Idiosyncrasy 특질

Chapter Twelve

"He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed."
                                                                                                - E.M. Forster, Maurice

Unlike what the movies and dramas showed on TV, murder was not very common in the Seoul metropolitan area. Sex trafficking, fraud, distortion made up the highest crime rates, but murder? Not so much.

So it was no surprise that Oh and Choi had several volunteers from their department. A homicide, even as unsavoury as the water body one, was a big deal.

No one was prepared for the amount of killing that would turn Seoul into a sea of blood by the end of the month, beginning with the body in the Han river.

It started on a Thursday. Usually the homicide department was a quiet, almost serene place where the upstanding men and women of Seoul Metropolitan Police went after their affairs, usually offering their time and manpower to other departments such as robbery, real estate fraud, anti-corruption and so on.

Assistant Inspector Choi had started a coffee pot in the little kitchenette in the hallway when the first phone call came in. The Coroner had finished the post mortem of their water body as well as gotten two new bodies that had been deposited on a local refuse dump.

The Han river body's report held the usual information; that the body was male, 25 to 35 years old, Asian and his skeleton showed signs of violent attack before death. The man had not ended in the Han river voluntarily so suicide was already ruled out.

What caught Inspector Oh's eye was the way the dead man had received his wounds. The splintering on the ribs from the weapon leaving a distinct pattern on it that he had seen in the two reports from the dead bodies from the refuse dump.

The same pattern as far as he could see.

Inspector Oh leant back in his seat and hollered over to another colleague of his who had gotten another dead body a couple of days back.

"Kim Seo-Joon-ssi, didn't you get a dead body a couple of days ago with a distinct pattern of stab wounds?"

"Sure," the man named Kim rifled through his files and came over with the file in question.

"He seems to be a young student, A negative, missing both kidneys and certain fragmented patterns on his ribs where he was stabbed."

Both men looked at photographs that accompanied the forensic report. The pattern from the knife left on the ribs was the same. Oh looked over the other reports again. While the Han river body did not miss any organs, one of the two bodies of the refuse dump did. The one not missing an organ however did show signs of an attempted organ removal of the liver.

"Choi-ssi," Inspector Oh shouted and the younger man's head jerked up. "Did you read the forensic reports on the Han river and refuse dump bodies?"

"Yeah," Choi replied and walked over to Oh's desk. "The coroner was really quick on those ..."

"Did you find something odd about these?" Oh inquired and Choi raised an eyebrow.

"I ... don't know, boss," he replied uncertainly.

"Look at the splintering at the ribs," Oh said. "The same patterns, probably the same ..."

"Knife or knives," Choi finished the sentence.

"Anyone we know who prefers knives?"

Choi shrugged. "A lot of gang members like knives ... but usually it's preferred by the North Koreans and the Raven Sun."