Detour

09

Haein

Our team met after an hour at the conference room. All of us are intently staring on the wall in front of us, the projector showing the information that we have received from the profiler and the file cases we requested related to the serial murder case we are investigating.

We found three leads on the case.

The first two persons of interest were inclined of a hate crime and the third one a revenge crime. All of them fit in the profiler's description and the timeline also fit in, the relative crimes happened 4 - 10 years ago. The first murder case happened three years ago.

"Mike, RJ, Tessa, concentrate on the first suspect, Namjun and Insub on the second one. Donggo and you two, I want you to take another sweep if any of these three have been captured in any of the CCTV footages, dig in if they were involved in any small crimes regardless what case, Kim, we will work on the third person. I want you all to be extremely discreet about this as we dont want to alarm our potential suspect. And I want you to dig in everything since we only have basic info of them."

"What particular information Sir?"

"Everything. Previous and current jobs, whereabouts for the past four years, if they've been in and out of Jeju, if they moved around their residence, everything that you can possibly dig in. And when you are on your stakeout, minimize your apperance on any places you could be caught on CCTV. It seems the suspect knew how to hide well on cameras or has access to them, I dont want your stakeouts compromised."

I provided further instructions to them. After almost two hours of deliberate discussion if how we will proceed with our investigation, I dismissed the entire team. Kim did not leave yet.

"You think one of them is our suspect?" She asked.

"That's for us to find out. Let's go."

Her brows arched.

"Go where?"

"To work." I concluded, dragging her out of the room.

***

"Do you usually go at stakeouts too? I mean you are a senior inspector already, you don't need to go to field especially if you have an entire team working for you." Kim threw her questions as we sank ourselves on the small couch inside my office.

"I don't sit around, bossing people to do the job for me." I replied as I open my laptop.

She huffed a breath as if I said something unbelievable.

"You don't believe it? My crime clearance rate will speak for itself Kim. I don't even need to brag about it."

"But you are bragging it just right now."

I shut my eyes as if I am debating to a probable suspect.

"Check the emails I sent." I tried to divert the topic, avoiding another argument with her. It will be endless bantering if I won't stop. Luckily, she really shut her mouth.

We've been working nearly an hour when she started stretching her arms.

"Saw anything interesting?" I asked to check her progress.

"Aaron Smith, half Korean half American, the crime happened seven years ago but not here in Jeju. His wife is a native though. He's working as a chef in Gangwon province where the crime happened. He miraculously survived the murder and sustain non critical wounds. He moved to Jeju four years ago working as a chef and as the owner of his own restaurant. He is currently at Namwon right now."

"Any records of his movement outside Jeju?"

"Not indicated here."

She lightly tapped my knee, making me look at her.