lot of paperwork.

Fortunately I had been able to rest up at the hospital without a care.

I took off my jacket and sat at my desk.

“Anyway, what’s going on? Why has everyone left without even leaving behind some guys to watch the office?”

“Well. I can’t really say whether it is or it isn’t a case for us to handle.”

“…huh?”

What the Team Leader had just said confused me.

Taking mercy on my bewilderment, Mong-Doo spoke up.

“It looks like an Amsu crime.”

An Amsu crime.

These are crimes that we know have occured, but can’t be processed and put on record because it wasn’t recognized to be a crime by the law or because of various other problems.

But what did he mean by, it ‘looks like’ an Amsu crime?

“Yesterday, a man came in confessing to a murder, but we only have his testimony and there’s no corpse or murder weapon.”

“If that’s the case, isn’t it just a wash?”

“That’s why Team 1 just tried to shoo him off. After all, we do sometimes get strange kids coming in and pulling stuff like this. But this guy refused to leave no matter what and pulled something out of his pocket.”

“Out of his pocket?”

“It was a woman’s shoe, a flat. He said that when he had come to his senses, it was already in his pocket.”

“Hm. Couldn’t he just be a crazy person?”

“Don’t know. But at the very least they needed to investigate the claim first. So the shoe was sent to the forensics unit, but a report came back saying that they had found the DNA of a woman who went missing a year ago. There were also traces of blood from five other unidentified sources.”

Traces of blood from a whole five unidentified sources?

If this was real, then this might just be a huge cae.

“So he was detained and interrogated, but he said that he threw away all his belongings before he arrived at the police station?”

“And that’s why everyone has dashed out. Because they need to find the evidence before the garbage trucks make their rounds.”

“Whether or not he’s playing around, he’s one crazy bastard.”

It could certainly still be just a joke.

It could be that something he had picked up by chance, just happened to match a missing person’s case.

Because the world has seen all kinds of crazy coincidences.

But I had to say.

I didn’t know why, but I was getting a sense of familiarity from all of this.

It seemed to fit the timing, but there’s no way it could be, right…?

From the depths of my memories, I recalled a certain man.