Tangled Lives

CHAPTER 4

I sat in the small, dimly lit interrogation room, watching Urmila Dutta. The air in the room was thick with tension, though none of it seemed to touch her. She sat across from me, hands folded neatly in her lap, her gaze fixed on a point somewhere above my head, as if the world around her were of no consequence. Her posture was relaxed, almost too composed for a woman who had recently lost her husband in such a brutal manner.

But it wasn't the composure that bothered me. It was the smile—faint, almost imperceptible, but unmistakably there—hovering at the corners of her lips. There was something disconcerting about that smile, something that suggested a deep reservoir of secrets, some dark, hidden satisfaction.

I leaned forward slightly, adjusting my chair so that I was directly in her line of sight. She did not react. Her eyes were large, glassy, as though she were looking at something far away. This wasn't unusual. I had seen it before—people disconnected from reality, sometimes in shock, sometimes by choice. But Urmila didn't fit into any of those categories. She wasn't disconnected. She was hiding. There was a difference.

"Mrs. Dutta," I began, my voice measured, "your husband was found with one hundred and eight stab wounds. His body was left on a hill, discovered by hikers. A brutal and frenzied attack, to say the least."

Her eyes flicked toward me then, just for a second. The smile deepened, but her lips remained tightly closed.

"You don't seem particularly disturbed by this fact," I said, watching her carefully. There was a beat of silence before she spoke.

"Why should I be?" Her voice was soft, almost delicate, but there was something brittle beneath it. "Druvan was never a man to inspire grief. Not in life, and certainly not in death."

I studied her, trying to reconcile her words with the image of a woman recently widowed, whose husband had been butchered with a violence rarely seen outside of the most deranged criminal minds. Most people, even those in abusive relationships, reacted with some form of emotion—shock, disbelief, sometimes relief. But this? This indifference was unnatural.

"You speak about him with such detachment," I pressed, keeping my tone neutral, "yet he was still your husband. Is it wrong to expect some semblance of grief? Or at least shock?"

She laughed—a short, sharp sound that cut through the silence like a blade. "You think I should grieve him?" she asked, her tone almost mocking. "You think I should mourn Druvan Dutta? You didn't live with him. You didn't know him."

There was a rehearsed quality to her words, as though she had practiced them in front of a mirror, molding her responses into something that would provoke sympathy, or at the very least, understanding. But it wasn't convincing. I'd seen enough liars to know when someone was playing a part. Urmila Dutta was playing hers, and she was playing it well. But not well enough.

"I understand that he wasn't the perfect husband," I said, and I could see her bristle at the understatement. "There are records of domestic disputes. Several, in fact."

Her smile faltered, just for a second, and her eyes darkened. "Domestic disputes," she repeated. "Is that what you call them? How polite."

I knew her type. People like Urmila often held onto bitterness like a lifeline, wearing it as a shield. She wasn't the first woman I'd met who'd been through the trauma of domestic abuse, and she wouldn't be the last. But there was something different here. She wasn't just a victim of her husband's violence. She was something else, something that didn't fit into the typical narrative. There was an edge to her, a hardness that hinted at something more.

"Why were no charges ever filed?" I asked, shifting the conversation. "The police reports describe physical altercations, neighbors reported shouting, yet no one pressed charges. Why is that?"

Her smile vanished. Her face became a mask of cold anger. "What do you think?" she asked, her voice low, almost a whisper. "You think it's easy for a woman like me to stand up to a man like Druvan? You think the police care about the bruises on a woman's face when the man doing the hitting has money and connections?"

She was baiting me, trying to steer the conversation in a direction that would paint her as the helpless victim, the woman who had no choice but to endure. But I wasn't buying it. There was something else here, something she wasn't telling me.

"You think I killed him, don't you?" she asked suddenly, her eyes narrowing. "You think I finally snapped, took a knife, and carved him up for every time he raised a hand to me?"

I didn't respond immediately. Instead, I watched her. Her hands, which had been so still and composed, had begun to tremble slightly. A faint tremor, but enough for me to notice. Her eyes were sharp now, fixed on me with an intensity that hadn't been there before.

"I think," I said slowly, "that you had plenty of reason to want him dead. But one hundred and eight stab wounds? That's not the work of a woman finally pushed to the edge. That's something else. Something darker."

Her lips curled into a sneer. "And what would you know about darkness, Ms. Sharma?" she asked, her voice dripping with contempt. "What do you know about living with a man who treats you like nothing? Who beats you when he's had too much to drink, who humiliates you in front of your own family?"

"I know that one hundred and eight stab wounds isn't just anger," I replied calmly. "It's hatred. Deep, consuming hatred. But it's also control. Precision. Whoever killed Druvan didn't just want him dead. They wanted him to suffer. They wanted to send a message."

Her sneer faded, and for the first time since the interview began, I saw something shift in her. Fear? Perhaps. But it was something more. A flicker of recognition. She knew something.

"You didn't kill him," I said softly, leaning back in my chair. "But you know who did."

She stared at me, her expression unreadable. For a moment, I thought she might confess, might tell me everything. But then her mask of indifference slipped back into place.

"You're wrong," she said, her voice cold and distant once more. "I don't know anything. Whoever killed Druvan did the world a favor."

"Perhaps," I said, standing up slowly, "but you know more than you're letting on. And whether you admit it now or later, I'll find out."

She didn't respond. She merely sat there, staring at the wall again, her hands trembling ever so slightly in her lap.

I left the room, my mind racing. Urmila Dutta was hiding something. I had no doubt about that. But she wasn't the killer. No, whoever had done this had acted with a level of violence and precision that spoke to something far more sinister. And Urmila, despite her disdain for her husband, didn't have the cold-blooded nature needed to carry out such a calculated, ritualistic murder.

But she knew. She knew who had done it, and she was protecting them. The question was, why?

As I walked down the corridor, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had just scratched the surface of something far darker than I had anticipated. The truth was out there, waiting for me to uncover it.

And I would. One way or another.

                                                                                                   ***

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