The men across the street

7: The Evidence

You took a deep breath as you were standing before the police office, starting to doubt if you had made the right choice by coming here. Thinking about turning around and going back, not only because you were afraid that the detective wanted something in return but deep down you were also very much afraid of what you would find in those boxes filled with evidence. You knew that this would be your one and only chance to look at the witness statements and to have an actual look at what the crime scene looked like, maybe even the victims, when police arrived. You were sure the ones that were still alive wouldn't be included since the detectives had told you that they themselves hadn't seen any identifying information or evidence about the victims, but still, this was a huge step since even the identities of those that had passed were kept from the public.

You almost jumped out of your own skin when the door to the police office suddenly opened and a few officers stepped outside, looking at you in surprise before asking if you were there to report something.
"No I had a few questions for detective Jung concerning a school project" you decided to tell them, not knowing if the detective was even allowed to show you the evidence since he had offered it only to you and had told you to come by at the time that the precinct would be mostly empty. One of the officers looked at you a bit confused but decided on letting you in, before he continued his way over to the parking lot along with the other officers, indicating that perhaps their shift had just ended.

Heading on inside, you discovered the precinct empty, not even the detective himself being insight.
"I was wondering if you were coming or not?" You heard detective Jung's voice say after sitting in the waiting area for a few minutes, before looking to you left where the detective had come through one of the locked doors.
"Come on in" he continued as he gestured for you to follow him. He led you through a couple of doors before stopping before a window with what seemed like a logbook and writing something down. After opening the door to what must be the evidence storage, he pointed to your right, where a table with a few chairs were and told you to wait there and to feel free to grab yourself a coffee while he got what you needed, before disappearing behind yet another locked door. You looked around the room while the coffee machine was busy making your drink of choice, quickly noting that aside from the table, the chairs and the coffee area, that the room was completely empty, not even a picture hanging on the wall and you wondered why.

"sorry it took so long. There is quite a lot" The detective said when he came back with a cart full of boxes.
"I must ask you to be careful and not take anything out of the zip lock bags when it's in one. The documents can be touched though." he explained, putting the boxes on the table before sitting down next to you, looking confused at the cup of cappuccino you placed in front of him.

"You ordered a cappuccino at the convenience store during the field trip, so I made you one since I was waiting anyway" you explained, giving him a smile hoping that would get rid of the tense air between the two of you. He thanked you before explaining to you that you couldn't take any pictures of anything inside of these boxes, before telling you that he needed to be upfront to organize some things and to call him if you had any questions, giving you a warning glance right before exiting the room, telling you to listen to the rules he had just told you.

Of course you had prepared yourself for what could be in those boxes, that it would probably be way more shocking than both the documentaries and the gusiwon itself, but yet you found yourself ill prepared for it all. Box after box was filled with pictures and objects more gruesome than you had expected, one being worse than the one before and then you hadn't even gotten to the witness statements and all the written documents, all the assessments by criminologists and psychiatrists. You saw the weapons and surgical equipment, pictures of how they had been used, pictures and descriptions of the containers filled with human meat, prove that the gusiwon had been as nasty when it still had tenants as it was now. You wondered if the reenactment of the final moments of the gusiwon was in these boxes too or if they had for once not done it since it might be too traumatizing for the victims, even though it was a standard procedure in Korea.
The witness statements were something else completely. Only now being able to truly grasp the fear that these victims must have felt was horrifying to say the least. The things they had to endure were absolute nightmare fuel, like they were too insane to be true, yet you knew they were, the evidence literally lying right in front of you. To you, the statements of Victim Yoon and Victim Seo were the most interesting, you already knew this would be the case before coming here. You felt like the statements of Victim Seo were perfect, too perfect, almost calculated and thought through, however the statements of Victim Yoon were the complete opposite and even without meeting or seeing him you could clearly see his mental struggles through his statements. You could feel through every sentence how tormented he had become and how he had started to grow paranoid. It was also here that you discovered that Victim Yoon was an aspiring crime fiction writer, another thing unknown to the public, and that most people around him blamed this fact for his suspicion of the gusiwon's residents.