Ernie shrugged and continued shoveling eggs in his mouth.
“All we want to know,” I continued, “is what he saw on the Blue Train.”
“And if he’s the killer.”
“There’s that.”
“And if he’s not the killer, who is.”
“There’s that too.”
I walked to the serving line and pulled myself a cup of joe from the huge stainless-steel coffee urn. When I reached in my pocket for my receipt, the tired female cashier waved me past. There were so few customers, she remembered that I qualified for the free refill. I studied her face. She didn’t look much like Mrs. Oh Myong-ja, the first victim, but there were similarities. They were both Korean, they were both in their early thirties, and I could tell by her ring that they were both married. Did she have children? Probably. Why else would she be working so early in the morning on a G.I. compound?
When I returned to our table, I clunked my coffee mug down and asked Ernie, “What do you think Runnels meant about the Blue Train rapist having a ‘checklist’?”
Ernie looked up from the sports page. “I think the guy has a lot of people he hates.”
“What makes you say that?”
Ernie shrugged. “What he did on the train was an in-your-face act. Like flipping the world the bird.”
I already knew that Ernie had more brains than people gave him credit for. And more brains than he usually bothered to show.
“And what he did next,” I said, “here in Pusan, is an act even more brutal than the first.”
“Right.”
“So the ‘checklist’ probably becomes progressively bloodier.”
Ernie looked back at the sports page. “Unless we catch him first.”
Mr. Kill was waiting for us at the Pusan Police Station.
He rose as we walked in, and within seconds we were in a police sedan being driven over to the Pusan-yok, the train station.
“The local police,” Kill told us, “are checking with every cab driver who picked up a fare at the Pusan station yesterday. They should have a report for us some time today. Not only did Mrs. Hyon and her three children take a cab from the train station to the Shindae Hotel, so did the killer.”
“So if they’re checking that,” Ernie asked, “why are we going to the train station?”
Mr. Kill raised a paper bag he’d been holding in his lap. “This.” He pulled out a woman’s purse. “This is the one the rapist showed to the desk clerk,” he told us. “So he could follow Mrs. Hyon up to the third floor.”
“Already dusted for prints?”
“There weren’t any. He must have wiped it down.”
“If the guy’s so smart, why’d he leave the purse?”
“Probably thought we couldn’t do anything with it,” Kill said. “And he might be right.”
The sedan pulled up in front of the huge flagstone expanse in front of the Pusan train station. Canvas-covered lean-tos were set up in neat rows. Some of them had wooden counters and sold hot bowls of noodles; others hawked already-packed toshirak with rice and kimchee and other savories inside, suitable for eating on the train. Other stands sold umbrellas or galoshes, and a few sold clothing items of various descriptions for the traveler who might’ve forgotten to pack something.
Mr. Kill stopped at every clothing stand, showed them the handbag, asking if they sold this type of item. Three of them did. He questioned them at length. Finally, a tall woman with a pronounced overbite admitted that she’d sold a handbag exactly like that to a foreigner. She remembered the time: it was already dark, and the Blue Train from Seoul had just pulled in.
“After that,” she said, “we locked up and went home. No business after the last Blue Train.”
“What did he look like?” Mr. Kill asked.
“Like them,” she said, pointing to Ernie and me. She realized Mr. Kill expected more, so she said, “Big. With a big nose.”
Patiently, Mr. Kill took her through all the various physical attributes a person can have. When he was finished, we had the picture we expected. A Caucasian male, about six feet tall-maybe a little more, maybe a little less-with short-cropped dark hair, but she hadn’t noticed if the hair was curly or straight. His nose was big, not as pointed as Ernie’s and not as puffed up as mine. He wore a dark shirt of some sort, she wasn’t sure of the color, and he wore dark slacks, although they could’ve been blue jeans. His shoes, she didn’t see.
“How about a traveling bag?” Kill asked.
She shook her head. “He wasn’t carrying one. And I would’ve noticed. I’m in that line of work.”
Mr. Kill asked about the man’s hands. He’d used them to point at the handbag and he’d used them to make payment.
Yes, there was hair on the hands. She crinkled her nose at the memory. And the nails, she thought, were probably cut short, although she couldn’t be sure. No rings or jewelry that she remembered.
Mr. Kill asked if he’d spoken to her in Korean or English.
“He didn’t say anything,” the vendor replied. “He just pointed.” Her array of handbags was hanging by nails on the rafters.
“He didn’t ask how much it was?”
“No. So I told him. Four thousand five hundred.”
“You told him in Korean or English?”
“In English,” she replied proudly. “I can speak that much.”
“Isn’t four thousand five hundred a little steep?” Kill asked.
The woman blushed. “All foreigners are rich,” she said. “And anyway, he didn’t wait for his change.”
A couple of hours later, the local KNPs located the cab drivers. The one who’d driven Mrs. Hyon and her three children to the Shindae Hotel was an elderly man who sat forward on his hard wooden chair and puffed on a Kobuksong cigarette through the entire conversation. According to him, Mrs. Hyon was having trouble with her kids, who were restless after the long train ride. When they arrived at the hotel, she paid him and thanked him, seemed all in all a very nice lady.
“Chuggosso?” he asked, his mouth open. She’s dead?
Kill nodded gravely.
He shook his head sadly. “Aiyu. Kullioyo.” How pitiful.
The second driver was a younger man, with hair hanging down just slightly over his ears. He seemed nervous. “The foreigner just pointed,” he said in Korean. “He didn’t even wait in line. He just stepped right in front of the other customers and climbed in my cab and he pointed to the cab that had just pulled away from the curb.”
“Didn’t you tell him to get out of your cab and wait his turn?”
“No. He looked fierce. With those big eyes and that big nose and those big hairy knuckles. I just drove.”
“When you arrived at the hotel, what happened?”
“He pointed at the side of the road. He didn’t want me to follow the other cab into the driveway in front of the hotel. He wanted me to stop before that.”
“But you’re not supposed to stop there.”
“No, I’m not. And when I did, traffic was backed up and honking behind me.” The man’s head had been hanging down; he raised it briefly. “I’m not going to get a ticket, am I?”
“No. No ticket,” Kill said. “What happened then?”
“He thrust some money at me.”
“How much?”
“At first I wasn’t sure. It was wadded up. I didn’t even count it right away. All I did was smile and nod my head and pray that he’d climb out of my cab. He did. Then I pulled away. Later, I counted the money. About eight hundred won, all in hundred-won notes.”
“How much was the actual fare?”
“Less than four hundred.”
“Easy money.”
“I wouldn’t say so.”
“Why not?” Kill asked.
“Because he scared the piss out of me.”
Kill said he was going to try for another composite sketch, using the train-station vendor and the young cab driver. Meanwhile, he had the Korean National Police put out an all-points bulletin for Specialist Four Nicholas Q. Weyworth. I told him that we suspected him of trafficking in contraband, an allegation that would be enough for the KNPs to hold him at least until the 8th Army MPs arrived.