My Calling Is Profiler [EN]: Chapter 240

“What about the relatives?”

“You mean the people who were going to adopt?”

“Yes, what if they changed their minds about adopting?”

Park Do-joon shook his head.

“They can just call and refuse.”

There’s no reason to kill a child just because they don’t want to adopt it.

“But how many people would know the house’s password…?”

“Well, we’ll find out when we ask.”

“The password?”

The investigation results came out quickly.

Accurately, the door opened while Kim Jung-sook was away. It opened exactly twice: once from the outside with the password, and once from the inside.

And the time it took was approximately 4 minutes.

That means the culprit entered the password to take the child out.

“Yes, do you know anything about it?”

“We’ve never told anyone else the password.”

“Never?”

“Yes, this isn’t exactly a great neighborhood to live in.”

It’s a run-down neighborhood that’s been approved for redevelopment. Naturally, there are too many unsavory characters here. So, we’re not close enough to anyone to share the password.

“Honestly, there aren’t many people around here we’d *want* to be close to.”

“Not a single one?”

“Who even talks to their neighbors these days?”

“Hmm.”

That’s true. In this day and age, not many households interact with their neighbors. Even if they do, it’s just a passing greeting, not sharing passwords.

“Then that means someone secretly watched it.”

Lee Yeon-yi tilted her head at Kim Jung-sook’s words and said.

“That wouldn’t be easy, would it?”

“That’s right. But it’s not impossible either. Given the current situation where it’s certain that someone else has been here, that’s the only clue.”

Following Park Do-joon’s advice that the electronic door could check entry records, they contacted the manufacturer. As a result, they were able to confirm that someone had indeed been there while Kim Jung-sook was away.

A very brief moment, but enough time to kidnap the child.

“Who would watch that?”

Lee Ji-soo also didn’t understand this case.

Because people are psychologically resistant to being watched.

Even when playing games, your skills inevitably decline if someone is staring intently at the screen. It’s distracting.

If that’s the case even with games, then no one would press a digital door lock in that situation.

“What about confirming by sound?”

“No way. It’s not even that kind of model.”

In the first place, there aren’t any models where the sound of pressing the buttons is different. In the past, telephones used different ringtones for each button to distinguish them when making calls, but after the side effect of people distinguishing the numbers by hearing them was revealed, the sounds were naturally unified so that they couldn’t be distinguished by sound.

“Then what about fingerprint verification or…?”

“That’ll be tough.”

Even if it were possible to check the numbers by sprinkling chalk powder like in the movies, it’s impossible to accurately guess an 8-digit number. Even using a computer, it would take a considerable amount of time in reality.

“Moreover, the number has two repeating digits.”

In other words, even if you check the numbers by sprinkling chalk powder, you can only confirm six numbers. It’s virtually impossible to check all the resulting possibilities in that short amount of time.

“In the end, that means they knew it from the beginning.”

No matter how much I think about it, there’s no one who *should* know the house’s number.

“It’s frustrating.”

Attorney Kang Soo-won muttered to himself without realizing it. It’s inevitable because if they can’t present evidence here that someone else knows the number, even if they prove that the door was opened, the police will say, ‘Look, aren’t you the only ones who know the number?’ which will ultimately confirm the client’s guilt.

“Hmm.”

Park Do-joon pondered for a long time at those words.

‘Someone knows it. But there’s no one who *should* know it. Sherlock Holmes said that: After eliminating all possibilities, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’

Of course, it’s a fictional expression, but it’s true to some extent.

“In the end, someone secretly saw the number there.”

“But there’s no one who would do that. Ho-yeon’s friends have no reason to either.”

And when Park Ho-yeon brought her friends, she opened the door from the inside; she never opened it from the outside. Because Kim Jung-sook is a housewife who works at home.

“I know. So, we need to think about it from a different angle.”

“A different angle? How can we look at it differently here?”

“Do you have any ideas, Senior?”

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

“Someone knew the number and opened it. But no one told them. Then the current possibility is that someone stole it.”

“Isn’t that what we already know?”

Kang Soo-won frowned at the repeated words.

“I’m trying to organize it clearly, even if it’s repetitive. And ‘stealing’ is the action from the perpetrator’s point of view, and we can think about it differently from *this* side.”

“This side?”

“Yes, it happens often… there are cases where the other person’s presence disappears like a ghost.”

The people who heard those words tilted their heads. It wasn’t an easy thing to grasp. Park Do-joon explained it simply to them.

“In a restaurant, if a waiter walks by, does anyone pay attention?”

“Ah, that’s true. As Senior said, we don’t pay much attention.”

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist. In fact, it’s well known that the resistance fighters who fought against the Nazis in the past used this tactic, working as waiters in restaurants used by the Nazis.

Because they don’t seem to ‘exist,’ people are careless and just talk easily.

“When you see that, the person who stole it has no presence. To be exact, it’s the target that Kim Jung-sook or other family members don’t think is a threat.”

“You mean they were watching our family?”

“Yes.”

Due to the structure of the villa [a large, often luxurious house], the only way to check the number when someone opens the door is to look at it from right next to them.

“Could there be cameras or something around there?”

Kang Soo-won asked, just in case.

“That wouldn’t be easy.”

The number panel faces the front, and it’s designed so that it’s impossible to accurately see the numbers being pressed from above or the sides.

To check the number, you need to check it from an angle of at least 45 degrees, and that range naturally allows the person pressing the number to cover the panel with their body.

“If it were a key that easily revealed the number, there would be no point in security in the first place.”

“So, you mean they checked it from right next to them?”

“Yes, realistically, that’s the only possibility.”

The structure of the villa is simple. There are two houses on each floor, and there are stairs and an elevator in the middle. Naturally, the houses are divided to the left and right based on those stairs and elevator.

“Looking at the location here, the only places where you can realistically check the number to confirm the camera are the wall on the right or the stairs on the left.”

But there’s no place to install a camera on the wall. It’s painted white and smooth, so it’s a structure where it would be obvious if something was installed. And even if you install it, the angle at which you can check the camera is extremely limited because it’s close to the door.

“The only thing left is the stairs.”

The stairs are a bit wide, so there’s relatively enough space.

“Then couldn’t they install a camera on the handrail or something like that?”

“There are clear limitations to seeing it that way too.”

A camera that’s small enough not to get caught and clear enough to clearly check the door panel would be expensive.

“Moreover, this villa is newly built. So, there’s nothing on the stairs.”

In the past, stairs were treated like extra space. So, people illegally piled things up here and there. But this is a newly built villa, and naturally, nothing is placed there in accordance with fire laws.

“But I don’t know why there are no cameras in the newly built villa.”

“Builders often do that. In the end, it’s about the money.”

If the purpose is to sell it, they honestly want to exclude anything that doesn’t affect the house price as much as possible.

In fact, installing cameras costs more money than you think. Sometimes, people are uncomfortable with CCTV [closed-circuit television] for privacy reasons, so they often don’t install it during the construction phase so that the buyer can install the camera themselves.

“Then either someone with a lot of money was monitoring this place and looking for an opportunity to kidnap the child, or someone who knew the number did it impulsively.”

Both don’t make sense. First of all, Park Ho-yeon’s house is an ordinary house. Park Ki-soo is an ordinary office worker, and Kim Jung-sook is just a housewife. They’re not people who would make enemies outside.

Park Ho-yeon? She’s just a high school student. There’s no reason for her to make that many enemies outside.

“Could it be that they were trying to do something else after kidnapping her, but things went wrong?”

“No, there’s no possibility of that.”

Of course, child trafficking does exist. In fact, you can’t deny that such transactions don’t exist perfectly. In fact, there are people who want to receive children without any traces because records remain when adopting.

However, the injuries should be different if that’s the purpose.

“In the case of child… no, infant trafficking, even if the child dies in an accident, it’s close to an accident. From the seller’s point of view, the child is a product. There are no merchants who like to see their products get hurt.”

So, they might accidentally kill them, but the possibility of intentionally beating them to death is not very high.

“What if the child cries a lot?”

Lee Ji-soo asked, just in case, but Park Do-joon immediately denied it.

“They would cry. But they wouldn’t kill them for that. I told you, it’s money. It’s not a product that can be traded for just a few hundred thousand won [Korean currency, roughly equivalent to a few hundred US dollars], is it?”

Beating to death an infant who is traded for more than tens of millions of won just because they cry doesn’t make sense. Moreover, kidnapping a child is very difficult. Not only are they the family’s top priority for protection, but the police also grit their teeth and search for infant abduction.

In this case, the problem was that the police were dragging their feet because the birth wasn’t registered, but if ordinary children were kidnapped, the media would be excitedly talking about the infant abduction case by now.

“Then there’s only one thing left: kidnapping for the purpose of murder from the beginning.”

The child’s body was covered in bruises. Beating an 8-month-old child to death—you can’t see those injuries as an accident.

“But who… no, apart from that, people wouldn’t just let someone watch them press the password right next to them, would they?”

Lee Yeon-yi also shook her head as if it didn’t make sense. Personal security is very important in this era. Digital door locks are more secure than you think. At the same time, security is weak enough that anyone can enter if the number is leaked.

As such, people do their best to prevent the number from being leaked.”