Priya hadn't slept properly in twelve days. Her body was running on caffeine, adrenaline, and the particular fuel that only obsession provides — the kind that keeps your brain spinning at 3 AM while the rest of the world is unconscious and the only company is the hum of the refrigerator and the distant bark of a street dog.
She'd converted her living room into a secondary crime board. Ananya had stopped protesting. At seventeen, her daughter had developed the resigned maturity of a child who'd grown up with a single parent in law enforcement. She made her own dinner, did her homework in her room, and left cups of chai outside her mother's door without being asked.
"Maa," she said one evening, leaning in the doorway, "you're scaring me."
Priya looked up from the evidence photographs spread across the dining table. "Why?"
"Because you look the way you did after Papa left. Like you're disappearing into something."
The mention of her ex-husband — Siddharth, who'd walked out when Ananya was six, unable to compete with a wife who loved her job more than she loved predictability — hit Priya in a place she thought she'd armoured.
"I'm not disappearing. I'm working."
"Same thing, with you."
Priya reached for her daughter's hand. Ananya let her take it — a small mercy. "I promise you, I'm being careful."
"Your idea of careful and the dictionary's idea of careful are not the same thing, Maa."
Despite everything, Priya smiled.
The pattern emerged on day fourteen.
She'd been comparing the two copycat scenes to the originals — not just the physical details but the timeline. Sunita Jadhav had been killed in March 2017. Farhan Siddiqui in November 2018. The copycat was recreating them in chronological order: the Jadhav scene first, the Siddiqui scene second. If the pattern held, the next recreation would be Case 3 — the Malad twins. The poisoning.
But there was another pattern, subtler. The original cases had been spread over years. The copycat was compressing the timeline — nine days between the first and second scenes. If the compression continued at the same rate, the third scene would happen within a week.
She called Vikram. "The Malad twins case. I need you to find Rohan and Rahul Desai. Where are they now? Are they safe?"
Vikram called back in two hours. "The Desai family moved to Pune after the incident. Both boys are alive, in a special care facility. I've spoken to the local police — they're putting a watch on the family."
"Good. Now listen carefully. The copycat isn't targeting the original victims or their families. They're choosing new people — people who roughly match the original victims' profile. Sunita Jadhav was a young woman in her twenties, and the copycat chose Kavita Mane — also a young woman in her twenties. Farhan Siddiqui was a man in his thirties living alone, and the copycat chose Nikhil Joshi — same profile."
