The Ghost Detective
Episode 3 & 4
Casts: Choi Daniel, Park Eun-Bin, Lee Ji-Ah, Kim Won-Hae, Lee Jae-Kyoon; Director: Lee Jae-Hoon; Writer: Han Ji-Hwan
The Ghost Detective, Episode 3 & 4
Ga-Ram and Ha-Eun’s escape draw attention and the police is notified. At school, they find Lee Chan-Mi hanging from a tree in a horrible state. Detective Park finds Eun-Yool on the bathtub.
After a frightening dream and unable to reach Da-Il by phone, Yeo-Wool grows anxious. Sang-Seob has to drag her away to stop her from revealing Da-Il’s involvement in the search and rescue effort to Detective Park, who starts asking questions. Sang-Seob reminds her that Da-Il didn’t tell the police for a reason. He assures her that Da-Il will be fine. “He disappears for a reason and he’ll return once he’s found the reason,” Sang-Seob says.
Meanwhile, Detective Park finds Bo-Ri’s body inside the underground cave. He recalls Se-Rin’s story and Yeo-Wool telling him off for dismissing it. He mentions the possibility of another person present in the night’s tragedy although he doesn’t share his reason for thinking so.
At the inquiry office, Sang-Seob and Yeo-Wool talk through the case. They still don’t know how Ga-Ram and Ha-Eun were abducted. Sang-Seob’s suggestion of an accomplice prompts Yeo-Wool to speculate about the accomplice being present at the school tonight and doing harm to Da-Il. Sang-Seob dismisses the thought. “He is not that easy.”
Yet Yeo-Wool can see that Sang-Seob is also worried about Da-Il although he insists that he isn’t. He recounted how Da-Il had always taken care of dangerous cases alone and left him out for his own safety. “More likely, he didn’t find you useful,” Yeo-Wool says. Even though he doesn’t like her blunt words, Sang-Seob understands them too well.
He tells her that she reminds him of Da-Il. He recounts how he and Da-Il got together. Two years ago, he approached Da-Il with the idea of a detective agency (not ‘inquiry’). He foresaw a change in the respectability and profitability of the profession and vowed to make Da-Il a famous detective. “We are business partners now,” he said and showed Da-Il their agency’s business card, ‘A Few Good Men’. He thinks they’ve done all right now even though the job hadn’t been lucrative — Da-Il often took cases that didn’t pay well. Saving Ha-Eun has saved them financially.
“Then Ha-Eun must have seen Da-Il, right?!” Yeo-Wool suddenly jumps.
On the marshland, Da-Il, covered in mud, runs towards the street under the rain.
The next day, Yeo-Wool continues her search for Da-Il. She is refused entry to Ha-Eun’s house to meet her and sent to CEO Lee’s lawyer. Attorney Baek tells her that she can’t meet the children yet because they are still in trauma. She also tells Yeo-Wool to leave it to the police. “There’s nothing you can do.” But Yeo-Wool insists that there’s more to the case that the police may have missed. “That may also be the reason Da-Il disappeared,” Attorney Baek says. He needs to get the answers on whatever bothers him.
Attorney Baek knows a bit about Da-Il because she once acted as his lawyer on his case. Staff Sergeant Lee Da-Il had been fired and jailed for making public his investigation on PFC Kim’s suicide, the bullying, and the corruption in the army. After two years in jail, Da-Il was declared innocent by the Supreme Court but denied reinstatement in the army. When they parted, Da-Il promised to live a quiet life and keep out of others’ business. Yet, he doesn’t change — she believes Da-Il took this case because he was worried about the safety of the other children if they only focused on saving Ha-Eun.
Asked why she insists on looking for Da-Il even though the case is solved, Yeo-Wool just mentions a promise he had made to her without elaborating further. During the job interview, Yeo-Wool told Da-Il why she applied for the job. “Because you checked Se-Rin’s story that Bo-Ri took the children,” she said. Da-Il told her that he did it not because he believed Se-Rin. He was just following a hunch. Yet those were qualities Yeo-Wool needed to find something. She didn’t believe her sister committed suicide. She wanted to work with him to uncover the truth about her sister’s death herself. “Please help me,” she said.
Attorney Baek advises her to wait or his return. He’s not of the kind who breaks promises. Then, why he disappears?
At the police station, the chief notices Yeo-Wool’s absence. Her bright personality, despite personal tragedy, has grown on him. Detective Park prefers her not coming to the station anymore. He looks at the notes on the drinks she’s brought — he saves them in a drawer — each trying to convince him that her sister, Yi-Rang, didn’t commit suicide.
The report on the night’s event still bothers Detective Park so he goes to the forensic office. He asks the medical examiner Gil Chae-Won (Lee Joo-Young), who looks a little too comfortable eating jajangmyeon in the company of dead bodies, for any possibility of another person present. “Could she have been assaulted?” But the Doctor confirms Chan-Mi’s suicide; the ears mutilation was self-inflicted. Lee Chan-Mi hurt herself before commiting suicide. It’s possible in cases where victims suffer mental disorders.
She draws Detective Park’s attention to Bo-Ri, which she considers even weirder. Other than signs of starvation, human bite marks are found on the body, which don’t match Chan-Mi’s dental record. Bo-Ri was bitten before she died around the time of Chan-Mi’s death. That means it’s possible that they weren’t alone when they died.
Nearby, an unidentified male body is wheeled out of the autopsy room by two personnels. As they reach the door, Da-Il is seen, having eavesdropped the conversation. Then he follows the two personnels through the door. He looks slightly fraught.
Yeo-Wool, who’s visiting Ga-Ram in the hospital, looks at his drawings. ”He has been drawing all day,” his mother says. She then sees Ga-Ram draw a female figure and colour it in stark red. Yeo-Wool is startled and demands to know who the figure is. “Did you see her?” Her agitation and rash behaviour prompt Ga-Ram’s mother to throw her out of the room. “You said you won’t ask anything!”
Some time later, when Ga-Ram and his mother are asleep, Da-Il takes a look at the drawing. As he leaves the room, Ga-Ram wakes up.
Detective Park looks up a record on Lee Da-Il. He searches the web and finds coverage of the Da-Il’s trial and an article on the ‘A Few Good Men’ detective agency.
Yeo-Wool walks home alone. The walk turns eerie as one street lamp is slowly died. Couple of times, she looks back to see if someone’s following her. She finally reaches her apartment. When she opens the door, a hand rests on her shoulder. Panicked, she slams whoever it is to the floor and quickly gets inside her apartment, nudging a ball away. But groans and coughs stop her. She turns back and sees Lee Da-Il on the floor. Both look at each other in surprise.
***
Yeo-Wool brings Da-Il inside her home. He is curious about her outburst when she saw Ga-Ram’s drawing. “Who is that woman?” Yeo-Wool keeps quiet. Is she the one she’s looking for? The one who killed her sister? Yeo-Wool dodges the question and instead asks why he brings that up. “Is she involved in the case?” She catches on. Da-Il wants her to tell him, from a to z, why she thinks the woman killed his sister.
When she insists on his answers, he threatens to walk out and leaves her to find the woman herself. Yeo-Wool gives in and tells him everything. She saw the woman in red as her sister was dying in the restaurant. Yi-Rang told her, in sign language, to run away and not listen to the woman. Yeo-Wool read the woman’s lips asking if she’s angry and, after Yi-Rang died, she was gone. No one saw the woman in red. No one believed Yeo-Wool either.
They must find out what the woman in red did to Yi-Rang. He asks if Yeo-Wool knows why her sister chose to end her life. Yeo-Wool doesn’t have an answer. The police concluded that Yi-Rang might have just given up on life because she had hearing difficulties and had no parents. Da-Il lets out a derisive snort at such conclusion. “No one has the right to reduce one’s death to such an easy excuse,” he says strongly. He tells Yeo-Wool to send message using her sister’s phone: ‘why did you do this to me?’
While Yeo-Wool is preparing her sister’s phone, Da-Il is drawn to a hearing aid. He takes it and feels something as he holds it in his palm then puts it back. He tells Yeo-Wool to send the message to everyone who was present the night Yi-Rang died. The fact that Yi-Rang chose to do such extreme measure in front of people means someone was bound to notice and felt guilty.
The message is sent. One reaches the handphone of the restaurant manager where Yi-Rang worked while he is in the car with his son. “What’s up, Dad?” his son asks. The manager just shrugs it off but he is obviously rattled.
A flashback shows how Yi-Rang’s life went horrible. At work in the restaurant, Yi-Ran was reprimanded by her colleague, Kim Mi-Jin, for ignoring a customer’s bell. The manager also told her off. “Are you deaf?” and later saw Yi-Rang taking the hearing aid and wearing it.
The manager suddenly entered the worker’s changing room and confronted Yi-Rang for not listing her disability in her job application. He threatened to tell the management, which could cost Yi-Rang the job. She begged him to let her stay. He started unbuttoning her top but Yi-Rang stopped him. Then Kim Mi-Jin entered the room and saw her state of undress after the manager walked away. Kim Mi-Jin jumped to conclusions and turned away disgusted.
In the car, the manager is anxious. Then his son suddenly asks why he did that. His son says that he killed the pretty girl who worked for him. His son bids him to come closer — he takes his eyes away from the street — and whispers to his ear that everyone knows it. The words shocks him and when his eyes returns to the street, it’s too late. The car has crashed into the pole of a signpost bearing the warning, ‘Dad, please drive safely’.
‘I’m sorry’, one person, Kim Mi-Jin, replies Yeo-Wool’s message. Da-Il tells her to meet Mi-Jin. “They barely spoke to each other,” Yeo-Wool says. Mi-Jin claimed that she wasn’t close to Yi-Rang.
Da-Il then devises a ploy. Yi-Rang had left a will, from which Yeo-Wool knows what had happened. If Mi-Jin refuses to meet, Yeo-Wool is to threaten her to bring it to the cops. The ‘sorry’ text will implicate her.
Kim Mi-Jin tells her story to Yeo-Wool — Da-Il is standing a few trees away. She just told people what she saw in the changing room, about the fact that Yi-Rang, in that state of undress, and the manager were together in a locked room. The manager had often singled Yi-Rang out and given Yi-Rang lighter workload than the others. Mi-Jin felt envy that Yi-Rang got paid more when she thinks Yi-Rang wasn’t that good at her job. She thinks it must be because Yi-Rang slept around for money.
That remark earns her a slap and Yeo-Wool does just that to Da-Il’s dismay. Yet Mi-Jin keeps saying that she only let on a few words behind Yi-Rang’s back, she never bullied Yi-Rang. It wasn’t her fault that Yi-Rang died. “At least I don’t think it was,” Kim Mi-Jin says. “Yes, it was,” Yeo-Wool says. She tells Mi-Jin to live the rest of her life knowing that Yi-Rang died because of her doing.
Yeo-Wool walks away in anger. Da-Il chases her and questions her conduct when she knows well that it wasn’t Kim Mi-Jin’s fault. “It was,” she insists. Mi-Jin could’ve helped Yi-Rang but instead made things worse. Yi-Rang had never told Yeo-Wool anything about her struggles. She had always looked fine. If it wasn’t Mi-Jin’s fault, “then it was my fault,” Yeo-Wool starts crying. “What should I do?”
“Find the real culprit,” Da-Il says. She needs to pull herself together. They must talk to the restaurant manager.
They are on their way to the manager’s home when Yeo-Wool sees the wife going out in a hurry. “My husband and son got into an accident,” the wife says and leaves for the hospital. Da-Il suggests they find out how the accident occured.
They find the manager’s car at some garage and watch the car’s camera footage. Just before the crash, when the son asked questions, the footage is disturbed by noise and for mere seconds a figure in red is seen. “We need to find her as soon as possible,” Da-Il says. They should keep the footage for evidence.
Questions arise regarding the connections among the manager, Yi-Rang, and the woman in red. Does the manager know her? They should go to see the manager.
Meanwhile, in the hospital, the manager is seeing things, haunted by the questions and claims that he killed Yi-Rang. He tries to escape the hospital that Yeo-Wool and Da-Il find his bed empty. They then see him crossing a road towards a building.
They run after him and finally find him at the rooftop, trying to jump off the building. Da-Il tries to pull the manager’s hand but his can’t touch it. Yeo-Wool manages to pulls the manager’s hand and drags him away from the railings.
Yeo-Wool faces Da-Il, who is assessing his situation. “You are dead,” she tells him.
12
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