Part 1

After the death of the Doctor's wife, a series of murders of murders followed. Were they connected? Doctor thinks otherwise, but something happens that might change his opinion

December 5^th

It was sometime in noon when the intercom rang as he was taking a look at some files sent in by the town’s asylum.

“Doctor, the Inspector is there on line one, he says its urgent.” said the receptionist, her voice cracking due to the speaker at the receiver end.

“Alright, thanks.” said Doctor Arvind Desai as he pressed a key on the telephone unit and picked up the receiver. His clinic was the place where many of the town's mentally depressed, disturbed, people with anger management issues visited to keep themselves in check. He was a psychiatrist. The only one in the town and a pretty good one, as his patients claimed. He expected this call to be one of those requests for a phone session. The receptionist could hear only his side of the conversation through the wooden partition in between the lobby of the clinic and the room where the doctor would conduct his sessions.

“Speaking.”

“Yes that’s right.”

“I am.”

“What? How? I’m on my way.”

There was a loud thud of the telephone receiver being placed on the unit. The door flung open and the doctor hurried past the receptionist’s desk.

“Rita, cancel all my appointments for the day.” he said in a stern voice as he made his way to the main door. Then he stopped and turned around.

“Do that for the next two days as well.” His voice was trembling this time. He made his way out of the clinic towards his car. The doctor was long gone before Rita could comprehend the situation. She did as Arvind instructed her and cancelled the remaining appointments of the day and all of the same for the next day. The doctor has never cancelled his appointments, she thought. She decided to call his place later in the evening to enquire about the matter.

He saw two police vehicles at the entrance of his building followed by an ambulance. The doctor was sweating as he left his car right behind the police vehicles and hurried up the steps. He could hear a certain commotion of people as he ascended the flight of stairs. It wasn’t loud, but the tone of the group whispering made it sound serious. Upon arriving to his floor, he saw a crowd comprising of his neighbours and people residing in the building. Everyone at once stared at him, their eyes filled with pity and sorrow, which he knew at once was for him. The doctor made his way into the house, which was swarming with police officials. Some were dusting on the furniture to look for finger prints, one of them carried a camera. Upon noticing Arvind, one of the police officer came forward and asked him to follow him into the bedroom.

As he entered into the bedroom, he stood still. His eyes were locked onto the floor. The officer walked all the way to the other side of the room and motioned the other officers in the room to leave. He bent down where a white cloth was covering up a human figure. The cloth was stained in crimson at certain places.

The officer said in a polite tone “I know this might be really difficult for you, but we-”

“Show me.” said Arvind in a voice as cold as ice.

“I think you should take a seat Doctor.” replied the officer still maintaining the tone.

“Show me.” repeated Arvind in the same manner.

The police officer lift up the white cloth and placed it half way down, exposing the face of a lady. Her throat was covered in blood and the stains on the cloth suggested there was blood on her abdomen as well.

“Is this your wife, Doctor?” asked the officer, this time in even more soft and low voice.

Arvind stood still and gave no reply. His eyes were steady on the lifeless face of his wife. His mind had two thoughts racing with each other. He felt an aggressive urge of breaking something and letting out a loud scream along with a plain blank emotionless ache in his chest. He stood there, he couldn’t move.

“I’ll just give you some time to yourself” said the officer as he left the room.

Arvind walked towards his dead wife.

She looks so peaceful.

He was surprised as this was what came to his mind after a run of thoughtlessness. Arvind fell to his knees near his dead wife. He looked at her with a blank face, contemplating the situation that he was in. He stroked her cold cheeks. She was dead and he had to digest the very fact of not having her with him for the rest of his life. He sat there for some time, with an empty mind. No tears of sorrow rolling down his cheek as he came out of the room.

“How?” asked Arvind to the same officer who guided him to his wife’s corpse.

“We believe her throat was-”

“No. I’m asking how did this happen right in the middle of the day?” now with some aggression in his voice he said “How can someone just break into my house and kill my wife right in the middle of the day!?”

“There are no signs of struggle, neither was the lock broken. It might’ve been some visitor or someone posing as a visitor whom your wife opened the door to. Our men are taking a look at the security guard’s register for the same” the officer still had a calm tone of voice.

“Who informed you about this?” enquired Arvind.

“The lady from next door. She came to your door to ask for something. After ringing the bell she noticed the door was open and made her way in. That’s when she found your wife.”

“Doctor Desai we know this is a very difficult time for you, but we will need you at the police station tomorrow for formulating a possible list of suspects and other formalities.” said the officer as two men with a stretcher came into the house. The officer pointed towards the bedroom and continued “We will have to take the body to the lab for further inspection.”

“Yes, absolutely. Do whatever you have to do inspector. I’ll try to be of help when I come to the station tomorrow morning.” said Arvind, his voice still shaky but he trying hard to mask it with a polite tone.

When the two men left with the corpse on a stretcher, the police officials too made for their van. The crowd in front of the door had been dispersed by the officers. Only the lady from the house across the floor stayed with Arvind for some time.

“Did you notice something sir?” asked the subordinate to his senior as they got into their vans.

“What’s that?” enquired the officer.

“The Doctor. He didn’t shed a single tear. That’s a first for someone who has seen their wife dead”

“Yeah I noticed. The guy is a psychiatrist. He might know well how to control his feelings. His voice was little shaky in the end though. Don’t think too much about it, I’ve seen people have mental break downs after such a tragedy.” said the officer as their van drove off from the vicinity of the building.

That night Arvind was accompanied by one of his closest friends in the town, Mr. Mukherjee. They were at Mukherjee’s place, as he thought it would be better to bring Arvind here than letting him spend the night at his tragedy stricken place. There were long silences and short talks. Mr. Mukherjee was one of the very first people Arvind and his wife knew when they first came to this town three years ago. He had helped them to get this place to stay in.

“I can’t stay there now. I am even afraid to go into the bedroom. I keep picturing Neha on the floor covered in blood. I just can’t.” said Arvind as he dropped his face into his palms.

“Yes sure, I’ll help you look for another place. We’ll look at it later. You need to get some rest.” assured Mukherjee as he placed his hand on Arvind’s back.

 

December 8^th

“I’m sorry it took some time to visit you for the formalities. I-” Arvind was stopped midway by the police officer. “Its fine Doctor, we understand. Besides, we ourselves have been busy last night. There was another death, similar to your wife’s.” The officer stopped and analysed Arvind’s face in order to decide if he should proceed or not.

Arvind had a mild headache due to restless sleep last night. His attention was half consumed by the same. It took him a moment to understand the officer’s words.

“Oh dear lord! Where? Who?”

The officer saw genuine feelings of sorrow on the doctor’s face for the first time since he met him on the tragic day of his wife’s death. Deciding it being fine to reveal details of the victim, he continued, “Mrs. Shetty. The family lives 20 minutes away from you place.”

“Oh yes, I know them, have met them a couple of times I believe.”
“The lady was killed last night, in similar fashion to your wife. We suspect that this is the work of the same person who killed your wife.” The officer noticed a change of expression on the doctor’s face upon the mention of his wife. His face went from a sorrowful frown to a blank expression.

“Anyway, we’ll just complete your form filling and then you can be on your way.” said the officer with a smile, sensing the change in mood and motioned Arvind to sit at his desk.

“I doubt I have any possible suspects. As far as I remember I never had any conflict with anyone.” said Arvind as he took a seat on the chair in front of the officer’s desk.

The officer replied as he offered some water to Arvind and then continued, “There might be some people who might wish sorrow upon you, Doctor. You’ve sent a couple of criminals to the town’s asylum by proving them to be mentally unstable.” replied the officer.

“Both the inmates are still in the asylum I think.”

“One of them was released a week ago based on his progressive behavior, Mahesh Sen. The doctors at the institute believe Mr. Shetty is now ready to get back to normal life.” said the police officer.

“My men are looking into his whereabouts. I’ll inform you if we find any leads. For now I’ll have you fill this form.” the officer handed Arvind a pad and a pen.

Arvind carefully filled out every field on the form. He had to concentrate a little harder, the mind numbing throbbing in his head made him ose focus.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name yesterday.” said Arvind as he handed the pad back to the officer.

“Das, Inspector Lalit Das.”

“Thank you Inspector Das.” greeted Arvind as he shook the inspector’s hand and made for his car parked outside the police station.

Arvind was thinking about the killing that took place last night as he drove to his new home that Mukherjee had helped in looking for. He felt sorry for the Shetty family. Along with the throbbing headache an overpowering feeling of sorrow and grief and then a thought hit him like lightning.

Could the two killings have a certain pattern? In both cases a married female was the victim.

The more he thought about it, the more his head would ache. He decided to leave the matter completely up to the police officials and Inspector Das, thus refraining from thinking anything about the incidents.

The police are doing their work. They know much more than me.

He went home, took an aspirin and went to sleep on his bed trying to recover some of last night’s lost sleep.

Arvind was to resume his clinic from the 13^th of December. He thought maybe some work would take his mind off this tragedy and help his mind get back in shape.

 

December 13^th  

The sleepless nights had become quite regular over the last week. Arvind thought maybe the hectic schedule of work would exhaust him enough to help him sleep well. That morning he woke up with the same throbbing headache. It almost felt as if someone was knocking from the inside of his head. He felt tired. But today was the day when his clinic was to resume work. Rita had informed him there were patients waiting for his sessions. Arvind remembered going to sleep with some worry about how he was going to handle his patients after a break of almost two weeks.

He got up, got ready and made his way to his clinic. The morning coffee had nominally subsidised the headache. He thought a smoke would help clear his mind before returning to work. So he lit up a cigarette and got into his car.

Putting the cigarette out on the side of the parking lot, he made way for his clinic. To his surprise, the cigarette made the ache in his head worse.

He entered the clinic to see Rita already there. No patients had arrived which made Arvind let out a sigh of relief. He was relieved that he won’t have to face someone as soon as he got into his room with this headache.

“Good morning Doctor.” greeted Rita with a smile. She had never seen the doctor so visibly irritated

“Good Morning.”

The television in the lobby was turned on. The news channel was the one which was always on the TV. Arvind walked towards his session room, but was stopped as the morning news anchor got in with a ‘Breaking News’.

“This incident, that has taken place last night is believed to be another one of the serial killings taking place around town this month. This being the third victim of the killer.” said the anchor in his mechanical yet hard hitting tone. This made Arvind stop and turn around to watch the news. The images on the television showed the ambulance taking away someone covered in a white cloth which had stains of red on it.

“The victim is a college boy, Anshuman Pawar, who was found by his mother this morning in his bed. He was already dead and covered in blood when she found him. The officials say his throat was slit and he was stabbed in the abdomen.” continued the anchor.

The next images showed the grieving parents answering the questions of the officials.

Rita immediately switched off the TV as she saw Arvind’s face with a blank expression and just blurted out without any thought.

“Poor kid. He stays somewhere near your neighbourhood.”

Arvind was almost deaf to her words. The headache had increased to a rate where he could hear the knocks from the inside of his forehead. There were too many thoughts running in his mind for him to comprehend. After a moment or two he came to his senses.

“Yeah, yeah, poor kid. He was one of the students at my guest lecture at the university you know.” replied Arvind in a calm voice.

Surprised at this response, Rita asked, “How do you remember him perfectly? I mean you have guest lectures all the time which are attended by many students.”

“He was the one who approached me after the lecture and kept asking questions about general instincts of the human mind in certain situations, also his name is quite catchy.” replied Arvind with a genuine smile.

“Alright listen, I have a bad case of headache this morning. So just send the patients in after a three to five minute gap. That’ll give me some time to relax. And get me some coffee, will you?” said Arvind in a polite tone that even surprised him.

 The effect of the work environment is already kicking in.

Author's Note

This is my first ever story here.
Feedback appreciated :)

Reviews

[MichaelJHyde]

Plenty of tension and mystery to begin with. Would like to see some more personal touches with the dr and his wife. Something that makes me feel for her loss the way the dr does. But its a great start.