A New Faith: Part 1: Chapter 12

The team had been trickling into the incident room. Alia had noticed that everyone was quite subdued. The news of the shoot-out in the Vatican and its direct link to the two murders in Sequoia had no doubt affected all the members of her team. The subsequent massacres in places such as Washington DC had further dampened their spirit. The perpetrators of those massacres had clearly pointed out that their actions were to avenge the Vatican attack. The fanatics around the world had decided to use the excuse of the Sequoia murders to light an inferno that could burn everything down. 

Usually, Tozi was colorfully attired. That day, it was all black with no other color visible. No sign of a head-dress nor any makeup adorning her face. Almost as if the real Tozi had decided to take the day off and sent in her shadow to work. Carlos always made it a point to seek out Alia’s attention and smile at her enthusiastically every morning. Today, he could barely bring himself to look at her and nod. Definitely, no smiles today. And Nadia, the effervescent one, was walking as if all the weight of the world had been loaded on her shoulders. Instead of floating into the room all light-footed grace, she shuffled in like a sick old woman and sank in her chair. Santosh hadn’t showed up yet. He was always punctual and when he was delayed, he invariably informed Alia beforehand. She glanced at her phone to see if there were any messages from him. But didn’t see anything. She decided to give him a few more minutes before calling him. 

They were all very much now in the collective spotlight of the entire world. Finding the perpetrators of both murders as soon as possible had become a topic of international importance. For almost five years, the world had left Sequoia alone. Treating it as an absurd little experiment playing out in a long forgotten corner of the world. That isolation was over now. 

There had been several tense video conferences between Sequoia’s city council and the UN. Sonia had been hauled in by the city council and then later made to brief the UN on the investigation team’s progress. She had been grilled for several hours. Overnight everyone at the UN had become a detective and was giving her all kinds of advice about how to track down the killers in Sequoia. To her credit, Sonia had lost her temper only a couple of times during the actual briefing. Although, she did lose it numerous times when she was talking with the city council. Her dark eyes would flash dangerously when she was faced with people who knew far less about criminal investigations but still felt that they could give her advice. 

After those frustrating conversations with the UN and the City Council, the previous evening, she had gone over to Alia’s flat to both vent and check on the progress. The two murders were now pretty much the most important things to deal with for the Sequoia police department. She didn’t want to take over the investigation - yet - from Alia despite all the pressure from the city council and the UN. That would both undermine Alia’s position as the lead investigator but more importantly, signal to the entire investigation team that they were not good enough to get the job done. With a young, creative, and enthusiastic team that was getting the hang of policing in a completely new urban environment such as Sequoia, nurturing the confidence was the key for ensuring the long-term success of the city. And if Sequoia did indeed become a success story, there would be more new and similar cities coming up. The experience of her team would be absolutely invaluable in training the police departments of those places then. For all her reputation of volatility, which was mostly relevant to how she communicated, Sonia had a very astute mind that weighed the pros and cons of every major decision from multiple perspectives.

“Boss - should we get going with the daily status report?” Tozi quietly asked Alia. She knew that Alia was in a tough situation and dealing with a lot of pressure. This was no longer just a murder investigation. This had spun out of control quite fast. The social media feeds that she had been monitoring were lit up with violent reactions. Alia looked up from her phone and said, “I was waiting for Santosh to join us as he has been following up with Nadeem’s neighbors. I would like him to bring us all up to date on that.”

That is when Sonia barged into the incident room, her usually dark brown complexion was several shades paler and those dark eyes were livid with anger. She was so angry that instead of shouting at them all, her voice went down to the lowest octave. Yet, the barely controlled fury and the terse low voice had no problem slamming into each and every team member. 

“Santosh is dead. Someone slit his throat. His body was found a few minutes ago in a trash container by the garbage collectors. They called it in and I have already dispatched Leela and her team to the location.”

For a few moments the room went completely silent. And then the dam broke. Sonia’s eyes filled up with tears and she shouted, “what the hell is happening!” Santosh, our dear Santosh - gone? That kind quiet little guy who was always the most dependable and reliable person in the room. They all knew Santosh as well as anyone knew anyone else in Sequoia. Literally, no one had ever thought negatively about Santosh. No one had even said anything bad about him behind his back. Who would want to kill him in this gruesome manner?

Alia had gone cold. Sadness and anger were locked in a death match in her mind. Her hands were clenched till the knuckles gleamed white, all the muscles tensed up to lash out and give way to the anger seething inside her. At the same time, tears had moistened her eyes and she felt a sob coming up to the surface. She wanted to just cry and let it all out. Neither was the right thing to do in front of her team. She must hold it all in until she had a moment to herself. Her team was not just under the hammer, but now they were also scared because one of them had been brutally killed.

She got up from her seat and went to stand by Sonia’s side. Alia gave her a side hug and whispered in her ears, “I got this boss. You go and deal with whatever you need to deal with. They will need a formal statement from you soon.” Sonia looked at her gratefully, turned around and left the room quickly. Alia watched her go. She was trying to organize her thoughts before she addressed her team. 

“Let it all out. Right now. Don’t hold it in. But, remember what you are feeling right now. Print it on your brain! We shall find who killed Santosh and we shall punish them. Even if it is the last thing we ever do.”

Carlos started crying and Nadia sat down next to him to put her hand around his shuddering shoulders. Tozi looked out of the window - her face blank. Alia sat down at her desk again and prayed that she would not throw the monitor at the wall. Anger seemed to have handily won the death match in her mind. Sadness was cowering away in the corner of the ring while anger was stomping around the ring just itching to throw a few more deadly punches. 

Reflexively, Tozi glanced back at her monitor. She had received an email from an unknown address and it had a video file attached to it. Almost in a trance, she opened the file and the video automatically started streaming both on her monitor and the large screen in the incident room. In preparation for the briefing, she had already hooked her computer up to the large screen. 

The entire screen filled up with Santosh’s terrified face. His liquid brown eyes were wide open and staring fearfully at whoever was holding the camera. His mouth was taped up. His whimpering filled the incident room and everyone involuntarily stood up and started drifting toward the screen. 

Alia snapped at Tozi, “what’s this? Where did you find it?” 

Tozi whispered, “I got an email with this attached to it. Just now.” 

“Boss - I have the same email,” murmured Carlos. 

Alia glanced at her monitor and saw that she had also received the same email. They all had received it. Sonia rushed into the room and then stopped abruptly at the door as she saw Santosh’s face on the screen. She mutely nodded at Alia confirming that she had also received the email.  

Alia waved at Tozi to continue playing the video. 

Slowly, the camera zoomed out and they could see all of Santosh, trussed up with zip ties and sitting on a low chair. Subconsciously, all of them noted that there were absolutely no clues in the view. No marks or objects on the wall behind Santosh or anything lying around him at all. Just a blank wall of some grey-ish hue. The chair appeared to be a typical 3-D printed one. No distinguishing features at all. The picture steadied as the person holding the camera seemed to have attached it to some stand. The angle went a bit askew and then it was straightened up. 

Then a black shadow spread across the screen as a person walked from behind the camera toward Santosh. Carlos was the only one who flinched reflexively but everyone had noticed the small knife glinting wickedly in the right hand of the killer. Nadia’s hand went to her mouth as she realized what the video was about.

The black shadow resolved into a person towering over Santosh. The killer was dressed in a flowing black robe and the face was covered in a balaclava mask. Only the eyes and the mouth were visible. But the killer’s figure was ever-so-slightly blurred to ensure that nothing was clearly articulated. The killer must have processed the video before sending it to ensure that he would not be recognized.

The sound of static filled the incident room. It seemed that the audio portion had also been passed through a distortion filter and then substituted for the original audio. A guttural sound issued as the killer cleared their throat and looked straight at them through the camera. The eyes of the killer were filled with anger. But then there was also some sort of excitement or maybe exhilaration as the killer had achieved his purpose. Despite the loose robe, it did seem like it was a man. 

“For too long the non-believers have killed devout Muslim men for no reason. We shall no longer allow that to happen. We shall avenge the death of our brothers by killing non-believers. Glory to God!” the distorted machine-like voice intoned. 

Then the killer raised the knife and in one smooth motion slit Santosh’s throat. For a moment, Santosh’s eyes stared in disbelief at what had happened to him. Then realization set in and incredibly, his eyes crinkled at the corners as if he was shyly smiling one last time. The blood had started gushing down his chest and the light went out of his eyes. The eyelids drooped and then his head leaned over slowly as the last breath left his body. 

“You have been warned! If you don’t treat us with respect, then next time the punishment would be far greater. This is a mere taste of what is in store for you if you don’t comply!”

Abruptly, the video ended and desolation settled down on the incident room. The sound of people starting to breathe again reminded Alia that she too needed to breathe or else she would faint. There were very few people living in Sequoia that had not seen if not experienced horrific violence during their lives before they had come to live in Sequoia. Their childhoods had been littered with thoughtless violence of varying degrees. Sudden deaths were the norm. They had numbed themselves to those tragedies as they attempted to survive from one day to the next. In fact, this was the most fundamental survival mechanism that humans are born with - the ability to make oneself numb and forget in order to focus on the challenge in front or the one that is peeking from behind it next in line. But all this experience drawn from childhood was no match for the flood of emotions they were all experiencing that morning.

The last five years had changed the norms utterly. Sequoia was a truly safe place where violence was rare if it happened at all. Even verbal violence was rare. They knew that being kind to each other was the only path to healing both individually and collectively. They had forgotten that violence still existed because of those five years and how much it could hurt if it was allowed to enter their lives again. Now, with a terrifying decisiveness, violence had arrived in Sequoia. However much they had thought that they had left it far behind in their past, it had somehow managed to breach the defenses that Sequoia had put up and was forcing each of its citizens to confront it. 

Alia had suffered through the tribal warfare in Iran as the Shias and Sunnis had fought each other. Similar tribal spirits seemed to have infected Sequoia. From two unfortunate and possibly unconnected murders, the situation had morphed into a war between the so-called believers and non-believers. What were they going to do now?