The innocent is the person who
explains nothing.
-Albert Camus
A few of Tess’s fingernails had been broken, as though she had clawed at her attacker before being murdered. On the day of the murders, Detective Elaine Stevenson had noticed a scratch on Mariet’s left cheek, just below his eye. She had asked him about this scratch in her two previous interviews with him. It was now time to see how he squared what he had said with what had been said by Veronica Fontes, the woman he had bumped into at the La Bou the morning of the murders.
“You had told me in the first interview you got the scratch on your face on Tuesday,” Stevenson said. But Veronica had told the detective Mariet said he had gotten it the night before.
“That’s how I remembered it,” Mariet said.
“So,” Stevenson said. “That morning when you were getting ready for work, did you have a scab on your face?”
Five months had passed since that horrific morning. Mariet did not know what to say.
The defense attorney told Mariet to tell the detective just what he remembered.
“What might help you remember?” Stevenson asked.
Mariet wiped his forehead.
Stevenson recounted the story Mariet had previously given about what had happened the night before the murder:
He came home from the driving range. Tess and MoMo were finishing dinner. He had done the dishes, as he was the family’s cleaner.
“It was the day before,” Mariet said. “Because …”
He did not have an immediate explanation.
“The day before what?” Stevenson asked.
“The day before the umm,” Mariet stopped in search of the right word. He said, “The accident.”
He had done it again. He had called the murder of his family “the accident.”
He hurriedly corrected himself, “-errrr the day before the murder.”
Stevenson said several people had commented that Mariet had seemed less concerned about his family on the day of the massacre than about the fire department’s dog sniffing for flammable liquids inside his Honda Del Sol.
Mariet said that he had been afraid that the dog would damage the $2,500 Power Book in his car. It belonged to his employer.
He touched his forehead. He touched his right cheek.
“In most of the cases that I’ve had so far, we have relatives of the victims of homicides calling us regularly or pretty regularly,” Stevenson said. “Is there any reason you don’t call?”
Mariet said he heard updates from Tess's family and friends.
The defense attorney said, “And also I’ve advised him not to call you.”
Stevenson needed to ask a few final questions to help her gauge Mariet’s guilt or innocence. These would be accusations phrased as questions. If she asked her questions in the right order, she would get to ask them all before the defense attorney stopped the interview.
“On January sixteenth, nineteen-ninety-seven, did you cause injury to Tess and MoMo, resulting in their death?”
“No,” Mariet said. “I did not.”
“On January sixteenth, nineteen-ninety-seven, did you start the fire in your house?”
“No, I did not.”
He clasped his hands before him, as though he was praying or as though the detectives had him cuffed.
“My last question,” Stevenson said. “Would you be willing to take a truth verification test to clear yourself?”
Before Mariet could open his mouth, the defense attorney answered. “That’s something I will deal with.”
He said he doesn’t generally allow his clients to take truth verification tests. He doesn’t believe they are accurate.
