This is something he never did for GI customers.
She ordered green tea, but the man profusely apologized and told her they only had the American PX-bought tea called “Lipton.”
She told him that would be fine and the cashier hurried off.
“Hey!” Ernie said. “What about me?”
He ended up getting his own coffee at the counter as usual. I already had mine. Once the three of us were reseated, Major Rhee lifted her steaming white Styrofoam cup and said, “Here’s to justice.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ernie said. “Justice. That’s what we’re all about.”
She gazed at me steadily. “Eighth Army is upset with you.”
I sipped my coffee and stared at her unblemished face, reminding myself what she’d done to me while wearing the uniform of a North Korean Army Senior Captain. It hadn’t been pretty, and it had nothing to do with justice.
“I understand you’ve been seeing a woman,” she said.
Ernie cast me a wry grin.
I stared at Major Rhee and raised one eyebrow.
“A highly educated woman,” she continued. “A doctor. You seem to be partial to them.”
“Why do you care who I see?” I asked.
She raised and then lowered her tea bag. “Who you see is important to this investigation. You believe the killer with the iron sickle might have been at one time a psychiatric patient. You’re investigating that angle. You’re also investigating the various claims processed through the SOFA Secretariat. Good thinking, I’d say. Once you find an intersection, you might find your man.”
“And we might not,” Ernie said.
It was Major Rhee’s turn to shrug. “That’s the risk one takes.”
“What do you want from us?” Ernie asked.
Major Rhee sipped from her cup, leaving a lipstick smudge along its edge. “I want to be there when you make an arrest. You’ll need me.” She jammed her thumb over her shoulder. “You’ll need the firepower I can provide. This killer has proven he is intelligent and ruthless. You need me and I need you to help me find him. I won’t take the credit. I’ll leave that to you. I just want to be there on the day when you take him down.”
“You want to kill him,” Ernie said.
Major Rhee jerked back in her seat. “Not necessarily,” she said. “If he comes peacefully, he won’t be hurt.”
“You don’t want him to come peacefully,” Ernie continued. “For some reason the ROK Army wants him shut up. They don’t want a trial. They don’t want to hear what he has to say. They want him dead.”
Major Rhee’s face flushed red. “Don’t you?” she shouted. “Don’t you want him dead? He murdered an American civilian, a fellow MP, and two innocent GIs in a signal truck. Isn’t that enough reason for you Americans to want him dead also?”
The ranking sergeant of her infantry squad pushed through the double doors, holding his rifle pointed toward the ceiling.
“Naka!” she shrieked. Get out! The man backed out the door.
She stood and loomed over us, pointing her red-tipped forefinger first at Ernie and then at me. “Someday you will need me. Someday soon. And then you will be groveling and begging for my help.” She lowered her hand, stared at us, and turned and stormed out the swinging door. As lumber creaked on rusty hinges, I glanced at Ernie. Saliva bubbled at the corner of his mouth.
“Whadda woman,” he said.
We finished our coffee and prepared to go, and the NCO in charge of the RTO peeked out of his office behind the counter. When he saw the coast was clear, he walked up to the counter and said, “Next time you guys need to make a phone call, go somewhere else, okay?”
I finally reached Captain Prevault at her office.
“Thank God you called,” she said.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Remember Miss Sim, the woman at the home for the criminally insane, the one who panicked when we showed her your drawing of the totem?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“She’s been taken.”
“Taken by who?”
“By a very forceful Korean man. He barely said anything, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. And a Korean woman was with him. ‘Flashy’ is how the staff described her.”
“They just walked in and took this woman who’d been there for years? Didn’t anybody try to stop them?”
“Yes, one of the male attendants confronted them. Grabbed the girl on the front steps and wouldn’t let her go.”
“What happened?”
“As soon as he touched her, Miss Sim dropped her rag doll and scratched his eyes so severely he had to be taken to surgery. Then the three of them left.”
“Have the KNPs been called?”
“Yes. So far they’ve done nothing.”
“I’ll go up there and check it out.”
“Take me with you!” When I didn’t say anything, Captain Prevault softened her voice and said, “I’m sorry about what I did in the snack bar. It was wrong of me. I realize now that none of the arrests at the Sanatorium were your doing.”
“What makes you so sure?” I said coldly.
There was a long pause. Finally, she spoke in the voice of a little girl. “I know you couldn’t.”
She was right about that.
I sighed, turning my head so the sound of it didn’t reach the receiver. “We’ll need to move quickly.”
Her voice brightened, becoming the old Captain Prevault again. “I’ll be waiting in front of the one-two-one.”
I told her we’d be there in twenty minutes and hung up.
— 13-
We crossed the Chonho Bridge heading south, Ernie driving, Captain Prevault bundled in a cold weather parka in the back seat. I pointed the way as Ernie wound up through wooded hills and finally pulled into the gravel parking lot in front of the home for the criminally insane. Three white-uniformed staff members were waiting for us on the stone steps.
They took us to Miss Sim Kok-sa’s cell and explained how the man and the woman had arrived in a kimchi cab and the driver had waited for them. They claimed to be relatives, and then without permission pushed their way to Miss Sim’s cell. When the attendant refused to unlock it, the tall man pulled a wickedly-sharpened sickle from beneath his coat and threatened to slice the attendant’s throat. The man unlocked the door, and to everyone’s surprise, the girl seemed to recognize the two people. Her eyes widened and she started to scream. That’s when the fancy woman slapped her, told her to shut up, and barked orders at her to stand up and do as she was told. Amazingly, Miss Sim complied, docilely, as if she were accustomed to taking orders from the woman. Like a convict on her way to the gallows, she followed them up the stairs, and when the head attendant confronted them, Miss Sim dropped her doll and, at the fancy woman’s orders, attacked him fiercely.
They showed us the rag doll.
“She left this?” Captain Prevault asked.
“She didn’t want to but the fancy woman ordered her to leave it.”
“But previously she would fight anyone who tried to take it away from her?”
The staff nodded.
Captain Prevault turned to me. “She knows them,” she said.
“Who?”
“The people who took her. Miss Sim knows them and feels she has no choice but to follow their orders.”
“Why would she feel that?”
“I’m not sure. But it probably has something to do with the trauma that landed her here in the first place.”
“What are they going to do with her?”
“God only knows.”
I thought of what they’d done to Mr. Ming and to Collingsworth and to the two GIs in the signal truck and to Mr. Barretsford.
“We have to find her,” Captain Prevault said.
I agreed.
One of the staff members had the presence of mind to jot down the license plate number of the kimchi cab that had carried them away. They’d given it to the KNPs but my guess was it wouldn’t do much good. Most likely, the pair had the driver take them to some densely populated area of downtown Seoul, and from there they’d either catch another cab or hop on a train or a bus. Still, I would’ve liked to talk to the driver, but that would mean contacting Mr. Kill, locating the investigating officers, and making an appointment, and all that would take time. Also, I no longer trusted Mr. Kill’s motives. I trusted him as a man-if he promised me something, he’d deliver. But notably, so far in this case, he’d promised me nothing. I believed he was working under tight orders from his superiors. What exactly those orders were, I couldn’t be sure. But I suspected someone higher up in the government was monitoring every move we made and when-and if-we found the man with the iron sickle, then the next step would be taken out of our hands. I discussed this with Ernie.