Chapter 27: The Pattern Returns

D-10

“Chief So.”

Mu-yun took his eyes off the monitor screen he had been staring at.

Detective Lee looked at him and pointed behind with his finger.

“Someone’s here to see you.”

Throwing his gaze in that direction, Mu-yun’s eyes narrowed as if to identify who it was, then soon widened.

An unfamiliar yet familiar face waved a hand.

Coming out to the break room, Mu-yun put coins into the vending machine and pulled out two coffees.

One for the guest who came to see him, and one for himself.

The meager heat in the thin paper cup, not even half full, barely thawed his frozen fingertips.

“Here.

Please have this.”

The guest who came to see him reached out and took the cup.

Kang Byeong-jo, once a rookie firefighter, now had an aged, weary face.

The person who had once reached out a hand saying he was clumsy and made frequent mistakes, and that since he might disappear from the fire station at any time, they should get close while he was there—that person was nowhere to be seen.

In his place was the unmistakable toughness of a man who had fought against flames.

“It’s been a long time.”

Mu-yun nodded.

“Indeed.”

Kang Byeong-jo chuckled and carefully lifted the coffee, taking a sip.

“I never thought I’d see you like this after ten years….

You’ve changed a lot.”

At his tone, reminiscing as if struck anew by the passage of time, Mu-yun spoke indifferently.

“Even mountains and rivers change in that time.”

Perhaps it was still a bit too short a time for a single patrol officer to become a full-fledged investigator.

“That’s true.”

Byeong-jo laughed softly and nodded.

Mu-yun looked at Kang Byeong-jo.

Seeing the orange duty uniform hidden beneath his jacket, one face naturally came to mind—a still youthful face not present here.

“By the way, what brings you here?”

He shook off the hazy memory and asked.

They weren’t the kind of acquaintances who would run into each other by chance.

The front of the violent crimes unit office wasn’t a supermarket, after all.

Kang Byeong-jo took another sip of coffee.

His breath, long and drawn out as if shaking off hesitation, scattered.

“I came because there’s something I’d like Chief So to look at.”

He couldn’t readily guess what it was that needed looking at, but Mu-yun’s back stiffened with a flinch.

The warmth seemed to vanish from his face in an instant.

Kang Byeong-jo gave a bitter smile and held out a file folder that had been placed on the seat next to him.

“It’s the investigation report on the fire incident that occurred in Seoheung 3-dong a week ago.”

Mu-yun just stared at the file folder placed on the low table that didn’t even reach his knees.

His hand didn’t move.

He hadn’t imagined that his body would stiffen so much at the sentence combining the words ‘Seoheung 3-dong’ and ‘fire’.

Something hot and rough churned in his stomach, causing him pain.

Kang Byeong-jo gazed at him.

“You have to look.”

After a long moment, Mu-yun finally let out a dry laugh.

“…The bastard died in that explosion ten years ago.”

It was something he never wanted to utter, but the arsonist, feeling psychological pressure from the investigation unilaterally conducted by Probationary Patrol Officer So Mu-yun at the time, had launched a suicide attack, shouting that they would all die together.

In that fire, two people died, including Firefighter Won Tae-i, and one was seriously injured.

The police had closed the case with ‘no right to indict due to the arsonist’s suicide.’

“I know.”

Byeong-jo nodded.

“And I also know that only you, Patrol Officer—no, Chief So—insisted that the person who died then wasn’t the culprit.”

Mu-yun let out a long sigh.

Then he finally reached out and pulled the file toward him.

Opening the cover, there was a report with brief details along with scene photos.

Detailed information about the date, location, and place of the fire.

Mu-yun checked the photos first.

Photos of black ash and burnt furniture were on top.

He lifted the fairly thick stack of photos and was flipping through them one by one when he flinched and stopped.

His eyes widened, then narrowed.

Kang Byeong-jo had already finished his now-cold instant coffee and crumpled the cup.

“Does it seem like him?”

Instead of answering, Mu-yun placed the photo he was looking at upside down on the table and turned it around.

“This ignition device here.”

It wasn’t anything special.

A hairspray can, easily purchasable anywhere, and a spark plug—the kind you could make quite easily with a few hand movements if you had any interest in science during school.

The kind of thing that could cause an explosion.

Enormous damage had been caused by such a crude, simple device.

“A detailed analysis would require collecting samples and running tests, but…”

Mu-yun pressed his lips together firmly, then barely parted them.

“Even if something comes out of this, it’s not enough.”

There were cases where only one out of a hundred pieces of evidence matched.

The device in the photo wasn’t distinctive enough to characterize the culprit.

Byeong-jo nodded and held out another file.

“It’s not enough with just that, but the bastard has one more pattern, doesn’t he?”

Mu-yun’s gaze turned toward the still-closed file.

“Five have been discovered so far.”

“The locations?”

Byeong-jo opened the file cover, turned the stack of papers, and pointed with his fingertip to where the locations were marked.

“Here.

There’s a mountain path between Cheongsan Paradise Apartments and Seoheung Hyundai.

It connects to a closed hiking trail that people don’t know about.

They were found in a clearing inside.

Discovered while inspecting forest fire surveillance cameras with the forest fire monitoring team under the Korea Forest Service.”

Mu-yun pulled the file closer and checked the scene photos.

He closed his eyes.

Animal bones were visible between thick piles of ash.

It felt like seeing the scene from long ago again.

“That’s why I came to see Chief So.

Because I thought you should check.”

Mu-yun took his hand off the file and nodded, somewhat weakly.

It was natural for Byeong-jo to come to him.

Among those who had seen every scene of the incident ten years ago firsthand, he was the only one who had seen the culprit himself, and the only one who insisted the culprit hadn’t died.

“That bastard… is it really him?”

‘I don’t know.

I need to check.

I shouldn’t jump to conclusions.’

His head murmured, but Mu-yun heard the cry of his own heart.

“…Yes.”

Swallowing the words that surged up next, Mu-yun nodded.

The bastard he had been searching for so long had raised his head above the surface again.

***

Now that even wagging his tail seemed difficult for Kkammi, Mu-yun prepared his sleeping spot and, for the first time in a while, stood before the map without alcohol.

He moved his finger along the marked traces on the map.

The appearance of Seoheung 3-dong had changed greatly from ten years ago.

In areas designated for development, old buildings with peeling paint were all torn down, and taller buildings were erected.

The neighborhood itself had grown a bit larger, and there were more houses than before.

Still, the forest land designated as a development restriction zone remained unchanged.

The sports park, which once had only a few benches and streetlights, had grown a bit larger, and the small park behind the Administrative Welfare Center had been transformed into a welfare facility site with ample parking.

More forest fire prevention CCTVs had been installed, and even the village buses passing by the outskirts at ten-minute intervals now had cameras for cracking down on illegal parking and stopping.

“And yet, he was only caught on camera in one place.”

Mu-yun attached a newly printed photo onto the old, worn map.

As if his life hadn’t been limited to just one spot, the bastard was dressed similarly to back then.

A man wearing a black cap pulled down low passed by the camera without fully revealing his face.

He muttered thanks again to Eun-shin, who had sent him this photo.

His colleague, who had become a cop to make a living because he had to eat, was still working diligently as a video analyst at the district police station while agonizing over whether or not to quit police work.

He unfolded the file he had received from Byeong-jo.

The incident brought by Byeong-jo, who had become a fire investigator, was, when classified, an arson for the purpose of concealing a crime scene after murder.

Reading the identity of the deceased victim, Mu-yun narrowed his eyes.

Except for the fact that the victim was the head of the women’s association of a 196-unit apartment complex, she was the owner of an extremely ordinary life history.

That was why the trace of a blade, pressed so deeply into the bone that it seemed embedded—a mark hard to create with ordinary malice—lingered in his mind.

If it was a crime of vengeance, there was a high probability of small impulses involving people around her, and from his short experience, oddly enough, the tighter the community, the more the title of ‘head’ was a necessary evil.

The title itself bestowed the qualification to demand something from others as if it were natural.

But even if such cases existed, it didn’t necessarily mean the victim had provided the cause.

Rather, it was more common than one might think for the perpetrator to have unilaterally felt slighted for personal reasons and brutally murdered the victim.

Before developing preconceptions about the victim, Mu-yun stopped thinking and focused only on the evidence from the scene.

His job wasn’t to make personal judgments but to examine the sequence of the crime, ascertain the facts, and then judge based on legal standards.

Looking only at this case, it was an incident that had absolutely no overlap with the scene where the incinerator was found.

The victim didn’t own any animals, and at the time the bastard appeared in the CCTV footage from the alley connecting to the trail, the victim was elsewhere, so the probability of her being a witness to the crime was low.

Except for the problematic ignition device, there was no evidence of a man of similar build entering or leaving the victim’s house around the estimated time of death.

At this point, it was better to view this case separately.

Forcing them together would mean forcing the scene to fit the evidence that needed to appear.

Still, if there was one thing that bothered him.

Mu-yun stared at the map.

The place where the victim lived was an apartment not far from Seoheung 14-gil, where the culprit had last been seen.

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