BXBX NOVEL Chapter 76 - The Burnt Girl (1)
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Hobin quickly rushed to the precinct. He had finally read one of Jina\'s many messages and was berating himself for not responding to her earlier. Inside the police station, he scanned for her but to his surprise, Siwan was sitting at her desk.
"Bro!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
"Giving a statement," Siwan replied. "You left the party early so you don\'t know, do you?"
"What happened?" Hobin asked, sitting beside him. Siwan quickly told him what happened with Song Yohan and how his wife tried to steal an envelope. The police had already arrested her and another suspect which Hobin immediately deduced as Hyojin, the boyfriend.
"Where\'s Tinkerbell and her crew?" Hobin asked.
"Jina and her partner are questioning the suspects I guess," Siwan sighed. "I don\'t know about the rest."
Right at that moment, Jiwoon came out of the interrogation room and saw Hobin.
"Doctor Ohm!" she greeted. "We\'ve been trying to get a hold of you for ages!"
"What happened in the interrogation?" he asked.
Jiwoon shot a glance at Siwan who was also listening in. "I think Detective Hwang and I will be giving a briefing to the others in a while," she said. "I\'m sorry but I can\'t tell it here because…"
Her eyes went to Siwan again who seemed to have realized what she meant. He was a civilian and the police could not leak information to him about any case.
"I\'m sorry if I intruded!" he quickly apologized. "I was just waiting for an officer to take my testimony."
"I\'ll do it," Jiwoon offered. "Doctor Ohm, you can meet up with the others in the briefing room. They\'ll update you on what we\'ve found so far."
Hobin nodded and immediately ran off while Jiwoon turned to Siwan. She handed him a form to fill up.
"Please write your testimonial on this and sign it," she instructed. "Sign here, here and here…"
She pointed at all the places for him to put his name on. Siwan followed her instructions and signed his name on his final testimony.
"Kang Siwan…" Jiwoon read. "Ah yes! You were the pediatrician who helped our boss at the orphanage."
"And you\'re the detective who got injured on-duty, right?" Siwan asked. "We didn\'t meet that time but I saw you when the paramedics were carrying you away."
They shook hands and sat down, waiting for Jina to come out of her interrogation.
"This case must be tiring out everyone," Siwan said. "I\'ve never seen my brother so tense. Even Jina is grim."
"We\'re being pressured by the higher ups to solve it as soon as possible," Jiwoon shrugged. "But it\'s not that easy. We have to look at every angle."
She was gently shaking her head. "People are really strange," she said. "Parents who didn\'t even know that their own daughter was buried in their mansion. A girl who died a painful death inside her own home, a place where she was supposed to be safe. I guess it\'s one of those cases where we question everything."
"Big mansions hide the worst secrets," Siwan mused. "My own half-brother was brutally tortured and killed by my father in our mansion but we didn\'t know until it was too late."
"Oh," Jiwoon said. "I\'m really sorry to hear that."
"Don\'t be," Siwan said. "He\'s in a better place now. And his tormentor is dead too. What matters is that I\'ll be a good brother to Hobin. I couldn\'t love Shinho but that doesn\'t mean I\'ll abandon my brother again."
"When you find someone to protect, I guess, you\'d want to do everything to protect them," Jiwoon said in a cryptic tone. Her eyes were glassy as if she was remembering something unpleasant. Siwan waited for her to speak but she shook the memories away.
"Anyways," she said. "I\'m glad that you have the determination to protect someone, Doctor Kang. I wish I had your courage."
Before Siwan could ask Jiwoon what she meant, she got up and walked away, ready to start her briefing. He stared at the strange woman until she disappeared from view.
"Weird," he muttered but waved off all thoughts. He checked his watch and realized that it was nearly 5 AM in the morning and his shift would start soon. He got up and left the precinct, vaguely thinking of telling his mother to send more crab cakes for them.
…
Jina just finished her interrogation and entered the briefing room where her team and Hobin were already seated. Jiwoon stood up to address everyone.
"We\'ll go over the case details," she announced. Quickly, they recapped everything they found out from the suspects. Once they were done, Hobin spoke up.
"Let me get this straight," he said. "When Hyojin left, Rachel was still alive, right?"
"Yes," Jina replied. "He said that he left around 8 PM. His call records verify that he received a call from his mother that night. Also, I called the vet over for questioning. He agreed but informally told me that Hyojin and his dog Tommy were at the clinic all night."
"8PM…" Jiwoon began. "Seohyun met up with Changseob between 11 PM and midnight. They were together for a while. Apparently, a maid was covering for them. So Changseob left after midnight through the basement."
"That means he must have seen something!" Jaebum spoke up.
"Or he might have killed Rachel," Chanmi said.
"I doubt it," Hobin said. "He was having sex with the mom, right? Then why would he bring a dog along with him? If it was a heat of the moment murder, then he might have been a suspect but it\'s more likely that he\'s a witness."
"I agree," Jina nodded. "It was late at night. He left through the basement. He must have seen something but is too scared to talk. We\'ll need to dig him out and also, Rachel\'s secrets. She was filming porn videos. Maybe it\'s in her laptop or on that college guy\'s computer. Bring everything in."
"We didn\'t find anything in her laptop nor her phone," Woohee said. "But I\'ll have her items cross checked again to see if anything is missing."
"That burn book," Hobin began. "We have it with us? Can I read it?"
"It\'s in the evidence room," Woohee said. "I want to read it too."
"Dahoon, where are we with the CCTV footage of the mansion and the party?" Chanmi asked.
"I\'m still clearing out the image," Dahoon replied. "The girl looks like a teenager. If she\'s someone from Rachel\'s school, then I can match the structure of the face with the students\' pictures and I might be able to get a clear photo. It\'s my only shot."
"I\'ll tell the school to send the files," Jina said. "Our only possible witness is Shin Changseob. We must find him!"
"And that PI who was hired by Song Yohan, bring him in," Jina went on. "Also, question the school students. "Get a direct court order if needed but that school is definitely hiding too many secrets. Tell them that if they don\'t cooperate, we\'ll have to start charging the minors and that won\'t be good for their image. Get the Captain\'s signature but get it done!"
"Yes boss!" everyone exclaimed. They all immediately set off for their tasks. Hobin stayed behind to talk to Jina.
"What you wrote in the text, is it true?" he murmured. He held up the text he received from her.
It said, "Rachel is a poltergeist. More danger. Come quickly!"
"Yes," Jina stated. "She\'s a poltergeist and is now attached to all those whom she hated or ahd a beef with in her life. She already sent her dad into a coma. Sera and Minyoon were attacked too. The college boy she had an affair with is also catatonic. She already made up with her boyfriend so I doubt she\'s gonna attack him. That leaves…"
"Her mother and the lover," he nodded. "She\'ll come after them as well. What do we do now?"
"We\'ll have to search for her," Jina said. "She\'ll look for her victims and kill them."
"What If she can\'t find them?" Hobin asked. "Changseob moved away a few days before I came. Does she even know where he is?"
"Then she\'s gonna go to all the places where she thinks her enemies are living and keep looking for them until she finds them. She\'ll look for him and I\'m sure of it."
She took a deep breath and admitted, "If Miyoo hadn\'t seen the poltergeist that day, Minyoon could have died! I just…"
Jina was too scared to think of the possibility of any harm falling onto her siblings.
"She must have been scared," Hobin said. "She\'s young. These things can affect her mind and make her more introverted than she already is."
"You\'re right," Jina agreed. "She can\'t communicate properly even at this age. The only thing she could say at that moment to warn Minyoon were the words \'burn\' and \'bald\'-"
"Come again," Hobin said. "Did she say, burn and bald?"
"Yeah," Jina frowned. "Why?"
"Oh no…" Hobin muttered. His mind was recapping the first time he met Miyoo when she entered his flat while he was sleeping.
"What happened?" Jina demanded. "Why do you look so worried?"
"Didn\'t you just mention that the poltergeist will keep on looking for her enemy at the places where she thinks they might be living?" Hobin asked.
"Yes," Jina replied slowly.
"I think Rachel is loitering around our building," he revealed. "That day when Miyoo arrived, she saw the poltergeist entering my room because Miyoo uttered those same words to me!"