the naked face || bts

eight

'Drink?' Jungkook shook his head moodily, studying Yoongi. Yoongi poured himself his second stiff scotch while Jungkook watched without comment. Yoongi's hands were still trembling. As the warmth of the whisky floated through him, he felt himself beginning to relax. Jungkook had arrived at the office two minutes after the lights had come on. With him was a police sergeant who now sat making notes in a shorthand notebook. Jungkook was talking. 'Let's go over it once more, Dr. Min.'

Yoongi took a deep breath and began again, deliberately keeping his voice calm and low. 'I locked the office and went to the elevator. The corridor lights blacked out. I thought that the lights on the lower floors might be working, and I started to walk down.' Yoongi hesitated, reliving the fear. 'I saw someone coming up the stairs with a flashlight. I called out. I thought it was the guard but it wasn't.'

'Who was it?'

'I've told you,' said Yoongi. 'I don't know. They didn't answer.'

'What made you think they were coming to kill you?'

An angry retort came to Yoongi's lips, and he checked it. It was essential to make Jungkook believe him. They followed me back to my office.'

'You think there were two men trying to kill you?'

'At least two,' Yoongi said. 'I heard them whispering.'

'You said that when you entered your reception office, you locked the outside door leading to the corridor. Is that right?'

'Yes.'

'And that when you came into your inner office, you locked the door leading to the reception office.'

'Yes.'

Jungkook walked over to the door leading from the reception office to Yoongi's inner office. 'Did they try to force this door?'

'No,' admitted Yoongi. He remembered how puzzled he had been by that.

'Right,' said Jungkook. 'When you lock the reception-office door that opens onto the corridor, it takes a special key to open it from the outside.'

Yoongi hesitated. He knew what Jungkook was leading up to. 'Yes.'

'Who had the keys to that lock?'

Yoongi felt his face reddening. 'Ara and I.'

Jungkook's voice was bland. 'What about the cleaning people? How did they get in?'

'We had a special arrangement with them. Ara came in early three mornings a week and let them in. They were finished before my first patient arrived.'

'That seems inconvenient. Why couldn't they get into these offices when they cleaned all the other offices?'

'Because the files I keep in here are of a highly confidential nature. I prefer the inconvenience to having strangers in here when no one is around.'

Jungkook looked over at the sergeant to make sure he was getting it all down. Satisfied, he turned back to Yoongi. 'When we walked into the reception office, the door was unlocked. Not forced- unlocked.'

Yoongi said nothing. Jungkook went on. 'You just told us that the only ones who had a key to that lock were you and Ara. And we have Ara's key. Think again, Dr. Min. Who else had a key to that door?'

'No one. They must have made a copy of Ara's key when they killed her.'

'It's possible.' conceded Jungkook. A bleak smile touched his lips. 'If they made a copy, we'll find paraffin traces on her key. I'll have the lab run a test.'

Yoongi nodded. He felt as though he had scored a victory, but his feeling of satisfaction was short-lived.

'So the way you see it,' Jungkook said, 'two men- well assume for the moment there's no woman involved - had a key copied so they could get into your office and kill you. Right?'

'Right,' said Yoongi.

'Now you said that when you went into your office, you locked the inner door. True?'

'Yes.'

Jungkook's voice was almost mild. "But we found that door unlocked, too.' 

'They must have had a key to it.'

'Then after they got it open, why didn't they kill you?'

'I told you. They heard the voices on the tape and-'

'These two desperate killers went to all the trouble to knock out the lights, trap you up here, break into your office- and then just vanished into thin air without harming a hair of your head?' His voice was filled with contempt.

Yoongi felt cold anger rising in him. "What are you implying?'

'I'll spell it out for you. Doctor. I don't think anyone was here and I don't believe anyone tried to kill you.'

'You don't have to take my word for it,' Yoongi said angrily. 'What about the lights? What about the night watchman?'

'He's in the lobby.'

Yoongi's heart missed a beat. 'Dead?'

'He wasn't when he let us in. There was a faulty wire in the main power switch. He was down in the basement trying to fix it. He got it working just as I arrived.'

Yoongi looked at him numbly. 'Oh,' he said finally.

'I don't know what you're playing at, Dr. Min,' Jungkook said, 'but from now on, count me out.' He moved towards the door. 'And do me a favor. Don't call me again. I'll call you.' The sergeant snapped his notebook shut and followed Jungkook out. The effects of the whisky had evaporated. The euphoria had gone, and he was left with a deep depression. He had no idea what his next move should be. He was on the inside of a puzzle that had no key. He felt like the boy who cried wolf, except that the wolves were deadly unseen phantoms, and every time Jungkook came, they seemed to vanish.

Phantoms or... there was one other possibility. It was so horrifying that he couldn't bring himself to even acknowledge it. But he had to. He had to face the possibility that he was a paranoiac. A mind that was overstressed could give birth to delusions that seemed totally real. He had been working too hard. He had not had a vacation in years. It was conceivable that the deaths of Taehyung and Ara could have been the catalyst that had sent his mind over some emotional precipice so that events became enormously magnified and out of joint. People suffering from paranoia lived in a land where everyday, commonplace things represented nameless terrors. Take the car accident. If it had been a deliberate attempt to kill him, surely the driver would have got out and made sure that the job was finished. And the two men who had come here tonight. He did not know that they had guns. Would a paranoiac not assume that they were there to kill him? It was more logical to believe that they were sneak thieves. When they had heard the voices in his inner office, they had fled. Surely, if they were assassins, they would have opened the unlocked door and killed him.

How could he find out the truth? He knew it would be useless to appeal to the police again. There was no one to whom he could turn. An idea began to form. It was born of desperation, but the more he examined it. the more sense it made. He opened his laptop and began surfing through the web.