Black, Blue, and Gold (Book 2)

One Step at a Time (Part 15)

Her phone beeped right before she was about to take another bite.

Thinking that it was Jennie with more pictures of Jiyoon, she quickly put her chopsticks down to unlock the screen.

"Good evening, Lisa. I'm sorry for disturbing you but I was just at your apartment to drop off the oranges and no one was there. I realize that it's my fault for coming by so late at night. I got held up, unfortunately. Anyway, I will come back another time or just mail them to you."

She exhaled and typed a reply. "Thank you, Mr. Kim. I'm afraid we're still out. Feel free to do whichever you find easier."

He sent another message but Lisa didn't really pay attention to it because Seulgi suddenly appeared with papers in her hand.

"This is all we could dig up on such short notice," Seulgi said as she sat down next to Lisa. "Sooyoung's still trying to search further so let's just wait and see." She then took hold of one of the bowls and a pair of chopsticks after she had handed Lisa the papers.

Lisa skimmed the rows of numbers highlighted in yellow. "What does this mean, exactly?"

"Well, apparently, he steadily received a certain amount of money every month to his account. It wasn't transferred though. Always through cash deposit at the bank." Seulgi began scooping the food into her bowl.

"Who deposited it?"

"Now that's the tricky part. The bank didn't have a complete history of the transactions since it had been quite a long time ago. Also, the signatures on the deposit slips vary and the written addresses look fake. Whoever was giving him money wanted it to appear random, done by different people at different banks with slightly different amounts every time."

"But it's not random. I mean, it was done once a month so that's a pattern right there," said Chaeyoung.

Seulgi nodded. "Major fail on their part." She took a bite from her food.

"The names are probably fake too then?" asked Lisa.

"That's what I thought, at first," answered Seulgi through a full mouth. "But then I saw this." She put her chopsticks down, took the papers from Lisa, flipped the page and pointed at a row she had highlighted in green. "Check that one out."

"Park Kyujun," Lisa read. Her eyes widened. "Wait. This name sounds familiar-..."

"He's dead now, unfortunately." Seulgi resumed eating.

Lisa gasped. "That juice collector!" She remembered the murder case that introduced her to Jennie and started this whole mess with Seungjin.

"Are you sure that this is the same Park Kyujun?" asked Chaeyoung.

Seulgi nodded. "I bet he was still green at that time. He used his real known address and signature. Sooyoung did a quick comparison."

"That's not very smart."

"His stupidity, our lucky break." Seulgi took another bite. "At least we found our link. No innocent student would receive money from a shady juice collector. You can use that to get him to talk."

"Any other familiar names?" Lisa flipped the pages, scrutinizing the names.

"Unfortunately not. But I found something else. In the first few years after he graduated, he would make monthly withdrawals of the exact same amount."

"From his account?"

"Yes."

"And why didn't you notice this sooner?"

"I thought it was just a regular monthly expenses kinda thing, to budget yourself," Seulgi defended herself. "But it stopped when he got transferred to Gwangju prison."