A New Faith: Part 3: Chapter 30

While Kaija was securing some more breathing room for Sequoia’s police on the basis of optimism, the investigation team was not demonstrating much of that in the incident room. In fact, the mood was downright depressing as each team member gave an update in a morose tone. 

Tozi had got the pity party going that afternoon. She presented a whole bunch of interesting leads based on her online research and the conversations she and Alia had with the Interpol experts. The problem was that none of those leads could be really followed up by the team because they were all physically located in either Syria or Sudan. And the conversations with local authorities in those places, heavily intermediated by the Interpol and UN staff, had been so muddled that Alia had lost her temper at one point. This, almost, never happened. Alia had apologized to the various folks on the call. It wasn’t enough and she had to make up some excuse to smooth the ruffled feathers. Tozi was frustrated, too. The basic problem was that the local authorities were stretched too thin to devote any serious manpower to running down the leads. That is, when they evinced some interest in helping the Sequoians in the first place.

The last known whereabouts of Qasim and Nadeem were readily known because they were mentioned in their applications for selection to Sequoia. They had also been duly verified by the UN staff. Both had been living in temporary refugee camps at those times. The trouble was that those refugee camps had been disbanded in the interim period because of strife. The people from those camps had been scattered in different places. No effort had been made to compile records so that a particular person could be tracked over time from one place to another. “What was the point?” asked the local authorities. They agreed to issue some public announcements in the various camps. If anyone came forward with information, they promised to pass it on. That was the best, they emphasized, that they could do given the resources. Reading between the lines, it was clear to Alia that they were asking the UN and Interpol for additional funds. The UN and the Interpol had their own problems when it came to funding. So they acted as if they couldn’t read between the lines.

Tozi’s online explorations seemed a lot more promising. She had managed to pin down a few people whose photos seemed to have appeared with either Qasim or Nadeem. She had reached out to them, unofficially, of course to find out more about the two dead guys. A few of those suspected accounts were bots and she had got nothing. A couple of them seemed to be genuine. But the responders were being extremely cagey. She was going to pursue those leads further. 

Sonia had been listening in. She was glad that Alia was continuing to go with her gut feeling that the motive behind the murders may have to do with their pre-Sequoia past. The part that she was getting steadily more irritated with was that there didn’t seem to be any leads turning up in Sequoia. She was not hearing much on that front. Still, she kept her peace as the discussion unfolded.

Next up was Carlos. He, painstakingly, summarized all the evidence from the various interviews that had been done so far. Nothing had turned up in forensics from the flats of the two victims. It was mostly their own prints and DNA. Nothing inexplicable. Since the clothes were washed in community laundromats, trying to find any interesting traces on their clothes was not worthwhile. 

The point that Carlos made again and again, to the annoyance of everyone in the room, was about the lack of CCTV footage. There just weren’t many CCTV cameras in Sequoia. Because the investors had not thought them worthwhile. It was as simple as that. Beating that dead horse was not going to get them anywhere. Yet, Carlos would point it out often, “if only we had that entrance or that street corner covered by CCTV, we would have the picture of the suspect to work with…” After the umpteenth such instance, Alia cut him off brusquely, “we don’t have that! So move on!” He gave an injured look to her.

After Carlos, it was Nadia’s turn. She gave an update on the follow-up interviews from the bar where Nadeem was last seen. The first round of interviews that she and Alia had done, had raised the possibility of a large black woman being a promising suspect. Whether she was sitting with him or merely next to him seemed to be unclear. Some of the witnesses had said that Nadeem and this woman were in such deep conversation and they must certainly have hooked up later. While others reported that it wasn’t even clear that the two had even looked at each other let alone talk. They felt that hooking up seemed extremely unlikely. None of the witnesses wanted to say how drunk they themselves were when they saw those two. 

A few witnesses who were smoking outside the bar had seen someone leaning on someone else and they felt that the person who was semi-conscious looked like Nadeem. But they couldn’t be sure because it was kinda dark outside and seeing people lurch off with or without help from others outside the bar was unremarkable. When asked, who was the person helping Nadeem, some said that it was a large dark woman. Others weren’t sure if it was a man or a woman. 

This last point about correctly identifying who was a woman and who a man had long been troublesome for the Sequoian police. The fashion in Sequoia had evolved rapidly over the last couple of years as many folks had completely abandoned the cultural norms that existed in most parts of the world. More than that, the notion of gender itself had become fluid in those last two years. For starters, a lot of people had been able to simply be themselves. Growing up in incredibly conservative and harsh societies meant that they had conformed to whatever sexual identity and gender their parents had assigned to them. As the freedom to be yourself became increasingly apparent in Sequoia, many people had started unpacking their true identities. Sex change operations had happened as the stigma associated with trans-people was non-existent in Sequoia.

Inevitably, the standard question that police asked when trying to solve a crime, “can you describe the person?” no longer yielded simple answers such as man or woman. Alia and her team had been stumped numerous times because of this. No one had any problem with this development, but at the same time, they had to figure out how to make sense of descriptions during investigations. So the standard question had become, “did you see the Adam’s Apple?” to try and get something worthwhile from the witnesses. This worked to a certain extent. For example, during warm months, the necks were more likely to be visible. During winter though, the necks were invariably covered up and this question became useless. Luckily, this was a warm night and some of the witnesses had confidently stated that the woman talking with Nadeem was indeed a woman because she did not have an Adam’s Apple. Beyond that point, it again became contentious: was she completely bald or did she have close-cropped hair? Since she was dark and her hair was dark, it was not clear at all. At least they had a suspect, Sonia thought!

What had become apparent from Vidya’s interview and later from other interviews, that Nadeem hadn’t shown any particular interest in women. Not that he had been seen hanging out exclusively with men, either. So those witness accounts of Nadeem chatting with a tall dark woman in the bar and they potentially hooking up, certainly seemed suspicious. That was a smart bit of triangulation by Carlos. Alia nodded her head and even allowed him an encouraging smile. 

She thought of the tall black woman from the scene of the riot last week. She had that nagging feeling that she had seen her earlier somewhere. But she couldn’t pin it down. Was she being wishful just because there was a tall black woman being mentioned by some witnesses? Maybe, maybe not. But it was worth following up. She asked Carlos to cross-check with the witnesses from the riot to see if they had seen a large black woman. Maybe Shahid knew her. Although, it was going to be difficult to question him again. He had been quite hostile after the riot.  

Nothing new had come up in Qasim’s investigation and hence, Alia wrapped up the team meeting and gave the next round of instructions to everyone. Sonia asked her to come to her office. That was when tempers frayed between them for the first time.

All night and the next morning, ever since Sonia had heard about the threat to Sequoia’s very existence, the tension had been building up in her body. The frustrating lack of progress in the investigation and Alia’s usual phlegmatic body language had finally gotten under Sonia’s skin. Usually, she admired Alia’s equanimity. Although, she would never admit that to anyone and, especially, to Alia. But now, she was angry at Alia. How the hell could she seem so business-as-usual? Without any banter, Sonia launched into a diatribe:

“So, you do have a suspect? This tall black woman?”

“Yes - boss. But nothing much to work on beyond that basic description.”

“Well… how many tall black women are there in Sequoia?” Sonia’s voice rose slightly. She was trying to keep it under check but was starting to lose that battle.

“Umm… dunno boss. Thousands? Maybe hundreds of thousands?” Alia ventured. She had not yet noticed Sonia’s changing demeanor. She was still dwelling on the tall black woman. She could clearly see her face in her mind. Maybe she should get a sketch done with their in-house artist and circulate it. 

“You don’t even know that?!” Sonia had lost the battle with herself.

“Wouldn’t that be the first thing to do? To list all the tall black women in Sequoia the moment we felt that this was a viable suspect?” she asked silkily. The voice was barely above a whisper, but it dripped with danger. Alia had now become aware of her boss’s dark mood. She looked up warily, trying to get a better read on this unprovoked anger.

“I will get on it, boss. Right away.”

Then Alia made the mistake of thinking out aloud.

“But what are we going to do with that large a number of suspects. We simply don’t have the manpower to bring them in for an interview. Anyway, what we have are their pictures from five years ago, when they came to Sequoia. They all, probably, look very different now.”

The whisper was gone. The full-throttle voice slapped her.

“I thought policing was doing what needs to be done. If we have a suspect and we have something to work with, then we follow up on it. We don’t just sit on it and wait for something to happen. At least that is the policing that I learned about. Do tell - what did you learn?”

Alia was not in the least bit afraid of her boss. That was just not in her nature. She was getting annoyed though. This was so unfair of Sonia. Why was she telling her to do something that was probably going to be incredibly time consuming and most likely not lead to anything worthwhile anyway. And why was she questioning Alia’s police training and investigative skills?! But she bit her tongue and kept quiet. No need to exacerbate the mood.

Sonia glowered at her angrily.

“Well - do you have anything to say?”

“I will get on it, boss. I will run all the various descriptions that we have through our database and shortlist some candidates for bringing in. The looks may have changed. But the heights wouldn’t have. Probably, the weight would have increased in the past five years. And we can certainly play with hairstyles to match with the descriptions from the witness.”

“Okay - fine! Go on… get going. And I want an update as soon as you turn up with that list.”

“Sure boss!” 

Alia walked out of Sonia’s office. Outwardly she looked calm. But inside, she was fuming at this unfair treatment. She had been busting her hump on the investigation and her boss had decided to suddenly throw shade at her skills. If anything, Alia was proud of her detective skills.