“Did you give him money?”
“Some money. We sent it to a foreign account. It was not important to him, though.”
“Why?” the interrogator asked.
Her chin fell on her chest again, but this time she kept talking, although her voice was trailing off. “He is very egotistical. Choi arranged to make him look like a super-detective.” She then chuckled to herself, like it was a big joke only she got. “Very funny, really. Bales’s superiors began relying on him to handle most of the cases committed off base. And when Bales’s tours ended, they were eager to see his time extended in Korea.”
“Tell us about the American Keith Merritt.”
“No,” she said, her voice becoming very weak. “It is time to sleep… You promised.”
The screen suddenly went dark, but the sound was still on and you could hear the noise of footsteps, then four loud whacks, and the woman yelping from pain. Then the picture returned. Her cheeks were red, and she was staring at her interpreter with a mixture of resentment and anger.
The interpreter barked something in Korean and she nodded her head.
She said, “He came here weeks before the rest of them. He was nosing around. He interviewed Bales two days after he arrived, so we began watching him. Then, uh, later, he and Carlson… later they returned to interview Bales together… He was handed a glass of water. Bales took fingerprints off it. He sent them to the FBI. He wasn’t an attorney. He was a private detective.”
“Who tried to kill him?”
“Other people handled it. Two agents from Inchon. We didn’t want to risk having any of our people identified.”
“Why?”
“At first he focused his efforts on trying to prove Lee was a homosexual. Later, he suspected Whitehall was framed. But he had no facts.” She stopped and stared at the floor a moment. “Still… we began to worry. Would he start looking at Bales and Choi?”
“How did you learn this? Did you bug his room, too?”
“No, only Whitehall’s apartment in the months before his arrest. Melborne was a detective. We thought, maybe… he knew how to check. We used other means to eavesdrop on him.”
Her head slumped forward again. We saw the interrogator’s back move toward her, and then he shook her a few times, harshly enough that her head flopped back and forth. She seemed to come back to consciousness.
She said, “We overheard Merritt discussing his suspicions with Carlson, Whitehall’s lawyer.”
“And how did Melborne arrive at that suspicion?”
“He was guessing. But it was too close.”
“So you lured him to Itaewon?”
“Choi thought of it. One of our people called Merritt and said they needed to talk. Melborne was told to walk down the street and shop. Our man told him he had seen his picture in the paper. They would meet and talk.”
There was a brief pause and I wondered about Melborne’s discussion with Katherine about a frame-up. How come Katherine never mentioned those suspicions to me? Was that why she’d told us to employ a frame defense?
Then before I could think any further about it, the unseen voice said, “Tell us about Whitehall.”
Again she hung her head, as though she needed to work to recall the details. Considering that she probably hadn’t slept in five or six days, I was amazed she could do anything except babble and drool.
Then the camera went dark again, and there were the sounds of more slaps and yelps, then her whimpering and saying something in Korean that sounded like begging, then the interrogator’s voice sounding harsh and uncompromising.
The woman came into focus again. “We learned of Whitehall’s affair with Lee four… maybe five months ago. They thought they were discreet. The fools. When an apartment is rented to an American, the landlord must report it to the precinct.”
“Is that how Choi knew?”
“He always watched for that. Usually the Americans are seeking a place to keep their mistresses, to conduct affairs.”
“Why didn’t you try to recruit Whitehall?”
She looked directly into the camera. “He was too unimportant. He held only a minor position on base. I directed Choi to have some assistants see what Whitehall was doing.”
“And you discovered Lee No Tae?”
She nodded. “Two, sometimes four times a week they would meet in the apartment. Eventually, we bugged it.”
“Whose idea was it to murder Lee No Tae?”
For a brief millisecond, you could see a spark of her earlier defiance. Or maybe it was pride.
“I ordered it.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? To drive the Americans off Korean soil.”
“Why that night?”
“They were about to separate. It would be our last chance.”
I inadvertently turned and looked to the back of the room where Minister Lee was seated. His eyes were on the television screen. His arms were crossed and his face was expressionless. I didn’t even want to imagine what he was feeling.
“How did you get inside the apartment?”
“We didn’t.”
“You didn’t?”
“Lee always awoke at three-thirty to go back onto base. Privates have to be present when their sergeants go through the barracks to awaken the soldiers. Otherwise he would’ve gotten into trouble.”
“So he was killed outside the apartment?”
The camera focused on her a moment until it was evident she was sound asleep. Her chin was back on her chest and you could tell by the way her breasts were moving that she was in la-la land. The film went through the dark-again-whack-ouch-whack-ouch-whack-ouch routine, then there were more words in Korean, then her face came back on the screen.
“We killed him in the stairwell. Lee put up a fight. He even struck Choi several times. Finally, though, the men held him. They beat him for a while. He had to appear roughed up.”
“How was he killed?”
“Choi pulled his… uh, belt out of his pants and strangled him.” She paused and her lip curled upward, ever so slightly. “It turned out, when Lee dressed, he took the wrong belt. It was Whitehall’s. Lucky,” she mumbled.
The interrogator said something sharp, like he didn’t think there was anything the least bit happy about any of this. She stared back at him, her face completely exhausted, but something in her eyes let you know she thought she’d won one here.
The questioner said, “How did you get him back into the apartment?”
This time I already knew the answer before she gave it.
“A key to the apartment… in Lee’s pocket. Whitehall gave it to him, months before. Choi used it then, then, uh, laid his body next to Whitehall’s. The door had an automatic lock. It relocked when they closed it.”
“How did you make it appear the body had been raped?”
“Choi brought along a…?” she suddenly appeared perplexed, then said some word in Korean.
“A dildo,” the hidden voice translated for her.
She nodded. “They inserted it and left it in his body for twenty minutes. Choi has investigated many sex crimes. This was his idea. It was a nice touch.”
This time when I turned back around and stole a look at Minister Lee, he was staring down at the floor and there were tears rolling down his cheeks. I felt a shudder of pain for him. One of the few facts about this case I’d been able to establish on my own was how much he and his wife loved their son. No parent should have a child murdered. Worse, no parent should ever be forced to listen to one of the murderers recount the tawdry details of the crime.
