My Calling Is Profiler [EN]: Chapter 356

“As expected, Detective Park. You acted like you were going to have a big fight, but you immediately backed down.”

“It’s easier to persuade someone if you know exactly what they’re trying to protect.”

“So that’s why you brought up the students.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Huh? Weren’t you telling them to protect the students?”

“Not at all. What that man wants to protect isn’t the students, but himself. They don’t protect the victims in cases of school violence or internal school crimes. They’re not interested in the perpetrators either. Most of them are just trying to protect themselves.”

Lee Ji-soo smiled bitterly at those words. As a profiler herself, she immediately understood what he meant.

In the end, he backed down as soon as he realized the possibility of being in danger.

“That’s sad. But Detective Park, there are more than one or two teachers. Can you identify who is suspicious?”

They didn’t have enough time to grab them one by one and interrogate them.

“There is a way to interrogate them collectively.”

Park Do-joon smirked and said,

“Humans are selfish. Hehehe.”

When the police conduct interrogations, they are based on isolated questioning. This is to prevent them from coordinating their stories.

Coordinating stories doesn’t mean doing it in advance. If there are two people, one of them is good at lying, and the other can create a lie by agreeing with them.

That’s why interrogations are basically conducted separately, and then the parts where they lied are confronted during cross-examination.

‘But that’s not possible in every situation.’

At least, to use that method, the other party must be in custody or in a situation where they cannot realistically meet outside.

Of course, in this situation, you can’t talk about that. You can’t treat all the 100 or so faculty members here as suspects and interrogate them individually.

“What on earth is going on?”

“It’s about Chairman Oh?”

“I heard he was arrested for murder?”

“I wonder what happened?”

Everyone looked at each other and talked about the current situation. Then, Park Do-joon went to the podium in front of the people.

“Ah, ah, can you hear me?”

“Yes, we can hear you.”

When Park Do-joon stepped forward, the section chief’s eyes turned wary. He thought his achievement was being taken away. But realistically, he couldn’t find anything suspicious, so he had no choice but to leave it to Park Do-joon.

“Everyone.”

Park Do-joon looked at the faculty members looking at him and spoke loudly. And at those words, the police officers’ eyes widened more than ever.

“It is currently believed that there is an accomplice of Oh Bang-hwan inside this room.”

“Accomplice? An accomplice?”

“Yes, but we don’t know who it is. In the worst case, you may be in danger.”

“Huh? What are you saying?”

“The results of the current investigation suggest that there may be an accomplice inside. And I want to inform you that he may give up and commit indiscriminate murder of people around him.”

At Park Do-joon’s words, fear began to creep into everyone’s faces. And some began to look around at people who seemed uneasy. After all, no matter how well they knew each other, they couldn’t help but be afraid of the fact that the other person might kill them.

“However, we are currently unable to identify who is suspicious. So please send me a text message to my cell phone.”

“Send a text message?”

“Yes, that’s right. If you send me a text message about someone suspicious around you or someone who is usually close to Oh Bang-hwan, we will investigate that person.”

“……”

“Of course, all of this will be handled anonymously. For your safety, please delete your sent message history immediately.”

The people looked confused at those words. And Park Do-joon spoke clearly to those people.

“If there is even a slight suspicion, please let us know immediately. In the worst case, the school may be closed or the students may have to transfer.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that if the culprit is not caught, there are concerns about whether the school will be maintained. No parents want to send their children to a school where a murderer is teaching.”

At Park Do-joon’s words, everyone nodded. They would feel the same way.

“And the biggest problem is you.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we don’t catch the accomplice, it won’t be easy for you to change jobs.”

“……”

There is an accomplice in this school. But they don’t know who it is. Then, if someone from that school wants to change jobs, will there be someone who wants to accept that person? Unfortunately, that is unlikely.

‘Because humans don’t even accept employees from a company that goes bankrupt.’

The biggest reason why a company goes bankrupt is usually because of the higher-ups messing things up. They embezzle or make mistakes in the direction of the business.

But realistically, if a company goes bankrupt, there are many cases where people cannot find a job simply because they are from that company. A bankrupt company is in that state, but what if there is suspicion of being a murderer?

“So I hope we can catch the culprit.”

Everyone was silent at Park Do-joon’s words. But their eyes were filled with fear.

“Detective Park, can you really identify the culprit by doing this?”

“Yes, watch the texts coming in.”

Text messages were constantly flying into Park Do-joon’s cell phone. This was because teachers and faculty members were constantly sending information about suspicious people.

“I don’t think identification itself is possible?”

Kim Man-hyeok sighed deeply as he looked at the incoming text messages.

“In the first place, almost all the teachers are suspicious. What does this mean?”

That’s because, although they were clearly told to send text messages about suspicious people, there were surprisingly many of them.

Of course, the number of targets is much smaller than investigating all 100 people, but there were still too many.

“About twenty-four people have been identified, but I don’t know why it’s like this.”

“It’s simple. People can’t distinguish between personal complaints and suspicions.”

“Huh?”

“Ji-soo, you know about the shaky bridge theory, right?”

“I know.”

“It’s similar to that.”

The shaky bridge theory is that when men and women meet on a shaky bridge, they often mistake the fear felt on the shaky bridge for excitement about the opposite sex. [This is a psychological phenomenon where arousal from one stimulus (like fear) is misattributed to another (like attraction].

In fact, this affects many real-life situations more than you think. The first topic of conversation when going on a date is food. Why? This is because, contrary to the shaky bridge theory, if you are hungry, that dissatisfaction becomes dissatisfaction with the opposite sex.

“This case is the same. When people gather, factions are bound to form. And dissatisfaction with those factions is linked to suspicion.”

Furthermore, since the police said they would not disclose it, they are trying to test the waters.

“There’s also the issue of survival.”

“The issue of survival?”

“Why do you think I suddenly brought up the issue of changing jobs there?”

“Well, that’s true.”

Even if they want to change jobs, they won’t be able to do anything in the end if they don’t catch the culprit, as Park Do-joon said.

“So, they are bound to turn on their eyes even more for their future.”

Even if they don’t have any plans to change jobs, they don’t know how the world will turn out.

“Then it seems meaningless?”

Lee Ji-soo frowned at the thought that it would be even more meaningless. It’s not the real culprit, and it’s just the police getting involved in their own disputes.

“Yes, that may be the case. But at the same time, we can identify suspicious people.”

“How?”

“Like this.”

Park Do-joon identified a phone number and said. He drew a line on one of the phone number lists he had printed out in advance with a pen.

“I’m erasing the numbers of the people who sent me text messages like this.”

“What does that mean?”

Detective Kim Man-hyeok asked back because he didn’t know the meaning, but profiler Lee Ji-soo immediately realized what Park Do-joon was doing.

“Ah! I see! I didn’t know you could elicit a response like that.”

“Waiting for a response is meaningless. It’s more efficient to stimulate them so that they have no choice but to respond.”

“I’m just a regular person?”

Kim Man-hyeok asked again with a look that he didn’t understand at all, and Lee Ji-soo explained it to Kim Man-hyeok in her own way.

“Criminals show one thing when the investigation narrows around them.”

“When they are identified?”

“No, not when they are identified, but when the investigation narrows around them.”

“Hmm, really? So what are those three things?”

“First, they run away. Second, they hide and hold their breath. Third, they want to actively get involved in the case.”

Kim Man-hyeok frowned at Lee Ji-soo’s words.

“Isn’t that all of them? I thought it was some grand profiling, but isn’t that what most investigators already know?”

Even if they haven’t learned it systematically, it’s not difficult to roughly predict how a criminal will move.

“No, is there anything other than those three in the first place?”

“No.”

“Then. So, from a psychological point of view, it’s self-defense… uh…”

Lee Ji-soo, who was about to continue her explanation, realized something and looked at Park Do-joon.

When she tried to explain it, what she learned was definitely profiling, but it was explained in the realm of an expert. It was because she couldn’t organize it when she tried to explain it in a way that ordinary people could easily understand.

Seeing that, Park Do-joon smiled and said instead.

“Of course, from the criminal’s point of view, there’s nothing else to react to other than those three reactions.”

“Then it’s meaningless, isn’t it?”

“Then how would ordinary people react?”

“Huh?”

“I’m talking about ordinary people.”

“Ordinary people?”

“Yes, what would be the reaction of a third party who is not directly involved in the case?”

“Uh, so…”

At those words, Detective Kim Man-hyeok scratched his head as if he didn’t know. He had never even thought about how ordinary people would react.

When tracking down a criminal, he gets a hunch about strange behavior, but he can’t have a hunch about someone who doesn’t know anything.

It’s even questionable whether a hunch that ‘this person is good’ can be created in the first place. Because so-called hunches or intuitions are a trained sense, and good citizens are not the subject of such training.

“Ordinary people try to protect themselves from the incident and distance themselves from it.”

“Why?”

“Because they are scared and annoyed.”

“Scared and annoyed?”

“Yes, unfortunately, ordinary people don’t try to take risks.”

If they are suspected by the police as a suspect, would they think, ‘The police will understand my innocence’?

No. If they knew that in the first place, they wouldn’t be on the list of suspects.

On the other hand, what if they are completely third parties to the incident? Of course, they want to distance themselves from the incident and not get involved.

When an accident happens somewhere, the most difficult person to find is a witness. If it were easy to request witnesses around when a traffic accident occurred, people would not be driving around with black boxes.