A strange, strangled noise comes out of my mouth, as I try to find the words that would best fit this situation. But I can barely form coherent sentences.

Neel paces the room in feverish worry, muttering something under his breath that I believe sounds like, "fuck what are we going to do" over and over.

Finally I snap out of my shock and immediately dial Karthik's number. He picks up on the second ring, sounding a bit annoyed.

"What is it, Aadhyavi?"

Before he can complain about how he is at work, I spit out a quick summary of the situation Neel and I are in, and demand him to come here at once.

"I will be there," he promises and the line disconnects. I sit down heavily, my back against the wall and head gently resting on the surface of the concrete.

Neel sits next to me, and takes my hand. "I'm not sure that you realised this in your panic, but you're a criminologist."

His words sink into me slowly and I whip around to stare at him. I'm a goddamn criminologist, I should be investigating this death, not panicking like an idiot!

"You're right!" I gasp, jumping up in excitement. But then a thought crosses my mind, which makes me sit back down again, shoulders slumped.

"What's wrong now, Dhavi?" Neel asks, looking extremely confused by my constant mood swings. I am blessed that he's here right now.

I pout like a five year old.

"I can't examine the body properly until Karthik gives me clearance to. With Devi gone, he would be my senior officer and I need him to let me start."

Neel offers me a hand. "Well, at least you can walk around it and maybe see what all you can identify from this. It might just be a heart attack, you know."

"Unlikely," I say with a sigh. "The knife sticking out the left eye definitely isn't the sign of a heart attack, Neel."

Turning back to the body in horror, Neel finally seems to notice the pointed needle protruding from Mrs Sharma's eye and lets out a screech.

I roll my eyes. "You're supposed to notice everything, Officer Devdar. Of course I would see the murder weapon, and of course I would determine the cause of death."

My partner just stares at me in shock and somehow, slight amusement. He seems to be waiting for something and I wonder what it is.

I double back. "It's a murder we are investigating here, then!"

Neel laughs. "Okay, I've met very few people that are so excited to see a murder, Aadhyavi, and I now find out that you are one of them."

"Did I just hear laughter at a crime scene?" Comes a slightly amused voice, and Karthik walks into the lobby, smiling at the two of us.

Neel's eyes light up. "Karthik!" He says, face suddenly flushed. I hide my smirk as best as I can. Well my friend, who's the excited one now?

"Hey, Neel," Karthik widens his smile at my best friend. "Could you walk me through exactly what you found here and how you came by it?"

"Sure!"

Before they can go on, I walk over to Karthik and promptly slap him across the face. He staggers back, mouth falling open. "That was rude!"

"Oh yeah?" I say sarcastically. "Let me guess, what isn't rude is leaving two people in a café that's a bit far from their homes, and not providing them with even a ride?"

He has the grace to look sheepish. "Yes, about that... Sorry, Aadhyavi and Neel but I just had to leave and I had a lot on my mind then."

Neel grins. "As long as your whole attention is on us now, we should get started. And let's stop smiling, guys. This is a crime scene, you know."

That does it. I recall the fact that it's Mrs Sharma, and no matter how much I hate her, I never would have wished her dead... Probably.

"How do you peg it as murder?" Karthik asks in confusion, leaning over to examine the body. He then sees the small knife embedded into her and sighs.

"Do I have permission to take a closer inspection of the body now, Karthik?" I ask as sweetly as I can manage.

"No." Is all he answers.

Neel snorts, stifling a laugh by covering it up with a cough. When I shift my glare to him, he hastily pulls on a straight face, turning to Karthik.

"You have to let her," he implores the criminologist. "She will figure this out, Mr Rajeshwar. Please, would you at least give her a chance?"

Karthik shakes his head, looking directly into Neel's eyes. His gaze is penetrating and sharp. The wait is agonizing. Finally, after a long pause, he speaks again.

"Fine." He sounds reluctant.

Neel gives me a triumphant smile and I grin back, pleased. Karthik gives us both an energetic nod. "Let's begin."

I understand. The adrenaline rush of hearing the word, "murder" is greater than anything else in the world. Solving crime is a drug.

It takes in your mind and soul when you solve it, renders you hopeless and desperate if you can't obtain a case of it.

And always, this rush propels you onward, even in the most strenuous of situations, when you can barely stand, let alone stretch yourself more than necessary.

Murder is a crime.

But boredom can make even murder seem like a mundane, everyday task. Just for excitement, just for the quick fun of it, murder is needed.

And it's time to solve it.

***

While I grab my gloves as not to tarnish any remaining evidence, Neel dials the station and explains that we need an autopsy done, stat.

Meanwhile, Karthik searches the desk and purse of Mrs Sharma.

I carefully peel apart the torn and bloodied flesh, observing the knife as it slides out of her eye with a sickeningly smooth gliding movement.

Crimson runs down the flat of the blade, painting the knife a strangely beautiful shade of red that seems like a thick river, somehow more alluring than water.

I shake my head. If people heard me talking like this, I was sure to be thought of as a psychopath. But I can't help myself, really.

That's the side effect of studying blood.

Don't get me wrong. As a child, I wanted to be a doctor, so I asked my uncle, who was a nurse at the time, to show me what it was all about.

Now, my uncle wasn't a very traditional man, so he tried to deter me from my course, but I wouldn't budge. He decided to take another approach and scare me.

So he pulled out bags of blood from the blood bank and showed them to me.

Unfortunately, it didn't have the effect that he wished to produce. I was taken by the colour and the properties, so I wanted to learn more about it.

It's an interesting topic.

Shaking my head slightly, I focus on my current task. The wound has thankfully stopped bleeding, so I can examine the damage done.

Whoever killed her thrust the delicate knife blade with great force into her eye, directly to the brain, which caused death by brain damage.

It was a violent death, and I shudder to think of how I often imagined Mrs Sharma dead, only to now have that as a reality before my eyes.

Neel gently touches my shoulder. "Are you alright, Dhavi?"

I suck in a breath. "I'm fine. It just shocks me to see her dead, no matter how much I hated her and wanted her dead. I guess this puts things in perspective."

"You're upset about her death?" Neel asks, tilting his head. "I mean, of course it's a horrific but..." He whispers the next words. "I am a bit relieved..."

"Don't worry, I'm not judging you," I reassure him. He has a right not to be upset about this. Neel is quite emotional, and he was often mocked by our lovely landlady for that.

"Aur ye bhi," she told her friend scornfully one day that Neel came over. "Ye itna emotional ho jata hai, bilkul ladka nahi lag ta."

I clench my fists.

"Aadhyavi!" Karthik calls out abruptly. "I need you to come here, at once!" I exchange a glance with Neel and we immediately are by his side.

"What is it?" I ask urgently, and Karthik shows me a cellphone. "I cracked the password," he says. "And I found her contacts list and a diary in her bag."

Neel already has the diary in his hand, and he's flipping through it at an astounding pace, muttering comments under his breath.

Karthik and I gape at him while he does this chore, and soon after slams the book shut.

"Well, I've found certain points that are quite interesting," he says, grimly pleased. "But I've also found information that makes me hate her even more."

"Anything pertaining to our case?" I ask lightly, already curious to know what all he had found in her diary. "For example, anything hinting at how she died?"

Neel looks doubtful. "Well, I do have one piece of information that may be of some help. In her diary she mentioned that she had to call a Riddhi."

"May I have a look?" Karthik takes the book from Neel and holds it out to me as well. Together, we read the latest page- today's entry.

"Meri pyaari diary,

Ab mein kya bolu. Ye din toh itna boring sa jaa raha hai. Par aacha hai ki meri dost aaj aaye gi. Mein aur Shilpa ko sabse aacha gossip pata hai. Aur ye bhi aacha hai ki vo Aadhyavi ghar pe nahi hai. Itni batameez ladki! Uski maa ko kitna baata na padega... Aacha ab mein baad mein baat karthi hoon. Thode time mein Riddhi ka phone aayega. Nahi toh mujhe isko call karna padega. Koi baat nahi."

Silence.

Then I break it. "Any idea who this Riddhi mentioned here is?" Karthik nods, holding up Mrs Sharma's cellphone. "I saw it on her contacts list."

Sure enough, the name is at the top of the list, at 1:56 pm, a little while after Neel and I left from here to get to the café with Karthik.

I grab the phone and open up WhatsApp, hoping to see a text from this 'Riddhi' to Mrs Sharma or vice versa. Surprisingly, my wish is granted and I find the chat.

Neel and Karthik peer at the phone as well, while I open the chat with bated breath.

Neel lets out an odd, sarcastic laugh. "Oh wow, Riddhi is her daughter, huh? What are the odds?"

Karthik has already dialled the number and is waiting impatiently for her to pick up, tapping his foot in annoyance and groaning when there is no answer.

He calls again. And again. And yet again, but nobody seems to answer the line. I take the phone from him and send her a message, asking her to respond.

"Now what?" Neel asks, frowning.

I take a look around and speak slowly, trying to emphasize every word. "Let me ask you the question I asked much earlier, Neel. Where is Ram Bhaiya?"

He jerks up as if hit by an electric shock, looking at me with wide eyes. "Right! I can't believe this! Ram Bhaiya is gone too! We need to search the building."

Karthik holds up his hand. "I'm sorry, we need to search? You two, this isn't a case assigned to you. I am very sorry to say this, but you need to go home now."

Neel and I exchange a look and then yell at Karthik in unison, "I'm sorry, WHAT?!"

He glares at us. "Yes, you heard right. I simply cannot let you go forward with this case until and unless you obtain a permit from a senior officer."

"It was us who found Mrs Sharma!" I gasp in outrage. "If we hadn't, you wouldn't have known about this at all!" I can barely control my rage.

"Oh I'm sure I would have figured out about it in some way," Karthik says coldly. "You aren't the only one who lives here, you know."

"This is unbelievable. I demand that you allow me to be a part of this case, Karthikeyan Rajeshwar!" I snap at him, which is a big mistake.

Karthik draws himself to his full height- and he is pretty damn tall- and puts the full force of his words on me. "I said no, Officer Choubey, and I mean it!"

I turn on my heel and run.

Stumbling up to my house, I yank at the handle and push myself in, tears rushing down my cheeks as I whirl back to slam the door shut and run into my room.

However, as soon as I enter, I can sense that something is disastrously wrong. I know my home, and there is a bad feeling around it as of the moment.

Pulling out my gun, I wrap my fingers around it, comforted by the touch of the cold metal.

Slowly, I push the door to my room open, and immediately drop the gun, mouth falling open in a scream. I can barely hear Karthik and Neel rushing up due to the heavy ringing in my ears.

"Ram Bhaiya," I choke out, wishing I could drown myself in my tears. Because there he is. There he lies, proving right all my worried suspicions.

And there he lies dead.