The Prosecutor’s Office’s Proposal Chapter 79

Prosecutor Joo turned the steering wheel smoothly and said.

“I was lying in bed yesterday thinking about it, but the fact that he stabbed the first child to death with a knife and suffocated the second child still bothers me. I feel like there must be a reason why he bothered to use different methods of murder.”

“That’s true. Perhaps… could it be that Ahn Dongjin and Lee Hyunsu did it together? That would explain everything—both why the methods of killing the children were different and why the knife was found back in Lee Hyunsu’s house. One of them took charge of killing one child each, and Lee Hyunsu recovered the knife.”

As if reviewing my hypothesis, Prosecutor Joo tapped the steering wheel lightly with his fingertips. He didn’t answer for quite a while, but it seemed he had judged it to be a possibility.

“That possibility should be considered, too. But if that were the case, I don’t think there would have been any need for Ahn Dongjin to buy a watermelon and go to his friend’s house with his wife. It feels like he deliberately created an excuse to get his hands on the knife, and that bothers me.”

The knife. That was it. This entire case hung on that knife.

It was certain that someone had killed the first child with a knife with a broken tip, and Lee Hyunsu had developed a phobia of sharp points after getting stabbed, leading him to grind down all the knife tips in his house. According to an inquiry I made with the detective in charge this morning, Lee Hyunsu’s phobia was so severe that he didn’t even keep scissors in his house.

Prosecutor Joo finally hinted at his inner thoughts to me only when we were right on the verge of conducting the investigation.

“On the day they bought the watermelon, could it be that one of the couple just went over to get blood on the knife? While using a different knife for the actual act?”

“A different knife?”

“They just need to grind the tip to look similar, right?”

It’s a method that is hard to detect, but the probability wasn’t zero. The method of framing Lee Hyunsu, an ex-convict, by only getting blood on his knife, then making a similar knife to do the stabbing. I am currently investigating a murder case where Prosecutor Joo and a suspect swapped an awl—why couldn’t I think of that?

That was the case of the retired obstetrician grandmother who was killed with an awl. In that case, too, the awl inserted into Grandma Park’s body was not the murder weapon used in the crime. Although the police and prosecution didn’t know that at the time.

I don’t know if it’s a wrong hypothesis, but a pure sense of respect arose for Prosecutor Joo’s sharp conjecture.

“That seems more realistic than the hypothesis that Ahn Dongjin and Lee Hyunsu conspired together. They might have secured an opportunity to get blood on it by buying the watermelon.”

“That’s right.”

“But if that’s the case, why would he bother going with his wife?”

At my point, he nodded slowly and affirmed. Every time that happened, I felt recognized as an investigator, which gave me the courage to voice my questions or hypotheses each time.

When I was in the violent crimes division during my police days, I couldn’t properly express my opinions, so I couldn’t influence the investigation even a little bit. There was no one who would listen, either.

“Officer Lee pointed it out sharply. Indeed. Why on earth did he go with his wife? I’ll have to call the couple in separately and take their statements again. And if we can’t find evidence within a few days that Ahn Dongjin made a knife identical to the one owned by Lee Hyunsu, we’ll eventually have to indict Lee Hyunsu. If we can’t find the evidence, we have to stop the imagination.”

“We must. After all, physical evidence is always right.”

I hesitated for a moment before adding.

“It doesn’t feel right to suspect the victim’s parents. I feel sorry if I’m wrong.”

“It’s the fate of a victim’s family.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

The car stopped in a small neighborhood. It was an exceptionally remote village located on the opposite side of the casino. Aside from a small supermarket in the neighborhood, there was nowhere to buy goods, large marts were very far away, and there were no apartment complexes in the vicinity.

I opened the car door, got out, and quickly put on my coat. I was envious of Prosecutor Joo, who didn’t shiver from the cold even while wearing a thin coat; the wind was that frigid.

I was about to enter the entrance of the hardware store when Prosecutor Joo grabbed my arm and stopped me. He wrapped his own muffler around my neck.

“Why are you doing this?”

Stunned by his sudden abnormal behavior, I looked up at him and asked back.

“Are you doing this because you’re sorry for what happened on Saturday?”

“Why should I be sorry for what happened on Saturday?”

“That’s because….”

I couldn’t bring myself to speak of what happened at Prosecutor Joo’s house that day, so I pressed my lips tightly together.

He had pressed on even after I told him to stop and said it hurt, so wouldn’t he have reason to be sorry? Even if it was done by mutual consent.

Looking down at me, unable to answer, Prosecutor Joo clicked his tongue lightly.

“You’re a handful even when I’m being good to you. Let’s go in.”

His warm muffler, imbued with Prosecutor Joo’s body temperature, touched my neck. I deliberately wrapped the muffler tight, as if to trap his warmth, and walked into the hardware store.

The hardware store was very large, and a middle-aged woman who looked exhausted was manning the counter. We both walked toward the back counter, piercing through the smell of iron piled up in every corner of the shop and the thick, pale dust layered heavily in the air. At first, she suspected that we were con artists, but she became cooperative once we presented our identification.

The owner opened an old, dented metal desk drawer and took out a thick ledger. It was an old-fashioned hardware store without even a POS terminal. She said with an indifferent face.

“Ask what you’re curious about.”

I took out a photo of Lee Hyunsu and held it out, asking.

“Do you know this person?”

“Yes, this gentleman. I know him. The gentleman who brings a knife and asks me to sharpen the tip.”

“Since when did he start coming to ask you to sharpen the knife?”

“Since he got out of prison.”

I was slightly surprised that the owner knew Lee Hyunsu was an ex-convict. I locked eyes with Prosecutor Joo, then broke away and asked again.

“How did you know he had been in prison?”

“Everyone in this neighborhood knows what everyone else is doing. There aren’t many people living here, you see. They say this gentleman killed those kids a few weeks ago and went to prison. The wretch, he should be sentenced to death.”

The owner clicked her tongue and cursed. Prosecutor Joo held out Ahn Dongjin’s photo to the owner.

“Then, by any chance, do you know this person as well?”

“No, I don’t know him.”

“Then what about this person?”

The second photo was Han Sujin. The owner shook her head as expected.

“No, I don’t think I’ve seen either of them. Do they live in this neighborhood?”

“It is difficult to disclose personal information. Then, from an expert’s perspective, would it be possible for an individual to sharpen a knife tip at home to the extent requested by Mr. Lee Hyunsu? By purchasing tools?”

“Oh my, that level is difficult. It’s not just sharpening. He is so afraid of sharp things that the tip has to be cut off first before it can be sharpened. How would an ordinary person cut a knife tip at home? They should do it at a place like this, or go to a professional knife sharpener.”

I obtained important information from the owner. That if Ahn Dongjin were the culprit, there must be a place where he sharpened the knife. Only then would it be possible to leave a similar mark on the first child’s bone without stealing the knife from Lee Hyunsu’s house.

All I had to do was go around to all the shops in Danhyeon City that sharpen knives, and scour the knife-sharpening trucks like looking for a needle in a haystack. There weren’t many, so it wouldn’t be a difficult task. If nothing came up even after that, then Lee Hyunsu was the culprit.

I carefully started the conversation.

“Then, first of all, would there be a record of Mr. Lee Hyunsu using the shop in the ledger?”

“There is, wait a moment.”

The owner, who had seemed listless, had an incredibly good memory. She recalled which month Lee Hyunsu had visited and spread open the ledger to show us. As we photographed the ledger and left the hardware store, I said to Prosecutor Joo.

“Since the owner has such a good memory, it must be true that she hasn’t seen the victim’s parents.”

“I suppose so. Are we thinking too excessively? There are strange points in Ahn Dongjin and Han Sujin’s statements, but… the physical evidence is too certain.”

Prosecutor Joo repeated exactly what I had said to him several times.

Sometimes there are cases like that. Cases where circumstantial evidence is certain but there is no physical evidence at all, or cases where the circumstantial evidence points in one direction but the physical evidence points in another. Whether it’s the former or the latter, the fact that an investigator must find and follow the physical evidence remains unchanged. Because evidence is always more accurate than human conjecture and bias.

The second, third, and fourth hardware stores were also fruitless. The sun dipped rapidly, and the white mist escaping from between our lips grew thicker.

Although we struck out, at every other hardware store, we heard the same opinion—that it would be difficult for someone at home to sharpen a knife tip to be that flat on their own. They said it would have to be cut off using equipment.

We found and visited a few more places that only do knife sharpening, but no one knew Han Sujin or Ahn Dongjin. The February sun had completely submerged beyond the mountains.

Prosecutor Joo and I sat in the dark car, drinking warm coffee for a while to soothe the cold. He gazed steadily out through the dark windshield.