Episode 14
“Honestly, you have no idea how flustered I was back then.”
Lee Seon-dong frowned.
“He came right out and said, ‘A man’s been following me since earlier, and I can’t go home. Could you just walk with me to the nearest police substation?’ And I thought, this is really bad. So I told her we should go to the building management office together.”
Taking her to the nearest management office had been the sensible thing to do.
“But she kept saying she didn’t live there, that she was too frightened, and begged me to take her to the police substation instead.”
“Hmm.”
“It felt a little off, but she was so upset that I figured the police station would be better, so I took her there.”
He had escorted the woman along the main road to Seocho 2 Police Substation, then, some time later, accepted the cold chicken and gone home.
“Lee Seon-dong, Seocho 2 Police Substation—this is the place, right?”
I unfolded a Seoul city atlas and pointed to Seocho 2 Police Substation just below the block where Readers Apartment stood.
“Yes!”
“And you came down this road.”
“Right!”
So I can confirm it with CCTV.
If I secured the delivery app records and the chicken shop’s CCTV footage as well, Lee Seon-dong’s account would be proved true in an instant.
So far, there was no problem treating this part as the truth.
“But the next day, the police came to my company. They said the victim of the sexual assault had remembered my employee badge hanging around my neck and had come in to ask me to accompany her to the station!”
That was the part his wife had mentioned.
His lips trembled violently.
“I-I told them it wasn’t me and tried to go back to my lab, but the police arrested me, saying there was a risk I’d destroy evidence and flee. In front of everyone, in the first-floor lobby, like some kind of disgrace!”
When he said he’d been branded complete trash at the company, a faint spasm flickered in his right cheek.
“I had chicken and beer the night before and was rushing to get to work the next day! I didn’t even step outside in the middle of the night while I was asleep, so how could my DNA have been found on the victim—h-huh?!”
“L-Lee Seon-dong?!”
Whether the ordeal had shocked him so badly that he couldn’t bear it anymore, his breathing grew ragged and his limbs began to twitch in broken bursts.
Hyperventilation.
There wasn’t even the usual plastic bag in the interview room, so I made do by laying him on the floor.
“Gu-guard. D-don’t call anyone!”
“Yes, of course. Just stay calm and breathe.”
I deliberately guided him into slow breathing—inhale for four seconds, hold for a few more, then exhale—to steady him.
“Inhale slowly, then breathe out.”
“Hah! I—I’m…”
No, I’m not!
I looked into Lee Seon-dong’s eyes as he struggled to breathe.
They were the eyes of a man who was truly, bitterly on the verge of going mad from injustice.
“Let’s focus on calming down for now. We can untangle the case step by step.”
“Hah! …Haa!”
“I may not look it, but I’m a lawyer who made a name for himself in Continent Law Firm’s major criminal team. So don’t worry.”
“Haa! I-I really…”
“Yes, so take deep breaths.”
In and out.
In and out.
For quite a while, I kept his breathing under control by having him exhale and inhale again and again.
“Ah….”
“Lee Seon-dong.”
He slowly sat up.
“Are you all right?”
“Y-yes. I’m okay now.”
He covered his white, bloodless face with both hands.
“Haah…”
“Lee Seon-dong, are you really all right?”
“Y-yes, really. Let’s start again, Attorney. We might run out of visitation time.”
“I’ll come back the day after tomorrow. Get some rest for now.”
But he was adamant.
“It’s better than the holding cell, but I still want to get out of this hell as soon as possible.”
“All right. Then could you tell me what you did after leaving Seocho Police Station, or whether you contacted anyone from home?”
“You first asked me where I was and what I was doing on October 1. Since it was Sunday, I was of course at home.”
“Did you happen to speak with anyone after 10 p.m.?”
“I did talk to my girlfriend, but it was before 10.”
“I’ll verify that right away.”
The police would have requested the call records from the carrier, but I needed Lee Seon-dong’s cooperation as well, to refute the allegation.
There’s a record of a phone call, and the location isn’t far from the scene. Even the prosecutor must be feeling uncertain.
That was why, even though the detention period would end tomorrow, they still couldn’t indict him.
If a judge rejected the warrant, the headlines would blaze with the story of prosecutors fumbling the ball after seizing the suspect.
In any case, the prosecutor’s detention period was ten days by default.
It could be extended once for another ten days, and pretrial detention before the first trial was supposed to last no more than two months.
They must have already filed for the first ten-day extension today.
In that case, I planned to petition the court for a detention review and get Lee Seon-dong out of the detention center before trial.
Using his ironclad alibi.
“Lee Seon-dong, were you at home for the second incident on October 14 as well?”
“Yes.”
The third incident, too.
The fourth one as well—home.
This is not going to be easy. Before I file for detention review, I’ll need to comb through the CCTV around his home.
“Hmm.”
The more I organized the facts, the less of a thread I could find to pull.
“You may think this is strange, Attorney, but I don’t really go out except when I’m at home, at work, or meeting my girlfriend. Even showering just to go outside feels too much of a hassle.”
He really was a homebody.
Even from the call records his wife had shown me, it was clear he’d spent most of his time at home.
“That’s why I can’t understand this case any more than you can. I don’t even go around outside, and yet they say I’m tied up in these crimes. Not just one or two, either.”
The hand he had rested on the table was shaking uncontrollably.
“They said my DNA was found on the victims’ bodies. But that can’t be true.”
And yet why was his DNA found inside the victims’ bodies?
The first crime took place around 10:40 p.m. on Sunday, October 1.
A woman in her twenties was sexually assaulted at Club Nine Room in Gangnam.
If Lee Seon-dong had been at home at that hour, as he claimed, then who was the Lee Seon-dong caught on CCTV?
The footage was dark, but the dimly lit face had looked a lot like him. And the DNA matched, too.
The second case was the same.
On Saturday, October 14, at 7:10 in the morning, Lee Seon-dong said he was asleep at home.
But in Gogae Park, only two blocks away from his house, a minor student on the way to a study café had been assaulted.
The third case was…
On Friday, October 27, around 11:30 p.m., a woman in her thirties was attacked in the bar alley on Teheran-ro.
And finally, the woman who had asked Lee Seon-dong to walk with her to the police substation had been assaulted in her own home.
That one could only have happened if he had followed her from the police substation all the way to her house. But Lee Seon-dong had gone through the chicken shop and headed home.
Well, if you used every minute ruthlessly, maybe it was possible—but only just. In truth, it was as good as impossible.
Then….
There was that distinctive way Lee Seon-dong walked when he came into the interview room earlier. I need to check again whether the CCTV footage his wife gave me matches that.
There was still one possibility: that Lee Seon-dong was not the culprit.
“Lee Seon-dong.”
“Yes.”
He met my eyes with a look of utter despair, and I gave him a faint smile.
“Do you use a cleaning service?”
“Huh? Oh, yes, sometimes. My mother makes the reservations for me, though.”
“Then would it be all right if I visited your home once? I need to check something.”
“…My home?”
“Yes. That’s how I solved the Oseong Group case, too.”
“In that case, yes. All right.”
He recited the password.
“Oh, and while I’m at it, could you also prepare a power of attorney? I’ll need to request his call records and location data from the telecom company.”
Jingle.
Just before the visitation time ended, I pressed the emergency call button.
As soon as I got home, I played the CCTV footage his wife had handed over, starting with the video from October 27 before the third offense.
I had a reason for choosing that particular day out of so many clips.
The proof that Lee Seon-dong had returned home early was too thin, so it would be faster to argue that the man in the footage differed from him.
Whirr.
I replayed the image of the figure moving somewhere on the screen.
“Again.”
The staggering gait, as if drunk, was subtly off.
Click.
I played the rewound footage at half speed.
“Just as I thought. There’s no trace of Lee Seon-dong’s little drag on the right leg.”
I had watched carefully both when he entered the interview room and when he left it.
It was a gait he used unconsciously, a slight drag in his step.
Compared to that, the figure on the video didn’t look like a drunk at all—more like someone loosely swaying in time to a song playing through a Bluetooth earbud.
According to the third victim, he had been drunk, but if he was going to commit the crime, he couldn’t have been that heavily intoxicated.
“If we’re talking soju, maybe a bottle at most?”
In any event, the police would already have requested the assault footage as part of their forensic investigation.
But I intended to request the same clip myself from the legal gait-analysis expert association.
“The form Continent used should be on the external hard drive, right?”
I’d probably stored it there with the files I rarely used these days, but I wasn’t certain.
I rummaged through the drawer and found the external drive.
I plugged it into the computer and searched for the file.
[Request Form for Legal Gait Analysis]
“Found it. Let’s fill it out quickly.”
Tap-tap-tap.
“...The analysis concerns whether the gait patterns of the individuals appearing in the three requested video clips are similar.”
I attached the two clips from before and after the crimes, along with the everyday footage of Lee Seon-dong that his wife had sent me, and emailed them off.
“That’s one thing wrapped up.”
Next.
I opened the post-incident footage and picked up my smart pen.
I was nowhere near as skilled as a video-analysis expert, but I still needed to narrow things down somehow if I wanted to catch the culprit more easily.
“His face is half-hidden by that hat, so there’s no way to tell whether it’s Lee Seon-dong.”
Still, after repeatedly stopping and rewinding the footage, there had been some small progress.
Unknown.
Sex: male.
Height: between 175 and 180 centimeters.
Weight: thin, like Lee Seon-dong.
However, the body looks sturdy. Seems to enjoy exercise.
The hat obscures the eyes, but the line of the jaw and the cheekbones resemble Lee Seon-dong’s.
Hesitated, but has the peculiar habit of shaking out his hands. (Not something I could confirm in Lee Seon-dong.)
Right-handed.
A faint mark on the back of the right hand—looks like a mole. Must confirm with the prosecution’s evidence.
No tattoo visible.
The brand of the clothing is……. luxury?
“Talk about looking rich even through the screen. That stuff looks expensive.”
Thanks to the wealthy clients I’d met at Continent, I was familiar with most luxury brands, but I’d never seen this logo before.
“If it’s not luxury, then maybe a streetwear brand. I should check the brand first.”
I opened Google Lens on my phone and took a picture of the clothing in the footage. Search results poured in immediately.
“Jesus. The hoodie costs eleven million won?”
And it was a high-end brand not sold in Korea.
“How did he get it? Did he buy it on a trip and bring it back? Or use a proxy service?”
Given how expensive it was, there might be customs records if it had been declared by a traveler or brought in through a buying service.
“Tomorrow I’ll go to Lee Seon-dong’s house and look for this clothing. If it isn’t there, I can always borrow the prosecution’s help.”
I saved the brand name and model number on my phone.
At the end of the footage I played again—
“…….”
—I pressed pause.
Then I checked the time stamp.
DATE: FRI-27-OCT-2023
23:53:27 GMT+0900 (Korea Standard Time).
The moment when the third crime had been committed, as captured on October 27.
The corners of the culprit’s mouth, lifted as he waved toward the CCTV, were steeped in the certainty that he would never be found.
“Interesting.”
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