Ty Callison for Kennebec7 (#7) [Interrogation]
On the third day of my investigation into the death of Miranda Weiss, Chairwoman of Evenside Corp., I met Seng. Just call him Seng. Don’t ask about the last name. Here in Thailand they got last names longer than Kyrgyzstan or some of those Russian tennis players. The first names are shorter, but fairly unpronounceable. The Thais have a great sense of humor, though. They give their kids nicknames that they’re serious about. They keep them even when they’re adults, like Boss, Dear, Gift, Bank, Donut and so on. I really love it. You gotta smile when you’re talking with these folks. They sure smile a lot, and usually it seems genuine.
Anyway, this fella Seng, he’s got a simple enough name. He was a former Phuket cop, graduated from a good school in Bangkok, learned English about as good as mine. They don’t pay the police too well over here, which makes them unpredictable law enforcement officers at times. Seng has a wife and two little girls. He wasn’t making enough as a cop in Phuket and he was a good Buddhist, too good to take bribes, and whatever else they need to do to take care of their families properly or else indulge themselves in enough booze to forget their troubles.
So, Seng got himself employed as a security honcho for the Weiss’s vacation estate in Krabi; Miranda the tech company owner, and husband, Philip, the international banker. Miranda fell off the edge of a high cliff while walking at night in a rainstorm. The Thai police called it an accidental death. Then, later, they said it might’ve been a suicide because they found out that Mrs. Weiss had had cancer.
Heidi Koenig, Miranda’s niece and an executive at Evenside, Miranda’s Phoenix company, was deeply suspicious when she heard the Thai police had speculated her aunt’s death had been a suicide. She hired Jill and me to come over here to investigate.
~
Hello, Mister Ty. I’m glad you have come, Seng welcomed me right off. He was a serious-looking, but amiable man in his early thirties. Good build, slender like a lot of these Thais are, but kept himself in shape. He had an earnest quality that I like in people. They believe in something. Seng believed that Miranda Weiss had not killed herself.
It turns out that he felt somewhat responsible for Miranda’s plunge off the cliff. There was that big thunderstorm the night she fell, and some of the security equipment wasn’t functioning properly.
My interrogation went something like this:
Callison: What do you have here for security?
Seng: We installed motion detectors and cameras around different sectors of the property.
Callison: Inside the house?
Seng: Just some things on the doors and windows, but they don’t use them very often. They don’t always turn them on. Mrs. Weiss and Mr. Weiss really don’t like them. And when they have guests like Mister Sandy, it gets—
Callison: Confusing?
Seng: Mister Sandy, he does not pay attention to security.
Callison: I can imagine. Sort of a rambunctious young man.
Seng looked at me blankly. I realized that I had just bypassed the vocabulary barrier. Callison: Yeah, okay, Seng. So the night Mrs. Weiss
fell, did you see anything? Did you see her out there walking in the rain? On your monitors?
Seng: I was not working then. Mister Ong was here.
Callison: Mister Ong is another security fella?
Seng: Yes. I came at 12 o’clock.
Callison: At midnight.
Seng: Yessir.
Callison: Miranda fell before midnight. They think before 11:30.
Seng: Yessir.
Callison: How long has Mister Ong worked here?
Seng thought about it a few seconds. Seng: Almost five months.
Callison: Does he have a background in security?
Seng: He’s my uncle.
Callison: Ah, I see. But does he have a background in security?
Seng: I taught him. It’s not so hard. Just this place.
Callison: What did your uncle do before he started working here?
Seng: He was a policeman.
Callison: In Phuket, like you? Or here in Krabi?
Seng: Ong was a lieutenant in Krabi.
Callison: Okay. Ong was a policeman in Krabi, and then he quit and came to work with you here?
Seng hesitated again for a second or two. Seng: Ong had a coffee shop with his friend. Then he came here. Before that, he was a policeman.
Callison: More money in security? Here, anyway?
Seng nodded. Seng: My uncle is a responsible man. Or I would not recommend him to Mrs. Miranda.
Callison: What were Ong’s hours the night Mrs. Miranda was killed?
Seng: I don’t understand, Mister Ty.
Callison: Okay. What time did Ong work the night Mrs. Miranda was killed?
Seng: Oh… from seventeen hundred.
Callison: Five o’clock PM.
Seng: Yessir.
Callison: A seven hour shift?
Seng: Ong works eight hours. Until one o’clock.
Callison: So you come in at midnight, and the two of you overlap one hour. Is that how it works?
Seng: Yessir. We review.
Callison: And Mister Ong was wide awake when you arrived, Seng?
Seng: Yessir. Of course.
Callison: Okay. Was there anyone else working security that night?
Seng: Just Mister Kiw. He walks around outside, but it was such a big storm that he came inside a few times.
I flipped around through the pages I had been given naming all the security personnel. I pointed to a picture. Callison: This guy?
Seng: Yes.
I went through the whole process again, concerning backgrounds, relationships, work shifts and so on. As I’ve said, I found this man, Seng, earnest and reasonably intelligent, but I wanted to know more about the security standards at the Weiss estate. Both Miranda and Philip were millionaires with their own particular businesses.
Callison: What kinds of problems were you told to anticipate?
Seng: Somebody trying to steal something, somebody trying to kidnap Mrs. Miranda or Mister Philip. Something like that.
Callison: So, if somebody in the security center saw something happening outside, or a sensor went off, you could notify Mister Kiw, or one of these other fellas, and you could intercept intruders on the grounds, that sort of thing.
Seng: There is Mister Martin, too. He is Mister Philip’s personal--
Callison: Yeah, yeah, I met Mister Martin The tall guy that walks around looking like Boris Karloff.
Seng gave me another of his blank looks. Probably never saw Boris. Or even any black and white movies.
Seng: Mister Martin has been Mister Philip’s personal bodyguard for a long time. He has a connection to the security center in his house.
Callison: That’s the blue house back there in the trees?
Seng: Yessir. He lives there by himself.
Callison: You all carry weapons?
Seng: Yessir.
Callison: Martin, too?
Seng: Of course. Mister Martin is a professional bodyguard.
Callison: What kind of weapon do you carry, Seng?
Seng: Sig Sauer 220. Mister Philip bought for all of us. Can shoot ten thousand rounds in a day.
Callison: Maybe a little overkill. Since you haven’t had any invasions yet.
Seng: Mrs. Miranda, she doesn’t want us to kill anybody. So we got two tazers.
Callison: So, basically, you were all watching for trouble on the outside. Someone coming onto the estate from outside.
Seng: Yessir.
Callison: What about a threat from the inside?
Seng gave me the blank look again.
[To be continued]
Ty Callison
Krabi, Thailand
06/08/2010
