“What are we looking for?” Minseok asked as they entered Kim Joonmyun’s shed, which seemed untouched since they were there the previous day.

“I want to make sure that we haven’t missed anything,” Jongin said, looking through the desk drawers.

“Okay,” Minseok said, crouching down to pull out the storage box under the small bed. “Are we looking for anything in particular?”

“Maybe more of these.” Jongin stepped over to the bed and gestured to the photos on the pinboard above it.

Minseok pushed the storage box back under the bed when a quick look told him there was nothing but clothes in it and stood up to look at the photos. “Why?”

“Don’t the people in the photos look familiar?”

There was a momentary pause as Minseok studied the blurry photos. “They’re quite possibly the same person.”

“It’s Kim Jongdae,” Jongin pointed out. “But there’s nothing newsworthy here. So what if he shoplifts sometimes, keys cars to get himself some work, gets into fistfights, and destroys people’s gardens? That’s kiddie stuff.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I think our victim followed Kim Jongdae around and took photos of him because he was waiting for him to slip up and do something incriminatory that he could use to blackmail him or something along those lines,” Jongin said. “I have a feeling that he might have done the same with the others and actually found something, and that’s why he didn’t stick them up on his wall.”

“Or maybe he just had a thing for Kim Jongdae.”

“Maybe, but based on what we’ve gathered, I think Kim Joonmyun was trying to exercise power over the group members using what he knew, and this was how he knew what he knew. So if we can find photos of the others, then we’ll find out what he found out and we’ll decide if those secrets are worth killing someone over.”

“How do you know there’d be photos?” Minseok asked.

“Because if he didn’t have any kind of proof then they could just say that he was lying.”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything though,” Minseok said, bending down to take another look at what was beneath the bed. “I think we’ve looked through everything.”

“The killer could’ve come here and destroyed everything before we even found the body,” Jongin said, sighing. He took the small notepad out of his back pocket to scan through it. “So out of the stories that we’ve heard, I think the ones that sound plausible are Park Chanyeol’s stealing from the till story because he apparently needs that job, and Huang Zitao’s overcharging customers story because he needs his business to support his extravagant hobby, so those two are more likely than not telling the truth. What do you think about Oh Sehun?”

“Well, he omitted certain parts of his story, but I don’t think he’s lying about what Kim Joonmyun said to him.”

“But he himself said that a lot of people know his secret, which makes it sound like it’s not really a big deal,” Jongin said. “Why would Kim Joonmyun go out of his way to tell him that he knew something that everybody knows?”

“The people we’ve talked to didn’t seem to know,” Minseok pointed out.

“Then why would he lie about people knowing his secret? His story seems dodgy and I think we need to talk to him again.”

Minseok nodded. “What about the others?”

Jongin looked through his notes again. “I think we can remove Kim Jongdae from our list of suspects because apparently Kim Joonmyun had nothing over him. Zhang Yixing is full of bull and I don’t think he’s worth our time. Do Kyungsoo didn't tell us anything. Byun Baekhyun and Lu Han outright lied to us. I think all the people we talked to yesterday are the ones that we need to have another chat with.”

“Okay,” Minseok said. “So who are we seeing first?”

“Let’s get all four of them to come down to the station,” Jongin said. “That might get them out of their comfort zones.”

***

Jongin replaced the receiver back in the cradle of the phone on his desk when Lu Han and Do Kyungsoo walked into the station.

“Am I stupidly getting myself arrested?” Lu Han asked.

“No, we just need to ask you a few more questions,” Minseok said, looking up from Kim Joonmyun’s laptop, which he had been scouring through while waiting.

“Have any of you seen Byun Baekhyun?” Jongin asked. “I’m having trouble contacting him.”

“Who’s that?” Lu Han asked.

“Thornydada.”

“I think I saw him in front of the laundromat just down the road,” Kyungsoo said.

Jongin sighed. No wonder he wasn’t answering his house phone. “Can you go get him?”

“Okay,” Kyungsoo said, letting his gaze travel from Jongin to Lu Han.

“We'll talk to Lu Han while you do that,” Jongin said. He didn’t fail to notice how Kyungsoo let his fingers brush lightly against Lu Han’s hand before walking out of the station. So much for keeping secrets.

Lu Han sat himself down in the side chair in front of Jongin’s desk. “I didn't think the follow-up questioning would happen this soon.”

“There wouldn’t be a need for one if you told us the truth the first time around,” Jongin said.

Lu Han looked at him, seemingly unruffled. “I guess you talked to everyone else.”

“We did,” Minseok said.

“Do you want to retract your statement or do you just want to tweak it a bit?” Jongin asked.

“Most of what I told you is the truth,” Lu Han said.

“Not all, obviously.”

“I didn’t leave out anything important.”

“No, just the bits that make you look bad,” Jongin pointed out. “You lied and said that you never played a game because apparently, from what we’ve heard, you were pissed off at Kim Joonmyun during that game. You also lied about why you were the first one to leave the outing. I don’t think it’ll be too far fetched to say that you lied about what Kim Joonmyun said to you too.”

“You figured out what happened anyway. You didn’t need to hear about it from me.”

“Why did you lie if you have nothing to hide?” Jongin asked.

“Because if I didn’t I might as well be admitting that I killed him.”

“Did you?”

“No,” Lu Han said simply.

“But you do admit that you were angry with Kim Joonmyun during the outing, and that was why you left earlier than the others,” Minseok said.

“Yes.”

“What did Kim Joonmyun say to you when he talked to you privately?” Jongin asked.

“I told you, he said he could see through my act.”

“Nobody mentioned that you were behaving differently to your online persona, so I doubt your reluctance to ‘roleplay’ was what he was talking about,” Jongin said.

“That’s all he told me.”

“Why would something ambiguous make you so angry you had to leave?”

Lu Han hesitated, before giving a soft sigh. “He said I could put on an act all I wanted but he knew I was a . He used to say like that often, but saying it to my face was really crossing a line.”

“I thought that kind of language was normal for you lot?” Jongin asked.

“Towards Kyungsoo, maybe, but not to the rest of us.”

“I thought you two are friends?”

“He’s okay with it.”

Jongin frowned. Apparently that was another unpleasant thing in this town that he would never understand. “So what did you say to Kim Joonmyun?”

“I told him flat out that I wasn’t interested in nancies.”

“And then what happened?”

“He said he had proof,” Lu Han said. “By then I was done with him and just left. I don’t know what his deal was, but lying was obviously his favourite pastime.”

“He wasn’t lying about having proof,” Minseok said.

Lu Han frowned. “What?”

Minseok placed Kim Joonmyun’s laptop on the desk and turned it around so the screen was facing Lu Han. He pressed the space bar to play the video that Jongin had mistakenly dismissed as amateur the day before. The video seemed to be secretly recorded, possibly from an open window, and the angle that it was shot from made it difficult to recognize who the people in the video were, but occasional glimpses of their faces were telling enough.

Lu Han slammed the laptop lid shut. “That’s disgusting.”

“Well, that’s you,” Minseok pointed out.

“And that’s not gay at all,” Jongin added in a mumble.

“If I knew he had that-” Lu Han halted, apparently trying to regain his composure, and added levelly, “I didn’t kill him. I would’ve, but I didn’t.”

“Then I really don’t understand why you felt the need to lie to us yesterday,” Jongin said.

Lu Han leaned back in the chair and exhaled heavily. “Kyungsoo lied to you because he thought I killed Suho. I told him I didn’t, but by then it was too late because he already made his statement, and I thought that if no one else lied then you’d think that he did it.”

“So you lied to us to protect him because he lied to us to protect you, when in fact neither of you needed protecting,” Jongin said. “Did I get that right?”

“That’s the gist of it.”

“It’s funny how the first thought running through his mind on hearing that somebody died was ‘my boyfriend killed him,’” Jongin mumbled.

“I’m his friend,” Lu Han stressed. “I wish you wouldn’t twist that into something sick.”

Jongin gestured at the laptop. “Yeah, that’s what friends are for, right?”

“You found him,” Minseok said before Lu Han could respond, watching as Kyungsoo entered the station, pulling Baekhyun along by the arm.

“I’m sorry that took so long,” Kyungsoo said, flopping himself down onto the bench near the entrance as he tried to catch his breath. “He ran away from me.”

“Thorny told me Aby was up to no good,” Baekhyun said, looking at the two policemen warily as he sat down beside Kyungsoo. “I can see that he was right.”

“We just need to ask you a few questions,” Minseok said. “It won’t take long at all.”

“Talk to Kyungsoo first so I can leave,” Lu Han muttered, getting off the chair he was sitting on.

“We have to make this quick,” Oh Sehun said, rushing in after doing a fine-worthy parking job right in front of the station. “I have a meeting with the craft society in about fifteen minutes.”

“You’re a bit overdressed for a craft club meeting,” Jongin commented. Unlike the last time they met, Sehun was all dolled up, looking like somebody’s hot stepmum, which made Jongin wonder what the real Auntie Oh looked like.

“What do you need to talk to me about?” Sehun asked, sitting himself down in the chair Lu Han had vacated.

“Are any of you in a hurry?” Minseok asked the other three people in the station, who shook their heads in response. “Well, we’ve talked to Lu Han, so you can leave whenever you want.”

“No, I’ll wait,” Lu Han said, positioning himself against the wall beside the bench.

“I assume this is about the case,” Sehun said, lowering his voice and leaning over the desk to be heard.

“We heard that during the outing Kim Joonmyun said something that you didn’t like,” Jongin said, matching the volume of his voice to Sehun’s.

“What are you talking about?”

“He said something about putting cameras up in the woods.”

“Oh, that,” Sehun said, sounding dismissive. “He didn’t own the woods. He had no right to do that. I didn’t mind him building a shed there because it wasn’t terribly invasive, but putting up cameras would be a completely different story.”

“From what we’ve gathered, your reaction was a lot stronger than that,” Jongin said.

“That’s part of my online persona.”

“What about what he said to you in private?” Minseok asked.

“What about it?”

“You said that he said he knew your secret, but then you said that a lot of people know your secret, which doesn’t really add up,” Jongin said. “If he really did say what you said he did, then I think he might have meant a different secret.”

“You’re getting my words mixed up,” Sehun said. “When I said ‘a lot of people’, I meant the elderly people that I’m – my mother’s close to in all the local clubs and societies. Those outside of that community can’t really tell the difference, and Joonmyun was obviously one of those people, so finding out who I am would be a major discovery for him.”

“Do you think it’s a problem if people outside of your mother’s group of friends find out your secret?” Jongin asked.

“I’m here, aren’t I? I’m not going out of my way to hide it.”

“Then why are we whispering?”

“Because I won’t go out of my way to reveal it either. I don’t really want people to find out, but it’s not something I’d kill someone to hide.”

“That sounds fair enough,” Minseok said, turning to Jongin.

Jongin nodded. “I think that’s all we need.”

“I hope you’ll figure everything out soon,” Sehun said, giving Jongin’s arm a presumptuous pat and standing up. “It’s only been two days but you look exhausted.”

“Don’t worry about us,” Minseok said, smiling at him.

“Don’t you have somewhere you need to be?” Jongin said.

“Oh, that’s right,” Sehun said, looking at the clock on the wall. “Feel free to contact me if you have anymore questions, but right now I’m running late. I’ll see you later.” He flashed them a smile and rushed out of the station.

“So who’s next?” Minseok asked, looking at the people gathered around the bench.

“Kyungsoo,” Lu Han said, giving Kyungsoo’s shoulder a nudge to urge him to get off the bench. “You know pretty much all there is to know anyway.”

“Okay,” Jongin said as Kyungsoo sat himself down on the chair across from him. “You didn’t exactly lie to us, but you failed to mention a lot of things.”

Kyungsoo hesitated, before nodding.

“We don’t have to ask you why since Lu Han told us everything.”

Kyungsoo turned around to look at Lu Han, apparently confused.

“The only thing I’m wondering is why you came to report Kim Joonmyun missing,” Jongin continued.

Kyungsoo reluctantly turned back around to face Jongin. “I wasn’t getting messages from him as usual, so I was worried that something might’ve happened to him.”

“You were worried because you weren’t getting insulting messages from him?” Jongin asked.

“He used to send at least one message a day so it seemed odd that he didn’t send any for a whole week.”

“You didn’t know that he was dead when you reported him missing?”

Kyungsoo shook his head. “Of course not.”

“Just to clarify, what you didn’t tell us is that you played a game at the outing, which some people, including Lu Han, didn’t enjoy, and before the outing ended Kim Joonmyun spoke to all of you in private,” Minseok said. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” Kyungsoo said. “But I didn’t play the game.”

“Because Kim Joonmyun told you to sit it out?” Jongin asked.

“Yes.”

“Apparently you were the first person he spoke to in private.”

Kyungsoo nodded. “I was sitting next to him.”

“What did he say to you?” Jongin asked, ignoring the frown Minseok was directing at him. He knew it probably had no bearing on the case, but it would feel like he was leaving a stone unturned if he didn’t ask, especially if they still hadn’t solved this case by the end of the day.

“He said he had proof,” Kyungsoo mumbled, eyes locked on his lap. “Photos or videos or something.”

“Proof of what?”

“That I’m, um-” Kyungsoo faltered, “-seeing someone.”

“You know what he’s talking about, you don’t have to ask him that,” Lu Han called out.

“I think we have everything that we need,” Minseok said, giving Jongin a pointed look.

“Right, you can go,” Jongin said, although a part of him was questioning his decision as he watched Kyungsoo walk out of the station with Lu Han. If the only suspect left was not who they were looking for, then he didn’t think he would be able to sleep tonight.

“I guess I’m the only one left,” Baekhyun said.

“It’d be nice if you can come and sit here,” Jongin said, gesturing at the empty chair across from him.

Baekhyun sluggishly got off the bench and walked over to Jongin’s desk to plop himself down in the chair. He placed the doll he had in his hands – which was the same Bart Simpson imitation that he had the day before – on top of the desk.

“So you lied to us about two things,” Jongin started. “You lied about when you left the waterfall, and you also lied about Kim Joonmyun talking to you in private.”

“You also didn’t mention that he threw your doll into the rock pool,” Minseok added.

“Which makes me wonder who that is,” Jongin said, looking at the doll on the desk.

“I didn’t lie about anything,” Baekhyun said.

“Almost all the people we talked to said that Kim Joonmyun spoke to everyone at the outing privately,” Jongin said. “If you were there then he talked to you.”

“He didn’t talk to me, he talked to Thorny.”

“I knew you would say that, but Kim Joonmyun threw Thorny in the water before he talked to everyone in private.”

“He didn’t throw Thorny in the water, Thorny’s right here,” Baekhyun said, lifting the doll off the desk to make his point.

“Let’s take a step back for a second,” Minseok said. “What did Kim Joonmyun say to Thorny?”

“He said he knew what I did to him.”

Jongin frowned. “Too many pronouns.”

“Suho told Thorny he knew what I did to him.”

“What you did to Thorny?”

Baekhyun nodded.

“And what did you do to him?”

Baekhyun shrugged. “Maybe he was talking about the time I dropped him in the bathtub.”

“That’s not it,” Jongin said flatly.

Baekhyun hesitated for a moment, before apparently deciding to drop it and pressing his hands over Thorny’s drawn on ears. “I didn’t want to talk about it if I don’t have to because I’m trying to get him to forget about it. I think he’s traumatized.”

“Talk about what?” Minseok asked.

“Suho throwing him in the water. I managed to find him when everyone had left, but it was still a really bad experience for him and me both. I’m trying to overwrite those memories with new ones.”

“What did Suho talk to you about?” Jongin asked, his patience starting to wear thin.

“He said he knew what I did to Thorny.”

“And what’s that? And don’t give me some bull about dropping him in the bathtub again.”

Baekhyun frowned at him, obviously displeased with Jongin’s choice of words. “He said he knew I took out the camera.”

“What camera?” Minseok asked.

“The camera he planted in Thorny.”

“He planted a camera in your doll?” Jongin asked.

“He planted a camera in Thorny,” Baekhyun corrected. “And because I took it out, he threw Thorny in the water.” He sighed. “He said Thorny wasn’t useful anymore and that made Thorny very upset.”

“What was the camera for?”

“Suho said that I hang out in the town center a lot so I could be like his spy or something. I didn’t like the idea, but he was persistent.”

“So basically he put a camera in your doll – Thorny so he could keep an eye on people,” Jongin said.

Baekhyun nodded. “I don’t know why he’d want to.”

“What was in it for you?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why did you agree to do it?”

There was a momentary pause, before Baekhyun breathed out a sigh. “He said he’d ban me from the forum if I didn’t. I mean, Thorny’s important to me, but so is the group. Asking me to choose was too much.”

“When did you decide to remove the camera?” Minseok asked.

“Right before I left the house to go to the woods. I was thinking about how I couldn’t get Thorny wet because I’d ruin the camera, but Thorny really wanted to play in the waterfall so I took it out. I thought Suho wouldn’t notice if I put it back in after, but then if I let Thorny go into the water, he’d either think I was damaging his camera or that I removed it so…” Baekhyun trailed off with another sigh. “And then of course he told me that he knew anyway.”

“And then what happened?”

“He threatened to kick me out of the group, so I told him I’d put the camera back in as soon as I got home, and he seemed fine with that.”

“So the camera’s still in there?” Jongin asked, gesturing at the doll.

Baekhyun shook his head, a smile slowly spreading on his face. “I took it out yesterday.”

“Why?”

“Because Suho’s dead,” Baekhyun said bluntly. “I get to stay in the group and I get the old Thorny back.”

“I think that’s all we need,” Minseok said. “Thank you for your time.”

“I can go?” Baekhyun asked.

Minseok nodded.

Jongin slouched back in his chair and groaned as Baekhyun left the station. “You don’t think he did it, do you?”

“He wanted Kim Joonmyun dead, that’s for sure, but I don’t think he killed him,” Minseok said. “I think we need to chew this over for a bit more.”

Jongin sighed. “And here I was hoping we’d pull a CSI.”