by Karen Dionne
She parked in one of the visitor slots and went inside to find the human resources manager, Hatchett. While the receptionist rang his office, Sarah wandered the lobby. Photos of company officials posing with NASA scientists and politicians including two U.S. presidents filled a brag wall. A Plexiglas display case featuring a diorama of a future Mars outpost dominated one end of the room: red rocks and gravel dotted with slender silver pods arranged like spokes on a wagon wheel surrounded by tiny space-suited figures. According to the research she’d done late the night before, Stratoco’s flights were limited to low earth orbit at present, but their ultimate goal was to develop the technology and the processes that would allow people to live on other planets. An ambitious, expensive undertaking that, if they pulled it off, would be the first time humans left Earth’s orbit since 1972. Other companies were working on similar projects, such as sending a married couple to Mars and back on a 501-day round trip using a unique orbit opportunity that came around once every fifteen years that would allow them to carry a minimal amount of fuel. But Stratoco was miles ahead of their competition—mainly because they’d won the contract after the government decided to outsource the space station resupply missions to the private sector so NASA could focus on more exploratory projects. According to Stratoco’s website, each non-manned space flight cost the government a cool $56 million. To Sarah, the whole idea of strapping yourself into a small metal can and leaving Earth’s orbit was more than a little insane, despite the popularizing of space travel in recent years through real-time Space-Earth social networking and guitar-playing astronauts. As far as she was concerned, life on Earth presented enough challenges.
“Officer Linden?” A ponytailed man in his late forties dressed in jeans and a blue and white galaxy-swirl T-shirt that read “Respect My Space” crossed the lobby and stuck out his hand. “I’m Peter Hatchett.”
“Detective Linden,” she corrected. “My lieutenant said you have something for me?”
“I do. Thanks for coming down. I know it’s a long drive. Terrible what happened to Lance, just terrible.”
“How well did you know him?”
“Well enough. But we don’t have to discuss this here. We can go to my office.”
He led her to a bank of elevators, then down a long hallway lined with framed Hubble telescope photographs. Most people didn’t realize that the spectacular images of nebulas and galaxies had been color-enhanced to bring out specific details, he explained as they passed between them. Not unlike what she did as a detective, Sarah thought. Singling out the important details to draw a clear picture while tuning out the rest. The trick was figuring out which was which.
He showed her into a cramped office on the back side of the building and waved her toward the guest chair. She glanced out the window, secretly hoping to see space rockets. Instead, she was treated to a view of the employee parking lot.
“Can I take your coat?”
“I’m fine.”
“Water? Coffee?”
“Nothing, thanks.”
Hatchett sat down at his desk. He drained his water bottle, then fingered the objects on his desk in turn: stapler, pencil holder, rubber band ball, pen, stapler again. Sarah leaned back and folded her hands in her lap. She saw it happen all the time. Somebody decided to play Good Samaritan and called in a tip, then got all tongue tied when a real live detective actually showed up. In her experience, the best way to deal with the situation was simply to wait. People couldn’t stand silence. Eventually they’d break and start talking to fill the vacuum.
Hatchett was no exception. He cleared his throat after several uncomfortable-for-him seconds. “Well then, I suppose we should get started.”
“What can you tell me about Lance’s employment history?” she prompted. An easy question to establish a baseline for the interview and to get the conversational ball rolling before he could start rearranging his desk again.
Hatchett’s shoulders visibly relaxed. “Lance worked for Stratoco for thirteen years. He came to us straight out of MIT. Lance was a brilliant man, truly brilliant. The kind of genius who comes along perhaps once in a decade. I’m not exaggerating. He could have landed anywhere after he finished grad school, so we were delighted when he came to work for us. He started in aerospace engineering, then moved to production supervisor, and finally was working as a build engineer for high temperature composites when he was terminated last September.”
So Lance hadn’t left the company voluntarily. “Can you tell me why he was let go?”
Hatchett pursed his lips.
“Mr. Hatchett, this is a murder investigation. I need you to be forthcoming with me.”
“Murder? I thought—Oh, wow. I didn’t know. When I heard that he was found dead in that god-forsaken trailer park, I assumed it was from some other reason. Appendicitis. A heart attack. Whatever people normally die from. The news didn’t say anything about him being murdered.”
Which was true, all thanks to Oakes. Sarah had noted the omission when she saw the report last night on the eleven o’clock news. A meth fire in a trailer park was practically guaranteed a few minutes of airtime, even on a busy news day. All the more so when someone had been badly hurt. Add a murder at the trailer next door, and the double tragedy would have bumped the story to lead without question. Sarah didn’t know how Oakes had managed to keep that particularly salacious detail off the air, but she was glad of it. Interviews were all about information. Giving. Getting. Withholding. Even when the interviewees were volunteers. In this instance, Hatchett’s astonishment at the news of Lance’s murder seemed sincere.
“So you knew Lance was living at Rainier Valley.”
“Of course. He had to keep his address current with us in order to get his checks.”
“His checks? I don’t understand. Wouldn’t his unemployment checks come from the government?”
“I’m not talking about his unemployment. I’m talking about the severance package he received because of his early termination. You have to understand, Lance worked for Stratoco for a long time. His contract was solid. So when we decided we had to let him go, breaking the contract involved a fairly substantial payout. Eight hundred thousand dollars was the amount we eventually settled on. Half the money was put in trust, and the other half was dispersed in four equal payments over the first four months. A hundred thousand dollars a month.”
“A hun—” Sarah had to struggle to keep her expression neutral. “Why was half the settlement put in trust? Why not give him the full payout and be done with it?” Zeroing in on the aberrant detail. Trying to develop the full picture.
Hatchett frowned and looked away.
“Mr. Hatchett—”
“Because Lance had a gambling problem,” he said in a rush, as if he was relieved to reveal the true reason for his call at last. Or maybe he was only having second thoughts about the whole Good Samaritan thing and just wanted to get the interview over and done with. “He was also a pathological liar who was caught faking test results. That’s the reason he was fired. We believe one of our competitors paid him to falsify his research, though we were never able to prove it. As I’m sure you can imagine, Stratoco didn’t want to offer him a severance package at all under the circumstances. But Lance knew too much about our proprietary processes, and he used that against us. The termination agreement stipulated that Lance could never work in the space industry again. But Lance wouldn’t sign it without a substantial amount of money in exchange. It was—messy.”
Messy and intriguing. “Whose idea was it to put the money in trust?” Coming back again to the one detail that didn’t fit. No gambler in his right mind would voluntarily tie up his own cash.
“It was his brother’s idea. Guy Marsee hired a lawyer to set up the trust, with himself as beneficiary and executor. Maybe he got Lance to admit he had a gambling problem, I don’t know. I certainly hoped so at the time. Lance needed help. The fact that he ended up living in that awful trailer park proves it.”
“So y
ou think the trust was set up to protect Lance from himself?”
“I did then, yes.”
“And now? Do you still think the trust was set up for Lance’s good?”
Hatchett frowned again and shook his head. “Now, I’m not sure. The thing is, over the past three or four weeks I’ve been getting phone calls from Lance’s brother. The last one was just the day before yesterday. Guy wanted to know how much money was in the account. If Lance had accessed it. How he could access it. I thought maybe Lance had run through the money he’d been given, and Guy was worried that he was somehow tapping into the balance. I told him that as far as I knew, the account was solid, but that he really should talk to his lawyer, since his lawyer could answer his questions better than I could. Then after I heard that Lance was dead, I remembered Guy asking all those questions, and it just seemed—strange. I’m not making an accusation,” he hurried to add, “but four hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money. Especially when you’re the beneficiary.” He shrugged. “It just seemed like something the police ought to know.”
And there it was. The ultimate motive. The root of all evil. Money.
“You did the right thing,” Sarah assured him, though Hatchett apparently didn’t think so. He looked utterly miserable as he wiped away the invisible specks of dust on his desk, as if he deeply regretted having gotten involved and couldn’t wait for Sarah to leave. Contrary to popular opinion, confession wasn’t always good for the soul.
She took out her card, laid it on the desk, and pushed it toward him. “Thanks for reaching out. If you think of anything else you feel might be helpful, please don’t hesitate to call.”
13
Sarah left Hatchett drowning his misery in his water bottle and retraced her steps to the lobby. The conversation had been enlightening. Certainly worth the long drive. While Hatchett’s fratricide theory was likely off the mark, given that the brothers had both died in the same window of time, the idea that Lance had been a gambler with ready access to hundreds of thousands of dollars opened up a number of investigative possibilities.
Assuming Hatchett was telling the truth. Sarah was always suspicious when someone offered so much information so freely. No one did anything without a motive. Helping the police with their investigation without asking for anything in return was usually fairly far down the list. Talking to Lance’s coworkers could verify Hatchett’s information. It could also catch him out.
She crossed the lobby and showed her badge to the receptionist. “I’d like to talk to a few of Lance Marsee’s coworkers before I leave. The people who were closest to him. Can you tell me who they might be?”
The receptionist looked from the shield, to Sarah, and back to the shield again. Sarah didn’t fault her for her reluctance. Anyone who thought a receptionist’s job was a simple matter of greeting people and answering the phones didn’t appreciate the delicate balance they had to walk between giving visitors like Sarah what they wanted and protecting the interests of the company and its employees. Make the right call in an uncertain or otherwise challenging situation, and you were on track to make Employee of the Month. Make the wrong call, and the next piece of paper somebody put on your desk was likely to be pink. Indispensable and expendable.
She offered her most disarming smile and put the badge back in her pocket. “I know everyone’s busy. It won’t take much time. Just a few questions.”
“Okay,” the woman said after another long hesitation during which she weighed the pros and cons. “In that case, I suppose Roger would be the best person for you to talk to.”
“Roger—?”
“Roger Fairmont. He and Lance were working in the same department last September when Lance was let go. Let me see if he’s available.”
So the circumstances surrounding Marsee’s dismissal were public knowledge. Interesting, though not altogether surprising. Work places were gossip mills. Bad news always traveled faster and farther than good. Sarah made a mental note to interview the receptionist as well.
The young woman spoke briefly into the phone, then hung up and turned to Sarah. “Okay, Roger’s on his way down. You can wait for him over there.” Indicating a leather seating area on the opposite side of the room.
Sarah shed her jacket and laid it on a chair, then selected another for herself with a view of the elevator and sat down. The table next to her was strewn with glossy magazines she supposed someone in the aerospace industry would consider light reading: Aerospace Engineering, Aviation Week, Aerospace America, Scientific American. She left the magazines untouched.
Five minutes later, the elevator doors opened and a slender man with a neat crew-cut emerged. He looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties, and was wearing a dark blue polo shirt emblazoned with the Stratoco logo. He saw Sarah and headed in her direction with his hand outstretched.
She stood to greet him but he waved her back down and sat beside her. “Jennifer tells me you have a few questions about Lance. If you don’t mind, we can talk here in the lobby. My office is a little cramped.”
A descriptor that Sarah took to mean “messy.” Not that it mattered to her where the interview was conducted. All she cared about was that she got her answers.
“How well did you know Lance?” she asked, again starting the interview with a simple baseline question. “I’m trying to get a sense of who he was. His likes and dislikes, his personality.”
“Actually, I really didn’t know him very well at all, to be honest. We worked in the same department for, I don’t know—maybe two years? But Lance was like a lot of the guys who work here. Kind of a loner. Hard to get to know. He’d come in early and stay late. Did his job and went home. We’re quite out of the way here, no places to go for a bite or a drink after work. I guess we might have hung out more if there was someplace close by. But in my opinion, he was one of those people who preferred to be left alone.”
Sarah had noted the lack of restaurants and other amenities in the vicinity. The country setting was lovely, but it wasn’t exactly conducive to after work bonding.
“Did Lance have any enemies? Anyone you can think of who might have wanted to hurt him?”
“Enemies? Well, sure. After his research came under scrutiny, we all hated him. You have to understand that to a scientist, falsifying test results is like, the ultimate sin. Everyone in the department was under suspicion until the powers that be decided that Lance had been acting alone. If he hadn’t been fired, we might have lynched him ourselves. Figuratively speaking,” the young man hastened to add, as if he suddenly remembered that he was talking not to a coworker, but to a cop.
Sarah nodded to show she understood that he hadn’t just uttered a death threat. “So people felt threatened by Lance’s actions,” she said encouragingly.
“We did. Not only did Lance put our jobs at risk, his actions threatened the company’s reputation. Worst-case scenario, Stratoco stock would have collapsed, and they’d have let us all go. Imagine trying to get another job in the industry with the stink of scandal on you. Even if you hadn’t done anything wrong, everyone would assume you were guilty by association. Believe me, we were all more than happy when Lance was fired and the company dealt with the fallout so discreetly. But really—all of that happened months ago. We’re over it. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt Lance now. Not after all this time.”
The idea that any of the scientists at Stratoco would have killed Lance over the falsified research incident was a stretch. Still, it was one that had to be considered and then, if the consideration warranted further investigation, checked out.
“Let’s talk for a minute about those faked test results,” she said. “Everyone tells me that Lance was a brilliant scientist. Falsifying his research seems out of character. Why do you think he did it?”
Fairmont shrugged. “Why does anybody do anything? Stupidity? Fear? Greed? If I had to guess, I’d say that Lance’s motivation was money. Rumor had it he was being paid off by a competitor, and Lance always needed mon
ey.”
“Why was that?” Knowing the answer according to Hatchett, but going for verification.
“Lance was into gambling—big time. I’m not talking slots or lottery tickets. He was hardcore. Blackjack, mostly. People saw him at the Black Bear Casino all the time, and there are plenty of others within driving distance.” Fairmont looked rueful. “Most people here enjoy the occasional bet, myself included, but Lance was on another level. Most of the time he seemed to do pretty well. His intellect was so far above average, it can’t have been hard for him to count cards, beat the house.”
“But he didn’t always win.”
“No, he didn’t. Nobody does.”
“And is that where he met Tiffany? At the Black Bear?”
“Who?”
“His girlfriend, Tiffany Crane. The woman he was living with when he was killed. She works there.”
“Gosh, if Lance had a girlfriend, he never said anything about her. Maybe he hooked up with her after he left Stratoco? He never dated much that I was aware of, and he was kind of geeky, but some girls go for that now.” Fairmont shifted uncomfortably on his chair. “Listen, are we almost done? Jennifer said this would only take a few minutes. I’m in the middle of a pretty important trial.”
“Just one more question. I assume Lance had a personal laptop in addition to the computer he used at work. Do you happen to know what kind it was?” It was hard to imagine a techie like Lance living without one, but no laptop or personal computer had been found in Tiffany’s trailer. Either he’d pawned it to fund his gambling habit, or someone had taken it.
“Not a laptop. Lance used a tablet, the Surface Pro. Intel Core i5 processor, 4 gigs of RAM, 123 gigabyte hard drive. Lance always loved his tech toys.”
“Expensive?”
“Not really. You can pick one up on Amazon for less than a thousand dollars.”
A thousand-dollar tablet computer wasn’t exactly a bargain at Sarah’s pay grade. Aerospace engineers definitely moved in a different world. She made a mental note to check the pawnshops in the vicinity of the trailer park, and let Fairmont get back to work.