Go Hae-ri returned in under an hour, which could mean that the meeting had either gone very well or very badly.
Cha Dal-geon, who had been watching for her out the window, met her by the elevator. "How'd your meeting with Gang Boojangnim go?" he asked.
"It went well," she said, sounding extremely self-satisfied. He'd almost say she seemed smug, but Hae-ri didn't really do smug. That was more his territory. "I got what I wanted."
"What was that?" he asked, falling into step beside her.
"I got the Director to agree that Vagabond will focus on the Blue Shark case exclusively from here on out."
Dal-geon stopped dead, honestly shocked. "What about new cases that come in?"
She paused in her march towards the bullpen and turned to face him. "We're going to farm them out among the other teams. I'll review them as they come in and will make recommendations as to the best way to reassign them."
Dal-geon took a moment to process this. This was good news, for him. It was exactly what he would have wanted, had the choice been presented to him. For some reason, though, the idea of Hae-ri arguing with the Director in favor of it was somewhat discomfiting. "I'm surprised you were able to convince him to do that."
"He wasn't happy about it," Hae-ri conceded.
"How did you persuade him?"
"I pointed out to him that this is the highest profile case the NIS has ever had. The fact that we haven't been able to catch South Korea's most notorious serial killer is an embarrassment to us. Edward Park is a sophisticated murderer with lots of powerful connections and seemingly unlimited resources, so going after him with anything less than the full weight of Vagabond isn't going to get the job done. Catching him is going to require complex strategic thinking and the full attention of the entire team. We've been splitting our focus too long, and that's a big part of why we haven't made the progress we'd like on the case."
"And he bought that?"
"He did when I framed it by saying that we're not just trying to catch Edward Park, which would be a huge win for the NIS in and of itself, we're trying to bring down his entire network. I told him to do that, we need dedicated resources for the task. I convinced Gang Boojangnim that if the FBI had this case, they'd have a team of ten people on it full time. He wasn't crazy about the comparison, but he said he'd consider hiring extra staff to support the other teams to pick up the slack on the new cases that we normally would have handled."
"Nicely done, Hae-ri Go!" Dal-geon said approvingly, outstretched his hands expecting their trademarked High Five which Hae-ri took with a nervous smile.
"But there's more."
He raised an eyebrow. "Mwo?"
"I told Gang Boojangnjm neither I nor any member of my team would be providing him with status updates on the case until the case is closed."
He stared at her. "How did you manage that?"
She shrugged. "I told him I didn't trust him. I told him no one outside my team was above suspicion, including him."
Interesting. He'd never had much use for Gang Joo-cheol, himself, and he had had his suspicions from time to time about whether he might have been a mole for Edward Park, but then, he was suspicious of everyone. For the most part, however, he had always assumed the man was a harmless narcissist. The fact that Hae-ri had independently formed her own suspicions about Gang Joo-cheol cast the situation in a different light.
"What else did you say to him?"
"I told him until I can be one hundred percent certain he will never leak information to Edward Park, it isn't safe to share updates on our progress even within the NIS. I said if he isn't working for Edward Park, I'm sure he can appreciate the need to take every precaution against moles within the department, given what happened with Han Ki-soo and Kim Ho-sik. And if he is working for Edward Park, I'm going to make it as hard as possible for him to get anything useful to report back to his boss."
"You painted him into a corner," Dal-geon realized, impressed. "If he didn't agree to go along with your plan, he was as good as admitting he was in league with Edward Park."
Hae-ri nodded. "Exactly."
Dal-geon couldn't help it. He started to laugh. "Only you could manipulate a Marine's Major General by attacking him straight on with nothing but brutal honesty."
"I'm not sure I would put it exactly like that," she demurred.
"It's true. That would never have worked if Gang Boojangnim didn't secretly believe that you're a better person than he is. If anybody else had tried that, he would have spouted off some nonsense about accountability and transparency and that would be that, but he knows he could never call your integrity into question."
Predictably, Hae-ri brushed off the compliment. "I don't care why he agreed to it, I'm just glad I was able to convince him to limit our new cases so we can focus on the Blue Shark case. Now, come on, stop distracting me, I promised the team I would give them their assignments once I got back."
He followed her into the bullpen.
××××××
Gi Tae-ung and Kong Hwa-sok looked up when she came in, but Kim Se-hun was on the phone.
"Who's he talking to?" Hae-ri asked impatiently, jerking her head in Shrek's direction.
"The babysitter," Tae-ung responded.
"He always calls her about this time to check in on Nam-joon," Hwa-sook explained.
Hae-ri nodded, her face softening.
Se-hun hung up the phone. "Sorry, boss," he said sheepishly. "Just needed to check in with the babysitter."
"Don't apologize," Hae-ri told him. "Your kid comes first. Always. You know I understand that." She smiled at him, that special soft smile she seemed to reserve for children. "How's Nam-joonie?"
"He's good. Getting bigger every day. At least, it seems that way as the person who has to keep buying him new clothes," Se-hun said ruefully.
"Give him a kiss for me when you go home," Hae-ri instructed him.
Se-hun grinned. "Is that an order?"
"Damn straight."
Tae-ung cleared his throat. "What about orders for the rest of us? You said you would give us our assignments when you got back."
Hae-ri snapped to attention, shifting seamlessly from doting godmother to Special Agent in Charge in a matter of seconds. "Right. We already discussed our basic approach. We're going to go after Edward Park's allies and dig up everything we can on every one of them. We're going to interview everyone they've ever known or even been remotely associated with."
She went over to the murder board and gestured to the map, indicating each of the points represented by the pins in turn. "Here are the key players: Min Jae-sik, Edward Park's accomplice in his first known killing, and his son, Jerome, who helped Edward Park to kill Seo Young-ji in exchange for the opportunity to hold her sister, Molly, hostage because he thought he was in love with her. Miki - infiltrated the NIS by posing as a receptionist and killed Kim Ho-sik. Jo Bu-yeong, cop killer who was burned alive in the NIS headquarters. Han Ki-soo, NIS mole who killed Jo Bu-yeong and tried to kill Gye Gwajangnim. Kim Do-soo, gas station manager who killed Head Chief's cousin. Then there's Kim Woo-gi, who kidnapped a young girl and pretended to be Edward Park, apparently on his orders. His wife, Oh Sang-mi, was his accomplice in the kidnapping, but we aren't sure of the extent of her connection to Edward Park. We've also got Hwang Pil-young, the security guard who stole the gun Kim Woo-gi was carrying when Cha Dal-geon shot him to make it look like Robinhood had gone off the deep end and killed an innocent man."
She turned back to face the rest of the team. "This is a big list, and if we're going to have any hope of getting through it before the end of this decade, we're going to have to divide and conquer. We'll each take a couple of Edward Park's accomplices and run down everything we can on those individuals. Everybody with me so far?"
The team nodded their assent, and Hae-ri continued. "Okay, here are your assignments: Shrek, you'll take Miki and Jo Bu-yeong. Start by compiling histories of each of them and getting together a list of known associates."
Se-hun nodded. "Ne."
She turned to her second in command. "Hook, you're going to take Kim Do-soo and Hwang Pil-young. Same deal, try to find out as much as you can about anyone who worked with them or might have known them socially."
"Will do," Tae-ung said, in his usual expressionless manner.
She looked at Hwa-sook. "Snow White, you've got Han Ki-soo."
Dal-geon was a little surprised by this, thinking Hae-ri might have assigned the mole to someone else on the team due to Hwa-sook's personal history with the man, but when he looked at Hwa-sook to gauge her reaction, her expression was hard and her jaw was set in grim determination. "You got it, Timjangnim."
"I know it's a long shot since we never knew anything about her but her first name, but see if you can come up with anything on that woman he hired to kill Gye Sun-ja in that hotel room," Hae-ri told her.
"Lily, right?" Hwa-sook. "Sure, I'll see what I can find out."
"Robinhood, you'll take Jerome, as well as Kim Woo-gi and Oh Sang-mi." She released a breath. "I'll be following up on Min Jae-sik and Jessica Lee."
"Ah, the silver pin," Dal-geon said. "Yes, I see why you kept her separated from the rest of the pack. The woman who gave us the name Samael. She doesn't seem to believe the man she knows as Samael is the same serial murderer Edward Park we know. She hasn't helped him kill anyone, and yet, she's still alive. Everyone else who has crossed paths with Edward Park who wasn't also a murderer has ended up dead eventually. She seems to be the exception."
Hae-ri nodded. "Right. Like you, she doesn't fit the pattern, but in a different way."