When I reach her front door, I am met with silence. The door is slightly ajar, giving me a heads up of what might have occurred minutes ago. I brandish my weapon and open the door, my quick movements allowing me a rapid once over of the apartment's living area. I should have waited for the backup but knowing that Shukla and Keith were only minutes away, it's perfectly fine.
What's not fine is the way Khushi is sitting on sofa with bloodied torso and hands. Fear clenches my stomach and curls nauseatingly as I rush towards her. She is staring at her bloodied hands and is unnaturally still. Had it not been for the soft rise and fall of her chest I would have definitely thought of the worse.
"Khushi." It's a statement. It's a sigh of relief. It's a plea.
She cocks her head towards her left and my eyes naturally shift towards that direction.
A man lies in a pool of his own blood, body obscured by furniture. I know I should go to the body and investigate first but I talk to her instead. "Are you okay?" She looks up and uncurls her palms. Hidden beneath her arm is a long knife. I wonder if the man brought the knife or Khushi had it on her.
"Just some cuts and scratches. He jumped on me when I was talking to you." Her explanation doesn't give away much but it's a start.
"Do you know who he is?" I ask gently. She shakes her head. "Is that yours?" I point to the knife on her lap. She shakes her head again. "Okay." I respond evenly without giving away the doubt in my mind. It was strange how she was clinging to the knife.
"I need a shower." She says plaintively but doesn't make an attempt to get up.
"Of course you can take a shower but after sometime, okay?" She is not only a victim but also evidence. I don't have the heart to tell her that. Thankfully she doesn't question anything further but merely nods in affirmation. "I will take a look around, okay?" I tell her and walk past her towards the man.
The moment I see the body in its entirety, I bite back a horrified scream. I take a look at the man and look at Khushi who is strangely calm. The body is heavily mutilated with innards coming out to play. The man is well built and looks strong. How can this strong man lie on floor with intestines hanging while a slim woman doesn't even get a cut that would require emergency medical attention?
"He is dead, I think." She rasps. I give up my crouching pose and stand up straight to look at her. Her eyes are looking straight ahead. "After he stopped moving I came and sat here, waiting for you." I walk towards her slowly and block her sight. I sit on my knees in front of her and gently take her face between my palms.
"It is over. He cannot harm you anymore." Her shoulders relax and sag a little. Her unfocussed eyes splay on me, tired and scared.
"He tried to... I...I..." I rake thumb over her lips and shush her. She sighs deeply and swallows hard.
"It's okay. It's over now. We can talk about it later, alright?" I reassure her. Though she nods, the way her eyes shifts between me and to her left gives me all the indications I need. She stiffens when she hears footsteps near her door. I remove my hands from her face and with a squeeze on her shoulder I stand up and put my cop mask back on.
"Get Arjun here ASAP." I bark out the moment Shukla walks through the front door.
"I already did," Keith replies instead. He is already snapping gloves. He throws a pair at me once he is close enough and raises an eyebrow.
I sigh. "I haven't touched anything." Keith gives me thumbs up and gets to his work.
"Oh my God!" Keith exclaims the moment he goes near the dead body. It isn't as if we haven't seen anything gory or disturbing but to see it in a home of a friend does its number on our psyche. It isn't the mutilation which scared me or even Keith for that matter. It's the notion that people we know are capable of doing something like that.
Shukla doesn't react the way Keith did but winces at the sight of man's torso.
"We should wait for Arjun." He repeats unnecessarily to fill in the silence that follows. "Have you taken her statement?" He asks me, looking at the knife placed on Khushi's lap.
"I was waiting for you two to come in. Arjun may want some pictures..." I wave my hand in Khushi's direction in general without looking at her.
"I need a shower." Khushi repeats her earlier request. Blood is slowly drying on her hand and is caking beneath her finger nails.
"I think shower is a very good idea." Arjun says walking in smiling at Khushi. She looked at him blankly and shrugged. "How about I help you cleanup before you take a breather?" He adds kindly. Khushi lets out a whoosh of breath she has been holding. Her shoulder sags in relaxation or in defeat, I do not know. Arjun carefully picks up the knife and slips it into an evidence bag. The hilt of the knife is adorned with complex engraving and I can see yellow gold shining beneath the blood. It is ornamental and looks expensive; almost as if it is...ceremonial.
Arjun ushers Khushi towards bathroom along with his kit. Keith turns around, hands on his hips and blurts, "Did she do it?"
Shukla is looking at me knowingly. "She said this man attacked her and she defended herself by killing him."
Keith frowns. "She said that?"
"She implied." Keith may have a point there. "I didn't ask her to explain about this. She was...composed when I came here. I could see she was scared of the man...I think she still is." I frown.
"You think she knows him?" Shukla cottons on.
"We cannot rule that out." I am not sure, to be honest.
"Why is there an over kill?" Shukla asks walking back towards the body. Arjun's team has started to pull out their toys and the living room is swarmed with people.
"She wasn't leaving anything for chance." I see several cuts on the man's forearms. They were defensive wounds. "The man fought back." I turn around and look at Shukla and Keith. "Similar cuts are present on Khushi's arms suggesting she was attacked by him."
"Am I the only one who is finding this situation odd?" Keith asks. Shukla and I exchange a glance. When I look back at Keith, he is frowning.
"What do you think?" Shukla asks.
"She could have severely injured the man and left him alive. He would have been more useful to us alive than dead." Keith explains.
"What's your point?" Shukla asks.
Keith turns to look at me. "It seems to me that she didn't want the man to be alive and talk to us. She had the weapon with her. After injuring the man she could have simply waited out. But she not only guts him alive but also attacks his face. Now the facial recognition will take time because of extended mutilation on his face and neck making identification process all the more difficult."
"Maybe she freaked out. The man scared her so much that she lost control and...did that." Shukla rallies back.
"Khushi doesn't freak out easily Shukla. She has seen stuff worse than this and...Keith does make a valid point." I concede. It isn't as if this didn't occur to me but I didn't want to deal with it with Khushi in the room.
"Oh, come on!" Shukla exclaims. "Are you suggesting that she killed a man to hide something? That this was staged?" He asks waving his arms around.
I shake my head. "No, the attack did happen and... something transpired between the two."
"You are speculating." Shukla frowned.
"I am hypothesizing Shukla. We need to treat this like any other crime scene. Let's start with the front door." I didn't give a room for argument or further deliberation. Shukla and Keith followed me in silence.
Keith walks past us to check the door. "Why does she have so many deadbolts?" He notes seeing four dead bolts from the inside. "What do you think she is afraid of?" Shukla asks.
When it comes to Khushi, we are always left with questions. None of us take a stab at questions.
"It looks like a simple case of breaking and entering. There are only two houses on each floor giving the man ample amount of time to work on this. These locks can be easily picked," Keith says pointing towards door lock. "I'll ask Deshmukh to interview the neighbors and the guard downstairs." Keith doesn't wait for a response or an affirmation from me and goes in search of Deshmukh who had arrived with Arjun.
"The area of altercation seems to be centered on living area - near sofa." Shukla observes. He is right. Magazines are on the floor. Trinkets are broken and pieces are lying on the ground. A vase which once was on the shelf next to sofa is now on floor broken into thousand pieces. Roses were still fresh, lying on the floor. Outside the area, nothing was out of place.
I open the door from outside and turn to my right to see light switch. Khushi would have first turned it on and placed the keys on the table right next to the door.
"That's right sir ji," Shukla agrees.
"I didn't realize I was talking aloud," I chuckle. Shukla smiles and shakes his head. "The man doesn't attack her immediately else we would have seen marks of trouble in this area," Shukla picks my thread. "Where is he then? Is he in the room?"
"If he is in the room then why come out? She would eventually go inside anyway and she would be more vulnerable once inside. In living room she is still carrying her purse and cellphone making it riskier to attack." Shukla answers his own question without waiting for an answer. He is thinking out loud and I don't disturb that train of thought.
"She didn't make it to her room. All her stuff is still here." Keith joins us and points to her purse sitting on sofa chair. "She was ambushed near sofa?" Keith looks around, confusion etched on his face. "He could have been hiding behind the sofa." He shrugs. Its only hypothesis at this stage and both the points seem to be valid.
"Maybe," I reply.
There are times when I feel we end up complicating things more than necessary by taking every probable route. Knowing the victim helps us in building theories and hypothesis based on which we infer several probable cases. With time, we have come to eliminate some routes well in beginning based on our collective experiences. This saves time and allows less room for error; be it error in judgment or analysis.
"He catches her off guard and they struggle. She takes the knife and kills him in self-defense." Shukla finishes.
I nod. It is a good theory. It's the most plausible one. It's believable. And probably this is what happened.
I however cannot shake off this feeling. This thing that's gnawing at me since the moment I saw Khushi's face. Things are complicated or simple based on perspective. The theories we come up with rely heavily on the victims and their behavior. But what if our reading of the victim itself is wrong?
"Or she could have let the man inside voluntarily. They could have had an altercation over something and things took a downward spiral." My eyes are trained on the body on the ground. Generally the mutilation showed incredible amount of rage. I am now left to wonder if it was both rage and a forensic counter measure.
Did we really know Khushi at all?
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