The Ninety-Minute Window
The moment I got home, I collapsed into a chair.
“...”
Mr. Lee Seon-dong had said it felt as if he’d been stripped bare.
I felt the same.
Still, it had been a meaningful conversation. At least now I had something to push back with regarding the DNA found on the victim’s body.
Continent Law Firm had handled similar cases before. Not just sexual crimes, either, but special assault cases where a drug had been used to obtain a diminished-capacity ruling.
“First I need to ask Choi Jae-woo, since he’s a urologist, about the semen and the medication ingredients.”
I opened my phone and dialed Choi Jae-woo’s number.
Rrring.
“Yo.”
“Choi Jae-woo, what are you doing?”
“Gaming.”
“I need to ask you something.”
“Yeah?”
“You know sildenafil, the one that’s also used as a cardiovascular treatment?”
He blew out a burst of laughter. “Pffft!”
“...?”
“Kukukuku. So Cha Do-hyuk, you’ve become a fragile little thing, huh? The time has come for you to pay homage to the rising star of Korea University urology.”
“I’m asking because of a suspect.”
“Sure, that’s how they all start. ‘It’s for my friend,’ or ‘my boss.’ Then they show up at the hospital and say, ‘Doctor, I want to live like a man too!’”
“I told you, that’s not it.”
“Kukukuku.”
The bastard wasn’t even pretending to listen.
“I’m hanging up.”
“Aw, come on. I make one little joke and you want to hang up right away? So what do you want to know? The difference between sildenafil and tadalafil? Or the side effects? Sildenafil does have side effects, though they’re usually mild—flushing, headaches, and so on.”
“After taking sildenafil, what’s the probability it’ll show up in semen?”
“Ah? So it really is about a case? Hm. That depends on when it was taken.”
“So the timing of administration matters.”
“Yep. Generally, after a single dose, the amount detectable in semen ninety minutes later is about 0.0001 percent of the administered dose. Within ninety minutes, it varies minute by minute. If it’s within sixty minutes...”
“You said you were gaming. Send me the paper.”
“Huh? Oh—okay.”
“Right away, as soon as you’re done.”
“I’m in queue right now, so I’ll send it over immediately. Hold on a sec.”
“Fine.”
While Choi Jae-woo was digging up the material, I mulled over what he’d said.
After ninety minutes, it was fair to say the amount was practically negligible.
Mr. Lee Seon-dong said he took it only at 11:00 p.m., at a fixed time. And if the sexual assault happened elsewhere at that same time, then the substance should have shown up with a high probability.
“Within ninety minutes?”
I hurriedly drew a line beneath the timeline I’d marked on the whiteboard, setting the ninety-minute limit.
The third incident’s time of commission: 11:30 p.m.
The fourth incident’s time of commission: 11:00 p.m.
These two incidents have to show the substance.
I immediately dug through the evidence.
I looked for any trace of the ingredient detected in the DNA sample, but...
“None!”
Of course. The culprit could only be that man—the bastard who’d gone off about making me go dig around in a goddamn costume that didn’t even fit.
“Choi Jae-woo, check one more thing for me.”
“Ah, damn it! I got matched with a troll, shit.”
“...?”
“Do-hyuk, send the rest by text. I’m going back to my game.”
“Yeah, fine.”
“Oh, right—Ho-jun said he’s having a housewarming before the wedding, so let’s meet then.”
Click.
“It’s already time for Min Ho-jun’s wedding? Well, today is November 27, so next year is almost here anyway.”
Since I’d thought of it, I sent Min Ho-jun a message asking him to tell me when the housewarming would be.
Then I checked which prosecutor was in charge of the case.
Now that I thought about it...
“Wasn’t the prosecutor in charge for this one Kim Sung-gil?”
If it wasn’t just a name coincidence, he’d been the supervising prosecutor assigned to me when I was a trainee prosecutor at the Judicial Research and Training Institute.
“Even back then he was an extraordinary second-year prosecutor—third or fourth year in service—and now he’s a senior prosecutor at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.”
An extraordinary prosecutor, indeed. It might sound odd to call a regular prosecutor extraordinary, but his first posting had been none other than the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.
Only the top one to three graduates from the Judicial Research and Training Institute could go there.
On top of that, even though there was an unwritten rule that anyone whose first assignment was Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office would be transferred somewhere else after two years, he’d stayed on for two more.
Back then, I used to wonder how well you had to score on your monthly evaluations for that to happen.
Now I was so thoroughly soaked in the legal world that I understood it for what it was: a working relationship built when the senior prosecutor who oversaw Kim had moved on to a more powerful post.
Even so, the fact that his second and third assignments had both been in the greater Seoul area, and that he’d ultimately returned to the place most prosecutors only dreamed of being assigned to, told me his personal capabilities were enormous.
“He was tough even back when he was mentoring me—kept telling me to act like a prosecutor even though my grades weren’t up to it, and snapped at me all the time.”
In any case, if my memory was right, then all I had to do was proceed carefully in a way that suited his temperament.
* * *
November 28.
I visited the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office as Lee Seon-dong’s attorney, there to meet with the prosecutor.
The main building’s fifteenth floor and the annex’s fifth floor were under the control of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, a place that had long held the reins of both politics and the economy.
Because its jurisdiction was where the political and business elite rubbed shoulders and lived side by side, whenever a case blew up, this was where things came to a head.
That was because, after the old Supreme Prosecutors’ Office’s Central Investigation Department had been abolished, its special-investigation work had been transferred here.
This place was always suffocating, even when I was a trainee prosecutor.
As soon as I entered the main building, a security guard blocked my path.
“What brings you here?”
“I have an appointment with Prosecutor Kim Sung-gil.”
“Did you make a reservation in advance?”
“Yes.”
“You’re attorney Cha Do-hyuk, correct?”
“Yes.”
“What’s in the shopping bag?”
Even though he already knew what was inside from the scan, the reason he asked was obvious.
They’ve already recorded everything I brought in, so this is their way of warning me not to cause trouble.
“It’s evidence for my defense.”
“Understood. Your ID, please.”
“Here.”
Instead of taking my ID, the guard handed me a visitor pass.
“When you leave, return the pass and I’ll exchange it for your ID. Take the left elevator to the seventh floor.”
After the usual by-the-book routine, I waited in front of the elevators.
Inside the prosecutors’ office, there were people with pale, drained faces and people whose faces had gone dark with anger.
It was kept spotless by constant cleaning, but the atmosphere itself was dingy and oppressive.
Ping.
As I stepped into the elevator, I bumped into a man in a suit. I shot him a quick sideways glance, and he looked visibly flustered.
I lowered my head and pressed the button for the seventh floor.
He doesn’t look like a lawyer. The pass says twelfth floor? Then he must be in Criminal Division Nine. Insurance, maybe.
My phone vibrated in my pants pocket.
When I opened it, it was a KakaoTalk message from Choi Jae-woo.
-Where r u?
The prosecutors’ office.
-Nice. While you’re there, go destroy some evidence in our hospital’s medical dispute case. Then I’ll be your consulting attorney, Professor I’m-a-doc, okay?
What kind of lunatic was this?
The prosecutors’ office has different passes for each floor. I can’t just go wherever I want. How many times do I have to tell you that?
-Heh heh. Look at Do-hyuk getting mad.
Honestly, what a pain.
-I’m texting because I forgot to send you something. lol. Before you meet the prosecutor, take a look at this too.
After that, he sent a few more messages, but I ignored them and read the paper he’d forwarded.
This’ll be useful for the meeting.
I switched my phone to silent and closed it.
Ping.
The elevator stopped on the seventh floor, where Senior Prosecutor Kim Sung-gil’s office was located.
From here on, we were no longer senior and junior alumni from Korea University Law School.
We were prosecutor and defense attorney.
It was time to wage a fierce battle.
“Room 728. Here it is.”
I knocked and went inside.
Below the window, where the sunlight poured in, sat Prosecutor Kim Sung-gil’s desk, directly facing the entrance to the office.
Still, I thought a senior prosecutor would have a nameplate. Guess not.
A few years ago, after a suspect was questioned and flew into a rage, used the nameplate, and assaulted a prosecutor with it, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office issued a directive telling offices not to place nameplates in front of suspects.
So some offices left them in the private room or tucked off in a corner, which meant there were some rookies who couldn’t even tell which one was the prosecutor.
I’m not one of them. I’m not exactly a veteran, either.
In any case, this was the senior prosecutor’s annex office—his interrogation room, really—staffed by an administrative officer on the left and a clerk on the right, so I couldn’t let my guard down.
“Good afternoon.”
Kim Sung-gil closed the file he’d been reading and looked up.
“Oh, our Korea University alumnus.”
“How have you been, sir?”
“I’ve been so busy I barely have time to breathe.”
“It’s the end of the month, so I’m sure you’ve been even busier.”
“And you still requested a meeting knowing that? I nearly refused, but since it was Cha Do-hyuk asking, I took it.”
That was a threat from the very start.
In general, even when you asked for a meeting, prosecutors were usually too swamped with work to make time. But when the defense attorney for a party to the case requested one, they nearly always agreed—while making sure everyone knew how generous they were being.
Tch. I’m not a former prosecutor, and tomorrow was supposed to be the day I’d have to question the suspect. Maybe it really was a burden.
Still, since the signal had been sent that I should be grateful for the favor, I’d have to put in the effort.
“A man who’s more ‘pro’ than anyone else sure knows how to joke.”
“Heh. Good to see you.”
With a creak, Kim Sung-gil stood up from his seat.
He patted me on the shoulder.
“I heard you left Continent, so I thought I’d never see you again. But seeing you like this is really nice. If it was going to come to this, why not appoint you as a prosecutor instead of sending you to Continent?”
Nice. Such a golden tongue.
“My grades weren’t good enough to become a prosecutor, sir. I should have studied harder back at the Judicial Research and Training Institute. I regret that.”
“Your grades? I know exactly what they were. Don’t beat around the bush—while we’re on the subject, why not apply for this open career-track position?”
“No, sir. I’m nowhere near your level. That’s far beyond what I’d even dare to imagine.”
Setting aside the workload, if I became a prosecutor, it would be difficult to reinvestigate my mother’s case.
Someone might claim that if a prosecutor’s family had been wronged, they could overturn a verdict that had already been handed down.
Or the higher-ups might order me not to reopen the case, saying I was dragging a senior prosecutor’s name through the mud.
Realistically, I’d probably be sent to some remote district far from my mother’s grave, and the fact that prosecutors were rotated to a new posting every two years annoyed me even more.
So I simply kept repeating to Kim Sung-gil that my abilities weren’t good enough and that I was satisfied being a lawyer.
“Fine. So what brings you here? You’re here about Lee Seon-dong, I take it.”
I’d only spent two months under him as a trainee, but it wasn’t hard to understand what he meant.
He was criticizing me for not focusing on building my skills and instead taking on a case that looked heavily tilted toward defeat.
He’s definitely remembering my days as a bumbling trainee prosecutor.
For me, that was a good sign.
I wasn’t the same person I had been back then.
Our rapport was solid enough, so I could get straight to the point.
“I came because I wanted to point out a flaw in the police investigation concerning Mr. Lee Seon-dong’s case.”
“...A flaw?”
“Yes. This case moved very quickly because Mr. Lee Seon-dong’s DNA was found on the victim’s body, wasn’t it?”
Since it was a string of sexual assaults in Gangnam, the impact was enormous.
“That’s right.”
“But even from your point of view, wasn’t there something suspicious before the request for supplementary investigation?”
“You think those cops were anything but amateurs?”
What he meant was that since the old system of prosecutors directly commanding investigations was gone, the case had been handled by rookie police officers who didn’t know the first thing about investigation, so it was only natural that the records would be lacking.
If you wanted to be strict about it, the prosecutors’ office and the police were still pretty much six of one, half a dozen of the other when it came to spinning a story that framed someone as the culprit using only circumstantial evidence and no direct proof.
Still.
“That’s what worries me. Even if the investigation is supplemented, I’m not sure the police will actually be able to find the real culprit.”
If it was Senior Prosecutor Kim Sung-gil, who was aiming for a deputy chief prosecutor post, he absolutely wouldn’t be able to let this be indicted as-is—exactly as I’d planned.