11:59 (29)
11:59 (29)
I'LL GIVE MASS RELEASE IF WE REACH 500 COINS!
....
Gayoon was dropped off at the precinct by Driver Jang who was ordered by Minho to stay there all day until the end of her duty. She was grumbling loudly but since she was one desk duty for a while, there was little she could do. Upon entering the station, she found Taejoon talking to a middle aged woman whom she recognized as Nam Jiyeon's mother.
She tentatively approached them.
"Hello," she greeted the elderly woman who stood up to slightly bow. "I am Detective Jeon Gayoon."
"Hello," Lee Dami greeted back. Her voice was heavy as if she had been crying non stop for hours. Gayoon ushered her to sit. Glancing at Taejoon, she began to converse with the woman.
"How are you holding up?" Gayoon asked gently. "Is there anything we can do for you?"
"N-no," Dami hiccupped. "It's just…"
She burst into tears. Taejoon quickly pulled out some tissues from a box nearby and handed them to her. The woman was beside herself with grief, thinking about her deceased daughter. Gayoon patted her arm but nothing would console the mother who had just lost her daughter in a brutal way.
"Why her?" Dami cried. "Why my little girl? Why…"
She dabbed her eyes but the tears would not stop flowing. It was the question Gayoon hated the most. Why? Why did these people become victims? What was their fault?
The answer was simple yet the worst one: there was no answer. No matter how much they tried, they would never know why people are killed. Why their lives were cut short. Seeing the bereaved mother break down in front of her, Gayoon hated herself for not being able to give her answers to her question.
"We are trying to find out," she said in a soft tone. "The killer is still out there and we need your help. Please."
"I just want my daughter back!" Dami wailed. She fell on the floor and Gayoon stooped down to hug her. The older woman clung on to her, crying for her only child.
Taejoon was perplexed but he stood there quietly as Gayoon consoled Dami.
"We will get that killer this time," Gayoon promised. "But we'll need your help. Please, Ms. Lee! We can't do it without your help."
Dami pulled herself together as Gayoon helped her to sit back on the chair. Holding her palms, Gayoon said, "Please. We really need to find this killer. He will strike again and kill another girl. Another mother might lose a child if we don't find him. And for that, we'll need to ask you some things."
"W-what can I do?" Dami asked.
"Can you tell us about Jiyeon?" Gayoon gently pressed. "And about the day she vanished?"
Dami's hands were shaking as she tried to collect her thoughts. She took a deep breath and began to narrate.
"Jiyeon was a volunteer worker," she began. "Other than her college studies, she worked part time for a local NGO. There, she was in charge of their accounts and was very good at it. People loved her. She was always smiling and cheerful. Never had any bad reputation nor fights. Her teachers spoke well of her and she topped all her classes. She was about to enroll in English classes to improve her bilingual skills. I know it all sounds like another bragging but you can ask her peers. They'll vouch for her."
"That night," Dami continued in a low tone. "She was late because the NGO she worked at had a small event. Jiyeon was helping the kids to dress up and perform the play. She called me around 9 PM to ask me whether I've eaten dinner."
"Afterwards, she did not return home. She had told me that she would return by 11 PM but 1 PM had passed and she was still not home. I went to the NGO's office but they told me that she had left two hours back! I was shocked so I went around looking for her."
"Morning came and she was still missing so I lodged a complaint. But the police could not find any clues until five days later when she…"
She trailed off and broke into another fit of hysterical sobs. Gayoon waited for her to cry her heart out while Taejoon was grim faced. Once Dami was calm again, Gayoon interrogated her again.
"Can you tell us about her father, Nam Daewhi?" Gayoon asked cautiously. "I know he's your ex-husband but we want to know more about him."
"Daewhi?" Dami frowned a little. "He's been in a coma for years. What does he have to do with this?"
"Your husband had self operated on himself, right?" Gayoon questioned. "Why?"
"I don't know," Dami admitted. "I only remember getting a call from him to pick him up from his hunting spot in the woods. He had this passion to hunt and went out at night almost every week to hunt."
Gayoon and Taejoon looked at each other. Hunt?
"I went to pick him up only to be shocked," Dami said. "He was in the woods, bleeding. There were chunks of his meat...cut off."
She shivered as she recalled how she found her husband all bloodied and motionless. With the help of a passing truck, she had managed to bring him to the hospital.
"Anyways," she said. "He fell into a lifelong coma and would never wake up. But I still had some hope that one day he would see our daughter. But that dream, too, has been shattered."
Gayoon felt a strong sense of pity for the woman but she could not express her feelings. It was another part of her job she loathed. She could never show her feelings to the victims' families. One show of sympathy can make the investigation biased.
"What did he used to hunt?" Gayoon asked in an attempt to probe more about this Nam Daewhi. "Your husband."
"He was a doctor but it's so ironic that he loved hunting," Dami said. "He mostly hunted and chopped the animals in the woods. Sometimes it was a deer. Sometimes a wild turkey. But he always brought and cooked the hearts of the animals. He would not let me taste them either! He claimed that only he could eat those hearts."
Gayoon froze and felt Taejoon's eyes on her. Both of them were thinking the same thing.
"And for some reason he always ate dinner at exactly 11:59 PM," Dami mused.