Finding You

CHAPTER 30

“Running on biased speculation, aren’t we?” she challenged them before tutting loudly, shedding the façade she endeavored to uphold in the past hour. “The results are going to be disappointing if you keep that up.”

In spite of her taunting, Kyung Won smirked and replied, “My gutfeel tells me that you’re wrong.”

Mrs. Hwang let out a musical laugh and for a second there, the insane woman that she truly was manifested.

“I’m sorry,” she offered as she tried to catch her breath. “I couldn’t help but find this situation oddly amusing. Nonetheless, suit yourself, Officer Yang. I am very excited to see how this ends. Until then, please stop wasting my time. I have a wake to attend to, in case you have forgotten.”

Mrs. Hwang was escorted out of the interrogation room shortly after and the pretense was up in full display as soon as she stepped out to the bright office. She quickly gave the officers empty words of thanks and bowed before walking out of the Violent Crimes department, her departure making Kyung Won grit his teeth in frustration.

“Choose your battles, buddy,” Tae Pyung mildly chided him as they conversed privately in a deserted hallway a quarter of an hour later. “One wrong move and we’ll be at a dead end here.”

“I am positive that it’s her,” Kyung Won maintained with contempt. “Haven’t you pieced everything together?”

“I have.”

“Then why did you let her get off the hook that easily?”

Tae Pyung squeezed his eyes shut to think of an adequate justification, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as if on reflex. He wanted to explain to his most trusted ally that if they did not permit Mrs. Hwang to leave the premises at that exact moment, she would not be able to reach the intersection at the 53rd Street at 11:51 am. If she were a second late, her car would have had to halt when the light turned red, thereby forcing the bus behind it to follow suit when it should have crossed the intersection and dropped off five passengers a minute after. The public vehicle in question had to depart the waiting area 44 seconds later, or else it would be in the same path as the truck with a cement mixer which was being driven by a man in his mid-fifties who was leisurely singing to the radio, consequently delaying them by a few minutes. The odds that the slowdown would cause a man named Jeong Ji Suk to fall asleep and miss his stop were high, yet these holdups should not happen as the man was required to be at the university gates at 12:27 pm in order for him to meet Park Mi Young. They were destined to marry right after college and six years later, she would give birth to a boy named Jeong Jin Young. If all things transpired as designed, he will grow up to be a very promising scientist who eventually would be successful in formulating the vaccine for an epidemic that plagued the continent for ten years in the winter of 2056.

Instead, Tae Pyung shook his head and said, “She had a solid alibi and we are lacking evidence.”

“She had to motive to kill the man,” Kyung Won countered. “We have witnesses saying that she was obsessed with her husband – not to mention the hearsay that in their ten years of marriage, there were several occasions when Hwang Tae Min woke up with either a knife pointed to his throat or a pillow covering his face.”

“I know that,” Tae Pyung agreed. “But we cannot afford to be careless here. If we want her locked up for good, we have to acquire enough proof that she was indeed behind everything aside from a hunch and some rumors.”

“I get that, alright?” Kyung Won grumbled. “What I don’t understand is how you left me on my own a while ago.”

“What?”

“Admit it, Tae Pyung. You weren’t interested in pushing her to confess. It was as if you sat there for the sake of getting the process done and over with.”