My Calling Is Profiler [EN]: Chapter 410

“The guy sticking to that side must be a legal expert.”

“Pardon?”

“What are you talking about?”

Those words startled both of them. Not only them, but other detectives who were a bit further away also rushed over.

“No, why would a legal expert pop out from there?”

“It’s simple. He knows the loopholes in our investigation system.”

“Loopholes?”

“Yes, what’s the reason we can’t go in there right now?”

“That’s….”

“Because the likelihood of finding evidence is low. To be precise, the delivery address is the store, and the upper floor is a separate office. Naturally, the warrant is only for the store and not for the upper floor.”

“But realistically, they wouldn’t store drugs in the store. That means we need to raid the upper floor.”

“In other words, we can’t raid the upper floor.”

“That’s right.”

“So, we wait, and the moment they come out, we arrest them on the grounds of attempted escape and use that to request a search warrant.”

That was the police’s plan.

“Usually, when something like this happens, they’re convinced they’ve been caught.”

That’s why most of them run. But the store is closed, and they’re operating normally.

“They probably know we’re watching them. And they know that escape is impossible now, and they’d only expose their weaknesses.”

“And without legal knowledge, they couldn’t make that judgment. It’s not enough to just have knowledge of the law. You need to know the police’s investigation methods and internal procedures very well to make this kind of decision.”

“Can’t we just raid them?”

“No. They’re Americans.”

Korean police raiding a company run by Americans without evidence? There would probably be a bloodbath [a disastrous and violent confrontation].

“But the store downstairs….”

“I know.”

“We already confirmed the store owner a long time ago. But their address isn’t here; it’s absurdly in North Gyeongsang Province. That means it’s a store set up using a borrowed name.”

“Probably, even if we raid the store, we won’t find anything.”

“And no matter how much the police raid the store, there won’t be any drug-related evidence.”

“I thought we could connect them directly.”

“They’re meticulous.”

Park Do-joon, who tried to raid their store using escape as bait, gave a bitter smile.

“At this rate, they’ll really escape.”

“Of course, they won’t take the goods and run. Instead, they’ll move out legitimately. If it’s a move, not an escape, the police have no way to search the place.”

“Do we have any information on who’s coming out?”

“We’ve seen some people come out of the second floor after we started watching.”

“What about their identities?”

“Ah, we can’t know.”

“We can’t approach them and ask to see their passports, as that would be a false alarm.”

“So, we don’t know their identities.”

“That’s right.”

“What about Koreans?”

“None at all.”

“Looks like they noticed and aren’t approaching.”

“If he were working here, he would have come to work. But he’s not even approaching.”

“So, we don’t even know who that person is.”

“Unfortunately.”

Park Do-joon closed his eyes at those words. Then, he started weighing countless possibilities in his head.

‘Who could it be?’

‘Of course, I expected him to be intelligent. But anyone who doesn’t know the police and court system well would have run away first.’

‘Should I request a warrant? No, it won’t be issued.’

At that moment, a good idea came to Park Do-joon’s mind.

“Let’s go inside for now.”

“Go inside?”

“Detective, we can’t go in there, that’s why we’re doing this!”

“That’s right. We can’t go in. But if they invite us in, we can go in.”

“Pardon?”

“Is that even possible?”

“It’s possible. Hehehe, let’s go in right away.”

“Yes, right away?”

Everyone couldn’t help but look bewildered at those words.

Going in right away, that was possible.

“Ah, real estate….”

“We have to move anyway.”

“As Park Do-joon said, a check with a nearby real estate agency revealed that the 2nd and 3rd floors were for sale. In the case of the 1st floor, the tenant is a third party, so we can’t ask for it now.”

“But since they have to move out legitimately, not run away, putting the store up for sale is, in a way, a natural thing to do.”

“It’s a good place to live. The 3rd floor is living space, and the 2nd floor was used as an office.”

The real estate agent was excitedly chattering away, not suspecting that they were police officers. If we said we were police, they wouldn’t act naturally, and we might get caught, so we said we were looking for an office and living space.

From the start, there wouldn’t be many spaces in this area that could satisfy these two conditions. As expected, the broker was taking Park Do-joon and his team to a place with the perfect conditions, saying that a room with just the right conditions had just come on the market.

“Here it is.”

“Hmm, there’s no parking lot?”

“It’s an old building, so what can you do? How many buildings in this neighborhood have parking lots?”

Park Do-joon acted as if he were a real tenant, trying to find fault with everything.

“The restaurant here… Ah, did it go out of business?”

“Huh? Ah, well, I don’t know? This place is usually doing well? It’s not even a day off today?”

The broker tilted his head, probably because he didn’t know the details.

“Well, something must have happened. It’s a great restaurant here. You won’t regret it.”

“But the name is unique. Indochina.”

“They sell Indian food, Chinese food, and rice noodles [a type of Southeast Asian cuisine]. Try it sometime. It’s a really great restaurant. Just having a great restaurant is enough to make this place worth it.”

Joo Kwang-won smiled bitterly at the broker’s strong recommendation, and Lee Ji-soo poked him. It must be absurd.

“What kind of place is this?”

“Well, they said it’s a trading company office.”

The real estate owner went upstairs and pressed the intercom.

“Hello, this is Golden Real Estate, who called earlier.”

“Ah, just a moment.”

After waiting a moment, the door opened, and a man appeared. And the broker flinched at the sight of him. Anyone could tell he was a foreigner.

“Uh….”

“I speak a little Korean. Come in.”

“Tha, thank you!”

Park Do-joon and his team followed the broker, who answered awkwardly, inside. Looking around, it was a space with about twelve seats.

“These people need an office with a living space.”

“Really? What kind of business are you planning to start?”

Park Do-joon said nonchalantly to the man who asked with a mixture of curiosity and wariness.

“I’m going to start a small IT company.”

“IT?”

“Yes, I’m going to focus on work with my friends, even living and eating together.”

“Ah~!”

“Certainly, some startups begin with friends, and especially in the programming field, they sometimes live and eat together in the early stages to focus on work.”

“Still, you’re planning to do it on a fairly large scale? This neighborhood is a bit expensive.”

The man still looked at them with suspicion.

“My father is a general. He’s at headquarters.”

“I see.”

“In other words, when he said he was going to supply to the Ministry of National Defense with his father’s backing, they finally seemed to ease their suspicion a little.”

‘They would.’

“If we said we were police, they wouldn’t openly say, ‘We’re going to do something illegal,’ but would try to gloss over it.”

“Is the internet fast here?”

“That’s what’s good about Korea, the fast internet.”

“True.”

“Even though Itaewon is in the old city center, it’s still a core area of Korea, so the internet speed will naturally be fast.”

“The facilities are good.”

“I’ll give them to you at a cheap price if you want.”

“Pardon?”

“We’re planning to buy everything new when we move.”

At those words, Park Do-joon smiled.

‘They must be in a hurry.’

“No matter who is advising and controlling them from the outside, as criminals, they can’t be comfortable with the police’s pursuit right in front of them. So, they want to leave as soon as possible.”

“Then I’m grateful.”

“Sure.”

Park Do-joon slowly began to look around. Of course, he glanced at the computer monitors while doing so. It wasn’t because he wanted them.

‘As expected, this isn’t a company that does anything.’

“If it were a normal company, they wouldn’t have game screens or shopping windows open during work hours.”

“If it were just one or two people, I would have thought they were doing it secretly, but seeing everyone with those screens open and mindlessly doing other things, I could tell my prediction was correct.”

‘There’s nothing special.’

“Of course, there wouldn’t be anything special. This place is just a nominal office.”

“This is the CEO’s office.”

“Well, I don’t really need a CEO’s office.”

“You can use it as a conference room later.”

“Opening the door that was blocked by a temporary wall, he saw the CEO’s office. And there was a large table and a mother-of-pearl nameplate on it.”

“-CEO Han Ki-seung.”

‘Bingo.’

“Park Do-joon couldn’t help but smile inside because he had obtained a name in a situation where he couldn’t track them down.”

“It’s quite big. But is the CEO not here?”

“He’s on a business trip.”

“Ah, really?”

Park Do-joon looked around at those words.

‘The employees are all Americans, but only the boss is Korean….’

“That person is probably the Korean criminal Park Do-joon suspects. And a large safe in one corner of the CEO’s office…….”

‘That’s it.’

“To sell drugs, you have to store them somewhere. But no matter how much I look around, there’s no space to store them. Except for one place, that safe. Of course, I shouldn’t open it now, or even show interest in it. Then they’ll naturally be suspicious. But instead, there was another way.”

Park Do-joon looked around and said.

“Ah, I want to show this place to my other friends, can I take some pictures?”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“Thank you.”

Park Do-joon smiled and started taking pictures of the surroundings with his phone.

Each time the shutter clicked in the office, the smile on Park Do-joon’s face grew wider.

“Han Ki-seung, 49 years old. Formerly from the Jindo Group’s Strategic Planning Office.”

“Jindo Group’s Strategic Planning Office?”

“Yes.”

“If it’s that level, he’s more than capable of doing something like this.”

“Well, those bastards are famous for being heartless.”

“That’s right.”

“Jindo Group is one of the leading conglomerates [large, multi-industry business groups] in Korea. Of course, it’s not a conglomerate with a very good image. And even among them, the Strategic Planning Office was notorious. The Jindo Group’s Strategic Planning Office was officially an organization under the Secretariat, but unofficially, it was the Secretariat’s superior organization.”

“They had a plausible title of Strategic Planning Office, but in reality, they were a kind of cleanup crew that would do whatever it took to produce results when an order was given.”

“Other companies have Strategic Planning Offices, and they are a means of organizational control, but in the Jindo Group, that is executed by a separate group called the Future Research Institute, and the actual Strategic Planning Office was like a Red Guard [a radical or revolutionary group], that carried out the orders of the Jindo Group chairman.”

‘And if they say they’ll do anything, illegality is a given.’

“In fact, lying, fraud, and even murder if necessary, were the methods of the Jindo Group’s Strategic Planning Office.”

Job is Profiler