“His bayonet was found in his field gear.”
“He could’ve stolen another one. Happens all the time.”
“Or,” Ernie replied, “the killer could’ve bought one on the black market.”
I nodded. Ernie was right. The KNPs were taking a big leap in locking up Rothenberg. So far, they had no hard evidence linking him to the murder. Still, public opinion had to be mollified. When a young Korean woman is murdered, someone has to be locked up, and fast. Otherwise, the public will wonder why they’re spending their hard-earned tax dollars on police salaries. Someone has to pay for the crime. Like the yin and the yang symbols on the national flag, harmony in the universe must be restored. Someone is murdered, someone must pay for that murder. Everett P. Rothenberg wouldn’t be the first American GI convicted in Korea of something that there was no definitive proof he’d actually done. But if that was the case, harmony would come to his defense. If there was little or no evidence proving that he did it, Rothenberg would receive a light sentence, maybe four years in a Korean jail and then deportation back to the States. So far, no one-including me and Ernie-had any real idea who’d murdered Miss O Sung-hee.
Rothenberg’s alibi was sketchy. After finishing the day shift at the 304th Signal Battalion Comm Center, he’d eaten chow, showered, changed clothes and headed to the ville. At about eighteen hundred hours, he’d arrived at the Full Moon Teahouse. There, he’d sat in a corner sipping on ginseng tea while Miss Kang and Miss O Sung-hee worked. Miss Kang did most of the actual serving and preparation. Miss O sat with customers-Korean businessmen, small groups of American officers-adding beauty and charm to their evening. Before the midnight curfew, according to Rothenberg, Miss O convinced him that she was too tired to see him that evening and he should return to Camp Colbern. He did. Since he returned to his base camp before the midnight-to-four curfew, the MPs at the main gate didn’t bother to log in his name. Lights were already out in the barracks. In the dark, he’d undressed, stuffed his clothes and wallet in his wall locker, and hopped into his bunk. None of the other GIs in the barracks had any recollection of his arrival.
Ernie walked over to the bell and rapped it with his knuckles. A low moan reverberated from the sculpted bronze, like the whispered sigh of a giant. We started back down the trail. It was steep. Boulders and thick brambles of bushes blocked our way on either side. We stepped carefully, inching forward, watching our step in the bright moonlight.
“Why’d we bother coming up here?” Ernie asked.
As he spoke, the earth shook-just slightly, as if something heavy had thudded to the ground. I looked back. I could see nothing except Ernie staring at me quizzically, wondering why I had stopped. Then two more thuds, one after the other, shallower this time, as if something were skipping forward, becoming louder, rolling toward us.
It emerged from the darkness above Ernie’s head, looking for all the world like a steam roller from hell.
“Watch out!” I shouted.
I leapt to the side of the trail and Ernie, not yet fully understanding, followed suit. He dove into a thicket of branches and I landed atop a small boulder and scrambled over it to the opposite side away from the trail.
The noise grew deafening, one crash after another, and then an enormous metal cylinder flew out of the night, rolling down the trail, careening to the right and then left; barreling down the trail and smashing everything in its path. It clipped the edge of the thicket and missed Ernie by a couple of feet. I crouched. The huge metal rolling pin crashed against the boulder and the cylinder flew over, only inches above my head. After it passed, Ernie and I sat up, staring at moonlight glistening off the cylinder. The careening monolith continued its pell-mell rush down the side of the hill, smashing an old wooden fence outside a small animal shelter and then hitting the shelter itself. Lumber flew everywhere. The cylinder kept rolling until it slowed and finally landed in a muddy rice paddy with a huge, sloppy splat.
“What the hell was that?” Ernie asked.
I rose slowly to my feet, checking uphill to make sure nothing more was coming at us. “The bell,” I said.
“The what?”
“The bronze bell. Come on.”
We ran back up the pathway. At the top of the hill, the shrine stood empty. Using my penlight I examined the weathered ropes hanging beneath splintered rafters.
“Sliced,” I said.
“With what?” Ernie asked.
“Can’t be sure but with something sharp. Maybe a bayonet.”
Mr. Shin found us.
So did about five of his pals. Light from a yellow streetlamp shone on angry faces, all of then belonging to young punks with grease-backed hair and sneers on their lips.
“Why are you looking for me?” Shin asked in Korean.
We stood in an alley not far from the King’s Pavilion Pool Hall Ernie and I had stopped in earlier today.
“Your girlfriend,” I told him, “Miss O Sung-hee, was murdered last night. Where were you while she was being killed?”
Shin puffed one time on his cigarette-overly dramatically-and then flicked the flaming butt to the ground. Ernie braced himself, about one long stride away from me, his side to the Korean man nearest him. He was ready to fight. Five to two were the odds, but we’d faced worse.
“Not my girlfriend,” Shin said at last, switching to English. “No more. Break up long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Maybe one month.”
A long time all right. “Miss Kang didn’t mention your name to the Korean police. Why not?”
“She no can do.”
“ ‘No can do?’ Why not?”
“She my … how you say?… sister.”
“She’s your sister?”
“Yes. Kang not her real name. Real name same mine. Shin.”
“So you met Miss O through your sister?”
“Yes.”
“Why’d you break up with Miss O?”
Shin shrugged. “I tired of her.”
I didn’t believe that for a minute. Shin was a tough guy all right and like tough punks all over the world there would be a certain type of woman available to him. Women who thought little of themselves. Women who, in order to build up their self-esteem, flocked toward men who were on the outs with the law. Men who they considered to be exciting. Korea, like everywhere else, had its share of this type of woman. But from everything I’d heard about Miss O Sung-hee, I didn’t believe she was that type. She went for cops and attorneys and helicopter pilots. Men of power. Men of real accomplishment. Not men who were broke and hung around pool halls.
“She dumped you,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Miss O. She think, ‘I no like Shin anymore.’ She tell you karra chogi.” Go away.
Shin’s sneer twisted in anger. “No woman tell Shin go away.”
Ernie guffawed and said to me, “Is this guy dumb or what?” He stepped past me and glared at Shin. “So you took Miss O to the top of the hill and you used a knife and you killed her.”
Shin realized that he was digging a hole for himself. “No. No way. I no take. That night, I in pool hall. All night. Owner tell you. He see me there.”
Shin mentioned the pool hall owner because even he knew that nobody would believe the testimony of him and his buddies. I crossed my arms and kept my gaze steady on Shin’s eyes. He was a frightened young man. And when he’d heard that Ernie and I were looking for him, he’d voluntarily presented himself. Both these points were in his favor. Could he have murdered Miss O Sung-hee? Sure he could have. But something told me that his alibi would hold up. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing here anxious to clear his name. If he’d murdered her, he’d be long gone. Still, I’d check with the pool hall owner as soon as I could.
Ernie had his own way of testing Shin’s sincerity. He stepped forward until his chest was pushed up almost against Shin’s. Ernie glared at Shin for a while and then snarled. “Out of my way.”