Tick-Tock

Tuticorin's roads never slept. Cars, buses, rickshaws — a metal tide that drowned every sidewalk. The municipal corporation had spent two years "fixing" the city. All they'd made was a maze of craters and half-dead streetlights.

Anandharaj didn't care. 

Earphones in. Volume maxed. Melody songs bleeding into his skull, louder than the horns, louder than the rain. 

The rain was a wall that night. Fat drops, cold, sideways. He didn't care about that either. His house was just past the bus stand. He ran. 

Keys. Door. Home.

Except home was wrong.

Lights off. Too dark for 8 P.M. Too quiet.

He stepped in, water pooling around his shoes.

[Anandharaj]: "Rakshana? Where are you? Why are the lights off?"

Silence.

The air was thick. No curry. No rice. No dinner. Just wet concrete and something else. Something copper.

*Tick... tock. Tick... tock.*

Only the clock. 

*Creeeak*
A door. Upstairs. Opening.

His stomach dropped. He took the stairs two at a time, slipped, caught himself, slipped again. Palm smacked tile. He didn't feel it.

The bedroom door stood open. A slice of black.

He stepped in. The smell hit first — sweet, rotten, wrong.

Then he saw it.

A chair. A duffel bag on the floor in front of it. Black canvas. 

He sat. Didn't know why. Legs just folded.

He leaned in. The bag's zipper glinted.

It was wet.

Drip.

Blood. Seeping through the teeth of the zipper. One drop. Then another.

His heart wasn't beating. It was slamming. 

He reached for the zipper—

The music started.

A speaker. Somewhere in the dark. Cheerful. Childish. Loud.

"All day, jolly day!  Kavalaikellam holiday!  College valaikai I'll,  Kootum holiday!"

He spun.

A man stood in the doorway.

Surgical mask, white turned red. Latex gloves, red turned black. A knife in his hand. Small. Sharp. Casual, like a pen.

The song kept going.

"Life is a! Life is a! GAME SHOW!  Music enpathu Drill show!"

The man tilted his head. His voice was soft. Almost kind. Like he was greeting an old friend.

[Man]: "Welcome back."

The music swelled.

"Life is a! Life is a! GAME SHOW!  Music enpathu Drill show!"

[Man]: "Anandha."

*Slash*
________________________________________

[Station PA, crackling]

"Welcome to Tuticorin Railway Station. The time is 8:30 A.M. Please mind your belongings. We wish you a safe journey."

*Thud*
My duffel hit the platform like a dead body.

Two days. Karnataka to Tamil Nadu. Sleeper class, screaming babies, sweat that wasn't mine. Six months I'd spent in Mangalore, untying one case just to land in the middle of another.

Being CID wasn't a job. It was a sentence.

"Hello! Mr. Sai! Over here!"

A cop in a pressed uniform waved from behind the barricade. Creases sharp enough to cut paper. He looked about twelve.

I guessed: Guru. 

[Sai]: "You must be Guru."

[Guru]: "Yes, sir. Sub-Inspector Guru. It's an honor, Mr. Sai Surya."

I picked up my bag. My spine hated me.

[Sai]: "Drop the 'mister' and the 'sir'. It's just Sai. What's the situation?"

He fell in step beside me. We moved toward a waiting patrol jeep. No siren. No attention. Smart.

We were barely out of the station when he started.

[Guru]: "It's bad, Sai. Elections in one month. Two bodies so far. Both tied to the ruling party. The Commissioner's phone hasn't stopped ringing. The party office calls every hour."

He passed me a file. Autopsy report. The photos were paperclipped to the front because someone thought I should see them before I read the words.

I did. 

My stomach turned inside out. I closed the file.

[Sai]: "That's nasty. Let me guess — they want it closed before voting starts?"

[Guru]: "One week. That's the order from the top."

I laughed. It wasn't a happy sound.

[Sai]: "One week? Tell them to go to hell. Cases don't solve because a calendar says so."

Guru's jaw tightened. "They don't care, Sai. And neither does the mob outside the station. If we don't give them a name, they'll make one up."

The jeep stopped at a squat government hotel. Paint peeling. AC unit rattling like it was dying.

Guru grabbed my bag before I could. "Third room, fifth floor. Government rate. Government mattress."

We rode the elevator in silence. He unlocked the door, set my bag inside, didn't step in.

[Guru]: "Get some sleep. You look like death."

[Sai]: "I feel like the guy in your autopsy photos."

He didn't laugh. "I'll be back at 0700. Don't open the door for anyone else."

The door clicked shut. 

I dropped the file on the bed. It landed photo-side up.

One week.

I think the room's AC was already dead. Just like my weekend. 

One week. For a pattern killing. Two bodies, political fire, and a city that wanted blood by next Monday.

I could say one thing for sure: my brain was going to die before this case did.

*IZZZ... IZZZ... IZZZ*
Phone. My phone. 

My voice came out broken. Like I'd been buried for a day.

 

[Sai]: "...Hello... It's... Sai..."

Then came a voice like thunder wearing heels.

[Mathi]: "Inspector Srimathi speaking."

I sat up. Too fast. 

[Sai]: "Yes, ma'am. How can I help?"

[Mathi]: "Cut the shit, idiot! Where the hell are you?"

[Sai]: "Hotel. Where else would I be?"

Mathi: "You're 'resting' in a hotel while I'm out here getting eaten alive by the press!"

[Sai]: "You're the Inspector. That's literally your job."

[Mathi]: "Don't you _ever_ call yourself my best friend again! You don't help, you don't care—"

*Click*

She hung up. Or threw the phone. Same result.

I couldn't hear her anymore. Didn't want to. My ears were too tired for that brand of yelling. Too tired for anything.

One week to solve this. With _her_ breathing down my neck the whole time.

F___k.

I stared at the ceiling. Paint cracking. Water stain shaped like a question mark.

[Sai]: "Please, God. Save me."

Another call came, Srimathi again. My hands were too lazy to pick it up, but I had no choice.

"Won't you let me get some rest?.... What.... Another one.... Where?... Wait, in madurai?!"

~ The case Continues.