The Prosecutor’s Office’s Proposal Chapter 80

“If it’s impossible for someone to sharpen it at home, then Lee Hyunsu must be the culprit.”

“Don’t you think it’s the father of the children?”

“The more I look around, the more I think so. It seems I’ve been overthinking things because of Oh Jahyeon.”

It was an objective judgment. Prosecutor Joo was a person accustomed to suspicion, and sometimes he became too absorbed in circumstantial evidence.

“As Officer Lee said, the physical evidence is too certain. There are points that make Ahn Dongjin suspicious, but for now, we have to assume it’s not him. For now, if we come up empty-handed today, let’s look at the credit card statements one more time, and if not, let’s drop it. It feels like a foolish deduction. How was it when Officer Lee looked at the statements?”

“As I checked this morning, there were no traces of him purchasing any items that could cut a knife. There were no places that seemed suspicious, either.”

“Let’s go to just one more place, for the last time.”

“Yes, Prosecutor.”

We arrived at a small hardware store following the streetlights laid out like stars. All the places we visited today had some scale, but this was a small-scale shop, and it was located the furthest away from the home of Han Sujin and Ahn Dongjin. I wrapped the muffler Prosecutor Joo had given me around myself properly and went inside.

I first showed the male owner the knife with the cut-off tip. The middle-aged man, who had a small physique that didn’t quite suit a hardware store, widened his eyes and looked up at us.

“Someone else is looking for this knife.”

In an instant, my scalp tingled. Prosecutor Joo and I locked eyes for a moment. A faint excitement was imbued in Prosecutor Joo’s voice as he looked at the owner.

“Was there someone who wanted to buy a similar knife?”

“Yes, they showed me a photo of a knife with the tip cut off like this. They asked if I sold the exact same knife. But this knife has been discontinued. So, I recommended a similar one and they bought it.”

I held out Ahn Dongjin’s photo on Prosecutor Joo’s behalf. The owner shook his head and said firmly.

“That customer was a woman.”

No way….

After hesitating for a moment, I took out Han Sujin’s photo and showed it to him, and the owner nodded without hesitation. Remembering how she had leaned on her husband and cried at the prosecutor’s office, pale goosebumps broke out on the nape of my neck.

“Do you remember when it was?”

“Let’s see. …It was in November.”

The owner answered easily without much thought. Startled, I looked up at Prosecutor Joo again, and he quickly grasped the implications contained in my gaze.

He asked the owner.

“November is almost 3 months ago. How do you remember something that happened 3 months ago?”

Asking why one remembers something is a very important factor in proving the credibility of a witness statement. To Prosecutor Joo’s question, the owner gave an answer right away this time, too.

“The day before that, I went to watch a shamanistic ritual, and I saw the shaman walking on blades. It was the first time I’d ever seen it, and wow, it was incredible. The blades were sharpened to a razor’s edge, but she danced on them so well. But from the day after that, knives were selling like crazy in the shop. For about a week? I wondered if it was because people saw the shaman walking on blades, but then someone came looking for a knife carrying a photo, so I really thought it must be thanks to the ritual.”

The owner’s eyes twinkled like someone secretly sharing a miraculous story as he unfolded the anecdote.

He had watched a ritual where a shaman walks on blades for the first time. It was an event worth remembering.

Not only did it explain why the answer ‘November’ popped out immediately, but the reliability of the statement also rises in such cases. The clearer the reason it remained in his mind, the higher the accuracy of the statement.

This time, I asked the question.

“By any chance, did this woman also ask to have the knife tip sharpened?”

“Yes. She said she’d been stabbed by a knife before? She said she was afraid of sharp points, so she asked me to sharpen it just like the photo. I thought that was strange, too.”

“Then, do you happen to remember the date?”

“I don’t really remember the exact date…. But the guy who performed the ritual is a friend of mine, so if you ask him, you’ll know the date. Just a moment.”

The owner immediately took out his cell phone and called his friend. They must have been close, because his voice grew very loud.

“Hey! It’s me. What date in November was the ritual you did? Answer quickly. There’s a Prosecutor here with me now. Yeah, right, a prosecutor who took the bar exam. Got it. I’ll tell you why they came later. Let’s have a drink.”

The owner finished his noisy call and gave us the date right away. While I took out my blue notebook to record it, Prosecutor Joo looked up and scanned the inside of the hardware store. He pointed to the CCTV hanging in the corner.

“Is that operational?”

“Yes.”

“Could the scene where she bought the knife you just mentioned be recorded?”

“Since there are 3 months’ worth left… yes, it should just barely be there.”

“Could we take a look at it now?”

“What should I do. I have to go drink with my friend…. Could you just take the recorded CCTV?”

“Are you sure that’s okay? It’s even easier for us if you provide it.”

“Yes, of course. When can you return it? Please just return it quickly.”

“We’ll back up the footage and send it by a staff member from the Danhyeon Branch Office tomorrow.”

We removed the internal memory card containing the CCTV footage and put it into an evidence bag.

“With this, will we get a warrant?”

“If her face is properly captured in the footage, we will.”

As soon as we stepped out of the hardware store, I was tapping my feet in anticipation while walking toward the car, but Prosecutor Joo pulled the back of my coat. I was dragged backward helplessly, like someone who was drunk. He took a cigarette out of his inner pocket and held it out.

“It’s been a while.”

I stared at the long, white cigarette.

“Let’s share one.”

“Yes.”

We stood in a remote spot where the streetlight didn’t reach. Prosecutor Joo took out his Zippo lighter, made a wall with his hand, and lit the cigarette. I watched the orange glow flickering on his palm as I usually did, but then I judged that I could ask him a question like this now, so I asked.

“The Zippo lighter looks old; did you receive it as a gift?”

“It’s a keepsake from my late father.”

I thought it was okay to ask, but I had guessed completely wrong. Feeling embarrassed, I inhaled the cigarette smoke and exhaled. Prosecutor Joo took the cigarette from between my fingers, slightly bit the spot I had sucked on with his teeth, and said.

“It’s fine. You can ask things like that.”

“Yes.”

“I should have known it was Han Sujin from the start. If it were Ahn Dongjin or Lee Hyunsu, they wouldn’t have needed to do that. That murder method, I mean.”

“The murder method?”

“The first child was a son, wasn’t he? It would have been burdensome to subdue a twelve-year-old boy to suffocate him with a pillow. Han Sujin isn’t exactly large in stature. Most parents prefer to kill them by giving them drugs or by suffocation, especially mothers. That way, no scars are left on the children’s bodies. Since the first child was a boy, there might have been a difference in strength, and because they had a plan to frame his friend, they stabbed him with a knife, but she wouldn’t have wanted to do that to the second one.”

“That makes sense. Then it explains why she split the murder methods into two. And it also makes sense that she visited Lee Hyunsu’s house together with her husband, whom she wasn’t on good terms with.”

Prosecutor Joo inhaled the smoke deeply again, took the cigarette out, and exhaled the smoke upward. Looking at the cigarette filter, wet with his saliva and bearing the mark where he had bitten it, funnily enough, I found myself wanting to smoke. Not because I wanted to try to fit in with my superiors or colleagues, or because I wanted to extract information from a suspect, but simply because I wanted to put that cigarette in my mouth.

I held out my cold fingers and took the cigarette back from him. I carefully put the cigarette in my mouth and inhaled. The filter, wet with his saliva, touched the tip of my tongue. Perhaps because I inhaled deeply unconsciously, the acrid smoke reached my throat for the first time. As I coughed slightly, Prosecutor Joo smiled faintly and swept his hand over my hair as if ruffling it.

“Don’t inhale deeply.”

In a tone that sounded less like a superior and more like he was coaxing a young lover.

“You don’t even know how to smoke well.”

He was smiling quite affectionately before I knew it.

If you smile like that, I’ll get the wrong idea.

Those words lingered in my throat along with the acrid smoke and then vanished along with the lingering cough that flowed out.

Wanting to erase the wavering emotions, I handed the cigarette back to him. He took the cigarette—the one that had entered and exited my mouth—naturally, just as he had the first time.

Even though I had already stepped into Prosecutor Joo’s private sphere, the moment we shared a cigarette made me tremble so much that I wanted to escape back into the public sphere. Just then, a suitable topic came to mind.

“Prosecutor Joo, I learned this from a senior detective a long time ago, but in cases where parents murder their children…”

“Yes?”

“There are almost no cases where one discovers their dead children alone.”