My Calling Is Profiler [EN]: Chapter 533

“That’s right. The victim changed to a man in the third case. Even if he was weak and a freshman in college, he was still an adult.”

This doesn’t simply mean he changed. It means he gained the courage to subdue the victim and became confident in his crimes.

“He’s definitely grown bolder.”

“Yes.”

“This is troublesome.”

If the murders were based on his preferences, it would be easier to track him. If it were women, then women; if it were people in their 20s, then people in their 20s. Their activity radius would be different. But this isn’t even that.

“There are no signs of rape, nor are there any other signs of obvious injury.”

“The cause of death is excessive bleeding in all cases.”

The victims all died from blood loss.

“It’s an unnecessary process, but perhaps that process exists to inflate his ego.”

“Ego?”

“Yes.”

“Ego about what?”

“Education.”

“Ah!”

The common denominator among the three people is their education. In the case of the female office worker, the company she worked for was a large corporation, and getting a job there is by no means easy.

“The same goes for the two students. You might dismiss them because they’re college students, but strictly speaking, college students should be classified as highly educated.”

In Korea, due to a unique situation, there are now more university spots than students to fill them, so it seems like anyone can become a college student. However, generally, the status of a college student is correctly classified as highly educated.

“Moreover, both of them attend universities in Seoul.”

Saying they attend universities in Seoul implies they studied quite hard.

“There are binding marks on the victims, but no rope was found. He probably wanted to avoid being tracked through the rope.”

“So, he untied them after death.”

“That’s right. But the stranger thing is that there are no signs of struggle or attempts to escape.”

If someone is in a life-threatening situation, how would they react? Naturally, they would fight back to subdue the opponent or try to escape.

“Since they were tied up, fighting would be difficult.”

“Probably.”

“But excessive bleeding doesn’t cause immediate death.”

If that were the case, they would have tried to escape to survive. They should have gone to the road and asked anyone they met to save them.

“But the victims didn’t do that. Why?”

“You’re saying he watched them.”

“That’s right.”

The perpetrator probably watched them slowly die before his eyes. And the victims begged for their lives.

“By watching the dying person beg, he probably thinks he is superior to them.”

He inflates his ego in that way, and by doing so, he thinks he is superior.

“However, I can’t figure out why the police are the target.”

“But how did he kidnap the victims?”

“That’s the problem.”

The three victims have no common ground, and their living environments are completely different. One is an office worker, and two are college students. But even the college students attend completely different universities, except for the fact that they are in Seoul.

“The activity radius of college students is actually quite predictable.”

They hang out around their university and meet with their peers.

College students inevitably spend more time with friends or someone else than alone.

“It’s impossible to kidnap such a person without a trace.”

Park Do-joon pondered and said,

“He must have used a vehicle.”

“That’s obvious. The problem is how he brought that person here without being seen.”

It’s impossible to move a person from the city to the outskirts without a vehicle. Of course, he used a vehicle. The problem is figuring out his method.

“It’s an important factor, but not an absolute one.”

Tracking that down is one method, but there are other methods.

“The rope is important.”

“Rope?”

“Yes.”

“Rope is sold everywhere.”

“That’s right. Rope is something you can use commonly. But the perpetrator deliberately took the rope with him. Why?”

“That’s… uh? I don’t know? To prevent being arrested by comparing the cut surfaces of the rope?”

“That’s… what kind of outdated method is that?”

“It’s not a wrong method, is it?”

“Of course, if the frequency of using rope is low, that’s possible. But the perpetrator works in transportation. He’ll be cutting and using it almost every day.”

“Ah…….”

“So, he took the rope for another reason.”

“What reason?”

“Of course, it’s because the rope is special.”

“What? What’s so special about the rope?”

Rope is just rope. It’s something you can easily buy and use online. There’s no purpose in making it special, and there’s no reason to use a rope made for a special purpose externally.

“Yes, that’s important. Rope isn’t inherently special. But it’s not like there are no cases where rope is made specifically for internal use.”

“There are such cases?”

“People are so indifferent that they don’t realize it, but there are more than you think.”

“Where?”

“Franchises.”

“Franchises? Ah!”

Only then did Lee Ji-soo realize. In fact, many franchises create and use their own packaging ropes.

Like chicken restaurants or pizza places.

“Twine is more durable than you think.”

The important thing about rope is its tensile strength. And what is commonly called twine cannot be pulled and broken by human strength when tied.

“Of course, there are people with real strength who can pull and break it.”

However, if you are tied up, instead of breaking, it will dig into your flesh and increase the pain.

“If the franchise name is written on it, they will search the related people.”

The victims are all from Seoul. Then there is a high possibility that the perpetrator is also from Seoul.

In that situation, what if you limit the people who can access the company’s rope?

“It would be greatly reduced.”

“Yes, it would be greatly reduced.”

Store employees or owners, or delivery people.

“Even then, only affiliated delivery people would be possible.”

“It will definitely be reduced, but…….”

Lee Ji-soo said, still not understanding Park Do-joon’s words.

“There’s still something I don’t understand. Where do *you* get that rope? I heard you work at a shaman’s house?”

“To be exact, I don’t work *at* a shaman’s house, but I do delivery work *for* them.”

“Yes, if that’s the case, then they conflict with each other, right?”

If you work for a franchise, you can’t realistically take on the work of shamans. If you only do daily work like shamans, there’s no reason to receive the franchise’s rope.

In the case of delivery, they just come and take the packaged items, so there’s no reason to give them the rope itself.

“There are several possibilities. They may have been running an existing business and closed it down, so they may have it. The important thing is that it’s an item that can identify them.”

“Um…….”

Lee Ji-soo frowned at Park Do-joon’s words.

“He’s definitely moving intelligently.”

“Yes, but because he’s intelligent, or rather, because he’s trying to *appear* intelligent, his patterns tend to become obvious.”

“His patterns become obvious?”

“This is a game to him. So, he wants to provoke the police and show off his abilities. That’s why he forces the police to play a brain game through the code.”

“I know. We still haven’t solved the third code message.”

The first and second messages were somewhat solvable, but the third is difficult. So, no one has solved it yet.

“A code is a more complex method than you think.”

A code that substitutes numbers or changes the order of words is too easily solved.

In fact, the first code was a number substitution code, and the second code simply wrote the Korean alphabet [Hangul] in English order.

“But we haven’t been able to solve the third code.”

The third code is a series of alternating English letters and numbers.

But the problem is that it’s not an existing code system, nor is it a known personal method.

“But creating a proper code is quite difficult.”

If it were easy, would each country have struggled so much to create codes during World War II? You’d be surprised to know how much money code experts receive each year in the United States.

“But it’s difficult. Then that code is a personal code.”

The key to a code is versatility. No one should be able to recognize it, but someone with a keyword should be able to interpret it.

“Isn’t that what codes are all about?”

“Well, yes, but the biggest difference is the method of interpretation.”

You can interpret it if you have a keyword. But in the case of professional codes, you can’t interpret them with just a keyword. Even the keyword is encrypted, so you have to receive separate training to interpret that keyword.

“There are movies with such content.”

In the United States, when codes kept being breached and information leaked, they changed their minds and decided to use Native Americans as signalmen and deployed them.

Of course, in the case of those Native American signalmen, they were ordered to be protected as much as possible, but if there was a high possibility of being captured by the enemy, they were to be killed even by their own allies.

It was to prevent the code from being compromised.

“The same goes for Korea.”

During the Korean War, the Korean army, which had inferior technology and wiretapping capabilities compared to the North Korean army, had no way to prevent information from leaking.

Code system? Most of the officers were from the former Japanese army, and many soldiers were illiterate, so no one had learned it at all.

“So, the solution that came out was to use Jeju Island residents as code soldiers.”

In fact, Jeju Island residents lived in an area with no contact with the North Korean army, and their dialect was so distinct that the North Korean army could never understand them. It’s the same Korean language, but the usage and meaning of words felt like a completely different language. Even now, conversations between locals are at a level that people from other regions can’t understand at all, so it was quite effective.

“It’s a kind of double security.”

Applying the technology to interpret the code as well as the code itself is the basis of modern codes.

For example, during the Korean War, when a fighter jet flew by with a ‘sseaek~’ sound, it was called ‘Ssaek-ssae-gi,’ and this Ssaek-ssae-gi is the first security. North Korea doesn’t know the words that are used in Korea.

But after a while, North Korea will know that Ssaek-ssae-gi is called a fighter jet, but if you twist it again and call it ‘Sae-gi’ or even ‘Cheol-sae-gi,’ no one can know it unless they are trained to call it that.

“The reason we can’t interpret the perpetrator’s code is because we don’t know the keyword.”

“But if we can identify an individual’s life or environment, it could be a keyword.”

“That’s right.”

Twisting the first code to create the second code is the realm of truly trained code experts. Those who claim to create codes to create a kind of threat or to show off their superiority end at creating the first code.