“Oh, I’m sure that can be arranged at another time, Mr. Roy,” said the middle-aged shrew, adding pointedly, “when her mother, an ex-police officer, is present.”
His phone was ringing. A text message arrived. And then another one. He pulled the handset from his trouser pocket and stared at the screen, blanching. “You’re on the news,” said one text. He dismissed an incoming call, but another one came. Another text message. This one said, “Die, pedo.” Another that said, “You better run.”
They know, he thought. The whole world knows.
And it wasn’t despondency or shame he felt, but once again a kind of exaltation. He knew now that he would need the sleeping pills he’d kept for an occasion such as this, because there was no way he could live in a society that despised his kind. But even so, he greeted the thought of his death, not with fear or resignation, but with a serenity. His suicide would not be a passing so much as an ascendancy. He would rise. His tormented soul would finally be at peace.
His being filled with joy at the thought, he failed to notice what was happening in the apartment. The news was on the radio, the lead item was the very public disgrace of Amit Roy, and the first he knew of it was Heena shrieking, “Maya, get out of here now!”
Roy came back to himself. He saw Maya come flying from her bedroom into the front room, a worried look on her face. “Heena, what’s wrong?”
“We’ve got to get out of here—he’s a monster.”
“Wait,” he said, rounding on Heena. “There’s been a terrible mistake.”
“You can tell that to the police. Maya, come over here, sweetheart, stay with me.”
“No,” said Roy. He advanced on Heena, who pulled Maya to her, placing herself between Maya and Roy as he moved toward them.
“You stay away from me,” she warned.
But her voice shook and she was stepping backward, going into the kitchen.
“I can explain,” said Roy, “really I can. You don’t need to be afraid, either of you.”
He snatched a knife from the knife block. Flipped it to hold overhand.
“Get away,” screeched Heena, and she too tried to reach for a weapon, grabbing blindly for something, anything, from the counter, protecting Maya to the last, keeping herself between the man and his prey.
Even when Roy buried the knife in her chest.
Her mouth dropped open. Roy pulled the knife free with a wrench and then stabbed again, pitilessly, enjoying the pain and defeat in his victim’s eyes, her lungs filling with blood, her eyeballs rolling back.
“Don’t worry, Maya,” he called over the loud gurgling sound Heena made as he stabbed her a third time—feeling blood drizzle his face, Heena dropping to her knees before him. “Don’t worry, my darling.”
Chapter 68
THE AUDIO OF Guha’s Carrot and Stick program was played on radio stations belonging to DETV. Nisha heard it in Neel’s Toyota as they rushed toward Delhi Memorial Hospital to find Santosh.
“Is everything all right?” asked Neel.
“No…” said Nisha distantly, thinking. “It’s just that Roy was supposed to have been in Maya’s school earlier today, awarding a prize for the essay competition.”
“I’m sure she’ll be okay,” said Neel.
“Can’t hurt to be sure,” said Jack.
She checked her watch. Maya should have reached home by now. But when she called there was no answer. She tried Heena’s cell phone, then Maya’s. Neither answered.
She told herself it was nothing. A coincidence.
Ten minutes later they screeched to a halt in front of the Delhi Memorial Hospital. Jack and Neel rushed inside, making a beeline for the morgue while Nisha clambered into the driver’s seat to park the car.
She steered one-handed, trying Heena’s and Maya’s numbers.
She needed to know her little girl was safe.
Chapter 69
JACK AND NEEL bypassed the elevators and took the stairs to the morgue in the hospital basement. The autopsy room and the refrigeration chamber were lined with gurneys, on each of them a covered body.
Jack held his kerchief to his nose as the stench hit him but his experience with corpses made Neel oblivious, and he began drawing down sheets to see the bodies beneath, moving quickly from one to the other until an orderly came running over. “Hey! Who are you?” he demanded. “You’re not allowed in here.”
Jack turned to him. “Does a thousand rupees change your mind?”
The attendant looked wily. “It might.”
“Good.” Jack reached for his wallet. “Then how about I give you a thousand now and another thousand when we leave just to make sure we’re given the executive treatment. And if you wouldn’t mind keeping anything you see to yourself, that would do nicely too.”
With a nod the assistant pocketed the cash and stepped aside.
In the meantime, Neel had finished checking the gurneys. “He’s not here.”
“Must be in the refrigeration chamber,” said Jack, motioning Neel to follow him through a door leading to the freezing units. One by one they tried the drawers, until they found what they were looking for.
Chapter 70
WITH NO ANSWER from Heena or Maya, Nisha abandoned plans to park the Toyota and instead pointed it toward Vasant Vihar and home. Her heart was racing wildly, her hands clammy. Would such a situation have occurred if Maya’s father were alive? He was the one who had always taken care of Maya whenever Nisha would be late.
Nisha cursed herself for not being around for her poor baby. She narrowly missed a pedestrian who was crossing the street without bothering to look left or right, and slammed her hand on the horn to let him know he was a prick. She pressed her foot on the gas and broke two red signals along the way.
“I feel so lonely. You’re always working. But at least when you were late, it was Dad who would tuck me into bed. Now there’s only Heena in the house. The apartment feels so cold and empty.”
But then again, wasn’t she overreacting? Forming worst-case scenarios when she had no reason to be so fearful? Roy might be a predatory pedophile, but he wouldn’t be the first and he certainly wouldn’t be the last to visit a school. The simple fact of him presenting a prize at Maya’s school meant nothing.
And yet Nisha couldn’t lose the nagging feeling that something was wrong, something was seriously wrong. Why weren’t they answering their phones? And if she was overreacting? Well, she’d laugh about it later. Call it motherly concern. What were a few red traffic lights when you were worried for the most important person in your life?
The Toyota tires complained as she pulled into the parking area in front of her block. Dark now, most of the apartment lights were on but not hers. Both units on either side of her ground-floor apartment were lit up. Hers was dark.