that the district attorney and the grand jury do in civilian proceedings. He decides who is going to be prosecuted and who isn’t. In addition, he appoints the officers who will preside as judges over the trial. And often there’s an understanding as to what the CG expects the verdict to be. So the Commanding General functions as the district attorney and grand jury and also-if he chooses to-as the judge and the jury. Ernie and I were toast if the CG decided against us, and we both knew it.
When General Armbrewster was satisfied that we understood what he was saying, he crossed his arms and leaned back in his swivel chair.
“He’s a killer.”
Ernie and I both jerked forward. My first thought was for Han Ok-hi-she hadn’t made it, after all-but the General said, “A traveling man.”
“Where?” Ernie croaked.
“Up in Songtan.”
We knew the place. The village outside Osan Air Force Base, the largest U.S. Air Base in Korea.
“I don’t know much more about the victim yet,” General Armbrewster said. “An old hag who works the streets, they tell me.”
“Who told you, sir?” Ernie was already investigating.
“The Korean National Police Liaison Officer,” Armbrewster answered. “He says the KNPs are worried because they don’t have access to our compounds or much good intelligence amongst the GIs who work mischief off base. He’s going to need American help.”
“How do the KNPs know it’s the same guy?” I asked.
“The way she was killed. Raped, strangled, stabbed, and then she was…”
“But that’s not the way Han Ok-hi was hurt,” Ernie interrupted. “Not at all.”
“I’m not finished.” Armbrewster stared at Ernie until he quieted. “Once this cretin was through with the old bag, he put a hole in her skull. With a forty-five.”
My side was still throbbing from the knife wound last night. In fact, I was worried it had started bleeding again. But now it felt as if another hot blade had been shoved into my stomach, by the same guy who had pulled the trigger of my pistol.
“It could be anybody’s forty-five,” I said. “The KNPs couldn’t run a ballistics test that quickly.”
“No, they couldn’t,” Armbrewster agreed. “But they also have this.”
He shoved a small piece of cardboard wrapped in plastic across his desk. Then, while Ernie and I leaned forward, he lifted the portable lamp and shone the beam directly onto the document.
It was made of rectangular white cardboard. Wallet-sized. Perforated edges. A standard 8th Army Form: USFK 108-b, Weapons Receipt. The card that was needed by every GI when he checked out his weapon from his unit’s arms room. This one described the type of weapon authorized-. 45 pistol, automatic, one-each-and next to that the serial number of the specific weapon.
I recognized the serial number. I had memorized it over a year ago, when I’d arrived in Korea and been assigned to the 8th Army CID Detachment.
I also recognized the name typed into the top square: Sueno, George (NMI).
There was a thumbprint on the card. Brown. Probably dried blood. Clear. As if it had been purposely placed there by a professional.
I looked back at General Armbrewster, still too stunned to speak. Ernie spoke for me.
“He wants us to catch him,” Ernie said.
General Armbrewster nodded his skeleton-like skull.
“Yes. On that, if nothing else, I and this cretin agree. I want you to catch him. Now. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but now! I saw your MPRFs.” Military Personnel Records Folders. General Armbrewster took a deep breath. “You’re both a couple of fuck-offs. You never do anything right. Your black market arrest statistics are for shit, and you’re always embarrassing some staff officer with a lot of scrambled eggs on the brim of his cap. Why? Because you don’t care about a damn thing except catching crooks.” He looked directly at us, eyes blazing. “Good work, goddamn it! Keep the bastards on their toes. You two are the only cops I’ve got who can find out anything in the ville. All the other investigators are like the assholes who work for me here in the headshed. Always trying to impress somebody, disdainful of going where the real soldiering is. This case fell on you two like a ton of latrine waste. God only knows why. But it’s yours now. You solve it. You catch this creep. You do it now. Not later. Now! Before he kills again. And if anybody gives you any bullshit, any bullshit at all, you contact me. You understand?”
We both nodded.
He handed us each another wallet-sized card. This one clean, no blood on it, only his name and personal phone number and his radio call sign. English on one side, Korean on the other. The card was stamped “Secret.”
“Don’t stop until you find him.”
We both stood and were about to salute again when General Armbrewster waved us off. “I told you. Forget about the bullshit. Get this guy. Get him now.”
We turned and started to walk out, but he called me back, as if he’d forgotten something.
“Sueno,” he said. General Armbrewster was standing. “One more thing. Sorry to have to break this to you, but that casino dealer in Inchon, the woman named Han Ok-hi. Bad news. She died less than an hour ago.”
He twisted the portable lamp, aiming it at the paperwork on his desk until his face was again deep in shadow. Then he sat down and began reading, ignoring me completely. I thought of Han Ok-hi’s parents. Their daughter was gone. I thought of my own responsibility. I wanted to speak, but what was there to say? So I stood there, silently, the only sound in the room the scratch, scratch, scratch, of a fountain pen on parchment.
A squad of Military Police vehicles, sirens blaring, escorted us south, away from Seoul, away from Tango, toward the town known as Songtan.
“VIP treatment,” Ernie said. “About time.”
We were in the back seat of yet another Army-issue sedan. This time with two MPs up front, one driving, the other holding an M-16 rifle across his lap.
Ernie leaned forward. “You guys ever seen two GIs being treated better than this?”
“Yeah,” the driver drawled. “When we transport them in chains down to the stockade.”
The other MP guffawed. Ernie sat back in his seat and turned to me and smirked. “Jealousy is a terrible thing.”
But I wasn’t so sure the MPs were wrong. We’d just been handed a hot potato by the Commanding General of the 8th United States Army and we’d just been given permission to ride roughshod over any military staff officer who dared to stand in our way. In the Machiavellian world of the 8th Army bureaucracy, such power had to be used with caution. Staff officers have long memories. And they know how to bite. Not to mention that failure meant court-martial. But I tried not to think about that.
We were off the expressway now, on a country road leading south toward Songtan-up. The town of Songtan. “Si” on the end of a place name means city, “up” means town, and “li” or “ni” means village. The farther down the hierarchy you go, the farther out in the country you are. Rice paddies stretched away on either side, and the MP convoy occasionally was forced to swerve around an ox-drawn cart laden with piles of moist alfalfa. The weather was cold and hazy, the way I like it. When I was growing up in L.A., we didn’t experience many days like this: overcast, fresh air, a brisk chill invigorating a gentle breeze. What we got mostly was blazing hot sidewalks and smog thick enough to make breathing painful when we tried to play.
It was autumn now. According to ancient poets, the most beautiful time of the year on the Korean Peninsula. The time when the name Chosun, the Land of the Morning Calm, seems most appropriate. When leaves turn brown and red and yellow, and farmers harvest the last dry fields of grain, and rice paddies are flooded in preparation for the winter freeze. Autumn is the time of Chusok, the harvest moon festival, on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. When families gather and perform the seibei ceremony and then trek out into the countryside, toward grave mounds dotting round hills, to commune with the dead. To eat a family lunch with long-departed relatives and provide them with updates on the progress of the living. It’s a warm time, a family time, a time of bounty and good cheer. And a melancholy time for an American GI alone in a strange country. But I’m used to that. I grew up in foster homes in L.A., and I felt alone in a strange country there too.
Straw-thatched huts lined the two-lane road but they soon gave way to tile-roofed buildings. Behind a line of
