A young Latin woman, about twenty, dressed in jeans and wearing blue rubber gloves, opened the door.
“I’m Detective O’Higgins. SFPD.” He flashed his badge and walked by her.
“Mr. Chaundhry is expected back shortly. We’re cleaning,” she said.
He walked by her, putting his wallet back. He looked at her jeans. They were rolled up and she was barefoot. “In the hallway. Mr. Chaundhry called us and told us it was okay to clean. That we could come in and start cleaning up.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “You’re fine.”
He looked around and saw the big landscape painting across from him. To his left was an antique umbrella stand with an assortment of umbrellas and what looked like a cane with a decorative head. He walked to the stand and moved the umbrellas and cane around, looking for a murder weapon they might have overlooked. He stared down into the bottom of the polished brass umbrella stand but saw nothing.
“Go ahead, I won’t be long,” he said.
The young woman looked at him a moment, then turned away and went back down the hallway. She’d been cleaning the elevator. As he approached he could see another cleaning woman, on her knees, with a brush scrubbing Asha’s bloody shoe prints from the hardwood floor. Most of her shoe prints had been cleaned, and were gone.
He imagined Asha walking crazily in the hallway. Why hadn’t she gone upstairs? Because she was telling the truth … She got here only moments before patrol arrived and after Nirad called 911. Why did he call it in? Why not just leave the house? He had to establish an alibi.
He didn’t know why he’d come back to the house. He didn’t know what he was looking for either, other than the murder weapon itself; someone would have removed it by now. Something like that. It would have been obvious, yet they’d not found it. Why? The only explanation was that the killer had hidden it and it was here in the house somewhere. It had to be here. He would be in trouble for coming back into the house without a justification, but he didn’t care. Let Nirad scream to the DA about it.
It was cold in the house, the heat having been off for days, dank. He walked into the cavernous kitchen and snapped on the lights. He looked at the stove and decided to open it. He saw two withered eggplants lying on a Pyrex dish, their purplish skins burnt. He remembered Madrone telling him they’d smelt something burning when they first arrived and while struggling with Asha, who was hysterical. Someone turned off the stove. Asha? Or had patrol? Would she have cooked dinner if she’d just stabbed her husband and Kumar to death?
He closed the oven door and turned to face the kitchen, with its huge granite bar separating the kitchen from a long chef’s table. On the opposite wall were a collection of posters of the Red Fort in Delhi.
I was cooking Rishi’s favorite, Bengin Bartha, Asha had told them during their first interview.
He turned back to look at the stove top. A pot held what looked like congealed tomatoes. A small coconut milk carton stood by the stove where she’d left it. A Safeway bag was sitting on the white Carrara marble countertop next to it. He peered inside the bag, lifted a bottle of wine and saw a receipt in the bag. It had stuck, folded in two, to the bottom of the bottle and they’d missed it. It was a Safeway receipt for three items: coconut milk, a bottle of wine, and parsley, time stamped 5:25 PM the day of the murders.
The children would have been due back from their play date with the Gilberts by then. Kumar should have picked them up, but she didn’t — why? So Kumar was dead by five, or before? And before Asha got back from the store?
He took a photo of the receipt with his phone. She’d paid with a credit card, so a record on a bank statement would confirm the time.
He saw an immersion blender still plugged in. Who cooks dinner for someone they intend to murder? Maybe for the girls? No — He turned on the lights over a large chef’s table. It had been set with six place settings. Doesn’t make any sense. She had a window of time to kill them both before the girls were due back, no denying it.
“No.” He said it out loud, walking toward the chef’s table that was frozen in time. White dinner plates sat in brown wicker chargers; clean flatware lay on folded linen napkins. The table linen was spotless. Someone had taken pains to set the table.
Had Kumar set the table? Would a woman like Asha actually stay in the house with her daughters if she’d caught her husband with another woman? Would Rishi Chaundhry have sex with his nanny when he knew his wife was only going to the store and his children—old enough to know something was going on between Kumar and their father—were due back home by five? It was all preposterous. Asha didn’t do it, because she didn’t have time. The call from Nirad to 911 had come in at 5:30 when Asha Chaundhry was at the supermarket using her credit card. She signed something. They’ll have that signature too … She was here cooking dinner … She left for the market knowing Kumar would pick up the girls and before Nirad came home. What happened between the time she left and the time she returned?
He walked by the two maids, who were grim faced and quietly working to clean the elevator. He went down the hall into Rishi’s office, and tapped on the computer that was still on. The screen lit up and showed the spreadsheet he’d been working on. He looked at the Excel sheet’s title, went into File Manager and began to look for it, but the file system seemed chaotic and the Hindi file names were impossible for him to read.
He clicked back to the open file, and, as if Jennifer who so often helped him with his computer, were standing next to him, helping him, he quickly inserted the sheet’s file path in a header. With that information he went back and searched again, and found the file in File Manager. The file had been last updated and saved at 4:51 p.m. on the day of the murder.
Holy shit. Rishi Chaundhry was here on his computer working before he was killed. It was exactly what Asha had told them. She was telling the truth. He was alive when she left for the Safeway.
“She didn’t do it. He was alive when she left.” He spoke out loud again. “God damn it!” He leaned in and looked at the Excel file’s time stamp carefully, then slammed his hand down on the desk. His intuition had been right. She didn’t kill him. And she didn’t kill Kumar either.
He was careful to grab a screen shot of the file’s time stamp before he left, emailing it to himself from Rishi’s computer. He called Towler and told him what he’d found, and that he and Marvin still needed access to the scene. Then he called Fields and told her to take Rishi’s computer from the house.
Both maids, on their knees, their rubber gloves bloodstained, looked up at him as he walked by. He told them they’d have to leave, that the police weren’t finished with the scene. He called for a patrol officer to stand guard and to keep the family, including Nirad Chaundhry and his employees, out of the house under any circumstances. He got a call almost immediately from Chaundhry’s lawyer, but didn’t take it.
CHAPTER 19
“Why did you come here today?” Marvin said. The two detectives and Asha Chaundhry were sitting in one of Homicide Division’s interview rooms on Bryant Street. The walls were dirty, the furniture shabby. The hallways of SFPD’s headquarters held a sense that all of it would be abandoned soon, for the new headquarters and a new era.
A strong smell of men’s cologne in the interview room added to the room’s claustrophobic atmosphere. It was a room where people were broken down, a room where lies were manufactured and guilty faces hidden in a last resort—deals finally made. The room’s bare bones furniture—just table and chairs— spoke to the room’s history of profound human suffering.
“I want to confess — confess to killing my husband and Bharti Kumar,” Asha said.
She was dressed conservatively. She’d not worn a sari to the interview. And the bindi she’d worn the day before was gone, too, Michael noticed. She looked child-like and frightened, as if someone were about to burst through the door. The two detectives sat across from her and s
eemed like giants compared to the slight young woman sitting across from them in an all their suited and very male glory.
“Would you like something, Mrs. Chaundhry? Coffee? Soda?” Marvin asked.
“No thank you,” she said.
“You say you killed them both? That’s what you came to tell us?” Marvin asked. “You want to confess, is that correct?”
“Yes. Both,” Asha said quickly. She didn’t look at either one of them. Marvin tapped his pen on the laminate tabletop.
“We have a receipt from your purchase at the Marina Safeway that has a 5:27 PM time on it, the day of the murders,” O’Higgins said. “The receipt was found in your kitchen. It listed three items: a bottle of wine, coconut milk and parsley. All three items were sitting in a paper bag in the kitchen. You were at the Safeway, weren’t you? Ms. Kumar didn’t have a driver’s license, or a car. Your neighbor, Mrs. Gilbert, said Ms. Kumar didn’t drive. You were at the Safeway. Someone called 911 at 5:42 from a number that we believe belongs to Nirad Chaundhry’s cell phone. The recording of the call to 911 is of a man’s voice. Please explain how you could have killed your husband and Bharti Kumar?”
“I did it before I left the house,” Asha said. “I killed them before I left.” She looked down at the table.
“Why?” Marvin said. “Why did you kill them?”
“Because Rishi was having an affair with Bharti. I was angry. I caught them. Nirad told you. He’s right. I killed them.”
“How long had you known about the affair?” Marvin asked.
“I don’t remember. Several days — no, several weeks,” Asha said.
“Which is it?” O’Higgins asked.
Asha looked up. She’d been avoiding making eye contact with either detective. “I suppose it was days,” she said.
“So everything you told us, before, was a lie? Is that what you’re saying?” O’Higgins said.
“Yes. I lied to you. Yes,” she said.
“I don’t believe you,” O’Higgins said.
“I killed them,” she said. “It’s the truth. I swear it.”
“How did you do it?” Marvin asked.
“I stabbed them — with a knife,” Asha said.
“What knife? Where is it now?” Marvin said.
“A kitchen knife. I put it back in the knife block, in the kitchen.”
“Which knife?” Marvin said.
“I don’t remember. I was in a state. I don’t remember which knife.”
“Okay,” Marvin said. “Who did you kill first?”
“Bharti. Bharti first, then Rishi,” she said.
“So tell us then, exactly, what happened,” Marvin said. “You walked into Ms. Kumar’s bedroom and — explain to us exactly what you did.”
“I — I heard the water and knew she was in the shower,” Asha said.
“Which hand did you hold the knife in?” Marvin asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember which hand you held the knife in?” Marvin said.
“My right hand. Yes. My right hand,” Asha said.
“Show me how you held it,” Marvin said.
“Show you? I don’t understand.”
“Yes. Show us exactly how you held the knife. At your side? In front of you? Was it hidden?
“No, it wasn’t hidden,” Asha said. “I had it out in front of me.”
“So you came into Ms. Kumar’s bedroom, prepared to stab the girl to death? Is that what you’re saying? Holding the knife out so Ms. Kumar could see it?” Marvin said.
“Yes. Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” she said.
“Go on. Tell us what you did next,” Marvin said. He unbuttoned his jacket and wrote something on the yellow legal pad in front of him.
“I came into the bathroom and — I — I stabbed Bharti. I killed her.”
“No,” Marvin said. “I want to hear what you did exactly. How you stabbed her.”
“What do you mean?” She looked at Marvin, then at O’Higgins. “I don’t understand. I’m confessing to this — isn’t that enough?”
“I want you to tell us what happened—exactly. What did Ms. Kumar do when she saw you with the knife?” Marvin said.
“She — she was frightened,” Asha said.
“Did she call out for help? Did she scream? Did she beg you not to kill her? What did she do?” Marvin said.
“I don’t remember,” Asha said. “I killed Bharti. That’s enough. I’m confessing.”
“You don’t remember? You say you murdered Ms. Kumar in the bathroom with a kitchen knife because the girl was having an affair with your husband. But you don’t remember anything about how you did it?”
“I was — I was out of my mind. With jealousy.”
“Okay. You were angry. Is that what you’re telling us?” Marvin said.
“Yes. Of course.”
“But certainly you remember what happened in the bathroom after you walked in? Did Ms. Kumar scream? Did she beg you not to kill her? What happened?” Marvin said, pressing her, a look of disbelief on his face.
“She was getting out of the shower. I stabbed her. She fell and I left.”
“So you stabbed her and she fell down. How did you stab her? Show me. Here—pretend this is the knife.” Marvin rolled his ballpoint pen across the desk, obviously not believing her “Go on. Show us how you stabbed Bharti Kumar to death in the bathroom before you murdered your husband in cold blood and then went to the Safeway to buy some coconut milk for dinner.”
Asha stared down at the pen as it rolled toward her. She didn’t pick it up.
“Go on, show us, Mrs. Chaundhry. Please, stand up and show us.” Marvin said, standing up and moving away from the interview table. “Let’s pretend I’m Ms. Kumar. I just came out of the shower and I see you. Where am I exactly? In the shower stall? Out of the shower stall? What do I do? Where am I exactly when you stabbed me? How many times did you stab me? Did you look me in the eye when you stabbed me?
“Show me how you stabbed Bharti Kumar to death with a kitchen knife you say you took from the kitchen and carried up the stairs. Or was it the elevator you took to the third floor? Elevator or stairs? Which was it?”
“She just stood there. Bharti —” Asha picked up the pen. “I don’t remember.” She started to sob and let the pen fall from her hand.
Marvin looked at O’Higgins. They both knew she was lying, and the confession a fantasy.
“Okay, if you can’t remember how exactly you murdered a girl you said was like a daughter to you, what about your husband? You must remember that, certainly? Tell us about how you murdered Rishi. Go on, describe it to us. Were you in the elevator with him? Was he in the elevator when you found him?”
“Yes. Yes, he was in the elevator.”
“And you had already killed Ms. Kumar. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“So you left the bathroom with the knife you used to kill Ms. Kumar?”
“Yes. Yes!”
O’Higgins watched tears stream down Asha’s face.
“And you did what exactly?” Marvin said.
“I — I got in the elevator and I rode it down.”
“Down where?”
“To the first floor. To Rishi’s office.”
“You’re in the elevator? Not you and your husband?”
“Yes.”
“How did your husband get into the elevator?”
“I don’t remember.” She looked up at them. “I’m confessing to killing them both. That’s what I want to say. I want to speak to a lawyer,” Asha said.
“Why are you lying to us?” Marvin said.
“I’m not lying,” she said. “You have to believe me. I killed them both.”
“Yes, I think you are lying, or you could explain to us how you did
it. How many times did you stab Ms. Kumar, then? How did you manage to not leave any blood, anywhere in Ms. Kumar’s bedroom? Did you change your clothes? You must have, after stabbing two people to death? Where are those clothes now? In the house? Certainly you must have changed clothes, Asha, bloody clothes? You couldn’t have gone to Safeway like that, correct? They must have been blood-stained? After stabbing two people? How is it you managed to not leave a trace of blood anywhere? None in your bedroom, none in the kitchen? None on the knives in the kitchen. None in the Land Rover. Yes we looked at the Land Rover. No blood found. None around the kitchen sink, in any of the bathrooms? Did you clean the knife? You must have cleaned it? But where? In the kitchen sink?
“Why would you go to the Safeway to pick up a bottle of wine and some coconut milk after brutally killing Rishi and your nanny when you knew your daughters were due home and could have walked into the house? What if they’d come home on their own? No, I don’t believe you,” Marvin said. “The question is, why are you lying to us? Why? Do you believe her, Detective?”
“No. I don’t,” O’Higgins said.
“You have to believe me. I killed them,” Asha said.
“I’m afraid we don’t have to believe you,” Marvin said. “That’s not how this works. We deal with facts, and the facts say otherwise.”
“Did your father-in law put you up to this, Asha? Is that what this is about?” O’Higgins said.
“I want to see my daughters. Do you understand? I don’t want them to be near him —he’s a monster. Why can’t you understand?” Asha said. “I killed them. Both! Why can’t you believe me?”
“Come on. I’ll drive you back to the hotel,” O’Higgins said, standing up. “We don’t have time for this nonsense.”
They sat in O’Higgins’ Ford, parked in front of the Clift Hotel in silence. One of the three doormen had asked them to move on. O’Higgins had flashed his badge and they were left alone, making it hard for airport vans and limos to unload. Asha had not wanted to get out of the car. Twice she’d grabbed for the handle but had not pulled the door open. He could tell she wanted to talk and was building up to it. He turned the engine off and turned his cell phone over and over waiting for her to say something.
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