A New Faith: Part 1: Chapter 6

Alia saw that Santosh was back from his trip to Nadeem’s flat. Nadia and her uniforms were back, too. The rest of the team was also waiting for her in the incident room. She cleared her throat to attract everyone’s attention. 

“Can we do a quick update please? 

Let’s start with Santosh.”

Santosh was from one of the forest-dwelling tribes of the state of Jharkhand in India. He was small guy with a dark brown complexion and a shock of oily black hair curling around the left side of his forehead. His large black eyes reflected his emotions instantly and completely. He was like an open book that even the least perceptive person could easily read. Unlike the others, he was also very quiet and rarely spoke until called upon to do so. Funnily enough, for someone of his stature, he had a deep baritone that surprised people all the time.   

To a lay-person, it was not obvious what Santosh was good at, as a cop, that is. He - of course - could have made a fortune doing voiceover work with that splendid voice of his. He even had a knack of mimicking accents which had landed him in trouble growing up. For Alia, Santosh was, simply put, Mr. Reliable. He just got things done, without any fuss. He didn’t need to ask many questions. He simply figured out what was expected of him and then invariably surpassed it. 

“We reached Nadeem’s flat at 8 am. The flat is located at… “

“Santosh, save those things for your formal report. Talk about what you found there,” cut in Alia. 

Santosh nodded and continued, “based on my observations, there didn’t seem to be any sign of any other person - male or female - in his flat. The forensic team will tell us later if they found any trace of another person in his flat. No signs of a struggle.

The flat has the usual furnishings - bed, table, chair, etc. Most of his personal possessions seem to be music-related. There were a few posters of musicians stuck to the walls. He had very few clothes and majority of them seem to be of the mundane kind - jeans, t-shirts, etc. He did have one set of the traditional east African attire - white robe-kinda thing - and that religious cap Muslims wear. He also had a prayer mat that seemed to be in regular use.”

“How did you figure that out?” asked Carlos curiously. 

“There was no dust on the mat. It was carefully rolled up by the window that faced toward the southeast. Some of the other surfaces had dust on them.

There was no TV but there was a really nice audio system. There were very few books on the only shelf he has. A few of them were in Urdu, including, a well-used copy of the Koran. Most of the books were about music - theory, biographies, music-sheets, etc.

There was no other equipment. The forensic team is taking apart his phone,” continued Santosh as he settled into his narrative. His voice was quite soothing and Alia felt like nodding off. The lack of sleep from the previous night was starting to catch up with her. 

“There is an art gallery attached to a small cafe that is open only during the evenings. We saw a couple of women in the common area. Both live in the same building and had known Nadeem by sight. But they had rarely interacted with him. Their impression was that he mostly kept to himself even when he was hanging out at the cafe. He always wore his headphones and seemed to be lost in the music. They could not remember seeing him in the last few days.

We shall - of course - go there again today evening to see if we can interview more of his neighbors. Any questions?” paused Santosh. 

“Let’s hold the questions until we do the full round of updates,” interjected Alia. 

“Tozi - you are up.”

Tozi was a plump woman with the narrow brown eyes and high cheek-bones characteristic of the Aztecs. Her complexion was a rugged honey wheat and she had a penchant for wearing some Aztec artifact every day in her waist-long dark brown hair. Sometimes it was not an object but Aztec make-up. She used to say that this was her way of staying connected to the spirit of her ancestors. Everyone else thought that it was an excuse to wear something colorful everyday. 

She was actually quite good at make-up. In her spare time, she would offer to do make-up in the common area of the building in which she lived. Initially, she would do it for free as she could try out new ideas in addition to the traditional designs that her clients asked for. As her creations grew popular, she started charging a fairly hefty fee for her services and her appointment book was filled up for several weeks in advance. Recently, she had collaborated with Mythily who used to do make-up for the famously extravagant Kathakali dancers of Kerala before arriving in Sequoia. They had created a whole new style that was catching on in the fashion world of Milan and Paris. 

All those make-up activities were her hobby, though. Her day job was being a cop which she loved far more than anything else. She had been training to be a software professional in Mexico City before she was selected for relocation to Sequoia. Her focus had been database development, especially, for diverse kinds of data such as video, audio, text, numbers, etc. Even though it was a nascent field when she had selected it, it had appealed to her in a visceral way. She had observed that she was different from her family and friends, she experienced everything via all her senses. For example, her brother Juan listened to music in a way where he mainly experienced the sounds and remained ignorant about the words. Her dad was the opposite of Juan, he was all about words and rarely noticed the tune. Her mother preferred watching music performances instead of listening to them. But Tozi absorbed and enjoyed all aspects more or less equally. Sometimes, in fact, she would insist on attending the music performances in person so that she could also experience the crowd, the ambience, the smells, everything.  

To the police department, it was obvious right away that she was best deployed to organize information instead of being out in the field trying to collect it. And she was an absolute genius at that. She had finished her studies in Sequoia while training to be a cop. She had been instrumental in setting up the information architecture for the Sequoia police department. Some of the European mentors of the Sequoia police department were secretly quite jealous of that database design.

Unsurprisingly, Tozi walked over to the windows and lowered the shades as her update would be a mix of audio-video material. Then she went over to her computer and projected her presentation on the barren beige wall behind her.

“I am going to focus on the information pulled together from various online sources.”

The screen showed various photos of Nadeem starting from the earliest ones - probably, from Sudan - all the way up to the post-mortem ones sent by Leela’s squad. It was fascinating to see the progression from a seemingly troubled teenager to an increasingly assured young man. 

“Nadeem didn’t have a birth certificate on record. His only known address is from Nyala. That region has long been an unsettled place because of the drought going back several decades. Then there is the chronic menace of the militia, both freelance and government-backed. The refugee camps in that region run by the UN and other aid agencies did try to keep some records. But I have not found anything on Nadeem in those databases. Nomadic tribes are quite common in that part of the world - so it is quite possible that Nadeem was part of one of them and hence, never got included in any database. 

Same as Qasim, Nadeem was also not socially active. He had boosted announcements about concerts on his social media page, probably, after he started his job at the concert hall. And then there were a few links to music that he had posted several months ago. He has a couple of dozen friends in his social network and they seem to be mostly colleagues from the concert hall and past performers that he had gotten to know. He follows a few musicians and bands but overall his level of activity is limited to once or twice a month.

I found some photos and videos of him that were posted by others. Some had tagged him while the majority were suggested by the facial recognition software. There was one video where he seemed to be sitting in a pasture playing the flute. It is hard to tell where it is shot - there was no meta-data with it. There appear to be a few folks in the audience and even some animals, all out of sight but their sounds were picked up by the microphone. I could recognize some neighing - so probably, horses and maybe some mules.”

Tozi clicked on the video and the room was immediately filled with the tune she had earlier listened to. She skipped through the video a few times to highlight the sounds of clapping and horses neighing close to the end of the video. 

“He seemed to have been living well within his means and there had been no official complaints about him. His main expenses seem to be the usual - food, clothes, etc. Other than that, he spent money on music, especially, concerts. He had a few subscriptions to music services on-and-off. However, it looks like he mostly relied on the freely available audio-video material over the internet.

In terms of the places he frequented, he was consistent. The same grocery stores and cafes show up all the time. Most of the cafe receipts also indicate that the bill was for one person suggesting that he either ate alone or split the bill conscientiously if he went out with others. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not much to work with.”

Next, Alia directed Carlos to bring everyone up to speed on their conversation with Vidya. He had the habit of injecting his analysis into his observations in such a way that the audience had trouble keeping the two things separate. She interrupted frequently to ensure that he stuck with the observations and didn’t spend too much time on his commentary. She valued his analysis, of course. But now was not the time to get into that. It was too early in the investigation. Analysis built on limited data could lead to biases that seeped into the very foundation of an investigation. Those biases, then, become hard to drain out at a later time. It was best to keep as open a mind as possible in the initial stages of an investigation. To simply observe and compile data.  

Sonia had been quietly listening to the updates from the back of the room. She needed to make her own observations in order to brief the city council later that day.  

She was confident of Alia’s talent. Alia possessed all the necessary qualities one looks for in a lead investigator - intelligent, calm, good leadership skills, and most importantly, extremely perseverant. Alia had effortlessly resolved each and every theft case assigned to her.  

She looked at each one of the team members in turn. She felt good about her selections and even proud of how far this cohort had come in such a short period of time. They were all good in their own unique ways. On top of that, they complemented each other well. Vitally, they were all in this for the right reasons. She had not detected even a single false note among them over the last five years. That was quite an achievement, given her naturally critical nature. Then why was this team struggling for the last month? 

Her first instinct had been to lead the investigation. However, the city council persuaded her to delegate. They had correctly pointed out that she was leading the entire police department and there could be other crimes while the murder was being investigated. Her job was that of a manager. Being in the field was the last resort. There were at least a couple of guys in the team who had been part of murder investigations in their pre-Sequoia days. She - though - had not been particularly impressed by their skills. Therefore, she decided to go with her gut and picked Alia to lead the investigation. 

Boy, had she regretted that decision when she saw the look on Alia’s face while entering Qasim’s campsite. Alia had been utterly stricken. She just stood there like a statue for a full minute. She didn’t faint or anything like that. Just as she had been about to change her mind and send Alia back home, she noted with pride the superhuman effort made by Alia into pulling herself together. It had been touch-and-go, but Alia had taken one deep breath, shaken her head, squared her shoulders, and then nodded at her as if saying, “I got this!” 

From that moment on, Alia was the very image of a typical experienced detective. Sonia had eased back from the investigation and was content with observing the team at work. They left no stone unturned. With absolutely nothing to show for the effort. 

After that first briefing on Nadeem’s case, she started getting a tad worried. The second murder was not violent - well, every murder is violent in its own way, but at least not as visibly gory as the first one. But there were unmistakable similarities as she had facetiously noted earlier in the day to Leela and Alia. The two victims were similar - quiet guys who seemed to keep to themselves and were, at least, privately devoutly religious.   

Lots of people in Sequoia were devoutly religious and most of them kept that aspect of their lives private. There were a few places of worship scattered around the city. To the best of her knowledge, those places never really got crowded. Her impression - unscientific and anecdotal - was that most people didn’t really have much interest in religion beyond as one of the many ways to stay connected to their past. She, herself, had not given much thought to religion for a long time. She was born into a Muslim family and while she was a child, she had gone along with the rituals and customs that her family had made her participate in. She hardly remembered any of that.  

As she was turning these things over in her mind, she became vaguely aware of Alia asking her something. “Sorry - what were you saying, Alia?”

“Boss - do you have any questions or comments for the team?”

“There is one question that comes to mind - did we dig into Qasim’s past the same as we are doing for Nadeem’s?”

“Not really. And even in the case of Nadeem, we are not sure if that is going to be a good use of our time. It was just an idea. Too early to say.”

Carlos raised his hand. He could be a bit too formal at times which became tiresome after a while. Alia wearily nodded at him, “we are not in a classroom. You don’t need to raise your hand every time you have to say something.”

“Sorry. Do we know for sure that Nadeem’s case is that of murder and not suicide?”

“Hmm… you are right. We don’t. Tozi - please can you check with Leela about what they have found in their autopsy?

Let’s keep an open mind. If it turns out to be a suicide then we can go back to focusing on Qasim’s case.”

While she was outwardly talking about keeping an open mind, Alia’s gut told her that it was a murder. She just couldn’t put her finger on exactly why she felt that. 

“It is already 4 pm. We have all had an early start. Let’s call it a day. 

God knows I am sleepy myself. We can pick this up tomorrow.”

“But boss - I had planned on going back to Nadeem’s flat to interview his neighbors in the evening,” chimed in Santosh. 

“Ohh… right! We need to do that. I’ll go with you. The rest of you can finish your reports and send them over to me and Tozi before you leave. Tozi, please could you take a crack at pulling together the full summary and send it to me. I will look at it later this evening. Santosh, let us leave around 5. I need to go take care of a few things.”

“Okay, boss!” 

As Alia was walking to her office, Sonia fell in step with her and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “What does your gut tell you - murder or suicide?” 

Alia stopped and turned around to look at Sonia. “Well… we have to wait to hear from Leela, don’t we?” 

“I asked you, what does your gut tell you. Remember, a good investigator knows how to take into account both the evidence and her instincts as they chart the investigation pathway. So what do you feel?”

“I am inclined to think that it was a murder.” 

“Okay - if it was a murder, then have you given any thought to the possibility of both the murders being connected in any way?”

“I don’t see any connection apart from the obvious similarities of both being lonely Muslim men. 

But, there is no dearth of such people in Sequoia.” 

“I think, your thought about digging into Nadeem’s past was a good idea. I suggest you do the same with Qasim. Maybe have Tozi allocate a little bit of her time to get that going while the rest of the team focuses on the interviews and other tasks.”

“Okay - I will talk with her tomorrow. I have to say though, it has been five years since all of us left our pasts behind. My working assumption had been that it has been long enough that the past is not relevant. Given our lack of progress on Qasim’s murder, I simply wanted to try something different with the second one.”

“Hmm… I think leaving a place is much easier than leaving the past behind.”

Alia didn’t say anything. But she knew exactly what Sonia was trying to get at.