***

Word Count - 3540 

***

15 | The New Criminal Profiler

"Sahib, Joseph Varghese sir is here."

"Let him in."

Karim nodded his head and turned around to strut out of his boss's office.

Sixty seconds later, a soft yet systematic rapping came from the locked entranceway of Mahadevan's posh workspace. "Come in." He directed.

Immediately, the lofty Brazilian Rosewood door unbolted to reveal a tall man in an olive-green turtleneck, black trousers, and a pair of Chelsea boots. Flashing a genial smile at him, he walked in.

Noticing this, Mahadevan stood up to greet him. "Good morning, Your Grace." He said poker faced.

"A sun-kissed hello to the Chieftain of the Dogra clan from my side as well." Joseph Varghese greeted him back wittily.

Minimizing the Excel sheets on his MacBook, Mahadevan flashed a faint smile and ambled closer to the man in front of him. "Coffee, wine, or Scotch?"

"Scotch pila de yaar!" Joseph stated while he was engaged in a firm handshake with his friend.

"On the rocks?"

"Yes."

"Alright." Gesticulating at the davenport in the far left section of the office, Mahadevan said, "How about we settle down with our drinks first and then carry on with our conversation?"

Joseph assented.

A few minutes later, Mahadevan ensconced himself on the single high-headed sofa chair while his bosom friend settled down comfortably on the three-seater sofa, two rock glasses filled with two ounces of the amber-hued distilled spirit, clasped sophisticatedly in each of their right hands.

Taking a sip from his glass, he said. "Now, coming to the main business, why are you here?"

"It's Sebastian's baptism ceremony on the 7th of this month; here is the invitation card." Joseph Varghese said while taking out a short and crisp-looking pale blue envelope from his pants' pocket.

"Oh, wow. Congratulations!" Mahadevan raised a toast as he grasped the cute little envelope his friend passed on to him.

"And I expect yours and Bhabhi's presence in Saint Nicholas Church at Gulmohar Park on May 7th, sharp at 9 a.m. in the morning, clear?" Joseph announced while savoring the peaty and smoky taste of the scotch with faint undertones of premium bourbon.

"Done!" Mahadevan brought up his left hand to signal a thumbs up, a smile etched on his face.

"Cheers!" "Cheers!"

Glasses clinked as the two bosom friends shared a boisterous laugh.

A minute later, as the two friends reveled in the soothing silence of the office, Joseph asked, "How is married life, Mahi?"

Mahadevan gazed at his friend as a tranquil smile tugged at his lips. "I have never felt so happy, so harmonious, and so relaxed before. The past few months have been bliss." He said.

"She makes you happy?" Joseph probed with a faint smile on his face.

"Happy? Happy as a term is an understatement for what she makes me feel, Joseph. She makes me feel content. I am so damn high on dopamine all the freaking time!" He spoke out lightheartedly.

Joseph chortled in joy.

"How did I become so lucky all of a sudden, Joseph? How did I become so damn fortunate and blessed to have her?" He paused, taking a sip of the woody, distilled spirit. "A man like me who was destined to depart his life, forever trapped with in the solitary fences of his own soul?" He articulated in a tone of melancholy as his chestnut pools blurred due to a thin layer of sheen.

Joseph moved closer to rub his friend's back as a gesture of comfort.

"Everybody gets their chance at happiness, Mahi. And for that, patience is the only key." He said this as a ruminative smile spread across his lips.

Mahadevan nodded back as he adjusted his specs, warmly gazing at the distant photo frame perched up on his escritoire—a picture of his wife cradling their son in her dainty arms.

***

Fifteen minutes later, Mahadevan saw his friend off outside his office.

He then fished his phone out of his pocket and dialed Karim's number. The man answered his call within the first two rings.

"Sahib."

"How is that fucker doing?"

"Alive, Sahib."

"Good, keep him alive. Is Gurung there with you?"

"Yes, Sahib."

"Okay, then, wait for me. I am coming there." Gyrating the golden doorknob of his office door, he entered inside. "Oh yes, is the shutter closed from inside?"

"No, Sahib. It's open."

"Okay, wait for me." He disconnected the call and entered the washroom in the far right corner of the office, closing the door behind him.

He then raised his right arm up to rotate the showerhead anticlockwise exactly nine times.

Immediately, the front wall of the chic and lavish washroom separated into two parts in opposite directions to reveal an unlatched, side-folding shutter gate. The path beyond it was reveling in dim red lights.

He strode straight into the path beyond the grill gate, after which he turned around to fold the shutters behind him. Once the shutters were closed, he volt-faced to press the switch on the left wall of the narrow passageway. Instantly, the two separated walls of the washroom beyond the grill gate latched back to each other once again, preventing whatever little luminescence the washroom's recessed lighting was reflecting on the constricted walkway.

He walked ten meters forward in the diabolical-looking, dark passageway illuminated with dim red lights, finally ceasing his footfall in front of a thick silver door. He then clicked on the green-colored button set up on the wall next to the door. Forthwith, a biometric Iris scanner emerged out of the wall and scanned his warm earthy irises, and then and there, the silver barricade unbolted on its own, revealing three human figures in the distant darkness of a mammoth-sized confidential chamber, the first two erect on their feet while the third was seated on a chair, his arms and limbs tied up and his head dangling forward like the neck of a lifeless hen.

"Sahib"

"Saab ji"

Karim Khan and Amar Gurung bowed their heads to acknowledge their master's presence.

"Arey, marr gayaa kya yeh?" He questioned in amusement as he walked into the chamber, closing the unassailable metal door behind him by pressing on a switch on the wall above the metal barrier.

Gurung leisurely strolled to the half-dead man on the chair and brought the middle finger and index finger of his right hand in the close proximity of his nostrils for ten seconds to check his breath.

"No Saab ji, he is still breathing." Just as he finished with what he was trying to say, the withering man before him sneezed loudly.

"Chiii! Abey haathi ke bachhe cheenkaa kyun?!" Gurung bounced backwards, as if struck by a truckload of Influenza virus. "He has not even properly cleansed his nose, Saab Ji! There is so much gunk on my fingers. Eww!"

Karim rolled his eyes as Gurung paraded into the washroom of the secret chamber to wash his hands.

Mahadevan stood before the man with a demoniacal, lopsided smile etched on his face. "Good morning, Kalki."

Kalkinath Sahu lifted his head up in debility to look at the autocratically Mephistophelian man in front of him. Trepidation seeped in through each and every pore of his body as he convulsed back in panic. "W---why have you brought me here, Dogra Sahib?" Words spoken in barely whispers echoed in the absolutely still room.

"You laid your wretched eyes on my woman. You and that minion, Guru Surya, both of you tried to harm her; is that a reason enough?" He inclined his head to his left shoulder as he advanced his right hand to softly caress Kalkinath's cheek, flashing a soft smile at him, quite a contrast to the unobtrusive, cold-blooded glint in his eyes.

"Sahib, wh---who--are y---you talking about?"

"Hinduja Rao I.A.S." Mahadevan enunciated with pride.

Recognition blazed right through the man's cat-like eyes, and he yelled out a profanity despite his incapacitated state. "That bitch!? ---" In a flash, Mahadevan yanked out Kalkinath's tongue and impaled the pocket knife he was holding right through his slippery saliva-coated muscular organ, while Karim heel-and-toed to the man sitting on the chair and stabbed him brutally across the back of his right metacarpus with his serrated Khukri.

Eerily spine-chilling cries left the man's mouth as Mahadevan broke into a fit of humorless chuckles.

"Not. a word. against. the. lady, clear?" Karim ruthlessly enunciated. Kalkinath bobbed his head desperately as Gurung got out of the washroom, hearing the loud yawp. "Oh, you people have started the fun already? Boss, you didn't call me." He stated this with a forlorn mien, embracing his visage.

Karim sighed in vexation.

Meanwhile, Mahadevan inched closer to the bleeding man before him. "Little kid, you have no idea who she is. You better mind your fucking language, yeah?" He paused, tracing the trail of blood oozing out of Kalkinath's tongue. "Or let me ask you..." Saying so, his exceptionally tall and rugged figure crouched down to grab the jaw of the man before him.

"Do you know who she is?" The long and sturdy phalanges seizing the man's jaw in a vice-like grip tightened exponentially.

Bones cracked. A pair of mandibles dislocated. Molars broke. And crimson gore dribbled down a pair of bruised and moisture-deprived lips.

Next, a gruesome and bloodcurdling scream echoed in the various dimensions of the covert chamber.

"Y---you--your wife?" He tried to answer despite the copiously bleeding tongue in his mouth.

"That's the right answer, bud. She is my wife." Mahadevan seethed, taking a whiff of the metallic fetor around his carmine-stained digits. "But do you know about the other rank she wields the scepter of?"

Terror struck the man as his forehead perspired; each drop of sweat trickled down to coalesce with the crimson vital fluid flowing down his contused chin and lips. He decrepitly shook his head.

"My crown; she presides over the position of my crown. She wields the sword of my glory." He whispered, his tone slow yet menacing. "She is the diadem I devoutly confer upon my head."

He creeped closer, resembling a venomous viper, all set to pounce on his prey.

"So, here is a decree you should abide by; no one—absolutely no fucking one—meddles with Mahadevan Dogra's crown."

He then turned around to look at his bodyguard, who was upright on his feet behind him. "Pass me the Khukri, Karim."

Just as Karim was about to pass the Khukri to him, Gurung jumped in. "Saab ji, look at Karim bhai's Khukri na! It's already smeared with so much of this weasel's blood." He then fished out a cleaver out of his black ensemble and handed it out to his boss. "Look at my poor cleaver—---not a drop of blood on it! It looks like a stark naked infant without a diaper. Make it holy by bathing it with this dog's blood, Saab ji." He appealed like a crotchety preschooler.

Karim rolled his eyes again.

"Alright." Mahadevan sighed in exasperation. He then about-faced to maniacally scrutinize Kalkinath once again. "By the way, your blood reeks pathetically metallic. You follow a really iron-rich diet, it seems. Too much hemoglobin in this sickening body of yours, huh?" He quirked his brows up, his sinful lips uplifted to form a sneer as he tapped on the man's chest. "But, you know what? Too much of anything is not good for health. So, how about we help you drain some of it? Huh?" He grinned calamitously as a cold yet satanic guise embraced his phizog.

"Tremendously creative idea, Saab ji." Gurung quipped in animatedly with a thumbs up. "Absolutely ingenious!"

Karim rolled his eyeballs for the third time.

On the other hand, Kalkinath Sahu sweated profusely. Eyes enlarged with consternation, each and every section of his enervated burly anatomy battered and bruised due to the continued thrashing from the last ten days. The man trembled in fear, thinking about what was to come next.

"Your first list of faults—oops!—crimes, which are technically not yours actually, but rather your sorry ass of an uncle's, but since you were also his ally in all those atrocities, you have to bear the punishment too. So, here goes the list: illegal mining, extortion, and murders. Your uncle also murdered Prabhakaran Iyengar, that I.A.S. officer who tried to unearth his true intentions, which in turn caused my wife anguish. And I didn't like it, because, let me tell you, I absolutely abhor it when she is in pain." Saying so with a cold grin etched on his face, he pinched a portion of skin on Kalkinath's wrist, lifted it up, and harshly carved it with the cleaver. Blood gushed out in a trice as the man before him cried excruciatingly.

He then crouched down and took hold of a section of skin from Kalkinath's left ankle and skillfully lacerated it with the cleaver. "My wife is a fiercely observant, quick-witted, and valorous lady, Kalki. Initially, I didn't plan on hunting out all three of you because I knew she'd legally eliminate all three of you one day or another. That's how fucking brilliant she is! But, guess what? You didn't seem to express your gratitude for the clemency I bestowed upon all three of you, which forms your crime list number two: firstly, you digitally tailed my wife. And then comes the most consequential action of yours: did you literally possess the guts to hire a killer to murder my wife without her knowledge and under my nose? You not only tried to meddle with my crown, you fucking aimed at harming her?! MY WIFE?!" In a flash, he stood up and brutally penetrated the whetted cleaver straight through Kalkinath's thigh.

Another octave of gut-wrenching wails reverberated in the confined surroundings.

Kalkinath looked on at the man in front of him with immeasurable dread in his droopy eyes, the pain almost rendering him unconscious.

"So, then and there, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Tell me, did you like the torture, kid?" Mahadevan probed with a fiendish grin.

"M--my--uncle?"

"Long dead. I heard that some of his cellmates in prison stabbed him to death. So sad, right?" Mahadevan puckered his lips out with a mock sad expression etched on his face.

"G--Guru bh--bhai?" Kalkinath gulped, unable to speak with his badly bruised tongue anymore.

"Dead as well. He was here about fourteen days ago, and unfortunately, I was not present here at that time. Gurung here---" He paused and turned around to point at a grinning Gurung behind him who was flashing his full set of thirty-two teeth. "Gurung by mistakenly stepped on Guru Surya's balls. The man died instantly." He finally forwarded his digits to feel Kalkinath's carotid arteries on both sides of his neck.

"And now, it's your time." Saying so, he tweaked Kalkinath's right carotid artery beneath the flabby skin of his neck and sharply slashed it with the cleaver. Scarlet gore spritzed undeviatingly on Mahadevan's face.

Kalkinath's moribund body remained buckled to the bloody wooden chair with ropes and chains as Karim came forward and handed out a pristine white handkerchief to his boss.

Wiping off the blood stains across his face and hands, Mahadevan said. "Drain out all the blood from his deplorable body." He then turned around to lock gazes with both his close security professionals. "After that, you know what you need to do."

"Ji, Sahib."

"Ji, Saab Ji"

***

It was the evening of May 2nd.

The conference room of Delhi's Special Crime Unit bustled with anxious whispers and perturbed breathing as Inspector General Neeraj Sathe strode into the conference hall with a poker face and a distraught piece of news.

All the officials stood up in attention at once with their right hands, saluting the senior who just walked in. The bustling environment of the conference room was long replaced with an utter stillness devoid of any auditory intervention.

"Gentlemen officers, here is a bad piece of news for you all. We have just been provided with an intel that fifteen-year-old Shrushti Thackeray, daughter of two software engineers named Rana Thackeray and Preetika Thackeray, and sixteen-year-old Deepa Mondal, daughter of Megha Mondal and high school teacher Sidhesh Mondal, have both been abducted. Shrushti has been reported missing since the time she didn't return to her home, even after the conclusion of her tuition classes this afternoon. Deepa, on the other hand, has been reported missing since early morning today somewhere in between the path from her home to her school." The senior officer informed his juniors in a grave tone. "It's time we pull up our socks because the serial abductor is on a spree now, and our department will have to go through a tremendous amount of pressure in the upcoming days. Hence, I hereby announce that the 'Serial Abductions of Maia's month' case has been officially reopened." He declared.

Firmly supporting both his hands on the long teak wood conference table, he said, "Before discussing the details of the case, I would like to call upon the name of the Special Investigation Team's official in charge now, Deputy Commissioner of Police Raghav Katoch!"

On call, a tall and broad-shouldered man immaculately dressed in civvies walked into the conference hall and raised his right hand up to make a formal salute to the I.G.

"Jai Hind, Sir!"

"Jai Hind." I.G. Sathe nodded back and beckoned the thirty-something officer to the chair of the second-in-command. "Settle down, officer."

Raghav adhered to his senior's orders.

"Officers, it has been duly informed to me that our previous criminal profiler, Mr. Chinmay Burman has undergone serious injuries in the last operation conducted by the SIT. And, even though he is out of danger now, he still needs to recuperate. Hence, citing this as a reason, we have a temporary addition to the SIT in place of Mr. Burman. Please welcome Ms. Hinduja Rao. She has done both her bachelors and masters in criminal psychology from the National Forensic Science College, Trivandrum, and she is also the Sub-Divisional Magistrate of NCR. But for this entire month, she has been discharged from all her duties as an SDM, especially for the purpose of this case. She will assist as the interim but main criminal profiler in this case."

The door opened once again as a woman of medium height, clothed in a pale pink linen saree, wended her way forward.

"Good morning, Sir." A delicate yet firm voice resonated in the conference.

"Good morning, officer." He beckoned her to sit in the chair of the third-in-command. "Settle down."

Hinduja did as she was told.

Raghav Katoch examined the woman sitting in front of him with his perusing gaze as the other officers, both male and female, followed suit. Immediately, the hushed conversations in the conference room revolved around the newly appointed criminal profiler.

I.G. Neeraj Sathe cleared his throat, following which every officer had his or her focus diverted to the commanding man settled in the front most chair belonging to the first-in-command of the Special Investigation Team.

"Let's discuss the case now."

Immediately, the man seated on the chair of the second-in-command got up and asked one of the constables to switch on the projector screen.

"Officers, The 'Serial Abductions of Maia's month' is not a new case, as we already know, since these serial abductions have been happening every year in the month of May for the last nine years, and the current year happens to be the tenth year. We have only been two days into the month of May, and the serial abductor has already executed the abductions of three adolescent girls, namely Snigdha Patil, who is seventeen, and then Shrushti Thackeray and Deepa Mondal, who are both fifteen and sixteen, respectively."

Hinduja had her onyx pools fixated on the projector screen on which DCP Raghav Katoch was writing and explaining the details of the case with a stylus while she noted down all the key points on her notepad.

"If we include all the three girls who have been reported missing from yesterday and today, respectively, then, from 2014 to the 2nd of May 2023, that is, today, a total of four hundred and fifty-two girls have been abducted by that serial abductor till date." He paused, taking a brief look at the lady in a pale pink saree settled on the conference table before him. "And we still don't have any intel about what really happened with these girls. Whether they are alive or murdered is also a matter of uncertainty as of now. To date, all 452 victims were teen-aged females, not a single male included. The abductor has not even made a single ransom call to the parents or guardians of all these four hundred and fifty-two girls, so we can already rule out the possibility of kidnapping. Plus, the motive behind the abductions is unknown as well."

He then dropped the stylus on the podium and walked forward to face all eight disquieted faces of his juniors. What surprised him was the ninth phizog of the new criminal profiler. The lady sat thoroughly straight with a ramrod back and an absolutely impassive, unbothered, and inscrutable expression on her facial framework.

"In conventional criminal cases, we generally go through the CCTV footage of the surrounding areas and the spot in which the crime takes place, but the main hurdle of his serial abduction case is that all the abductions till date, even the three that were executed yesterday and today, were all carried out in areas that are either CCTV camera blind spots or areas with no CCTV supervision at all. That's all the information we have so far." He concluded just as his gaze collided with the obsidian irises of the lady in pale pink.

***