Till Human Voices Wake Us: Last Part: Page 175 - Page 56

"Have we walked into a daily soap which thrives on twists and lies?" Satya asked sitting on the armrest of sofa next to Emily.

It was only five days since they started working on the case and everything was one tangled mess. Before they could even scrape the surface of first murder, they had another one already on their hands. With this speed they would be simply chasing people all around and not have enough time to touch base.

Everyone was quiet for minutes sipping on tea and looking at various reports spread on coffee table.

"Okay, let's consider three murders and see what we can draw from them. What is the common in the three cases?" Maan asked.

"One photo with words written across was found in each murder scene. The finger print on the photo matched the respective victim's index finger." David said.

"In case of Sasha, there was a postmortem wound on index finger that was cleanly bandaged. In case of Anjali, as David mentioned, it was cleaned up after writing on photo and in case of Mal, the killer didn't bother to hide what he had done. The cut was open along with several other defensive wounds." Vic said.

"The words written on the photos were something the victims were in their own life; Sasha's secret wasn't much of a secret as she was facing a lawsuit but the others had kept their parallel lives quite out of the world's eye." Deshmukh said.

"The first two victims had drug in their system while the last one didn't. But the victimology of the last two crime scenes shows similarities – rage. And the photo found in the crime scene was placed in a vase – the vase whose photo was uploaded in Sasha's blog. Sasha had wanted to acquire the vase given how she was fascinated by them." Satya said.

"The killer left messages on social networks, Facebook to be specific in the last two cases - the lines from the same poem. My team sifted through Sasha's blogs in detail and read through the comments she received for her entries. One comment stood out – In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo. It's a line from the same poem from where the Facebook status messages came. The comment was posted on her website an hour or so after Sasha's murder. My team is tracking down the IP address." Emily said.

"Mal got Anjali followed by private detectives for some reason. Sasha had caught on to something – she mentions in her blog a month or so before her murder about the incident where Mal or Geet or both may have visited the stalker. How much did Sasha know anyway?" Satya asked no one in particular. The question wasn't thrown in to get an answer but for everyone to remember that there was something left unanswered.

"Here are the photos that were taken from Anjali's room. Geet had provided me with USB with the photos from Phuket trip." Maan said handing out the pictures. The photos were of Sasha, Anjali and Geet in a temple praying. There was nothing else in those pictures besides them.

"What do these pictures signify?" Emily asked.

"Repent. The shrine where these photos were taken is supposed to contain a splinter of Lord Buddha's bone and apparently people come here to pray for happiness. Local legends say that if you repent for your sins in this shrine, you will be given second chances." Maan explained.

"Alright, now in these commonalities what is specific to only the killer? Sure there is lots of information overlapping when it comes to victims, but from a killer standpoint, what is only 'his'?" Maan asked.

"The vases. He brought all of them to the crime scene," Satya said.

"And the messages he left after the murder – lines from the same poem," Emily said.

"Rage against them for what they have done," Deshmukh said.

"What is so special about the vase?" Maan asked reiterating what they have been always talking about. Only now, they have to look at it from a totally different perspective.

"Sasha wanted to buy similar vase during vacation in Phuket. She was fascinated with it given how she loves the mythology of Pandora's jar. The line from her blog was - What Pandora had, was filled with evil known to mankind and closed it shut before Hope came out. Let ours hold the truth. It looks like she was looking at the vase as her own jar where she could keep her sins tight shut or it contained only hope. Either fits." Emily said.

"If the killer has read about it in her blog, then could he have strung the two and thought the same way you just did?" Maan asked.

"It is possible, yes." Emily replied.

"The killer kept her sin back in the jar. But that doesn't make sense. Keeping bad things inside the jar should bring in happiness to the world but look where it got Sasha," Satya said. No one answered to that.

"Emily, is the order of lines in the poem same as chronological order of the murders?" Maan asked looking at the board where Deshmukh had written the lines for each woman.

"No they aren't. Sasha's line is in the beginning, Mal's somewhere in middle and Anjali's is the last line of the poem. I believe the killer is talking about himself and his interaction with each woman; the lines tell us a story." Emily said.

"What does Sasha's line mean?" David asked, curious.

"The line - In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo, would mean the meeting between him and the women. In the poem, the narrator sees women who are talking about renaissance art and discussing Michelangelo and wonders why women of that stature would ever look or talk to a man like him. The line however appears more than once as the narrator of the poem sees women coming and going but he hasn't budged. If I apply the same allegory here, the killer also feels the same – being outcast and ignored in a social setting." Emily explained.

"Can you check Sasha's blog and find out where she socialized since the time she met Anjali?" Maan asked. Emily immediately sent out an email to her team on her blackberry and nodded at Maan once finished.

"What about Mal's line? If her line comes next to Sasha's line," Satya asked.

"Mal's line is – I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing to me. It's a reference to Homer's Odyssey. In the book, sea nymphs who sit on a shore and sing a song so alluring that it attracts all passing sailors who hear it. Then the sailors sit on the shore, transfixed by the song until they die. Odysseus plugs their ears with wax and orders them to tie him to a mast. Thus as they pass the shore only he hears the song but cannot go ashore, though he wants to, because he cannot break free of the bonds. The nymphs are singing but not to him. In the same way killer is bound to something and he cannot approach the women who are singing; or in this case socializing." Emily finished.

"So the killer saw them somewhere together, correct?" Satya asked Emily. She nodded.

"But why Mal? Why not Anjali or Sasha? Why is he accusing her of not talking to him?" Maan asked.

"I don't know. Maybe we may find something about it if Sasha has blogged, okay?" She answered.

"What about Anjali's line?" Satya asked again.

"Anjali's line – Till human voices wake us, and we drown. It's the 'we' I am unable to understand. In the poem the narrator is actually in conversation with a Dantesque listener who is a totally different person or the narrator's inner self. In our killer's case, am unable to figure out, honestly." Emily sighed.

"Emily, what if we added another parameter in the analysis of these lines?" Maan asked.

"What parameter?"

"Geet," he answered. Emily raised eyebrows and exchanged looks with Satya. Maan was on to something.

"It fits better actually. In case of Sasha's line, it would mean that it was Geet who was talking to the other women probably about something intellectual. And in case of Mal, he is angry that Geet talked to Mal as Mal was her closest companion and not to him. And in Anjali's case, the 'we' could represent him and Geet and he isn't happy that Anjali lives with Geet. And he justifies it by showing care to her at Anjali's house." Emily finished.

"I need to read more about this sir and I have to rethink the interpretation with Geet in perspective again," Emily said. Maan nodded.

"Why is the killer angry with the three women?" Maan asked after moments.

"He is angry about what they did to him either directly or indirectly. Anjali entered Mal's and Sasha's lives only two years ago and few months later Sasha was dead. It is possible that they might have done something to him without knowing exactly how their actions were affecting him. He can be that angry car driver from Phuket who wanted to kill that mother and child and these ladies managed to save them. But Mal doesn't fit in the equation." Deshmukh said.

"Mal could be killed simply because she knew the three women," Satya said thoughtfully.

"No, that cannot be the case. He had an easier way of dealing with them in Phuket and he even had access to do so. But he came all the way here and killed Sasha and Anjali sporadically and also killed Mal? Why wait for a long time?" Maan said.

"I agree. This isn't some guy with plain old revenge in his mind. The psyche of the killer is much complex than what we perceive. The rage is a manifestation of something primal, the reason which we aren't able to figure out. The reason is what fascinated him about the women in the first place and their failure to meet that reason is what turned him to an angry man," Emily said.

"How can you deduce that?" Satya asked.

"Rage is born out of tremendous amount of emotion – jealousy, injustice, harming a loved one et al. And the way rage is exhibited gives a little idea about how the subject is dealing with it. People resort to killing when this rage blinds them and overshadows rationality. And in cases like these, the person on whom the rage is exhibited has wronged the subject directly with tangible evidence. But here in the murder of Mal, the rage is almost out of control given how there were seventy three stab wounds -"

"- seventy-five, there were couple more on her neck which I had missed during initial examination," Vic cut off Emily and corrected her.

"He could have killed them seeing how they aren't what he perceived them to be. Their immorality might have driven him to the brink of rage. The thought crossed my mind at Mal's apartment this morning when I looked at the photo from the vase," Maan said.

"How can that be motive?" Satya asked incredulously.

"It can be when psychosis due to severe delusion is involved," Maan said flatly.

"And we know who has a history of delusion," Emily said softly.

To be continued.

Originally posted by: -Sookie-

Chapter 18:

"And we know who has a history of delusion," Emily said softly.

To be continued.