“That look on her face.” Barrett came out of the wings to stand silhouetted before the white screen. “I’ve never seen her look so scared. Obviously she was terrified of Lambert and what she might do.”

“Then why’d she get on the elevator with her?” Cruz said.

“Who knows? A desire to maintain normalcy no matter the situation? Whatever, she soon regretted it.”

“We’ll need the raw footage.”

Barrett nodded at Culligan, who trotted down the stairs on the side of the stage and handed Cruz a large manila envelope. “In there you’ll find a flash drive with the video footage, along with affidavits establishing authenticity and chain of custody,” Barrett said. “You’ll also find flash drives containing the non-privileged contents of Lucy’s computer, and the same thing for Lambert. Meanwhile, I want to draw your particular attention to this document that we found on Lucy’s computer.”

The screen lit up again with a supersize image of a form. It was a CDMI form, with the white dove logo in the upper left corner. Notice of Termination was the preprinted heading. Barrett used a laser pointer to highlight the first field. Lambert’s name was typed into that box. Next he pointed to the either/or boxes farther down: Without Cause and With Cause. The second box had an X filled in. Below that was a blank for Grounds, and the field was filled in with the words Falsified Employment History. Barrett ran the laser to the bottom of the form, where there was a line for Employee Acknowledgment. It was blank. Below that was a notation that Employee declined to sign. He highlighted that for a long moment before he turned back to his audience.

“She was combative. She left in tears. But by the time she returned to her own office, you can see her resolve in her posture. She wasn’t going out like a lamb.”

“I got a question,” Cruz called from his seat. “For you, I guess, Mr. Culligan. Doesn’t company policy state that a terminated employee has to be escorted off the premises by security?”

Culligan glanced at Barrett before he answered. “It does.”

“So why didn’t you have a security officer on site?”

“It was Sunday. Super Bowl Sunday. No one was on duty—”

“And Lucy said it wouldn’t be necessary,” Barrett put in.

“Uh-huh,” Cruz said, obviously not buying it. “Doesn’t company policy also state that terminated employees must surrender their keycards?”

“Yes.”

“And Lambert still had hers.”

Barrett answered again. “Lucy’s assistant was in charge of collecting the cards. She wasn’t in the office last night, obviously, and I expect Lucy simply overlooked it.”

“That’s it? Mistakes were made?”

“What can I say, Detective? These policies are written in a vacuum for an idealized, perfect situation. In real life, mistakes are made. But you can see what happened. She was terminated, she refused to sign, she refused to surrender her keycard, she was clearly hostile.”

“And Ms. Carter-Jones was clearly suicidal.”

Barrett scoffed. “That’s ridiculous.”