Hyukjae inched closer to the talking duo, trying to get as near to them as he possibly could behind the yellow police tape.

“You like jogging?”

“I jog every day.”

Wow, Hyukjae thought. This guy must be some kind of health and fitness freak to jog every day. He could see the prominent biceps and triceps on the jogger’s arms and concluded that that was exactly the case. The man seemed to love working out too.

“What’s your usual route?”

“I jog around the park near the woods and then I circle around this block before going home.”

“Which means you were on the way home before you found this girl in the alley?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hyukjae frowned when he heard that statement. He could detect something amiss there but he couldn’t quite point it out yet. He quickly scanned the man from head to toe, trying to find out exactly what was wrong. The ex-officer still couldn’t associate a name with the jogger’s familiar face and he hated himself for that.

The man wasn’t wearing anything out of the ordinary; in fact he was rather good-looking in those clothes too. He was wearing a grey wife beater with navy blue sports pants and matching shoes. Hyukjae actually admired his well-built body and could feel some slight jealousy creep through him. He would never look this good even after working out for hours, and still not break a sweat like the jogger there.

Hold on… I think I know what’s wrong. Majorly wrong, in fact.

Hyukjae narrowed his eyes and focused on the jogger’s clothes. He knew that every time he wore grey to the gym, his shirt would immediately change colour into a darker shade as his shirt absorbed the salty moisture from his body. The man there had said that he had been jogging for some time already, right?

So why wasn’t his grey shirt stained with sweat at all?

There could only be one possible explanation; he was lying. There was no way anyone could jog around the park near the woods – which was one of the biggest in the district – and then go around the block without sweating.

“I knew there was something fishy about that guy…” Hyukjae muttered to himself, watching as said man began walking away from the scene after the police were done. He took off in the direction Hyukjae assumed to be his home. On a hunch, Hyukjae decided to just follow after him. He walked briskly as the man in front broke into a slow jog, hoping that he hadn’t just set himself on a wild goose chase.

Hyukjae kept a safe distance behind the man. The jogger must have sensed someone following him because his speed suddenly increased and shot forward with a burst of energy. Hyukjae cursed as the man rounded a corner before disappearing from his sight. He slowed down and let his eyes skim around the neighbourhood trying to locate a certain jogger who had managed to give him the slip. He realized that he was in an unfamiliar part of town, but it was very close to the place where the police had found the first body.

The streets were quite empty, and Hyukjae gave up the thought of chasing after the man. He stopped abruptly and turned around, meaning to go back but he bumped into a set of very tough and well-defined abs. Hyukjae barely had time to register that someone had sneaked up from behind him before something hit him hard on the back of his head, and everything became dark and blurry. Hyukjae could just make out a faint snigger before everything turned black for him.

* * *

“I’m starting to think there’s a pattern to all of this,” Kyuhyun said, snapping Donghae out of his reverie. The inspector had been spacing out for the past ten minutes, which was kind of unusual for him.

“What?”

“I said, I think the murderer is following a pattern to murder his victims.”

Donghae scratched his ear, which had somehow begun to itch. “Why do you say so? The last time you said the victims were random.”

“But take a look at this,” Kyuhyun said, double-clicking on each photo in the inspector’s ‘Archive’ folder. “Forget what I said last time. Observe carefully not the crime scene, but rather the clothes of the victim.”

Donghae peered curiously at each blown-up photo, not for his life guessing what Kyuhyun meant. “I don’t see anything… Oh wait.”

“Yeah?” the younger officer asked, looking at Donghae expectantly. “Do you see what I see?”

“But that has got to be the weirdest reason why anyone would kill thos