Ba Reum's mind was in turmoil. He had stopped and watched the scene at the phone booth, just like a dozen other people. The black cars and the people with guns had gotten their attraction. When they saw that everyone was starting to look at them, one came towards them and flashed a national security service badge.
"Excuse me, we are looking for someone who told called us to confess he placed a bomb in the city house. We located his call from this phone booth about 15 to 30 minutes ago. Did anyone see someone in there?"
Muttered words where heard, but no one had seen anyone there. Eventually the people in black went away, but not before taking note of all the public cameras in the neighbourhood.
And in all the time they spend questioning people to find the one who could have called, not a single person went to check the house just a little bit further.
Ba Reum stomach was turning a bit. So, these were the people they were up against; They obviously had the resources, and the group might be bigger than he first thought. But how deep did they go. He had called the emergency number and they got here in record time.
He stood around with the rest of the people to hear the gossip, sometimes joining to seem like one of them. Everyone checked their smartphones to check if there was indeed a bomb found, but when nothing special came in the news, everyone thought that someone did a prank call or something.
In the end all the groups of people broke up and they wen to do their own business.
Ba Reum finished his jogging routine at the park, and afterwards made sure to stretch before he went back home, trying to look unhurried,
He wasn't sure if these people were going to look at the CCTV in the park after they had gone in hope to see someone suspicious, but Ba Reum was going to make sure they wouldn't catch him being in a hurry.
His mind was reeling with the size of his opponent. He presumed they and the stalkers where part of the same organisation and that they were probably the cause that some of the evidence went missing.
Ba Reum wondered how many people they have already made disappear wo tried to turn in the murderers? Was it a gang or something? What could such a big organisation win by protecting this serial killer?
Ba Reum thought about how they had to start to dismantle such a big group. They had first had to find out how big they were and hopefully find the leader; He hoped that when he cut the head of the snake the body would just die.
And they must be caught. That's why he had put his mother in hiding, because at the slightest sign that she was about to wake up, they would of course make sure that that was never going to happen. The chance that his mother had seen a face or could identify the killer completely was too big a risk for such an organization to take.
He was sure that they would kill her without mercy.
And if they protected the killer, it left the question to why are they stalking him? Did the killer know of this organisation?
The endless stream of questions was not making his head feel better.
When he came home, he started his computer and decided it was tome to thoroughly examine the smartphone. It didn't take long to unlock. There had been little activity on, just one call had been made.
He put it on playback.
"Why are you calling from my phone?"
"Because you lost it, idiot. You were lucky someone found it. If these numbers came out in public, there will be hell to pay."
"Hey, I'm not an idiot. I just dropped it. As if that never happens to you."
"Whatever."
And the conversation ended like that. Ba Reum snorted. Apparently, there was some rivalry as well in this organisation.
Ba Reum opened the contact list and saw a list with obviously fake names. He guessed that it was just a part of the organisation. They probably worked in cells, with each just knowing the identity of a few other members.
Aunt Em
Dorothy
Toto
Wicked witch
Glinda
Scarecrow
Tin Man
But at least he had their phone numbers and a connection to the smartphone of this guy. He would try to track each number that called, to make sure to get all the callers' locations in the hope of finding out all their identities.
He hoped that they wouldn't scramble their lines, but if they thought these phones were safe, he guessed that they would not bother with it. He would take their overconfidence as an advantage, and he felt that he could use every advantage that he got.
Moo Chi was staring at the case files. He looked at the name of the gynaecologist once again. He tried to focus on other things, because two of the four victims were not related to her, but his attention always returned to her.
His gut was telling him that there was something there.
He sighed, and decided that since he had no other lead, he could dig a little deeper in her background. Perhaps he might find something interesting. He slowly typed in her name in the social register and saw nothing suspicious or strange.
She got married when she was rather young, probably still studying and had 2 children. The date of the birth of her first child was just a few months after her marriage date, but these days that wasn't so unusual.
She had not even as much as a parking fine on her record, no contact with the law, and when he searched her name in a search engine, he just found a whole lot of articles she published or helped research and a lot of praise from patients.
And her husband? He searched up his social register and saw that he had been married before. Moo Chi raised his eyebrows a bit and went to check his notes. Unlike what the doctor declared, her husband hadn't been divorced from his first wife a few years before they married, but a few weeks.
Moo Chi wondered if the doctor had just been putting it in a better light or if she just didn't know that he had still been married when she had gotten pregnant. Some guys were really sleaze balls like that.
And he was a teacher as well. Nice example for the children.
"Who was his first wife?" Moo Chi muttered and tapped a few keys on the PC, clicking his tongue when he first mistyped the name. A few clicks later he got the information. He blinked in surprise and then he swore.
"Hey, detective Sang, can I have the file from the last victim?" he said, urgently gesturing detective Sang to hand it to him. Detective Sang shuffled through all the papers on his desk and shoved them back in the folder.
"Sure, here it is."
Moo Chi took the folder and quickly flipped through it until he came to the page that stated her job.
She was a teacher. At the same place that the husband is a teacher at.
He glanced around the room and quickly minimized the windows on his PC before going over to detective Sang's desk.
"Sang, I think I found it, the connection." He whispered and gestured for the younger detective to follow him.
Once they were outside Moo Chi glanced around, to make sure that no one could overhear their conversation.
"What did you find?" detective Sang asked, curious.
"It's all connected. I finally worked it out." Moo Chi said excitedly, gesturing wildly.
"Victim 1, patient of doctor Cha, Victim 2, patient of doctor Cha, we knew this right." Detective Sang nodded.
"Yes, but the other victims are not her patients, so what is the connection."
"Victim 4, teacher, co-worker of Kim Dong Huyn, who happens to be married to doctor Cha." Moo chi whispered. Sang's eyes widened at the information.
"You suspect the husband?" Moo Chi nodded, "but what's the connection to Ba Reum's mother?"
"Kim Dong Huyn was married to someone else first, guess who his first wife was." Sang's eyes widened in surprise.
"No way."
Bong Yi was just at the hospital to visit Soo Jin, but the sign on her room said that she was not to be receiving any visitors. Bong Yi frowned and asked one of the nurses what this was about.
"She got a bad day and her vitals suddenly dropped. The doctor thinks it safer to not add any outside stimulation for the moment." The nurse explained. Bong Yi nodded in thanks and felt a bit of despair, not only for Soo Jin, but also for Ba Reum.
She didn't know if he was informed about this already. She was just about to leave the hospital when her own phone rang. I
"Yes?" she answered the phone. It was her lawyer who called her to inform her about her mother's case.
"We are really in luck with this. We filed for it to be seen as fast as possible and they even have an unexpected spot free tomorrow morning. That means that before tomorrow evening your grandmother can be home already."
"Is it true? Do we have a medical expert to defend her?" Bong Yi asked, biting her lip in worry, because if they didn't have the right rapports, no medical leniency would be granted and if they wanted to apply for it a second time, they would have a hard time to get the case open again.
"Yes, Ba Reum asked the help of a Dr Sung Yo Han and he really provided us with a quality rapport. If the judge doesn't grant us medical leniency with this, which is very unlikely, we can take further actions against the court."
She finished the conversation, suddenly feeling giddy, Soo Jin's condition temporarily pushed to the back of her mind. When she encountered Dr Sung Yo Han in the hallway Bong Yi spontaneously hugged him. She could feel his muscles tensing and his body completely froze, but she didn't care. She just hugged him harder and whispered a quick thanks.
He awkwardly petter her back and pushed her away. She didn't mind.
Ba Reum was in luck. It was just early evening and he already managed to get 5 different addresses of the organisation. He had taped all the conversations and traced them back to houses.
He had also discovered, something he should have guessed, seeing the names of the contacts, but they were apparently called OZ.
Most of the conversation were reporting the actions of the oldest child and changes of guard and suspicious activity. He was glad to note that they mentioned Yo Han passing through, but not finding it suspicious.
He had already prepared 5 eavesdrops sets with microphone and camera and was planning to break in as soon as possible to place them all.
He was preparing files of all the persons that were part of OZ and for now he had discovered that all of them had lost someone to a serial killer, some even from the Head hunter.
At least he knew what the motivation was to be joining this group, but what could they possibly achieve by hiding a murderer?
They had all been through the tragedy of losing someone to a murderer already, why would they help one, it didn't make sense.
Another call went in. He started his tracing software again. Dorothy was calling.
"Yes?"
"I have been informed that someone reported the Kim Dong Huyn and Kim Tae Woong as the murders."
"Shit, did we find him."
"No, we got lucky that we intercepted the call already. When they checked out the location of the caller, he had already gone. Extra watch for suspicious activity, report immediately when you see strangers in the street."
"Yes, I will." And the conversation ended. The software had got enough time to localise the caller "Dorothy" and when he looked up the address on the internet, he realised how deep this went.
It was the Choi Young Shin.
He really hated politics.
Moo Chi knew there was leak in the police office, but he still knew that to arrest the husband, he needed the correct papers, so in secret, he filed a request for an arrest warrant for Kim Dong Huyn directly to the prosecutor's office, no other steps used.
It was already taking a couple of hours and he was thinking about just arresting him without waiting for the warrant when he suddenly received a mail.
Thinking it was the warrant he opened the file and saw it was a video file.
"If you ever want to see him alive again, you better leave the current case alone. Don't come looking, or he's gone." It mentioned on the file.
He opened the video and gave a strangled breath. There was a video of his brother sitting tied to a chair, mouth gagged, tied, and blindfolded. He looked to be unconscious, and he could just make out a droplet of blood sliding down his face.