DEADLY ENTANGLEMENT ⋮ markhyuck

𝐈𝐈𝐈

"Okay, how much did you find?" Mark asked, walking into the room and finding both assistants working together.

"You're here already?" Jeno was surprised. "Did you take a break?"

"No, I let him go."

"That fast?" the assistant detective's eyes widened. "How was the interrogation?"

"Let's talk about it later, okay? For now, tell me everything you know," he said, leaning on the desk and locking his eyes on the computer screen.

"I found a few men. From middle-aged to seniors. They all work in different fields," Assistant Detective Na, said as he showed the list.

As he said, their ages varied. Just by looking at their faces, Mark could tell they visited places such as brothels. Perhaps, their wives no longer found them attractive, or maybe didn't give them attention at all. Why else would they end up in a dirty place like this? On top of that, to a brothel where only men worked.

"Please, contact them all and bring them for interrogation as soon as possible. Right now, each one of them may be our suspect. I also want to see how much they match what Donghyuck described yesterday evening," Mark commanded then, turned to Jeno. "May we have a word?"

They left the office and went to the hallway. Jeno repeated the question, but Mark was unable to answer it right away. He needed a little bit of time to gather his thoughts.

"Okay, throughout the interrogation, I felt like I was fooled at least a couple of times," he finally said. "I don't know how much we can trust him. Let's question those men and see if Donghyuck's descriptions of Haewon's frequent clients match, and then he can conclude if he was telling the truth."

"Why would he lie?" Jeno asked in confusion.

"He gave away the clients' names only after we put a little pressure. He refused to say anything about his co-workers, which is suspicious because we found no one except him. He's also very sly with words. He said he didn't have any business with the police before and tried to appear like a good citizen, but I think it's not the first time he's here."

"Shall I check if he was charged before?"

"That would be great."

Jeno was about to leave, but Mark stopped him.

"Any results on autopsy?"

"I'll call you as soon as I get notified."

"Alright."

Mark went down the hallway and reached his office. Approaching his table, he dropped the notebook and sat down, reading through his notes.

Haechan.

Or Lee Donghyuck.

Neither rang anything in his memory, despite the familiar face.

Even though he was the only information source, Mark found him very suspicious. His physique wasn't something a killer would have, but everything could happen. Maybe he was pushed to do it by anger and suddenly got stronger. Mark hated concluding with only little to no evidence, but he surely noticed Donghyuck's body language. From slouching and being unresponsive to someone very confident and almost controlling, asking questions himself and even providing information about what could've happened. Wasn't this suspicious?

It didn't give the detective inspector peace. Especially when Mark was aware he had interrogated Donghyuck once.

♟ ♟ ♟

The same day, one by one, all five men came. They appeared embarrassed, so Mark had to calm them down that if they weren't related to the crime, their identity would remain a secret. Detective Inspector Lee then let Jeno do the questioning while he just sat there in the room, analyzing the potential suspects and trying to catch them lying. He also kept glancing at his pocket notebook, where he had all the words describing the frequent clients' appearances.