South Korea’s youngest profiler.
Coming out of someone else’s mouth, it was never anything more than a line of résumé padding dressed up to sound impressive. But to a certain kind of person, it might be a title that stirred curiosity.
“Muerte asked me to figure out what he’s done. Who he is, why he did it. But I’m not an expert in criminal psychology.”
“So what he wanted from the start was for me to be in on it with you?”
“It’s only a guess, but that’s what I think.”
“Couldn’t he be someone connected to a case you handled in the past?”
“That was my first thought too, but I don’t think the reason’s that simple.”
Iheon tapped the tip of his index finger against the table.
A killer sends emails confessing his crimes and asks for a name to be put to his sin. And the recipient of those emails happens to be the wife of a criminal psychologist.
It lined up far too neatly to be shrugged off as coincidence.
There was every chance he’d approached her precisely for that, exactly as Jei said.
That explains it. Something about those emails had set his teeth on edge from the first line. That unpleasant prickle of recognition had almost never steered him wrong.
So a murderer thought he could use a profiler as a pawn on his board.
What laughable confidence.
“Better this way, then.”
If this was a man he had to face either way, he had not the slightest intention of leaving Jei to face him alone.
“This isn’t why I showed you the emails, though...”
“Don’t you think it’s a little late in the day to say that?”
Jei’s face had clouded over, and Iheon let out a short, dry laugh.
“Honestly, if I’d had to do this on my own, I would’ve been completely lost.”
Jei picked her words with a sheepish smile hovering on her lips.
“But you said you’d do it with me, just like that, and I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but it makes me feel so safe. So steady. I’m shameless and selfish. Aren’t I?”
Instead of answering, Iheon drew back and let his shoulders settle against the chair. She hadn’t asked expecting an answer in the first place. Still, if he had to give one, she was selfish to a downright infuriating degree.
Hearing that from a wife who had chosen to turn her back on him in the moment when he’d truly needed to feel safe and steady did him no good at all now.
And yet some corner of him softened pointlessly at the words, which he found ridiculous.
“In exchange, I want a promise out of you too.”
Across the island table, their eyes met. Hers were clear, holding nothing but an open question.
“Email, text, whatever it is. The second he contacts you, you tell me.”
His tone left no room for argument.
“Same goes for the reporting. If something comes up you want to check, don’t you dare move on it alone. If you meet someone or get hold of material, you share it with me, all of it, no holding back.”
Jei blinked slowly, and then, a beat late, caught his meaning and nodded.
“Okay. I will.”
“What I’m saying is, stop reaching your own conclusions and then handing them to me like a press release.”
“I won’t do that anymore.”
“I still don’t trust you.”
“I’ve picked up on that much, at least.”
“Then act like someone I can trust.”
Something in Jei’s eyes wavered at the jab, but she didn’t add a word one way or the other.
With the conversation more or less wrapped up, Iheon turned his wrist to check his watch. The long summer day had burned out, and night had settled in a good while ago.
“Dinner?”
The question came out of nowhere, and Jei’s eyes went round.
“If you feel like it, we eat together. If you don’t, we eat separately.”
“No! I do feel like it! I want to eat. I’m starving. I haven’t had a thing since yesterday. Because I wanted to eat with you.”
Jei scrambled up from her chair to get the meal started. Iheon told her offhandedly to just clear the table, then turned away just as offhandedly.
A little while later, two plates went down on the island table.
Aglio e olio, made with thin-sliced garlic fried to a golden brown.
Iheon set a plate in front of each of them and took his seat.
A hushed dark had come down over the night. Out in the yard, where the trumpet creeper was in full bloom, insects sang in the grass, and the living room’s picture window beyond the kitchen glowed with a low, cozy light.
The last time had been before Jei left without a word. Before Iheon flew to Jeju on a three-day trip, that final dinner. So it had genuinely been a long, long while since the two of them had sat down face to face over a meal.
Set against last night’s dinner, which had been a disaster in every sense of the word, two plates was as good as a banquet.
“Wow...”
Face full of something close to awe, Jei gazed down at the pasta mounded on her plate in a neat little whirl.
The noodles, tossed in olive oil, carried a soft sheen. The thin garlic slices had crisped at the edges, and crushed peperoncino was scattered through like red flecks, sharpening the whole picture.
Above all, that nutty smell unique to roasted garlic and warm olive oil. Tangled up with a full day of hunger, it set her mouth watering.
“You know, there were times in America when I really wanted this aglio e olio of yours?”
Spoon in her left hand and fork in her right, Jei twirled a decent amount of pasta as she spoke.
“I went to this restaurant because it was supposed to be a Michelin pick, and would you believe it wasn’t even as good as yours?”
Money down the drain for nothing, really. Jei pushed the tidy coil of noodles into her mouth, a full bite. A moment later she hummed appreciatively through her nose, eyes curving into half-moons.
“Maybe it’s because it’s been so long, but this is unbelievably good. No, wait, is ‘so long’ even enough? It’s been forever. You remember too, don’t you? Back at the officetel, you used to cook for me now and then.”
She swallowed after barely chewing, then marveled in a voice pitched a little more theatrically than necessary.
Iheon just worked through his own plate like a machine.
“You cooked the garlic crisp back then too, almost like you were deep-frying it.”
Chewing over the old memory, Jei speared a sliver of garlic clinging to the rim of her plate with the tip of her fork.
“You know what? I was so surprised back then. I never once imagined you’d cook for me. I thought you were the type who’d brew himself a coffee and call it a day... and then it turned out to taste good, on top of everything.”
Talking to herself, laughing to herself. Any other person would have shriveled up at the man’s refusal to give her so much as a single reply, but Jei just kept busily stitching more words on.
“I tried making it myself over in America, you know. Aglio e olio looks easy, right? Hardly any ingredients at all. Garlic, olive oil, pasta, peperoncino.”
Unlike Jei, who wouldn’t stop chattering, Iheon devoted himself wordlessly to his food. He didn’t spare her a single glance, like a man who simply couldn’t hear her voice.
Even so, Jei doggedly carried on.
“But somehow it never came out tasting like yours. The garlic burned black, the noodles went soggy, the oil turned all gluey. I gave it maybe two more tries and then gave up.”
“...”
“I can manage Korean food well enough, but Western food, I’ve just got no knack for—”
“Lee Jei.”
The man who had gone on eating his own share no matter what she prattled about cut her off cold.
She looked up, wondering if he had something to say. Iheon swallowed a sigh and pointed at her plate.
“Stop talking and eat.”
“Huh?”
“Running your mouth about nothing because you can’t stand the awkwardness is less efficient than putting something in it and chewing.”
“Ah...”
For a moment Jei just stared at him, blank.
Her lips parted and moved as though hunting for something to answer with, but in the end she said nothing at all, lowered her head, and wound pasta onto her fork.
The table fell quiet almost at once. The space her voice had been so busily filling a moment ago seemed suddenly hollowed out. In its place came the small, fine scrape of silver against porcelain.
Iheon emptied his plate first, set down his fork, and picked up his water glass. Washing the lingering taste and smell from his mouth, he checked his wife’s plate.
She hadn’t even gotten through half of it. For someone whose eyes had been shining with hunger minutes ago, she was eating awfully slowly.
Even after putting the glass down, Iheon didn’t rise. It wasn’t that he was waiting for her, exactly. It was just that if he got up and left, she looked likely to abandon her food and get up after him.
He had no desire to watch a woman who claimed she hadn’t eaten since yesterday fail to finish even the half plate of pasta in front of her.
That was all it was.
She can’t have been cowed by one remark. Is her stomach off? Should I have made something other than pasta? Should I have just boiled her some porridge, something easy to get down?
The instant his thoughts got that far, Iheon found himself ridiculous and let out a short breath.
Bullshit. Porridge, my ass.
He looked down at the empty plate in front of him, then picked up the water glass again. The beads of condensation on the clear glass came away cold against his fingertips.
“If you can’t finish it, leave it.”
Jei’s fork stopped mid-twirl, then started winding round again a second later.
“If you’re tired, go on in and rest. I’ll finish this and clear up.”
He knew Jei was trying.
Chattering about whatever came to mind because the silence made her uncomfortable. Laying it on thick about how good the food was to shift the air at the table. He saw all of it.
That kind of effort was exactly what things between them desperately needed right now, and at the very same time a sour thought rose in him: if she was going to act like this, then why did she do it at all?
“Something you want to say?”
Feeling the weight of Iheon’s unblinking stare, Jei swallowed the pasta in her mouth and asked.
“Sleep in the bed.”
“Is that okay?”
“The way you curl up and sleep on the sofa looks like a protest. It grates on me.”
“I just thought you’d be uncomfortable—”
“If it’s uncomfortable, I’ll put up with it being uncomfortable. So you put up with it too.”
Jei nodded without a word.
The truth was that what grated on him was sleeping apart from her. The rest of it was just so much hot air.
Hah... Was I always this pathetic a bastard?
Doubt settling over him, Iheon lifted his glass to wet his throat, realized the water had been gone for a while already, and quietly swallowed a sigh.
