Yougjae had gone back to monitoring all the CCTV footage from Star Destiny. He was essentially following Kris around the company through the footage during the last month of his life. It was tedious job but provided how less they had on their hands about Scream, this seemed like a good option. Of course he wasn’t expecting to find Scream at the company, but he was looking for some clues – the day, the time when Kris was acting strange, a phone call he had made away from prying eyes, maybe even a guest he received without signing him in. it was all a long shot, but Youngjae was patient and meticulous.

No wonder I’m the brain around here.

He flinched at the thought, as if he had said it out aloud. If Sungyeol heard him speak that way one more time, there was no saying what his superior would do to him. Sungyeol could be so stubborn and childish sometimes, he might even have him suspended. He wasn’t going to take that risk.

He was sitting back on his chair, his head against the shoulder-rest. Yawning, he paused the black-and-white video on the screen with the remote control. He had been sitting in this position for the last hour and he decided it was time for a stretch. Maybe he should go and see what Minji was doing. She was, after all, a new recruit and she should be made to feel welcome.

Venturing out of his office space, he found Minji’s, where she was talking on the phone to someone very earnestly.

“Hi,” Youngjae said quietly, but she was too busy to reply.

“No, no, file no. 090610. Yes, Narcotics, yes. What do you mean by there’s no such file? Look again!”

It didn’t look like she would come off the phone anytime soon, so showing her a thumbs-up, he returned to his desk. Minji was determined about doing her part and it seemed like she was trying to find a breakthrough that would put her in a good light in front of the chief detectives. It was good to be ambitious but Minji might be disappointed – surely, no one had told her yet, but Youngjae was the man of breakthroughs in this precinct.

Chuckling to himself, he was about to turn the video he had been watching on again when suddenly something caught his eye. The video was paused at the moment when Kris was about to leave the office – he had already clocked out – but he looked…bare. Youngjae was sure he had been carrying a bag when he had come in. Just to confirm it, he rewound the video to the morning of that day.

Sure enough, Kris entered the office with a medium-sized duffel bag slung on his shoulder. The absence of the bag at the end of the day was slightly disturbing. He played the video again, watching carefully as Kris entered a room to the right of the reception, which Youngjae had checked on the map of the company, and found it to be the locker room. He came out of the locker room without his bag – he must have put it in a locker. Kris then advanced toward the reception, where he signed himself present and then walked toward the lifts.

Now why would he leave his bag in the locker?

If it was Kris’ day bag, it didn’t make sense to leave it in the locker. Youngjae checked through the footage from the day before. He brought the bag with him and he took it away at the end of the day. Youngjae moved on to the footage from the day after. Kris entered the building empty-handed, and at the end of the day, he visited the locker room and brought the duffel bag out.

This was intriguing – had he simply forgotten to take the bag back home on that particular day, or was there some other reason? Had he left the bag in the locker on purpose?

Patting himself on the back for his attention to details, Youngjae went back and checked all incidences of the disappearances of the duffel bag at the end of the day. There had been six in the last month, no pattern evident. It was always the same – Kris would walk into the locker every morning but on those four days he wouldn’t bother to get his bag back before leaving. It seemed like he had simply forgotten, but six times in a month was too often for it to be a mistake. Granted, he was supposedly distracted in the past month, but it was a fact that he was working the drug business again, which meant he would have to receive them and pass on the drugs to someone. As far as they knew - and it was difficult for them to know all since Kris rarely used his credit card – he wasn’t going anywhere he shouldn’t be.

Kris was a model, and even though he was an average one, he had more chances of getting photographed by the paparazzi than a normal person. So it made sense that he wouldn’t arrange for drug dealing meetings in strange places and would take time off his schedule to do so. It made sense if he had found an effective way to transfer the goods without being seen with the client or the main supplier.

If it was me, I’d have chosen the most inconspicuous way.

And what would be more inconspicuous than getting the job done where he was expected to be.

Suddenly, something occurred to Youngjae. Getting up from his seat again, he searched through the hodgepodge of papers on his desk, looking for the file containing translations from Kris’ calendar. When he found it, he flipped hastily to the page that listed the appointments labeled Scream that Kris had jotted down on his calendar. Pulling the paper where he had noted down the dates when the duffel bag was left in the locker, he started to match the dates on the two papers. His breath became shallower as more and more numbers matched. 

He whistled through his mouth as he ticked off the last date – they all coincided with the Scream appointments on Kris' calendar.

So this is how he was getting around – he was leaving the duffel bag full of drugs for Scream to pick them up.

It was an assumption though, a shrewd guess, but he still needed concrete proof. Picking up the phone, he pressed a few numbers that transferred the call to the Crime Scene Unit. Quoting his badge number, he asked to speak to the officer in charge of Kris’ case. When the man had confirmed that they found a duffel bag among Kris’ belongings, he ordered him to search it again, but this time more carefully.

“Comb it for prints other than the victim’s. And I need you to look for any signs of drugs.”

If Kris had indeed used the bag to transfer the drug packets, it wouldn’t be absolutely unlikely for traces of the white powder to be present. That would put his theory in a stronger hold.

“And as for the revelation,” he muttered as he fast-forwarded the CCTV footage. If Kris was leaving the bag in the locker room, someone would have come to get it, someone preferably with a bulky bag because the drugs had to be carried.

This search however proved difficult since most of the people who went in and out of the locker room carried bags. There was nothing wrong about bringing a bag to work, and taking it home at the end of the day. There weren’t any CCTV cameras inside the locker room, so there was no telling who’d opened Kris’ locker.

At that thought, something else occurred to him. He had looked inside the locker room – the lockers were all numeral password-protected. You punched in a code when you put your things in, and used the same code to retrieve you belongings from the locker.

So whoever is opening the locker knows Kris’ password.

Kris was a careful person – would he have used the same number over and over again as the password? It just didn’t seem like him – which meant that he would have to communicate the password to ‘Scream’ on a regular basis.

But how?

Scream had access to Star Destiny, that much was certain. He or she probably worked there, because it seemed a bit out of place that a random stranger would just walk into the building and head toward the locker room. The security of the building was pretty tight.

Unless that person had been signed in by an employee as a guest…

Immediately, he thought about Chanyeol. But Chanyeol didn’t come often enough for him to complete the job. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like it was an inside job. It made perfect sense as to why Kris would want to leave the job. Once Scream had been done away with, he would leave his workplace, both legal and illegal work.

The weird thing was, Kris’ financials showed no signs that he was taking payment from a different source other than his work. Was Scream using the duffel bag to pay him as well? But then what had happened to all the cash he had been paid with?

Maybe Chanyeol can shed some light?

He knew Myungsoo had gone to talk to him. It would be the perfect moment to ask him about the duffel bag. He transferred the picture CSU had sent of the duffel bag onto his cell phone, and attached it to an email. ‘Can you ask Chanyeol what he knows about this bag?’ – he typed and sent it to Myungsoo, with the subject line bearing, ‘Important’. 

“Umm, there is a problem –er-Sir,” Minji said haltingly. Sungyeol hadn’t had any interaction with the new recruit yet. She had seemed like an able detective, although her closeness with Youngjae didn’t really recommend her to Sungyeol.

Another person who might be able to comment on the use of the bag would be Junho. So he called up Kris’ manager, and described the bag to him.

“Oh yeah, it’s the bag he usually took to the fashion designer’s to bring the clothes he gave him back. That why it was bigger than an everyday bag,” Junho supplied.

Youngjae remembered interviewing the fashion designer Kris was working with – Onew, he was called in the fashion world. He hadn’t been able to say anything important about Kris or the murder and he had an alibi.

He had mentioned that most of the time he worked at his workshop and rarely came into the office at Star Destiny. The models usually went to his workshop to pick up their clothes – Kris had been there many times. And now he knew that Kris had gone to the workshop with his duffel bag. The bag was proving to be an important clue.

Youngjae decided that he needed to talk to Onew again. He retrieved the file containing the interviewee contact details from Hana’s desk.

Swiftly, he called Onew, who picked up after seven rings.

“Hello,” he said.

After Youngjae had introduced himself, he asked him about the duffel bag Kris used to bring to his workshop.

“We’ve found traces of drug in that bag -” Youngjae bluffed. Onew went very quiet on the other side. “Onew-sii?” there was no response. A second later, there was a noise that told him the call was dropped from the other side.

Youngjae tried calling him back again but he wouldn’t pick up. His phone had been disconnected. That sent an alarm – was Onew really involved and thinking that the police had gotten to the bottom of it, he had made a run for it?

Likely.

Youngjae sprang to his feet and dashed toward Woohyun’s room.

“I think Onew, Kris’ fashion designer is making a run for it,” he told his superior quickly.

“Go, get him, take Sungyeol,” Woohyun said. That was all Youngjae needed. He hurriedly called for back-up, told Sungyeol the situation briefly, and the two of them ran to their car, Youngjae holding the file that contained Onew’s address.

While they sped across the road, Sungyeol asked, “Are you sure about Onew?”

Youngjae shook his head.

“He acted suspiciously so…”

“And Woohyun told you to take me?”

“He did,” Youngjae replied, wondering why that was important. Sungyeol seemed to be pondering something.

“Oh,” Sungyeol sighed, fixing his eyes on the dashboard and not speaking until they arrived at the apartment complex where Onew lived. A car whooshed past them as they were about to enter the complex.

“That’s him!” Sungyeol shouted, recognizing the fashion designer from the pictures he had seen of him and his car.

“Target escaping,” Youngjae spoke into his radio and reversed his car. His stomach lurched unpleasantly. He was still not used to the chases.

“Brace yourself,” he muttered, more to himself than to Sungyeol, “it’s going to be a chase.”