Enjoy!!!
Chapter 6: Not ready yet:
Saturday I sleep in. I don't have my guitar here, or my instructor. I don't want to go outside as it's raining, so I take out the scripts I brought with me. After a day of reading my opinion on the original creativity of Bollywood writers is considerably diminished. I call my agent and tell him I won't be doing any of those. One was about a gay couple wanting to adopt a kid and the other was another action flick. When reading the last one, I keep thinking about what Satan said, and what kind of accident could have turned what I assume to be a normal genius, into Satan. I contemplate going home for the weekend but I don't want to be spotted at the airport. I had my publicist check the dishrags for news that I was in Delhi, but he didn't find any. Yuvraj was good for that, if there was anything, he'd find it. He was also respectful of the fact that I didn't like to walk around with a bunch of security. Sure I had it but they always kept themselves far away. I left them in Mumbai figuring I wouldn't need them up here, and so far I haven't. I'm hiding out, hoping to keep it that way. The irony that I'm hiding out to keep the feeling of being free, does not escape me.
Monday morning comes around and for some reason, I'm not dreading it. Perhaps it's because I've felt like a prisoner in my condo, despite the huge windows. Satan is in the office when I get there.
"So God, what's on the agenda for today?" I ask but stop dead in my tracks when I actually look at her. She has the biggest smile on her face.
"Trace evidence." She says and her voice is like a bell. She seems relaxed like she normally is in the morning but she also looks happy. It's completely foreign to me.
"Why are you so happy?" I ask having no idea what the answer could be.
"I have to be in court today so someone else will teach you the basics." She said still smiling.
Oh she's happy because she's getting rid of me. Well good riddance to her as well.
"Wonderful!" I exclaim, rubbing my hands together.
"Great, we're in agreement, now off you go." She waved me off and I practically ran to trace evidence.
"Hello?" I called out not seeing anyone when I got there.
"Well hello there!" an annoying woman's voice said. When she came around the corner, my blood ran cold.
Upadhyay
"What brings you here today, did you finally get away from CSW?" she said totally invading my personal space.
No way.
Shashank was right; paring me with Satan was a good idea. If I had to choose between Upadhyay and Satan…I chose Satan, every time.
"Oh sorry, I thought this was prints. See you later." I called out, retreating before she could say anything.
Never did it ever cross my mind that I would prefer Satan's company to almost anyone else I've met so far. I guess I'll have to start calling her Riddhima again.
I go to prints and work on my dusting techniques. Riddhima's stuff is still set up in there. I lift prints from glass, some hard plastics, and start a glue fuming on a piece of cardboard. This is actually starting to be fun. I make all the correct notations on the card.
"Attention" a woman's voice comes over a PA system "Loser, please report to God's office."
Satan is back.
I collect my cards and orientation sketches and do the death march to the office. "Where were you?" she asks in a short tone as opposed to her normal exorcist voice.
"In prints." I report confidently.
"I thought I told you to go to trace." She grew angry. I knew it was too good to last.
"Yeah, I didn't want to hang around with that girl. I think I'd even prefer you to that." I say casually.
And she smiled, and then let out an actual laugh.
"So God, why did you call me here?" I am shocked but I talk trying to regain my composure.
"Go put on your forensic suit. I'm going to drill you." She says getting back to her more rude persona.
"Yeah, ok…um right." I say and actually stumble out of the office. After making a complete fool of myself, I put on the fully loaded suit and report back to the office.
"Okay" she starts in "I'm going to call out an instrument or tool and you have to get it out of your pocket, without looking at it. Once you get the hang of that, we'll work you on squats, and then you'll have to pull out the tools you need while in a squat. Understand?"
"Do I have to learn to do this while taking my sunglasses on and off?" I ask, and she smiles again.
"No. ready?" I nod.
For two hours she drills me. I am pretty bad in the first half hour. Thank god she had me load the suit myself or I would have never gotten it. The remaining 90 minutes aren't nearly that bad. By the end, I can even do it with my eyes closed. Then we started on the squats.
Oh . God.
I thought I was in shape…I overestimated myself. Doing a normal squat wouldn't normally faze me, but these are different. She has me picking up fragile stuff with tweezers while in a full squat, and then, has me just pop back up. It's hard to balance in this position, and it's painful to stay in it. On top of that, I'm sweltering in this suit.
"That's enough for today. Go home, take a warm bath, and rub this into the spots that hurt the most. After you put this on, don't get it wet, don't touch your eyelids, and don't be a scared cat." She tosses me what looks like an oil bottle, and walks out without another word.
Thank god that's over.
I limp to the locker room and stow my gear before fleeing to the sanctuary that is my condo.
Ow, Ow, Ow.
I feel every step and the second I'm in my door, I head for the bath…dinner forgotten. The warm water of the bath feels heavenly and I try to massage my poor muscles into rejuvenation but I know I'm going to be sore for a couple of days. Normally I would curse Satan for doing this to me, but I could see how this is something I would actually need. Better to learn it here, than in the field, or worse, on the set. After my bath I rub on the oil that Satan gave me. It's in a little dropper bottle but doesn't have a label. It smells of wintergreen and menthol, I wonder where she got it. I rub it on my aching legs and back…then I feel it.
Ouch this burns!
I wonder if Satan has done this intentionally but I have faith that she wouldn't do this on purpose…would she?
Don't be a scared cat she said.
She didn't seem like she wanted to kill me today, just sell me to the highest bidder or something to get me out of her hair, but she wasn't spiteful today. I'll just have to have faith that this is how it's supposed to feel. After about 10 minutes, I can feel the pain relief offered by the oil. Another 10 minutes later, I'm considering sending Riddhima some flowers as a thank you. The oil feels wonderful on my muscles, taking away almost all the pain.
Looks like I'll have to stop calling her Satan for good now.
It didn't take me long to fall asleep after today's brutal beating.
I bring the oil back with me the next day. "Where'd you get this oil?" I ask her.
"I made it." She answers without looking at me.
Interesting
I place it on her desk "Keep it; you'll need it again later today." She says with a smirk.
Shit
"What are we doing today?" I ask trying to return her isolated kindness.
"Trace. Come loser." She snaps at me.
One step forward…two steps back.
"Upadhyay!" she yells out when we get there. Shreya looks like a deer caught in the headlights. "Get the hell out."
"What? You can't order me out of here." She whines. Riddhima doesn't have any mercy on her pleadings.
"I know for a fact that you haven't written your report on the Agarwal case yet and in case you didn't know, if you don't actually get the report to the cops or the CBI, what we do here is academic, so go finish your report like the good little loser you are and perhaps if you're really good, Sahil will take you home." She hisses at her.
I thought what she spat at me was vile…I had nothing on what Stanley just got. It didn't take long for Shreya to scurry away, much like the other techs did yesterday. It was dead silent.
"Who is Sahil?" I ask and surprise myself. Out of that whole rant, that's the detail I focus on?
"Male counterpart of Shreya." She says with disdain and for once, I don't think it's directed at me.
"So" she turns back to me "Do you know what types of simulated crime scenes are in this movie?"
"I know it's going to be dark, damp, and the scenes are that of murders, so I think I need experience in trace, latents, some chemical, and the scene itself. My co star is doing the ballistics and I've heard they were going to throw in some DNA stuff for good measure."
She nodded her head "Any cars or indoor crime scenes?"
"A car gets run off the road but I don't think we'll have any indoor crime scenes."
She tensed and pressed her lips into a very hard line.
"Alright, then we'll start on trace evidence." She said strained. She's clearly upset about something I said, but I was being very respectful…especially since she got rid of Upadhayay for me. Riddhima taught me how to look for things like fibers and hairs on clothing and carpets. Then she showed me how to photograph trace evidence. I had figured it was just point and shoot, but in reality there are 27 different types of lenses you use to photograph a crime scene. She showed me how to process a large piece of cloth for fibers as opposed to small ones and what types of bags or folders to put what types of fibers or hairs in.
When Riddhima wasn't in hitler mode, she was actually a little normal. I can't say she was actually normal because I could always see the hitler, bubbling beneath the surface, just looking for an excuse to come back out.
After lunch (which I got to spend in the sanctuary of the office) she took me down to automotive, and showed me how to collect paint scrapings off of cars. This was a real case she was showing me on, so I couldn't touch it, not at least until I'd been tested and certified, but I don't think Riddhima was going to give me that big of a seal of approval any time soon. We finished up with that about an hour later.
"Get your suit and boots on and report back to the office." She said apathetically. Her tension from earlier gone. I wonder if she snuck off to down some meds while I wasn't looking. I scurry to the locker room and thankfully, it's almost empty. Shashank set me up with a locker in the most private corner, which is how I've been able to avoid being accosted by guys in towels thus far, but I wasn't banking on it. I dressed a little smarter today , leaving my boxers and undershirt on. Riddhima was going to drill me again and I didn't need to feel like I was in a sauna. When I was putting on the boots, I noticed that there were serial numbers on the back heel of both boots.
"Hey God? What's up with the numbers on the boots?" I asked when I got in the office, but then looked up.
OH MY GOD.
Riddhima is in her forensic jump suit but has the top down around her waist. Underneath she is only wearing a tamk top. I've only ever seen her in masculine type suits with her hair down, with the exception of that night. Her hair is pinned up and the soft curves of her neck are on display. She looks gorgeous.
This can't be happening to me…I can't find Riddhima attractive…she might actually kill me if she found out!
"Did you check the tread on the boots?" she asks, rousing me from my internal panic. Her voice would be back to that indignant tone I'm used to.
"Uh, no." I confess. She doesn't offer any further information so I take a seat and do as she suggests. "Why are there numbers on the tread?"
"The thing about humans is that we all have to walk, or roll as the case may be sometimes. Almost every outdoor crime scene and a good portion of indoor ones, will have some sort of shoe prints. When we are walking around a scene, we will also leave footprints. With the numbers on the tread, we can immediately eliminate our prints and focus on the unknown ones. The numbers also help up keep track of each pair. If those got into the wrong hands, a killer could wear them, leave foot prints for us, and we would immediately discard them."
"That makes sense." I answered. She grabbed a bag and left the office, once again not even issuing a command for me to follow. I caught up to her and walked behind her silently, staring at her neck and being assaulted by mental images of my night with Meera.
Shit
Riddhima led us to the automotive section and hopped in a big SUV. I climbed in the passenger side and she took off through the garage.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"Field day." She replies shortly and turns on some music.
St. Matthew, The Passion.
If I thought this song sounded good, it sounded great with Riddhima lightly humming along with it. She's driving so I let myself take in the sights. It's strange, everything is so green. I've been to lots of places but it seems once you get out of the city, that everything is covered in a think carpet of deep green.
We go through a tunnel and about 15 minutes later, she pulls up to what looks like a trail head. She gets out of the car and pulls a much bigger bag than the one she carried from her office, out of the back. I get out to help her.
"I can get those." I try to take the huge bag from her, but she resists.
"It's fine." She says curtly.
"Don't be stubborn God, I can get this." I say trying to take the bag again.
"Fine," she says and releases the bag. I take it and realize it's actually pretty light for how big it was.
I can see her toned muscles flexing to pick it up. She sets it on the ground before closing the back doors to the rig and finally, puts her jump suit on the rest of the way.
"Come on." She commands and I follow. We hike for about 20 minutes before we come to a locked double gate.
"Remember" she says while taking keys out of her pocket and unlocking the gate "Don't touch anything until I say so and if you see something that looks like a dead body in here, it probably is. Don't stare too closely if you don't want those images burned into your memory." She finishes her warning with a slight tone of…caring?
"Dead bodies!" I exclaim. I didn't read anything about this being part of the training. I mean I knew that I'd probably do some field work but real dead bodies!
"Yes loser, dead bodies. Those tend to show up at crime scenes. If you don't have the guts for this, we can always go back." She taunts, trying to break me.
No, I won't let her break me, no matter what the cost.
"No, I'm fine, just surprised." I say in triumph. "What is this place anyway?"
She opens the gate.
"This is a body farm, bon appetite." She says and leads me into hell.
Anupamaa
Cricket
272