Chapter 3
The master bathroom smelled of expensive lavender soap and bleach. Every bottle of shampoo and lotion lined the glass shelf according to height, descending in a precise mathematical progression. Beneath the sink, behind a decorative lattice panel, lay the access point to the building’s secondary vertical shaft.
Jin-woo crouched down, his dark jacket straining slightly across his back. He pulled a specialized pen-light from his pocket, clicking it on. The beam cut through the dim interior, illuminating a narrow metal tunnel coated in a thin film of gray dust. He reached out with his white-gloved hand, tracing the rim of the bolt that secured the mesh screen. The paint around the screw head was flaking—freshly disturbed, no more than twenty-four hours old.
“Someone unscrewed this recently,” Jin-woo observed, his voice echoing softly against the porcelain tiles. “And they put it back with obsessive care. If we hadn’t looked for the tool marks under magnification, we would have missed it entirely.”
Madame Chen stood in the doorway, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. The white fabric of her suit strained against the gesture. Her breathing was shallow, controlled through sheer willpower. “I told you. They are testing the locks. They want to see how long it takes me to notice.”
“Who is ‘they’, Madame Chen?” Lin asked, stepping closer to the crouching detective. She kept her eyes on the resident, searching for any flicker of recognition or suppressed memory.
“The ones who want what my husband left behind,” Chen said flatly.
The statement dropped into the room like a lead weight. Up until this moment, the police reports had listed Chen as a wealthy widow living alone on her late husband’s corporate pension. There was no mention of a legacy, no mention of unfinished business, and certainly no mention of anyone hunting her for it. Jin-woo slowly stood up, brushing a speck of gray grime from his glove.
“Your husband passed away eighteen months ago in an industrial accident at the shipyard,” Jin-woo said, reciting the public file from memory. “The inquiry concluded it was structural failure.”
“The inquiry concluded what the board of directors wanted it to conclude,” Chen corrected, her voice dropping an octave. “David found something in the cargo manifests of the Pacific freight liners. He spent his final weeks cataloging discrepancies in weight, routing codes, and shell companies. When he realized the scale of the operation, he tried to secure the physical copies.”
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“And you think those documents are here?” Lin asked, scanning the immaculate, minimalist bathroom as if a stack of shipping manifests could somehow hide behind a bar of soap.
“They aren’t here,” Chen whispered, her gaze dropping to the floor. “I burned them six months ago. But they don't believe me.”
