by UD Yasha
‘CID officers will come to your house first up tomorrow morning,’ Rathod said. ‘They’ll want to talk to you. They’ll ask you – ’
I cut in ‘Yeah, I know. They had presumed my mother was dead but instead she’s alive. There’s a new killer out there. He’s leaving behind messages in my mom’s blood, possibly for me. Of course, the CID would want to speak to me.’
Silence.
Rathod said, ‘They’re calling the new killer ‘The Bedroom Strangler’. You would also want to look at the crime scene photographs.’
I nodded. I did not want to go through them with Radha and Rahul around. It was hard enough for them to experience this. I was not going to show them gory and bloody pictures of death that could keep them up at night. Even after half a decade of experience with gruesome killings and crimes, this was hard for me because it was personal.
‘I’ll be with the officers when they come to your house tomorrow,’ Rathod said. ‘You know the protocol.’
We got up to leave. I pulled Radha close. Rahul walked behind us. He took the wheel. Just as I was going to sit in, Rathod called out to me. His car was a few feet away. I crossed over.
He said, ‘I don’t know what happened to you and where you disappeared. But I’ll be glad to work with you again. Don’t hesitate to call me after you go through the crime scene photographs.’
‘Thanks a lot for today,’ I said.
When Radha and Rahul started walking towards the car, I pulled Rathod away.
‘I hate the way things were left when we last spoke,’ I said.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Rathod said. ‘I wondered where you have been for the past three years.’
‘I have a lot to tell you, and I will in due course,’ I said and paused, hesitating a bit. ‘Do you think us working together will be a problem again for your wife?’
‘She…we’re not together anymore. Our divorce went through two years ago.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t—’
‘It’s not your fault. There were clearly some issues in our marriage. My wife suspected we were having an affair when weren’t. That was just the tip of the problems we were facing.’
‘I hope you’re better.’
‘I am. Now let’s catch this bastard together,’ Rathod said and then gave me a reassuring nod of the head.
As I walked towards our car, I clenched the pen drive in my hand and wondered what was inside it. Rahul put the car in gear and turned out of the parking lot, I said, ‘We should tell Karan.’
I was glad Karan was reachable on phone then and not somewhere in the distant mountains.
‘I’ll join you at the back,’ Radha said, touching Rahul’s arm, gesturing him to pull over so she could come at the back.
I pulled out my phone as Radha sat next to me. It was almost midnight. I video called Karan. Shama answered the call. I could make out they were already in bed. Shama rubbed her eyes, the brightness of the screen too much for her eyes. Karan came in the frame, grinning. This was going to be much harder than I had imagined.
‘We need to talk to you, Karan. It’s about maa,’ I said.
Karan said. ‘Did they find her? His voice was heavy with pain and the expression on his face changed drastically. He was prepared to hear the worst. He knew this day would come. He broke down even before I could say anything.
‘She’s alive, but she’s still held captive,’ I said.
Karan suddenly looked better. The situation was not ideal but far from the worst. We told him everything Rathod had told us.
‘Should I ask for a leave?’ Karan said after a prolonged spell of silence.
My brother had the best work ethic amongst the people I knew, even for people in the Army. He was away and alone. Radha and I at least had each other. Sometimes the only cure for sadness was being surrounded by loved ones.
I nodded, realizing he would be alone once Shama comes back. ‘Come if you can.’
‘I’ll come if my leave is approved,’ Karan said. ‘Please take care, you two.’
We got home in fifteen minutes. Shadow jumped on us in greeting. But he calmed down in a beat, reading our body language. He sat on the floor in front of us without making a sound. Rahul went straight to the kitchen to make coffee for all of us. I sat alone with Radha in silence. We had gone through similar pain before as well. Yet this time, the numbness of reality hung in the heavy air. Everything seemed bleak, a shade greyer.
Once Rahul came with the coffee, I went upstairs and got a photo of all of us. Both the parents and their three kids. It was the last photo of all of us together. We had all dressed up for their anniversary. The photo had been clicked a month before maa went missing. Karan was sixteen, Radha was ten and I was fourteen. It was clicked using a good old-fashioned analogue camera. Maa was flashing an evergreen smile in it. She looked beautiful. Radha and I had gotten our green eyes from her. I also had her long curls. It hit me then how similar Karan and dad looked. They had the exact same facial features and grins. Radha and I only got our heights from dad, the rest from maa.
We sipped on our coffee quietly. At times, the best form of communication was silence. Just sitting there with Radha and Rahul felt comforting. A weight was lifted off me. There was now a chance to get maa back.
Radha was thinking of the same thing. ‘At least now we know she’s alive,’ she said and smiled for the first time since she had cried. ‘We’ll be alright,’ she said and I could tell from the tone of her voice she was telling that to herself more than anyone else. But I did not mind that. I needed to hear it as well.
‘I think I need to sleep,’ she said. ‘Will you be okay?’
I nodded.
She continued to stare at me. ‘I won't be though,' she said. ‘Can you come to sleep in my bedroom? Rahul can spread a mattress on the floor.'
I smiled. ‘Of course, I’ll see you in some time,’ I said. I would have joined her right away but I had something else in mind.
A part of me was happy but the other was angry and shocked. Even though I had hoped all these years that maa would somehow be alive, I had always thought she would be with us the moment we found out she was alive. Even as a child, I had wondered how anyone could kill another human being. As Radha and Rahul went upstairs, my mind drifted to the days and years after maa’s disappearance.
Maa had disappeared on 1st August 2003. Radha, Karan and I were out with dad for the day. We had gone to an amusement park and had only returned at almost ten in the night. Maa had stayed back home because she was unwell from a cold and mild fever. Dad still took us because we were all looking forward to the day for a month and he did not want to disappoint us.
After coming home, I rushed upstairs to tell maa about our evening. I remember being excited to see her. I opened her room door very slowly, in case she was sleeping. The light in her room was on. The bed was empty. The bathroom door was ajar and I saw a crack of light around it. I pushed it slowly and screamed.
My scream on seeing the blood in the bathroom brought dad, Radha and Karan to the room. Dad had frozen on seeing the bathroom. But he was quick to take me away from there as well as keep Radha and Karan out. I told them what I saw while we waited in our room. Dad called his cop colleagues and kept trying mom’s number but it was out of range.
We had a security camera in our house because of dad’s cautious nature. But somebody had blocked it at seven forty-five in the evening. Our neighbours had not seen anything. Maa’s shoes were missing so it was deduced rather weakly that she had gone out and then gotten kidnapped. If that was indeed the case, nobody could figure out why there was blood in the bathroom.
Dad himself could not be a part of that investigation directly as it was too close to home. The police chief was a good man and ran the department like a close-knit family so he did not keep dad out completely. Two weeks went by and no lead was found. Initially, it was believed to be a case of kidnapping but there was no call for ransom. It is believed that the chances of getting someone back af
ter a kidnapping are the highest in the first twenty-four hours and then drop by more than ninety per cent. My mother had been gone for almost four hundred hours and people were starting to lose hope. If the investigators were to be believed, my mother had disappeared into thin air. My dad got increasingly frustrated and he asked for leave from work to pursue the investigation on his own.
We were in the care of our maushi, maa’s cousin. Every passing day, we missed maa more. Karan and I were old enough to understand what had happened. We were concerned about dad. He used to come to visit us every evening after we returned from school. We could see he was torn between finding maa and ensuring our welfare. We used to look forward to seeing him. We used to finish our school work on time to be able to spend time with him. Before he left, he would always tell us that we were soon going to find maa.
Then one day, dad did not come home. We were eagerly waiting for him at eight o’clock. We were not concerned at first. Neither was maushi. At eight thirty she called him but his phone was out of range. At nine, she called the police department, but he had not shown up there as well. None of his friends knew where he was as well.
Just like that, we had lost both our parents in less than three months.
Chapter Nine
I strode up the stairs and went to my room. My study table was filled with books on psychology and maths – the two subjects I taught at a college. I had a stack of uncorrected papers from an exam I had conducted in class last week. I took the books and put them in a pile at the corner of the table. The papers went on top of that. The desk was clear. I had actual work to do.
I was already thinking about the woman who was murdered. Rathod wanted me to look at the crime scene photos. I booted up my laptop and inserted the pen drive. It had two medical reports and a folder of photos. I opened the folder. It had subfolders of different names. Victim, Bedroom, Bathroom, Luminol, House and Garden.
I opened the first that was titled ‘Victim’. It had photos of the dead woman’s body from different angles and some close-up shots of the neck.
The next folder was titled ‘Bedroom’. Every corner and object in a crime scene needed to be photographed, however irrelevant or small it may seem. You could never be sure what detail would help you get the killer. I skipped it for now. I would look at that series later. Rathod wanted me to specifically see something.
I guessed ‘House’ and ‘Garden’ would have the same kind of photos and I had already seen the Luminol lighting up a message. I would look at them later. I opened folder titled ‘Bathroom’.
I froze on seeing the first image. It was taken from the bathroom door. The walls and tiles were splashed in blood. A literal bloodbath. But that’s not what made me go numb.
The exact same thing had happened in the bathroom of our house when maa had gone missing. All the blood in our bathroom belonged to maa. The reason she was presumed dead then was because of the sheer amount of blood she had lost. It had to be a miracle for her to be alive after that.
The similarity was uncanny. The crime scene was a copy of the crime scene at my house when maa disappeared. Trademark Zakkal in many ways, except for the presence of the body.
I moved to the next image. It was maa’s hair. I felt my breaths shorten. I pushed myself to focus. I noticed that the hair was black, with some white strands, shining, eerily lifelike. It was placed in a clean circle, the only area in the bathroom that did not have blood. I moved to the next image. It was a long shot of the bathroom, that captured the circle, the hair and the blood. My hands went cold seeing the similarity to our bathroom. I narrowed my eyes as I flipped through the other bathroom images.
My parents’ disappearance had pushed me into studying law and then becoming a defence lawyer and a private detective. I had spent hours going through maa’s files. The only physical evidence left behind was the blood on the bathroom walls. Seeing similar images drilled in the gravity of the situation.
The larger question loomed. What was I going to do? Was I ready to go back?
I had to make a choice. I could either let the CID handle this independently or investigate the murder on my own. The latter meant returning to a life I had run away from for the past three years. I feared it would rip apart all the pieces that I had tried to join. But a thought came to my mind. What was I even afraid to lose? Being anxious, afraid of waking up, feeling scared and breaking into a sweat, worried knowing that the girl whose life hung in balance because of me could die any moment? This was no life. For the first time in years, I had felt energetic and excited when I had spoken to Rathod. The energy probably stemmed from knowing maa was alive. If there was ever going to be a last case I investigated, I would be glad if it involved saving maa and getting her back.
I inhaled deeply.
I exited my bedroom and went to the stairs leading up to the terrace. The space at the landing was big enough to have racks that were stacked with files and papers from my days of practising law. It also had a small study table that I used when I was still active. I had spent hundreds of hours sitting at it, working cases. I had some of my biggest breakthroughs and ideas at that exact place. The memories always flooded my mind when I took even a step towards the terrace.
That day was no different. I had to go to the place that reminded me most of it to put an end to the cause of my trauma.
My feet turned heavy as I dragged myself to the file cabinet. I knew the file I dreaded the most was at the extreme end of the rack. Radha had put it away. I froze.
The face of the man I had defended three years back flashed in front of my eyes. Shivers crawled up my body. His name was Kunal Shastri. I remembered the way he had shaken my hands after the court case had gotten over. The way he had looked in my eyes and smiled, while gently pressing into the handshake. The way he had said, ‘thank you' in a low hoarse voice.
I had flashed him a warm smile then, thinking I had done a good job by setting free another innocent person. It was my way of giving back to society. Because of dad being accused of taking maa, I knew the pain of a loved one being accused of a crime that they had not committed. I thought that was the last I would see of him.
A month had gone by and I was about to pour some silky Glenlivet in a glass to wind down after a busy day when he had walked back into my office. He had smiled again. But this time it did not reach his eyes. They looked cold and pale. That was my first hint that something was wrong.
‘Can I come in?’ he said, knocking on the door, peering in. ‘I see you’re celebrating. Mind if I join you for a minute?’
I hesitated. He had been a good guy with manners. I had no reason to feel creeped out.
‘Yes please,’ I said.
I pulled out another glass from the rack and poured him a drink. ‘What are you going to do now?’ I asked.
He held his glass in the air. ‘To freedom,' he said and clinked it against mine. He took a sip and made a face like he was appreciating the whiskey. ‘I'm going to go home to my wife and daughter and hold them close like I've done the past month every night. This has taken a lot out of all of us. I cannot thank you enough.'
I never knew what to say when a client thanked me after I had successfully defended them. I feel it was my duty to seek justice, whether it was defending the innocent or chasing the guilty.
All legal systems are erected on two pillars – the guilty must be punished while the innocent must be armed with rights. Both are equally important. For catching a criminal is as important as ensuring that good people are empowered. There are enough people doing the latter and not many good ones doing the former. There’s no glamour in defending someone who had been accused of rape or murder.
So, I always smiled and felt good about carrying out my duty. That was all it was to me. A simple duty. The reputation, the money; they were all by-products.
We sipped the whiskey in silence for a while until he downed the final three sips. He rose. ‘I better get going,’ he said.
‘Use the back door this time. The media
doesn’t know that it exists,’ I said to him, peeking out from the window through the curtains.
He nodded his head slowly with a slight curl of his mouth which I knew by then was his gesture of appreciation. ‘I’ll always remember you,’ he said, once again smiling, and once again the smile did not reach his eyes.
My hands went cold.
I could not quite place what that feeling was. It was maybe something about his demeanour. I watched him take his stuff—a leather messenger bag and a coat. He broke step for the back door and stopped when he reached it. He turned around, looking very different all of a sudden. Raw and pale.
Am I imagining this or something is wrong with him?
He took a half a step towards me. ‘Also,’ he said and paused.
And in that very second, everything changed.
I froze and panic ricked my intestine. I knew what was coming next. How could I have done this? I was in sheer disbelief. Could it actually be true? But that feeling lasted less than a picosecond. Guilt crippled me.
He stepped forward again. I did not want him to say what I was thinking. As if him not saying it would make it less true.
‘I wouldn’t have been able to walk away free had it not been for you,’ he said. ‘You’re the best. Especially as I killed all those girls.’ He held his hands, fingers separated, in front of his face. ‘I killed them with these very hands. I have been meaning to tell you for so long. Meaning to tell someone. Meaning to be appreciated for my work.’
He threw his hands in the air. He smiled again. It was a menacing turn of his face, one that I would replay over and over again in my head for years to come. He bore no expression. And I could see it this time. ‘That's why I want to thank you, my lawyer,' he said, stressing on the last two words. ‘You proved I was innocent. You did the unthinkable. I knew you were good at your job. But to play the court, the judge, the police and, the media, especially in the manner you did was incredible. Wow. Hats off to you.' He mimed taking off an imaginary hat. He paused. ‘I wanted to ask you. You said something about only defending innocent people when we first met. Is it actually true? Because you convinced everyone I was as pure as a saint. Having said that, maybe I should start believing in God. For what you did was a miracle. You're God, Siya Rajput. You're God!'
