The bullet had left a hole in the windshield. Thin cracks threaded around it like strings from a cobweb. Officer Adam Kent watched a thin drop of blood dribble off the edges of the hole and collect in a small pool on the dashboard. He shook his head. Someone had been angry enough to do this, he thought. Really angry. And crazy.
It was Grace May’s first story on the beat. She wanted to do better than her predecessor- and she knew that was not going to be easy. Harold Stern might have gotten drunk enough to get killed in a car crash, but he was still a name to reckon with. No one had better scoops than Stern – unless May now set a new standard.
She looked around for a place to start. The siren from the ambulance wailed as paramedics rushed from the victim to the man sitting in a corner, his coat pulled tight across his chest and a distant look in his eyes. The victim’s blood was sprayed across his face and he scratched a dried spot of blood on his jaw almost sub-consciously, as a woman in scrubs knelt by his side. May slowly made her way to him, wondering if he would talk. But before she got to him, an old woman stepped in front of her.
“I don’t want you asking him questions about my daughter,” she said, in a thick Indian accent. “I don’t want you asking any questions.”
Shalini Mehra was Gayathri’s only daughter. Maybe that was why Gayathri let her get away with every one of her whimsical dreams. As a girl of 10, she had wanted to see Europe. Gaythri had tripled clients and worked whole nights in the dark room of her photo studio for the next two years, repaying loans. At 14, Shalini had insisted on buying a piano. It still sat in the far corner of their Mumbai living room untouched. At 16, she had given away all her old clothes to charity. Two days later, their home was strewn with shopping bags from designer stores.
Then at 18, she had gone missing for a night. Gayathri had called Shailini’s friends and combed the neighborhood, until four in the morning. At half-past-four her daughter had dragged in a new car – streaked with mud across the wheels, a sign that she had been driving all evening and night. At 20, she had brought Akshay home.
When Gayathri first met Akshay, she knew Shalini was in trouble. But she had nothing to tell her daughter. She had never refused her anything – and she could not bring herself to refuse her this man.
Gayathri often wondered if mothers, who had husbands, had similar problems dealing with their daughters. Or did they do better because they did not have to be apologetic about a divorce? She had never asked her friends. She preferred not to know.
Officer Kent found that the weapon was registered to Akshay’s Mehra’s partner. But the Hamiltons had not noticed it was gone; not until Kent knocked on their doors and told them.
“I guess it must have been taken last weekend,” Peter Hamilton said, looking shocked, “when… when they came over for dinner.” Holly, his wife said nothing. She shook her head and lit herself a cigarette. She knew the Mehras were not happy. But planned murder was more than she could take.
Sneaking was an art May had mastered. She had been a girl of eight when she had tip toed across the kitchen and inched closer to the bedroom, where she could hear her parents fight. Four years later, she had sneaked in a camera into her neighbor’s garage and found his hidden collection of rare stamps. She had sneaked into her principal’s office and removed papers from her file. More recently, she had sneaked in on her boyfriend kissing his secretary. So it was no difficult task to sneak past the old lady and enter the house.
May was surprised at how ironically peaceful it all seemed in the couple’s living room. A mahogany table with a glass table top stood at the center of the room and a deep black couch, with three cream cushions rested against the wall behind it. A long and slender black vase with pale white flowers stood tall on the table. There were a couple of armchairs against the other walls and directly in front of the couch was a plasma TV, mounted on the wall with slender mahogany bookshelves on either side.
Akshay Mehra could give her all this, May noted, as she moved across the room into the kitchen. She stood around inhaling the faint smell of coffee and looking for something out of place. Just as she was about to turn away, her eyes fell on a shelf with a neat row of recipe books. One book seemed to have been put back in a great hurry. May reached for it and as she flipped through she smiled. She had Shalini’s diary.
Anupama knew it did not take a trained psychologist to tell that her friend was losing it. Shalini had been showing symptoms for a few months now. Anupama knew she would say nothing and yet she knew it had something to do with Akshay.
The edge to her voice, the way she stared at him blankly when he wrapped his arms around her, her clenched fists when he spoke of her in a familiar way, her silent eyes boring into him if he laughed – Anupama had seen them all.
“I don’t know Mahesh,” she told her husband one night as they pulled the comforter over their legs. “I don’t know why she hates him.”
“Beats me,” Mahesh had said, before he turned to kiss her. They did not speak of the Mehras that night.
Anupama nibbled her nails as she waited for Mahesh to come back, trying hard to think of something Shalini might have said or done. And then it came to her – the soft words that she had heard Shalini whisper at the barbeque three weeks ago. Anupama had ignored them then. But now her spine tingled as she heard Shalini’s voice in her mind.
“I could kill him.”
Gayathri did not hate Akshay. She simply knew his kind. He was tall and handsome, neat and groomed. He was polite and soft-spoken. He did not have just any job- he had a small empire to run. He was ambitious and successful. He drove the best cars, ate the best food, and had condos around the world. Only Shalini could have singled this man out.
She told herself she could be wrong and Shalini could be very happy with him. But every time she saw his eyes, she froze. He did not love her daughter. In fact, she suspected he did not love anyone – except for himself.
Shalini’s world was steeped in desolation. As May flipped through pages of the diary, she closed her eyes to imagine what living in this house must feel like.
Footsteps echoing through the rooms devoid of the sound of human voices, computers booting late into the night, the pungent smell of alcohol in parties, cigarette butts still warm in the ashtrays, the aroma of cologne in the bath, wardrobes with silk ties and golden cuffs, the smell of new furniture, the sound of new tyres screeching on the driveway – this was Akshay’s world. And Shalini fit into the scheme of things like icing on the cake – she was the beautiful wife he was envied for; the diva every man hoped he had.
In his own way, Akshay loved Shalini – where it mattered – in parties, at social gatherings, at award ceremonies. He told her where they would go next, who would meet them there, what she should wear, who she should sit next to, who she should charm. And she did this like a puppet whose strings he held.
Vacuum laced Shalini’s plush world and tightened around her neck like a noose. May could feel the hatred slowly build as the pages ran on. She flipped to the last page for something to hint at the turn of events that had May exploring this strange situation now. But Shalini seemed simply to have rambled on.
May left the kitchen and moved into the house. She climbed a spiral stairway to the rooms upstairs. She walked into each of them, looking for a clue. Why did this girl never leave this man? Why did she stay with him, hating him for everything he had done? Why did she not bolt when she could?
Anupama sat in the dark, still waiting for her husband. She nibbled at the nail in her right little finger. The dualism in Shalini’s life puzzled her. She could hate the man she chose to live with. Anupama wondered if Shalini had wanted this life as much as she had grown to hate it. Or was she afraid to get out of it as much as dared to hate it? Why had she never just packed her bags and left? Whatever had happened Anupama would never know. Shalini had died.
Akshay sat very still, reminding himself that the last conversation between him and his wife had to remain a secret. She was a murderess, but now she was dead. The last thing he wanted is for the police to know exactly how she had died. He did not want them to think he had a hand in it.
May opened the wardrobe in what she assumed was Shalini’s room. There was a photograph of the old woman she had met outside on the inside of the door. There was another one of the mother and daughter on the other door. Unlike everything else in the house, this wardrobe was unkempt. But a pile of scarves caught May’s eye. A few of the scarves had unfurled and were hanging over the edge of the shelf.
Almost as if something had been pulled from beneath them, May thought. Then it dawned on her. Maybe Shalini had kept the gun here.
“Do you know why she might have wanted to kill him,” Kent asked the Hamiltons. They looked at each other in confusion and shook their heads. Kent sighed and turned away.
Akshay had known that she was growing a little restless. He observed her from the corner of his eye as he worked, gauging her movements for a clue. But he never asked. He knew she would bring something up about isolation and loneliness. Unlike his wife, he had no time. Definitely, not for small talk.
He had also noticed that she never wanted to come to the parties with him anymore. He would have to force her – remind her that he had not bought her all the clothes and jewels for her to flaunt them at home.
Which was why he had been surprised when she had agreed to go see one his friends for a barbeque so very easily.
“You do not mind?” he asked, when she did not object.
“No.”
She had dressed in her best that evening and had even smiled as at him, as he had watched her step down the stairs. She bit her cheek then and smiled knowingly. He could have been ready then, had he known. But he did not guess. It came to him as a complete surprise when she pulled out the gun and pointed it at him in the car. His foot was over the clutch, and he was about to push off, when he saw the black barrel.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“I lost all sense of being a complete person Akshay”, she said calmly. “You destroyed me.”
“And now you will destroy me?” he asked, trying to keep his composure.
She said nothing. He could see her finger tighten over the trigger.
“Well,” he said, “What’s the difference between us?”
She looked confused for a moment and then she did something he had not imagined. She put the muzzle to her head and pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped through her and left the car through the windshield.
As he got out of the car, he noticed that his dead wife’s blood was sprayed all across his silk shirt. He pulled his coat over it and called the police.
Pic Source: Getty Images
The Author There is nothing Shweta loves more than writing. A graduate from Madras Medical College, she is now a student at the Knight's Center for Science and Medical Journalism at Boston University, from where she hopes to graduate a fine science writer and a nuanced thinker. Apart from experimenting with eggs in the kitchen and paint brushes in her room, Shweta enjoys watching cricket and tennis and just about any movie. She is a voracious reader and enjoys astrophysics, anthropology, genetics, archaeology, mythology and just about anything that will kindle her imagination. Sa, for Shweta is her means of telling the men and the women in the world that there is enough space for everyone. It is also her way of letting people know that no one is more equal than another.
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