Who is Invidia? - Murder in Heliopolis

 

WHO IS INVIDIA?

I put my detective cap on today, and made a cork board sketch to determine who Invidia is. Strings, connecting dots, the whole deal.

For those who aren’t familiar with this character, “Invidia” is the code name that Cassia’s blackmailer went by. This person knew about Cassia’s past and her true relationship to Aster Lockwood. They were using this information to get payments from her each month. A few months before her murder, Cassia had stopped paying Invidia and refused to continue doing so. Naturally, Laith suspects that this Invidia person might have been Cassia’s killer.

In the current draft, Invidia is revealed to be…

(SPOILER ALERT? It changes so it doesn’t matter but if you’re reading the current draft and haven’t gotten to it yet, read ahead at your own peril.)

…Audra Haize.

In a nutshell, here’s the case against Haize:

She works at PATET HQ, she is able to hack her way into parts of the PATET system she isn’t supposed to have access to or clearance for, and she has more money than an Assistant Spec should have. She also worked under Grot Antrum, who was connected to Cassia’s past, so she could have maybe learned about the whole thing from him, directly or by snooping. She’s a good snooper.

Moreover, she would have had the knowhow and opportunity to remove all traces of any footage which featured Cassia Grove meeting up with Invidia at Platano Maduro.

On the surface, she looks like the kind of person who would be able to pull all of this off. In the current story, we learn that she was doing it for two reasons:

• She was blackmailing Grot Antrum to keep him in check and ensure her career progression.
• She wanted to get a little extra money; apparently, there are rumours within PATET HQ that Specs have crossed lines for bribes before.

Why this doesn’t hold up:

Audra has been cooperating and aiding in the investigation into Cassia’s murder from the moment we meet her.

If she was Invidia, she would want to stay as far away from Laith as possible. To make herself invisible. Just another Assistant Spec. There is one compelling reason for this:

In the current draft, Haize claims that she had no clue about the murder that Grot, Cassia, and her husband were covering up. Given that she had become a part of that crime, there is a very big chance she would be arrested and sentenced heavily for her involvement in the continued cover up of a murder.

The punishment for murder in Heliopolis is the death penalty.

Covering up the crime is almost akin to being a part of it, which means that Haize was, in the worst case, facing the hangman’s noose if her involvement was revealed.

Why does she help Laith if she truly is Invidia? She could be risking her life. There is nothing tying her to this case, apart from Aster Lockwood, and if we’re being honest, he’s not credible. Logically, if she is Invidia, the best thing for Audra to do is lay low.

The other issue is the money and job progression thing:

Specialists are very well respected in Heliopolis, and even Assistant Specialists are paid handsomely for their work, despite the job’s entry level status. So she’s pretty solid on that front, too. She doesn’t need to blackmail anyone.

And, if she’s as good at her job as the book makes her out to be, why would Antrum keep her career from progressing? He wouldn’t; and he couldn’t, because each team of Assistant Specialists reports to two Specialists which act as co-leaders and trainers. It’s not up to Grot alone.

It just doesn’t make sense for Audra to be Invidia the way I’ve set up her character and the worldbuilding.

So, who is Invidia? 🧐

After carefully assessing motives, means, and opportunities for each potential Invidia suspect - including new characters I’ve added like Moorland and Wulf - I narrowed it down to four main questions:

1. Did they know/could they have had the opportunity to learn about Aster Lockwood and Cassia Grove?
2. Would they not actually go through with their threat if Cassia and her husband refused to pay? (This is a necessary point because Invidia didn’t do anything after Cassia and her husband stopped paying up. After all, Invidia is meant to be a false red herring - not related to Cassia’s murder but related to the huge iceberg of which her murder is only the tip.)
3. Did they need the money enough to do something like this, right under PATET’s nose, where the smallest slip-up could cost them everything?
4. Did they have access to PATET and could they potentially manipulate it to protect themselves?

Only one suspect fit all four criteria, and it wasn’t Audra Haize, mainly because she didn’t need the money enough to potentially put her neck on the line.

Also, the one person who did fit all four criteria had an even stronger motive, means, and opportunity than she would have, and a history of criminal activity.

I wonder if you can guess who it is? 😉

Read Murder in Heliopolis here, and learn more about the WIP here.