"Another dead Sunday morning still, quiet, and predictably empty." I sat at my desk, staring at the empty room, waiting for a case any case to show up. But after what happened during my last investigation, After the disaster of my last case, I knew no one would darken my agency's door again not for a long time.
I took a sip of coffee. Strong, with too much sugar. The sweeter, the better because let's face it, it's the only sweetness left in my life anymore. My eyes wandered across my old-fashioned study. Books and papers were strewn everywhere. "The table was littered with printouts cold cases I never cracked, and never will. Each one sat there like a ghost refusing to move on." Dust settled thick on my old revolver. Even the coffee had lost its warmth — just like everything else.
It had been years since my last case. Loneliness was becoming a familiar friend. Maybe it was time I quit being a detective. My past, my trauma, it was all catching up. Even my doctor said I was showing signs of emotional detachment. Borderline sociopath, she once joked. I didn't laugh.
Speaking of which
Damn, I forgot I had an appointment.
Dr. Meena Krishna, one of the city's top psychiatrists, and with a temper that could scare the life out of a ghost. She hated late arrivals. The appointment was for 10:00 AM. I checked the time, just a little over an hour left.
I dragged myself to the bathroom, washed off the dread, and got ready. Then came the only part of my day I still enjoyed kicking up dust on my old Royal Enfield Bullet 350cc, 2010 model. A beast, once upon a time. Now, it's just another bike on Bangalore's chaotic roads.
Getting from Jayanagar to Hebbal in under 30 minutes? That's not commuting — that's war. But somehow, I made it.
I parked the Bullet and walked into the clinic. I wasn't a fan of the doctor, but I sure didn't mind the receptionist.
Devi Prasad.
"Hi Bishop," she smiled. "Nice to see you today. Just a second, I'll let Dr. Meena know you've arrived."
"No rush, Devi," I said with a grin. "If I had a choice, I'd pick five minutes with you over an hour with the doc."
She chuckled. "Tempting offer, but we both know you have no choice."
A few moments later, she escorted me to the last second cabin down the hallway.
Dr. Meena Krishna sat in her usual place. "Welcome, Bishop," she said, calm but sharp. "I was expecting you."
I took a seat across from her and nodded. "Nice to see you too, Doc."
She raised an eyebrow. "Is it, though?" she said, voice dipped in sarcasm. "Or are you just saying that so we can skip the awkward silence?"
I gave her a smirk. "Can't it be both? Besides, you're not that bad but for once stop psychoanalyzing my every breath."
She didn't smile. "That's literally my job, Bishop."
She wore her typical black two-piece suit neat, professional. Her shoes polished to a mirror shine. A simple platinum ring on her finger. Heavy makeup, no nonsense. The usual. As a female psychiatrist, it is important to look professional and keep a neat appearance. Doc wasn't a great fan off jewellery but she wore a platinum ring in her ring finger with a plane simple design and a ton off make up.
The session began.
She started asking about "the incident." Whether I still had nightmares. Whether it was affecting my personal life.
I lied.
Told her I was fine, sleeping well, eating regularly, socializing even which I was not. The usual script.
Truth is, if I told her what was really going on in my head, she'd throw me a prescription and one of those long lectures I'd already heard too many times.
Then she leaned in, eyes locked on mine.
"So," she said, "have you moved on from it?"
I hesitated.
I would've. I could've… if I was back doing what I was meant to do. If I had a case. If I had a purpose.
I barely whispered, "Maybe if I was working again—"
That set her off.
Her voice went sharp.
"No more dead bodies, Bishop. No more detective work. You're not mentally fit for this."
She launched into her usual monologue about exposure to trauma, unresolved grief, and how stress like mine can ruin whatever's left of a mind already fraying at the edges.
"You're not in a condition to handle it," she said firmly. "One more case, one more scene, one more body and I'm not sure you'll come back from it."
There's no use arguing with her. You don't win debates with psychiatrists, especially ones who know you too well.
I nodded, did as I was told, and pocketed the meds she handed over without a word.
Session over.
As I stepped out, Devi was at her desk, filing something.
"Done already?" she asked with that soft smile.
"Apparently I'm cured," I said dryly. "Or just well-medicated."
She laughed, and for a moment, the world didn't feel so heavy. That alone made the visit almost worth it.
Then I got back on my Bullet and rode home.
Alone.
Again.
It was around 2 PM when I got back home, just another silent afternoon, or so I thought. That's when I saw it.
A package.
Small. Plain. No labels, no markings. Nothing to give away who had sent it.
Just sitting there on my doorstep like it belonged.
The letter was bare — no name, no message. Just a string of coordinates scrawled in neat black ink:
N 12 57 30.654 E 77 36 6.4548
2565
No explanation. No context. Just numbers. 2565, What the hell did that mean?
A random number which I didn't understand.
Curious and a little cautious. I plugged the pen drive into my old laptop.
It took a moment to load. Then the screen flickered. A video started to play. And what I saw… shook me.
Cold.
Calculated.
Brutal.
A murder.
Someone had recorded it start to finish. No cuts. No edits. Just raw, sickening reality.
And now it was on my screen.
The killer wore a white, hacker-style mask, the kind you'd find in novelty stores. Dressed in dark clothes, his hands covered with gloves, he also wore a long apron and a clear face shield, like something out of a horror lab. The room was wrapped wall-to-wall in plastic sheets, not a single inch exposed. Everything was sterile. Deliberate.
The victim a man in his late 30s was tied to a metal chair. He was screaming, thrashing, begging. Maybe the killer was asking questions, but only the screams were audible. The rest of the audio was muted, almost like the silence was intentional.
Then the real horror began.
Using a cutting plier, the killer removed the victim's fingernails. One by one. Slowly. Methodically. He took his time not out of hesitation, but pleasure. As he continued asking questions, slowly removed one by one fingernails. Even after all the nails were gone, he wasn't done. Not even close.
Next came electrocution. Short bursts at first. Then full, relentless voltage.
By 10:45 PM, the man was dead.
But the killer still wasn't satisfied.
He fired five bullets into the body - cold, casual, calculated. A final insult to a life already extinguished.
No blood splatter. No obvious clues. The plastic-wrapped room made sure of that. It was clean. Clinical. Like a procedure.
Except for one detail.
A TV in the background was left on, showing yesterday's news. The camera had captured it clearly complete with the time, date, and anchor's face. It wasn't an accident. It was a message. A timestamp. The video had started at exactly 10:00 PM and ended at 10:45 PM, a 45-minute execution, choreographed and filmed with precision.
I stared at the screen in disbelief. My hands trembled as I picked up the phone and called the police.
Inspector Ram was one of the first to arrive, my closest friend and former partner. We'd solved more cases together than I could count. If there was anyone I could trust, it was him.
I showed him the video. He was silent. Focused. Then I handed him the letter.
N 12 57 30.654 E 77 36 6.4548
2565
Still a mystery.
I sat frozen, still trying to make sense of what I'd just seen. My heart was racing, but my mind was racing faster. A thousand questions collided in my head.
Why did the killer send me this video?
Who was the victim? Do I know him?
Why torture him like that?
And why shoot a dead man five times?
Where's the body now?
Maybe if we found the body, we could find the killer. But we needed a place to start.
That's when I remembered the letter. The one that came with the pen drive.
At first glance, it looked like random digits and letters. But it had to mean something. A killer this precise wouldn't include anything by accident.
I looked at it again:
N 12 57 30.654
E 77 36 6.4548
2565
The letters 'N' and 'E' stood out.
What if…?
North and East.
Coordinates.
Why didn't I see it earlier?
I broke it down the way I'd seen in old maps and GPS formats. Degrees, minutes, seconds.
North 12° 57' 30.654"
East 77° 36' 6.4548"
Latitude and longitude.
This wasn't a random number. It was a location. A clue.
The killer wasn't just showing me a murder.
He was inviting me to the crime scene.
But then there was the other number - 2565.
What the hell did that mean? A code? A time? An ID?
I couldn't figure it out, not yet. And right now, I didn't have the luxury to sit and guess.
First, the coordinates.
I needed backup. Someone I could trust.
If the body was still there or even a trace, it might give us the leverage we needed to crack this. Identity. Motive. Maybe even the killer himself. I had a bad feeling this was just the beginning.
I called Ram aside and told him what I'd decoded. He immediately sent the coordinates to the tech team. Within minutes, we had a location.
A cemetery.
Of all the places…
We rushed there, an abandoned graveyard near Hosur Road.
Finding one grave in that sea of tombstones? Like finding a needle in a haystack.
We rushed there without wasting a second. The search team fanned out and began scanning the area, row by row, grave by grave.
Old headstones. Crumbling crosses. Dirt mounds that hadn't been touched in years. Time had erased names, blurred dates, and nature had done the rest.
It was quiet. Too quiet.
We began our investigation, combing the place for anything a shallow grave, disturbed soil, any hint of the body. But there was nothing.
No victim. No clues. No blood. No sign that anyone had been here recently.
Either the killer was bluffing or he was two steps ahead of us.
Again.
There had to be some clue. Something we missed.
I watched the video again, frame by frame.
I re-read the letter.
Nothing.
But one detail kept bothering me, the five bullets.
It seemed excessive, even for a brutal murder.
Why shoot a man who's already dead?
Maybe it was just a hunch. Or maybe instinct. But I told the team to search for anything connected to the number five.
And that's when we got our break.
Towards the far end of the cemetery, one of the officers called me over.
There it was a grave. The name etched crudely on the headstone: Victim1. No real name.
Just a placeholder.
Underneath the name and the date of death, something caught my eye five tiny holes drilled into the stone. Perfectly aligned. Like someone had marked it intentionally.
The grave looked freshly dug. But the date on the headstone was old. It didn't add up.
"Could've been reconstructed," someone muttered.
Maybe. Or maybe the killer was mocking us.
We weren't going to take any chances.
We dug.
And after hours of searching finally we struck something.
A plastic sheet.
Then a body.
We found our victim.
Wrapped, staged, buried in silence. Just like in the video.
The remains were carefully removed and sent to the forensics lab for examination. Ram ordered the entire area sealed off. Officers spread out to canvas the place, asking around about anything unusual - noises, strangers, any movement around the graveyard recently.
Ram was buried in stress, shouting orders, coordinating every angle of the scene.
I didn't want to get in his way.
So, I did what I do best — I wandered off, looking for something everyone else missed.