Vivaan Sharma
The Body on the Shore
The waves crashed softly against the rocks, their rhythm almost meditative under the hazy early morning sun. Palolem Beach was just beginning to wake—fishermen pulling in their nets, yoga teachers arranging mats on the sand, tourists stretching and sipping on bitter black coffee from the shacks. And then the scream. It sliced through the humid air like a blade. A local boy had found her—curled on her side near the rocky edge of the shore, half-buried in sand, her hair tangled with seaweed. At first glance, it looked like she had been sleeping. But the blood near her temple said otherwise.
Inspector Ayesha Fernandes stood with her hands on her hips, squinting at the body. “Foreign?” she asked, not looking at the constable beside her.
“Indian,” he replied. “Name’s Reeva Malhotra. She was staying at Bliss Bay Resort. Travel vlogger. Her ID and phone were in her sling bag, thirty feet up the beach.”
Ayesha crouched. Sand clung to the dead girl’s wet dress. The body had clearly washed ashore from the sea, but something didn’t feel right. No bloating. No obvious drag marks from the tide. And then there was the bruise—a deep, round impression at the base of the neck. Strangulation? Blunt force? Not from the ocean.
“How many guests at Bliss Bay last night?” she asked, standing up again.
“Thirty-two checked in. Most foreigners. Reeva was supposed to check out this morning.”
“And her last whereabouts?”
The constable flipped through his notebook. “Witness says she was seen filming near Butterfly Beach at sunset. No one saw her after 7 PM. No calls. Her last Instagram story posted at 6:48 PM.”
Ayesha sighed. “We need her camera. If she was vlogging, she probably recorded something. Find out if she backed up her footage to the cloud. And call her family.”
She turned to the waves. They always looked so innocent from afar, didn’t they? But they were just as good at keeping secrets as they were at erasing them.
By afternoon, the news had spread. A beautiful influencer dead on a Goan beach? The internet exploded. #JusticeForReeva trended before the autopsy even began. Her page, previously filled with sunlit shots of beaches, hammocks, and street food, was now flooded with RIP comments. Strangers mourned her like they knew her. But Ayesha knew better. No one really knew the dead. Not until the lies began to unravel.
Back at the resort, the receptionist fidgeted nervously. “She came alone. Booked for three nights. Always polite. Didn’t speak much. Took a scooter out every evening. Didn’t bring anyone back to the room. Quiet type.”
Ayesha scanned the logbook. Reeva had indeed kept to herself. No room service orders. No bar bills. But someone had followed her. She was sure of it.
The forensic report came in that evening. Cause of death: blunt force trauma to the head, coupled with signs of asphyxiation. Estimated time of death: between 8 PM and 10 PM. No traces of seawater in her lungs. So, she was dead before she hit the water. “Murder,” Ayesha muttered. Her mind raced. Who would want a young influencer dead? A stalker? An ex-lover? Someone she exposed?
A knock on her office door startled her. The constable entered, holding a water-damaged GoPro in a zip-lock bag. “Found this floating near Patnem beach. Could be hers.” She grabbed it. “Send it for recovery. I want that footage by morning.” Outside, the waves whispered again. As if amused by the chaos they’d delivered to her doorstep.
The Footage
The GoPro footage came in just after sunrise, extracted painstakingly from the water-damaged memory card by the cybercrime lab in Panjim. The technician handed it over to Ayesha with a furrowed brow.
“Not all of it is intact,” he said. “But the last two videos might be useful. The timestamps line up with her disappearance.”
She took the drive and locked herself in the small AV room beside the station archives. A dim ceiling fan turned slowly overhead as she plugged in the device. The first video was mundane—Reeva speaking cheerfully to the camera, showing off a local thali, interviewing a chaiwala near the fort, laughing easily in a way that felt almost too perfect.
The second video was different. No voice, no selfie-stick banter. Just shaky handheld footage. Trees rushed by, uneven footsteps crunched on gravel. It was nearing twilight. The camera caught glimpses of the narrow trail leading to Butterfly Beach—shimmering water, swaying palms. Then a male voice, off-camera, faint but deep.
“Sure you want to go this far?”
Reeva didn’t reply, but the footage turned briefly to capture a blurry silhouette beside her. Male. Tall. Wearing a grey hoodie. He kept his face turned away.
Another thirty seconds of walking. Then she whispered something. The words were muffled, but the tone was anxious.
“I shouldn’t have come.”
The video ended abruptly with a jolt and a clatter, as if the camera had fallen.
Ayesha froze the frame. Zoomed in on the last image. Part of a face—chin and lips—caught in the corner of the frame. A mole near the mouth. Someone Reeva knew. Someone she trusted enough to walk into the forest with, just before dark.
She called for Rohan, her junior officer.
“Cross-check the guest list at Bliss Bay Resort. Anyone matching this description: male, mid-twenties to thirties, tall, grey hoodie, mole on lower left jaw. Also, pull CCTV from nearby rental shops. She might have been tailed.”
He nodded and left.
By noon, she had more. The scooter rental owner confirmed that Reeva always took the same blue Activa. Last night, another guest had rented a black Bullet minutes after she did—booked under the name “Jay Purohit.” Cash payment. Fake number on ID.
But the mechanic across the street remembered him.
“North Indian guy. Accent like Delhi. Asked if the road to the secret beach was safe at night.”
That was enough. Ayesha issued a BOLO alert across the state for Jay Purohit, age unknown, likely traveling solo. She suspected he wasn’t far.
As she waited, she returned to Reeva’s online world. Her YouTube channel was still active. Her last video, posted two days ago, had a cryptic comment pinned by Reeva herself.
“The sea hides more than it reveals. I’ve learned that the hard way.”
Underneath, someone had replied:
“Still digging, are you?”
— JayTrek89
It sent a chill down Ayesha’s spine. JayTrek. Could that be her suspect?
She clicked the profile. No real information. No videos. But the handle had been active on at least five of Reeva’s old travel posts, always in the comment section, always vague and slightly mocking.
Someone had been watching her for months. Possibly years.
By dusk, an anonymous tip came in. A man matching Jay’s description had been spotted at a beach shack in Agonda, drinking alone, nervously checking his phone.
She drove there herself.
He was still at the bar, his fingers tapping the counter, his hoodie folded on the seat beside him. When he saw the police jeep, he bolted. Ayesha ran after him, her boots kicking up sand. He turned down a narrow lane, but she was faster. She tackled him near a coconut grove, pinning him to the ground.
“Jay Purohit?” she demanded.
He was panting, sweating. “I didn’t kill her. I swear.”
She tightened the cuffs. “We’ll see. But you were the last one with her.”
As the tide rose again that night, washing over the footprints on the beach, Inspector Fernandes knew one thing: the
waves couldn’t wash away the truth.
They could only delay it.
The Interrogation
The interrogation room in the Canacona Police Station smelled faintly of damp paper and rust. Jay Purohit sat opposite Ayesha, his wrists cuffed to the metal chair. His eyes darted between the ceiling fan and the recorder on the table. He hadn’t asked for a lawyer. He hadn’t asked for anything, except water.
Ayesha leaned forward, voice low. “Let’s start from the top. When did you meet Reeva Malhotra?”
Jay hesitated. “Online. Instagram. I followed her for years. I… admired her work.”
“Define ‘admired’,” Ayesha said flatly.
Jay rubbed his jaw with a cuffed hand. “She was honest. She traveled solo. She didn’t fake it like others. A few months ago, I messaged her. Commented on her videos. Nothing creepy. I didn’t stalk her.”
“But you followed her from Delhi to Goa?”
“I was already in Goa,” he shot back quickly. “I’m a filmmaker. I came for the indie festival. She posted that she’d be in Palolem, and I thought… maybe I could meet her. Collaborate.”
“Did she agree to meet you?”
“She was hesitant at first. But yeah, eventually. We met near Butterfly Beach around 6 PM. Just walked. Talked. I told her I admired her. She was… distant. Kept checking her watch.”
Ayesha narrowed her eyes. “What happened after 7 PM?”
Jay’s throat bobbed. “We argued. She accused me of knowing too much. I didn’t understand what she meant. Then she started walking away. I tried to follow, to explain, but she snapped. Said if I didn’t back off, she’d call the cops.”
“Then what?”
“I left. I swear. I rode back to Agonda. Drank at a shack. I didn’t touch her.”
Ayesha leaned back. His story was rehearsed, but not confident. The fear in his eyes wasn’t fear of guilt—it was fear of what he didn’t understand. That made him dangerous, or possibly innocent.
She pulled out a still from the GoPro video, zoomed in to the corner where his blurred chin appeared. “This is you. You walked with her into the woods. You were the last person seen with her alive.”
Jay looked at the photo, face slack. “That’s not possible. She had her GoPro out before we reached the trail. After that, she put it away.”
“She didn’t. And it recorded more than you think.”
He went quiet.
Forensics had found something else, too—a broken pendant buried in the sand near the body. A small seashell charm with a blood smear. Jay didn’t wear jewelry. But someone else might have.
Ayesha stood. “You’re not the killer, Jay. You’re just the bait.”
She left him in the room, heart pounding. The pieces were shifting. The beach. The bruise. The sudden fear in Reeva’s voice. What had she been afraid of?
Outside, Rohan was waiting.
“We traced the IP address for the ‘JayTrek89’ comments. Not Jay’s. It came from a different resort. Sunset Heights. Just a kilometer from Bliss Bay.”
“Registered under?”
“Alisha D’Cruz. Travel writer. Check-in date: two days before Reeva’s death.”
Ayesha’s brow furrowed. “Alisha… That name sounds familiar.”
Rohan pulled up her profile. The face on the screen stared back with cold familiarity. Long hair. Sharp eyes. Dozens of photos from exotic places. A blog that had once competed with Reeva’s in the same niche—until Reeva overtook her in subscribers, partnerships, even awards.
“Looks like someone didn’t enjoy losing the spotlight.”
“She was tracking her,” Ayesha said. “Maybe more than that.”
Suddenly, Reeva’s pinned comment made sense.
“The sea hides more than it reveals. I’ve learned that the hard way.”
She wasn’t being poetic.
She was leaving a clue.
Ayesha grabbed her keys. “Let’s visit Sunset Heights.”
The Other Vlogger
Sunset Heights sat on a low hill overlooking the sea, its red-tiled roofs casting long shadows in the golden hour light. Ayesha walked up the narrow steps with Rohan at her side, past bougainvillea vines and the scent of jasmine that clung to the walls. The receptionist looked up from her phone with startled eyes as the police badge flashed.
“Room 104,” she said, barely waiting for the question.
Alisha D’Cruz opened the door in linen pants and a sleeveless blouse, a half-finished mojito in her hand. She didn’t look surprised to see the police—only mildly amused.
“Inspector Fernandes,” Ayesha began, “We have a few questions about your acquaintance with Reeva Malhotra.”
Alisha’s smile was razor-thin. “Reeva and I weren’t friends. We moved in the same circles once. But she changed. Got big. Got arrogant. Forgot the ones who helped her.”
“You helped her?”
“I gave her her first guest post. Promoted her channel when she barely had five followers. But once the sponsors came in, she ghosted everyone. Took shortcuts. Even leaked one of my unreleased trail maps as her own. It’s a brutal business, Inspector. You know how women tear each other down.”
“And you stayed at a resort barely a kilometer away, at the same time she was here?”
“I didn’t know she’d be here.”
“But your handle—JayTrek89—commented on her video hours before her death. And it was traced to this IP.”
Alisha took a long sip from her drink. “Maybe I was watching. Maybe I was angry. That doesn’t mean I killed her.”
Ayesha stepped into the room. It was spotless, too spotless. The only thing out of place was a duffel bag by the window. Rohan opened it carefully. Clothes. Camera equipment. A small velvet pouch. Inside—two shell pendants. One of them broken.
Ayesha held it up. “This was found near Reeva’s body. With her blood on it.”
Alisha’s mask slipped for a fraction of a second. “She grabbed me. She scratched me first.”
“You were there.”
“I followed her to the beach. Yes. To talk. To confront her. She laughed at me. Said the past didn’t matter. That I was stuck. That people like me didn’t ‘trend’ anymore. And then she walked away, like she always did.”
“What happened next?”
“I grabbed her shoulder. She spun around, shoved me. I lost my balance, hit a rock. She looked down at me and smirked. So I pushed her back.”
Silence.
“She fell. Hit her head. It was quick. I panicked. Dragged her into the surf, thinking… maybe the tide would take her. I didn’t mean to kill her. I just… wanted her to stop acting like nothing mattered.”
Ayesha exhaled slowly. “So you planted the pendant, used a fake account to harass her, followed her like a fan… and when she finally stood up to you, you killed her?”
Alisha’s voice trembled. “I didn’t mean for it to go this far.”
“But it did,” Ayesha said coldly. “And now, the waves won’t protect you.”
Back at the station, Jay sat in stunned silence as Ayesha told him the truth. He was never the predator—just a pawn in a rivalry gone rancid. Released with an apology, he left the station as the sun dipped below the sea.
As for Alisha, her arrest made headlines. But Reeva’s last video—her last wave—went viral not because she died, but because it revealed a quiet, raw vulnerability that people had missed.
Ayesha stood once more on Palolem beach, the sand cooling beneath her boots. The case was closed. The tide was pulling back. But the sea, as always, whispered other stories. Some solved, others buried deep.
And not all would rise with the next wave.
THE END
