The Only Child

by Mi-ae Seo

  Thanks to her father, she had been able to turn her back on the hole and come out where she could see the light. Thinking that the child had a hole just as deep and dark, Seonkyeong felt terribly sorry for her. She resolved that she would take her hand and guide her, just as her father had done for her.

  19.

  SEONKYEONG OPENED THE GATE AND STEPPED OUT, AND SAW two men, both strangers, standing there.

  The man standing in front had a crew cut and a stocky build, and was dressed in a black suit. Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead, as it was a hot day. The man standing behind him, in a checked shirt, was sweating as well; his hair was all wet, and he was constantly wiping his face with a handkerchief.

  “Is this Mr. Yun Jaeseong’s residence?” one of the men asked.

  “Yes, but . . .” Seonkyeong trailed off.

  “We are investigators and we have a few questions regarding the fire that took place at the home of Mr. Pak Yongseok,” the man said.

  Pak Yongseok? Who was Pak Yongseok? Seonkyeong wondered, but the mention of a fire brought Hayeong to her mind.

  “My husband isn’t home right now.”

  “Actually, we came to see his daughter, Yun Hayeong.”

  “Oh . . . well, come on in,” Seonkyeong said after a moment’s hesitation, and opened the gate.

  Hayeong would be coming home soon. And Seonkyeong couldn’t make these men, drenched in sweat on such a hot day, go on standing in the scorching sun.

  “Would you like something cool to drink?” she asked as they stepped in through the front door, and the man in the checked shirt jumped at the chance and asked for some water.

  Seonkyeong led them to the living room sofa, and quickly went to the kitchen and got some cold water from the fridge. The two men took their cups and gulped the water down, as if they had just been waiting for it. The man in the checked shirt, who had been sweating profusely, poured himself some more water from the pitcher. Wiping away the sweat running down the back of his neck with the crumpled handkerchief in his hand, he mumbled an excuse, “The sun was so strong, it cooked my head as I walked into the alley.”

  Smiling and nodding, Seonkyeong got to her feet and turned on the air conditioner in the living room, and brought a fan over and turned that on as well.

  “Oh, thank you so much. That feels so much better. Heat really gets to me,” the man said.

  Unlike the other man, the man with the crew cut wasn’t sweating much, and didn’t seem too bothered by the heat. He looked irritably at his colleague, who was making a great fuss, flapping his shirt in front of the fan to get some air into it. He pulled out a business card from his suit pocket and handed it to Seonkyeong.

  Sergeant Yu Dongsik

  Fire Investigation Team, Forensic Science Investigation Department

  SEOUL METROPOLITAN POLICE AGENCY

  Seeing the other man hand Seonkyeong the card, the man in the checked shirt promptly took his own card from his pocket and handed it to her as well. Unlike Sergeant Yu, he was a fire inspector in the fire defense headquarters.

  Yi Sangwuk

  FIRE INSPECTOR

  Seonkyeong had heard that there was a fire investigation team in the forensic science investigation department at the police agency, but she had never met a fire inspector before. She hadn’t known that they worked as a team with fire inspectors from the fire defense headquarters, either.

  “You two are from different organizations?” Seonkyeong asked.

  Taken aback by her question, they chuckled, looking at each other. The way they did so hinted that they had worked together for a long time—they seemed quite comfortable with each other.

  “You’re very sharp. Most people think we’re both fire inspectors,” said Yi Sangwuk, the fire inspector, who seemed quite talkative.

  “Fire identification used to be under the jurisdiction of the fire defense headquarters. But the process of fire suppression necessitates police intervention at times, which is why the two organizations have come to cooperate,” he explained.

  “Oh, I see,” Seonkyeong replied, and examined the two cards on the table.

  According to her knowledge, fire inspectors generally examined the scene as the fire was being put out; they also talked to witnesses on the spot. Why had they come after so many days had passed?

  The air had cooled, and Seonkyeong hugged her shoulders without realizing it. Sergeant Yu picked up the remote control and turned off the air conditioner.

  Seonkyeong looked up, and Sergeant Yu put the remote control down, saying a fan was enough.

  She realized that he was a very attentive man who was mindful of details. She felt a bit nervous, sensing his gaze resting on her. She spoke to break the awkward silence.

  “As far as I know, fire identification takes place at the scene. Is there a reason why you came out of your way to see Hayeong here?” she asked.

  This time, Sergeant Yu spoke. The two men seemed to have clearly divided roles.

  “We were quite preoccupied that day, and on top of that, the child had a hard time talking, probably because of the shock. She was the only witness, but we didn’t get to hear what she had to say. We figured out the situation that day as much as we could, but there was something we wanted to ask her in person,” he said.

  “I see,” Seonkyeong said, nodding, and glanced at her watch.

  I hope she doesn’t come home late, Seonkyeong thought, feeling anxious for no reason. She couldn’t help but feel nervous with two men, whom she didn’t know very well, sitting in her living room. In addition, Sergeant Yu wouldn’t take his eyes off her face. Inspector Yi sensed her discomfort and said with a smile, “Please don’t worry about us and do what you need to do. We can just sit here and wait.”

  Seonkyeong, however, couldn’t do as he said. She found her gaze falling repeatedly on the yard out the window.

  “Um, excuse me, but . . . ,” Sergeant Yu said.

  Seonkyeong turned her head to face Sergeant Yu, who was staring intently at her. “Yes?” she said, tilting her head as she spoke.

  “Are you in this line of work, by chance? Something to do with the police?”

  “You could say that. I’m in criminal psychology.”

  Hearing her answer, he tapped himself on the forehead, trying to recall something. Sangwuk looked from Sergeant Yu to Seonkyeong, looking puzzled.

  “What, you know her?” he asked.

  “Didn’t you come to the criminal psychology seminar held at the National Forensic Service last winter?” Sergeant Yu asked.

  “Yes, I did, in January,” Seonkyeong replied.

  It had been five months. She had attended an academic seminar on scientific investigation and criminal psychology, conducted by the National Forensic Service. It seemed that the sergeant, too, had been there, and seen her.

  “I thought I’d seen you somewhere,” he said.

  Seonkyeong finally understood why he’d looked so intently at her, making her uncomfortable. Sergeant Yu, who had been looking at her for quite some time, unable to recall the memory, now turned his gaze away, looking as if he had solved a difficult problem. She felt relieved that he had seen her before. The awkwardness lifted, and she felt more at ease.

  “You have a good eye. How did you remember that?” she asked.

  “Sergeant Yu remembers all beautiful women,” Sangwuk said lightly, and the inspector poked him in the waist.

  “I apologize, this guy has no manners. Something you said that day stayed with me, actually,” he said.

  “Huh? What did I . . . ,” Seonkyeong asked, not recalling talking in front of people. She hadn’t make a presentation, or even gotten up from her seat to ask a question. She found it odd that he should remember something she’d said.

  “Didn’t you say that wounds turn a man into a monster?” asked Sergeant Yu.

  She felt perplexed, hearing words she didn’t remember saying. Had they even talked that day?

  Waving his hands, Sergeant Yu said, “You didn’t
say it directly to me—I was sitting in the row in front of you. I heard you talking to someone next to you during a break in the seminar. You were talking about Yu Yeongcheol.”

  “Oh!” Seonkyeong exclaimed, vividly remembering that day all of a sudden.

  A colleague had invited her to the seminar, and introduced her to someone who wrote freelance for a police journal. He had a knack for telling stories, probably because he made a living writing, and they talked at length, never an awkward moment in that first meeting.

  Hearing that Seonkyeong had studied criminal psychology in the States, he asked her questions about profiling, and talked about the childhood of Yu Yeongcheol, which he had covered in his writing. The conclusion the reporter had drawn afterward was that the wounds his parents had inflicted on him had traumatized him terribly.

  The freelance reporter quoted from Robert Ressler, saying that no one lived a normal life and then had a dramatic change in personality in their thirties that led them to become a murderer; he agreed with Ressler that behaviors that foreshadow murder develop during early childhood.

  During the conversation with the freelance reporter, Seonkyeong had said, in talking about the meaning of the word “trauma,” “Wounds turn a man into a monster.”

  “You’re the kind of person I fear the most,” Seonkyeong said.

  “Huh?” said Sergeant Yu.

  “I have a friend like you. She’ll remember what I was wearing during a lunch with her ten years ago, what we ate and talked about, and even the music that was playing at the café. It’s a little scary, to be honest.”

  “Haha, that’s exactly Sergeant Yu. He remembers the most trivial things,” Sangwuk said.

  Sergeant Yu laughed along, and said he’d been that way since he was a child.

  To Seonkyeong’s relief, Hayeong came home on time.

  Seonkyeong looked up at the sound of the gate opening, and saw her walk into the yard.

  “There she is,” Seonkyeong said, and Sergeant Yu and Sangwuk looked up as well, and watched Hayeong as she came inside.

  Hayeong, who had opened the front door and was stepping inside, stiffened when she saw the two men.

  “Hayeong, do you remember them? They’re fire inspectors. They have a few questions to ask you,” Seonkyeong said.

  Hesitant, Hayeong looked from one man to the other, then went to sit down on the sofa when Seonkyeong asked her to. She looked quite nervous. Feeling bad for her, Seonkyeong held her by the shoulder and tried to put her at ease.

  “It’s all right, you don’t need to be scared. Just tell them what you remember,” she said, but Hayeong wouldn’t let her guard down.

  Sergeant Yu looked intently at Hayeong, then began to ask her questions when Sangwuk nudged him.

  “Do you remember me?” he asked.

  Hayeong nodded.

  “You must’ve been quite shocked that day. Are you okay now?” he went on.

  “Yes,” Hayeong answered.

  “Will you tell me in detail what happened the night of the fire?”

  Hearing the question, Hayeong hesitated for a moment, then shook her head.

  “I don’t remember very well,” she said.

  Sergeant Yu, after looking straight into her eyes for a moment, pictured the structure of the house in his mind and asked another question.

  “Where was your room?”

  “The one next to the kitchen. When you went out through the window, there was a staircase leading to the rooftop on the second floor. Oh, and that’s where I went when the fire broke out, to the rooftop. Then a fire fighter saved me,” Hayeong said, seeming to remember little by little as she answered the question.

  “Did you see anyone suspicious when you went out through the window?”

  Hayeong shook her head and said, “I couldn’t see anything because of the smoke.”

  “Were you sleeping by yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know that there was a fire?”

  “I woke up because my throat hurt. The smoke, it came into the room. That’s why I went out through the window.”

  “What else do you remember?” Sergeant Yu asked, writing down Hayeong’s words and waiting for her next. Hayeong, however, seemed to have nothing more to say; she clamped her mouth shut and looked at the two men.

  Seeing her response, Sergeant Yu must have decided that he couldn’t pry any more out of her; he closed his notebook, put it in his pocket, and took out another business card.

  “I’ll leave you my card. Will you call me if you remember anything else about that night?” he asked.

  Hayeong nodded.

  Sergeant Yu got to his feet, and nodded lightly at Seonkyeong, saying goodbye.

  Then, while putting on his shoes at the front door, he seemed to recall something all of a sudden—looking shocked, he stared down at his feet for a while. He whirled his head around to where Hayeong was sitting.

  Hayeong, who had been sitting on the sofa, hastily got to her feet when their eyes met, and went off upstairs.

  Sergeant Yu asked Seonkyeong, who had gone out to the gate to see them off, for her phone number. He took out his cell phone, checked her name, and saved the number on the spot.

  “I’ll give you a call later,” he said.

  “Okay. Goodbye, then,” Seonkyeong said.

  “By the way, does Hayeong go to bed with her socks on, or off?” he asked.

  “Huh?” Seonkyeong, about to go back into the house, looked puzzled, not seeing where the question had come from.

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  EVEN AFTER THE GATE HAD CLOSED, Sergeant Yu stood there for quite a while. Sangwuk, standing next to him and blocking the sun with his hand, rushed him, saying, “Come on, let’s go. We’ll get scorched in the sun, standing here.”

  Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. He took out his handkerchief and began to fan himself. Sergeant Yu, however, still wouldn’t budge. He stood there frowning for a while, then asked, “Don’t you find something about that child strange?”

  “Huh? What about her?” Sangwuk asked.

  “She found out that there was a fire because the smoke came into her room. How do kids usually react when that happens?”

  “They usually run in a direction where there’s no smoke. Or they hide somewhere.”

  The most heartbreaking thing at the scene of a fire was finding dead bodies of children. Children instinctively looked for somewhere to hide when a fire broke out. They often hid in a closet, as if playing hide-and-seek with the fire, afraid it would find them. So in many cases, children died by suffocating from the smoke before the flames even touched them.

  Again, Sergeant Yu pictured the structure of the house where the child had lived. The window was on the wall next to the door, just around the corner. If the child found out in the darkness that a fire had broken out, how would she have reacted? Rather than go toward the fire, she would’ve gone back into her room.

  “Now that I think about it . . . ,” Sangwuk said, his eyes wide in surprise with a thought that had just occurred to him, and looked at the sergeant.

  “That day, on the day of the fire! So . . . that’s why you asked her that question,” he said.

  Looking at him, Sergeant Yu nodded. He had finally confirmed something that had been nagging at the corner of his mind.

  The child, who said she’d been sleeping when she woke up to find a fire had broken out and escaped through the window, had been wearing socks and shoes that day at the scene of the fire. Which meant that she either had known that there was going to be a fire, or had been outside before the fire broke out.

  Why did she lie? Sergeant Yu thought, wondering what it was that the child was hiding. There was something else that troubled his mind.

  Please call my dad, she had said, handing him her father’s business card. How could she have been that calm—putting her father’s business card in her pocket, putting on socks and shoes, and even remembering to take her teddy bear with
her—when she was running from a fire?

  A sickening hypothesis rose to his mind as he recalled seeing the child early that morning of the fire. It’s not possible, he thought, but the thought that had crept its way in began to grow and spread like poison ivy.

  Sergeant Yu shook his head. There was still the autopsy report. The results were ready, but the cause of death had yet to be confirmed. The autopsy lab at the National Forensic Service said they would send a report after the analysis. Things would clear up a bit when he saw the report. It wouldn’t be too late to judge then.

  Part 3

  20.

  ON THE MORNING OF HER NEXT INTERVIEW WITH YI Byeongdo, Seonkyeong called the head of the serious crime division at the Seoul Gangbuk Police Station.

  She asked him if he knew about Yi Byeongdo’s mother, who had gone missing.

  He knew nothing more than what Yi Byeongdo had said. Seonkyeong told him that there was a possibility that she had been killed by her son, just as Yi Byeongdo had told her. He listened quietly to what Seonkyeong said, and asked if she had any other information. He seemed more interested in the evidence of the other missing people that still remained at Yi Byeongdo’s house than in an old case.

  Seonkyeong said that she would inquire into further crimes during the interview that day.

  “And . . . I called to ask you for something,” she added.

  There was another reason she’d called. She had guessed why Yi Byeongdo found her important and she wanted to find out if her guess was correct.

  “When you searched his house, did you ever come across a picture of his mother? If you did, I’d like to see it,” she said.

  He said he would ask the investigators and give her a call, and hung up.

  In less than ten minutes, the crime division head called back. He said he’d found in the case record a picture of Yi Byeongdo’s mother that the investigator in charge had photographed as evidence. He offered to send her a copy via text message.

  The text arrived just as Seonkyeong got her bag from the study and was about to leave the house. She flipped her cell phone open and checked the picture, but the face wasn’t what she’d imagined.