Such a Perfect Family, page 27
Her voice gone raw, stripped down to the core, Shumi said, “Bobby was so proud. He loved that he could give me the life we had, loved that even though he hadn’t had the grades to do medicine, his parents boasted about him being a successful businessman.” A gulping sob. “He loved how Diya looked up to him.”
There was more.
Shumi had managed to stay conscious long enough to see Bobby attacking Diya, then leaving her for dead, as he’d left Shumi.
“Blood in my eyes, everything red, Diya’s dress turning the same color.” Horror in her face as she moved her hands as if trying to stanch her bandaged wounds. “I don’t know about the fire or about going into the lake. I didn’t see. I don’t remember.”
“That’s fine, Shumi,” Ackerson said. “What you’ve given us is plenty.”
“Do you know about Rhiannon?” Shumi asked in a sudden burst. “I believed him when he said he didn’t have anything to do with her death. I always believed him.” Her sobs were heartrending. “He was my husband.” A whisper wrapped in tears. “I believed him.”
I put my arm around her, looked at Ackerson.
Who said, “I think we’re done here for now.” She stepped out, her phone in hand, but she was still nearby when I left Shumi ten minutes later.
Her family had rushed in after the detective left, but she’d leaned into me instead, so I’d stayed. Until, at last, she fell into an emotionally exhausted sleep. Her mother had looked at me. “She trusts you, a near stranger, more than she trusts us.” It was less an accusation and more a confession.
There was nothing I could say to that, because it was true.
So I’d said nothing, just touched Ajay on the shoulder before I left.
“What will I tell Diya?” I said to Ackerson when we met by the empty waiting area outside the ICU. Knowing her brother had done this, annihilated their whole family—it would destroy her.
White lines bracketed Ackerson’s mouth. “I don’t envy you. Men like that, I wish they’d just take themselves out, but they always murder the innocent, too.”
“I read about family annihilation,” I admitted now that I was no longer a suspect. “I couldn’t understand how anyone could murder their entire family, was trying to figure it out.”
“Psychobabble bullshit is that they’re narcissists who believe no one will be able to go on under the circumstances, so death is the kinder choice.” She twisted her lips. “At least your brother-in-law had the grace to end his own pathetic life, too. A lot of that kind—and it’s nearly always men—flinch when it comes to their own life. Cowards.”
I would’ve never used that word for Bobby, but what other one was there?
Coward. Killer. Murderer.
That was now Vihaan “Bobby” Prasad’s final legacy.
“And to think,” Ackerson said, “I was beginning to lean away from him as the suspect. He was in negotiations with a possible business partner—we spoke to the man, and he said that while things were dire with the business, it wasn’t beyond redemption.
“Guy was willing to stump up the necessary cash for a majority stake, and they’d worked out what had gone wrong so it wouldn’t be repeated. Had a whole five-year plan mapped out to not just put Elektrik Ninja in the black, but expand it into Australia.”
“He’d have lost control,” I said, thinking about how he’d monitored every aspect of Shumi’s life, how he’d followed Diya when she went on dates. “Someone else would’ve been the boss.”
Ackerson shrugged. “Yeah. You’re probably right. It’ll all come out in the inquest down the road, I’m sure. But on my end, the case is closed—Shumi’s account explains everything. Bobby Prasad must have started the fire, then taken his own life, not realizing he hadn’t managed to kill Diya and Shumi.”
I decided to follow Ackerson’s lead. No one, least of all my wife, needed to know my suspicions about her parents. Sarita, Rajesh, Bobby, they were all in the past.
As were Susanne, Jocelyn, and Virna.
It was done. Finished.
Chapter 66
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Nov 2
Time: 02:08
Things are finally starting to come together. We might not have physical evidence, but even the DA thinks this much circumstantial evidence will bury the bastard.
I’m not giving up on the physical evidence, though—eyewitness testimony might be notoriously unreliable, but the professor gave me a whole new window of time to check for movements in and around the route. Thank fuck the tech guys who got all that footage last December were as anal as usual and went back an entire day.
We’re still shit out of luck when it comes to some footage we didn’t know to get at the time, but it won’t matter if I can pin him on at least some of the footage we do have. Because he lied. Not once, but in every interview. It’s all on video.
Chapter 67
Sarita, Rajesh, and Bobby’s joint funeral three weeks later was a somber affair.
Shumi hadn’t wanted Bobby anywhere near his parents, while Diya remained in a state of shock, not able to process the events of that horrific day—but in the end, there hadn’t been a choice.
The remains were in such bad shape that some fragments were mere bone shards. There was no way to know which piece belonged to which family member without DNA testing each and every fragment—if the DNA was even there to find. The experienced forensic anthropologist the cops had asked to consult on the case was of the opinion that some of the shards were simply too small or too damaged to differentiate using any of the usual markers.
All three were as linked in death as they had been in life.
The Hindu priest—or pandit, as Shumi had called him—who officiated over the ceremony gave a speech about parenthood and the love parents had for a child, and it was only then that Diya stirred. She, like Shumi, was yet under medical care at the hospital. The doctors had authorized their attendance at the funeral service only because the counselor who was working with the women said it would help with closure.
“He’s right,” my wife said dully, the dark shadows under her eyes all but purple. “The pandit.” A painful inhale, a slow exhale. “My parents did love Bobby that much. I think they’d forgive him his day of insanity.”
I thought of a child locked in a small room under the stairs, of a boy crying because his exam results weren’t a hundred percent. It seemed to me that the Prasads had expected perfection from their only son—and what Bobby had done was about as far from that ideal as it was possible to get.
But if believing in their forgiveness gave my wife peace, then I wasn’t going to argue. Because in the months and years that lay ahead, she’d have to come to terms with her own complex emotions toward her brother as well. “Yes,” I said quietly. “From what I saw of how he was with your parents, I don’t think they could do anything but forgive him.”
She leaned her body into me from the wheelchair we’d parked near the end of the front row of seats, with me acting as the bookend. Shumi sat next to Diya, her brother Ajay next to her, alongside their parents.
Diya’s hand was interlocked with Shumi’s.
The rest of the padded chairs in the large room were filled by friends and strangers both. No more family, Diya the sole survivor of both her maternal and paternal lines. The funeral home’s overflow room—the service fed into it via a television screen—was also full, and there were people standing in the parking lot listening to the service through the hastily arranged loudspeaker system.
All but a rare few were here to pay their respects to Sarita and Rajesh.
I’d spotted Richard and another one of Bobby’s friends in the crowd, but no one spoke for him…at least not till the very end, when a red-faced Richard got up and walked to the podium that had been opened only to a strictly limited short list of people. Richard had a quick conversation with the funeral director before the solemn man waved him to the microphone.
“I know no one wants to hear good things about Bobby,” he began, to a stir of whispers from the audience, “but you know what? Even if he lost his mind at the end, he was a good friend to me, and to many of you, and that should be remembered. His parents would want that, too.”
His voice hitched. “They were always so proud of him.” The tears rolling down his square-jawed face stopped the whispers, as others began to cry, too. “So, yeah, I think they would’ve forgiven him—after giving him one hell of a bollocking for what he’d done.”
A hint of laughter in the crowd at the blunt speaking.
“I don’t know what went wrong in Bobby’s brain that day,” Richard said. “But I’ll remember him as the friend who never let me down, the man who quietly donated five percent of his profits to the city’s food banks, the son and brother who would do anything for his family, and the business owner who took a pay cut so he could keep on several long-serving employees.
“I love you, mate, and what happened that morning, it wasn’t the you we all knew. I’m going to remember the you from before.”
Chapter 68
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Nov 18
Time: 23:47
Got it! Clear evidence of malfeasance, with transfers from Virna’s accounts at times she simply couldn’t have authorized them. In one instance, she was under general anesthetic in the hospital for a minor procedure.
Added to that, the bastard’s own accounts show a constant pattern of dives into the red, only to be topped up with a transfer from Virna’s accounts. She might even have gifted him some of that money. But not all of it. Some of it, he took.
We’re not ready to charge him yet, but his days of freedom are numbered.
Chapter 69
Violet Long turned up a week before Diya was set to be released from the hospital. She still had the same blunt-cut bangs as in the photo I’d seen, though her bob was now asymmetrical and her cheekbones could cut glass. Diya’s fellow event planner wore an ankle-length dress in an antique cream with small needlework flowers of a dusty pink.
It hung on her gaunt frame.
“Violet!” Diya, mobile now though still healing inside, got up to give her a hug. “You came.”
Violet hugged her back with careful arms. “I was so ashamed that I couldn’t even attend your family’s funeral that I really ramped things up with my counselor.” A hot flush on her cheeks.
Hearing her while being able to see her made me realize her face was partially paralyzed; that was what had caused the slur I’d taken for intoxication. The haircut, asymmetrical on purpose, was to help minimize the appearance of it when she wasn’t speaking. It worked; I hadn’t noticed at first glance.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” Diya said fiercely. “It must be so hard for you being back in the hospital.” Another hug before she drew back and said, “Oh, where are my manners. This is Tavish, my husband.”
“Hi, Violet, nice to meet you in person.”
“Same.” When she smiled, the left curve of her lips tugged slightly down—and I realized she hadn’t had the paralysis in the photo I’d seen in the newspaper.
This was a lingering result of the assault.
Anger stirred within, but I stuffed it deep down. I would never ever mention my suspicions of Sarita and Rajesh to Diya—my wife was barely holding herself together right now, a fragile glass bird who’d shatter with a single new blow.
“You two want me to grab you coffee and snacks from the café?” I asked, figuring they didn’t want me hanging about while they chatted.
Diya beamed at me while tugging Violet toward her hospital bed so they could sit on it side by side, in front of a window that gave them a view of the hospital’s sloping green grounds. “That’d be perfect. You know my order. Violet?”
“An almond milk flat white, one sugar. Thanks.”
With Shumi having been discharged two days earlier, there was no Ajay wandering the halls, but he called me while I was waiting for the coffees. “How’s it going?” I asked. “Shumi doing okay?”
“Fine—except I think she’s going to murder our mum.” A pause. “Oh man, how could I say that?”
I could almost see his mortification. “It’s just words, don’t sweat it.” Life had to go on. “They’re fighting?”
“No, the opposite. Mum is hovering—like she’s trying to make up for all the years in between.” That he saw so clearly was a testament to Ajay’s inherent empathy; it would have been in his best interests not to see, to pretend his elder sister had experienced the same loving childhood as him.
“Shumi’s already told me that she’s moving in with you and Diya wherever you go, until she finds a place of her own. I thought I better give you the heads-up in case, you know, you’d rather she didn’t.” Youthful awkwardness. “I could talk to her…”
I’d been looking forward to having Diya to myself at last, but I couldn’t abandon Shumi. Not when the idea of being stuck in a house with my own mother while I was vulnerable and recovering from injury was my personal nightmare.
Mrs. Kumar might have good intentions, but it was too fucking late. “Tell your sister she’ll be welcome.”
“Thanks, man.”
Grabbing the drinks the barista had just slid over in a little cardboard carry tray, along with the brown paper bags that held the treats I’d picked up for the two women, I went back to the ward, arriving just in time to overhear Violet say, “…never told you, but I did get a couple of weird cards before I was attacked.”
I hesitated outside the curtain the women had pulled around the bed to create a bit more privacy. Diya was in a room with three other patients, each of them in their own little curtained cubicle.
“What do you mean, weird?” my wife asked now.
“They were generic floral cards, but inside someone had written that you weren’t what you seemed, and that I needed to stay away from you for my own good. Same message in different words in both cards.”
Diya sucked in a breath. “Why would someone do that?”
“I figured maybe a competitor. I had several others approach me looking for a partnership, but I turned them down. Honestly, I forgot about them until just last week, when my counselor made me do a deep dive into the events of that entire month.”
“That’s pretty awful,” Diya said, “knowing that someone dislikes me so much.”
“I really think it was a dumb attempt to open up the partnership spot,” Violet reassured her. “I wasn’t going to tell you at all, but I want you to watch your back when you return to work.”
The other woman paused. “My counselor thinks I’m too paranoid these days, but they never caught my attacker. Knowing that person is still out there…it’s part of why I have such a hard time leaving the house. I can’t help thinking that they could be waiting for me around any corner.”
“Oh, Violet, I’m so sorry.”
I went to back off, not wanting to interrupt what seemed to be an emotional moment, but a nurse came by just then and said, “Knock, knock,” at the curtain before peeking inside. “Won’t be long,” she told the women. “Just have to chart your blood pressure.”
I entered a moment later. “Your waiter’s here!”
The rest of the conversation was light and carefree, but Diya told me about the cards after Violet left. “Do you think she’s right? That it was just some disgruntled competitor?”
“Yeah,” I said, because I could tell she needed reassurance. “Especially given the timing, with the two of you in partnership negotiations.”
Nodding slowly, Diya leaned back against her pillow. “Tavi?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been thinking…we have to take Mum and Dad and Bobby home. To Ani. She’s been waiting such a long time.”
Chapter 70
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Nov 19
Time: 15:17
I thought Perez was punking me when he showed me the marriage certificates. No one could be that stupid. But then again, he did get away with it for years. But, yeah, this is it, the last nail in the coffin.
We’ll be putting handcuffs on the bastard in a matter of days.
Chapter 71
Six weeks after Diya walked out of the hospital, and I continued to dream of the horror of that day, continued to grapple with the idea of Bobby being so consumed with his own image that he’d destroyed his entire family.
I’d probably never understand.
Diya, still mentally dazed and in psychic shock over the events that had forever altered the course of her life, sat quietly beside me on the sofa with its view of Lake Taupo. I’d rented the house with its sweeping views of a lake far bigger than Tarawera, then driven all three of us here through the night hours.
The renewed media storm that came with the revelations about Bobby had passed while the women were in the hospital, Ackerson turning up for most of the questions. The media must’ve known it’d be a bad look to hound a grieving family member, so they hadn’t attempted to beard me, and the only articles about my past had been in the gossip rags.
When contacted by one of those rags during the tail end of November, Detective Baxter had, surprisingly, come through for me with a blunt “No, Tavish Advani isn’t a person of interest in the Musgrave case.”
Five days later, he’d called me and said the last words I’d ever expected to hear. “I owe you an apology. I did get tunnel vision with you when it came to Virna, and didn’t look hard enough at Jason.”
