Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

Keeping her eyes on me, she navigated the stone steps with ease and then paused in front of the body and turned her attention to what lay before her. The escorting officers backed up and Captain Peik approached. He stood silently next to her for a few moments and then began to whisper soft words. When he finished, she nodded slowly. Captain Peik thanked her and the two officers escorted her back to the waiting sedan.

When she was gone, Captain Peik turned to us. “That’s her husband, all right. She says he left the house shortly after midnight. Had to meet someone, she doesn’t know who. Now, you fellows want to tell me what you know about this?”

We nodded and walked back to General MacArthur. As Ernie explained about Sergeant Dubrovnik and our screwup last night, I studied the granite statue and noticed that it even had shoelaces. Doug seemed to be listening to Ernie and Captain Peik. I strode across the expanse of lawn to the cliff and gazed down at foamy breakers crashing against rocks a hundred feet below. From here, I guessed I could throw something a quarter mile out into the Yellow Sea.

When I turned around, General MacArthur was staring at me, reading my thoughts.

Ernie and I caught hell back at 8th Army.

The Foreign Organization Employees Union had lodged a formal protest about our conduct. Harassing one of their employees at his home and later not protecting him when he went to his rendezvous with death. Of course, everyone assumed that Sergeant Dubrovnik was the man who had summoned Clerk Lee to the park overlooking the Yellow Sea and there proceeded to bludgeon him to death. Why had he done it? Maybe because Sergeant Two wanted to keep Clerk Lee quiet about the nefarious activities they had engaged in together. Maybe. More likely they had an argument. Maybe Clerk Lee threatened to rat Dubrovnik out. Right now we could only speculate. What we needed to do was catch Sergeant Dubrovnik.

Ernie and I checked with his M.P. company. The man hadn’t shown up for morning formation, and according to the commanding officer, no one in the unit knew where he had disappeared to.

That remained to be seen. Ernie and I were about to start searching for Dubrovnik when the CID first sergeant pulled us aside.

“You’re off the case,” he told us. When Ernie started to protest, the first sergeant held up his palm. “Your first suspect escapes right from under your noses. And then your second suspect, a Korean national whom you shouldn’t even have been messing with, turns up dead.”

Ernie’s face flushed red and he started to sputter.

“Keep your trap shut, Bascom,” the first sergeant barked. “The provost marshal is still deciding whether or not to bring you two up on charges. A Status of Forces violation. Harassing a Korean civilian and misuse of your military police powers. Not to mention gross incompetence.”

With that, we were assigned to the black market detail.

Two weeks passed by. Two weeks of watching Korean dependent housewives to make sure they didn’t sell duty-free liquor or cigarettes down in the ville. Clerk Lee was buried, Sergeant Dubrovnik was still at large, and the provost marshal was still holding the threat of charges over our heads. Then we got the call.

Stiff found in the village of Songtan-up.

The corpse belonged to Sergeant Ivan Dubrovnik. He’d been shot once through the heart at close range, apparently with his own military police-issued .45 which was found beside him. He lay in a cobbled alleyway lined with nightclubs and beer halls and cheap room-rent-by-the-hour yoguans of Songtan-up, which served the five thousand or so U.S. airmen stationed at Osan Air Force Base. The sun was just rising above the rooftops of the two- and three-story buildings that surrounded us.

The Korean cop who’d found the corpse at two in the morning told us that no one in the neighborhood had heard or seen anything. Five hours more of canvassing the neighborhood didn’t change that story. The security police at Osan classified Dubrovnik’s death as a suicide.

Ernie didn’t like it. Neither did I. The only other person who’d been involved in the plot was the driver who’d been long since locked up. He couldn’t have been the killer. That left suicide.

And that also closed the case neatly. Now that justice had been done, the Foreign Organization Employees Union dropped their formal protest against Ernie and me. Everyone had suffered enough, they figured. The provost marshal put us back on regular duty status and signed off on the finding that no charges would be brought against us. Still, he kept us on the black market detail.

Dubrovnik’s body was shipped back to the States. It was over. All killings had been accounted for. Nothing left but to burn incense at their graves.

The blue silk of her dress hugged the curves of her body like wet paper clinging to a baby’s cheek. Her face was a smooth oval with shining black eyes and full lips and I recognized her immediately. The wife of the late Lee Ok-pyong.