Jung Yong-gil, his expression still dazed, took the paper from Jeongrok’s outstretched hand, his face turning ashen as he slowly read the legal text.
Just then, the forensics team, laden with their intricate equipment, streamed into the yard, a wave of organized activity.
A startled Jung Yong-gil stumbled backward, then, as if his legs had suddenly given out, collapsed to the ground, a heap of despair.
“Uh… are we allowed to go in?” the forensics team leader cautiously asked, his gaze flicking nervously from Jung Yong-gil to Jeongrok.
Jeongrok, already pulling his gloves back on, simply offered a curt nod, his attention already shifting.
Finally, all the closed doors of Jung Yong-gil’s house began to open, first tentatively, then fully, as the search commenced.
The forensics team immediately started by meticulously examining the perimeter of the house, a systematic sweep for any initial clues.
Following Jeongrok’s earlier request to painstakingly search for anything that might turn up, however small, the investigation teams began to move in perfect, coordinated efficiency, a testament to their training.
“How’s the cattle shed looking?”
Jeongrok called out, his voice cutting through the growing hum of activity.
“The forensics team went in there too,” a detective responded.
“They should be starting by now, given its potential significance.”
Jung Yoon, after a moment of thoughtful consideration amidst the bustling investigation team, approached Jeongrok.
“I’ll join them at the cattle shed. I feel like that side might be more promising than here in the house. My gut is telling me so.”
It was merely a hunch, a subtle whisper of intuition, but Jung Yoon’s gut feeling told him that the immediate vicinity of the house wasn’t the primary location for a significant discovery.
Of course, Jung Yoon, who was a complete novice in practical police work despite his outwardly calm and collected demeanor, couldn’t be entirely certain, yet he found it hard to ignore the persistent feeling.
He wondered if something in his subconscious, perhaps a fleeting memory of the contents of “the book,” was subtly guiding his steps towards that particular area.
Jeongrok, who had been heading into the house with the forensics team leader, paused for a moment, his hand hovering over the doorknob.
“If anything turns up…”
Jeongrok began, his voice low and serious.
“I’ll send it directly to you, Team Leader,” Jung Yoon finished, understanding the unspoken implication.
“Don’t let anyone else get wind of it,” Jeongrok added, emphasizing the need for discretion.
He poked his own eye with two fingers, then spun his hand around to poke Jung Yoon’s chest, a bizarrely intimate gesture.
Jung Yoon shuddered at Jeongrok’s usual eccentricity, thinking how his partner never missed an opportunity to spout nonsense, even now, in such a serious situation.
He took off his gloves and turned away, trying to regain his composure.
I must be crazy to associate him with my brother…
Jung Yoon thought, the unsettling comparison returning to his mind despite himself.
“Ugh… my eyes hurt. Damn, hoo-hoo, ugh.”
The long-unused cattle shed was an unmitigated mess.
From its pervasive musty smell, a mix of stale straw and old animal waste, to the dust so thick and omnipresent that it was genuinely hard to open one’s eyes without irritation.
Hangyeol, already inside, theatrically complained about his burning eyes, waving his hands through the visibly thick, swirling dust motes that danced in the shafts of light.
“Ah… it looks like it hasn’t been used in years, really,” Junhyeok commented, confirming Hangyeol’s assessment.
“Hangyeol.”
“Yes?” Hangyeol replied, turning to Jung Yoon.
“Are you hungry?”
Jung Yoon asked, a hint of dry humor in his voice.
He had been shoveling in one corner, and now he thrust his shovel into the ground, straightening his back and stretching.
Hangyeol, who was nearby, meticulously sifting through a pile of branches and dry straw, furrowed his brows, clearly wondering what Jung Yoon meant by the unexpected question.
“Because you look like someone desperate to eat dust,” Jung Yoon clarified, a small, wry smile touching his lips.
“Ugh.”
Hangyeol coughed, covering his mouth with a gloved hand, then looked around and held out a hand to a forensics team member, asking for a mask.
The forensics member chuckled softly, understanding the plight, and took a spare mask from his vest pocket, handing it over.
Jung Yoon watched Hangyeol fumbling to put on the mask for a moment, a brief diversion from the task at hand, then gripped his shovel again.
He briefly scanned the overturned earth, noting the slight variations in color, and then the undisturbed areas, before resuming his methodical shoveling.
The current focus on this particular spot was a direct result of one of the forensics team members, who, while examining the shed’s general condition, had astutely questioned why the ground color in this specific area looked slightly different from the rest.
Jung Yoon, recognizing the potential significance, had sent the eager Hangyeol to another area to continue the general search, allowing him to focus intently on digging here.
After some time, Hangyeol approached Jung Yoon, moving with the eager energy of a flying squirrel, his voice excited, unable to contain his discovery.
“Fingerprints! They came out from the rice cooker over there and the fence here! It’s a breakthrough!”
“Fingerprints?”
Jung Yoon asked, his shovel still.
“Yes. But one is a partial print, and the other is overlapping, so they’ll have to send them to the National Forensic Service for more in-depth analysis, but they said not to expect too much from those. Anything turn up here yet, Detective Woo?”
“No,” Jung Yoon replied, his voice still, his mind already shifting gears.
“First, report the fingerprint findings to the team leader immediately. We need to check this area more thoroughly.”
Just as he spoke, Jung Yoon stopped shoveling abruptly, his shovel hitting something solid with a dull thud.
The forensics team member working opposite him, who had also struck something, did the same, his shovel grating against an unseen object.
Both their expressions instantly turned grim, a silent acknowledgment of a potentially significant find.
“Hold on, come over here!” the forensics team member shouted, his voice echoing with urgency.
“What? Did you find something?” another voice called out, the excitement palpable.
As the forensics team member shouted, other team members, who had been working further away in the vast shed, quickly gathered, their movements swift and purposeful.
Two more joined the immediate digging effort, their presence speeding things up.
Jung Yoon also picked up his pace, digging with renewed vigor.
While it could very well be nothing, a false alarm, he dug with extra caution, his senses finely tuned, preparing for the very real possibility that it might be something significant, something they had long searched for.
Soon, the damp soil was carefully cleared away, revealing a sheet of opaque plastic sheeting beneath.
A forensics team member gently brushed away the scattered dirt with his gloved hands from the plastic, which seemed to tightly wrap something, its contours suggesting a distinct shape.
“Is it it?”
Hangyeol whispered, his voice barely audible, the tension mounting.
The rustling sound of the disturbed plastic was strangely chilling in the quiet shed.
Hangyeol, who had finished his call and hurried over, squatted beside Jung Yoon, his eyes wide.
Two forensics team members, their faces grave, carefully began to peel back the plastic, their movements slow and deliberate.
The rapid click of camera shutters taking scene photos echoed around the tense site, documenting every step.
Finally, the forensics team member, who had completely removed the plastic covering, looked directly at Jung Yoon, his eyes conveying a silent, heavy request for confirmation of what they had found.
Jung Yoon immediately stepped closer to the plastic, his heart pounding.
Hangyeol, sensing the gravity, instinctively took out his phone again, ready to make another call.
“…This, it feels like this is going to be a big deal,” the forensics team member, with a somber face, added with a deep sigh as Jung Yoon approached, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Huh? What is this?”
Hangyeol murmured, his breath catching in his throat.
Inside the plastic that the forensics team member had peeled back, as expected, lay a body.
However, the condition of the exposed body was entirely unexpected. Given the significant amount of time that had passed since the disappearance, it should have been skeletal remains, long decomposed.
Instead, the body was still remarkably un-decomposed and quite intact within its plastic shroud, a chilling testament to the preservation qualities of its burial.
“…How?”
Jung Yoon whispered, the single word escaping his lips in disbelief.
“Call the superintendent. I’ll report to the team leader,” Hangyeol said, glancing at Jung Yoon, who couldn’t tear his eyes away from the surprisingly preserved body.
Hangyeol nodded, his face pale, and put his phone to his ear, already dialing.
Jung Yoon, pulling himself away from the sight, gestured to the surrounding forensics team members, turning his attention to the logistics of recovery.
“Alright, here. Let’s start lifting it out from this side, carefully,” Jung Yoon instructed, pointing.
“Put that down there. Dae-kyung! Over here!” another forensics member called out, directing his colleague.
Reading his gaze, the forensics team members became a flurry of activity, their professionalism kicking in.
Jung Yoon watched them for a moment, then pulled out his own phone and contacted Jeongrok.
[Hello.]
Jeongrok’s voice came through, surprisingly calm.
“We found a body here,” Jung Yoon stated plainly, cutting to the chase.
[…Hah. Alright. Send it directly to the National Forensic Service for immediate identification. Ki Junhyeok! Jung Yong-baek’s movements…]
“No. I don’t think you need to do that,” Jung Yoon interrupted, trying to stop Jeongrok, who had clearly been about to issue another directive to Junhyeok on the other end of the line.
Jeongrok remained silent for a beat, the only sound a faint, almost imperceptible static.
Jung Yoon let out a short sigh, figuring Jeongrok must have roughly understood his reaction and the implication of his words, and turned his head back to the scene.
Soon, the body, carefully retrieved by the combined efforts of the forensics team and the other investigators, was fully exposed on the ground, laid out on a clean sheet.
“This is…”
Jung Yoon began, his voice trailing off.
A beat of silence from the other end.
“It’s Jung Yong-baek.”
Jung Yoon’s complicated gaze fixed on the cold corpse.
The discovered individual was indeed the very person the Cold Case Team had been searching for, the missing piece of the puzzle.
It was Jung Yong-baek, Jung Yong-joon’s older brother and, until this moment, a prime suspect in their investigation.
The revelation was staggering.
The news of the police swarming in spread rapidly through the quiet village, carried by whispers and phone calls.
The area around Jung Yong-gil’s house and the cattle shed quickly filled with curious people from nearby villages and local broadcast reporters, their cameras flashing.
With Jung Yong-baek’s body found in such a shocking state, Damhong Village had, in essence, returned to its past, a grim echo of the original tragedy.
Jung Yoon finished his immediate search responsibilities before the commotion around the scene grew even worse.
In truth, he found it hard to concentrate, his mind reeling.
He moved twice as diligently as others, a flurry of focused activity, to avoid showing his inexperience or his internal turmoil, but his mind was blank, struggling to process the impossible.
He was utterly confused; Jung Yong-baek, whom he’d firmly believed was the culprit, had been found as a cold corpse himself.
Jung Yoon harshly chastised his reading habits, the irony of the situation not lost on him.
I should have read the book properly.
No, I thought I did.
The culprit was definitely Jung Yong-baek, wasn’t he?
He was half-distracted by such disorienting thoughts, the narrative he had clung to shattering around him.
A few hours later, after the search had thoroughly commenced, Jung Yong-baek’s body, discovered early on, was swiftly recovered by the forensics team.
Along with the body, a few strands of hair and two cigarette butts found within the cattle shed and nearby, as well as fingerprints meticulously collected from the fence and feeding trough, and various other pieces of minute evidence, were carefully transported to the National Police Agency and the National Forensic Service by the dedicated forensics team.
After clearing the immediate crime scene, Jung Yoon handed it over to a police constable for ongoing security.
He had received a call to come in for a case report, a formal briefing on the day’s events. At the same time, Jeongrok and Junhyeok also finished searching Jung Yong-gil’s house and the surrounding area and said they were leaving.
Jung Yoon, now driving the patrol car he had hitched a ride in, took Hangyeol with him and set off for Deokdong Station, the day’s events swirling in his mind.
A few eager reporters were already waiting in front of Deokdong Station, their cameras poised.
Their eyes lit up as Jung Yoon and Hangyeol got out of the car, and they rushed forward, a barrage of questions.
Jung Yoon easily brushed off those asking about the developing case, his years of avoiding media attention serving him well, and led a bewildered Hangyeol inside the station.
Up on the second floor, Jung Yoon was met with the heart-wrenching sight of Jung Yong-gil and his mother, Go Ok-nam, who were pouring out their raw shock, profound despair, and deep pain in agonizing screams and tears.
Jung Yoon’s steps halted instinctively in front of them.
These were people he simply couldn’t turn away from, even if he wished he could.
Jung Yong-gil and Go Ok-nam were clearly not in their right minds, consumed by grief.
They babbled incoherently, their words disjointed, grew angry in fits of rage, and even collapsed on the floor, hitting their heads in their anguish.
Several detectives managed to calm them down to some extent, but it was clear they wouldn’t regain their full composure in just a few short hours.
Jung Yoon approached them slowly, intending to offer some words of comfort, however inadequate.
However, Hyeoncheol, who was watching the scene unfold from inside the office through the glass partition, shook his head subtly, a clear signal to dissuade him.
Jung Yoon, hesitant but understanding, had no choice but to quietly walk past them, the weight of their sorrow heavy in the air.
“De-Detective!”
However, he hadn’t gone more than a few steps when Jung Yong-gil’s hand, surprisingly strong, clutched desperately at his leg.
A flustered Jung Yoon steadied himself, holding onto the arm of the man who was now crouched at his feet, weeping uncontrollably like a lost child.
“Mr. Jung Yong-gil, please don’t do this. Get up,” Jung Yoon urged gently, his voice strained.
“I… I was wrong. I did everything wrong, so please… Please, my Yong-baek, just Yong-baek…! Heh, I’ll tell you anything you ask. I’ll do whatever you say… please, just find out what happened to my son…”
The man who had been furious at the police’s arrival just moments ago was now on his knees, a picture of abject pleading, stripped bare by grief.
He must never have imagined his son would become a victim, a cold case resolved in such a tragic way.
Jung Yoon looked down at the man’s thinning, scalp-revealing hair with a complicated heart, a mix of pity and a familiar, unsettling recognition.
***
Returning to the office, the Cold Case Team, who hadn’t yet officially started their meeting, were each busy with their own individual tasks, the buzz of activity filling the space.
Jeongrok, who was talking to someone with a serious face, handed a stack of printouts to Jung Yoon, who had just taken his seat at the table.
Jung Yoon frowned at the piled-up work, anticipating the long hours ahead.
Jeongrok, seemingly unfazed, shoved his phone into his back pocket, then even took what Hyeoncheol was looking at on his own desk and placed it on top of Jung Yoon’s already growing stack.
Jung Yoon’s workload had instantly doubled, a subtle act of delegation.
He gritted his teeth, careful not to show his frustration or exhaustion.
“First, they said the fingerprints would take some time to process,” Jeongrok began, addressing the team.
“Most of them are overlapping and blurry, making identification difficult. However, the partial prints found on the fence and the feeding trough seem usable, so there’s hope there.”
“I searched for Jung Yong-baek’s cell phone, but it wasn’t there at the scene,” Hangyeol chimed in, eager to contribute.
“We even searched Jung Yong-baek’s officetel through Section Chief Shim, but it wasn’t there either, so they’ve been looking everywhere for it. Take a look at this footage.”
Hangyeol rattled on the keyboard with practiced speed, then thwack! pressed the enter key with a cheerful sound, a small triumph.
He then turned the laptop so everyone could see the screen.
“Is that Jung Yong-baek?”
Junhyeok asked, leaning closer.
“Yes. Just a moment…. Ah, here. Do you see it?”
Hangyeol zoomed in on the image.
Jung Yong-baek was clearly captured on the CCTV at the officetel entrance.
The date on the timestamp matched the day he had informed his work he was taking annual leave.
Jung Yong-baek looked at his face reflected in the glass entrance door, then opened the inner pocket of his suit jacket.
He looked towards the main road, fiddling with the cell phone he had taken out of his inner pocket.
A little later, he made a call to someone, his lips moving in conversation, and walked out of the CCTV’s view while still talking.
“He took his phone,” Jung Yoon observed, a new piece of the puzzle falling into place.
“But it wasn’t found on the body, and there was no phone in the vicinity of the cattle shed either,” Hangyeol confirmed, the anomaly highlighted.
“Where did he go from here?”
Jungrok pressed, his gaze intent on the screen.
“We got the CCTV footage from the entire area that day and followed his path meticulously,” Hangyeol explained, proud of their work.
“He took a bus and got off at the terminal.”
“Oh.”
Junhyeok placed two new photos on the table.
One was a grainy image from the CCTV inside the bus, clearly showing Jung Yong-baek.
The other was taken at the terminal entrance, showing him entering.
“He bought a ticket to Deokdong,” Junhyeok continued, pointing.
“We checked Jung Yong-baek’s card statements, and the purchase matches the time he arrived at the terminal. But…”
“But what?”
Jungrok asked, sensing the twist.
“He didn’t take the bus.”