Why Is She So Desperate to Find That Detective?
“Why are you so desperate to find that detective, anyway?”
Gyeonggi Northern Provincial Police Agency, Statement Recording Room.
Under the lights, Kim Chung-gon sat with his eyes gently closed, dressed in a gray prison uniform.
As if he were in meditation, his back was straight and his breathing was calm.
From the observation room, Captain Kang clicked his tongue under his breath.
“He still won’t talk?”
“Haah. He hasn’t budged at all.”
“Even after we put the evidence in front of him?”
“Well... most of it’s circumstantial evidence, so...”
Captain Kang’s face hardened.
“Then bring in something that leaves no room for argument! What the hell are you people doing?”
“That’s just it... he didn’t leave anything behind...”
The head of the violent crimes unit lowered his head, looking embarrassed.
Captain Kang narrowed his eyes and muttered like a growl.
“You do realize that if this goes wrong, both you and I are losing our heads, right?”
“I know that. I do, but...”
“If you know it, then act like it!”
He was about to explode, but Captain Kang took a deep breath and forced himself down.
“Hoo. That bastard Kim Chung-gon—he dragged in the wrong guy in handcuffs. Because of him, we’ve spent the last six months running around like idiots. You think I enjoyed all the crap I had to go through to work out a deal with the commissioner?”
“I-I’m sorry.”
The violent crimes chief bowed his head deeply.
“How many days do we have left?”
“Five days.”
“Within that time, you either find direct evidence or get a confession out of him. One or the other, no excuses. Otherwise, we’re both done for. Understood?”
“Um... for now, could we at least push him on attempted murder and then prove the other crimes later...”
Captain Kang’s face went cold.
“Team Leader Oh. You’re not seriously suggesting that, are you? We’ve been blabbing all over the place that we caught a serial killer, and now you want to slap him with attempted murder and call it a day? If that were you, would you sit still and take it?”
“I’m sorry...”
“And if the commissioner starts getting worked up again because people are going around yapping about police incompetence, then what? We’ll all be dragged out and buried together, that’s what! You get me?”
Realizing the situation was worse than he’d thought, the violent crimes chief let his shoulders slump.
“For the rest of the time, I’ll use whatever means necessary...”
“Forget it. I wasn’t planning to rely on you people alone, anyway.”
“Do you have some idea in mind?”
“I’m bringing in a proper player. When a problem’s this troublesome, it’s smart to leave it to an expert.”
The violent crimes chief tilted his head, and Captain Kang glanced up at the clock on the wall.
“He should be here by now...”
Creak—
At that very moment, almost as if on cue, the door opened and someone stepped inside.
Click, click, click—
A woman with a cold, striking gaze walked toward them.
Just from her appearance, she looked to be in her early thirties.
“Hello, Captain. It’s been a while.”
“Oh! Detective Do, you’ve been well? You look good.”
The violent crimes chief glanced at them, silently asking who she was.
“Meet Detective Do Se-lin. She’s a profiler from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency. You’ve heard of her, right?”
At that, a low murmur of admiration escaped the violent crimes chief.
“Ah, yes. I have. She’s famous, isn’t she?”
It wasn’t an exaggeration.
She had graduated top of her class from the Police Academy and even completed training at the FBI in the United States.
But what made her truly famous was that she was deployed to countless violent-crime cases, where she would identify suspects hidden behind veils of obscurity and draw confessions out of them as smoothly as if she were hypnotizing them.
“Captain, that’s a little much. You know I’m buried alive right now with that child abduction attempted case profiling report.”
As Do Se-lin shot him a light side glance, Captain Kang gave a hearty laugh.
“Come on, if I weren’t desperate, do you think I’d be asking? Help me out just this once, Detective Do. If this wraps up well, I’ll never forget this favor.”
The violent crimes chief had to swallow his surprise.
It was the first time he’d ever seen Kang Su-dae, who lived by the principle that he was the best thing since sliced bread, beg a subordinate for help.
Do Se-lin’s gaze moved past the glass window.
“Is that Kim Chung-gon?”
“That’s right. You looked through all the materials I sent over, didn’t you?”
“Of course. It was very interesting. An old man cosplaying as a monk, strangling homeless people... and even performing that bizarre ritual of washing their feet...”
Licking her red lips ever so slightly, Do Se-lin smiled faintly.
“It’s fascinating. We didn’t have cases like this in the States.”
“We have to get a confession within five days, no matter what. If not, this is really going to blow up in our faces.”
Watching Kim Chung-gon sit motionless in the interrogation room, Do Se-lin nodded.
“Naturally. If I take on a case, I see it through.”
Picking up her bag, Do Se-lin stepped lightly into the interrogation room.
Creak—
Clack.
“Hello, Mr. Kim Chung-gon.”
Her voice was neither high nor low.
For someone facing a vicious criminal, her tone was almost unnervingly calm.
Kim Chung-gon’s eyelids twitched faintly, then slowly lifted.
For the first time, their eyes met.
“I’m Detective Do Se-lin. I’ve come to hear your story.”
“I don’t really have anything to say.”
Without a smile or a frown, Do Se-lin continued in a blank, expressionless voice.
“I’m not going to ask about the case. There’s something I’m genuinely curious about.”
Kim Chung-gon’s murky eyes settled on her.
“Do you think you saved your victims, by any chance?”
“.......What do you mean?”
“The four people you killed, Mr. Kim Chung-gon. They had no homes and were cut off from their families. In other words, homeless people with no future to speak of.”
Slowly, Do Se-lin opened the case file.
“From the first murder in Uijeongbu, to the second in Yangju, the third in Dongducheon, and the fourth in Pyeongtaek—every single victim had their feet washed.”
She spread several photos across the table.
Pictures of the victims’ feet, washed clean.
“Why on earth did you do something like this?”
Kim Chung-gon’s gaze lingered on the photos for a moment.
Then, his pale lips, rimmed with cracked flakes of skin, slowly parted.
“The body is a vessel of worldly delusion, but the act of washing is like a ritual to cleanse the mind. The dead have at last been freed from suffering, so I believed it was to wash away the karma they left behind...”
“Does rubbing someone’s feet clean somehow wash away karma?”
“The form is merely a symbol. The feet are where a human being stands upon the world. To cleanse the feet that have walked through a filthy world is...”
“Either a way of easing your guilt, or a symbol of some kind of performance.”
The overlapping voices cut off Kim Chung-gon’s words.
“Well, fine. Why did you move from the northern Gyeonggi area to the south?”
“I simply moved according to the thread of fate.”
“No. You expanded your sphere of control. At first, you stuck to familiar territory. Then you moved into adjacent areas. Once the net started closing in, you switched regions outright to throw off the investigation. You’d gotten confident.”
Do Se-lin pressed him relentlessly.
“All the victims were drunk, and all of them were weak people who had nothing. You talk about salvation and mercy and all that nonsense, but what you really are is just a contemptible murderer who preyed on the powerless.”
Kim Chung-gon’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“Am I wrong?”
At her provocative stare, Kim Chung-gon clenched his bony fingers tight.
The veins on the back of his hand stood out sharply.
Do Se-lin felt a surge of quiet triumph.
She thought her strategy was working.
She hadn’t merely tried to provoke him emotionally.
Serial killers—especially the kind with a strong tendency toward self-justification—often carried two selves at once.
There was the outward self, wrapped in moral and religious language, and the inward self, which realized its sense of superiority through the urge to control weaker people.
Do Se-lin intended to force a confession using a self-narrative collapse.
By directly denying and shattering the criminal’s so-called noble story, she would shake the psychological defenses he depended on.
As expected, Kim Chung-gon’s gaunt body began to tremble faintly.
Do Se-lin watched him closely with emotionless eyes.
“Mr. Kim Chung-gon? Are you admitting the entire crime?”
His lips quivered, then suddenly he dropped his head.
“It’s coming... it’s coming again...”
“Mr. Kim Chung-gon...?”
Kim Chung-gon jerked his head up.
His eyes were bloodshot now, utterly unlike the vacant look he’d had a moment ago.
“T-the Four Heavenly Kings... Jikgukcheon of the East, Jungsangcheon of the South... they’re coming to bind me!”
His gaze chased something through empty air.
“You’re using iron chains to ask about karma...! I said it was still too early, so why...!?”
Do Se-lin’s brow twitched slightly.
She’d heard the suspect hadn’t been sleeping properly for days.
This could be an acute stress reaction.
“Don’t try any tricks. This won’t let you claim diminished responsibility.”
But Kim Chung-gon didn’t even see her before his eyes, and only kept spewing nonsense with trembling pupils.
“Every night they come and seize my ankles... the ones I saved are the ones dragging me down by the ankles... huff, huff!”
His breathing grew rougher and rougher.
“I-I can’t take any more. It hurts too much. I can’t take it anymore! Aaaagh!!”
Bang!
Kim Chung-gon shot to his feet and lunged at Do Se-lin in a sudden attack.
The detectives waiting outside flung open the door and rushed in.
“Subdue him! Quickly!”
Two detectives grabbed Kim Chung-gon’s arms.
He thrashed wildly and screamed.
“The detective who caught me! Bring that detective here! Only he can free me from this sin! Hurry!”
With madness blazing in his eyes, Kim Chung-gon roared like a beast.
In the end, he was forcibly dragged away, and his howls of resistance faded farther and farther into the distance.
Left alone, confusion settled over Do Se-lin’s face.
Exaggerated delusion? Acute psychotic symptoms caused by sleep deprivation and stress? Or was it calculated acting?
After a moment, she shook her head.
“No. He’s just putting on an act. If I press him a few more times, he’ll definitely talk.”
Then Captain Kang and the violent crimes chief entered the interrogation room.
“What happened?”
“He got shaken. Once things started turning against him, he pretended to go insane.”
“Maybe he really did go insane from lack of sleep? Kim Chung-gon hasn’t slept properly a single night since he was taken in here.”
At the violent crimes chief’s words, Do Se-lin shook her head.
“When a person’s self-narrative collapses, there are usually two reactions. They either attack, or they break down. We saw both today, so he’ll crack and talk soon enough.”
Captain Kang said with a grave expression, “We have to get a confession within four days, no matter what. There’s no time left.”
“That’s enough.”
Do Se-lin answered with confidence.
But less than two days later, that confidence was shattered.
From that day on, Kim Chung-gon began skipping meals in the holding cell.
He wouldn’t sleep a wink, only hunching in on himself, then suddenly smashing his head into the wall or constantly trying to injure himself.
It was the same when he was dragged into the interrogation room and sat down across from Do Se-lin.
He just kept repeating the same thing.
“Please call that man for me... that man who bound me... please...”
“Why is he so desperate to find that detective, anyway?”
“The karma I created has become flames of hell, gnawing at my heart... Every night the Four Heavenly Kings split my head open and eat my eyeballs!”
On the eighteenth day since the warrant was issued, Kim Chung-gon’s madness had reached its peak, and looking at the living corpse he’d become, Do Se-lin had no choice but to make a decision.
“Team Leader Oh. Who was the detective who arrested Kim Chung-gon?”
“There’s a guy named Song Tan in the Annam City Southern Precinct violent crimes team... Why do you ask?”
“I think we need to bring that person here. Please request support from Annam City Southern Precinct.”
And so, the day after the emergency support request was sent out, Song Tan went to work not at Annam City Southern Precinct, but at the Gyeonggi Northern Provincial Police Agency.
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