Next to her, leaning against a pedestal, was a large photograph of Yi Won-suk bordered in black. In front of the photo stood a short bronze incense holder.
Cops at a murder site are not expected to participate in ritual behavior. I could tell by his body posture that Lieutenant Rhee wanted me to keep moving. But rules had been broken here. The KNPs had allowed this old woman to set up this shrine to the dead not more than a few feet from a police crime scene. The KNPs had let their own rules be broken not only out of respect for the dead but also because of the age of this mourner. Old grandpas with poor eyesight can totter across busy intersections in Seoul, against the red light, and cops with whistles will stop traffic and make sure that younger drivers swerve safely around the old man. To ticket a venerable elder for jaywalking would be considered the height of impropriety.
And no one had the heart to shoo away this old woman.
Ernie was already slipping off his loafers in front of the raised floor, but I didn’t join him. Instead, I approached the old woman, bowed, and spoke in Korean. “I’m very sorry for your trouble, Grandmother.”
She cackled. Surprised to hear a foreigner speak the tongue of the gods.
“No trouble for me,” she answered. “Trouble for the young Mrs. Yi. And more trouble for her husband. And for their child, Myong-song.”
“Yes. For my country’s part in this, we are greatly ashamed.”
“Good for you. But don’t waste your breath on a foolish old woman.”
“Did you see the man who did this, Grandmother?”
“No. I heard Mrs. Yi return from the market and push her cart through the gate, but after that nothing. Apparently Myong-song was asleep from the long ride home. All was quiet, so I went about my business until about an hour later. Then I heard Myong-song scream.”
“And you came over here?”
“Yes. Myong-song was a quiet child. I’d never heard her scream before. I found her in the kitchen. Apparently her mother had taken a pot of warm water off the charcoal brazier, but she must’ve been interrupted because she left the flame exposed. Myong-song reached in and burnt her hand.”
“And her mother?”
“In the back room.” The old woman shook her head. “Don’t ask me more. That young policeman knows everything.”
I thanked the old woman, slipped off my shoes, and stepped into the silent home.
The front room was wallpapered but barely furnished. Only a small wooden chest with brass fittings and a stack of sleeping mats and folded blankets sat neatly against the wall. The floor beneath my feet was still warm. Apparently, the old neighbor woman had been good enough to change the charcoal for the heating flues that ran beneath the stone foundation. The late Mrs. Yi must’ve been a good housekeeper. The floor’s vinyl covering was scrubbed immaculately clean.
We entered the kitchen. Pots and pans hung from the wooden rafters. No sign of struggle. Only an open charcoal brazier that had now died out. The metal lid had not been replaced. Surely the old woman was right. When Mrs. Yi Won-suk pulled the pan of hot water off the open charcoal flame, someone must’ve jumped her from behind. Someone huge. Overpowering. She wouldn’t have had a chance to struggle. Yet someone who was stealthy enough to tiptoe past the sliding door and across the vinyl-floored front room without being heard. Or if she had heard him, maybe Mrs. Yi thought it was her husband returning early from the fields.
We entered the back room, where Mrs. Yi had been taken. Again, no sign of struggle. A small table in the corner with a mirror, bottles and jars of ointments and lotions, all undisturbed. Maybe the man had threatened Mrs. Yi with a knife. Or worse, threatened to hurt her daughter.
Lieutenant Rhee pointed to the center of the floor.
“The body was found here,” he said in Korean. I translated for Ernie.
Then he told us that her skirt had been pulled up, her long underpants and leggings ripped off, and that the doctor who examined her corpse found enough tearing in her small body to conclude that she’d been violated forcibly by a powerful man.
Lieutenant Rhee pointed to his own neck. Bruises, he told us, had formed a line beneath the curve of Mrs. Yi’s delicate jaw.
For the next two days, our work at Camp Henry was routine. After a while Ernie and I started to feel like a couple of personnel clerks. The officer corps was under orders to account for the whereabouts of every soldier in every unit under their command on the afternoon of the murder. Hundreds of soldiers were eliminated almost immediately because if there’s one thing the army’s good at it’s keeping track of GIs. Support activities are what soldiers do on Camp Henry, so Ernie and I spent a lot of time making phone calls to ensure a truck convoy had actually reached its destination or that a piece of communications equipment had actually been repaired on the day in question.
Our progress was rapid. We were scratching off whole blocks of names and narrowing down our suspects to a short list. We didn’t stop with the enlisted men, we also checked on the officers and even the three or four dozen US civilians employed on the base. The entire process became more and more exciting as each and every alibi was checked and the list grew smaller and smaller. Finally, at the end of the second day, Ernie and I compared notes. To our horror, we obtained the one result that neither of us had expected.
Everybody had an alibi.
We sat in stunned silence for a while, drinking the dregs of the overcooked coffee in the pot in the small office we’d been assigned.
Finally, Ernie spoke. “How the hell are we going to break this to Eighth Army?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The Korean newspapers have been all over it.”
The original thought that only the Korean tabloids would carry the story of the sordid murder of Mrs. Yi Won-suk had long since gone by the boards. Koreans have an affinity for the simple country life. Even though nowadays they work in high-rise office buildings or fly back and forth to Saudi Arabian oilfields or cut deals with Swiss bankers, they still think of themselves as the pure and virtuous agrarian people that their ancestors had once been. Mrs. Yi was so attractive, her surviving daughter Myong-song so charming, and her husband so stalwart and brave that the heart of the country had been drawn to their little family. The biggest newspapers in the country had run her photograph on the front page. Television reporters had produced specials on her, showing the craggy peaks and streams near her home. Some of them had even tried to talk to Ernie and me, but so far we’d managed to avoid them.
Finally, Ernie and I decided to do what we always do when we don’t have a plan. We locked up the office, strode outside the gate of Camp Henry, and headed toward neon.
When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was.
What I did know was that my stomach was churning and my head ached and my bladder was so full that I was afraid to move. Finally I did move. I threw a silk-lined comforter off my body, rolled over onto a warm ondol floor, and slowly rose to my feet. I was in a rectangular room not much bigger than a closet. I found my clothes and threw them on and pulled back the sliding door, stepped out onto a narrow wooden porch, and squatted down and put on my shoes. The courtyard wasn’t much bigger than the room I’d been sleeping in. The sky was overcast and a light sheen of drizzle filled the sky. Quickly, I stepped across moist brick to the byonso on the other side of the tiny courtyard.
After I relieved myself, a woman with a pocked face, hair in mad disarray and a cotton robe wrapped tightly about her slim body, stood in the center of the courtyard waiting for me. I had no idea who she was.
She told me. I gave her the money that I had apparently promised her the night before, and I left.
Back at the temporary billets at Camp Henry, I showered, shaved, and changed into clean clothes. Still Ernie hadn’t arrived. He was probably passed out somewhere in a hooch behind the bar district. I didn’t have time to wait for him.