The next day, Detective Laith Alazraq was called in by Captain Olivia Fox for a report. He stepped into the elevators and listened to the soft music as he ascended to the fifth floor, where her office was, and went through what he had been able to learn so far. But it wasn’t much, and he was worried it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the Captain.

Captain Olivia Fox was a stout, stern woman with no room for nonsense. She was grumpy on the best of days, and a downright nightmare to be around on the worst. Or so Laith had heard. Luckily for him, he hadn’t had to deal with Captain Olivia Fox on her worst days, given that he’d never had to actually investigate a case before – apart from the cold cases, and there wasn’t much expectation there. Maybe his luck was about to change, though. A homicide of this nature… He was already feeling the pressure to solve the mystery.

Cassia Grove’s Slate contents available for investigation.

Laith checked the notification on his Slate, a small trickle of relief making its way through him. At the very least, he had his next step. Going through Cassia’s Slate would take hours.

Outside the Captain’s office, he knocked and waited, pulling his Slate out and navigating to his NoteDeck. He had a short few seconds to take a look through it all – he knew it all by heart, anyway – when Captain Olivia Fox’s door slid open. “Come in, Detective,” she called from within, and he stepped inside her spacious office to find the Captain seated at her desk, signing off on some document and sending it away immediately.

Captain Olivia Fox’s office overlooked the long lawns leading up to the Heliopolis Police HQ, its floor-length photovoltaic windows tinged with a subtle blue. It had recently been repainted, the walls now enjoying a brand new coating of non-toxic paint that held the light scent of lavender. All corners of the room held groupings of potted plants, and her desk itself existed under a canopy of verdant ivy that crawled up the small trellis against the wall and over the wooden-frame awning above, finally dangling over the edges in a well-trimmed arc. For all of her grumpiness, Fox had a definite green thumb.

She placed the stylus beside a small set of succulents on the table as he approached, and motioned for him to take a seat. “Tell me, Detective. What’s the latest on the homicide case?”

“There haven’t been many developments, to be honest,” Laith said, and he watched her open the case log on her desktop surface. “As you may already be aware, Cassia Grove was found stabbed to death in her home in the Hills yesterday afternoon. There were clear fingerprints on the murder weapon, but PATET didn’t recognize them.”

This made Captain Fox’s head snap up, her blue eyes narrowing. “What was that?”

“PATET did not recognize the fingerprints on the murder weapon, Captain,” Laith repeated. He didn’t mind having to do it – he’d also been shocked to learn of PATET’s failure to identify the perpetrator the day before. “We’re not quite sure why that is, but I’ve asked the forensic team that was on the scene to look into it.”

Captain Fox smoothed back her short black hair as she let his words sink in. He could tell this development confused her, which translated into a deeper furrowing of her ever-furrowed brow, and decided that it was better to let her have all of it before she decided if she was going to venture our into fabled nightmare territory today.

“I checked out her business out on the Floats – the club called Nymphaeales. They wouldn’t let me search her office unless I returned with a warrant, so I guess this is me officially requesting that. The sooner the better, but I don’t think it should be too much trouble given that this is a homicide investigation.” When Captain Fox nodded her assent, he continued. “The victim’s husband is Aster Lockwood of Greenland Farm. I haven’t been able to get in touch with him at all thus far,” Laith said. “I’ve tried to contact his Slate and visited the farm to check on his whereabouts. Normally, I’d assume he was out and about – busy people usually are – but he didn’t return home at all last night, or PATET would have alerted me.”

“You think he killed Grove?” Olivia demanded, interjecting.

“I don’t know yet,” Laith admitted. “If he was the one who killed her, his prints would have been easily identified by PATET. That doesn’t seem to be the case, but his disappearance is concerning, especially given the fact that PATET tracked his Slate all the way out to the Ruins.” Laith had checked its location again this morning on his way to work, but the Slate hadn’t moved.

“So, we could potentially be looking at a second victim in Mr. Lockwood,” Captain Fox said, leaning back in her chair. “Or a man on the run.”

“There’s still a slim chance he simply lost his Slate or had it stolen, and he’s elsewhere in the city, completely unaware of his wife’s death,” Laith offered, though even to him it seemed an extremely slim chance. The whole situation reeked of something bad.

“Perhaps,” Captain Fox replied with a wave of her hand. “Either way, we have to find him. And we have to get our hands on his Slate before something happens to it. I’ll order a Rinvestigator for you. Take it out as soon as it gets here and bring back that Slate. It might include information relevant to the case, given his coincidental disappearance.”

“Right,” Laith said. “In the meantime, I’ve gained access to Cassia Grove’s Slate and plan to get through that today. It might shed some light on who might have harbored grudges against her.”

He got up to leave, but Captain Fox’s sturdy voice called out once more, stopping him in his tracks. He turned to look at the woman and was met with a deep frown. “What’s this I hear about a transfer request?”

☀️ ☀️ ☀️

Cassia Grove’s Slate had been left with the forensic team the day before. It had been in her pajama pocket when she was found, so Laith couldn’t have taken it with him even if he wanted to. Instead, he had been waiting for PATET to download all of the Slate’s contents and send them to him in a package he could access from his surface desktop, and now, as he sat down at his desk and got ready to delve into the Slate’s contents, Laith was all too aware of the sheer amount of information he would be sloshing through.

Slates were used for everything. They were all connected to PATET, which made them the perfect personal devices for managing anything and everything a person might want. They could lock and unlock doors, vehicles, and safes. They allowed for efficient payment and money transfer. They kept updated health and medical records, as well as academic and professional records. They could hold inventories and libraries, home databases and contact books. They connected to emergency authorities when needed, and allowed people to complete official documentation remotely – legal matters, documents that needed preparing for government agencies, and more could simply be managed through the Slate. It was each person’s little hub, and thus an extremely powerful – and personal – device.

Decades ago, people might have been frightened to be walking around with such an item in their pockets. They could be stolen by criminals in dark alleys or pick-pocketed in busy locations. Now, these things no longer happened so easily. PATET, which tapped into surveillance feeds city-wide and had the ability to match faces to databases and locate anyone it needed to, saw almost everything, and soon enough, all criminals were caught. In the past ten years, PATET had assisted Heliopolis in retaining a 100% solve rate for all crimes committed within its limits.

Laith realized that if he didn’t solve this case, that perfect record would be blemished forever.

No pressure at all.

He pressed down on the screen and released, watching the surface screen rise out from its place in his desk until it became almost vertical. Then he tapped on a few buttons and entered Cassia Grove’s Slate. Where to begin? he wondered, stroking his chin. He supposed it would be best to look at her most recent messages with her contacts. Perhaps it would show him how her relationships with the people around her were.

The first messages he was interested in were those between husband and wife. Laith suspected they would reveal more about their relationship, which was already a big question mark. A quick read through their most recent conversations, which took place in the week previous to the murder, seemed to reinforce Laith’s suspicions of a distanced couple.

27/10/2111

AL: Won’t be home tonight.

CG: Ok.

29/10/2111

CG: Tell your assistant to stop calling the house.

CG: It’s irritating.

30/10/2111

AL: Call your mother back.

CG: Why are you talking to my mother?

AL: Why aren’t you?

AL: I can’t tell my in-law to lose my number. So call her.

CG: Not your business.

At the very least, it painted a picture of a particularly dysfunctional relationship. If these were their messages to each other, what were their phone calls and conversations like? Did they argue often? Did it ever get physical? Were there ever any threats exchanged? It was possible that this particular couple only messaged each other when something was happening – and to complain – but that they were otherwise happy. It just didn’t seem very plausible, given what Laith had already learned. He moved back another week.

20/10/2111

AL: Are you meeting him today?

CG: No. It’s over.

AL: Are you sure?

CG: Yes. Stop bringing it up.

21/10/2111

CG: You’re supplying a competitor?

AL: Which one?

AL: We supply a lot of businesses.

24/10/2111

AL: Won’t be back tonight.

CG: Whatever.

Laith sighed, shaking his head. They certainly didn’t play nice with each other. It seemed like there was a lot of tension in their relationship, and given what he’d read so far, he wondered if the two of them were even faithful to one another at all. And – if not – what in the world was the merit in staying together? He couldn’t wrap his head around wanting to stay in a relationship when both parties were irritable, on edge, and argued all the time. Put simply, based on the information he had obtained so far, the relationship between Cassia Grove and her husband seemed cold. Icy, even.

He moved on from her messages with her husband and looked for the other conversations she had on her Slate. There was one with her assistant, Fleur Verdi, but it was relatively normal. Lots of business talk, very professional, almost cordial, and not nearly as cold as Cassia’s messages with Aster. Then there were her messages with her mother, which seemed quite natural up until several days ago, where the messages became a bit tense, as though the two had had an argument, and Cassia stopped responding to her mother altogether. Finally, there were a few messages between her and someone called Afan Ayyash. A quick search told Laith that Ayyash was Grove’s business partner, and the messages between the two were respectful and professional.

She didn’t have any other active messages, it seemed, which probably also meant she didn’t have much of a life outside of her job and her home. She didn’t have any friends – unless he counted Fleur, which he didn’t. Though she seemed a kind enough person, the woman was Cassia’s employee. She was practically paid to be nice to her. That, and the fact that Fleur had spoken of Cassia in very professional terms, had told him the two weren’t all that close at all. But given everything he’d seen in her messages, Fleur might have been the closest thing the dead woman had had to a friend in Heliopolis.

What did that tell him about Cassia? Was she a good person? Was she nice? Or would the people who knew her personally characterize her as a difficult person to be around? Why didn’t she have any friends? Was she a loner, or socially inept, or simply someone who enjoyed her solitude? Was she a workaholic who didn’t allow herself the chance to meet new people?

Laith moved on to Cassia’s agenda, looking through her most recent appointments. One in particular caught his eye immediately. On the day of the murder, Cassia Grove had a meeting with her business partner, Afan Ayyash.

That was as good a lead as any.