One Step Closer to Victory

Reavan climbed up to his store room for the first time in more than a year, that is ever since she passed away. He had stuffed away most of her possessions there that it haunted him and reminded him of all the sweet memories that he was deprived of. The worst was, he still couldn’t move ahead of her, it was as if his time had stopped along with her life. His heart stopped beating once her breath left her soul. In this condition, he managed to last until now, but now was gathering his courage to overcome it so that she gets her justice. According to him, justice is not something that can be snatched away from someone. It was their birth right. Every person should be served what he deserves, nothing more and nothing less, his duty was to see to that he aids the people in getting what they deserve.

By understanding what his duty was, one can definitely say that it is similar to that of his other friend, the ideal of all the trainees and the lover of Billie; of course! Reavan was aspiring to become like his friend, but not anymore as his friend had gone berserk during his duty. And he didn’t want that to happen to him.

Its about time that he finished dusting the cob webs and dirt off Ria trunk box. He was currently unboxing his most priced possession, that is, all the articles of Ria that merged their life for eternity. According to Reavan, their souls were entangled to each other and she was waiting for him in the other side, patiently like she used to when she was in this world.

In fact, he used to get dreams of her cheering him to finish his cases, and as though she was encouraging him to stay a little longer and do greater good for the society.

Upon segregating her items, he finally found what he had been looking for, her photo album from before her graduation out of school. He opens it to find pictures of each student with their names and their future ambitions.

His fingers softly glide through Ria’s picture, she looks young and with full of enthusiasm. Next to her pic, he finds her two friends who had gone to the falls with here. Beside these pics, there is another girl’s photo stating her to be the other rank holder besides his own wife. He intuitively feels that he should know and remember that girl’s name, which is Sharon and her face.

He carries on looking at her pictures, her scape book, her diary so on. He then finds a piece of news paper that is unevenly torn with Ria’s advertisement about her start-up in it. He then finds something similar, as in: someone else doing the same business with a similar product as that of his wife but occupying and dominating the whole page, unlike Ria’s.

He pursues it further and finds out about the CEO of it, which is none other than Sharon. “Damn! I got this right!” Reavan is excited, all he has to do now is enquire Jaish.

Reavan’s connections were called and asked to set up a meeting with Jaish, whose information was gathered via looking up the company that the friend’s husband had been working under.

He also thought it to be wise to research a bit about Sharon who had newly come into his purview. In fact, Reavan was finally getting the whole picture, when he looked up the value of the company that Sharon was leading, he noticed that the market value of it had increased since the last year. Upon looking up at her, he also gets to find out that she is the one and only daughter of Jaish. The mist was finally clearing up and he was finally able to have a pinpointed focus on finding out how Ria had died and whom to target this question to? (Jaish)

All that ran in his mind was, “Jaish,” he was crazily absorbed in his work that all he thought about ended up being about Jaish.

***********

By noon of the very same day, he got his most awaited call talking about the meeting that he wanted to arrange. To his misfortunes, his connections couldn’t get a hold of Jaish. Not trusting his sources completely, he himself tried calling the reception at Jaish’s office, told them he was a cop thus inevitably forcing the receptionist to tell his schedule. Again, since he didn’t turn out to be much lucky, the receptionist told him that only his P.A. knew about his schedules.

He then tries contacting the P.A who is out of reach. After thousands of missed calls, he finally decides to go and meet them personally, thinking that he cannot be denied if he did so.

He reaches Jaish’s office, enters into the huge multicomplex building having a large open space with plants, fountains and benches. It also has stores, plazas, cafeterias etcetera where people can chill and then work more efficiently after a little break. The building consists of twenty floors, top most having swimming pools, game rooms and gym.

Apparently, the whole building belongs to Jaish, him being the CEO and also obviously a member of the board of directors, occupied the whole of nineteenth floor. With his own personal room with books, also a personal space to meditate and all other stuff.

Thus, getting to know where to find Jaish, Reavan unstoppably strides towards the elevator showing his card at guards whoever comes in view of him trying to stop him or deviate him from his path. Little did they know that he had no official letter what so ever to enquire anything, they had no clue as he never stopped moving, as he knew for certain that if he tried to explain or do anything else, he might be kicked out of the office quite instantly.

Reavan reached the nineteenth floor where he found the P.A but not Jaish. When enquired about Jaish, the P.A didn’t answer much. All he said was, “he hasn’t been visiting office for the past few days, I will inform him about you, and will contact you if he agrees to meet up.” Well, what more can Reavan say, he said “alright, let me please hold on to your visiting card until then?” the P.A lifts his eyebrow, “very well, here you go,” he gives him the card, he then asks, “by the way do you even have an approval from your office for an enquiry?” Reavan confidently removes a folded A4 from his wallet, shakes it in front of the P. A’s eyes, “do you want to see it?!”

P.A. is taken a back, he refuses it, “well, no sir, thank you” Reavan thought to himself, maybe he too has supported Jaish’s crime that’s why he is scared of being arrested and an associate to the crime. Huh… whatever be it, I am glad I didn’t have to show him an empty sheet.

************

Reavan then travels to a palace like building, which is none other than Jaish’s home. He enters the house without much trouble. Due to his past experience with the P.A he takes a fake paper which gave him powers to enquire. Poor family members with a proper lack of knowledge and associating their trust to his confidence level and the presence of an ID, (which he obviously had) answer all that is asked of them.

Reavan gets to know that Jaish and Sharon had not been home for the past three or more days ago. When asked why they hadn’t complained or filed a missing case, the mother said that they (both the father and the daughter) had done this once earlier too. The mother had complained to the cops, when the two of them returned five days later, they looked worn out, pathetic and sick. But all they cared about was of the mother raising a complaint to the police. All they did was scold her badly asking her to quite down her cry, which was out of concern and pity towards the two, and to retrieve the complaint.

When Reavan questioned when was the previous time that this happened, he got to know that it was around one to two years back. He didn’t know whether to be happy or sad, as things were finally falling in its place.

But a question still persisted in his mind wondering why would they be harmed if they were the ones who were responsible for Ria’s death, did this imply that there was another hand too? Was someone else involved in it? Someone else who hated Ria? Who could it be? Or were they behind me and my family? Were there more than two groups involved? Did they conspire and do it together? If that was not the case, did Jaish mess something up and he was punished back there? But if so, why was he trying to cover up the whole incident, as a natural tendency would have been to coverup their mistake but let the other person’s out so that they get caught, why did he not do that?

The questions kept coming on and on as his mind dwelled deeper into the crime and the probable cause of it. He finally managed to distract himself just to make a call to his other friends to arrange a search party for Jaish.

They kept searching and searching for days without any luck. They finally decided to give up, but Reavan managed to get a written FIR from Sharon’s mother to search for both. Now that the case had become official, and though he didn’t deal with the same, he suggested his colleague in-charge of the case to try using hounds.

Yes, hounds. It was much more of a drag, but they were the ones who could finally lead the way towards, the Abandoned Street….

Why there, you ask? Because that was the place they were cremated.

*************

Cremated?! Yes, it was Ms. Clean’s job (Jane's) to clean off all the dirt that cobra gang leaves behind. She thus cleared them out of the equation so that Reavan or the cops don’t get to know about the existence of the gang. Little did she know that they would use hounds. In fact, she hadn’t thought of it as it was uncommon to use hounds in their city. She neglected the fact that they had Reavan with them who was an all-time genius even during their training time together. By training I mean, their training time as cops. She worked with him too.

That aside, in order to cremate them both, she had found their hiding place which was in a slum. According to human psychology, no matter what or how rich one is, he can even end up in an unsophisticated just for the sake of protecting his skin.

This time, they had gotten information about Reavan searching for the cause of Ria’s death. they had thought it was all over but it had resurfaced after more than one year.

They had also gathered information about cobras who were being expected by Jaish’s gang to be befriended, but due to unfortunate turn of events as in torture of Jaish and Sharon by the Cobra gang for trying to protect them by covering up the truth, the cobras had become their enemy.

The cobras had gotten a new member called Jane, apparently, she was the one clearing up the mess behind the gang, very few knew about her but how Jaish got to know is still unknown. But since he had the knowledge of Jane, he thought that it was better to stay away from their lavish life for sometime to escape both Reavan as well as the Shinigami Jane.

The sad part is, Jane sniffed them out.

**************

Jane thus enters into a narrow lane of an urban slum, felling gross all over her body especially since she came from a palace like house of Aron’s directly to a stinky, filthy, narrow, congested place like that. Though she too was born and brought up in a place like that, she had gotten used to the new comforts that she had found in her house, that her own way of living in the past had ended up becoming disrespectful.

She slowly entered into a house that had broken metallic sheath to cover for a door. Upon entering, she finds a father and daughter which is none other than Jaish and Sharon, sitting by the corner of the room. They stare at Jane as if they were mentally preparing themselves for undergoing Jane’s torture. Well, in for a disappointment? they were immediately killed by slashing them with a katana.

Blood spurted everywhere, the girl, Sharon, coughed blood along with the blood that was oozing out of her neck, the father was dead on the spot. The girl tried calling Jaish, who wouldn't get up. She then tries to say something, for which Jane replies with, "karma bounces back. You wanted to kill Ria, but now look at you, you poor thing" she is filled with sarcasm, after all, girls like her is what Jane hates the most, she thus wanted to torture her as much as possible. Thus asks, "what do I do to you, shall I let you live or kill you now?"

Scared out of wits, Sharon joins her hands to plead; as weak as she is, along with a lot of blood that is lost, she shivers all over the floor like a withering flower.

Jane comments, "Hmmm, what a sight, so beautiful. Since you begged me to spare you, I will do so, anyway you'll be dead in half an hour due to bleeding anyway, then I will come and clear both your bodies up and dispose you once you are dead. Sounds good? " She asks Sharon as if she had options. Well, Jane wanted to make the girl feel miserable and she succeeded in it too.

She then left the house, closed the door behind her so that no one saw what was going on inside the house. In simple terms, so that they could die peacefully, post completely bleeding off. She then revisits the house, clears all kinds of evidences and escapes the place along with the blood and body matter of them both. After all, the method that she usually uses to dispose of was to electrically cremate them leaving nothing behind. Thus, she needs to take their bodies to her place to do so.

She walks into the abandoned streets, dragging their bodies contained in a rug sack across with a trolley as it’s otherwise very difficult to lift. As she pulls them, a little amount of blood drips onto the floor. Drip by drip it keeps dripping which she doesn’t realize.

Upon finally reaching her place, she lifts the bag with a throwing action in a circular motion that a bunch of thread gets attached and torn by the nail that struck out of a wooden pillar.

Upon placing the rug sack on a metallic chair, she cremates and disposes the ashes into a drainage outlet. This was what had happened before she called Aron to inform him that the job was over, four days ago….