A/N:

Case one is almost done with one chapter left to post! I hope you enjoy this one :-)

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12: 'THIS LADY REALLY WENT HAM'

AKA THE TIME MINWOO FOUND THE BODY (+1)

"Whoa, this place is... creepy."

Grayson hitched an eyebrow at the quiet, small hallway of the apartment complex they sneaked into. They've skipped out of the main road and jumped into a mess of alleyways and peaking shops. Medicinal places with big jars full of roots dunked in some sort of mineral water, shoe repair shops with stained windows, and places who sold glass baubles.

Minwoo led Grayson into the maze like an expert, smiled despite the heaviness he felt - both in head and bones, feeling like he was filled to the brim with sludge - and realized he was moving like water around the people and shadows to keep out of cameras.

Once, he had paused him into a shade of a closed up shop and discreetly pointed at the two cameras that can capture anything that moved if they went ahead. They waited until a sweeper with a small cart of trash came by.

Now they were here after reaching up an apartment complex's building with Minwoo pressing the buttons for it with his quick, gloved thumb. When they reached the floor, Grayson shivered.

"D'you have the key?" he asked as Minwoo stopped at the door 206. Then he crouched and pulled out his silvers. "Right, yeah lockpicking. Should've guessed." As Minwoo worked, Grayson felt awkward in the silence, feeling the thrum of headache quietly simper into a corner as the drug finally kicked in.

When the door clicked open, Minwoo trudged in, Grayson following not soon after.

The place was, by standards, normal. A cramped apartment with the bed compacted close to the bathroom door. The sofa was in front of a bookshelves lined with your standard books you don't actually read, and a TV that was - upon inspection - unplugged. The place was normal if not a little too tidy like a hotel room is.

"What's this place?"

"The prosecutor's secret stowaway place." Minwoo went around the kitchen and took out a water bottle, the only thing inside. "This is my water before you can make comment on it. He hasn't been here in years, bought it sometime before he became prosecutor - before he was married. He had a name change just before he was married, so this place isn't precisely accessible but it's also not securely hidden away with some intense sources." Minwoo met his stare, his eyes sharp. "And that's very clever."

"Clever..." Grayson echoed. Then his foggy, old mind cleared. "Because if it was something easy to find the agent would've seen it. But if it was something super tightly secured - several firewalls, buried down fake names and firewalls, hide the Terracotta army in there for good measures - then you would've seen it. But because it was a warm middle..."

Minwoo turned, spinning around to the living room in the middle, going through the shelves as if trying to find something, flipping through the books then picking some off.

Grayson shifted slightly, staring at Minwoo and his usual silence. "Look, aren't you going to ask me where I've been? What I've been up... to, I guess? Or if I'm even sober?"

Minwoo met his gaze, his expression carefully blank. "You're sober enough to stand and walk. I don't care what you did or where you've been, I'm assuming you were doing enough jobs in my absence. You're my work partner, Grayson, not my wife."

"Oh." Then he smiled slowly. "Great, man, love you too."

Minwoo made an annoyed groan cross gurgle at the back of his throat. "Come here and put these books down."

Grayson trudged towards him and picked up those around his arms, setting them at the coffee table. Soon, when half of the books are gone on the shelves, Minwoo motioned for him to sit down. "What are these? Did your girlfriend got you into book club?"

"No." He opened a few pages and showed him. "These aren't just books."

Instead of words on a page, book after book - page after page - was filed with notes and pictures, even going as far as blacking out pages to write down noted riddles, dissecting them. Pictures were of criminals or CCTV footage of various people - most of them were, from the detailed notes, common criminals to suspected kidnappers and killers. Most from around town. Others - ones with serial cases - infamous around the country and out.

The things written down on each file - it was straight out of the agent's desk.

"Are these from the prosecutor? He didn't struck me as... an obsessive man who writes on books. I mean. What's wrong with blank paper? Why write on books?" Grayson flipped through them, every book was brimmed. "This is a crime."

"The prosecutor hasn't been here for years," Minwoo said. "He bought the place and left it alone. Every other item, all these case notes - this was done by someone else."

"You know who it is don't you?"

"Who else? Rosalie Jang. She found the place. She was good. Smart enough to become the agent's director. Or if she's going down your route, enough to become a criminal boss." Minwoo opened each book, opening to files specifically - he noticed, were of criminals with kidnapping records. Others were listed sex offenders. Everyone just around the city and close towns. "Rosalie Jang was genius, and when her child was kidnapped, she became obsessive. This is what I found out. Somehow, she found this apartment, listed under her husband's old name - a name she didn't even know - and saw this place. But this isn't everything."

As Minwoo stood up, Grayson almost laughed." Oh, of course because files of rapists aren't enough."

Minwoo went around the TV and pawed at something on top of the shelves, trying to find something on top of it before he found a ring and pulled it down. Out came an entire canvas strapped in more notes - obsessive, greedy notes, and photos of the same woman and a man, a young man that looked mysteriously like Prosecutor Jang.

"Jesus, she's just like you. Obsessive, compulsive, loves murder boards." Grayson stood up and followed the red strings connecting scenarios and people and places. "But damn. Damn. This lady really went ham."

"Ham?"

"It's an American phrase."

Minwoo rolled his eyes. Then his expression settled. "Also she's not a 'she's'. Not anymore."

Grayson gasped. "Is she a man now?"

"No. She's a she was." Minwoo turned to him. "I found her. That was the first thing I found. She's dead, Gray. She was murdered."

• • •

Grayson's body fell flat, like the warmth seeping out of him. While he was working, Grayson had filled his thoughts with Rosalie Jang. He had absorbed information about her like scattered stars. Something about her was so pure and so devastating.

Something about her made Grayson want to find her. To save her. While Minwoo submerged himself into his case, Grayson took four to five cases in between, trying to drown himself with the ache of missing a partner. In between these cases, he was pursuing facts about her. Trying to understand her better. Putting himself in her shoes made him see that she was a woman who was depressed and who had procured PTSD from the fear of losing her child over that week.

And now she's dead.

"How?" he asked, his voice lost of its significant cheery tone. Even when angry, his voice still held that lilt. But now it was void, and Minwoo turned to him, his quiet scrutiny deboned him.

"Found her at one of the church's outhouse facilities. She didn't sign in there and the facility wasn't heavily monitored - no CCTVs. It was just yards of cleaned up land enough to put around a few houses for those of the church who wants to take a break from the city. There are no WIFI and reception. So no one knew her throat was cut inside one of their houses. No one visibly checks. People go there to hide."

Grayson nodded. "So what'd the agent think? And what are we doing here?"

"I have no idea because I didn't tell him. And we're here to solve her murder. Also." He raised a finger to his mouth and pulled the hem of his suit, checking his watch. "Listen."

There was nothing. The silence of the room and the town was enunciated.

Until a faint beep that repeated with three seconds pause. Again. Thrice. Four times.

Grayson and Minwoo looked around. Apart from the pulled books and the murder board - the room was empty and silent, the shadowing of the dark afternoon.

Five. Six.

Grayson approached the sofa, his hearing mincing through the silence. Minwoo followed silently, their footfalls quiet thuds.

Seven. Eight.

Grayson reached over the sofa and pressed his ear tightly on the wall. There, the beep was louder. Minwoo went over on his other side, facing him and pressed his ears.

Nine. Ten.

Minwoo took out a knife, slim and tight, and pierced at the sound. One quick stab to the drywall.

Eleven... and twelve.

The beeping stopped and Grayson tore through the hole with his fingers, hitching off the drywall by bits.

"Care to tell me why the walls are beeping?" Grayson whispered, not removing his ear on the wall.

"I don't know. I just found this place yesterday and the beeping came at the exact same time. I wondered if it would come again and it did." Minwoo peeled his ear and cheek from the wall and pulled out a small flashlight. "And there it is. The reason Rosalie Jang died. That's the only thing I needed to confirm before I tell the agent."

"What? What's in -"

Grayson reeled back. There, stuffed on the drywall wrapped in thick plastic was a body. Or what's left of it. A skull was tightly and crudely pinched in.

"Oh. Well, hello. Didn't see you there." Grayson turned to Minwoo. "You should apologize. You nearly stabbed her. Or him. Or them." He tilted his head, trying to make sense of who the bones are. "Who is it?"

Minwoo nodded at the murder board. "If you read those carefully... that's Kang Min Hee. From Rosalie Jang's little murder board, she found out about her and her husband, then Jang Seung Min, dated. And she found out he killed her. And she found her body. That genius of a woman who scoured through kidnappers and kidnapping in the area after her son was kidnapped, kept tabs on sexual offenders in the are in this little apartment, hiding away here and taking files - she would've made that connection of that beep. But she hasn't touched it. She held on suspicions and went to confront her husband. That's why she's dead."

Grayson blinked at him.

Minwoo nodded solemnly. "I am a god, I know."

Grayson cracked a smile. "Alright, Mr. Funny Bones. So how'd you know she was killed by her husband?"

"Who else? She didn't have enemies, she stayed away from society and disappeared for days on end. She was using the church as a cover when she found this apartment. She used that time to obsess over criminals around her family. And that beep. Everyday, hearing it at the precise time. All twelve beeps. She would've checked. Then replaced the wall if she didn't just guessed. So now she has to figure out who her husband actually is. Why does he have this apartment for years - not telling her, not selling it, keeping it in his old name? So she digs and digs and she finds out about Kang Min Hee and she makes assumptions at best. Then she finds evidences. More trips. Maybe trips to his hometown. And when she has all her thoughts - all her red lines pointed to one direction - her husband."

Minwoo flicked his coat and sat down on the sofa, directly behind the dead bones of Kang Min Hee. Grayson took a few steps back and admired this almost cinematic shot.

"Confront someone who has slave through where he is - changed his name and went through the ladder of corporate prosecution." He flicked his blade and spun it around his fingers. "I bet, around the time she confronted him, the prosecution were readying themselves with cases against Chairman Lee. When he's the face of the prosecution - an old murder case he fought so hard to bury, renting the apartment every year to make sure the body is never found... well."

Minwoo's eyes flashed.

"Don't dare a person who can lose everything. Just as you would with a person who has nothing."

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