Ernie climbed out of the car. I climbed out with him.
Reluctantly, Mr. Kill got out of the car too. All the uniformed KNPs stayed in their vehicles, awaiting Mr. Kill’s orders.
Calmly, Mr. Kill took off his raincoat. He folded it and set it on the seat inside the sedan. Then he took off his jacket and undid his tie. Finally, he slipped off his shoes.
Ernie stared at him, dumbfounded.
“You gonna take a swim?”
“If I have to,” Kill replied. “When you flush Parkwood out, please send him in my direction.”
Ernie squinted at Kill, trying to understand his strange behavior, but finally gave up. He turned and started marching across the thick gravel. I followed. Footsteps crunched as we approached bathhouse number three. On this side, there were no windows: the entranceway faced the river. Ernie unholstered his. 45. With his free hand, he pointed for me to take the left side of the building; he would take the right. We met out front.
Quietly, Ernie trotted up the wooden steps. He tried the door. Locked.
Behind us, the Gapcheon River rolled serenely as it had rolled for centuries. Crows cawed and swooped low. Ernie leaned back, raised his right foot, and kicked the door in.
The interior was dark. Wood planks squeaked beneath our feet. The bathhouse smelled of incense but also of some herb I couldn’t quite place. Laurel leaves, maybe, like the ancient Greeks used in their baths. One dim bulb shone at the end of the hallway. Doors lined either side. As we passed, we opened them and checked each small cubicle: a body-length table, a work bench, and empty towel racks. No Marnie. No Casey. No Parkwood.
Finally, we reached the end of the hall. A door was open to a much larger room, tiled for showers. Spigots stuck out of cement walls. Casey was squatting, partially hidden, next to some wooden shelving narrow enough to hold slippers. I crouched next to her. She appeared to be all right physically, but her hands and her head rested on her knees. She wouldn’t look up. Marnie sat alone on the far side of the room. Her blouse and her blue jeans were ripped all to hell. She was doing her best to put them back on, but various parts kept slipping off her voluptuous body. Finally, she gave up and, almost naked, threw the clothing to the floor.
“Don’t look at me like that!” she screamed. Ernie and I stared at her. “I did it because I had to, to save my daughter.”
I nodded slowly. Ernie’s. 45 was out. He wasn’t staring at Marnie anymore, or even at Casey. He scanned the room, moving from side to side, sliding back plastic curtains in the private stalls.
“Yes,” Marnie screeched, answering a question we hadn’t asked. “Casey was watching. He wouldn’t let her leave the room.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
Marnie stared at me as if she didn’t know who I was talking about.
“Where is Parkwood?” I repeated.
“That’s his name?” she said softly.
Clearly, Marnie Orville was still in shock. After the fright of having her daughter kidnapped, of being raped in a tile shower room, who could blame her?
I asked again, softly, “Where did he go, Marnie?”
Casey raised her little arm. “He went that way,” she said.
Her finger pointed to the right. Ernie hurried over and at the end of the row of private showers found a door that was hidden from view. He shoved it open. It led down a short hallway.
“Don’t leave us!” Marnie shrieked.
Ernie glanced back at me, as if to ask, “Are you staying?”
I nodded.
He took off into the darkness.
I did my best to help Marnie cover herself, ripping down one of the shower curtains as an overgarment. Casey soon made her way to her mom, and the two began hugging each other. Casey was crying and Marnie was crying. I was glad to see the tears: it meant she was coming back to herself.
I asked if they felt well enough to follow me, and they both nodded. With me in the lead, we entered the dark hallway Ernie had gone down. After about ten paces, it led down a wooden stairwell that twisted back on itself. The basement was dark, but a yellow light shone at the far side.
“I don’t want to go in there,” Marnie said. “Let’s go back.”
“Come on, Mommy,” Casey said. “Ernie’s all alone.”
Somehow she’d picked up his name. I patted her on the head. Marnie nodded her consent and we crossed the dark cellar. Halfway through, Marnie screamed. I turned and saw a long tail scurrying off behind wooden crates.
“Mommy,” Casey said. “It’s only a mouse.”
A rat, to be exact, but I didn’t correct her. When we reached the far door, I peered into the yellow-lit room. It was storage: giant beach umbrellas, inflatable rafts, boxes filled with rubber flippers. I took a few steps inside. Marnie and Casey followed. One of the boxes fell, dumping a gaggle of squiggling things onto the ground. I leaped back. Marnie screamed. Casey leaned down and picked one up.
“They’re only goggles,” she said, holding one up to the light.
I felt foolish, but there was no time for embarrassment.
On the far side of the storage room, a door let out into another room streaming with sunlight. A service counter. In front of that, a small foyer and then plate-glass windows. Printed on the windows were the words in hangul: Bathhouse Number Three, Rentals. Stupidly, I was proud that I could read the sign backward.
But when we stepped around the counter, I lost my sense of pride. I heard a shout outside. And then a gunshot.
Ernie stood on the river side of bathhouse number three, his. 45 held straight out in front of him, taking aim on a man running toward the beach.
“Halt!” Ernie shouted.
When the man didn’t stop, Ernie fired off another shot. The round flew ineffectually into the far bank.
“He’s out of range, Ernie,” I said.
“I know that.”
He holstered his pistol and was about to take off in pursuit when engines behind us roared to life. In seconds, a fleet of blue KNP sedans went flying across the gravelly sand, heading toward the Gapcheon River.
“They’re cutting him off,” Ernie said.
Marnie and Casey stood behind us. The rain had started again, and drops pattered against the plastic curtain that Marnie held over herself and Casey.
We watched as the sedans sped across the sand like a phalanx of hounds, spinning around on the slick surface some fifty yards in front of Parkwood. He stopped, turned, and started running back toward us.
Slowly, regally, Mr. Kill strode barefoot across the beach. When he was about ten yards away from us, he pointed and said, “Take the women back to that car. There’s a female officer there.”
A smart-looking woman, wearing the neat blouse, skirt, and cap of the Korean National Police, stood at attention next to a sedan. Marnie didn’t need any more encouragement than that. She grabbed Casey and, keeping the shower curtain wrapped tightly around her, the two of them almost ran toward the road.
Kill sauntered casually toward the flowing water. Parkwood was heading right at him. Something was in Parkwood’s hand.
“What is it?” Ernie asked. Then he answered his own question. “A straight razor.”
Suddenly, I was worried for Kill’s safety. “Is he armed?”
“I don’t think so,” Ernie replied.
The two men were closing on one another. Clearly, the intent of the officers driving the sedans had been to drive Parkwood back to Inspector Kill. Their plan was working. Parkwood had run out of options. He had nowhere to go. But as he approached, it was clear from the perspiration pouring from his forehead and the clenched look of his face and the way he gripped the straight razor in his right fist that this was a man who wouldn’t go down without a fight.
I started toward Inspector Kill.
From out of nowhere, two blue-uniformed KNPs stepped in front of me. One of them held out his palm. “Inspector Kill,” the man said in English, “wishes to interrogate the suspect on his own.”
