Let's End Your FEAR

Chapter 11

Mumbai was dressing itself for the evening with a sparkle of lights. It was a pretty city, Detective Sameer thought, staring out at the yellow rectangles in a distant tower, climbing into the night sky like some kind of golden ladder. Not the kind of place you'd expect to produce such a killer.

Sharma, as a Mumbaikar ,as he was a North Indian, was convinced that whoever had murdered Ashish Puri was certainly from somewhere else; Pune, maybe, or wherever it was where people like the Sopranos lived.

Rai had smiled at that, but had to admit there was an old-time mob taste to the way the elderly man had been killed. You didn't see creativity like that in many other arenas.

He glanced back at his monitor, jiggled his mouse to bring the report he was writing back to life. He hated writing reports. Hated the arcane, affected cop speak that mangled the brain and tied the tongue.

You never went into a house; you entered a residence. People were never shot to death; they sustained mortal wounds inflicted by such-and-such caliber firearms. And Ashish Puri had certainly not been tied to a train track to be turned into oatmeal by the midnight freight to Goa, he'd simply been 'secured to the tracks by means of barbed wire. You couldn't even mention that the train was due, because that would imply the alleged perpetrator had actually premeditated a means of death not in evidence.

Some junior-high school defense attorney would jump all over that. Genteel, legalese gobbledygook is what it was. If a cop ever talked like that in real life, he'd be laughed off the force.

He looked out at the lights again, dreaming of his last sentence, wondering if Chief Anant would suspend him if he wrote that Ashish Puri had been left on the tracks to get filleted by a train.

C'mon, Rai,' Sharma chided him.

'Goose the mare, would you? The caterers have arrived."

Rai looked up with the guilty start of the grade school kid who should never be given a desk by a window. Sharma, Yadav, and Shetty were at the big table in the front of the Homicide room, pulling white cardboard containers out of a collection of smelly paper bags.

'Almost finished,' he said, turning back to his computer.

'Well hurry up,' Yadav said good-naturedly. 'My stomach thinks my throat's been cut.'

Nakuul gave him a look. "Where do you get that stuff?"

"What stuff?"

"All those pithy little sayings."

"My father. He's a very pithy man.'

Sharma found the bag of garlic rolls and stuck his nose in the top.

"What's "pithy" mean?"

Like in "pithed off," Yadav said deadpan.

"Say, how come Rohit and Aditya aren't here? You're doing a tandem, right?"

"Nah. We're catching media bullets on this one, and the chief hasn't let Aditya near a camera since he told that arrogant prick from Channel 3 he was an arrogant prick."

Yadav sighed happily. "That was a beautiful moment,"

"That it was" Sharma agreed.

Anyway, Rohit was signed out for vacation starting tomorrow morning anyway, so it worked out. Now I get all the glory as soon as Sameer solves this thing.

Sameer smiled as he keyed in the command to print, then stood up and stretched.

This was good. Being in the office after hours, working an active case, listening to the guys banter.... for the first time in what seemed like years, he was beginning to feel as if everything might be all night again.