Sex and Murder.com: A Paul Turner Mystery (6 page)

The very oddest part of the job to Turner was still the viewing of the dead bodies. Turner assumed it would always affect him. He hoped he’d realize when it didn’t and quit.

“Hold on, now, hold on,” a woman in her early twenties said. There were only two women in the group. This one wore a faded denim skirt, a white blouse, and white walking shoes. “We knew and worked with Craig Lenzati. You come barging in here uninvited and now you’re demanding information. We’re all grieving. We’re all …” She drew several deep breaths. “We were all close to him. We cared about him. This is impossible. This is …” She stopped.

“We know it’s tough,” Turner said.

“He was murdered?” Waldron asked.

“Yes,” Turner said.

The woman who spoke said, “How could we possibly know anything about murder?”

Turner said, “Statistics prove that a person is most likely to be killed by someone they knew. When we interview everyone, we begin to get a sense of his life, who he knew, who didn’t like him, who might have wanted to kill him.”

“Everybody liked him,” Waldron said.

“Everybody but one,” Fenwick said.

“None of us is a killer,” the woman said.

Turner said, “We’d like to begin the interviews with those who worked most closely with him. We’ll have uniformed officers conduct preliminary interrogations of anyone he came into contact with at other levels in the company. Mr. Waldron, we can start with you. We’d like everyone to stay until we say it is okay to leave.”

There were nods in the group. Turner and Fenwick arranged for beat cops to begin the interviews with the other employees.

First, they asked to be shown Lenzati’s office. It was a surprisingly small cubicle with little more than a cheap metal desk, a folding chair, a monitor, computer, and a keyboard.

“For a rich boss, his office is kind of a big nothing,” Fenwick observed.

Waldron said, “He and Brooks worked mostly at home. Here they used any computer that was handy. They worked with individuals and groups at their stations. All of them are connected to the main server. You can do anything from just about any computer. They felt it was a more personal touch that way.”

Next, Waldron led them down another hall to a conference room with an oval, solid oak table that Turner thought might look at home in a castle in Europe. Dark stains overspread and deep gouges scored the well-polished surface. On top of the table at each place setting was a laptop computer. A large display screen hung on the far wall of the narrow room, and a computer projector hung from the ceiling. As they talked, Waldron idly toyed with the keys on the computer in front of him. Turner wondered if the old masters that hung on the wall were originals or reproductions. You sell your company for over a billion, you could buy a lot of expensive artwork. They sat near a window in a room that looked out on a courtyard. Periodically, Waldron used a tissue from a box on a small work table in an alcove.

Fenwick said, “You seem awfully young to be the CEO of a company.”

“Craig and Brooks learned from the mistakes a lot of engineers and creative people made in other computer companies. I had much less power than most CEOs. They kept control of the company securely in their own hands. They hated people in suits who just wanted to sit on boards of directors. They called me their real, live, hands-on CEO.”

“What did you do?” Turner asked.

“I was just a numbers cruncher. In essence I do the day-to-day running of the operation. I oversee bookkeeping, receiving, accounting. All major departments not connected to creativity report to me. I’m in charge of making sure the research operation gets hassled as little as possible. I know how to run a business.”

Turner thought the man might be in his late twenties, if that. It was a little hard for him to believe the guy was in charge of millions or possibly billions of dollars. Of course, Lenzati and Werberg each were worth half a billion when they sold off their first company when they were in their mid-twenties.

“How often did you see him?” Turner asked.

“I had contact with Craig every day, either in person or on the phone.”

“How’s the company doing?”

“Great. One of the most solid in the computer industry. The dot-com crash has barely touched us.”

“How did you wind up working here?” Fenwick asked.

“In business school I created a new software program for businesses to keep track of inventory, profit, loss, product development, delivery; all facets of a business reported and analyzed in one continuous flow. No duplication was necessary. With my program you could tell how many items you sold in Newton, Iowa, in the past hour. It was the perfect melding of needs of the customers and product delivery. It limited the amount of merchandise you had sitting on a shelf taking up space. It even made selling on the Internet more efficient. Its key, though, was identifying an area where a new product was needed and projecting how much revenue the new software or program was likely to generate.”

“What kind of man was Mr. Lenzati to work for?” Turner asked.

“Great. A creative genius. Sometimes he was shy and awkward with people. He never confronted anyone directly. He had this quiet, soothing voice. He would explain things very gently and at great length. At critical moments he did have an instinct for knowing exactly when to give encouragement and back off or when to step in and give direction himself. His leadership was always aloof but surprisingly effective. Everybody liked him and Brooks. They were great guys to work for. The salaries here are high. The benefits are terrific.”

“Who fired people?” Turner asked. “Who dealt with company problems?”

“I didn’t work on hiring and firing, but these were good people.”

“Not one disgruntled employee, ever?” Fenwick asked.

“This is a cooperative group working on the cutting edge of technology. This is a place people were eager to come to work. There’s a waiting line just for accepting applications. This is paradise. Sure, everybody’s got an ego, probably some pretty big ones, but not big enough to kill for.”

“Who has the biggest egos?”

“Craig and Brooks. When you’re as bright as they are, you’ve earned the right to a big ego.”

“Do you know of any clashes of any kind Lenzati might have had?”

“No. I never did. My department deals with numbers.”

“What do you guys actually make?” Fenwick asked.

“We provide goods and services,” Waldron said. “Computer games, operating systems, network security—any—thing on the cutting edge of technology.”

“What kind of life did Mr. Lenzati live outside of the office?” Turner asked.

“I have no idea. He and Brooks worked from sixteen to twenty hours a day. I’ve been with them since the old company. I left with them when they started this new venture. I finished my first advanced computer degree from college at nineteen. We weren’t close outside of business hour: I’m not sure they had much of a life outside of business.”

Turner said “We’ve been told about late night parties at Mr. Lenzati’s. You know anything about them?”

Waldron looked genuinely mystified. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“You never stepped out for a night with the boss?”

“No. There might be social events here, but they were very subdued—like cakes for birthdays kinds of things. Those were just interdepartmental, small lunchtime events.”

Fenwick said, “They had millions to spend on luxury yachts, vacations, trips to exotic locales. They never did any of those?”

“They might have bought entire exotic locales for that matter. For all I know, they did. I dealt strictly with the business. For their personal stuff you’d have to look elsewhere.”

“Where?” Turner asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Isn’t that kind of odd?” Turner asked.

“It’s the way they did business. Their paychecks and profits went into electronic accounts controlled by them.”

“Who did their taxes?” Fenwick asked.

“You’d have to ask Brooks.”

Turner said, “We were told that sometimes Mr. Lenzati dated women, brought them to functions.”

“Yes, Craig did. They were usually bright and funny women.”

“Do you remember any of their names?” Turner asked.

“I vaguely remember a few first names, but no addresses or anything. He never brought the same one around more than a few times. I’m not very social. None of us really is. I’m not good at it and I’m not sure Craig was either.”

“Were there business problems?” Turner asked. “Did the firm have any trouble with industrial sabotage or computer hackers?”

“You mean crackers, of course,” Waldron said. “By strict definition a hacker is somebody who develops programs and makes them better. Crackers break into computer systems.”

“Whichever it is,” Fenwick said. “Was there a problem?”

“They were always on the alert. Complete checks of all equipment are done on a weekly basis. If there are possible problems, sometimes the checks are daily.”

“Were there problems?” Turner asked.

“I don’t know. You’d have to speak with the engineers.”

Turner said, “Mr. Werberg said they had no rivals.”

“I’d put it that they had no equals. Aren’t there always others who wish they have what you have? Although in this case, I have no idea who that would be specifically.”

“Who would know?”

“Rian Davis, the head of the creativity division.”

“Where were you early this morning?”

Waldron looked pained. “I got up like I do every morning. I shaved, showered, dressed, stopped for coffee, and came in. I was here before seven. I have no witnesses. Although, I stop at the same coffee shop every day. The clerk might recognize me.”

Rian Davis was the woman who had not spoken in the first group they’d met. She wore black jeans, a highly starched, pink cotton shirt, covered by a black silk vest, which was buttoned in a bustier effect. She spoke quietly, calmly, and authoritatively. “Waldron hasn’t got an ounce of creativity in his body. He can crunch billions of numbers, good for him. My division was the heart and soul of this company. We were engineers, creators. The real lifeblood of the operation.”

Turner said, “He mentioned problems with people getting into your systems.”

“Sabotage? Hackers! Crackers!” She snorted in derision. “We were the company everybody turned to for preventing just such problems. Only we could develop systems faster than crackers could break into them. We were the ones governments from around the globe turned to. The security area is a gold mine. Spending on security is up to five percent of corporate operating budgets now. It used to be around one percent.”

“If you specialized in it, didn’t they try and break into your computers?” Turner asked.

“Sure, crackers and hackers targeted us. They’d try every trick to best us. They never could. Brooks and Craig were too smart and too clever. We spent innumerable hours on it. Every computer company has to. Unfortunately, Brooks believed it was good for the company to hire the most successful crackers. I told him he’d be sorry. It’s like hiring the criminals to police the streets. It’s a pleasantly liberal notion, until it goes very wrong.”

“And did it go wrong here?” Turner asked.

“No one ever got into our files from the outside. We were just too good for that, but we hired a cracker a couple years ago, Eddie Homan. About ten years back he broke into the Pentagon computers and supposedly was three clicks away from starting a thermonuclear war.”

“Is that true?” Turner asked.

“True enough that he got a seven-year prison sentence. Against my advice, we hired him. No question, he was good—very, very good. I warned them about internal sabotage. Craig and Brooks could be very arrogant about their abilities. They wouldn’t listen to me. Homan ended up trying to sabotage everything we were working on.”

“Why?”

“Perversity? He’s nuts? That he was a brilliant nut case made it very difficult for us to figure out what was going on. One day a teenage intern accidentally came upon an anomaly in one of our programs. He reported it to me. It took me an hour or so to realize we had a major problem. I immediately notified Craig and Brooks. We worked forty-eight straight hours to find out where the problem originated from. Homan was aware of us from the first. He and his files were long gone by the time we went to confront him.”

“Did the company lose much because of him?” Fenwick asked.

“Time, energy—but nothing monetarily. At least Brooks learned a lesson about hiring known felons.”

“When was this?” Turner asked.

“A few months ago.”

“And where is Eddie Homan now?”

“He’s disappeared into the Internet ozone. He has no known address. Every once in a while when we get a nibble trying to get into our computers, we assume it’s him. We had to change all the codes very fast when he left.”

Turner asked, “Who fires employees?”

“We didn’t fire Eddie. He just walked out and never came back.”

“Who fires people who are not Eddie?” Fenwick asked.

“Each department head is in charge of their own personnel. Frankly, I don’t remember anyone having to be let go. The screening process for hiring is pretty thorough.”

“Are there business rivals?” Turner asked.

“None who would be willing to kill. At least none that I know of. I can’t imagine it. This is a civilized business.”

Fenwick said, “Capitalism can lead to greed and murder as well as fame and riches.”

Turner asked, “Among the employees in your department, were there arguments, fights, even any minor disagreements that lingered?”

“I don’t want to single anyone out. Not anyone who’s here. Eddie was the one big problem.”

“How’d you get started here?” Turner asked.

“I was particularly grateful to Craig and Brooks. My little computer start-up company did not make millions. My husband and I were working out of our home. We were going broke and Craig and Brooks bailed us out. They paid a lot more for our company than it was really worth and put me in charge of the creative division here. My husband does consulting work for this computer company and many others. We owe Craig and Brooks a great deal. They rescued a number of businesses. A lot of us didn’t have MBAs, didn’t have a sense of the possible or the practical. They did the same for Justin Franki, the head of the research and development department.”