Would that I could discover truth
as easily as I can uncover falsehood.
-Cicero
When Detective Elaine Stevenson heard conflicting stories, she knew that one version was not true. The rest of the story could be sound, or a killer could weave a whole web of lies to obscure something incriminating.
As Mark Twain had said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
Now, it was time to see if Mariet could untangle his story and tell it straight.
“One last set of questions,” Stevenson said. “I’m going to ask them. I don’t know how you’re going to feel about them.”
She returned all attention to the missing 45 minutes in the story he had given her about the morning of the murder. If he could prove he had been anywhere else, even having one of his affairs, it would give him an alibi.
“Can you explain the time gap from the time you left your house at 5:45 until you were at the gas station at 6:30?”
“No, I can’t,” Mariet said. “I don’t know what time I left my house… But I know I didn’t go anywhere else.”
He said that at the time of the murders he had not been “feeling any frustration or stress” in his life. “In fact, I was kind of anxious about Tess going into labor,” he said. “I was going to be spending a lot more time at home.”
Having searched Mariet’s house and seized his financial records, Stevenson asked Mariet if he and his wife hadn’t felt any frustration or stress about their finances.
Mariet protested that his family was not having “financial problems.”
“So,” Stevenson said. “Five past due notices in a couple weeks to you isn’t any problem?” Stevenson recounted his debts – the mortgage, the two cars, $40,000 in outstanding debt. She asked, “Did you and Tess ever have arguments over the finances?”
“No,” Mariet said. He sounded wound up for the first time in the interview. He said they “never” argued over the finances.
Mariet’s demeanor even amidst Stevenson’s barbed questions now was polite and gentle, not at all given to violence.
Mariet’s story relied on such an improbable set of coincidences – everything he had supposedly done that morning had been out of character. He had left the house earlier than usual, deviated from his usual path to the office, and visited a public place that would give him, coincidentally, something of an alibi.
Plus everything he claimed about his wife’s actions that morning conflicted with everything impartial witnesses had said about Tess.
In this third interview with Mariet, Stevenson watched him sitting beside his defense attorney in the hard plastic seat.
She directed his attention to the Franchise Tax Board, where Tess had worked up to the time of the murders. All of her co-workers there said it was out of character for Tess to have stayed home from work. She had been tracking her vacation, sick and comp time as well as her maternity leave so she would have time after the delivery with the baby. The co-workers said Tess had been very adamant about not taking any time off work – no matter how tired or even sick – until the birth of baby Marcellus.
That would have been out of character enough, but her co-workers said Tess had never – never – missed work without calling in.
“Her co-workers didn’t live with her,” Mariet said.
He remained planted in that hard plastic chair. He had nowhere else to go. He appeared more wound up. “They didn’t know me,” he said.
The defense attorney put his hand on his client’s arm.
Mariet calmed.
Stevenson said the morning Mariet had described was not fitting Tess’s patterns.
“One day, as I kept explaining to her, was not going to hurt her,” Mariet said.
