The Sun to my Moon

Chapter 24: Lost and Found

Several days later, Go Hae-ri was in the bullpen staring at her map again, her right hand absently resting on her stomach.

Cha Dal-geon studied her from his position on the couch.

"Gwaenchanayo?" he asked.

She looked at him. "Ye. Waeyo?"

He gestured to the way she was standing. "You're resting your hand on your stomach. You only do that when you've had too much to eat or you're feeling queasy. You haven't had lunch yet today, so I assume it's the latter."

"It's nothing," she said dismissively. "Probably had some bad cream cheese on my bagel this morning or something."

He frowned. "You sure?"

"I'm fine, Dal-geonssi," she assured him.

He looked unconvinced. "Okay."

She changed the subject. "What have you been doing with yourself?"

"Since you banished me, you mean?" he said with a slight scowl. Hae-ri had effectively thrown him out of the office two days earlier, claiming he was hovering again, and he'd had to entertain himself. He might have been sulking a little.

"It doesn't seem like it was a very effective banishment," she said dryly. "Here you are."

Dal-geon ignored this. "I've been working on a theory about how Edward Park chooses his victims. Revenge killings and hapless minions aside, that is."

She looked interested. "Mmm? What have you come up with?"

"Duck ponds," he announced.

"Duck ponds?"

"Duck ponds," he confirmed. "Most of his early victims were concentrated in the Busan area. I took a leaf from your book and decided to map them out, but on a smaller scale. I looked at some detailed maps of the city and noticed a lot of the victims lived or worked near some of the larger parks in the area. I went to visit them and realized those parks all had something in common."

"And the thing they have in common is duck ponds?"

"Geureomyo. So now we know one of Edward Park's hobbies. He likes to feed ducks."

Hae-ri shook her head. "And he managed to combine that hobby with his other hobby of destroying people's lives."

"The multi-tasking serial killer."

She snorted. "Sure."

"Anything new here?" he asked.

"Not really. Snow white is helping me with that list of employees from the steel corporations and project development companies but it's slow going. There are just so many of them."

"Nothing stands out?"

"There doesn't seem to be any overlap between the lists. Not that we've found so far, anyway."

"What about Min Jae-sik family?"

"I did find out one thing about them. Remember how I told you Min Jae-na had died?"

"Ye."

"There was an obituary for her all right, but no death certificate."

"Interesting. Think she faked her death?"

"I'm not sure, but I'm going to look into it a little more," she said, heading back into her office.

__________

Hae-ri was true to her word. It was only the next day when she stalked out to the bullpen with a file in her hand and a light in her eye.

"What's up, Timjangnim?" Gi Tae-ung asked.