I looked at her eyes, searching for nothing and everything. I searched for a demon capable of a crime so gruesome. I searched for a monster incapable of hiding itself from the preying eyes of the jury. Instead, I found a broken, numb girl, lost and...
A broken bottle of wine, a few bricks, a lot of dry leaves and the heavy scent of Jasmine making Eyzah feel nauseated. She assessed the roof thoroughly. Nothing out of the ordinary. She walked over to the side and looked down, trying to imagine the last view for the victim. But what makes more sense is the last thought.. my own daughter killed me.
Innocent until proven guilty. Not really! The verdict has been given. By the people, by the media, by every single passer by on the street. And soon, by Eyzah.
She visited the forensics on her way, summoned by Dr. Styles. The moment she walked in Dr Styles' six foot frame towered over her, making her own five-three look like a joke. It was so easy getting intimidated by tall people.
"Ahh, there you are. My favorite homicide detective," he joked.
"Has the dead started to speak?"
"You know how I can easily make people open up?" He winked.
"God, you're so inappropriate. Just tell me what's up."
"You seem to be in a hurry. Well, I don't think I'll take more of your time. Come, let me put my professional face on," He grinned.
We walked over to the body. Saara Hasan laid peacefully on the morgue bed, her face pale and egg white. Now Eyzah knew where Errum got her pale features from. Errum looked like she belonged from snow. Or more like, made out of snow.
"When people fall accidentally, they will always act reflexively to break the fall. Hence there will be fractures to the forearms, abrasions to the palms, etc. That we don’t see in cases of pushing a body off a cliff. Saara Hasan's body," he went around the table and dramatically lifted his eye brows, "had none."
"Another thing to it is that when something falls off a cliff, it will tend to bounce off the side of the cliff on the way down due to unstable inertia, whereas when something is pushed, it accelerates to terminal velocity much faster, and hence you don’t have near as much bouncing around- meaning much less external injury to the body."
Euzah barely understood anything except the less external injury part but nodded anyway to act wise.
"And Mrs. Hasan's body? Did it have external injuries? What about DNA samples on her clothes? Or signs of struggle?"
"Barely. The injuries were mostly internal, but there weren't any signs of struggle."
"Could be because it was done so smoothly there was no time to retaliate?"
"Possible, especially considering what I'm going to tell you now. It seems like our ideal daughter figure is in trouble." He smiled through his teeth.
Eyzah hated the fact that people were so eager on portraying Errum as the killer. Probably because the thought of a 17 y/o psychopathic mother-killer thrilled them. Whereas all she wanted was to see Errum innocent. She didn't have the heart to let go of her faith in humanity just yet.
"We found DNA traces," Dr. Styles flashed his perfect teeth once again, "Fingernails on the mother's dress. Could be the daughter's when she pushed her,"
"The killer's," she corrected him, "we aren't sure it was the daughter yet,"
He chuckled.
"C'mon now. A woman in her perfectly stable mental and physical health falls off the rooftop and you find her daughter standing there, perfectly normal. You really think she isn't the monster?"
Eyzah sighed. She knew every evidence found so far pointed to Errum. The fact that she didn't deny or correct anything doesn't help either. Eyzah needed to wrap her head around the fact that this was what she was dealing with. A psychopathic mother killer.
Dr Styles looked at Eyzah with warmth and his voice dove an octet deeper as he put a hand on her shoulder and said,
"Eyzah, I know you're good hearted and all and that's good. But you are a cop and you gotta deal with people like this all the time. We are the law enforcers. Sympathy doesn't suit us."
Right now he wasn't the charming, forensic expert Dr Styles. Just Harry. The easy going, her comfort person Harry.
"I get what you're saying," she nodded.
He straightened himself and brought his professional manners back.
"Yeah so, hopefully we'll receive the results by tomorrow. What a wonderful open and shut case. You'll be all over the papers, congratulations in advance," he winked.
"So will be Errum," she sighed.
Here's detective Eyzah Malik:
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
