The Prosecutor’s Office’s Proposal Chapter 52

Just as many families of perpetrators insist. Remembering their brazenness again, the disgust made me feel nauseous.

The son of a man who committed suicide in prison after being arrested for murder went to the police academy. To find out if his father was truly a sinner. It was a plausible hypothesis.

I flicked my index finger, tapped Lee Chaeha’s photo with a sound, and shoved the application form into a corner of my drawer. It was also then that I decided I had to keep an eye on what kind of police officer this brat would become.

Even though a criminal’s blood is not hereditary, it was hard to imagine that Lee Chaeha would become a decent police officer. Moreover, since Lee Gilyoung died before being convicted, Lee Chaeha’s record was spotless. I felt that I would be the only one to keep watch over Lee Chaeha.

I pinned Lee Gilyoung’s mugshot and newspaper articles to an empty board. A round silver magnet held the newspaper scraps firmly in place.

After that, I occasionally sought out news about Lee Chaeha. Lee Chaeha, who had been attending school quietly, couldn’t shake off rumors after being branded with the stigma of pestering a male sunbae around his second year. With the high ratio of male students at the police academy, I could clearly picture how grueling his school life must have been.

I briefly thought of it as Lee Gilyoung’s karma, but the rational judgment that just because his father was a murderer, the son didn’t have to suffer, also coexisted. I wondered if he would drop out, but Lee Chaeha endured the rumors and eventually graduated from Seoul Police University.

He must have worked hard, exercising and undergoing training for four years, but the face of Lee Chaeha that appeared in the graduation album still had fair skin and a youthful appearance. His neat, kind-looking impression remained the same as well.

“…With a face this pretty, it’s no wonder perverted bastards would flock to him. I’m sure that sunbae bastard messed with him.”

I flicked my index finger against the new photo of Lee Chaeha and shoved it into the corner of the drawer, on top of his application form.

Around that time, Oh Jahyeon’s face was positioned in the center of the whiteboard in my study. All around it, materials regarding the murder cases were plastered like a collage.

‘President Kang Woosung’s Ice Pick Murder Case’

‘Oh Jahyeon’s Husband’s Death Case’

‘Grandma Park’s Ice Pick Murder Case’

There were three.

It was difficult to find any specific charges for President Kang Woosung’s ice pick murder case because Lee Gilyoung had died. So, while digging through similar cases that used ice picks, I learned the fact that a case with the same modus operandi had occurred at the Osong Apartment.

The late Grandma Park was Oh Jahyeon’s personal doctor 20 years ago, and three days before that grandmother died, Oh Jahyeon’s husband died of a heart attack. Oh Jahyeon’s classmate, President Kang Woosung, and the grandmother who was her doctor. Two people related to Oh Jahyeon had been murdered and passed away.

So, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that Oh Jahyeon’s husband might have been murdered as well. Although there was no evidence. I suspected that the grandmother, who was a doctor when she was young, might have obtained the drugs to help Oh Jahyeon kill her husband and then been eliminated herself.

The initial start was just a hypothesis with no evidence, a mere suspicion. However, I gradually became unable to consider other possibilities.

Oh Jahyeon must have killed them all. Those who stood in her way.

I was buried in a monstrous thought that I had been staring at for a long time. My objectivity was falling into the abyss. I noticed my fall, but there was no way to overcome gravity.

That was why I desperately needed someone else to look at these cases with me, but Prosecutor Yoon had passed away a long time ago, and it was difficult to find a capable investigator to pull into my nonsensical deductions. Of course, even if I found such an investigator, they wouldn’t devote their time and effort to a case that wouldn’t help their career.

Furthermore, although the prosecution had investigative powers, in reality, it was the police’s job. Most prosecutors and investigators were too busy to even passively read the materials brought by the police.

And not long after, the case of Lee Chaeha, who had become a police officer, landed in my hands. Just like he did at thirteen, he called the prosecutor’s office directly and visited the branch where I was working at the time.

I faced Lee Chaeha in person for the first time, whom I had only seen in photos for years. His facial features were more distinct than they appeared in the photos, and his large eyes overflowed with various uncontainable emotions.

However, perhaps because the world he had lived in was not as easy as I had thought, his face was exhausted and expressionless, unlike the look in his eyes. It looked different from the life I had read from his resume.

“Hello, Prosecutor. I am Lieutenant Lee Chaeha from Hanpo Police Station.”

“I’m Prosecutor Joo Taeson. I was planning to contact you anyway. Shall we go into the inner office and talk?”

“Yes, Prosecutor.”

It was summer, so the sunlight was hot. When I turned on the small air conditioner attached to the annex office and turned around, Lee Chaeha was cooling the sweat that had gathered while coming up by fanning himself with his hand. The neckline revealed above his white shirt was long.

“It will be cool soon.”

“Thank you.”

“Sit down.”

“Yes.”

I sat in my seat and asked about his well-being briefly.

“I heard you’re from the police academy; isn’t life in the violent crimes unit tough? Your colleagues even reported you to the Internal Affairs Department.”

“It’s because I was greedy to work in the violent crimes unit.”

“Shall we look at the evidence you brought?”

“Yes.”

He handed me a brown envelope he had been holding onto tightly, as if it were an important item. As I took it, our fingers brushed, and Lee Chaeha recoiled as if something creepy had touched him, pulling his arm back. He curled his fingers, which were trembling slightly, and placed his hands on his knees.

If Lee Chaeha and I touch, I should be the one feeling disgust. Since the other person was acting that way, it made me feel strangely sadistic. I wanted to grab the wrist that looked like it would snap if I squeezed a little too hard and tell him that I was the one who should be feeling unpleasant about this accidental contact—I, who had touched ‘Lee Gilyoung’s son.’ Instead, however, I swallowed the saliva pooling in my mouth and pulled the materials out of the envelope Lee Chaeha had prepared.

Lee Chaeha explained the evidence.

“This is the original copy of the loan agreement that was submitted to the Internal Affairs Department as evidence that I received bribes. It was hard to find.”

These days, politicians or public officials usually take bribes by writing up loan agreements. It was money they had no intention of actually returning, but it was to use as an excuse that they had borrowed the money if they were ever caught for bribery. From the perspective of the bribe-giver, it was a mutually beneficial strategy since they could wave the loan agreement to demand the money back if the other party didn’t fulfill their promise.

The evidence for Lee Chaeha’s bribery charges was also a loan agreement.

“How did you find it?”

“I looked through all the financial case records from the cases handled in the last two years by the detective who reported me to the Internal Affairs Department.”

“How did you get the conviction that it would be in that detective’s case files?”

“I didn’t. It just happened to be two years as I went back from the most recent ones; I was planning to look back as far as ten years.”

It was remarkable persistence. I didn’t need to confirm the fact that that willpower must have been what kept Lee Chaeha going until now.

“Why did you think the same loan agreement would be among that detective’s case files? He could have written a new one.”

“The handwriting on the loan agreement was unique. No one at the Hanpo Police Station has similar handwriting. And I thought that a detective—a profession that knows more about handwriting analysis than anyone else—would never take the risk of writing it themselves. People with knowledge of investigation find it harder to fabricate evidence by creating something out of nothing. They try to utilize what they already have.”

Having been trained while attending the police academy, he answered clearly and neatly, but Lee Chaeha looked like he was about to burst into tears. His downcast gaze wavered, and while he wasn’t speaking, he rubbed his knees with his white fingertips. The sunlight coming through the gap in the curtains cast a transparent shadow on his face along his prominent nose bridge.

He seemed to feel wronged by being framed, and also appeared to regret his own choice to specifically choose the violent crimes unit. Countless unorganized emotions were scattered across his face, but his demeanor was neat. That discrepancy created an even more impressive atmosphere.

“Actually, even if Lieutenant Lee Chaeha hadn’t brought the evidence, I would have judged it as a false accusation. The evidence submitted by the Internal Affairs Department was crude, malicious, and insufficient. I was planning to drop the charges with a non-indictment decision.”

“…Really?”