Corner Store (Part 1)

Feb 11th.
It was Friday evening. Anala was doing her weekly shopping as usual at the Corner Store – the super marker of her locality. She was in the ‘Clothes’ section. A girl – sweet, good looking, may be in her early late teens or early 20s was talking to someone on her mobile phone and searching for a belt. After a long search she got what she wanted. But she never hung up. ‘She is not mentally present here’ thought Anala. The girl had stumbled at a rack, dashed someone, let her purse slip, and after paying the bill forgotten her credit card (only to be returned by the clerk), had the guard not warned her about the signal she would have been in hospital or worse dead by now.

‘Such an easy target for a thief’ thought Anala after observing the girl, who had somehow managed to get into her house almost opposite to the departmental store.

Anala was just about to leave the departmental store when everything went blank. She lost track of where she was. Everything was fine now, but she was not in the departmental store but in a house, the girl smiling at her, the same girl whom she had just seen in the stores. Anala could not understand what was happening. Suddenly a hand appeared, it had a belt, the same one which the girl had just bought. Then the strangled the girl with the belt. There was nothing that the Anala could do. Within no time the girl was on the floor, dead. And then everything came back. Someone had sprinkled water on Anala, who was down on floor now, people had gathered around her. The guard had a bottle of water in his hand and offered it to her. It took some time for her to comprehend what had happened. She had just passed out. This had happened couple of times before. But never had she seen anything like what had happened today. She didn’t want to tell anyone about what had happened. After some time Anala got up, thanked the guard, told she would be alright and was on her way back.

‘why did I see the girl getting killed? Is this an indication of something? Na, I am normal. Of lately I have been reading lot of murder mysteries. May be that s the reason I imagined the girl being killed’ thought Anala sitting on the couch drinking juice once she reached home. ‘It has been a hectic week and a hectic Friday. I need some rest. Let me sleep’ she thought. Within no time she was in her bed and fast asleep.


Feb 12th.
Saturday morning around 8. 2 police jeeps. Journalists waiting outside to interview the inspector and ask for details. Detectives searching hunting for clues, flashes of camera. Reason: a girl aged 22 found dead in her apartment. Murder. A brand new belt - the price tag still on and mentioning the name of the store from which it was bought – Corner Stop. No trace of forced entry. No trace of robbery. No finger print other than the girl s found. And not much struggle thought the Inspector.

The girl Mehak, did not answered her boyfriend s call, which made him pay a visit to her house in the morning at around 7 30. looking at her lay down dead had petrified him. After the initial shock he had called the police.

Inspector Kashyap found something strange. Mehak s watch showed 12. It was forced to stop at 12 in fact. In the struggle the murderer might have hit the button though the inspector initially. But when the autopsy reports arrived he was sure that something fishy was going on. According to the reports Mehak was killed at 9 pm. Murder weapon – The Belt. So the only possible solutions were either Mehak had unknowingly stopped her watch at 12 that noon, or the time was changed and watch stopped in the struggle during murder, or the murderer had changed the time to 12 after the murder and stopped the watch. Instinct told him that the third one might be the solution, but why would the murderer stop the watch at 12? Was he trying to tamper the evidence. Coming to evidence the murderer had hardly left any evidence. And if this was an evidence, it did not make any sense. The watch did not have any other finger print on it.

Inspector Kashyap had found something else odd too. In a corner in Mehak s bedroom room there was a calendar. There was noting special about it at first glance. But as he flipped through it he found that March 6th was marked as ‘D DAY’ in bold black letters. The letters here were definitely different from the ones found on the other pages. Which meant that it was not Mehak who had marked March 6th. What was so significant about March the 6th? This is not an easy case to solve thought Kashyap