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 This is part of a podcast novel. If you like what you're reading, you can visithttp://mindofbryan.com/thehiddenfor more news and to hear the chapters.Chapter 3 The beginning of the paperwork was as close to a ritual as Nami ever came. Hestarted with a meditative review of the initial evidence, laying out the ingredientsthat would eventually lead to a reading and a suspect. It began at the end, thescene of the crime, where the visualization of the evidence begins. Each piecewas a node in a matrix, waiting to be connected together, coalescing to form awhole picture of the crime, a visual network in Nami’s cortex.The paths of the individual pieces of the tale of why Fadil Marak was founddead on the floor of his convenience store formed brightly lit paths, like a complexmolecular diagram. As he introduced new evidence the diagram would shift, newlinks were made, a new result was formed eventually leading to an ending point, asolution. The paperwork was the first added chemical, the first process of review,where some suspects were ruled out, some were flagged for their potential as theprotagonist in this drama. Nami’s gut told him who to focus in on, and in some of his cases, he was right even this early in the process.At this point his list of suspects was thin. The only people known to have beenin the store in the morning were the victim, a delivery driver, and this gang kidout for an early morning robbery, who instead called in the ambulance. There hadbeen no credit card transactions, and the security cameras had picked up only acouple other customers who had paid and left prior to all of this happening. Thiswas not looking like a homicide.On the other hand, there had been a gun in the store, and nothing could beruled out quite yet. He would have preferred to hand this off to street crime, sinceit appeared to be a robbery with utterly bad timing. Suspicious circumstanceswere the only things keeping this in his current case load.He started in on the typewriter, filling in the first of many forms, but had hardlyforefingered his way through a word when he heard a knock at the door. DetectiveGarcia, a relative newbie from street crime walked in.“You ever going to use more than two fingers to do that?” he mockingly askedNami.“Call me when you’ve ended the gang problem,” Nami replied without lookingup. You had to hold your own in the ego games of the station.Garcia smiled, he didn’t have a comeback to that one.“I saw your tape. The kid on the surveillance camera.”“You know him?”“Grew up with him. When I was working juvie, he was a regular. Now that I’mon gangs, its like he never left.”
 
Nami stopped to assimilate this into his story, his motion picture of the event.“What’s his name?”“His name is not quite as important as exactly who he is. Tobias Stinson, theyoungest brother of Wesley Stinson.”These names meant nothing to Nami. He shrugged and shook his head.“Wesley is in the upper echelon of The Blooddogs, a younger brother, Lavon, isin middle-management, but is never going to make it. Your boy Tobias is Wesley’sprotégé, but when you look at it, he’s got even less potential than Lavon.”Nami immediately wrote the name down on a note pad for inclusion to his files.“We know how to get our hands on any of them?”“Tobias has to keep a permanent residence at his mothers, terms of hisprobation. But you probably won’t find him there. Not after something like this. You’ll have to find him on the street.”“Great.”“Don’t worry. He’s not too smart. He’s still a kid. You’ll find him,” Garciareassured Nami.“You know, I’m not too sure this is a homicide. It might fall back into your lap. You want me to pass it your way if it is?”Garcia considered this for a moment, then dismissed the thought.“Attempted armed robbery, probation violation, maybe assault. Not much onthe camera, no witnesses. The gang retains a local Johnny Cochran for theirdefense, so the whole affair is a time consuming wash.”He started to step out, but realized it might be a bit of a high-profile case if itcame to all that.“Still, call if it turns my way. I’ll see what I can make of it.”Somewhere in the wilds of Chicago, another side of the death of Fadil was runningscared, unsure of exactly what kind of trouble he was in, but certain that it didn’tbode well for him. Tobias tried to avoid eye contact with everybody heencountered on the street. Nearly every face seemed hostile now, threatening,and the hot chills of a fever sweat had begun to run through his body. He wasn'tsure if his nerves were driving him, or he really was sick. His judgment seemed soclouded right now, he couldn’t trust his instinct.Over seven hours had passed since he'd left the convenience store, so hefigured the police may have come up with his ID if they were on their game.Response time was at least one of the characteristics of the police with which hehad intimate knowledge. When they finally got it into gear, he’d catch wind of itlong before seeing a cop. He kept to the side streets and alleys, he was in histerritory, so he felt a degree of comfort and ease to get around inconspicuously.Still, he didn’t want to be seen, just in case the cop that landed on the case was ayoung go-getter.Tobias carried a rider on his shoulder that he wasn't aware of, it was invisible,and had no weight at all. This world was very new to it. On its home world, therewas nothing like what he was experiencing now. It knew of cities, but had neverbeen to one, it had only sat on craggy desert mountains and looked at them fromafar. If its kind ever went near cities, they would be chased away or killed. Thecities there didn't look anything like this. This was huge. It'd never seen anythingas tall as the formations around him that were built with intelligent hands. They
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