“Where’s Miss Kim?” I asked.
Riley shook his head and studied the paperwork in front of him. He didn’t answer.
Ernie looked at her desk too. “Everything’s gone,” he said. “No more Black Dragon tea.”
We both loomed over Riley. “What is it?” I asked.
His voice came out garbled, as if he were choking back tears. I don’t believe I’d ever seen him so emotional. Maybe the one time he accidentally dropped his bottle of Old Overwart and it shattered all over the barracks floor, but that was it.
“She quit,” Riley said.
“What?” Then I said, “When?”
“This morning.”
“Did she say why?”
“Not to me. The Colonel took her into his office and had a long talk with her. He didn’t want to lose her, she was the best admin assistant we’ve ever had.”
For once, Riley didn’t use the word “secretary.”
“So what did the Colonel say?” Ernie asked. “Why’d she quit?”
Riley shook his head more vehemently this time. “He told me that she wouldn’t tell him. She just said that she had to leave the job.”
If anybody was responsible for us losing Miss Kim, it had to be Ernie. Both Riley and I stared at him. Finally, I said it. “You followed her onto the bus.”
“Hey, don’t blame me,” he said, pointing at his chest. “I didn’t do nothing. I caught up with her after her stop and she didn’t want to talk to me, but I finally convinced her to have one cup of coffee with me at a teahouse. We just talked. I was a perfect gentleman.”
We continued to glare at him.
“Honest!” he said. For the first time since I’d known him, Ernie Bascom was on the defensive. “She told me she wouldn’t go out with me. I accepted that.” He glanced back and forth between me and Riley. “It’s not my fault,” he said. “Or at least it’s not anything I did to her.” He thought about it. “Not lately, anyway.”
I turned to Riley. “Do you have her address of record?”
Without hesitation, he pulled out a five-by-eight card with all her pertinent data, even her Korean National Identification Number.
“Can I keep this?”
“I wrote it out for you.”
I slipped the card into my jacket pocket.
“Go talk to her,” Riley said. “Tell her we need her here.”
“A little late for you to admit that,” I told him.
Riley’s face turned red. He didn’t make a rude retort, which is what I’d expected. For the first time since I’d known him, I almost felt sorry for him. Not quite, but almost.
– 19-
Maybe it was to take our minds off of Miss Kim. But mainly, we knew it was time, so Ernie and I drove downtown to KNP headquarters. We wanted to check in with Mr. Kill concerning their progress on the investigation into Major Schultz’s death and the whereabouts of Miss Jo Kyong-ja. I also had a few other questions for him.
After we checked in at the front desk, Officer Oh appeared almost immediately. She escorted us upstairs to Kill’s office. He sat stone-faced at his desk, his jacket hanging on a hook behind him. “No progress,” he told us. “No hint of the location of Miss Jo Kyong-ja, even though every KNP station in the country has been notified. Mokpo tells me you paid them a visit.”
“We wanted to see her mother’s home,” I said.
He cocked an eyebrow. “What did you think?”
“Dirt-poor,” Ernie replied.
Kill sighed. “For my country, it’s been a long, slow fight out of poverty. Many tragedies.”
“And no one’s found an unidentified female body?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“So she still might be alive?”
“She might.”
Officer Oh brought in a stainless steel tray with a bronze pot of hot water, three cups, a box of Lipton tea bags and a squat jar of Folger’s Instant Crystals, plus some creamer and sugar. She set it on the long coffee table in the center of Mr. Kill’s office, and he came out from behind his desk and joined us, serving himself. Officer Oh asked if he needed anything else, and he told her no, that she could leave. On her way out, I thanked her. Her face impassive, she nodded back.
Once the three of us were alone, Ernie said, “You know that crime scene is phony.”
Kill didn’t reply. He just stirred coffee crystals into hot water and ladled in a heaping spoonful of sugar. “Phony in what way?”
Ernie explained how there really wasn’t enough blood, and that the blood that had been there looked as if it had been purposefully splashed. And that there wasn’t a big enough mess. Not enough broken bottles or smashed wooden crates.
“Major Schultz was a husky guy,” Ernie said. “If he’d been fighting for his life, there would’ve been more damage.”
Kill sipped on his coffee. Then he set the cup down, looked at Ernie and then looked at me. “Yes, that’s what I thought, too. And after our analysis, that conclusion is confirmed. There’s little doubt that the body was transported from somewhere else and left behind the Dragon King Nightclub. Probably sometime during the midnight-to-four curfew.”
“Meaning it couldn’t have been done with a civilian vehicle,” I said.
“No,” Kill agreed, “to be out after curfew, it would have to be a military or police conveyance. Something on official government business, anyway.”
“Or he could’ve been carried there,” Ernie said.
“Yes. Even during the curfew, our foot patrols can only cover so much territory. A couple of thugs could’ve carried the corpse there, dumped it, and done their best to replicate a murder scene. However, if that’s what happened, they couldn’t have carried him far.”
“Too heavy and too high a chance of being spotted.”
“Exactly. So I had a dozen officers canvass the area, checking for evidence, asking questions of nearby residents. I even have them checking trash-collector pushcarts for traces of blood. The circle around the crime scene keeps growing, but so far they’ve found nothing.”
“So transport of the corpse by motor vehicle seems most likely.”
Kill nodded.
We sat silent for a minute. Then I said, “Who?”
“That’s the question,” Kill replied. “So what do we ask next?”
He was treating us like students. Personally, I didn’t mind. He’d been a homicide investigator for over twenty years, the best Korea had, and I was more than willing to learn. I’m not so sure Ernie was thrilled with us receiving the subordinate treatment, but he kept quiet.
“Motive,” I said. “That’s what we have to look at next.”
“Miss Jo had a motive,” Inspector Kill said. “He had accused her of being a thief and her landlady, backed up by the Itaewon police, was making her life hell.”
KNPs can literally run a business girl out of town if she makes trouble and embarrasses them, especially when it has to do with the US military.
“She could’ve just moved to another GI village,” Ernie said.
“Without her clothes? Without money? You saw what she already had to do, start work in a brothel. Maybe it doesn’t seem like much to us, but to her it must’ve been a hideous shame. And she must’ve blamed Major Schultz for losing what little she had.”
“Not to mention,” Ernie added, “she claims he beat her up.”
“Or his accomplice did.”
“So she had a motive,” I said, “but physically, I don’t see how she could’ve done it. Yes, maybe if she’d surprised him with a knife or a hatchet, she might’ve been able to kill him, but how would she then have transported the body to the Dragon King Nightclub?”
Kill shrugged. “Someone could’ve helped her. Like the men who attacked you and made possible her escape.”
My head pulsed painfully at the thought.
“Seems too elaborate,” Ernie said. “Who wants to risk their life for a business girl?”
“Yes,” Kill agreed. “But this involves international politics. An American field grade officer has been killed, and the Korean government is extremely embarrassed. If there’s some way to wrap the case up quickly and make it seem like nothing more than a straightforward criminal matter, they’ll do it. They’re already pressuring me to find her and close the case.”