Finding You

CHAPTER 30

The lone pendant light swayed and cast a shadow on the face of a woman in her late forties. For a fleeting moment, her reflection on the one-way mirror showed the monster that she was instead of the smokescreen of a faultlessly timid housewife that she was putting up ever since they invited her for questioning. Luckily, the experienced investigator who sat in front of her was never the gullible type.

“So you believe that your husband drugged himself to death, huh?” Yang Kyung Won concluded without attempting to hide his sarcasm. “Am I correct, Mrs. Hwang?”

“Yes,” the woman he called Mrs. Hwang agreed calmly.

“And he injected the toxin himself in his right arm.”

“Yes.”

“Your husband is amazing then,” he noted, with a dry chuckle, earning a confused look from Mrs. Hwang.

He casually leaned back on the steel folding chair and crossed his arms before he clarified it for her benefit.

“Well, for a right-handed person to accurately give himself a shot of the poison with his left and not miss a vein” – he raised a challenging brow, causing her mouth to twitch ever so slightly – “that really is a feat.”

Mrs. Hwang’s hand flew on her chest, clutching the thick brown scarf that was wrapped around her neck as if she was greatly offended.

“My husband died and I haven’t even had an opportunity to properly mourn since you summoned me here like a murderer,” she spat through trembling lips. “I’ve been telling you so many times already that I don't know what happened to my husband. I drank so much at the party that I couldn’t even remember how I got myself to bed that night.”

Right before she finished talking, the door behind Kyung Won opened and a tall man emerged, holding a thin manila folder in his hand and sauntering towards the table with an unmistakable sense of superiority. He stared down at her through that high and sculpted nose, his face unperturbed in spite of the intimidating frown that seemed to be plastered permanently on his lips.

“This is the comprehensive report stating the cause of death of Hwang Tae Min, including the photos from the scene of the crime, the laboratory tests, et cetera,” Kim Tae Pyung detailed as he pushed the papers to Mrs. Hwang, his voice extremely lethargic to a point that she expected him to yawn out of boredom before he could even finish his sentence. “Apparently, cyanide played a huge role in his demise.”

He took a seat next to Kyung Won with finesse, crossing his legs and perching both elbows on top of the armrests so that his interlaced fingers are touching his chin.

“Coincidentally, your staff in the jewelry store told us that they have noticed the bottles of cyanide you insisted to purchase for cleaning gold and silver went missing a day before your husband’s death,” he continued. “Any thoughts on that matter?”

Mrs. Hwang shrugged as if he stated something obvious, a smug smile threatening to break her thin lips.

“Probably coincidental, like you mentioned.”

She stretched her arms forward and placed her clasped hands on top of the table, then tilted her head curiously to the right, eyebrows knotting together in superficial mystification.

“I wonder, officers, if there’s anything in your possession that might disprove my claim because you are a little too keen to paint a picture of me as the bad person here,” Mrs. Hwang noted with measured composure, her eyes alternately flicking from Tae Pyung and Kyung Won. “From what I heard, you haven’t gotten anything aside from the autopsy results. No fingerprints, no footages, not even a discarded syringe… nothing.”