"No." His voice was firm despite the tremor. "Ajay was not supposed to kill anyone. The plan was different. The plan was exposure — recreation of the crime scenes using forensic dummies and staged props. A public demonstration of the department's failures. My failures. I wanted to force the department to reopen the cases, to give the victims' families the investigation they deserved."
"But Ajay deviated."
"Ajay is angry. His brother is twenty-two years old and on dialysis for the rest of his life because the police — because I — didn't investigate properly. When I approached him about the project, he was supposed to be a researcher, an assistant. But his anger found a different channel."
Priya set her cup down carefully. "Are you telling me that Ajay Kulkarni acted independently? That he turned your demonstration into actual murders?"
"I'm telling you that I planted a seed in soil I didn't understand. And what grew was something I cannot control."
"Where is he now?"
"I don't know. He stopped returning my calls two weeks ago. After the second murder. I tried to reach him — to stop him. He's disconnected everything."
Priya looked at this man — this diminished, trembling man who'd once been the most formidable officer she'd known — and felt a collision of emotions so violent that none of them won.
"Sir, I'm going to have to arrest you."
"I know."
"And Ajay has the chemical. The Compound 1080. He's going to use it within five days."
Dev Sir closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were wet. "There's something else you need to know. Something that changes everything."
"What?"
"Ajay didn't just study your seven cases. He studied you. Your routines, your family, your daughter's school, your home address. I found files on his laptop before he disconnected — surveillance photographs. Hundreds of them. Not of crime scenes." He looked at her. "Of you."
The room was very quiet.
"Priya, you're not just the audience for his performance. You're the final act."
She drove home that night with her hands white on the steering wheel, Rajan's car in her rearview mirror, and the understanding that the countdown wasn't just marking the recreation of seven cases.
It was marking the distance between her and her own murder.
