Three days. That’s how long he’d been side-tracked by Aster Lockwood and whatever strange events were happening to him. Three days - at least. That’s how long he’d neglected Cassia Grove, stubbornly convinced that whatever was going on with Lockwood would be the key to who had killed Cassia. Entire days, wasted focusing on someone who wasn’t supposed to be the main priority of this investigation.

Cassia Grove was killed. He needed to find the killer. That was all.

It didn’t matter to him who kidnapped Lockwood if it had nothing to do with Grove’s murder. That wasn’t his jurisdiction.

It didn’t matter to him what was going on with the two Aster Lockwoods that had been identified if it had nothing to do with Grove’s murder. That wasn’t his jurisdiction.

It didn’t matter to him what corporate irresponsibility was taking place at the Farms if it had nothing to do with Grove’s murder. Again: that wasn’t his jurisdiction.

And so far, there was no evidence to connect her murder to any of these three things, except for Aster Lockwood, which might have been a coincidence, for all he knew. Even if his gut was screaming at him that everything was connected, the fact remained that someone killed Cassia Grove. That was the target of his investigation. Whoever that person was, that was who was supposed to be under the microscope here.

Warda's report had made it very clear: Aster Lockwood's wounds had not been self-inflicted. They were dangerous wounds. He was lucky he didn't have permanent brain damage. So maybe he was telling the truth about him having been attacked and kidnapped. Which put Laith back at square one. He felt like he was standing in Grove's house again, standing over her body, just as clueless has he'd been on Day 1.

I’ve been wasting time, he scolded himself as he went back to the basics, looking through all of the interviews he’d had with Grove’s colleagues. He needed to focus on Cassia Grove again, not her husband. He needed to find out who killed her. That was his job.

The interview with Afan Ayyash caught his attention, reminding him that there was one lead he hadn’t followed through on. He’d forgotten to note it down on his Slate, and has a result it had completely slipped past him. Yet another mistake. It seemed he wasn’t as ready to be a detective as he’d thought he was. This case was making that painfully clear to him now. With a shake of his head, Laith tried to focus more on the task at hand and less on beating himself up for his errors.

Ayyash had told him about some family issues that Cassia was having. In his words, Cassia was suffering from “a family matter – some relatives from back home were getting on her nerves about something.” Her only relatives were her mother and cousin. Given that Cassia’s Slate corroborated some kind of an argument with her mother, it made sense that she would know more. Laith got in touch with the Novus Atlantis Telecommunications Authority and requested that they put him through the one Ms. Patina Grove of the Orichalcum District, then waited while the request went through the official channels.

A Novus Atlantis Police official got on the phone with Laith, introduced himself as Leo Riviera, and let him know that, as this pertained to a crime related to one of their own, the call would be recorded. Laith had figured as much, so it wasn’t surprising. He was also going to be recording this call. When all of that had been cleared up, they put him through to Patina Grove’s landline, connecting him. He could hear an old-fashioned beeping noise, letting him know that the phone was ringing.

Laith squashed down a sense of nervous anxiety as it rose through him. Patina Grove would have been told of her daughter’s murder automatically, as soon as the case had been opened by the Heliopolis Police Department. When it pertained to non-Heliopolitan citizens, the system was set up to notify the requisite authorities of the case almost immediately. The Novus Atlantis PD would have then notified the next of kin. So, it wasn’t like Patina Grove didn’t know that her daughter was dead, and he would be springing the news on her. Nevertheless, he felt completely remiss for not having contacted her earlier, if only to offer his condolences and introduce himself as the detective in charge of her daughter’s case. Despite the distance and barriers between them, Patina Grove, he was certain, would have wanted to hear from him.

On the fifth ring, a gruff male voice came onto the line. “Hello?”

“Hello. This is Detective Laith Alazraq from the Heliopolis Police Department,” Laith said, introducing himself. “Can I please speak with Ms. Patina Grove?”

“Give me a minute,” came the reply, and a set of sounds Laith couldn’t really make out filled his ear.

“Hello?” The voice was brittle, wobbly.

“Ms. Patina Grove?”

“Yes,” she said. “Kalkos told me you’re a detective from Heliopolis?”

“That’s right, Ms. Grove,” Laith replied. “I’m sorry to be contacting you so late into the case. I’m sure you’ve been waiting to hear some news, but I’m afraid your daughter’s case has been a bit complicated. I was hoping that you could give me some more information about Cassia.”

“I don’t know if I’d be much help,” Patina said uncertainly. “I didn’t speak with her often. As soon as she married and moved to Heliopolis, she distanced herself from us.”

“Was there a specific reason for that?” Laith asked.

“Oh, I’m sure there was,” Patina Grove replied. “You see, Cassia’s father made a bit of a reputation for himself out here. She never liked that much. She was as law-abiding as they came, but as soon as people found out who her father was, and who she was related to, they had her pegged as more trouble than she was worth. It affected everything for her – her schooling, her studies, her work.” She sighed deeply. “I know she was always looking for a way out. A way to stop dragging all of that with her.”

“But she spoke to you,” Laith noted. “You sent messages back and forth.”

“I spoke to her,” Cassia Grove’s mother said with a note of sadness. “She never initiated any conversations. If I didn’t send her a message, she wouldn’t speak to me. If it was anyone else – if it wasn’t my own daughter – I would say good riddance and stop trying to start up a conversation. But she was my daughter. So I kept reaching out to her first. At least, that way, I knew she was doing alright.”

“I understand,” Laith said. “Was there an argument that the two of you recently had?”

A moment of silence, and then Patina Grove cleared her throat. “Yes, there was,” she told him. “I recently learned something… Well, it had to do with her marriage. I always found it strange, you know, that she married so quickly and left so soon after – within a span of a few days, she was married and on her way to Heliopolis. It wasn’t like her to move so quickly like that. Up until that moment, our relationship was good. After she made the decision to marry, everything seemed so strained. She didn’t want her husband to meet me and Kalkos. She didn’t want to tell us when and where the wedding was taking place. She closed up.” Ms. Grove sniffled and cleared her throat again. “I knew she hated the legacy her father had left behind, but I didn’t think she’d want to push me out of her life so...”

“That must have been a very confusing and emotional time for you,” Laith said.

“That’s about the gist of it,” Patina replied quietly. “Since then, messages are the only way I could stay in touch with her. I used one of the portal cafes in town to connect with her. Kalkos taught me how to create an account and find hers so that I could message her. If he hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have ever heard from her again, I think.”

“You said earlier that you’d argued with her about – about something regarding her marriage,” Laith said. “Can you tell me what exactly that issue was?”

There was a shaky exhale, and Laith could almost imagine the older woman trying to prepare herself, to steel herself for whatever it was she needed to tell him. Finally, she spoke.

“Cassia didn’t tell us much about her husband,” she explained. “She told us his name – Aster Lockwood – and she told us that they’d met while she was studying in Heliopolis. Later on, she said he took a job here in Novus Atlantis or something along those lines, and they reconnected. Apparently, they fell in love. But his time here was up, so he had to go back to Heliopolis. And that was the reason she gave us for why she had to marry him and move so quickly. They couldn’t stay apart from each other. That was their solution.”

It made sense, from a practical perspective. As the wife of a Heliopolitan citizen, Cassia Grove would have been automatically given a residency permit to live in Heliopolis. She would have gained her citizenship later on, after some time had passed. Maybe they were in love – though it certainly didn’t seem like that love had lasted. Or, maybe she was a young woman eager to get a fresh start in a place where nobody knew who her father was and why they should avoid her and her family of criminals, Laith thought, stroking his chin. She saw an opportunity with Aster Lockwood and took it with both hands.

“I believed that for a long time,” Patina Grove continued. “I was not blind to my daughter’s frustrations and the pain she went through because of her lineage. And I can well see why someone young would throw everything to the wind for someone they fell in love with. I’d done the same when I’d married my husband – much to my family’s disdain and disapproval. I understood that very well, Detective. But Cassia and I had always been close, so I never truly accepted it. And then one day, I learned that it was all a farce. A trick.”

Oh? Laith wondered, intrigued. He sat up straighter, his body rigid with anticipation.

“Not two weeks ago, a man came to visit me,” she said. “He wore shabby clothes, and looked like something the cat drug in. But he told me his name was Aster Lockwood. The real Aster Lockwood. He talked about how he’d met Cassia in Heliopolis, what he’d been studying at the time, and how he’d thought he’d found someone who finally understood him. He talked about how he’d gotten himself a job with Emerald Farm here in Novus Atlantis just to be able to see her again, in hopes that they might reconnect, since she was working in the same company. We didn’t really take to that all too well, you know. The idea of a man following my daughter back to her home and purposefully choosing a job at the same company where she worked… It concerned us. Kalkos almost lost his temper. He’s always been very protective of Cassia and myself, seeing as how we’re the only relatives he has left in the world.”

“I can understand why that would concern you,” Laith said, mentally urging her to go on with her story.

“Yes, well, that was hardly the most concerning thing he told us that day,” she replied dryly, a tinge of bitterness to her voice. “You see, he admitted that he might have overstepped his bounds by coming to Novus Atlantis in hopes of rekindling some kind of connection with Cassia, but he was happy to know that she did seem interested in getting to know him better and spend time with him. According to this Aster Lockwood, though, towards the end of his time in Novus Atlantis, Cassia revealed herself for what she truly was. She and her friend – some man he didn’t know the name of – had plotted against him. Using our family connections, they had managed to take away his identity somehow. He said something about them taking a Slate? And that they had attacked him and left him for dead. Apparently, it had all been a ruse. Cassia never really loved him. She had taken everything he owned and left him behind.”

“Did you believe everything he said?” Laith wondered.

“Not at first,” Patina Grove said. “It didn’t sound like something my daughter would do. It still doesn’t. But he had… evidence. He showed us the scar on his chest where he said they’d stabbed him. He said that his identity was still recognized here in Novus Atlantis, but that it wasn’t recognized in Heliopolis. Kalkos is… really good with computers and things. Something that he learned from his father. He was able to find out whether the man’s identity checked out here in Novus Atlantis, and it did. Aster Lockwood, in the flesh. And, to top it all off, he had a photograph of himself with Cassia. The two of them looked close, and I knew that Cassia hadn’t been romantically involved with anyone before this Aster Lockwood person. I still wasn’t completely convinced, though. It’s easier to mess around with the records and databases here in Novus Atlantis than it is over there, or at least that’s what Kalkos tells me. And Cassia… She just wasn’t that kind of woman.”

"You mentioned family connections that might have been able to help them steal Mr. Lockwood's identity," Laith said. "Can you give me any names? Anyone who might be able to corroborate this story?"

"There is someone," Patina replied after a long hesitation. "I shouldn't be telling you... People in that community don't take too well to being outed, as you might expect. But my daughter is dead, and I owe him no loyalty. Kalkos actually connected the dots first. He said that it was probably the guy working over in Heliopolis, the one working on that PATET system. His name was..."

"Berch?" Laith suggested curiously.

"No, no," Patina said with a tsk. "It was something else. On the tip of my tongue. Kalkos! Kalkos, come here for a second! What was the name of that guy that does all that PATET stuff? You know, the man you said might've helped Cassia with whatever she was getting herself into." There was a short silence as Kalkos presumably responded. "Right - yes, that's him. Grot. Grot Antrum."

Laith's heart squeezed in anticipation. Grot Antrum. Yes, he knew exactly who that was. The man had been under his nose the entire time. How he'd been able to do everything he'd done when he didn't have the access - according to Haize, anyway - was something that he'd have to look into, but Antrum was apparently a family connection of Cassia's...

“Did you confront your daughter about this?” Laith asked.

“Yes,” Patina Grove said, her voice hard. “I got Kalkos to call her up for me, and I asked her if her husband was in Heliopolis. She said that of course he was, and where else would he be? So, I asked her why a man had come by the house saying that he was the real Aster Lockwood and that she’d tricked him. I suppose I caught her by surprise, because she clammed up. She wouldn’t answer any of my questions, but she asked plenty of her own. What did he look like? Where was he now? What else did he tell us? I realized then that my daughter was hiding something from me – that she was involved in all of this somehow. And she didn’t want to tell me anything else.” Another sigh. “She told me to forget everything and let it go. That it was safer that way. And to not message her about it for security reasons.”

There was a crackling at the other end of the line, and then a long silence. Laith wondered if Patina Grove had hung up on him or left the phone, but just as he was about to speak up, her voice came through again.

“I did as she asked, but I couldn’t help but feel that there was something bad just around the corner. I’ve seen my fair share of past crimes coming back to bury a person. And now, here we are.”

☀️ ☀️ ☀️

Laith’s interview with Patina Grove had revealed more to him than he had expected. Maybe her revelations had something to do with why Aster Lockwood was being quiet. It might have also had something to do with Invidia, who was using a photograph of the Novus Atlantis Aster Lockwood to threaten Cassia Grove, and whose name had undoubtedly been recognized by the Aster Lockwood in the hospital.

With Aster Lockwood resting up in the hospital and unwilling to respond to any of his questions, Laith had decided that he would head back to Heliopolis Police Department headquarters and do a little more digging. His intention was to use the rest of his day looking into parts of Patina Grove’s story and verify as much as he could. He was almost at his office, his Camino Forest speeding through the A-lanes, when he received a call from Captain Olivia Fox.

“Laith, where are you?” she demanded.

“Almost at the office. Why?” Laith asked, noting the impatience in her voice.

“Because we’ve just had another development in the case,” Fox replied eagerly. “There’s a man here. Walked in about five minutes ago. Says his name is Aster Lockwood.”