Hey everyone.
Here's the next part. Thebig reveal. I am absolutely sorry for some of the stuff that you will read in this part. If you are a kid or have low tolerance please don't continue.
Chapter 9: Why we don't talk about it
She was out of breath and unsteady on her feet, with a horrified look on her face.
I put my hand on her arm, making sure she didn't fall. She twisted out of my grasp, and ran out of the room. I have a pretty good idea of where she is going, so I head to the office. I get there and find her at her desk, eagerly digging pill bottles out of her desk. After reading the labels on a few, she settles on taking pills from two bottles. I stand next to her trying to see what they are.
"You know, I don't think you're supposed to combine them." I say softly. I don't want to spook her anymore than she already it. She just rolled her eyes at me and downed the pills.
"You knew" she said after swallowing "You knew this entire time and didn't say anything." Her tone was half pissed, half scared.
I shrugged "I was going to say something but you hate me so much. I figured it didn't matter, Meera never wanted to see me again." I said honestly.
She flinched "I don't hate you." She whispered, looking straight at me but with a frailty about her eyes I'd never seen before.
"Why did you leave?" I whispered back, remembering the crushing disappointment of that morning.
"I was scared. I woke up in a strange place.Why wouldn't I leave?" she said, her voice wavering.
I pulled her up from her chair into my arms "I didn't want you to leave." She didn't try to pull away.
"You didn't know who I was, you wanted Meera to stay, not me." She said sadly, and it held a little portion of truth.
"You didn't give me a chance to get to know Riddhima. I wasn't looking for a one night stand and I'm still not. Do you have any idea what that night meant to me, do you remember what you said you could show me, do you know how long I've wanted that?" I whispered against her lips. The feeling of her hands gripping my shoulders was driving me mad.
"I know me and I'm a horrible wretched person. I'm not her, I'm Riddhima." She whimpered while her hands absentmindedly traveled up my neck to my hair.
"You're both. I feel it when I'm with you. You don't look at me like a movie star; you just look at me like I'm Armaan."
"You don't look at me like I'm broken, you make me feel normal. But I'm not normal Armaan, I am broken." She whimpered with a single tear rolling down her cheek.
I know she's broken. If she is broken now, she was broken that night. Marie is in there somewhere and I'm going to find her again if it kills me to do so.
"I know, and I don't care." I whispered back…and then I kissed her. I gave her the gentle kisses she should have gotten that morning. When our lips met I realized why it pained me to think of going back to Mumbai, it was because of the woman in my arms. She may be broken, her past may be a mystery, but I wanted how she made me feel normal none the less. She melted into my arms and her lips returned the same gentle fervor I felt.
Her pager went off and startled us both.
"Sorry." She muttered while checking the pager. "We're up. Are you okay with this?" she waved her pager indicating that we had another call.
"As long as we get to talk later, I'll be fine." I replied.
She nodded her hair "That's fair. I get off call at seven pm. You need to check out another pair of boots and another suit. I'll get the kits and meet you at the rig, okay?" she asked me. It was strange having Riddhima ask me as opposed to order me, but I hope it will be this way from now on. I do so and get changed.
Being with Riddhima is so different than everyone else. Everywhere I go, even in the lab, people stop what they're doing to stare at me when I walk by. When I'm with her, they don't do that, they're too afraid of her. Again I realize how much I appreciate how normal Riddhima makes me feel, but that doesn't mean I like her for her, it means I like how she makes me feel. I'd like to know her, I see the nice Riddhima every now and then when she's not on "repel mode", and I like what I've seen so far, but there is so much to her I haven't seen yet. The best I, or really anyone could do now is see where this can go, and not have any expectations.
I quickly get changed into my field gear and meet Riddhima in the same place I met her this morning. She's there by the time I get there, and has something for us to eat.
"We'll eat on the way. It's just a home robbery, nothing to lose your lunch over." She tosses me a sandwich as I get into the passenger side. On the way there we eat and talk. She puts on the Chopin Etudes again saying it's her calming music. I start asking general questions but when I ask her who her first kiss was, she tenses up. She just said she'd rather not talk about it, but she didn't go all rabid on me…which is an improvement.
"This one shouldn't take long." She says opening the back of the rig, getting the gear out. It's started lightly raining so I'm thinking were going to get pretty cold if we have to spend any amount of time outside.
"Why's that?" I ask while loading up my suit.
"This neighborhood is pristine, they probably have a maid service so surfaces that we would normally have to spend hours dusting and lifting, are going to take far less time. Windex tends to destroy fingerprints, and that's if they even left any." She says casually. I can see the officers by the police line tape chatting away but grumble when they see that it's Riddhima who's been called out.
"Hey, can you teach me how you do your mojo?" I ask eagerly.
"My mojo?" she asks confused.
"Yeah, Shubhankar said you're the Crime Scene Whisperer." I casually replied, and she let out a loud laugh.
"They're still calling me that?" she said around her laughs. "I thought they'd given up that name when I retired."
"Retired?" I asked completely confused.
"Yeah" she tensed up "I came back two years ago."
"Why?" I asked.
"Nothing else to do." she mumbled before closing the door to the rig. "Follow me and listen." She added quietly and we walked towards the house. She stopped when she got about twenty feet from the front door. She loosened up her shoulders and rolled her head around, the same way she did this morning at the murder scene. She shook her hands up by her chest and then took some deep breaths. I felt like I was watching an athlete warm up before a game. She looked both directions slowly, and then proceeded to the front door.
"What are you looking for?" I asked.
"I'm thinking how they got in. Its broad daylight but I can already see there's damage to the front door jamb, so I'm thinking they kicked the door in but that doesn't make sense for broad daylight and in this type of neighborhood." She leaned over to get a better look at the door.
"No footprints" she mumbled to herself. "Okay Armaan, take out your camera, shoot what you think is relevant and anything I tell you to. Be sure to always use a scale reference in the frame and if possible, a number reference in the same frame." I did as she said, starting with the door.
"Look here, at the door jamb. The damage is going the wrong way for the door to have been kicked in, it's from something hitting it on the way out." I pulled out my tape measure and took some photos of it, and then we looked inside.
"Looks like the place has been completely looted." I mentioned to Riddhima. She nodded in agreement but was thinking.
"I get it." She chuckled a little "The point of entry is probably somewhere in the back, they didn't come in the door, unless they picked the lock or had a key. The lock doesn't look like it's been picked so it's probably a window in the back. Did you see all those tall shrubs along the fence?"
"Umm" I stammered. I actually hadn't noticed them.
"Don't fret pretty boy, you don't have to be observant to pretend to do this for a living." She joked.
"You think I'm pretty?" I teased her.
"Yes I do." she said confidently and continued with her work. I know that lots of women find me sexy or attractive but coming from Riddhima, it meant more.
Her playful side was quickly becoming intoxicating.
"Wanna know what, let's go back outside." She turned and I followed. She squatted down on the driveway, right where it met the grass of the front yard.
"fools." she laughed to herself.
"What?" I questioned.
"They left tire tracks in the grass. They loaded up the house into what looks like a moving truck with double wheels on the back axle. I can't be sure but it looks like the tread is really thick on only one of the tires. Do you want to take a cast?" she asked me.
"Me collect evidence on a real case?" I responded surprised.
"I know you can do it and I'll be supervising. It'll hold up in court. That's what it means when I said you were a probie. As long as I'm here, you can collect evidence."
I smiled like the retarded tag along I am.
"You know, I never thought I'd be your groupie, but now I'm thinking that wouldn't be such a bad gig. Yes, I'd love to follow you around while you do your CSW thing and let me help." I confessed like an eager schoolboy. She laughed out loud again.
"You better be careful Armaan, I might end up liking you." My heart jumped in my chest a few times at those words.
"That's the plan." I sassed back.
"Let's go to the back." She pushed me in the direction she wanted me to go. On the way to the back of the house, she found a little cloth fiber caught on the fence and a shoe print from a person looking in the window. I got to take a cast of that one too, as well as bag the fiber. She found tool markings on a window that led into a laundry room and a foot print from the dirt on the washer they stood on. I took photos while Riddhima put a sticky film over the print. It made the dirt stick to it, and she lifted the entire print off intact.
When we got in the house, everything of any value was gone but it wasn't messy. They didn't dump dishes on the floor or anything like that, they just took what they wanted and left. I continued to photograph but then Riddhima interrupted me. "Hey, come try some prints." She said happily.
I concentrated on the areas where things were clearly missing. The table under the huge flat screen TV, the door knobs…things like that. I found and lifted lots of prints but Riddhima didn't seem too excited about them. They were most likely of the house occupants or the cleaning crew, not the cleaning out crew as Riddhima put it. Two and a half hours later, Riddhima released the scene. The detectives were then cleared to go in.
For whatever reason, she didn't like them and was back to Satan Riddhima with them. Apparently the home owners were on vacation and wouldn't be back for a month. That was bad for us being that they wouldn't be available to take elimination prints from. We had our evidence and gear cleaned up and were stowing it in the rig.
"Check and make sure you have all your gear. We're not running the "free fingerprint brush with every break in" special this week." She joked.
I laughed out loud. The officers looked at me like I was crazy. Riddhima changed into her shoes and hopped into the driver's seat while I finished up in the back.
"Hey Armaan!" one of the officers shouted out, running over to me.
Shit, not this again. I know that look.
"Yeah?" I ask wearily.
"Can I get an autograph on my arm?" he asked rolling up his sleeve, revealing a pretty buff arm, and handing me a permanent marker.
"Umm, sure. Who do you want it made out to?"
"Me, Ramesh Chanda." He smiled brightly.
"Of course you can." Riddhima said, appearing at my side. She took the marker from my hand and started writing on the guy's bicep. He was shocked and from the looks of it fearful. "There you go." She finished writing something, and then put a peck on his cheek.
"Hey I said I wanted an autograph from Armaan." He protested still a little in shock.
"No, you said "can I get an autograph" not "can I get your autograph". You know, police should be more observant." She taunted him. "Armaan, let's go." She pushed me towards my side of the rig. We got in and she drove away with a huge grin on her face. I pulled a water bottle from under the seat and took a swig.
"Riddhima, what did you write on his arm?" I asked curious and took another drink of water.
She laughed "I wrote "this bicep is so big because from all the exercise I get by cleaning out my garbage bin. Love Riddhima Gupta."
I blew the water out of my mouth. It was so silly, something completely unexpected from the 'Satan'. Who could have though that she could be silly and childish too.
"You didn't." I said, trying to hold in my laughs.
"I did." She beamed of satisfaction. I didn't bother holding in the laughs after that. I laughed all the way back to the lab. When I got out of the rig, I was still laughing but Riddhima was laughing with me. I saw Shubhankar a couple of meters away gaping at the sight of us. I'm not sure why, but I'll ask him tomorrow.
After checking in the evidence to the clerk, we got changed out of our gear and met back in the office. She was sitting at her desk, doing something on the computer. She had on a pair of skinny jeans and a dark blue V-neck sweater. She looked beautiful. When I walked in, she looked up and smiled at me.
"So, what do you think of the field so far?" she asked pleasantly, motioning I should sit down. We were only on call for another 15 minutes and were killing time till she could release the on call pager to the next person on call.
"I like the field. I can see why they call you CSW. How'd you learn that?" I asked while sitting down.
She shrugged "My mom died when I was little and papa didn't really know how to relate to a girl. He was a detective before he got injured and put on the desk he currently rides, so dinner conversations consisted of work stories. When I showed an interest, he started showing me his case files. I wasn't good at talking with people and chasing down leads so the lab stuff interested me more. After so many years of exposure to cases with papa, I noticed what to expect at certain types of scenes. It's not that I have some weird sixth sense, I just have the benefit of years of experience, and they thought it strange in someone so young." She finished her story and went back to checking her email. She said everything casually so whatever caused her to be the way she was with me before had nothing to do with that.
"Shit." She cursed at her computer.
"What?" I asked worried she was slipping back into Satan Riddhima.
"Looks like we're not doing something tonight after all." She got up and walked towards the door. "You can come if you want but you don't have to. I have to clean up Upadhayay's mess."
"I'll come; I don't have anywhere to be." I volunteered. She nodded and led me to trace.
"Upadhayay, where the hell are you!" she said swinging back into Satan mode. Nobody answered. We walked over to what I assumed was Shreya's workstation and saw the broken brown glass Riddhima collected from the murder scene this morning. "Figures she'd just leave it." Riddhima grumbled under her breath. Without another word, Riddhima walked over to the far wall and pulled a binder off the shelf and returned. She snapped on some gloves then started picking through the pieces of glass.
"What's going on?" I ask her.
"Upadhayay sent me an email saying she couldn't do anything with this. It's possible, she's just being lazy. There it is." She said while picking up one of the larger pieces of the bottle. It was the bottom and Riddhima was reading some numbers off the bottom. She then opened the binder, flipping the pages.
"What are you looking for?"
"I need to know what type of bottle this is." She stopped on a page and double checked the numbers on the bottom of the bottle with the reference number on the page. "You up for a little shopping excursion?" she said while putting down the glass piece and taking off her gloves.
"Where we going?" I asked as I followed her out of the lab.
She laughed "On a sexy date." The mischievous glint in her eyes was fascinating.
When Riddhima said a sexy date, what she meant was a seedy corner store in a bad part of Delhi.
"I'm glad you told me to bring my hoodie." I playfully chastised her "This place is awful. When you said sexy date, I didn't think you meant you were going to take me to the corner store and buy me a bottle of "Magic moments". You know you don't have to get me drunk, I will sleep with you." She let out a beautiful laugh while she paid for the bottle of beer whose alcohol content was the most prominent feature on the label. We returned to the trace lab and poured out the beer.
"Yeah, we're not drinking this shit." She laughed while the bottle emptied. I then followed her to the chemical closet while she picked out a few things, and then returned to the trace lab.
"What are we doing?"
"We're going to reconstruct the broken bottle using the cast of this bottle as a skeleton."
She then mixed the cement type solution and poured it into the empty bottle.
"While we're waiting for this to set, do you wanna go spar?" she offered casually.
I cringed at the memory of her in that ring. "Are you sure that's such a good idea?"
"Why wouldn't it be? I was going to go workout tonight anyway. The gym is not nearly as crowded after hours. It actually closes in a bit." She dismissed my concerns.
"Okay but I don't have any gym clothes here." I countered. Riddhima motioned for me to follow her, and led me to a place where cops apparently keep gym clothes. She rifled through the shelves of clothes and returned with a pair of basketball shorts and a huge shirt.
"I think the shirt might be a bit big, it's all I could find even remotely in your size." She said while handing me the clothes. "I'll see you in the ring." And she went to change into her gym clothes. By the time I got changed and into the gym, she was already in the ring stretching.
God she is flexible.
I'm looking at Riddhima in a short t shirt that exposed her midriff and shorts.
"You ready?" she called out with her glorious abs on display.
"Umm, yeah." I stepped into the ring. She stood up and got into an offensive position.
"Mark!" she called out and started her assault. She was more controlled and focused than she was last time but I got a point on her backside. She was still focused solely on offense.
"Again?" I teased when I had landed what would have been a hit if we'd really been fighting. She was breathing heavily, which was terribly distracting for me.
"Of course probie." She said with a mischievous smile. It was I who launched the attack this time. I noticed that when she is forced to be in defensive mode, her stance is unstable and I took advantage of it. In one swipe I'd knocked her off her feet.
"Are you alright?" I ask helping her up.
"Yeah, just surprised. No one else has ever landed a hit on me before, well except my teacher. How long have you been doing this?" she asked, getting back into position.
"Since I was a kid. How long have you?" I answered honestly. It was something I could do away from the eyes of the press.
"Only a couple of years." She responded.
I launched into another assault with Riddhima blocking me with her arms and ducking out of the way. She got a hold of my wrist and used it to flip me across her back. I promptly ended up on mine; tangled in the huge shirt and she went for the point to the ribs.
"Good" I commented.
"That's shirt is getting in your way." She laughed, and was right.
"I know and I think I'll need all the help I can get so if you don't mind?" I started to take off my shirt. When I had tossed it to the side of the ring I saw something in her eyes, and it wasn't the desire to fight. She cleared her head and returned to her ready position. She launched an assault but during it, I threw a couple of punches, making her go into defensive stance. She tried to throw a punch but her stance was wrong and there wasn't enough power behind it. That made it easy for me to grab her wrist and swipe her legs out from under her.
"You're doing it wrong." I commented.
"Clearly" she retorted while I helped her up. My hands lingered on hers longer than they needed to, but I really didn't want to let them go. She looked me in the eye, "What am I doing wrong?"
I must have looked like a deer caught in the headlights "You" my voice cracked so I cleared my throat "Your stance is completely offensive. When you have to shift to a defensive stance quickly, your tricks lose power."
"Show me." She whispered clearly affected by the same energy flowing between us as I was.
"Offensive stance" I murmured. She complied. "Now a defensive stance." She complied again, her hips weren't aligned up right and her feet were too close together. I stood in front of her and put my hands on her hips. "Your feet" I trailed off but rather just nudged them apart with my own foot, "And your hips need to" I rotated them with my hands but couldn't bring myself to remove them when she had the proper stance. I finally glanced a look at Riddhima's face and saw nothing but pure lust.
And then I kissed her…hard. The feeling of her lips against mine was indescribable. I'd kissed her but then she was Meera or broken Riddhima. Now she was just a girl I was attracted to and who I am pretty sure was attracted to me too.
"Ah-hem" a man cleared his voice behind us and we turned to look at him, still clinging to each other. "I need to lock up here so if you don't mind." He motioned that we should get out of his gym.
Riddhima muttered under her breath. We gathered out things and left to our respective locker rooms. Good thing too because if things had gone much further, I don't think I would have been able to stop. It gives me time to think. Is this just a fling for me…no, not in a million years. I've never been into casual flings but this feels mo much more connected than the semi-serious relationships I've had so far. I need to know if this is something Riddhima can live with because if it's just a fling for her, I need to walk away now.
I get just get dressed figuring I'll take a real shower when I get home. I check the lab where Riddhima and I were earlier, but she's not there. I check the office and again, I come up empty. I check the women's locker room by shouting into it for Riddhima, and it's silent. It's now that I realize how little I know about Riddhima. I don't even have her cell number. I head home determined to get some answers from Shashank and Shubhankar tomorrow.
After a half hour of following the directions Shubhankar sent to my phone, I finally get to Shashank's house. The car I rented didn't have GPS unless I wanted to upgrade to the Hummer.
Yeah, no thanks.
I did the entire thing online and had the car delivered to the condo so I didn't have to go out in public. I'm excited to hang out with Shashank and Shubhankar for more than the obvious interrogation I'm going to do to them today; it'll be nice to get out of the condo in a safe from rabid fans environment. I knock on the door and Shashank hollers for me to come in.
"Armaan, so glad you could make it!" he said shaking my hand. He seemed happy and carefree. I held up the 12 pack of Peroini beer I brought for the game. Shashank looked at me confused.
"It's what my brother drinks. I'm more of a vodka guy myself." I shrugged, not really knowing my beer. Shashank nodded in agreement.
"What's up guys!" Shubhankar announced his arrival.
"Armaan brought Italian beer." Shashank replied and Shubhankar laughed showing that he'd brought a 24 pack of Foster's.
"I guess I can't beat out the Aussies." I concede defeat in my beer choice. I'd talk to Atul about that later.
"Why was Riddhima laughing with you yesterday?" Shubhankar blurted out.
"She was laughing?" Shashank exclaimed directing his attention at me. Both of them were scope locked on me. "What did you do?" he asked eagerly.
"What? Nothing, I did nothing." I defended myself not wanting to tell Shashank I'd f**ked his daughter and wanted to do it again and again.
She was laughing?" Shashank exclaimed directing his attention at me. Both of them were scope locked on me. "What did you do?" he asked eagerly.
"What? Nothing, I did nothing." I defended myself not wanting to tell Shashank I'd slept with his daughter and wanted to do it again and again.
"You don't understand Armaan, I haven't seen her laugh or even smile in two years. Please, tell me what you did." He pleaded.
"No way am I telling you guys about me and Riddhima, unless you give up what you know about her. I'm flying completely blind here not knowing what the horrible accident was about." They both flinched.
"We don't talk about it." Shashank said softly.
"That's not fair to him." Shubhankar replied "We've been trying to help her for two years, and in all that time what have we accomplished? Armaan has been here what…two weeks and he has her laughing?She's still drowning herself in pills and vicious to everyone she meets. She still won't look at pictures of them or even breath a word about them.? I say we give him the information he needs so he's not wondering if she's going to go all Satan on him again. It's the least we can do as he had succeeded where we have failed."
Shashank nodded then passed me a cold beer from the fridge. "Drink this, you'll need it." He mumbled and we all took seats in the living room. Shubhankar was downing one as well.
"Okay. Remember how I said Riddhima was a genius?" Shubhankar asked. He was clearly the one who was going to be telling this story. "The short of it is that she'd grown up fast. When she was 20, she married a cop named Sahil Sharma, you probably know better as, the guy whose knee you saw Ridz break."
Oh, so it is broken…good.
"Anyway when she was 23, she got pregnant and they had a set of twins. A boy and a girl, Karan and Anushka." He pressed his lips in a hard line "Riddhima retired and was the quintessential soccer mom to them. She loved them dearly, we all did. When they were three, Riddhima caught Sahil with Shreya Upadhayay and naturally filed for divorce."
"Continue." I said cautiously.
"One day while they were separated but not yet divorced, Riddhima called Sahil asking for the key to the safety deposit box. He was on a stake out and suggested that she come by and pick them up. It was in a bad part of Seattle but she really wanted to get her grandmother's jewelry out of there, so she agreed. She found them and got the key, no problem. She got lost in the maze of streets and called OnStar for directions. They were guiding her to the freeway when she had to stop at a light. She got carjacked."
"Holy shit." I muttered trying to keep cool. This story had many levels of horror written all over it.
"Yeah, from what we can tell, the driver's window was bashed out and she was removed from the vehicle somehow, but the kids were still in the back. He must have thrown Riddhima to the ground pretty hard because it knocked her out."
The thought of Riddhima on some roadside unconscious made me livid.
"He drove off with the kids still strapped in their car seats. He was muttering something about the CBI but it's hard to hear. He was driving erratically which is why the cops started chasing him in the first place. They were more concerned with getting him off the road so they didn't bother to run the plates, as a result, they didn't know who the care belonged to or that there were kids inside. Riddhima had tinted windows so they couldn't visually see them either."
I nodded not wanting but needing to hear the rest of this story.
"They tried to shoot out the tires but failed, hitting the gas tank instead. When another unit finally got ahead of him, they set out a spike strip and took out the tires. He was only a 17 year old kid so he wasn't an experienced driver. He swerved off the road and down a small ravine. Because most of the gas had leaked out of the tank from the holes the cops shot in it, there was nothing but fumes left and the car burst into flames. He got out because the air bag saved him and he staggered up the ravine. The cops arrested him but left the car to burn not thinking there was anyone else in it."
"Oh. My God." I quietly moaned. I felt sick, like I was going to throw up. This was far worse than anything I had ever imagined. "How did you know he was muttering something about the CBI?" I asked trying to force this whole story to make sense.
"She was connected with OnStar, they record all their calls." I nod wanting him to connect the dots for me.
"There is a 21 minute long recording which Riddhima has heard…it ends with the children crying for her as they burned to death."
Oh god…
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Yeah.. So ..sorry about what you guys had to read. I'd said that there will be more of AR but couldn't fit much into this chapter. I have cleared all the mysteries though.. CSW, Riddhima's past, the night they spent together. The chapter after this will for sure have a whole lot more of AR. But for those who expect that AR will fall in love quickly, I am sorry to disappoint you guys their relationship is going to take a little bit more time in building up.
Thanks
Sagarika
P.S. Onstar is a car safety system. I am not sure if its available in India though.
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