“Alright,” Laith said aloud in the empty office, trying to focus. He always spoke out loud when he needed to think through something important. It helped him pay attention, almost as though he were holding a discussion or a lecture and needed to make sure his progression through his thoughts made sense and everything lined up.
“Let’s run through those theories one more time. Cassia Grove is killed in the afternoon, soon after returning to her house, stabbed by a knife from her own kitchen, with fingerprints that PATET can’t identify… Possibly linked to tampering in the PATET system’s databases?” He stared at the virtual cork board projection and rubbed his chin. “Aster Lockwood’s Slate is recorded opening the door to exit the crime scene, placing him at the scene… and yet, his Slate is then located in the Ruins, and Aster Lockwood stumbles into a hospital days later. It’s possible he wasn’t at the crime scene at all, and that his Slate was stolen and used by the true killer.”
Laith considered the other elements on his board, tapping his fingers on the slim wooden planks of his wife’s coffee table. “Cassia Grove was being threatened by someone, probably blackmailed, and had been meeting someone called Invidia once a month up until a few months prior to her death. Invidia could be the person threatening her, but they could also be someone else entirely. Although… if Invidia is not the blackmailer, then why would Cassia go out of her way to use a pseudonym? Why would she need to protect their identity? I’m thinking the person who sent the X-letter and this Invidia are probably the same person. There’s no evidence to prove that this blackmailer was her killer… But something tells me they’re connected to this crime, one way or another. The fact that Invidia has a photograph of Cassia Grove with a man that Novus Atlantis identified as Aster Lockwood cannot be a simple coincidence.
“Let’s assume that the blackmailer is Invidia and Invidia is the killer. The fact that the meetings stop a few months before Cassia’s murder could point towards her having decided that she would no longer pay the blackmailer. It’s possible the decision to kill Grove would come about as a result of no longer being able to threaten her into paying in whatever form Invidia was expecting. Standing up to someone like that would take a lot of courage, though. Then again, Cassia Grove was known to be quite straightforward to those who worked with and around her. She was, by all accounts, a no-nonsense kind of person. So, maybe she was brave enough to tell Invidia to beat it.” It made sense, but how did Grove’s husband and his Slate fit into it?
“Okay, so let’s move on. Aster Lockwood is missing, his Slate was out in the Ruins, and the facial recognition software used in Novus Atlantis was able to match the photograph of the man – who doesn’t bear any particular resemblance to the Aster Lockwood in PATET's database – to their city's records of Aster Lockwood. So, either their facial recognition software made a mistake, or one of them isn’t really Aster Lockwood. I think the latter is more probable. Which leads us to the fake Aster Lockwood. It might be the one right here. Could that be why the fingerprint identification failed? Or, maybe this links to what I recently learned about PATET’s systems and how they can be manipulated… Maybe that’s why Invidia was blackmailing Grove. But does that make sense? Would Grove have known? Is it even possible for someone to go that far, and for PATET not to notice?”
Laith ruffled his hair with both hands and let out a frustrated groan, loud in the quiet, serene confines of Warda's office. Nothing made sense.
He checked the time and realized that dawn would only be hours away. He had spent all day and all night in the hospital, and even when Warda had gone home, he’d stayed behind, using her office's coffee table as his interim office desk while he waited. He hadn’t wanted to be away from Aster Lockwood in case he woke up and could be questioned. But the hours passed by uneventfully, and the doctors and nurses had told him – every single time that he’d asked – that there was no knowing when the man might wake up. The body responds on its own time. And so Laith was settled into Warda’s office, working on Aster Lockwood’s clock as he tried to figure out what he did and didn’t know.
Apparently, there was a lot more of the latter than the former. He stood and stretched his muscles, walking over to his wife’s surface computer. From there, he’d been able to log into the Heliopolis PD’s systems and access his files on a larger, more visually comfortable screen. Beside her surface computer, a small set of plants with reactive pots sat side by side. Beside them was a white ceramic jug. Laith noted the color of the pots, which changed whenever the plants needed something, and realized that they had not been watered in a while. Perhaps Warda had forgotten. More likely, she'd steered clear of her office to give him the space and quiet he'd need to work. He stepped outside her office and made his way to the neared water dispenser, where he filled up the ceramic jug and returned to water the plants.
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These regular motions made him feel better, though he didn’t know why, exactly. Maybe it was the fact that the case had thrown his life into a state of constant stressful change, and he hadn’t allowed himself the chance to really slow down, calm down, and breathe. He wasn’t taking care of his own mental well-being, something that went against the grain for him. Since childhood he had been taught that his own health was priority, and everything else came afterwards. As a little boy, he had found that an easy enough lesson to learn. Why wouldn’t someone prioritize their own health? Now, with the case, he began to realize what made people neglect themselves. His pursuit of truth and the stress that came with it were beginning to affect him physically, too. He poured himself a cup of water from what remained in the jug, wondering when he’d last had a drink of water. His body answered for him, and he gulped the cool liquid down greedily. It was almost as though someone had completely erased his need for water until that very moment – the moment the water touched his tongue and revived his thirst again.
Erased.
He paused, empty cup in hand, and stared blankly at the light green walls of his wife’s office. “Erased,” he muttered, his brain suddenly kicking into overdrive.
The unidentifiable fingerprints.
The missing footage from Platano Maduro.
The missing photographs of Aster Lockwood pre-2104.
The answer had been in front of him all along, hadn’t it? Ever since he’d spoken to Audra Haize, the answer had been staring him in the face, and he’d been too preoccupied to see it, too distracted, too busy trying to think of it. Everything had been erased. It was as simple as that!
And now, he moved on to the most obvious question: Why had it been erased?
The obvious answer there was that someone wanted to hide their identity from PATET – from law enforcement. Whatever it was they were doing, it wasn’t a simple matter of wanting privacy. Besides, there were many ways to avoid PATET's facial recognition and detection processes. There were masks, head gear, jackets, gloves, and more accessories that helped a person keep their identities from PATET. It was never one-hundred percent perfect, and most of the time, no matter what they did, people who needed to be found were found regardless, but these were options if someone just wanted to have their privacy. If they don't like the idea of Big Brother watching over them.The force has dealt with a few of these people before, but most don't care enough to go out of their way to hide their faces, body shapes, and identities from PATET's detection.
No, it wasn't just about keeping themselves from being detected. They wanted to completely hide from the system for a much bigger reason. Whatever that reason was, it was probably connected to Aster Lockwood – and almost certainly connected to Cassia Grove’s murder.
The next most obvious question, then: Who is trying to hide from PATET’s watchful eye?
“Who benefits from these missing fragments of the puzzle?” he wondered aloud, still staring at the wall, as though the answers would materialize there for him.
In the case of the fingerprints, it was obvious: the killer was escaping justice by ensuring the crime couldn’t be traced back to them.
In the case of the missing footage, it might have been Invidia’s identity that was being protected, not Cassia Grove’s. She wouldn’t have asked Fleur Verdi, her assistant, to meet her out front otherwise, would she? It made more sense that Invidia, who was either already protecting their identity with a pseudonym or being protected by Cassia, was the one who benefited most from that missing surveillance footage.
And in the case of the missing photographs of Aster Lockwood…
Laith finally sat down in the undisturbed two-seater across the room from the armchair he had taken up residence in. Leaning back, he rested as he tackled that final puzzle. It was admittedly a bit more of a challenge. Why would Aster Lockwood want to erase all photographs of himself before a certain time period? If the photographs were Aster Lockwood’s, then was it him that benefited from that erasure? Laith couldn’t see why or how that might be possible, but he kept an open mind. If that was the case, then he had two or three suspects involved in PATET manipulation, either directly or indirectly: Invidia with their hidden identity. Lockwood with his missing photographs.
And the killer, who might have been Invidia or Lockwood.
Perhaps the picture is finally coming together at last, Laith thought as the exhaustion of the day finally crashed against him. With the small sense of hope that perhaps he’d effectively narrowed down his pool of suspects and was on the right track, he drifted off into a deep sleep.