Chapter Six – The Consultant
It was just after five o’clock and Dr Lisa Proctor was preparing to leave the office when she was momentarily distracted by the military helicopter that swooped past her window towards the building’s landing pad. She wondered briefly who in the building was working on a military contract but quickly went back to preparing the papers she would need for tonight’s dinner. It was with a wealthy prospective client and she would need to be ready. Ten minutes later her personal assistant opened her door.
“Lisa, I’m sorry, but there are two men here to see you,” he said.
“Not now, Freddie,” she said without looking up. “I’m getting ready to go.”
“I’m afraid it will have to be now,” said a voice she didn’t know. She looked up and saw a tired-looking, overweight man in a cheap suit. He held up identification. “Detective Inspector Richardson, Australian Federal Police,” he said. He indicated a young, athletic man behind him. “This is my associate, Detective Sergeant Wilson. We are investigating the deaths on the Prometheus. You have read the papers?”
Lisa sighed and turned away to gaze out her window. “Yes,” she said. “It brings back memories I’d rather leave buried.” Then she turned back to look at Richardson with a puzzled expression on her face. “Why are the police involved?” she asked. “Isn’t this a matter for the technical investigation team?”
“Their preliminary investigation has indicated that the crew were murdered,” Richardson replied. “We need to understand how and why – and by whom.”
Lisa’s face went stone still and then turned white. Her grip tightened on the stylus she was holding until it snapped. “It was DeWitt, wasn’t it?” she spat. “I knew that idiot was mad. Everyone knew that Mars was as sterile as a hospital autoclave but he had this insane idea that he could find life in the Hellas Basin. A new sort of life based on RNA rather than DNA. It was like a religious quest for him. He would laugh at Elise and Martin, but he was the one who behaved like some weird religious fanatic. He hated the fact that no one else believed the way he did.”
“That seems a rather unlikely motive for a murder/ suicide,” Richardson commented. “Killed because they didn’t believe in Martians.”
“You didn’t know him,” she replied. “He really was a fanatic. If he thought the others were hindering his great work, I can easily believe he would’ve killed them.” She paused thoughtfully. “Don’t believe he’d intend suicide though. I think maybe he just killed the two of them and only then realised he didn’t know how to work the ship. Stupid bastard.”
“You didn’t like him?” Richardson suggested.
“No one did,” she replied. “The other two were sweethearts, everyone loved them, but he was a bastard. He accused me of faking instrument results just because they didn’t match his theory. He should never have been allowed anywhere near a spaceship.” She paused and looked thoughtfully at the policemen. “If you think it was murder, then there’s something strange about the deaths,” she said slowly. “That’s why there’s so little technical information available. Look, if it’s something that would make people believe they were attacked by aliens, then it’s definitely DeWitt. He would happily commit suicide if it would convince the world that alien life really was out there. For him, it would be a small lie to serve a greater truth. As I said, the man was a fanatic.” Richardson nodded thoughtfully and consulted the data recorder on his wrist. The woman was not just smart but shrewd. She would be good at business – and at hiding a crime.
“DeWitt wrote something on the inside of the lander before he died,” he said. “He wrote: ‘They’ve got to me. I should have known they would. I was so close. I wish I had time to write the details.’ Any idea what he meant?”
Dr Proctor snorted contemptuously. “That’s it. He’s trying to get people to believe in these bloody aliens. Trying to make himself famous by pretending that he was close to proving they existed. What a load of rubbish. Inspector, do you know the story of the mathematician in the early years of the twentieth century who, whenever he set sail across the Atlantic, would send a telegram saying, ‘Solved Thermat’s last theorem. Details later.’ So that if the boat sank, he would go down in history as having solved the theorem? This is the same thing. Look, I died. Ooh, aliens killed me. Pathetic.”
Richardson nodded. “Maybe,” he said noncommittally. “You were the engineer in charge of the instrumentation on board the Ares II orbiter, correct?” Richardson asked. She nodded. “You had access to all the instruments?” She nodded again. “How much did you dislike Dr DeWitt?”
She frowned. “Not enough to kill him, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Certainly not enough to kill the other two just to get at him.”
Richardson again looked at the small data terminal on his wrist. “In your position, were you in charge of instrument scheduling?” he asked.
Lisa nodded. “Early on,” she said. “But we were well past our primary mission by the time the Prometheus incident occurred. By then the scientists mostly worked out the schedule informally among themselves. There were safety protocols, of course. I checked all of those. Why are you interested in the orbital instruments?”
Richardson ignored her question. “I understand all instrument use was logged. Could those logs be tampered with?” he asked.
Lisa shook her head. “No,” she said. “They could be turned off but once logged they were secure.”
“Were they often turned off?” Richardson asked.
“Only occasionally,” Lisa replied. “When the scientist was chasing some crazy private theory of their own, maybe using the instrument in a weird way, and didn’t want anyone else knowing what they were up to.”
“How much power did these instruments use?” Richardson asked.
Proctor shrugged. “It varied,” she said. “In terms of the ship-wide power usage it was mostly trivial. The MMS could be a bit of a power hog on some settings. If you wanted to use it on high power, you had to schedule it very carefully or you could interfere with the normal ship operations. That’s why all the high-power stuff had been scheduled for early in the mission.” Detective Inspector Richardson sat and looked thoughtfully out the window for a moment; at this level the view was spectacular. Then he stood up abruptly.
“Thank you for your time, Dr Proctor. You have been most helpful,” he said. “I will leave you to enjoy your evening. I would ask that you let us know if you plan to leave on any extended travel. We may need to ask further questions.” He paused. “Also,” he continued, “I would prefer it if you didn’t discuss this with any of your former crewmates.”
“No problem,” she said. “I never see any of them anyway.”
Back in the helicopter, during the brief flight back to their car, Wilson asked, “Do you think it’s her, boss?”
“Well,” Richardson replied, “she had means and opportunity and she clearly had some personal grudge against DeWitt.”
“Could it be DeWitt, like she said?” Wilson asked.
Richardson shook his head. “No, not the way they died,” he said. He gave a small tired smile. “We have been collecting some strange theories today but hers is the least likely of the lot.”
Wilson smiled. “Just as well,” he said. “It would’ve made the arrest very difficult. What’s so important about the amount of power the instruments use?”
“There was a power outage on the Ares II right before they lost contact with the Prometheus,” Richardson explained. “Vince Lombardi, the ship’s chief engineer, reported it to the commission of enquiry but they were so convinced that the problem was Carter that they didn’t take much notice of it. It was serious though. He claimed that he had to reboot several crucial systems but he could find nothing wrong, nothing that would cause the outage. He couldn’t explain it. I think the commission should’ve investigated that more closely.”
“So, are we going to talk to this Lombardi next?” Wilson asked.
Richardson gave a
sad little smile. “It would be hard,” he said. “He died on an expedition to Venus seven years ago. Nothing suspicious about the death,” he said, forestalling Wilson’s question. “His ship took a direct hit from a massive solar flare.”
“And that killed him?” Wilson asked.
“He got over a thousand times the safe annual radiation dose in the first ten minutes, so, yes, it killed him,” Richardson replied. “Come on, let’s get back to the car. I need to get home.”