Keeping Secrets

Chapter 7

It was 2 a.m. when the phone finally flashed the doctor's name. The findings of the autopsy were about to drop like a bombshell on Gaurav.

She confirmed that Nikki had, in fact, died of asphyxiation less than two hours before she was stabbed. The cause of her death was strangulation, and the weapon was most likely a thin metallic wire. The residue in the stab wounds indicated that it was a piece of glass, perhaps a broken bottle. However, Nikki's body showed evidence of older bruises and scars too, some of them up to a few years old. Most of the older bruises and scars were in intimate places like her inner arms and thighs that would usually be covered by her clothes.

The most shocking part, however, was that Nikki was about three weeks pregnant. In most likelihood, she knew about it too. There was no alcohol in her blood. Instead, the doctor had found Clytamine-6, an uncommon drug that gives a short burst of energy, followed by extreme drowsiness, nausea or even unconsciousness based on the quantity. The effects were similar to an alcohol buzz, with an after-effect of Rohypnol but due to her pregnancy, it had triggered a lot of unexpected hormones. Since Nikki had vomited shortly before her death, it was hard to determine the exact quantity ingested, but the anticoagulant properties of the drug caused her blood to dilute, making her corpse bleed unnaturally even after her heart had stopped beating.

Gaurav was dumfounded. He opened his mouth to say something, but could not find a single word. Nikki was pregnant. She definitely knew it, but she could not have skipped alcohol throughout the party without anyone else in the group knowing. His mind was buzzing from the impact of new questions as he desperately fished into his notes for information from the interrogations earlier in the day. Who was the father of Nikki's child? Nikki's ex from high school, Ruby's mention of an accident between Nikki and Ryan, Anushka's mention of chemistry between Kevin and Nikki, all rang in his mind, making his head throb like the blaring cacophony at crowded places did. Most importantly, it was the scars on her body. It was not possible that none of her five best friends had ever noticed something like that. Nobody could just ignore something so starkly appalling!

Moreover, nothing he had heard about Nikki so far explained a possible cause for the kind of overwhelming rage that could push someone to stab a person after watching their eyes roll back, exhausted from desperately struggling for a single breath. It takes more than physical strength to hold someone down for that long and not have a change of heart: to lock eyes with someone you had once felt anything for, and watch the treachery sink in. It's always a journey to watch the emotions play out in the eyes of a dying person. It's a longer journey when you add familiarity and love to the equation: the fear, the panic, and the sheer disbelief leading to rage, gradually giving way to desperation and just when you think it's over, you witness agony, a helpless plea for just one chance to stay alive, to see another day for reasons that you might know the significance of, to fulfil one last dream that you know how much they cherished. That's a long and relentless journey, and Nikki's killer seemed to have had no second thoughts at any point in theirs. In fact, he or she had still had enough rage left to batter her body with countless stabs after watching her die slowly and painfully.

It was 3 a.m. when Nikki's friends were summoned into the lunch room: a long, narrow one, covered in white tiles with a Turkish geometric pattern that made the room appear larger. It had a single, long lunch table and two smaller ones in different corners, probably for laying out dishes to be served. A large glass chandelier sat above the dining table at the centre of the ceiling, elevating the entire room with its ancient grandiose. They took their seats at the mahogany lunch table without a word. Their exhausted faces made them all look like they had aged overnight. With Aryan due to return the next morning, there were only four of them left. Gaurav sat alone at one end of the table. Kevin and Ruby sat on the closest chairs on one side, while Ryan and Maya sat at the other. The vast table with many empty chairs felt like a grim reminder of how lonely and vulnerable they were right now, with two of their friends gone.

Everyone looked as puzzled and anxious as they were exhausted. Even for a murder investigation, this was a rather strange hour to convene, unless the detectives had uncovered something new. Now that the reality of Nikki's death had started to sink in, all of them were being tormented by the same fear, 'Could it really have been one of them? Had Gaurav's team uncovered something that could point them towards one of their friends?'

"Which of you knew that Nikki's murderer took two lives instead of one?"

Ruby, Maya and Ryan were evidently puzzled, but Kevin's eyes gave his resignation away, and Gaurav was swift to catch it.

"Umm... Nikki told me just a few days before the trip."

Kevin sighed before he continued, "There was a fest going on in college, and we were all busy with our own thing, but our IM group was buzzing with all the planning for our trip: cocktails and games and what not. When Nikki suddenly went quiet it was pretty hard to miss. When I went looking, I found her sobbing in one of the changing rooms after her performance. She looked devastated, and she made me promise I would not tell anyone. She was still not sure how she felt about it, but in the meanwhile, she was worried that everyone would find out and she would never be able to put it behind herself, even if she wanted to."

"Did she mention who the father is?"

Kevin's head dropped again. "She wanted to make a decision about the pregnancy before telling anyone anything," he muttered quietly.

"What? You're telling me that none of you even knew if she was seeing anyone and you did not even ask her about it after hearing that she was pregnant?" Gaurav could see that the other members of the group were more apalled than him. In fact, some of them looked offended.

"And were any of you aware of any other substance: drug or medicine that she took last night?"

It was a unanimous no.

Gaurav angrily slammed his fist on the table, "Come on, you guys. So much for your perfect friendship! I've been beyond patient with you so far, but if you're going to act smart with me, I'm going to have to deal with you like culprits for deliberately delaying my case. You want me to believe that your friendship was thicker than blood, but none of you knew about your best friend having a boyfriend. If her college friends do not know this, I don't know who would."

The silence persisted and seemed to make Gaurav angrier. "I couldn't give lesser fucks about your morals or your secrets, as long as you did not kill Nikki, so don't worry about it, but hiding such details in a case like this is fucking incriminating."

Before anyone could say anything else, one of the sub-inspectors knocked on the door to steal Gaurav for a moment. Nikki's phone had been unlocked.

Gaurav felt a little strange scrolling through something that anyone of Nikki's age would have defended with their life. Her rose gold phone sat in a clear phone case with a collage of photos of her with each member of the group.

By now, Gaurav also knew that Nikki did not have many filial ties in the world. Her parents were separated, and Nikki and her younger sister Natasha had grown up with their grandmother, who had passed away during Nikki's second year of college. In a statement his team had collected from Natasha, he learned that they had drifted apart as they grew up because Nikki was too hung up on the idea of making a family happen. Given their life story, this was something Natasha did not agree with, and their beliefs on the subject were strong enough to drive a wedge in their own relationship. Yet, there were no photos of her family on Nikki's phone or wallpaper. Despite still being funded by a heavy cheque from her father in Sydney every month, Nikki seemed to have found a new family for herself far away from the house where she had sought a home for years, and the collage of happy pictures pressed behind her phone case seemed to tell a tale of victory.

Nikki's phone echoed what everyone had been saying about her. Her messages screamed kindness and reflected a person who cared about people. She had written to people asking if they were feeling better, offered to watch people's homes, dogs and children so they could have a day off, and was unhinged in giving away money and love. She was also an active member of a lot of college clubs. There was nothing that seemed out of place at a glance, but he decided to return to Nikki's phone after completing his conversation with her friends.