My Calling Is Profiler [EN]: Chapter 347

“Let’s start searching.”

Song Pil-man and the detectives entered, their faces betraying a lack of enthusiasm. The other detectives looked openly annoyed.

In their minds, Song Pil-man was just stirring up trouble.

“Where are you going?”

Park Do-joon headed in a different direction, prompting Song Pil-man to call out to him.

“That’s not where we need to go.”

“Huh?”

Everyone looked puzzled.

“Seriously, this is annoying.”

“Hey, you go over there. We’ll check upstairs.”

The other officers shot Song Pil-man a look, and noticing their displeasure, Song Pil-man followed Park Do-joon.

“Where are you going?”

“There won’t be anything upstairs.”

Everything’s been cleaned up. If the first floor is like this, what would the second floor even hold?

“They would have cleared out the sewers, too.”

“Probably.”

The police grumbled as they went upstairs, but as expected, they found nothing.

“So, we need to target another area as planned.”

“Planned…?”

Song Pil-man was surprised.

“Did you expect this?”

“Detective Song, what are you talking about? You knew this would happen?”

“I knew.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?”

“We’re not executing the warrant with just the three of us.”

He couldn’t reveal the plan, fearing it might leak through the other officers.

“But what’s here? There’s nothing, is there?”

“There’s nothing. That’s why we need to go.”

“Huh?”

“Because there’s nothing, they won’t be paying attention.”

Park Do-joon led them not outside, but down to the basement, specifically the underground parking lot.

“Just as I expected.”

The underground parking lot held several cars, all coated in a thick layer of dust.

“Nam Yeon-hwa doesn’t go outside, and she doesn’t seem to drive herself either.”

If she’s truly the culprit, the victims came here; she didn’t venture out.

“So, there must be a car involved, parked in this lot. But there’s nothing to remodel here.”

“Because there’s nothing.”

It’s an empty space with just a few cars. There are no materials for remodeling in such a space. They *could* do it if they wanted, but they’re too busy remodeling the upper floors, so there’s no reason to prioritize the empty basement.

“Moreover, there’s also the issue of these vehicles.”

They’d have to move them, which is complicated. Besides, the construction workers need to use the underground parking lot. In other words, even if they planned to remodel it, it would be a low priority and done last.

Naturally, remodeling in just a week after the warrant was issued would be a difficult construction project.

“Then what did you come here to see?”

“This.”

Park Do-joon headed to a corner. Looking at the floor, he said,

“The floor here feels a bit different, right?”

“What’s different?”

“How should I put it? Doesn’t it seem a bit brighter?”

“Brighter?”

“Yes.”

At those words, they both examined the floor again. Since it was a gray floor, it wasn’t easy to see clearly, but they could discern one thing.

“There’s a little less dust, I guess.”

“Right? The color is a bit more distinct compared to the surrounding floor. You often see this phenomenon.”

Lee Ji-soo immediately understood what he meant.

“Doesn’t this usually happen after it rains and then stops?”

“Exactly.”

If a car is parked there and it rains, the rain is blocked above it. If the rain stops while the car is still there, the area under the car stays dry because it didn’t get wet, while the surroundings do.

“What was parked here? A construction vehicle, maybe?”

“It couldn’t be a construction vehicle.”

First of all, the parking lot is large, and this spot is a bit far from the entrance. Construction vehicles would likely park closer. And since they weren’t doing construction here, it would take a considerable amount of time for dust to accumulate like this.

“Why do you say that?”

“Do Kyung-deok had his own truck, you know. And he carried all his belongings in it.”

At those words, they both stared intently at the empty space, as if they had realized something.

“According to the records, the truck Do Kyung-deok had was a manual vehicle [stick shift]. They’re hardly used these days. Even Do Kyung-deok’s license is a Class 1 Ordinary [standard driver’s license for larger vehicles].”

Manual transmissions used to be common in trucks. That’s because automatics had worse fuel efficiency compared to manuals.

But that was decades ago, and now there’s not much difference, so even trucks come with automatic transmissions these days.

Naturally, the popularity of manual trucks in the used car market is at an all-time low, and they hardly sell at all.

“For someone as poor as Do Kyung-deok, it’s a good choice in a way.”

It’s a bit inconvenient to drive, but you can buy a truck cheaply.

“And we couldn’t find that car.”

And the Nam family said they met Do Kyung-deok at the house. And circumstantially, Do Kyung-deok and Nam Yeon-hwa lived together in this house.

“The truck must have been parked here.”

“Right. It must have been.”

At those words, Song Pil-man turned his head and looked at the exit. It was an incident from four years ago, so there weren’t even any CCTV cameras to track it. But what about this week?

“Are you focusing on the CCTV footage?”

“Exactly.”

From the start, they expected that everything inside would be completely cleaned up. It wasn’t like they hadn’t dealt with that before.

“But that’s something you can’t do anything about inside here.”

The truck has to be taken out. And wealthy neighborhoods are bound to be full of CCTV cameras everywhere. They have to protect the rich.

“There’s nothing to gain here in the first place.”

But what if the vehicle went outside? If it’s possible to track it afterward?

“Maybe the story will change, hehehe.”

Park Do-joon’s eyes gleamed.

Tracking the vehicle with CCTV was easy. It’s not like there are many one-ton trucks driving around in that area, and the car quietly left around 3 a.m.
And the place where the vehicle went was none other than a public parking lot located by the Han River.

“Since they can’t dispose of it urgently, they’re going to hide it here.”

It’s too conspicuous to smuggle it out because of the police’s scrutiny. So they’d rather hide it among the cars. That must have been the Nam family’s judgment. In reality, there are a huge number of cars abandoned in these external public parking lots for years.

Click, click.

While the police discovered and searched the vehicle, and people from the National Forensic Service were checking it, Park Do-joon calmly said while watching.

“Maybe the guy who brought this here doesn’t even know what kind of vehicle it is. I think it’s one of the construction site workers.”

“There’s no criminal intent, then?”

“He’s just a construction worker anyway.”

If you give him money and tell him to put it there, he’ll do it without thinking. Moreover, since it’s far from the construction site, if you tell him to just bring it there and leave work that day, he’d think it’s a sweet deal.

“But, Detective, what do you think? Do the Nam family know about Nam Yeon-hwa’s crime?”

“It’s highly likely they do.”

“If they didn’t know, they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of remodeling. They could have just hired professionals for a thorough cleaning to erase all traces of DNA and everything else. The fact that they hurriedly selected a construction team through a lawyer and tore up the house suggests they either know or at least strongly suspect something dangerous.”

“So, they’re trying to cover it up by any means to avoid getting caught, and remodeling is the most obvious way to do that.”

“And because they rushed, they’re bound to make mistakes.”

One of the National Forensic Service (NFS) employees is seen shaking a reagent [a substance used in chemical analysis]. It’s a reagent for identifying human DNA. Of course, detailed DNA sequencing would have to be done in a lab, but at least they can tell what kind of DNA is present on the equipment.

After dropping the reagent onto the test strip, the NFS employee who had been waiting shouted, “Human DNA detected.”

Human DNA was found. And not just anywhere, but at the blade point.

“Whose could it be?”

“Who knows?”

Now it was time to find out.

Human DNA was found on the meat-cutting saw. This is a bigger problem than expected. Moreover, if it’s suspected to be related to the dismembered body case from four years ago, things get even more complicated.

“What’s the police station saying?”

“It’s chaos, what else.”

With the four-year-old unsolved case being a bizarre dismemberment murder, and the possibility of it being connected to cannibalism, everyone is clinging to the case unlike before. Reporters, who knows how they found out, are all over it.

“What about Nam Yeon-hwa?”

“She’s under 24-hour guard. She’s not even coming home.”

“Even though the remodeling is done?”

“Well, they say it’s to avoid sick building syndrome [a condition caused by indoor air pollution in buildings]?”

“Bullshit.”

It’s obvious without even looking. The person they’re guarding is not a protectee but a prisoner. They’re preventing Nam Yeon-hwa from leaving.

“Will it be easy to stop the case from progressing?”

“It’s not that difficult, either.”

As expected, the person who brought the vehicle there was a construction worker with a Class 1 Ordinary Driver’s License [a standard driver’s license] who was involved in the construction. He said he was instructed by a lawyer to take the vehicle to the parking lot in Han River Park, and the lawyer is adamantly denying any other purpose, claiming it was moved because it was obstructing the construction.

“Saying he doesn’t even know whose car it is doesn’t make sense either.”

Since there’s already testimony that he met him at the house, it’s impossible for Nam Yeon-hwa’s lawyer not to know whose car it is.

“They’re still not issuing an arrest warrant for Nam Yeon-hwa?”

“No.”

“Hmm.”

The situation is roughly understandable. The Nam family will desperately want to prevent the warrant from being issued. The problem is that officially, Nam Yeon-hwa was the only person living in that house.

“We need to apply for the next warrant now.”

“The next warrant, as in?”

“There was a garden there, right? Humans think so simply.”

A search warrant and an excavation warrant are different. A search warrant is for searching an existing place, while an excavation warrant is for digging up the ground.

“Why didn’t we apply for an excavation warrant from the beginning?”

“Would it have been issued?”

“I guess not.”

Probably not. An excavation warrant is basically issued on the assumption that there might be a body there—that is, assuming murder.

But in this case, there’s no evidence that anyone died there. There might only be evidence related to a disappearance.

“But things have changed now.”

Evidence of dismemberment has been found, and the NFS has acknowledged that the equipment and the body from the dismemberment case four years ago have the same traces.

Moreover, with human DNA found on the equipment, even if the court is looking out for the wealthy, they can’t cover this up anymore.

Furthermore, the Nam family lost their power as a result of losing their company. Having a lot of money and having power are distinctly different. Especially with reporters swarming, who knows where the information leaked from, there’s no way to deny the excavation permit.”