At the Crossroads

Chapter 20

Jinyoung was seated in the interrogation room again the next morning but this time, with Yoon Junghee in front of him. Her composure well kept as she sat there, was something to admire.

"Well, Junghee," Jinyoung started. "You do know Kim Shiwoo intimately. And the questions I'm going to ask you, can you promise you'll answer them honestly?"

That brought a spark of hesitation to her expression. She took a while to reply, "I'll answer when I can, honestly, Investigator Park."

"Call me Jinyoung please," Jinyoung said, "Let's start off with why you were in Kim Shiwoo's room on the day he was killed."

She looked startled for a moment. Seemingly by the fact that her visit had been noticed. Another moment, she looked like she was weighing her answer. Eventually, she said, "You know I used to visit him often and it was just one of those visits on that day."

"Did he know you were visiting him?" came Jinyoung's next question.

"We'd agreed to meet on that day."

"You came to the hotel at about 2pm and when you got to the room, you encountered Mr. Tuan who was just leaving the room. Is it right?"

Once again, she seemed to have to drag out the answer. "Yes. It is."

"When did you leave?"

"An hour later."

"Kim Shiwoo was found dead around five in the afternoon. You left his room at about three. Can we assume that you were the last one to see him alive?"

Here, she looked quite indignant and seemed to have possessed a kind of spirit to defend herself. "As I said, I left him an hour later and how do I know it he met someone else afterwards or not?"

Jinyoung nodded, "A fair point. Leaving this at the moment, can we now turn to your relationship with Mr. Kim? Can you given me a detailed account of how you two met and the nature of your relationship?"

He knew he was on the right track when he saw her disturbed expression. She still held her head high and said, "I choose not to answer this. It's personal and I'd like to keep it to myself."

"There'll be a harder question for you, Junghee." Jinyoung held her absolute attention as he said, "Did you kill Kim Shiwoo?"

She sprang to her feet in anger and her eyes bore resentment. "What an absurd question! Why should I kill him? I didn't! Not at all."

"Please calm down and be seated. There's a strong reason for why I had to ask you this question," Jinyoung opened the file that had been laid before him all this time, "Yoon Jihoon, your husband, was found dead near a railway on 20th July in 2018. The cause of death was starvation and severe injuries of having been beaten. This was an unsolved case and the person who was responsible for this death had never been found. Until now. Will you agree with me if I say it was Kim Shiwoo?"

As if all the energy had been knocked out of her, her lifeless figure dropped back in the chair. For a long while, she could not speak and Jinyoung waited patiently. There was a glint of tears in her eyes but she blinked them away, before they could fall.

"You already know so much, Jinyoung. Law and punishment is something we can't run away from, isn't it?" She looked sober, determination starting to shine on her face. "I'll face the consequences of my action. But let me tell you something. I don't regret what I've done and will never. He'd destroyed many lives, not just my husband's but many others. But to tell the truth, I didn't have any intention to kill him on that day. The knife was only something I carried around for my own safety. But I had a quarrel with him. You know the death of Kim Sungho. It was all Kim Shiwoo's doing and so cruel. I met his wife at the hospital and seeing her helpless on the hospital bed, with no one to rely on, all of this had fueled me. I mentioned this to Shiwoo and he brought up my husband's name. We had a heated argument. The rest, you can imagine."

Jinyoung had noted down all of this on his notebook. He gave her an understanding nod, "You hate him, don't you? But why were you together with him?"

"Let me recount everything from the beginning," she sighed but there was no reluctance in her. Her eyes, however, bore sorrow as she recalled her past. "My husband, my son and I, we were not a well-to-do family. Considering our son's future, my husband wanted to do his own business. A local sportswear company. But of course, we didn't have enough capital and investment. One day, he told me that he had got the money needed to start the business. It was from a bank, he told me and I believed him. But the business didn't go well. Everything went downhill within a year. Only later, I found out that the money he'd borrowed was from a loan shark, not from a bank. Kim Shiwoo was the one who'd lent the money. Because we could not pay off our debt, they took our house and abducted my husband. For days, I didn't know where they kept him. I went to and pleaded with Kim Shiwoo but he only enjoyed our misery. Only when in the papers the news of my husband's death appeared, I knew where to find him. I hated Kim Shiwoo. I still do. If I'd got justice for Jihoon, I would've moved on. But Kim Shiwoo was not punished. I wanted to take revenge on him. My intention was to get to know more about his crimes and report all of them to the police. So I needed to be with him. But my hatred had grown even stronger and I did him in, in a hasty decision. I don't care whatever happens to me. But my son..."

"Don't worry about him," Jinyoung reassured her, "We'll do what we see fit for him. We'll do all we can for him. Till you come back." The innocent eyes of the little boy popped up in his mind and he resolved he would keep the promise.

"Thank you," she said.

"I'm afraid we'll have to keep you in the cell now, Junghee. There may be another interrogation today. But this time, for Kim Shiwoo's crimes. You'll help us, won't you?"

"I'm glad to."

She was, afterwards, led away to a cell. The team met again in the office and recorded all the new information and searched for all the unsolved case files, which could possibly be related to Kim Shiwoo case.

In the afternoon, they drove to where Junghee lived and informed the landlady about what had happened. She was in tears when they left her. Yugyeom went to Hwanshin's school and picked him up while the rest drove back to the police headquarters for the interrogation.

Junghee was willing to tell everything she knew. Kim Shiwoo's old company just being a cover for his illegal activities, the employees there being the gang members and many more murders and black market crimes. It was a fruitful but weary evening altogether and the rest of the night, the team was busy matching all the cases Junghee had mentioned with the existing case files.