Descent of The Demon Master [EN]: Chapter 222

“Want a smoke?”

After settling down in the park in front of the house, Cha In-cheol took out a cigarette from his pocket and offered it to Kang Jin-ho.

“Isn’t this a no-smoking area?”

“There’s no one around, so who cares.”

“…Isn’t that something a police officer shouldn’t do?”

“I’ll pay the fine if we get caught. Go ahead and smoke.”

Kang Jin-ho chuckled wryly and accepted the cigarette Cha In-cheol offered.

Click.

Cha In-cheol lit Kang Jin-ho’s cigarette, then took out one for himself and lit it.

“It’s a world where you have to find a secluded spot just to have a cigarette these days. Things have changed a lot.”

Cha In-cheol felt a sense of the passage of time.

The world was changing that quickly.

If you were to say that just twenty years ago, people used to open the windows on city buses and smoke, no kids today would believe it.

“Investigations are the same. In the past, investigations relied on gut feelings. If there was a suspect who seemed suspicious, they’d just grab him, yell at him, and it often turned out he was the culprit. Ah, don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying I tortured anyone or anything like that. It’s just that it was a bit more forceful than it is now. It’s something you can’t even imagine now.”

In the past, it was possible to arrest someone based on suspicion alone, even without evidence. If that happened now, they’d have to go to court instead of the police station. They’d be too busy dealing with lawsuits.

Kang Jin-ho silently looked at Cha In-cheol.

He couldn’t understand why this man had come to see him in the morning and was rambling on like this.

“I have to go to work.”

“Let’s get straight to the point. Good. I like that.”

Cha In-cheol exhaled a long stream of cigarette smoke and looked at Kang Jin-ho.

“Yesterday at dawn, or rather, at three in the morning, where were you?”

“I was sleeping.”

“At home?”

“Yes.”

Cha In-cheol’s eyes narrowed.

“Are you sure?”

Kang Jin-ho didn’t answer and just stared at Cha In-cheol.

“…Okay. You’re saying, ‘Do you have any evidence?’” Cha In-cheol chuckled softly.

“I don’t have any evidence. So don’t be nervous.”

“I also don’t understand why you’re saying these things to me?”

“I guess not.”

Cha In-cheol quietly looked at Kang Jin-ho.

In the past, he would have just arrested Kang Jin-ho first, regardless of evidence, and then thought about it. But this wasn’t an era where he could do that.

And on the other hand…

“When you live as a police officer, there are times when you think like this.”

Cha In-cheol said with a bitter expression.

“There are people who have power or influence, or those who don’t leave any evidence at all. We, who have to catch criminals in the name of the police, can’t touch them if we don’t have evidence.”

“So sometimes, you meet guys that make you want to quit being a cop and just shove a gun in their jaw and blow their brains out, you know?”

Kang Jin-ho’s eyes darkened.

Who was he talking about?

“Sometimes, I think it would be nice if there was someone who would catch and kill those guys. Like this time.”

Cha In-cheol took out a photo from his pocket and handed it to Kang Jin-ho.

As he took the photo and looked at it, a familiar sight came into view.

In the middle of a police line, there was a photo of the Outlaw’s cold, dead body.

Cha In-cheol chuckled as he watched Kang Jin-ho look at the photo without any change in expression.

“You’re not surprised, are you?”

“I’m not that easily surprised.”

“I figured.”

Cha In-cheol laughed.

“He’s dead. The cause of death is ridiculous, it’s hypothermia. His limbs were all severed, but it wasn’t from excessive bleeding. It wasn’t even that cold, but I guess he lost so much blood that he died of hypothermia.”

“I thought you might want to know.”

Cha In-cheol smiled as he looked at Kang Jin-ho. But Kang Jin-ho still didn’t change his expression as he faced Cha In-cheol.

“Hey, Kang Jin-ho.”

“Yes.”

“Usually, at times like this, you’re supposed to react by saying, ‘Why are you suspecting me?’ Not by making a face that says, ‘Even if you know something, you don’t have any evidence to arrest me.’”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, fine. It’s not like I came here to do anything about it. But…”

Cha In-cheol’s face slightly contorted.

“Do you know why I haven’t put a bullet in those bastards’ mouths, even after going through so much shit?”

“No.”

“Because it’s the law.”

Cha In-cheol chewed on the filter of his cigarette.

“Even if it’s justice, it’s against the law. The law is like the minimum safety device for humans to live as humans. No matter how righteous the purpose, a human who moves outside the safety device of the law will eventually cause an accident. They think they are above the law, and eventually, that justice becomes corrupted. That’s why I don’t like those shitty hero movies. And I don’t like those bastards who act like shitty heroes.”

Cha In-cheol’s voice was heavy.

“Those bastards who break the law and act like heroes are still criminals. Does a guy who kills a murderer not seem like a murderer?”

Kang Jin-ho calmly replied to Cha In-cheol’s question.

“Why are you telling me this?”

The two’s eyes met in the air.

“That’s right. It’s something that has nothing to do with you.”

Cha In-cheol’s eyes softened.

“Thank you for your cooperation. I’m sorry for taking up your time this morning, Mr. Kang Jin-ho.”

“It’s nothing.”

Cha In-cheol bowed his head and turned around.

“Hey, Kang Jin-ho.”

“Yes.”

“…This is off the record.”

“That bastard is probably a murderer. Killing a guy like that is something I can sympathize with as a human, but I can’t understand it as a detective. You seem to be acting like you’re living a normal life on the outside… Don’t act, just live normally, you bastard. A guy who steps into a battlefield is bound to die miserably. And…”

Cha In-cheol hesitated several times, then sighed.

“No. It’s not something you need to know. You should stay out of this.”

“I haven’t been involved from the start.”

“You son of a bitch.”

Cha In-cheol’s voice was mixed with annoyance and laughter.

“The world has gotten a lot better. In the old days, a guy like you would have been thrown into an interrogation room without any questions. No, before that, I might have had my head chopped off?”

Cha In-cheol grabbed his neck as if he was scared and shook it, joking around.

“Let’s not see each other again if possible. Honestly, I’m scared shitless of raising my voice in front of a guy like you. But the shitty thing about being a detective is that even if you know you’re going to die, you have to run towards it if there’s evidence. Be careful not to get me killed, you bastard.”

Cha In-cheol threw the cigarette he was holding on the ground and stomped it out.

“I’m going.”

Kang Jin-ho, who had been watching Cha In-cheol walk away, let out a low sigh and turned around.

You meet them when you live.

People with good instincts.

But he had never seen a person as reckless as that before.

‘What was he about to say?’

Kang Jin-ho noticed that Cha In-cheol had hesitated and didn’t tell him something a little while ago.

And for some reason, that fact kept bothering him.

“Did you come?”

“Yeah.”

“Did anything come up?”

At Gu Young-don’s words, Cha In-cheol got annoyed and got into the passenger seat, fastening his seatbelt.

“What do you think I went there for, you bastard!”

“…Then why did you go there this morning?”

“You don’t need to know.”

Gu Young-don chuckled and started the car.

“Hey, don’t go after innocent people. It’s a sickness to suspect someone as clean as that, it’s a sickness.”

“Clean my ass. It stinks like hell.”

“He looked so clean just by looking at him. He didn’t look like someone who doesn’t shower.”

Thwack!

“Ah, what if there’s an accident after hitting the back of the head of the person driving!”

“Then stop the car, you bastard. Get hit properly and then go again.”

“…I’ll correct myself.”

Cha In-cheol sighed deeply.

He was a partner in name, but practically an assistant, how was he supposed to teach a guy who had no instincts like this?

“Did the forensics come out?”

“I asked them to hurry it up, so they did that part first.”

“Okay.”

“They found DNA from several people on the severed nails of the corpse. We still have to wait for the DNA analysis results, but in these cases, it’s usually correct.”

“I guess so.”

Gu Young-don glanced at Cha In-cheol and asked.

“But you’re really amazing. How did you know? It was just a corpse found in an empty lot with no one around, but to realize that he was a serial killer, isn’t that the realm of a shaman, not an investigation? Should I get you a bamboo stick?”

“I didn’t know by looking.”

“Huh?”

“I was waiting. For a corpse to appear in a miserable state.”

“…What does that mean?”

“Do you know why a male lion dies?”

“Changes in habitat and food shortages due to climate change.”

“Why?”

Cha In-cheol put a cigarette in his mouth.

He felt pathetic that he had to have a conversation with this guy.

“They die fighting over territory. If you carelessly invade another male lion’s territory, you have to fight for your life. But a wolf carelessly entered a lion’s territory and hunted, so it’s natural that it got torn to pieces.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying at all?”

“You don’t need to know for the rest of your life. No, it’s better if you don’t know.”

Cha In-cheol opened the dashboard and took out a file. Then, he took out a photo from it and stared at it quietly.

“So are you going to go see Kang Jin-ho again?”

“No.”

“You were chasing after him with your eyes blazing until now, why are you suddenly like this? Are you now convinced that he’s not the culprit?”

“We have to reduce the number of victims.”

“Huh?”

“Even if they’re shitty bastards, I can’t let them die at the hands of civilians. If they’re going to die, I should be the one to kill them.”

Gu Young-don frowned.

That senior was good in every way, but the problem was that he made it impossible to understand what he was saying.

But Cha In-cheol didn’t care what Gu Young-don thought and quietly looked at the photos of the victims.

‘It’s different.’

The first victim was killed after being stabbed all over her body.

But the second victim was the same gender, but there were no signs of damage to her body.

The cause of death was suffocation.

‘Crazy bastards.’

A woman walking down the street was dragged into a corner and killed without a trace. And that happened within a week. In both cases, the culprit dragged the victims away without leaving any trace in areas with a lot of CCTV cameras.

That alone was enough to call it a serial killing.

But Cha In-cheol’s thoughts were different.

The focus should not be on the process leading up to the murder, but on the method of murder. The two victims were dragged away in the same way, but they died in completely different ways.

‘It’s not the same culprit.’

The person Kang Jin-ho killed was probably a murderer as well.

But there was no evidence that that murderer killed both of these people.

What if there was another murderer?

Cha In-cheol lit a cigarette and looked out the window.

“It was good that I didn’t say anything.”

“Huh?”

“Shut up. Drive faster, you bastard. I’m going to be late.”

“You’re already late?”

Cha In-cheol ignored Gu Young-don’s words and looked out the window.

“The weather is nice and gloomy.”