My Calling Is Profiler [EN]: Chapter 570

“But even with such extreme minimalism, you can’t do anything about the weather.”

“The weather?”

“What’s the weather like these days?”

“Well… come to think of it, everyone’s wearing long sleeves?”

Everyone is wearing long sleeves. Even the photos that seem to show short sleeves are actually long sleeves rolled up.

“Would you dress like that in this weather, minimalism or not?”

“Of course not.”

Korea isn’t a huge country, and if you have a car, you can get home anywhere in the country in a day. So, I’d rather go home, quickly change clothes, swap my luggage for summer clothes, and come back.

“But they’re not doing that.”

“Then it makes sense that they have a car.”

“It does.”

No matter how minimalist they are, they wouldn’t be dragging a carrier around. They need to keep their clothes and daily necessities somewhere, and the most likely place is a car.

“This is strange. Definitely.”

“Yeah, it’s strange.”

This situation doesn’t make sense in many ways. That’s why Lee Ji-soo is only now sensing something is off.

“Now, take a look at the report.”

“Didn’t you tell me not to look at the report earlier?”

“That was to prevent bias. Now that you feel something is strange, you’ll be less biased.”

At that, Lee Ji-soo nodded and began to read the report.

“There’s nothing special here.”

Just dining and dashing, and as travelers, they don’t have a fixed residence, making identification impossible. Their faces are captured on video, but that alone isn’t enough to identify them.

“Yeah, doesn’t it seem strange?”

“What does?”

“When they handed the case over to us, they said they were travelers, right?”

“Yes.”

“And the report also says they’re travelers.”

“That’s right.”

“They probably thought they were travelers because they were causing trouble everywhere they went.”

“Probably.”

“Then wouldn’t the police have considered checking other accommodations?”

“Ah!”

“No matter what, that’s not right.”

Not continuing the investigation is completely different from pretending to investigate. If they don’t investigate at all and just pass it off as unresolved, they’ll get criticized. So, they’ll investigate in some other way. And even though 50% of the police are criticized for being a mess, that means 50% are still decent cops, and they wouldn’t just abandon the case without investigating for no reason.

“Come to think of it, there’s no mention of hotels or motels?”

“Right?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“The report only includes what happened. It can’t include what didn’t happen.”

If they had to write down everything that didn’t happen, the report would be as thick as the sky.

“Can’t write what didn’t happen. Oh, there’s no record of staying at a motel…?”

“Correct.”

Park Do-joon nodded.

“This is what Senior often talks about, the story of what wasn’t there.”

“That’s right.”

Did the police really not check the motels? No. When minor crimes like this occur nearby, the first two places they check are motels and PC cafes [internet cafes]. But there’s no trace in either motels or PC cafes?

“Either they dashed off to another place right after eating, or they’re sleeping far away… but the chances of that happening for five months aren’t high.”

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

“So, they’re not booking rooms and just traveling around in a car, eating and running? Is it a campervan?”

“No.”

If it were a campervan, the sleeping problem would be solved. But campervans have cooking facilities. Naturally, they would just cook and eat there.

“And look at the prices.”

“What about the prices?”

“Let’s say they’re doing dine-and-dash for the sake of memories. What would you eat?”

“I’d eat something delicious, of course.”

“But look at the menu these three men ate.”

“That’s true. The menu is too cheap for a dine-and-dash, isn’t it?”

The cheapest item is a bowl of *jajangmyeon* [black bean noodles] for 6,000 won [approximately $4.50 USD]. So, the total damage is 18,000 won. The most expensive is *galbitang*, a bowl for 12,000 won, plus a bottle of *soju* [Korean distilled rice liquor]. The total damage is 40,000 won [approximately $30 USD].

“If it’s a dine-and-dash, they usually try to go for expensive stuff like meat, sashimi, or eel.”

Because if it’s for memories, it should be something like that. Of course, that doesn’t negate the fact that it’s a crime.

“That’s true. Why just this?”

“Could it be that they really don’t have any money?”

“They really don’t have money?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t that still dine-and-dash?”

“Dine-and-dash is dine-and-dash. But the results and analysis differ depending on the cause of the crime.”

Murder is all the same. That can’t be denied. But the perpetrator’s mindset is completely different depending on whether it’s murder for profit, murder for revenge, or an accident.

“If they ran because they didn’t have money, not because they wanted to eat and run, the story changes. What did you say earlier?”

“My memory theory is scrapped, then.”

“Yeah.”

A memory is something you say, ‘Those were the days,’ after time has passed. There’s no reason to keep doing it, and no reason to be broke, if you’re dreaming of a memory and thinking, ‘Let’s do it once.’

If they get caught, they need to have the money to pay for what they ate to prevent things from escalating.

“Think about it. If they get caught dining and dashing, what do the police do?”

“They just tell them to pay and settle it.”

“That’s right.”

Strictly speaking, they should be punished for dine-and-dash, and the victim restaurant should have a separate agreement, but the police usually say, ‘Just pay,’ and the perpetrators just pay, and the restaurant settles with that.

Because if they actually punish them for dine-and-dash, they have to go through all sorts of complicated processes.

“That could be called a memory. But this isn’t it.”

They’re eating and running with such cheap items, and it’s not just once or twice, but for five months, traveling all over the country doing this.

“What are they doing?”

“This is…”

Park Do-joon frowned.

“It’s closer to being on the run.”

“On the run? Out of the blue?”

“Yeah, it’s out of the blue. But if they’re on the run, all of this is possible.”

“No, this is being on the run?”

“You learned about profiling fugitives, right?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Then it’s simple, just apply it.”

“Fugitives…”

At those words, Lee Ji-soo began to recall what she had learned. And her expression couldn’t help but become strange.

“They prefer changing locations rather than having a fixed location, they prefer cash over cards, and they’re afraid of constantly contacting people…”

So, they constantly move and try to erase traces to hide their escape. It’s definitely similar to a fugitive in many ways.

“But there’s one thing that doesn’t fit if they’re fugitives. If they were fugitives in the first place, they wouldn’t have come to us for dine-and-dash.”

The criminals clearly weren’t trying to hide themselves. They didn’t wear masks in the restaurant, nor did they wear hats or sunglasses to hide their faces. That’s why the police were able to easily obtain video footage of their faces.

And the police aren’t stupid, wouldn’t they have compared that video with their wanted criminals? Moreover, the types of criminals who move around in groups of three are obvious.

“Yeah, that’s the problem. But change that one thing to something else.”

“To what?”

“The standard for that fugitive is based on the pursuer being law enforcement. If the pursuer changes, the response also changes.”

“Law enforcement? Isn’t that obvious? Who else would be pursuing them?”

At those words, Park Do-joon clicked his tongue.

‘Well, Korea is weak in this area.’

There are fewer countries in the world where law enforcement has real power than you think. Even in the United States, law enforcement is said to be powerful, but that doesn’t mean the power of criminal organizations is weak.

In countries like Brazil and Mexico, criminal organizations have more power than the government in some areas.

As a result, Korean police make many mistakes when they go abroad because they judge based on Korea.

“It must be a criminal organization.”

“A criminal organization?”

“Yeah, there are limits to what a criminal organization can track.”

They can’t look at CCTV, and they can’t request warrants. They don’t have enough personnel either. So, if they just run away properly, most criminal organizations can’t catch the fugitives and eventually give up.

“Ah, that makes sense.”

The reason they’re not trying to hide themselves is that criminal organizations can’t access CCTV that can identify them.

They can’t even know which store they went to, so even if they go to any place and say, ‘Give me the video!’ the police will just be dispatched.

“Do criminal organizations have that much power?”

“Criminal organizations are more powerful than you think. The Korean police just don’t admit it because of their pride. You know that, right? Officially, there are no nationwide gangs.”

But people don’t believe that. They’re just quietly hidden, but there are at least ten nationwide gangs in Korea.

The police are just turning a blind eye and deaf ear, claiming, ‘There are no nationwide gangs.’ Because they’re afraid to fight them the moment they acknowledge them.

“On the run, huh.”

“It’s not minimalism, but the only reason they have three sets of clothes.”

If they’re running away in a hurry, they can only bring so much.

“It’s not a memory, but they don’t have money?”

“That’s right.”

“But the car…”

“Criminal organizations operate illegal cars anyway, right?”

“Ah, that’s true.”

How could gangsters track illegal cars that the police can’t easily track?

“If an organization member escaped, it wouldn’t be strange if they took one of those cars.”

As Lee Ji-soo listened to Park Do-joon’s words, her face gradually hardened. No matter how she looked at it, it was hard to think of it as a simple dine-and-dash.

“Did you know, Senior?”

“To some extent.”

“How…”

“There is such a thing as profiling for dine-and-dash.”

“Oh, I guess there is.”

There’s no way there wouldn’t be. It’s just that most people don’t have a reason to learn it. So, most people don’t know. However, Park Do-joon profiled many crimes before his regression in order to increase the arrest rate, and dine-and-dash was one of them.

Dine-and-dash is surprisingly one of the most common crimes, even if it’s not well-known.

“Dine-and-dash is basically driven by memories or a sense of self-abandonment, like you said.”

In the case of memories, they eat and run, but they don’t do it in large groups like this. And it mainly occurs in tourist destinations. Dine-and-dash that occurs in non-tourist areas is often due to a sense of self-abandonment, where people whose lives are ruined just decide to go all out, and it often becomes localized as a regional crime, and the police usually know who the criminals are.

“But this is neither.”

In other words, he thought there must be another reason, and after calculating various possibilities, he realized it was very similar to being on the run.

“If they’re on the run… how do we track them? No, who are they running from?”

“One thing is certain.”

“What is it?”

“It’s not embezzlement.”

“Probably not.”

If they had embezzled money from the organization, there would be no reason to dine-and-dash and run away because they didn’t have money.