Chapter Nine #2
Preethi opened her mouth, then shut it, looking from him to Naina helplessly. Naina reached over and placed a hand on Preethi’s. “We’re your lawyers,” she reminded her. “We need all the facts.”
“And all the feelings,” Tejas added, quirking an eyebrow.
“Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking.” Preethi interlaced her fingers in her lap as another tear slid down her cheek. “I know he is—he was—married, and it’d been years since we were together, but I also needed closure. I wanted a conversation between us—nothing else.”
“The night of his murder,” Naina said, noticing how Preethi twitched at that word, “what happened?”
Preethi tilted her head back against the couch as though to suppress her emotions.
“It was six weeks into filming, and we were on location miles away from Bangalore, in the hills for a specific action sequence. He hadn’t mentioned our past, and his wife was often around…
I figured I’d never get a private conversation with him.
But then”—she blinked, more tears trickling down her lashes—“he texted me, saying he was thinking of me and wanted to meet in his trailer. Alone.”
Naina rested her fingers on the edge of her iPad keyboard, waiting patiently until Preethi continued.
“I knocked on his trailer, but nobody answered. The door was ajar. I went in, and…and I saw him on the floor, face down in blood.” She clapped a hand to her mouth as more sobs took over.
“I screamed. Ran to him, turned him over, begged him to wake up. There was a knife sticking out of his stomach. I…”
Tejas spoke up. “You touched it.”
“I—I know I shouldn’t have, but if you saw the man you once loved bleeding to death, you’d have tried to help him too, regardless of how it ended!
” Her voice was loud now, high-pitched; her face was purple and her eyes wide as saucers.
“I was going to pull the knife out, then I thought maybe I shouldn’t, that might make him bleed more, and it would hurt him, and then—then our producer Jagannath walked in.
I guess he heard my screams, and he found me there.
Drenched in Rohith’s blood, my hands all over him.
He flipped out, started yelling, then Gopal Krishnan, the lead actor, rushed in and called the cops.
And that was…” She wiped her cheeks. “That was it.”
As the silence stretched on, Naina looked at the notes on her iPad, swallowing hard.
Preethi was found at the scene of the crime by the producer and the lead actor with her fingerprints all over the victim and the murder weapon.
The prosecution would say this was a scorned woman taking revenge on a former lover, and the judge would agree.
Then Naina jerked her chin back. “The texts he sent you,” she said slowly. “They’d have time stamps. How long after those texts did Jagannath find you?”
Preethi’s eyes went back and forth. “Maybe twenty-five, thirty minutes? I only saw the messages after I finished my nighttime skincare routine.”
Fuck. That was more than enough time to commit a murder.
Tejas coughed. “There’s one more thing.” He placed Preethi’s mug shot on the table between them, which showed her wide-eyed in a skimpy, bloodstained pink camisole under a silk dressing gown. Then his eyes darted to Naina. Clearly he didn’t want to be the one to ask this question.
Naina spoke. “Preethi, do you normally sleep in lingerie?”
Preethi scowled. “It’s not lingerie, it’s sleepwear. I like to be comfortable while I sleep, and in my haste to get answers from Pai, I decided not to change.”
Naina held back a sigh. With the public already seeing her as a home-wrecker endorsing “provocative” pole-dancing classes, her attire at the scene of the crime wouldn’t help their case. She exchanged glances with Tejas, tilting her head to ask if he had anything to add.
Tejas asked Preethi a few other routine questions about the police’s line of questioning, making sure she hadn’t told them anything different. Finally, he asked, “Any alibis who can confirm you were in your trailer for that half-hour window?”
“No,” Preethi said, ducking her head. “I didn’t tell anyone about it because, well, I didn’t want them to get the wrong idea. I just wanted closure from him.”
Naina let out a soft sigh. “And do you think anyone who was on set that night had motive to kill Rohith Pai and potentially frame you for it?”
“Everyone hated me as much as they loved Rohith,” Preethi replied bitterly. “They all thought I would sabotage filming because of our past. I wish I could help you more, but I…”
“I understand,” Naina said, standing. “This is a tough time for you.”
“We’ll be in touch,” Tejas said, shaking Preethi’s hand as he stood up too. “Don’t hesitate to call us.” He ushered Naina out the door, through the angry crowd, and back to the neighboring street.
They didn’t speak about the case until the auto rickshaw dropped them off at the AKC building.
“She’s got motive, she was found with his body, DNA evidence, and no alibi,” Naina rattled off, and pressed the button for the elevator.
“Oh, and his misogynistic fans are out for her neck. This won’t be easy. ”
“You’re right.” Tejas smiled as they got into the elevator. “If it were easy, Iqbal wouldn’t have given you the case.”
The compliment made Naina’s heart flutter, much to her disdain.
No distractions allowed, no matter how cute his smile is, she reminded herself.
So she cleared her throat and changed the topic.
“The postmortem confirmed what she said about the single stab wound in his stomach, but the full forensic report will take another week.” The elevator reached their floor, and she got out first. “I have to prepare for another case. Catch you later.”
“But—wait!”
If Tejas had thought she was unapproachable earlier, she’d certainly proved it now. It was probably for the best, Naina decided, as she suppressed the urge to look back at him.