“Hyung, you should talk to her.”

I was looking through Kris’ financial documents when Youngjae poked his head inside my office. His eyes were gleaming with enthusiasm. He had been talking to an employee from Star Destiny about Jinwoon’s alibi.

“Why? Does Jinwoon’s alibi not stand?”

He shook his head vigorously and beckoned me with his hand. I got up, wondering what could have gotten him so interested. I knocked on Woohyun’s office door to alert him that he was needed.

“What’s going on?” he asked, coming out of his room.  He looked at me, but I nodded at Youngjae who repeated his request.

Shrugging, Woohyun followed us to the small room at the end of our precinct which we used to hold interviews. It was quite a bare room, with only a set of sofa and a small coffee table. The receptionist we had met yesterday at Star Destiny was seated on a sofa, looking slightly nervous. Her composed air was broken and she was dressed in a casual pair of jeans and a loose T-shirt, looking considerably different from yesterday. I could say that she was wearing make-up but nothing excessive. The entire toned down effect was quite nice.

When we had greeted and taken seats in front of her, she started to fidget. Youngjae prompted her to repeat what she had told him.

She was about to start when Youngjae’s phone beeped loudly and he excused himself. That left only the three of us in the room. Woohyun picked up the file where Youngjae had been recording her statement and said, “Ms. Hara, continue please.”

She began hesitatingly.

“Umm, well it’s about Kris. I didn’t really know him but I once saw him having an argument, about a week ago.” She paused, looking at us for our reaction. We didn’t say anything. It was an invitation for her to go on.

“I work at the reception but I had to go to the third floor to take the phone record to Mr. Kim. That’s when I saw him - them - at it. They looked very angry.”

“Who was it?” I asked.

“I don’t know him. He doesn’t work at our company, he was a guest signed in by Kris himself.”

“So he was Kris’ guest?”

“Yes, twenty minutes before that Kris had taken him upstairs. I know because the receptionist keeps a record of all the guests at the company, he’d to sign a register.”

I looked at Woohyun and knew that he was thinking the same thing – how did Kris, who didn’t mix with people and didn’t have friends, produce a guest? And what was so important that they had to meet at the company?

“Did he have the same guest before?”

“A few times, yes,” she said hesitatingly.

“Did you catch what they were arguing about?”

Hara shook her head timidly.

“I just heard him saying ‘why did you betray me?’- Kris, I mean, and the other man said ‘I thought we had a deal’. That’s all I heard. Then they saw me and I had to walk away from them. The man stormed out about ten minutes after I’d returned to the reception.”

Woohyun was completing the statement Youngjae had been taking. I wanted to ask him what he thought about it, because it was indeed a breakthrough. If Kris had been arguing with someone, who apparently had a ‘deal’ with him a week before, that produced the sketch of a potential murderer.

“Do you have a name for the man?” I asked. Even with a description, it would be difficult to find a man whom we knew nothing about.

“Lee Chanyeol, it was in the records,” Hara said, as if she had come prepared. 

“You remember a lot,” Woohyun commented.

Hara blushed.

“I looked it up before coming here.”

I asked her a few more detailed questions but she couldn’t give us much more than she’d told us. When I asked her if she’d agree to describe the man to a sketch artist, she told us that we could get a picture of the man from the CCTV footage. All the rooms on the third floor were CCTV-monitored and she gave us the camera number for room 31B, where she had overheard the row.

“Thank you very much,” Woohyun said earnestly, when she rose to leave. She smiled, blushing. Then her face changed slightly

“Do you think he murdered him? Lee Chanyeol?”

Woohyun glanced at me meaningfully.

“If he did, then you just handed us our murderer,” he said to Hara, who looked satisfied. She muttered something like “justice” and the exited out of the room.

“What do you think?” Woohyun asked when the door closed.

I shrugged.

“She might just want to help the police or -”

“Or she has something to gain by making Lee Chanyeol look guilty.”

“He might be guilty,” I pointed out.

“Well, let’s find out.” He slapped his knee and got up. Ordering Youngjae to get the footage from CCTV Hara had mentioned on the specific date and time, we went to sit at the board room, where we usually discussed the cases.

We had brought the case files with us. Flipping through one, Woohyun asked, in a causal tone, “What did the Captain want with you yesterday?”

I realized I hadn’t told Woohyun. He took it personally when I didn’t tell him something. He’d look at me with betrayed eyes and try to make me feel guilty or ask me in a pointed way, like he was doing now.

“He’s concerned about Sungjong, and I guess a little mad about why he hadn’t called him in a month.”

I shared almost everything with Woohyun. He seemed to understand relationships better than I did and sometimes it came in handy. Having someone know your secrets also had a relieving effect, you feel light.

“Oh,” Woohyun said, not looking at me. He thought that the feud between the brothers was due to miscommunication. Of course I hadn’t dared to tell Sungjong that, and none of us in our right minds would speak that to the Captain.

“You can remind him you know, tell Sungjong to call him.”

“And spend the night on the couch, no thanks.”

Sungjong could get emotionally aggressive in a short time and that made him do a lot of crazy things, like banning me from sleeping with him on the bad. I would wake up in the morning with a stiff neck and no healing hands rubbing it.

“Got the footage,” Youngjae sang as he waltzed into the room, looking victorious. Hana, Sungyeol, and Minji filed in after him. The three of them greeted us.

“What are we watching?” Hana asked curiously.

“Take a guess,” Woohyun said playfully.

Hana shrugged. Youngjae was setting up the DVD player – the big screen in front of us flickered to life. We could see a grainy image taking form and then the black-and-white soundless footage of a small glass-paneled room greeted us. Youngjae was fast-forwarding it, no doubt to the time when Hara had said she’d seen Kris having the argument. The room was empty for the most part, but then two men entered. One of them slammed the door too strongly; the door bounced back and remained ajar. Kris, now recognizable for his mop of lighter hair, drew down the blinds. They had become invisible from the people outside, save the half-open door.

I shivered slightly. It was always odd to watch a murder victim on film – when we had met Kris, he was lying on the ground, stone cold. But now I was watching him move around, so alive and real.

They were definitely arguing. Or at least, Lee Chanyeol was. Kris looked more composed while Chanyeol moved his arms around wildly, no doubt shouting. Kris looked like he was trying to calm him down. This went on for a while. Chanyeol’s gestures were definitely aggressive.

Then Kris started to get less passive. He stood up and seemed to attack Chanyeol back. Things were getting pretty heated up when suddenly the door opened, and another man entered. It took us some time to recognize him but from the figure, we agreed that it was Junho, Kris’ manager. That was strange because he hadn’t said anything about walking in on a row Kris was having with someone, neither to us, nor in the statement Youngjae and Minji had taken later.

Junho seemed furious and he was wildly gesticulating. Then he was pointing towards the door and looking at Chanyeol, maybe telling him to get out. He even shoved Chanyeol by the shoulder, toward the door. Kris had given up the moment Junho had arrived and he looked defeated and haggard, as he stood by the two men.  Finally, Chanyeol left, and Junho did too, after telling something to Kris.

After we had checked that nothing else happened, Youngjae paused the video and enlarged Chanyeol’s face. It was difficult to tell from the CCTV footage, but he was probably young, maybe not even older than Kris. His features were not very distinct. Regardless, I told Youngjae to circulate his picture and find out if anyone knew him. If he had known Kris, he might have gone to his apartment. Despite his neighbor’s disinterest, one of them might remember him.

“And also call Junho and tell him to come in, we need to ask him what’s going on,” Woohyun added.

“Which reminds me,” Minji suddenly said. “One of the people we talked to at Star Destiny, he called up yesterday and said he forgot to mention something in his statement. Apparently he,” she checked her diary, “had seen Kris and his manager arguing at the bar during the dinner party. He isn’t sure about the time, but it was probably near to 2 am. He couldn’t hear them but it seemed like Junho was threatening him.”

“Threatening him? Isn’t that what he accused Jinwoon of?” Hana asked.

I nodded grimly.

“Junho failed to mention that as well.”

“Wonder what Junho’s up to,” Sungyeol said, speaking for the first time since he’d entered the room. Maybe he was still mad at me. Or maybe he was mad at Woohyun.

Our attention turned to Sungyeol, who looked uncomfortable. Squirming in his seat slightly, he said, “I was looking at Kris’ phone records. I got his number from his agency papers. Kris had been calling a number a lot, I traced it to a burner phone. He also called a number which is registered to Lee Chanyeol, but his details are missing, so we can’t really trace him from that. Right before he died, at 3.54 am, he called the burner number. He called it during the dinner twice as well, all calls were short, 15 seconds max. He also called Chanyeol at 2.15 am.”

Sungyeol was reading from a file. When he looked up, he stared at Woohyun, who simply looked away. Sungyeol was evidently disappointed and I felt the urge to vituperate Woohyun for it. But we had more important things to consider right now.

“So it seems like he was meeting someone, whoever owns the burner cell,” Hana said slowly.

“That does seem like it. It could be a client he wanted to pass on the drugs to,” Woohyun commented.

“Or it could be the main dealer, or whoever was threatening him,” I added.

Sungyeol blinked.

“Do you think that he was being threatened over the phone?”

I shrugged.

“Could be. His emails were clean right?” I asked Hana.

“Yeah nothing threatening. He didn’t get a lot of emails, a few from his family. Nothing on his laptop. His calendar though…” She held a file up, tapping the cover.

“The translations came in and I was right, he used the calendar as a planner. He wrote down appointments with fashion designers and that sort of stuff. He also wrote about the dinner party, however, there was another appointment that day, labeled ‘Scream’. This one didn’t have a time appointed to it though.”

I looked at her for her to go on but she didn’t say anything else.

“What’s scream?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“No idea. He had appointments labeled ‘Scream’ before as well, thrice or four times a month. They started about 3 months ago. The last month though, he had 6 Scream appointments in total.”

I exchanged a glance with Woohyun. This looked like a code name for something he was doing secretly, like drug dealing. Maybe these appointments were delivery appointments.

“Right, we have to find out who he met the night he died. Also, we need to bring in Chanyeol quickly, he might know things. And I also want to see the footage of when Kris attacked Jinwoon. And Junho, we need to talk to him as well,” Woohyun announced calmly, but I could see his knees shaking, which meant he was becoming jittery. That happened when he felt that he was confused and couldn’t see a way out.

“All right people let’s get to work.” He clapped his hand and stood up. “Let me know when Junho’s here okay?” he told me. I nodded.

I was in my office, looking over the translations from Kris’ calendar when Woohyun suddenly entered, without knocking. That was strange. He had a file in his hand and he looked disturbed.

“What?”

I asked, surprised to see my partner like that.

“The ballistics report is in,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Guess whose gun killed Kris.”