The Prosecutor’s Office’s Proposal Chapter 68

That was why the eldest son couldn’t open the front door after coming home from school. He called his father to confirm the password, then got into an argument, complaining about why he couldn’t have told him in advance to avoid such trouble. A deep sense of guilt was buried in the statement of the eldest son, who had expressed his dissatisfaction so fiercely.

Every single word the son had uttered became an ominous clue, etched into my pupils. A cold chill spread white beneath my fingernails. I had no choice but to admit it.

“So, there was no opportunity for anyone else.”

“Given the circumstances, there’s no room for doubt. At the time, President Kang Woosung was feeling anxious, suffering under various pressures while preparing for the opening of the casino. He often changed the password, thinking that someone might break into his house and threaten him.”

“…So there wouldn’t have been any other suspects besides his two sons and Lee Gilyoung.”

“Moreover, Lee Gilyoung’s DNA was even found on the awl.”

“From the police’s perspective, they wouldn’t have even felt the need to investigate this case further once they arrested Lee Gilyoung.”

Mr. Joo nodded slowly. I averted my eyes from the report I had been reading. I forced strength into my voice, which was threatening to collapse.

“Why did he come back out? It would have been enough to commit the murder while dropping him off.”

“He must have been waiting for the right moment. He came out, then decided the time was right and went back in. President Kang Woosung was dead drunk at the time.”

“It’s certainly similar in method to the Grandma Park awl-murder case. My father is already dead, so why are the modus operandi of the two cases identical? Unless it’s the same perpetrator.”

“From Oh Jahyeon’s perspective, it was a murder case she incited but wasn’t caught for. She must have imitated it when she killed the grandmother.”

My father entered President Kang Woosung’s house twice. Both times, he typed in the password.

There was one thing I was curious about. Why didn’t the second son know that his father was being murdered?

The answer was in the autopsy report. President Kang Woosung was ambushed from behind. He didn’t even have a chance to scream. The first strike of the awl was to the neck, piercing sharply through to the other side. My skin crawled the entire time I was reading the autopsy report, giving me a strange feeling.

Since the victim had turned his back on the perpetrator, it was certain that the killer was someone familiar. Since he had typed the password twice, Lee Gilyoung was definitely the culprit.

It was certain, but… I was still struggling to find some hope.

Mr. Joo did not interrupt me while I was engrossed in the materials. I sat opposite him with the desk in between, frantically scanning the documents.

My father’s method of committing the crime was excessively cruel. The warm, kind face from my memories kept surfacing, making my eyes heat up, but I tried to exclude my emotions. Just as I had always done until now. After speed-reading the vast amount of materials for nearly an hour, focusing mainly on the parts Mr. Joo had marked, I lifted my head.

“The person who killed Grandma Park definitely must have imitated the Lee Gilyoung case. When Lee Gilyoung killed President Kang Woosung, he pierced the neck with the first strike and then stabbed him fifteen more times. It was complete overkill. Even down to leaving the awl stuck in the neck at the end as if to display it…. Even the fact that it was a grudge murder rather than a contract killing was perfectly imitated.”

It was hard enough to accept that my father had committed a contract killing of his friend, but it was even harder to believe he could murder someone with such emotional cruelty. It didn’t match the personality of the father I knew in the slightest.

However, because of the DNA detected on the awl and the act of entering by typing in the password that had been changed that very afternoon, the possibility that anyone other than Lee Gilyoung had killed President Kang Woosung had completely vanished. All physical evidence pointed to Lee Gilyoung.

The expectation I had struggled to hold onto my entire life—to believe in my father—was trampled into the dust. My heart ached sharply. I felt an urge to deny the objective truth because of the pain, but the terrifying voice of Mr. Joo, who had scolded me at the playground, blocked any foolish judgment.

‘If you ever dare to spout that bullshit about how your father wasn’t that kind of person or that you don’t believe it in front of me again, don’t think I’ll go easy on you.’

I clenched my fists and tried to accept the objective facts.

My father killed him. I blinked my hot eyelids.

Mr. Joo readily affirmed it.

“It is exactly the same method as the Grandma Park awl-murder case. After all, he stabbed the grandmother twenty times with an awl and left the house’s own awl stuck in her neck as a disguise.”

“Do you think Oh Jahyeon herself was the one who killed the grandmother?”

“Yes. The grandmother opened the door willingly to the killer, and she, too, was stabbed from behind. It has to be someone familiar. Oh Jahyeon had been the grandmother’s patient for a long time. Furthermore, since a woman is perfectly capable of subduing a 70-year-old grandmother who is resisting, she could easily have executed it herself.”

“If the culprit is Oh Jahyeon, why would she go so far as to reproduce the President Kang Woosung murder case so exactly when killing the grandmother? Did she feel safe because it was a murder she had incited herself without getting caught?”

As I flipped through the autopsy photos of President Kang Woosung, I was seized by another intense intuition.

It’s too identical. In that case.

“I think the awl left stuck in President Kang Woosung’s body was also a disguise. Lee Gilyoung took the real weapon he had brought with him. Could it be that Oh Jahyeon received that weapon, kept it, and then used it in the grandmother case as well? That’s why she might have thought to reproduce the scene.”

It was a somewhat bold hypothesis, but after hearing my speculation, Mr. Joo shifted his back away from the chair he had been leaning against. He looked at me with a burning gaze, just like the time I deduced that the awl stuck in the grandmother’s body couldn’t have been the real murder weapon. It was a cold heat, different from when we had sex.

“I think so, too. Lee Gilyoung must have taken the awl he used with him and instead inserted the one that was already in the house. Because he approached from behind and stabbed him in the neck first, President Kang Woosung died without even being able to scream, and that’s why the second son didn’t hear his father’s screams.”

“Yes, it’s reasonable to assume Lee Gilyoung took the real murder weapon and it ended up in Oh Jahyeon’s hands. Oh Jahyeon used that weapon when she killed the grandmother eight years later, and just like Lee Gilyoung did, she must have inserted an awl found in the grandmother’s house as a fake. That explains why she went to the trouble of staging the murder weapon.”

“She must have felt burdened to keep a weapon that had murdered two people, I suppose. There probably was also an intention to confuse the investigation.”

As expected, Prosecutor Joo Taeson was thinking along similar lines. I nodded.

“That’s right. What if she had left it behind and President Kang Woosung’s DNA had been detected on it? She surely would have cleaned the weapon thoroughly, but she must have been afraid. Oh Jahyeon wouldn’t have wanted to take the risk of the police struggling to find the real murder weapon. That’s why she insisted on inserting a different awl.”

Talking about my father’s case for such a long time under the premise that he was the culprit made my heart sting with every word.

‘Isn’t that a bit strange? He’s your own father, yet you call him Lee Gilyoung, Lee Gilyoung quite easily.’

Mr. Joo’s words also cut through my heart.

My uncle had forced me not to let it be known that I was the child of a murderer, and at some point, it had become comfortable for me. Calling him by his name like he was a stranger seemed to make the scarlet letter pinned to my chest fall off for a moment. But Mr. Joo’s observation poked at my habit like a stone in the road beneath my feet.

He thought for a moment before opening his mouth again.

“But why on earth would she use that weapon again? And does this method of murder really suit Oh Jahyeon?”

I lifted my eyes in slight surprise. Until now, Mr. Joo had been convinced solely of the fact that Oh Jahyeon was the perpetrator.

“Are you considering the possibility that it might not be Oh Jahyeon?”

“That’s not it. Oh Jahyeon is involved one way or another. The only person who benefited from these cases is Oh Jahyeon. Because President Kang Woosung died, Osong was able to win the casino hotel construction bid. Although she couldn’t return to Osong, she eventually became a casino director. She didn’t have a good relationship with her deceased husband, but she was able to end her marriage without dividing the property. On top of that, the grandmother, her personal doctor, who died three days later, suffered in the exact same way President Kang Woosung was murdered. This is a single circle with the same beginning and end. It cannot be broken.”

“What was the personal doctor’s specialty?”

“Obstetrics and gynecology.”

“Does Oh Jahyeon have children?”

“No. Still, she needs a personal doctor. She had been Oh Jahyeon’s patient ever since that grandmother opened her practice.”

“You said Oh Jahyeon’s husband died of a heart attack.”