A New Faith: Part 1: Chapter 2

Alia decided to walk to the HQ. She needed some time to calm down and organize her thoughts before she faced her team. She was not sure why she was feeling so unsettled ever since that first murder. She was just not used to feeling this way. She paused to take several deep breaths and then started walking briskly. Tall and lithe, she reached the HQ within half an hour.

The team was fidgeting as she walked into the incident room. They had, of course, received the preliminary details. Some of them had been to the crime scene for a quick look-around before assembling at the HQ.

In the first week immediately after the first murder, the team had worked round-the-clock as they applied everything they had learned to find the killer. However, that energy started wearing off after the second week as none of the leads yielded anything useful. Almost a month later, the team appeared to be simply going through the motions.

Alia had the difficult task of re-invigorating the young team and fervently hoped that they could solve, at least, this one quickly. She stood at the podium deep in thought when she realized that everyone was patiently looking at her. She looked up and nodded at them.

“Alright, let’s start putting together the dossier on Nadeem. Address, friends, work place, social media...

Tozi, you take the lead in compiling the dossier. The rest, send your notes and data to her as you collect it.

Carlos, find out where Nadeem worked. You and I shall go interview his colleagues right after this.

Santosh, take the forensic team to Nadeem’s home. Don’t interview the neighbors right now. You and I shall go there later in the evening.

Nadia, start tracing Nadeem’s movements from yesterday. Take the uniforms for a thorough door-to-door questioning around the crime-scene. Start with a couple of blocks radius and expand if you strike out. Make sure the uniforms get all the relevant details down. Many are still in-training. Maybe do a quick refresher on questioning before heading out.”

Everyone nodded and got busy with their assigned tasks.

“Oh… and Tozi, I need you to pull Nadeem’s pre-Sequoia details. Whatever you can find.”

This last item had not been considered in Qasim’s case. Seeing Tozi’s puzzled expression, Alia shrugged and said, “well, let’s think a bit differently this time around.”

For most Sequoians, their lives before arriving in Sequoia were not much worth remembering. It was not that people were not in touch with their families and friends back home. To be sure, “back home” was not really the way most thought about the places where they came from. Sequoia was their home and it would be so until they died unless they decided to leave it for good. Staying in touch with folks from their former homes meant having some sort of a virtual conversation and that was pretty much it. Those were the terms they had all agreed to in exchange for living in Sequoia. Most were focused on making something good with the rest of their lives. Not much emotional bandwidth was left to indulge in nostalgia.

The more important reason behind Tozi’s puzzled expression was that none of the Sequoia residents had any family living in Sequoia. In fact, the residents had been, specifically, selected in such a way that no one was supposed to even know anyone else from their pre-Sequoia days. Then, Tozi wondered, why would the past life matter in the investigation?

“Should I also try to pull up similar information for Qasim?” asked Tozi.

“No. This is a long shot. Let’s see if something useful pops up for Nadeem before we spend more time on Qasim's case.”

Tozi studied Nadeem’s official data to identify key search parameters. He was from the town of Nyala in South Sudan, one of the deadliest regions in the world. The relentless droughts and unending civil wars had left tens of millions of people homeless. Most gravitated toward refugee camps set up by international aid organizations or the UN. The rest wandered around the land searching for safe refuge from marauding gangs.

As far as she could tell, no one else from Nyala had come to Sequoia. A few came from that country, but they were from other villages and refugee camps. She ran a quick query to see if there were any linkages between him and anyone else in Sequoia. Nothing popped up. Another dead end.

She scrolled through his meager social media presence. Most of the pictures were from when he was in his teens. There were no pictures of him since he came to Sequoia. This was not surprising as quite a few folks found that their real-world social life was way more interesting than whatever they could find online. In any case, the online world had taken a turn for the worse ever since generative artificial intelligence had arrived on the scene several years ago. The difference between real and fake was no longer apparent to anyone. Most people now used online tools only for direct communications with people they knew in real life. The notion of interacting with a stranger online had more or less become obsolete.

She zoomed in on one of his photos. She stared at it for a few moments, trying to articulate her reaction to it. She felt that his eyes betrayed fear. Another thing that struck her was the way he seemed to be turning away from the camera while simultaneously pulling his turban’s flap across his face. “Evasive” was the word that sprang to her mind. Why didn’t he want his picture taken? Who was he hiding from? Who was he afraid of?

He was probably 18 or 19 when the picture was taken. He had a wispy beard and a faint mustache to go with shoulder-length hair. She hadn’t visited the crime scene. So she pulled up some of the crime scene photos to compare with. And they showed him to be completely clean-shaven with short stylish hair.

Unbidden, she remembered her older brother Juan as she stared at Nadeem. Juan was frail and got bullied by other kids in their village in Mexico all the time. That particular look in Nadeem’s old photo was the same as Juan had when he was trying to escape his bullies.

Unlike Juan, though, Nadeem was not frail at all. Rather, he seemed to be a stout guy for someone from South Sudan. She had seen the news footage from that region. Most of the people were emaciated and their eyes had that far away look, as if their spirit had already left the earth while their body merely survived in that godforsaken place. Something was not adding up. Even Nadeem’s clothes in that old photo were quite decent. No obvious tears or rips. They even seemed clean. Then why that hunted look?

There was only one video of Nadeem. He looked somewhat younger in it as compared with the photo. No sign of any facial hair at all. He was playing the flute under a tree in the middle of a what looked like a blistering hot day. There seemed to be some sheep behind him but she couldn’t tell whether there was any audience in front of him.

The tune he was playing was incredibly fast. It felt like he couldn’t wait to get out all the notes. She closed her eyes and heard the tune. The image that sprang up in her mind was of a herd of wild horses galloping across a pasture with unbridled passion. Each one lost in its own world and yet somehow their hooves synchronized in a harmony that only they were aware of. It had a rhythm and there were quite a few high notes close to the end as if those galloping horses were about to reach their destination and leap high into the air. She had no idea what kind of music it was. She could tell, though, that this guy knew how to carry a difficult tune. More importantly, in the video, his eyes had none of that hunted look from the photo she had seen earlier. Instead, his eyes glinted with such intensity that she felt a bit intimidated. After he finished the tune, though, his face transformed back into that same hunted look.