by UD Yasha
Afraid, lost and confused. To some extent hopeful that I would get to know something about dad.
‘Think about how you ran downstairs, how your footsteps echoed in the silence.’
They had echoed. I had also heard my heart thud away. It was beating fast again. Funnily, it was like I was in the moment. The smell of ash penetrated my lungs. It seemed to grow stronger. I was running down the steps. I remember using my phone and typing a message. Rathod. I had sent him a text. My heart rocked faster. I had just remembered something. I could know it all. Sweat layered on my skin. I wasn’t sure if I was actually sweaty or if I had felt sweaty in the morning while running down. It didn’t matter because now I was close to the back gate. The moment of truth.
‘Are you at the door yet, Siya?’ Komal said.
I nodded. I was running like there was a fire roaring behind me. The cool air of the early morning hit me. I inhaled sharply.
Komal’s voice came from far away. ‘What do you see, Siya?’
‘I see a man. He’s standing in front of me. But I cannot make out who he is. Right now, he’s in the shadows of the trees in the distance.’ I cannot recognize him.
‘How big is his silhouette?’
‘He’s tall,’ I said, wary of the fact that my father was tall too. Radha and I had got our height from him. ‘I don’t know who he is though.’
‘It’s okay. Just stay in the moment.’
My eyes searched the ground as I thought of the dead woman. She was alive in the boot, so she must be alive right now as well. That’s when I saw her. She was moving on the ground.
‘Help me,’ she said, her voice barely coming through between her heavy heaves.
I ran to her and knelt down.
‘I had called you, Siya. Your father…he…’ the woman said and her eyes closed.
‘What about him?’ I said and started giving her CPR. I could not let her die.
I looked up again in the shadows. Dad, is it you? There was no one there anymore. My eyes explored the endless foliage. The man wasn’t there anymore.
BANG. BANG. There were two gunshots in the distance. I was too disoriented to see anything. I knew I had no defence in the darkness. I jumped on the ground next to the woman, still trying to revive her. She was bleeding profusely. Silence returned. I tried to look around but saw no one. Who had fired the shots? And at whom? The noise seemed to have come from inside the factory.
I needed to save the woman as she could have the answers.
I got on top of her and started pumping her heart. I was at it for a few minutes.
‘Siya!’ Someone called out my name. I turned around and the world around me started spinning. Who called me? Everything around me started fading away. The world became a shade of grey.
I heard a faint voice. ‘Don’t do that.’ I didn’t know who it was. The voice was too low. My world was spinning faster. Before I knew it, the lights behind my eyes went out.
I opened my eyes with a start. Komal was next to me.
‘Are you okay?’ she said.
I looked around. I was not at Stan Mills. But I knew that throughout. I was aware I was in Komal’s office.
‘It all felt so life-like,’ I said.
‘I know,’ Komal said and offered me more water.
‘I was trying to save the woman. I think that’s how her blood got on me. I was giving her CPR to revive her,’ I said.
‘I know,’ Komal said again. ‘You were saying everything out loud.’
My eyebrows went up in surprise. I didn’t know that. ‘That man,’ my voice faded away.
‘We can’t be sure who he was.’
‘He was tall like my dad.’
‘Yes, you said that too. But there are many tall men.’
‘Will I ever remember?’ I said, tearings streaming down my face.
Komal said nothing.
‘I don’t even know why I am crying,’ I said. ‘I am glad I didn’t kill the woman.’
‘You remembered a part of what happened. That’s a victory for you according to me. But you don’t feel like it because you were seeking answers to bigger questions—whether your father is still alive and if you saw him today morning.’
Silence.
‘You should be happy, Siya. The rest of it will come to you. Just give it time.’
‘What if I don’t have time? What if it was my dad and he now needs my help.’
‘You will find a way in either case.’
‘This was a victory, Siya,’ Komal said. ‘You should be proud of yourself. You are a step closer to knowing exactly what all happened.’
I nodded. Komal was right. I had two fears at the start. One of them had been ruled out. I didn’t know how I would have dealt with killing a woman, especially when there seemed no reason to. Despite getting some answers, the session made my suspicion of having seen dad even stronger than before.
After I thanked Komal for the session and paid for it, I sat inside my car with my hands on the wheel. The car engine was still off. I was ruminating about what had happened in the past hour. I used to do that a lot before. Radha used to come with me every week during my first week of seeing Komal. She used to sit outside and read about finance. Even then, she used to only join me when I flicked on the headlamps of our car.
My chain of thoughts was broken by my vibrating phone. It was on the empty seat next to me. Rathod’s name flashed on the screen.
‘Dr. Rastogi tried calling you but couldn’t get through,’ he said. ‘So, he called me. He has found a lot of gunshot residue on the hands of Jane Doe. I told Dr. Sonia about this and she asked me to get a sample of the GSR. Sonia told me she knows of a newly discovered and advanced method that checks if particular GSR has come from a specific gun.’
‘That’s huge, Rathod. It can tie suspects to crime scenes directly,’ I said, forgetting about everything else.
‘I know. I just got the sample and Sonia is checking it as we speak.’
‘Right now, we know that the GSR found in the bullets that killed the Jathars and John Doe has come from the same kind of gun. A local Indian variety. Sonia is conducting more advanced tests to check if it was the same gun. Same is the important part here.’
‘If it is the same, then we can say with reasonable certainty that Jane Doe killed the Jathars and John Doe in the morning. She gets tied to the crime scene. The two events connect.’
‘Sonia said she will take thirty minutes to tell us. As they say, I don’t want to count the chickens before they hatch. But if it’s the same gun, then everything changes.’
‘Okay, great. Come to my house right away. I just met my therapist and I’ve partly remembered what happened in the morning at Stan Mills.’
‘I’m on my way,’ Rathod said and hung up.
Chapter Twenty
Dr. Sonia Joshi prided herself on learning and constantly improving. Just two months back, she had attended a conference on modern techniques in forensic science in Melbourne. Out of the many concepts and ideas that she had been exposed to, the most exciting was a new gunshot residue examination technique. It took the components of GSR and analysed them to a detail that was never done before. The technique was designed to detect unique elements and isotopes in glass fragments that were found in the GSR that got deposited on the shooter. Simultaneously, the same test was conducted on the gunshot wound and the ammunition. If all the isotopes and elements matched, the shooter could be placed on the crime scene.
The only challenge was knowing if the person on whom GSR was found was just a bystander or the shooter. GSR discharged from firearms could land on objects or people close to it. The quantity of GSR was the highest on the firearm and the shooter, which was a generally accepted norm in the field of forensic science.
Sonia remembered the last line of the presenter on the topic. ‘GSR can now be used as a fingerprint. Its components remain the same before, during and after a firearm is discharged.’
The same researcher had said that tests could als
o be conducted on the remaining ammunition from a batch if the actual ammunition was not found. It was going to completely revolutionize the field of GSR testing.
Sonia didn’t need the remaining batch. She had the actual bullets. Four of them. Two in John Doe’s chest and one each in the bodies of Niyati and Malhar Jathar. That gave her a big sample size to test the components of GSR in each.
Analysing the isotopes and elements was a challenge without the right equipment. But when Rathod gave her samples of the GSR found on Jane Doe, Sonia called up a researcher called Gandhar Deshpande at the Central Forensic Science (CFS) Laboratory in Pune. He owed her a favour and the lab was one of the six advanced forensics labs in India. It had state of the art equipment that could be used to get an idea about the components of the GSR.
She had called him up and asked if he could help her out. She gave him minimal information and had convinced him to keep it off the record.
He had agreed because of two reasons. First, the GSR test she was conducting was the first one of its kind, at least at the CFS Lab in Pune. That excited Gandhar. And second, he was young and eager to learn from her. So, she had arranged for the GSR sample to be delivered to Gandhar. She had kept the communication off CID records, but had taken precautions to file it into the system in case the evidence needed to be produced in court. She recorded a statement that said she had a reason to believe that putting the procedure in the system might cause her personal harm as she felt threatened.
Now, two hours later, she was back in her CID Lab, awaiting the results of the test. Even though the CFS had advanced equipment, they had to use an ad-hoc assembly to test the isotopes and elements in the GSR as the exact one was not available in India. As far as Sonia knew, only four forensic centres in the world had it, as the technology was still new. It meant they were going to need more time to find out if Jane Doe was responsible for the triple homicide.
Sonia was glad that she trusted Rathod but felt guilty at the same time. Even after she had told Rathod that she would test what he wanted her to, she had thought of reporting him to the ACP. But she had not, thinking she would give him the benefit of doubt. Her reason was based on her perception of Rathod. He was amongst the few officers who treated everyone with dignity and respect. Being a woman in a male-dominated industry, especially the higher up you went, was hard and rare. Amid all that, men like Rathod were scarce. He had never looked down upon her just because she was a woman. Her gender didn’t matter to him. He was just with everyone. That he trusted Siya Rajput so much also told her he had no issues taking orders from a woman, as long as they had the same vision.
While she waited for the result, she thought of conducting the ballistics tests on all the bullets from both the crime scenes. The task that Rathod had originally asked her to do.
Sonia knew that any kind of forensic testing in India was a problem. The crime scenes or the evidence gathered was often harmed because of improper handling. When she had joined the CID four years back, she had trained her staff for two whole months on proper methods to collect samples.
That’s why Sonia wasn’t happy with the way the two bullets from Stan Mills had been collected. Yes, granted it would be classified as a part of the anonymous tip. But a defence attorney could tear open the case simply based on proper procedure not being followed. It had occurred to her when Rathod had asked her to conduct the tests but she had let it pass, thinking Siya would know more about its admissibility in court. From what Sonia had gathered, Siya wanted to get to the bottom of knowing what happened to her father and such details were the least of her concerns if corrupt police officers were behind his disappearance. The anonymous tip would definitely help with it being admissible but it would still depend on the public prosecutor’s skills.
That was not her concern. So, she let it go and started with the bullets retrieved from Stan Mills. The logic behind such a ballistics test was simple. Each gun made unique marks, or striations as they were called by forensic experts, on any bullet that was fired using it. So, if two or more bullets have the same striations, they were fired from the same gun. Striations of all known fired bullets were recorded in a central system in India that was maintained by the Directorate of Forensic Science Services (DFSS).
If the firearm was retrieved and not the bullet, the process was elaborate as a bullet had to be discharged from the weapon. With just the bullets available, it was all about observing and recording the striations.
She watched the bullets under a microscope and recorded each striation. After ten minutes, a device beeped twice, confirming that both the bullets from Stan Mills had the same striations, meaning they were fired from the same gun. She next uploaded the pattern of the striations to the DFSS database. She wanted to keep it out of the system but there was no way around this. Once it was uploaded, she set up a search to see if the same gun had been used for any other known crimes.
There was no point in waiting so she started examining the bullets from the triple homicide. As she got the hang of the pattern under the microscope, she grew more confident that all the four bullets had been fired from the same gun. It was different to the one used at Stan Mills. After ten more minutes, her device beeped twice again to confirm what she already knew. She fed those striations into the DFSS database and set up a search for them as well.
Sonia sat back in her chair. It had been an exhausting day and she could not wait to go back home. She felt better knowing that her husband would be there to give her a nice back rub. She would then apply some Amrutanjan on her forehead and go to sleep to face the world of murders again the next day.
She whistled the tune of her favourite Arijit Singh song as she waited for the search to be complete. The software didn’t tell her the progress but she knew from experience that it could take up to an hour.
As the minutes ticked by, she felt relieved because the software always first checked the new entries against the most gruesome crimes like terrorism-related or horrific and unsolved murder cases. The crimes got lesser in intensity the further the search ran. She glanced at the clock. It was ten thirty-two, fourteen minutes since the search for the bullets from Stan Mills had started. It would be getting to lesser intensity crimes soon.
Just as she thought that, the software beeped once. It said:
1 Match(s) Detected.
EXPAND NOW.
Sonia stopped whistling and jumped from her chair. She stood in front of her computer. It had to be a bad one for the software to go off so fast. She had not expected it to.
She clicked the ‘EXPAND NOW’ button. A case file popped up. It was handled by both the Mumbai and Pune Police in 2002, which she found odd. She had not come across a case where two police forces were investigating it together. The case itself was of the unsolved murder of a woman named Sheena Ahuja. Why was the Pune Police also on the case? She read the case number. M-31222. She pressed another button to get the case summary.
A movement to her right and her attention was drawn towards her door. She could make out that someone was outside the opaque glass wall. She thought it was someone from her staff so she looked back at her computer.
The summary of the case took over her screen.
Sheena Ahuja had been shot twice, once in the head and once in the torso. The case had gone on for over four years before it was officially declared unsolved. The Mumbai Police had first rights over it. The Pune Force had joined a few days later. Just as she read the reason why both were jointly investigating the case, her attention was again drawn towards her door.
The person outside her office still had not moved. Sonia tried to play down the growing uneasiness that was creeping up on her. She didn’t realize what caused it. Seconds ticked by. The person outside had not moved. Who was it?
As she took a step away from the computer to see who it was, her door swung open and the person came in.
It was a man. Tall and well-built. He had grey hair that was cut short. She could not recognize him as he was wearing a black mask.
She froze.
Before she could take her next breath, the man raised his arm and pointed a gun at her. The next instant, two bullets, fired in quick succession, sliced through the chilled morgue air and hit Sonia in the chest.
A stinging pain ripped through her body even before she fell to the ground. She saw the blurred figure of the man walk up to her table and take something from it. The bullets, she thought helplessly. Maybe something else. How had security not stopped him? Before that thought could go out of her mind, she saw the man walk out from the same door he came.
At that moment, Sonia was only sure of one thing. She had a few seconds to live. She knew the dynamics of a gunshot wound to the chest too well. At times like these, knowledge was a bitch. She had conducted a lot of autopsies of a similar nature. She had seen the way arteries had burst open, causing internal bleeding and the heart to go into shock. She could almost feel her body and mind collapse.
She somehow reached her phone which was clipped to the loops of her pants. Rathod had called her just a while back, so his name was fortunately on the ‘Recent Calls’ list. She put the phone on the floor. She heard a faint ring go through and then it stopped. She hoped with all her remaining life that Rathod had answered because the next words were going to be the last to ever come from her mouth.
She yelled, or at least she thought she did, ‘The bullet is a match. M-31222.’
Chapter Twenty-One
I got back home at almost ten in the night. My two hour-session with Komal had flown by. But it had been fruitful. I remembered her words. This is a victory for you, Siya. I had started to believe it the more I thought about it while driving back home.
Rathod arrived a few minutes after I arrived. We had varan, rice and sabji from the morning for dinner. While eating, I told Rathod, Radha and Rahul about my session.
