Special Affairs Team TEN: Episode 4

by kaedejun

Welcome to episode 4 of Ten! Titled “The Queen,” we learn a little more about Ji Hoon, see another side of Ye Ri, and finally meet a victim who is more scary than the killer. Jealousy and fear can bring out the worst in us.

Secrets are a woman’s life – or so our victim Yoon Mi Ra so claims as she luxuriously eats chocolates and gets her feet massaged by a male escort. Looks to be one hell of a hot and sexy night – naturally videotaped by an indifferent man outside the house – until she’s found dead the next morning. Whee! Sex, secrets, murders.

While waiting for a new case, Do Shik and Min Ho spend the time playing poker and betting on lunch money. (One more secret talent for Min Ho: not only is he a lady killer, but he’s quite good at poker.) Ye Ri channel surfs between a celebrity interview and a senator’s press conference. As for the Monster, aka Ji Hoon? He’s out to a sushi lunch with Chief Jung.

Ye Ri presumes that Do Shik is jealous that he wasn’t invited to this tasty lunch. Do Shik: “There’s always a reason if a superior feeds us – let’s be ready to clear corpses.”

True enough, Chief Jung informs Ji Hoon that they found the corpse of a madam, Yoon Mi Ra, in a vacation house at Gapyeong. It’s a sensitive issue because she has the numbers of all the high-profile people in politics, entertainment, sports, etc. The head of National Police is nervous because he himself is involved with some of these high-profile people, and therefore Chief Jung took the opportunity to snag the case for Ji Hoon. Everyone had doubted Ji Hoon because of his past, but if he can successfully solve the case with discretion, things will start looking good for him again.

So he takes the case back to his team. Time of death for Yoon Mi Ra: 8pm on Saturday. Cause of death: strangulation. Though her neck was broken when she fell against a marble coffee table, she was merely paralyzed; the choking did her in. Ji Hoon assumes that the murderer must have walked in on her paralyzed, but instead of calling for help, he chose to kill and clean up his tracks, thus removing any possible association he may have had with her.

They already do have a suspect in question: Senator Jeong Ui Seok. He and Yoon Mi Ra had communicated frequently via text and phone calls right up to her death. It is possible that they were lovers. Ji Hoon advises his team to tread carefully, as the senator can fire the head of National Police in an instant.

Chapter 1: The Secret of Authority

Min Ho and Do Shik head up to the vacation house to check the crime scene. They learn from autopsy that semen was found in Mi Ra’s body. Min Ho finds the affair between her and Senator Jeong all too interesting, and reads the texts aloud as if he were in a Shakespearean play. Hehe. The texts show her desperation to meet him, and Senator Jeong sounding all too unwilling to go.

Do Shik observes that since their text messages to each other are short, it’s possible that their torrid affair had burned out.

They find tire prints outside the house, which they plan to match to Senator Jeong’s car tires. They’re tasked to follow him all day, but Do Shik has other plans, much to Min Ho’s outrage.

Meanwhile, Ye Ri investigates Mi Ra’s villa in Cheongdamdong and notices the Old World furnishings and the absolute cleanliness of the home. Ye Ri presumes there must be a maid, and then finds a doorway to a cellar. There’s a bar and recreation room, but behind a curtain there’s a small bed and some basic furnishings. When Ye Ri finds a men’s razor behind a drawer though, it indicates that a male manservant must be living there. And, since all his belongings are gone, it appears that whoever lived down here left the night of the murder knowing that he’d never come back.

Min Ho does some investigating and confirms that the tire prints outside the Gapyeong house matches Senator Jeong’s car. There’s even CCTV video to prove that he was going there. The one befuddling thing for him is that the house is full of male DNA, and the only female DNA belongs to Mi Ra. Sounds like she was entertaining all these men by herself?!

Ji Hoon does some research himself, heading to a private bar and sitting next to none other than Senator Jeong’s wife. She’s drinking herself to a stupor, and Ji Hoon takes advantage of her weakened state to pry about her husband. Mrs. Jeong isn’t going to give up her husband’s dirty secrets so quickly, even though she knows Ji Hoon wants to know if she knows about Senator Jeong adulterous ways.

Mrs. Jeong: “He may be the perfect man, but he has one weakness. He dislikes the scent of a woman, even though he’s a man.”

Ji Hoon’s eyes bug out – and it’s worth noting that this is the most extreme expression I’ve seen him do in the past 4 episodes. So, Senator Jeong… is gay?!

Off he goes back to the office, but Min Ho has more surprising news. Senator Jeong is in his office, waiting to turn himself in. In the interrogation room, Senator Jeong admits that he knew Mi Ra, and that she had blackmailed him with a video. However, he didn’t kill her. She was already dead when he arrived at the Gapyeong home. He ran away instead, not wanting to call the police and leave room for misunderstandings. However the senator realized that keeping silent was not the better solution at all, so he decided to go to the police.

Senator Jeong also trusts that Ji Hoon will not make a big fuss about this to the media. Ji Hoon: “If you did nothing wrong, you’ll be fine, right?”

When the senator leaves, Min Ho sends off a DNA sample of the senator to compare with the semen found in Mi Ra’s body. Ji Hoon says it’s not necessary – Senator Jeong is not interested in Mi Ra in any shape or form. He only goes to the vacation house where Mi Ra would set him up with other guys. Min Ho’s jaw drops – but it totally explains why the vacation house has mostly men’s DNA all about.

Mi Ra is a dangerous holder of many secrets.

Chapter 2: The Secret of Power -> The Power of a Secret

Do Shik heads over to The Queen’s Nest, Yoon Mi Ra’s host bar. It’s open, which makes Do Shik wonder if the workers know about Mi Ra’s death. He requests to see the manager, and Kim Seon Woo appears. He is both the manager and the owner of the bar when Mi Ra is not around.

Do Shik casually mentions about a vacation house, and Seon Woo’s silence indicates that he knows something about Mi Ra’s hideaways. He presents himself to Seon Woo as a real estate developer who wants to meet Mi Ra about payment for a vacation house. Seon Woo: “So she wants to purchase another vacation house?” Do Shik: “Another? You mean, she already has one?” Seon Woo’s casual mention of ‘another’ indicates that he knows about the crime scene/Gapyeong house.

Seon Woo asks what will happen if she can’t pay anytime soon. Do Shik presses further: is there a situation where she wouldn’t be able to pay? Seon Woo sidesteps the question and says that if Do Shik wants to file a missing persons’ report, he could. He then leaves, but Do Shik isn’t about to give up so easily. He camps outside the bar and calls up Min Ho with some more intel. He managed to dig up the bar’s files, and Seon Woo is listed as the bar owner, but has a lot of gambling debt. Mi Ra had paid for the interest on his debt, but not the original debt. If she were to pass away, Seon Woo would gain full ownership of the bar, and then be able to pay off his debts. It’s the perfect motive. He instructs Min Ho to call in Seon Woo as a suspect and see if the guy runs away. If he runs, he’s guilty of something.

Later into the evening, Do Shik sits inside a cab with a running meter. The cabbie thinks that Do Shik is trying to track down “his wife” who may be cheating on him; he’s had to do these stakeouts before for another guy. Heh! Finally Seon Woo leaves the bar, and Do Shik quickly orders the cabbie to tail him.

They end up at an upscale bar/cafe, and Do Shik watches Seon Woo several tables away behind a newspaper. Finally, Seon Woo’s guest arrives – it’s the famous actor Seung Yi Han whom they’d seen on TV just a few days ago.

Meanwhile, Ye Ri befriends the security guard at Mi Ra’s villa by helping him open a tightly covered jar of honey. He confides that her “brother” lives at her home, but he is usually cleaning and doing all the dirty chores for her. He’s more like a slave than a brother. Ye Ri asks if he knew when this “brother” left, and he says it was Friday night – the night before Mi Ra died.

Seon Woo is brought in for questioning with Min Ho. He states that he last saw Mi Ra on Friday morning, and spoke to her that evening, but he couldn’t contact her since Saturday. He didn’t know whether or not she went to her vacation house because she never spoke about her private life to him. His alibi for Saturday was that he was at the bar all day, working. He even suggests that Min Ho check his cell phone’s GPS location for that day.

Do Shik heads over to a film set and locates Seung Yi Han’s van. Yi Han’s manager tries to shoo Do Shik away, but he professes to be a huuuuuge fan and just wanted an autograph. Yi Han agrees to it (as it would cause the least amount of fussing), but freezes when he hears that he must address the autograph to Detective Baek Do Shik. Time for a private chit chat!

Yi Han admits to knowing Mi Ra, having met her “accidentally,” and that he’s friends with Seon Woo. His alibi for Saturday was that he was shooting from Friday night to Sunday morning. The manager asks if Do Shik came because of Mi Ra, because the both of them had a lot of trouble with her after she secretly recorded a video. Yi Han snaps for his manager to shut up, but enough has been said.

Do Shik manages to get ahold of the blackmail video, where Yi Han is a male escort and having sex with another woman. Of course, our three detective boys get a kick out of watching this. Ji Hoon muses that Mi Ra must have had a reason for blackmailing him. Turns out she wanted Yi Han to switch entertainment agencies, and join the one where she holds stocks in. He rejected her request, and in return received the video.

Now we have two men with motives; both Seon Woo and Yi Han owe Mi Ra in some way, money-wise. As for Senator Jeong, she knows that he’s gay and can use it to ruin him. Ji Hoon has the two other guys verify Seon Woo and Yi Han’s motives.

As for Ye Ri – she’s busy with her two female officer-friends. They’ve all dressed up to the nines and enter The Queen’s Nest as potential customers. The two officers get a kick out of the alcohol and the service from some pretty male hosts. Ye Ri herself gets a bit drunk, but starts up a conversation with one of the guys. After hooking him in with a lie that she’s a billionaire, she makes a passing comment that Mi Ra must live with some of her escorts at her villa (not the Gapyeong house).

According to Ye Ri’s male host, that’s not cohabitation with an escort; it’s “study abroad.” Mi Ra would select one of her male host employees to go live in that villa for some “training,” and then she would help them become celebrities. Case in point: Seung Yi Han. He was a male escort as well until he went for “study abroad,” and became the famous celebrity thanks to Mi Ra’s help. Seon Woo was also an escort, but because Mi Ra didn’t like him as much, he just became the manager.

Ye Ri then asks to meet with Hyun Il, the latest escort to go study abroad. But when he arrives, Ye Ri becomes too drunk to ask him any questions. The other escorts suggest they just leave and get these drunk girls a cab, but Hyun Il raises his hand: he can’t, because Ye Ri had just handcuffed them together.

They return to the office – Ye Ri stumbling, and Hyun Il being dragged by the wrist – much to Do Shik and Min Ho’s amusement. She begs them to unlock the handcuffs because she has to pee so badly!

As she rests on the couch, another officer helps bring up CCTV tapes from Mi Ra’s villa, where they catch Hyun Il in the parking lot, rushing out on Friday night with his luggage. Min Ho wonders if it’s because Hyun Il is the killer; Ji Hoon figures out that Hyun Il is the one who lived with Mi Ra and disappeared that same night. Time for interrogation with Min Ho!

Min Ho’s interrogation tactic is to stay quiet, and then when the suspect is bored, he springs a shocking question – like, “Did you kill Mi Ra?” Hyun Il: “What!? No!” But Min Ho has the evidence of Hyun Il running away in the parking lot. Hyun Il immediately denies that he was doing anything wrong. He says it was all because Seon Woo had told him to pack up and leave. Hyun Il had hated being in that villa working like a slave, and had complained to the manager. So when Seon Woo offered him a chance to leave, Hyun Il didn’t think too hard about it and just packed up to leave.

Hyun Il was then ordered to stay at Queen’s Nest the entire day Saturday, and Seon Woo had given him his cellphone. Whenever the phone rang, he thought it was Mi Ra, but it ended up being Seon Woo on the other line, using Mi Ra’s phone. They spoke about 6 times throughout Friday night to Saturday night.

Ji Hoon puzzles over the timeline. If Seon Woo couldn’t contact Mi Ra since Saturday, what was he doing with her cellphone that day? And according to Seon Woo, Mi Ra was at the vacation home since Friday night. Ji Hoon then requests a more accurate time of death from the Medical Examiner – if they can determine exactly when she died, it might help sort out the timeline and figure out who killed her.

The M.E. presents a report where she found massage oils on Mi Ra’s body. It was odd that she hadn’t even bothered washing them off. What’s odder is that when Ji Hoon goes back to the vacation house where she died, there’s no massage oils anywhere. He smiles – perhaps she’s not really supposed to have died at the vacation house.  Ji Hoon checks the marble coffee table and rug area where Mi Ra was found; underneath the rug are traces of spilled massage oils. HMMMM.

Chapter 3: Babies of the Queen

When Seon Woo is brought back in for questioning, this time Do Shik and Ji Hoon do the interrogation. Yep – Do Shik ain’t no real estate developer! Do Shik catches Seon Woo’s lies about working all through the weekend. They show him the table and the rug that they’ve brought in from the vacation home; Ji Hoon states that Mi Ra didn’t die at the vacation home, but somewhere near the table and the rug. Seon Woo then took those pieces of furniture and planted them in the vacation home to make it look like she died there. The goal was to put the blame on Senator Jung. Ji Hoon continues, “You rubbed her body with massage oils to delay rigor mortis and fiddle with the exact time of death.”

It’s a complicated theory, but the fact that they know Seon Woo was not at the bar (thanks to Hyun Il’s testimony) makes it all possible.

However, there’s another twist! Seon Woo has undeniable evidence that he did not kill Mi Ra. He shows them a video he recorded outside Yi Han’s home, where Mi Ra and Yi Han got into an argument. Mi Ra slapped him, Yi Han pushed her down and then choked her.

Apparently Mi Ra requested that all her meetings with clients be recorded because it was her way of keeping them in line. She made her entire business around others’ secrets, which also made her very hated. Her nickname was “The Queen.”

The investigators then go to Yi Han’s home. He has a strong alibi that he was filming all weekend since Friday night, but Do Shik finds a photo of Yi Han and his friends. In that photo, the marble coffee table is in his living room; now, it’s been replaced with another black coffee table. Ta da! Yi Han is forced to go in for questioning.

Yi Han admits that Mi Ra was trying to convince him to do her bidding so that he can become more famous. He knew that if he didn’t change his management company, then she would blackmail him with videos of his male escort days. Yi Han was sick of her being the puppet master, and was annoyed that she pretended to not know of any videos. They got into an argument, he pushed her, she cracked her neck against the table, and then he choked her until she passed out. It wasn’t until she became unresponsive that he realized he did something very. wrong.

Seon Woo then got involved because he had been recording the whole thing, and rushed in when he saw the murder. Seon Woo admits to helping Yi Han move the body to the vacation home and make the murder seem like it occurred there. However, Yi Han then had to go for filming, so Seon Woo let him go. (At least they’d be able to build their alibis.) Seon Woo took over in cleaning up the mess and making it look like murder there. He ended up choosing to blame the death on Senator Jeong because the man had power, and would probably try to sweep the entire matter under the rug with his influence.

Despite all this, Ji Hoon is not convinced. He feels like there’s more to the story. He checks in with the Medical Examiner about the time of death again, and she confirms that the time of death is actually Saturday at 8PM, not Friday night as Seon Woo and Yi Han so claim.

When Ji Hoon gets the signed confession from Seon Woo, he casually mentions that Mi Ra must have been a very durable person because she actually managed to stay alive for an entire day, from Friday to Saturday. He shows another piece of evidence that he discovered: the mark of a ring that Seon Woo wears found around Mi Ra’s strangled neck. Ji Hoon also discovered that the person who sent the blackmail videos to Yi Han and Senator Jeong was actually Seon Woo. Though Seon Woo claims that Mi Ra ordered him to send those videos, Ji Hoon knows better.

All Mi Ra had to do was keep quiet, and then Yi Han and Senator Jeong would do anything she asked. As long as there was trust between the two of them that the other would not spill the secrets, Mi Ra would hold the power. She didn’t have to blackmail them with videos. Seon Woo was just a beginner to this whole “power” business, and he thought that he should guarantee their silence by blackmailing them.

Now found out, Seon Woo admits that Mi Ra was able to talk after cracking her neck against the table. She couldn’t move, but she did ask why he was killing her.

Chapter 4: The Death of the Spade Queen

Flashback to the night of the crime. Seon Woo was freaked out of his mind when Mi Ra opened her eyes and spoke to him. She was angry that after all the nice things she had done, why is he hurting her now?

Back to the present, Seon Woo admits that he wanted to be the Queen, the one who held all the power and the secrets. He thought he could be that if he recorded the videos to ensure secrecy (so Mi Ra really didn’t know about the videos). Therefore, when she begged for him to save her, he decided to just get rid of her. In the beginning, Seon Woo had wanted her approval, just like every other man under her control. However, he grew to resent her, and I’m sure him not getting to go on “study abroad” was a sore point. He didn’t like that she would take advantage of their weaknesses just to make them obey her.

Yay they got a confession! But honestly, Ji Hoon just wanted to know what it must have felt like to pretend to be dead.

Ji Hoon goes down to the coroner’s room and asks the M.E. to accompany him as he goes to look at Mi Ra’s body. He didn’t want to see her alone. The M.E. asks if he still has a “fear” – of what, it’s not said. He says that someone knowing a secret is dangerous, so he asks that she just forget it if she knows anything about him.

Chief Jung takes Ji Hoon out to lunch again, and now the new team has political support from the head of a political party. Ji Hoon doesn’t really care for that because he knows that the authority can break ties really easily if they have no need for it. Ji Hoon is more worried about the fact that Chief Jung knows his secret; secrets can evolve into something really good for one person, and really bad for another. Chief Jung nods in understanding.

Comments:

WHAT IS JI HOON’S SECRET?!!??! Of course it probably has to do with the fact that he killed “his woman,” as revealed in the last episode.  I hope it’s a good secret, and not a lame one like, “Oh, I’m actually afraid of blood.”

I found this episode slightly confusing, as I was trying to figure out the location of where the murder occurred. However, I do think that there are three locations that are being talked about: Mi Ra’s home, the villa in Gapyeong where her body was found, and Yi Han’s home where she was actually murdered. Aside from that, this episode was fairly interesting. The killer wasn’t completely twisted, but he had a lust for power and didn’t know the best way to gain that power. I found that his motive was rooted in jealousy for not being as successful as Yi Han, and rooted in fear. Even Ye Ri, being sympathetic as she is, understood that Seon Woo was scared. I feel that this killer was a lot more sane than the previous killers we’ve had.

I’d really like to know what’s going on with Ye Ri now, and learn about her backstory. Or see more of her drunk.

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