Chapter 11 – Are You Guan Yu?

[The Conscience is a window to the soul; evil is the curtain. -Dirk Horton] 1

“Does that mean that the younger one knew of her elder sister’s crimes? Or are you saying that she is also an accomplice?” Inspector Jung Yu-mi asked.

Hansol was sure that Kim Jiyeon and Kim Jiyo were sisters, and there was a high probability that the younger one was preoccupied with her graduation projection.

However, in terms of borrowing someone else’s ID and operating a stolen bankbook, there was a high possibility that Kim Jiyeon did that.

Perhaps, the sisters were taking turns to be able to do such things. To feel that pleasure of being witnesses to each other’s arson. It may be the state of the superego, as Freud called it. The sisters lacked a conscience.2

In Freud’s superego state, conscience is lacking. Since it is a state of the superego, more than an instinct, it may have acted on desires.

Hansol continued to speak.

“For now, both sisters cannot be charged. They can only be charged if they don’t have perfect alibi.”

“What about Kim Jun-myeon, the other part-timer?”

“We will only proceed with investigation with them as witnesses.”

“Then the only things we focus on the case are Kim Jiyeon and Kim Jiyo, right?”

“Yes. In addition to tracking both of them and their movements, we will have to make sure of their alibi. Ah, and their mental aspects too. Let’s proceed with a PCL-R3 test.”

“Doctor. PCL-R test is for psychopath….”

“There is a difference between sociopath and psychopath. Psychopaths only trample on and kill other people’s rights; sociopaths rise above other people’s rights and create death for people in others’ hands instead of their own. In that sense….”

Hansol thought about his father. If Hansol was a psychopath, his father was wearing the mask of a sociopath. He knew it would be fun to fool others, so he wore the mask and made sure no one noticed. Only Professor Kim Hee-seob and his father knew that.

‘… Kim Jiyeon and Kim Jiyo may also be like father.’

“Then, please schedule the summons to investigate the witness. Inspector Jung will have to accompany me.”

“Eh, Doctor Im. Won’t you take Woo-cheol with you?”

Detective Kang Woo-cheol frowned at Team Leader Woo-jin’s words. Even if they were on the same team, they had a bad past, so it wasn’t pleasant for them to move together. To Detective Kang, Hansol was like a dangerous person.

Inspector Jung Yu-mi raised her hand as she noticed that.

“Team leader, I want to go with the doctor.”

“Ah, okay then. Take a close look at things. That Team One’s Lee Jae-Woo is shrugging like that, but he must be feeling uncomfortable with the progress.”

Team leader Woo-jin spoke openly, but Team Leader Lee Jae-woo didn’t respond.

“I will leave first.”

Hansol and Inspector Jung stood first. Inspector Jung followed Hansol being a little concerned about where they were heading.

“Doctor, where are we going now?”

“You and I had previously moved and walked on the shortcut of the two neighborhoods. The road had a shared bike stand. Team One and the CIF have now secured the CCTV footage. We can only tell from there is that, between Kim Jiyeon and Kim Jiyo, only Kim Jiyeon’s face was seen.”

“Hmm… are we going to find Kim Jiyeon? To her company and investigate….”

“Both sisters are lying.”

“That…. How can a doctor know?”

“There is a characteristic of liars. Difficulty making eye contact or shaking legs or many more, or sometimes tapping the desk with fingers. First of all, Kim Jiyo displayed such figures.”

Inspector was surprised at Hansol’s observation skills. With Hansol’s skills, she thought that this case could be easily cleared.

“So, we will head back to the scene of the incident. I have no doubt that there are still traces of the culprit there.”

“The forensic team had enough time to investigate and we, too, had previously checked it though?”

“And we will go there once again now.”

“…?”

Jung Yu-mi couldn’t understand what Hansol was thinking. How many times will they revisit the site?

“You must remember. We met Miss Kim Jiyeon at the end of the alley.”

“Yes… it was Miss Kim Jiyeon. And we found out later that Kim Jiyo, the sister of a fraternal twin, is related to the suspect….”

“We will walk down that path again. We will go and check if there are other roads leading there and how fast a bike can take us.”

Hansol and Inspector Jung got into the car and went to Yongjin-dong.

After parking the car, the two got off and opened the Maps app.

“This is an experiment. Inspector Jung will navigate through the normal bike path in the map app and I will walk on foot. You know the end point, right?”

“Yes, I know. Then, I’ll see you later.”

On foot, Hansol was walking through the shortcut on the Maps app.

If Kim Jiyo is the culprit here, it would be a very shameless act for her to pretend like a witness and report what happened to the police. Hansol wanted to put the entire charge on Kim Jiyo, but he couldn’t since the elder one, Kim Jiyeon, had done suspicious things.

In particular, he had to focus more on this case because it felt like this was committed by a masked sociopath than an arsonist.

‘They must not have touched the garbage bag and should have touched only the ash. And there was a shared bike slot closeby. In particular, Mijeong-dong and Yongjin-dong are places they know very well since they knew that the CCTVs weren’t working properly.’

Hansol remembered the information about the two sisters from the report he had his team make before leaving for here.

It has been about 10 years since the two decided to live apart from their parents and have been in this neighborhood for 10 years.

It has been confirmed that Kim Jiyeon, the older one, works as an accountant at a small company next door to Yongjin-dong. Her younger sister, Kim Jiyo, was in the Department of Painting at Gohan University, that’s also near their neighborhood, and ready to graduate.

During the two weeks of the incidents, it was the middle of the month and an essential time for accounting, and Kim Jiyo was busy preparing for her graduation work.

Both will have alibis.

‘Freud’s superego… right, let’s think of that. let’s assume that both of them are sociopaths with a breakdown somewhere in the temporal lobe of their brain. As a member of society, wearing the mask must have been frustrating and started a small arson. If the arson went unnoticed, it would escalate to a more daring act… perhaps it is possible that the two of them were together in the case of 20 fires in 2 weeks.’

With that thought in mind, Hansol walked through the shortcut.

When he arrived at the spot, Inspector Jung was already there.

“Hmm… the road for the bike was much shorter. Even though I was walking this Map app was of no use as I ended up late despite coming through a shorter route.”

At Hansol’s words, Inspector Jung smiled.

“I see, the culprit… or maybe the culprits didn’t take the shortcut pointed by the Map app, but rather took this route, which allows them to get faster to the desired point on bikes?”

“Right. However, there are still things in question. How many CCTVs are installed on the path where you drove the bike? Or was the culprit spotted in the black box of a regularly parked car in this place? The shortcut is an alley, so no cars will fit in there. What choice did the culprit make?”

The answer was there.

The first one to be summoned was the elder of the twins, Kim Jiyeon.

Hansol went and sat facing Kim Jiyeon and looked at her closely. Kim Jiyeon was calm even though she was called for questioning as a witness. Normally, one would be tense. But such a thing didn’t exist in her. It was as if she was anticipating this.

“Hello Miss Kim Jiyeon. I am Im Hansol, who will be taking your statement.”

“Ah… I saw you on TV before. You’re a profiler, right?”

Kim Jiyeon treated Hansol somewhat normally. It was someone else they would let it pass, but not Hansol. He turned cold at it.

“Thank you for recognizing me. Now, I will jump into the questions.”

“What kind of questions? I am looking forward to it. I hope this is an important question that will require me to miss my working time today.”

“I will ask. What do you usually do after work?”

“After work, I normally do housework. I was born a little earlier but anyway, I am the elder sister. I can’t get in the way of my sister entering college.”

“Then one thing. Do you know that Mss Kim Jiyeon’s name was on a stolen passbook?”

Even with those words, Kim Jiyeon’s expression didn’t change.

“A stolen bankbook? It wouldn’t be possible. Not too long ago, I lost both the bank book and debit card. And then it was messy so I made a new one. To get the paycheck.”

“… wouldn’t it be normal to call the bank and ask them to suspend the missing account? Didn’t you think of stopping anyone who might have taken it away from using it?”

“There was nothing in that account anyway. So I wasn’t worried.”

“I will ask you one thing. As a result of checking the bank CCTV, it was confirmed that the bankbook and card which were lost by you, were used by you. The same at the ATM CCTV.”

“Uh? Is that so? It is true that I don’t know that. Actually, I have a bad memory. And I even get yelled at work for….”

‘… a complete lie. Kim Jiyeon is acting now.’

“I know that you are an accountant at a company, and if you have a bad memory working must be quite difficult, right?”

“Still, I work hard and make sure to take notes of things.”

“Yes. Especially with accounting, you must have been busy from the beginning and the end of the month. When was the last time you relaxed?”

The 20 or so fires in the past two weeks evaded the start and end of the month. It could have been a lucky timing, but it was right to doubt Kim Jiyeon.

Besides, wasn’t Kim Jiyeon casually lying? Hansol took a closer look at her detailed appearance.

Then Kim Jiyeon answered the question, “Well. I don’t think I have ever been relaxed during that time, because I always have to do the housework after work.”

“Then I will ask you again. Miss Kim Jiyeon, are you sure that you lost both your bankbook and card?”

“Wow… you are quite meticulous at this. I said I lost it. Is there any evidence on the CCTV that I had them? Maybe that one in CCTV wasn’t me. Maybe the CCTV broke down and kept playing only video.”

“Which is why I prepared the video for us to see.”

Hansol played the CCTV video and showed it to Kim Jiyeon, and the unchanging expression on her face frowned a little.

“Ah, I remember. That day…”

“You are changing your words? You said you lost it, and during the period of losing it, you visit the bank and work on making a new one, but it is also you who is using them in the CCTV video. And another one. When Miss Kim Jiyeon visited the back that day, you rode a shared bike. Am I right?”

“… wait, do I have to tell you if I used a shared bike or not for going to the bank?”

“We ask for your understanding that we have no choice but to investigate even the smallest details as this is a witness questioning.”

Hansol grinned as he thought of the next question. His eyes gleamed cold.

Angel’s Corner

Hello! If you already forgot about me, I’m GPHI’s Editor. I just wanna add another Psychology info that children can’t be diagnosed with ASPD, which happened in chapter 1 of this novel. Well, since this is fiction, anything can be. I will add more about ASPD soon. Let me study first. Hehe.

1 It was initially [The Conscience is a window to the soul, evil is the curtain over the window -Dirk Horton] ↩️

2 More on Freud’s superego here. ↩️

3 Psychopathy Checklist Trait Test. More on it here. ↩️