by UD Yasha
Silence resounded in my office.
Kunal went on. ‘You know, after the court let me go, I thought I will kill one last time. And I just did. I thought I should come and tell you right after the kill.'
I was stunned. Every word was like a turn of the dagger that was already inside me. I could not move. I could not breathe. His words, his face and the conviction with which he spoke pierced the knife deeper into my heart. As my head become a muddle, I knew this was going to change everything.
Kunal Shastri was enjoying himself. He had gotten an audience after a long time. He was making the most of it. He said, ‘But don’t worry, my Lord. I have decided. I will never kill again. Never ever. I will change my ways. I will hold my wife close and tell bedtime stories to my daughter. I used to do that before as well. I used to tell her a special story—the same one on the nights I used to venture out to kill. But I will never tell her that story again. I will change my ways.’ He started grinning. ‘I feel like I’m alive again. It’s all because of you. I want to thank you for everything,’ he said, and then finally left, leaving me alone with the demons he had set free.
I collapsed to my knees. I saw his face wherever I looked. My head touched the ground and I sat that way for hours. I did not cry, not then, not when the shock of everything was so raw and fresh. I did not answer my calls. I had not even heard my phone ring.
Eventually, Radha came to my office. At least that’s what she told me later on. I did not remember her banging on my office door and eventually coming in. I also did not remember her asking me what was wrong. I did not have the slightest memory of her taking me to the hospital. I do not remember what happened next. All I could see were four different faces of four different girls; faces of those that he had murdered. Nothing else mattered, nothing else existed. All I knew was that my life was over. I was responsible for the murder of a seven-year-old girl, the one he had taken after I had fought his case that ensured he stayed out of jail.
I had only said one thing. They were probably the most important words I have ever uttered. I don’t remember calling Radha. But she told me later that I called her and told her about the girl whose life was in danger. I would later discover that the police had gotten to her just in time to save her from dying. But in the meantime, she had lost a lot of blood and her brain had been deprived of oxygen, putting her in a coma from which she had not ever awakened. Kunal Shastri was arrested soon after. A trial followed and he was found guilty. It was found out that his wife killed along with him. She was his alibi and the basis of my case for his innocence in the first place.
The doctors told me I had a blackout. They suspected it was because of excessively high stress. My blood pressure had shot up as if I had just sniffed cocaine. I was kept under observation in the hospital for the next three days.
We eventually got discharged from the hospital after three days. Radha hugged me and did not let go for hours. Maybe even the entire week. I started crying somewhere in between. Radha said only one thing, the one that mattered the most then. ‘I love you no matter what,’ she whispered in my ear.
Chapter Ten
The girl Kunal Shastri had attacked was fighting for her life because of me. Shastri was serving time for his crimes, but that did not change the fact that I could have caught him earlier and saved the girl.
That’s why I was hesitant to dive into this investigation. I was afraid to admit the reason. I knew it deep down. I thought I was not good enough anymore. If I was, I would not have let Kunal Shastri get away in the first place. His victims would have gotten justice earlier. He had been caught one victim too late because I had freed him in the first place. It was a dangerous thought to have. It snaked in my mind and I kept feeding it with more self-doubt. I checked on the girl in the coma every month. Her name was Suhana Kulkarni. Pain shoot through my head as I thought about Suhana.
A switch clicked.
Maa’s smiling face flashed in front of my eyes. I remembered the last time she had held me close and planted a kiss on my cheek. It was just the day before she had vanished. I had gone to her room to tell her I was leaving for school. I remembered her tender smile, one that could calm even the harshest of souls.
At that moment, love triumphed over fear.
I realized then, that we only need to be brave for just one heartbeat as long as we act in that fleeting moment of courage.
No more. Enough is enough. I scampered to my room and grabbed my laptop. I ran downstairs. I had to put an end to this. Nothing else entered my mind. I plucked a bunch of keys from the stand and unlocked the front door. The cold air smacked me. I was not wearing a sweater. I did not care. I crossed to the garage of our house. It was a few yards away from the veranda. I had last been inside it almost three years ago. It would have been a wreck if not for Radha who made sure it was cleaned every three months. I used a key to unlock the two padlocks on the garage shutter.
I stood back, never more convinced that it was time to open it. I stepped forward, bent down and grabbed the handle. I yanked it up. An old dusty smell hit me. I covered my nose and mouth instinctively. I found the light switch and turned it on. The garage revealed itself.
Memories of days and nights spent inside rushed past me. The one that stood out was the moment when I had realized that Kishore Zakkal was the person behind the disappearance of my mother and six other women. It was late at night. I had been investigating maa’s case along with Santosh Wagh for a while. Once we had joined the dots that pointed at Zakkal, it was all about gathering hard evidence against him. Within the next two weeks, we had handed it over to the Maharashtra CID. They came on board after reviewing it. Eventually, Zakkal was caught in the act of stalking and killing a woman. We had saved the woman just in time.
I was delighted to get justice for maa. But that happiness segued into disappointment because I never got to know what had happened to maa or the other women who were taken by Zakkal. He refused to speak. He refused to reveal if the women were dead or alive. The court found him guilty of kidnapping seven women and killing one woman. There was enough evidence in his car that linked him to the women who had disappeared.
I had felt something was missing despite Zakkal’s conviction as we had not found the bodies. It did not really matter in terms of logic. Zakkal had been caught. But it felt incomplete then and in the years that followed. Until now.
Now, we knew that maa was alive. At least she was twelve hours back. Which gave me hope that she along with the other six women could also be breathing somewhere. Keeping them hidden for more than sixteen years and now showing they were alive in some way would require immense resources. We knew Zakkal was not short of them. What we did not know was that he had a fan—a person that he would mentor. Maybe even teach how to kill. Zakkal would have had to have an apprentice who would have looked after his women once he was caught. A chill ran through my body again.
When did I start getting so scared?
I hated it. I made a mental note to start punching the boxing sack we had on the terrace. I pulled down the garage shutter. I was so consumed in my own mind that I failed to realize I was inside the garage after three years. All the items were untouched from the previous time I had stepped in, except for the cleaning Radha did herself every three months. The last was just a week ago around Christmas.
There was a long desk along the wall. It was stacked with books and newspapers, all were related to my mother’s disappearance. Clippings from Zakkal’s trial had been added five years ago when Kishore Zakkal was found guilty. I had not bothered to add the papers from the appeals made by Zakkal and his lawyer later on as by then I had stopped practising law.
I looked sideways and stared at a murder board I had made when I was first investigating Zakkal. It had timelines of everything related to mom’s case. Photos of suspects and places were clipped and connected using strings. Nothing then had remotely pointed to him having a partner. From what I knew of Zakkal, he would not work with anyone. So, this new killer had t
o be some kind of an associate.
I felt a chill crawl up my body. I felt better by being inside the garage. More than actually being there, getting over the challenge of coming back was refreshing. I had never thought I would be able to come back here again. The energy I had felt inside some time back, once again surged through my body.
Seeing my progress during the year, Radha had even asked me a month back if we should start parking our car in the garage. I had simply shaken my head. I did not know then what I would do with the all evidence in the garage if we started parking our car in it. I had always used it as the mission centre for maa’s investigation ever since we had moved into this house.
I walked to the long desk in front of me. I had arranged all the documents in chronological order. Starting from right to left. I pulled out the chair and sat on it. I rolled it towards the right. I went to one of the initial files that had reports and photos from the crime scene of maa's disappearance. I peeled out the photos of our bathroom. I opened my laptop again. I held the photo next to the laptop screen.
I held the first stack in the rightmost corner. I picked out the first document on top. It was the FIR my father had filed the day maa had gone missing. I flipped through the other documents. I found what I was looking for. It was a diary of my investigation on Kishore Zakkal. I needed to read it again to be fully prepared.
I took a deep breath and opened the diary.
Chapter Eleven
Maa’s disappearance was constantly at the back of my mind through college though I got used to living with it over time. I learned to live without knowing what had happened to her. I first thought I was betraying her by not feeling as hurt anymore. Karan was extremely helpful then. He said he used to feel the same. Together we came out of the hole we were digging for ourselves. We even spoke to Radha about it to ensure she did not have to go through the same pain.
I worked under Santosh Wagh on graduating from law school. He was a renowned lawyer and private detective. He was sixty years old then but spoke and acted like he was a millennial. He went on to become my mentor, a man to whom I owe most of my practical legal knowledge. He was the one person who had backed me when I was just twenty-three years old. I still don’t know what he had seen in me then but I was glad he had. He shared all kinds of wisdom with us. He had only one condition. I had to call him by his first name.
All through law school, I had read maa’s case file thousands of times. I had kept gathering more information. Santosh encouraged me to know more about new technologies and trends in crime scene analysis, criminal profiling and forensic analysis. Because of him, I began speaking to experts in various fields across the world. It was one such conversation that changed everything.
6th April 2011.
It was late in the evening. I had just gotten home from Santosh’s office and had directly gone to the garage. I had an appointment with Ester Francis, a graduate student in Forensics at New York University. Francis had told me that in 2003 there had been a murder in New Jersey in which the bathroom was covered with blood. That got me curious.
Francis shared the details of the case with me. The woman in question was a thirty-two-year-old brunette bachelor named Holly Summers. She was a doctor by profession and lived alone at her home in New Jersey. Her body was found in the living room of her house. She had been strangled. The bathroom of her bedroom had been splattered with blood. The autopsy revealed at least three litres of blood had been drawn using a needle from Holly’s hand. It was highly suspected that Holly was killed in the living room and the killer later splashed her blood in the bathroom. The animalistic nature of the crime scene had got the local police department wondering if the motive of the crime was personal. The state of Holly’s bathroom was similar to the one at our house. Holly was killed on the 1st of May 2003. Maa had gone missing three months later in August of the same year.
I could not help but wonder if there could be a connection between the two. I knew that the chances were slim. The only common factor was the bathroom. Cross country killers were rare as well. But that was the first time I had come close to getting a new lead in maa's case. It was the coldest of clues if at all it was one. But I saw no warmer pursuit. That possibility did two things. First, my spirits sank as I realized if there was a connection then maa would most likely have been killed like Holly. Second, the possibility that maa's killer could be a serial offender entered my mind.
I went back to Holly’s file. The police had been able to recover only one piece of evidence from her house. They had found traces of unidentified DNA. It did not belong to any of her friends. They also could not find a match against any records. They were not even sure if it belonged to the killer.
Even though the DNA evidence did not match against any existing records, it gave me something at least apart from knowing the killer has black or brown eyes. I got to know he is a carrier of the Marfan Syndrome. If he had a child, the child was fifty per cent likely to have it as well. It was a genetic condition characterized by thin, long and flexible limbs and fingers. You can make out the syndrome in many cases if you know what you are looking for. But in other cases, the symptoms can be non-existent and a person with Marfan Syndrome can appear completely normal.
The reason only a minuscule amount of DNA was found at the crime scene was because Holly's living room, staircase and bathroom had been bleached, destroying all evidence that would have been there. The killer knew what he was doing. However, the most interesting piece of evidence had not been washed away by bleach. It was not in the house, but on Holly’s body instead. The autopsy revealed five pollens in her hair.
There was something strange about them.
The police identified four of the five pollens from areas around Holly’s house. They had never identified the fifth pollen.
At that point in time, I only knew one biologist. Rahul. It had only been a week since he and Radha had started going out. It was eleven at night but I snuck into Radha's bedroom and got his phone number. I was unsure for a beat because I knew Radha would have gotten hysterical if she knew what I was doing. Radha had told me about him in confidence. According to Rahul, I was not even supposed to know about him then. But after years of searching, I finally had a potential lead. I was in no mood to let it go.
‘Is this Rahul Saxena?’ I said when he answered the call.
‘Yes, who’s this?’ he said.
‘I’m Siya Rajput. Radha’s sister.’
Silence. What else was I expecting?
I said, ‘This may seem odd, but I understand you’re a biologist. I wanted your advice regarding something related to my work. It’s urgent so I called you right away. Can you please come over?’
Silence resounded again for two beats.
‘Of course,’ Rahul said.
‘I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t have called if it was not urgent. It’s the same house where you picked up Radha for dinner two days back.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Rahul said, his voice bore a weird mixture of bewilderment and kindness.
Rahul reached in fifteen minutes. Understandably, he was awkward.
‘I’m Siya, Radha’s crazy sister,’ I said, offering him a handshake.
He said nothing but pulled out something from his bag. ‘It is my first time coming to your house, so I got a small gift. It's coffee—pure chicory and cocoa. I was in Coorg a week ago for work. It's fresh from the coffee plantations there.'
‘Thanks a lot,' I said, taking it. I knew right then that we were going to get along very well. We went to the garage that was already lit up. I offered him coffee or tea but he refused. Back then, the garage was a cosy space with two armchairs and a small rug at the back. Rahul took the armchair and I turned my desk chair to face him.
‘I don’t know how much Radha told you about what I do. I’m a lawyer who specializes in criminal defence. We seek innocent clients. Understandably, that does not always pay our bills so we do other consultations. I need your assistance with something I’m workin
g on independently,’ I said. I did not plan to tell him about our mother or Holly’s murder. At least not then.
‘Sure,’ he said.
I pulled out another chair and he joined me at the desk. ‘This is confidential information,’ I said and passed him printouts of the reports that Ester had sent me. They contained information about the pollen grains. ‘I want to know everything I can about these pollen grains. What plants they belong to, what sort of changes have occurred or anything else that comes up. The sample you have was found in New Jersey, USA.’
‘Can you tell me where you got this sample from?’
‘I'm sorry but it's confidential. I'll try to answer as many of your queries as I can though.'
Rahul read the report. He said, ‘What do you know about pollens?’
‘I know that a pollen grain is the male sex organ of a plant. There are hundreds of thousands of kinds, all coming from the vast variety of plants found on earth.’
‘That's good. You know that pollen grains are minuscule in size. You wouldn't even know but there would be some in your clothes right now. They can stay there even if you wash your clothes. They're sticky and small.' He paused. ‘Can you give me the original sample of the pollen?'
‘That’s going to be impossible. I don’t think I’m even allowed to have this report.’
‘Can we ask for new reports based on the samples?’
I could always ask Francis to do it for me. She could speak to the local police department as a student. ‘Yes,’ I said.