You Have Been Defended [EN]: Chapter 280

“Sang-gil did a great job.”

The news Tae-shik brought from the morning was welcome.

Finding someone who was fishing near the scene on the day of the murder was already good enough, but he brought even more than that.

They found out that a group of people in suits were walking around there at the time the murder was presumed to have occurred.

He said there were three people, so he couldn’t have been talking about me and Kang Min-jae.

Then, are they the ones who killed Lee Jeong-chan?

“Do you think the person saw the guys who killed Lee Jeong-chan?”

Kang Min-jae also pondered, and then slowly opened his mouth, probably thinking the same thing as me.

But I shook my head.

“It can’t be.”

“Why do you think it isn’t? They seem like the guys who do dirty work under Woo-shin. Who else would be doing that kind of thing at the time Lee Jeong-chan died?”

“It’s true that they’re the guys who do dirty work under Woo-shin. But I’m saying they’re not the ones who directly killed Lee Jeong-chan.”

“Why?”

“There were fishermen not far from the scene. If they were the culprits, they wouldn’t want to attract attention, so why would they be walking around in suits? They would have definitely worn something like hiking clothes to blend in naturally. Ko Sang-jun wouldn’t use guys who aren’t that smart.”

I recalled the numerous missing person cases I had experienced in my previous life.

Most of them were people who were trying to expose Woo-shin’s corruption, or people like Choi Jong-hyun who were digging into Woo-shin’s shady affairs.

Circumstantially, it was clear that Woo-shin was behind it, but there was no evidence, so many cases ended up unsolved.

All the incidents presumed to be Woo-shin’s work were brought to me directly, but even then, no conclusive evidence was found.

That’s how meticulously those guys work.

You might think they wouldn’t be as meticulous now as they were in 2011 with all the advanced technology, but 2011 is only seven years ago.

There’s no way they wouldn’t have that level of meticulousness.

“Then who are those guys in suits?”

“Well, if I had to guess, Ko Sang-jun sent them to check if Lee Jeong-chan was really dead and if the job was done properly.”

“So you’re saying the person who saw the killer’s face might still not have been identified? Ah, that’s a bit sad.”

That’s one way to put it, but if you think about it more broadly, it might be a good thing.

Woo-shin would have definitely selected someone who had no connection to Woo-shin to kill Lee Jeong-chan.

So, even if I somehow find the culprit and clear my name, it will be difficult to prove that the culprit was hired by Woo-shin.

But if they are Ko Sang-jun’s henchmen, wouldn’t there be some connection?

Kang Min-jae told me that the police had all the text messages Lee Jeong-chan and I exchanged.

Then they must have seen the content where Lee Jeong-chan mentioned that he would hand over data to report Woo-shin.

In addition to that, if it is revealed that Woo-shin’s people were there on the day Lee Jeong-chan died, it won’t be difficult to implicate Woo-shin.

“The police definitely saw the text messages.”

“Yes, they did.”

“Lee Jeong-chan sent me a text saying he had data to report about Woo-shin. Then, isn’t there someone inside the police who suspects that the real culprit is Woo-shin, not me?”

In general, people are reluctant to believe in matters that are only mentioned in conspiracy theories.

They don’t want to be mistaken for unrealistic people who believe in absurd stories.

The idea that Woo-shin killed Lee Jeong-chan is definitely something that could be said in a conspiracy theory.

In my experience, whenever a phenomenon with a large ripple effect occurs, conspiracy theories naturally follow.

Most of them are considered absurd and nonsensical stories.

But as time passes, and another phenomenon occurs as an extension of that phenomenon, it often turns out that the absurd story was actually true.

That’s why they say reality is stranger than fiction.

People who work in investigative agencies gain that realization faster than ordinary people.

This is because the whole story of a case is so absurd and shocking that it is often released differently to avoid social repercussions.

So, people in investigative agencies tend to keep even absurd stories in mind.

Ironically, it might be true.

Similarly, there may be someone on the police side who thinks it was Woo-shin’s doing after checking Lee Jeong-chan’s text messages.

It’s not allowed in principle, but once a case record for a celebrity is created, rumors spread so much among the police that people from other stations and substations know everything.

“There might be. I’ll tell Jong-hyun *hyung* [older brother or male friend] to ask a police officer he’s close to and see what they say.”

“The problem now is that we lack connections in the police. We have Chief Prosecutor Park in the prosecution, an elder in the political world, and reporters Choi Jong-hyun and Yoon Se-yeon in the media. But we don’t have anyone in the police.”

“And this case hasn’t been sent to the prosecution yet, so the police have the right to investigate.”

“That’s right.”

If we could find a reliable helper on the police side, the investigation would be easier.

-Can I come in for a moment?

At that time, suddenly there was a knock and Chief Kang’s voice was heard.

When Kang Min-jae opened the door, Chief Kang came inside.

“A package just came from Chief Prosecutor Park Young-ki.”

Chief Kang said, handing me a box the size of his palm.

“A package?”

“Yes. I didn’t ask exactly, but you’ll know when you see it.”

After Chief Kang left the room, I opened the box.

Inside was an external hard drive wrapped in bubble wrap.

“Oh, could it be CCTV [Closed-Circuit Television] footage?”

Kang Min-jae said with a delighted expression, taking off the bubble wrap and connecting the external hard drive to the laptop.

And indeed, inside were dozens of road CCTV videos organized by time.

It was time to start the work of tracking the meter reader in earnest.

* * *

A long time had passed since we started checking the videos one by one.

Kang Min-jae and I were each holding a laptop and watching half of the videos, and when I checked the time, it was already close to dinner time.

“……My eyes are going to fall out.”

Analyzing road CCTV footage was the first time I had done this since leaving the prosecutor’s office.

Even when I was in the prosecutor’s office, we didn’t have to analyze it ourselves.

Usually, road CCTV is analyzed in the process of finding a criminal, and finding a criminal is the job of the police, not the prosecution.

Even if such CCTV analysis is needed after it is handed over to the prosecution, the prosecutor rarely analyzes it directly.

It’s the job of the investigators.

“The secretary would be really good at this. We shouldn’t have volunteered to do it.”

And Kang Min-jae and I, who are lawyers from the prosecutor’s office, were staring at the CCTV with bloodshot eyes for a long time.

Without any know-how, we mechanically clicked the next video, the next video dozens of times.

Since we don’t know when and where useful information will pop up, we can’t afford to break our concentration.

“This bastard is really creepy.”

“Why?”

“As soon as he came out of that *officetel* [a building with residential and office units], he really stopped at the Hanseong Energy Seocho Center.”

Considering that the man wasted several hours coming down from the 20th floor, one floor at a time, to pretend to be a real meter reader after bringing a weapon to my house for the first time, they are thorough enough.

One of the reasons why I thought the men in suits who appeared at the reservoir earlier were not the culprits was because of this meticulousness.

In case someone suspected him of disguising himself as a meter reader, he continued to act as a meter reader until the end of the mission.

“What time is that?”

“7:32. And this is the last video?”

“Why does it stop here? I need to see where this car goes after it comes out again.”

“I know, right? Was the file not completely transferred?”

Kang Min-jae tilted his head as if he found it strange and fiddled with his phone.

“Should I tell the chief prosecutor? ……Wouldn’t that be too shameless?”

“Now that we’ve become shameless, we can be shameless to the end. I’ll call.”

Didn’t Park Young-ki say it himself?

If you can do your part alone, you don’t have to get help from others, but that’s usually not the case.

So it’s natural to get help.

I don’t have the ability to check CCTV, so I need to get help.

Since Park Young-ki himself said that, he won’t be able to refuse to help, even if it’s a difficult situation.

-Oh, Attorney Kang. Did you get the package okay? I sent it by quick delivery because I was worried about leaving a record.

“Chief Prosecutor, this is Cha Ju-han.”

-Ah, yes, yes. That’s right. I unconsciously said that because it was Attorney Kang’s phone.

“I was so busy checking the video as soon as I saw it that I couldn’t even thank you.”

-Okay. Was it helpful? Did you find any clues?

“No, I’m sorry to say that I couldn’t find any clues even though you helped me like this.”

“……Oh no.”

“So, I’m going to be sorry one more time since I’m already sorry. The last CCTV video ends with a white Damas [small van] with license plate number 2974 entering the Hanseong Energy Center. I need to know where it went after that, but I don’t have that information. Could I ask you one more time for a video of 2974 coming out of the Hanseong Energy Center?”

At my words, Park Young-ki burst out laughing.

I didn’t know why he was laughing when I was speaking so seriously, so I waited silently for him to stop laughing.

-You’re really making good use of the fact that I told you to get help. Jung Pro told me that 2974 hasn’t been seen coming out of there since then.

“……What do you mean it hasn’t been seen?”

-It probably means that the car is still parked there. I kept checking to see if the white Damas with the Hanseong Energy sticker on it was coming out, but it wasn’t there.

“It’s been a few days since then, so there’s no way someone could have been in that car for days. I think we should check who came out of there. We have elevator CCTV footage that shows the body shape and part of the face, so we can compare them.”

-Hmm, really? Jung Pro, the investigator, said he checked it while rewinding it, so I’ll check if the video hasn’t been discarded yet and call you back.

“Thank you.”

And three hours later, the second package arrived from Park Young-ki.

“My eyes are really going to fall out.”

Unlike the last video, which had dozens of 1-2 minute videos, this time two 3-hour videos arrived.

I quickly fast-forwarded and stopped whenever someone came out to compare their appearance with the ‘meter reader’, but not a single young person came out.

“No, where did this bastard fly off to?”

Kang Min-jae, who had been quietly checking the video, now felt frustrated and tilted his head left and right with an exclamation of ‘wow’.

“It’s making me angry. Where did he go? Oh, wait. A white Damas is coming out.”

Kang Min-jae, who had stopped the video for a moment, checked the car’s license plate and then slumped his shoulders.

“Ah, what is it. It’s not 2974.”

White Damas were so common, and to make matters worse, it was as if Hanseong Energy had matched them in bulk, so there were more than one or two white Damas cars caught on CCTV.

After that, every time a white Damas came out, I stopped the video and checked it, but 2974 was not among them.

“No, let’s say 2974 is still parked there. Then at least that meter reader should come out. Where did he go after parking? Oh, a white Damas! ……Ah, this is not 2974 either.”

“Wait a minute. Go back.”

“To when?”

“10 seconds ago.”

Kang Min-jae pulled the playback bar back with a bored face.

As with what we had seen so far, the scene of a white Damas coming out of the parking lot was played.

Of course, the license plate was not 2974.

“Stop here.”

“Why? Is there something strange?”

Kang Min-jae asked, quickly pressing pause.

“The letters on the window here. It’s not Hanseong Energy.”

“……Huh? Really. All the white Damas that have come out so far have had Hanseong Energy on them.”

“It says Hallim Corporation.”

“Hallim Corporation? Hmm, is it a Hanseong Energy supplier? Or a subsidiary? Both have the ‘Han’ character in common.”

“The license plate is 7519.”

“Then it’s not the meter reader’s car.”

“We can’t be so sure.”

“……Then?”

“The meter reader parked the car in the Hanseong Energy parking lot, then changed the sticker to Hallim Corporation and changed the license plate, too.”