Hidden River

5: THE LONGEST DAY OF THE YEAR

The blue flame of the paraffin lamp was almost cobalt in the darkness of the tent. It burned clear with only a fragile light that dripped color and a little heat, taking the dark, molding it into tiny shapes and forms that were weird and spectral under the aged canvas of khaki and muck black and burnt sienna.

The tube around the wick was hot and the green metal of the vessel buckled slightly as the heat rose. I adjusted the intake valve to make it consume more oxygen. The smell of the oil was strong and rich, like some exotic opiate or sleep inducer, and I drank it in and kneeled there for a while like a devotee before his idol.

I sighed, and leaned back, and sat, still in the moment, holding my breath and then slowly letting it out again into the cool night air.

The heroin easing out of my body now.

I shook myself. The lamp burned on, seeping a brittle indigo onto the cheek of the sleeping girl. I hadn’t slept at all. I climbed out of the tent. There were a few people awake waiting for the dawn. John, one of them, smoking by a fire.

“How do, mate?” John asked, grinning at me.

“Not bad,” I said.

“You look terrible. You shot up again, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“What about your ‘Only an addict would shoot up twice in twenty-four hours’ spiel?”

“Jet lag. Doesn’t count,” I said.

“Why even bring your gear with you to the bar? Do you carry it everywhere now?”

“John, I was up all night and I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I would take a hit. I am exhausted beyond belief. We should have just gone back to the hotel.”

“Yeah, blame me,” John said, his face showing a little irritation.

“I’m not going to get into this with you again. I’m really not.”

“Ok.”

And what was I going to say? John, the heroin in America is not to be believed? John, I’m having serious misgivings about trying to be a cop again? But the bastard was right. I didn’t have to do heroin now. It wasn’t necessary. The fact that I had shot up this morning meant something huge.

“Hey, at least did it go ok with the girl?” John asked.

I didn’t answer. I was thinking now about the day ahead. We had much to do. Victoria Patawasti’s neighbors had to be interviewed, her work colleagues, the police, the supposed murderer and his attorney, and if possible the murder scene had to be examined, her movements explored, a thorough, slow, precise investigation. Haste is the enemy of the investigator. Haste makes you jump to conclusions, miss things. The ally of lies is speed. I’d solved about two dozen cases in the RUC as detective and ordinary cop. All of them broken by solid police work, a slow growth of fact and evidence until the picture had formed itself. In my experience no one cracked under questioning, no one confessed, there were no sudden lightning flashes of insight. An assembling of a jigsaw full of detail. Detail upon detail until its weight breaks through the lies and ambiguity, and truth rings out.

That was the way to solve this case, too.

But it wasn’t to be that way. I mean, did I want to fail? Did I want to escape from the awful injunction over me? Did I want to sabotage myself? Maybe the peeler wants to be nabbed himself, trapped, found out. Maybe he has had enough of truth.

“You don’t buy into this summer solstice shit?” John asked, taking off his Belfast Blues Festival baseball hat, wiping his forehead, and shaking his long hair in a way he knew really annoyed me. I was determined not to let him piss me off.

“Well, John, they say it’s the holiest day of the year. In Hinduism and Buddhism it was a propitious day to reach enlightenment.”

“You ever been to Newgrange in County Meath?” John asked.

“No.”

“I went down there on the bike once, now it’s aligned with the winter solstice, not the summer, that’s more like it, that makes more sense, you’re begging the sun to come back again, see….”

But I wasn’t listening. I was still obsessing on me and Victoria and that big word: truth — I don’t buy into the existential solipsism of fucking defense lawyers: “Everything’s relative, subjective.” I’m old school. Aristotle, who says there are five ways of finding things out: techne, which is practical technique; episteme, or scientific method; phronesis, which is sagacity; sophia, which is wisdom; and, finally, intelligence or nous. Techne is the most important for a policeman. The most important for me. And before heroin, my technique was killer: patient, focused, incremental, deep.

Aristotle was wrong about nearly everything. Galileo disproved his physics, Darwin his biology, his pupil Alexander his politics, but he was right about technique. More important than being smart is being meticulous. We had a lot to do today and it was the longest day of the year and we could have done it if we’d been patient. But instead of techne—fuckups; instead of breaking the case — disaster.

In fourteen hours the sun had finally gone down on this long midsummer day and we were on the run from the Denver police, the state police and any other law enforcement agency you care to mention.

John patted me on the shoulder and we turned from the sunrise, walked back to the tents.

We decided on a division of the labor. I’d do Victoria’s old office in Boulder to see if the anonymous note writer was still around. I’d let John interview Victoria’s neighbors at her building in Denver. I’d have to do it again myself but it would give him something to do and there might be inconsistencies in their stories. John was a peeler, but I told him again how to interview someone. You don’t offer information and you take all they say with equanimity. You write down everything and if they’re going too fast you ask them to slow down.

Also at some point, I’d call the lawyer representing Hector Martinez — the supposed killer. Then I’d call up the police and book a talk with the lead detective.

The girls drove us to Boulder and we had eggs for breakfast. The girls had things to do, so we split and John caught the bus back to Denver. I was wearing a shirt and jeans, but I bought a tie to look more respectable.

Boulder had an interesting vibe, it was what happened when Grateful Dead fans became rich, yuppie, and comfortable. Every third store sold crystals and Tibetan prayer flags. The parking lot outside the yoga center was stuffed with brand-new Volvos and Range Rovers. The L.L. Bean-clad citizens were white, thin, smelling of soy and vitamins — the sort of smug baby-boom wankers so caught up in their path toward self-actualization that they really didn’t see the scores of homeless people begging on the pedestrian mall.

I found a phone booth that contained a potpourri basket to mitigate the stench of urine. I dialed my first number. Before I got through, I hung up. I had to rethink my story. I wanted to be very low-key at first. I know as a cop I hated private detectives with a passion. So instead, I decided I’d be a newspaperman.

I dialed the Denver police department.

“Detective Miller, please, my name is Jones, I work for the Irish Times, I’m looking into the Victoria Pat—”

“Detective Miller is out of town for a few days,” a woman said.

“Oh. Uh, well, can I speak to any other detectives on the Victoria Patawasti case?”

“Detective Hopkins is on leave.”

“Ok, is there a supervisor?”

“Detective Redhorse hasn’t come in yet.”

Dead air on the line.

“Ok, I’ll call back,” I said and hung up.

Damn. Better luck with the next call. The phone book was still attached to the booth. I looked it up and found Enrique Monroe, public defender, attorney-at-law, who was representing the accused. I dialed his number. Got a secretary, told her I was a reporter from Ireland looking into the Victoria Patawasti murder.

“Hello,” the lawyer said in a friendly manner.

“Hello, Mr. Monroe, my name is, uh, Simon Jones, I’m a reporter from Ireland. I’m investigating the Victoria Patawasti case and I’d very much like to speak to you.”

“I’ll give you all the help I can. I would be delighted to talk to you. Are you in town soon?”

“Yes, I’ll be in Denver very soon, I—”

“Well, let me tell you something, the police have got the wrong man, Mr. Jones. You can tell your readers that my client has an alibi for the night of the murder, if only I can persuade his friends to speak up for him.”

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“Well, to be frank, they’re all illegal immigrants and they’re worried about their status. I think, though, that I’ll be able to turn them around, the police have no physical evidence at all. Nothing, this is an outrageous case. What newspaper did you say you worked for?”

“Uh, the Irish Times.”

“Listen, I know the people of Ireland want justice, I want justice, but my client is innocent. I’ve checked his alibi, it’s watertight. I’m working on his friends. Working on them. And with an alibi the DA will have to drop the charges.”

“That sounds interesting. Mr. Monroe, could we talk later in the week?”

“Impossible. I always want to talk to gentlemen of the press, but this week is impossible. I have to go to Pueblo then juve court. Look, how about Monday, next Monday? Nine o’clock.”

“What’s your address?”

“Evans and Downing. The Calendar Building, Suite Eleven, Denver, easy to find, I promise you. Well, look, I have to fly—”

“Let me ask you something. What did your client do for a living?” I asked.

“Hector’s a mover. He works for Grant Moving.”

“Where does he work?”

“Oh, he works all over the city, the whole metro area.”

“Boulder?”

“I believe so.”

“Let me guess, he’d done some moving work at the CAW headquarters in Boulder, right? They were moving from Boulder to Denver, isn’t that right?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Monroe said, sounding a little embarrassed.

“Don’t you think that’s where he could have dropped his driver’s license?” I suggested.

“I don’t know. I haven’t really looked at that in much detail. I’ve been trying so hard to get the alibi witnesses on board, I haven’t been working on anything else. I had just thought that the victim somehow found Hector’s license, put it in her purse, and was going to turn it in to the police. But yes, that’s possible. That license is the only piece of physical evidence linking my client to the murder. If I can dismiss that or if I can get the alibi to work I honestly think we’re home free.”

“No fingerprints, no hand prints or powder residue on your client?”

“Well, this isn’t the sort of thing I would want to discuss over the phone, but what I’m hearing from the DA is that their whole case is based on that license. Pretty thin stuff. They say he picked the lock but there were no scratches on the outside. They say he shot her because he panicked. But Hector’s a big guy, he could have just knocked her out. It’s weak, very weak.”

“I’ll bet you money that Hector’s firm did the moving in the CAW building. That’s why Victoria had his license. She found it there. Or even better, someone else picked it up, used it to frame Hector.”

There was a long pause on the line.

“Now that you mention it, it’s so plausible,” he said finally.

“Well, look, can you find out for me by Monday?” I asked.

“Of course, I’ll ask him. This could be very helpful.”

“Mr. Monroe, you’ve been very helpful. I’ll look forward to meeting you.”

“Thank you, I’ll see you then.”

I hung up. Typical overworked immigration lawyer, and I’d learned from bitter experience that you only believed half of what a defense attorney said. But even so. Maybe the murderer had found this poor guy’s Mexican driving license, knew he was almost certainly an illegal immigrant with no credibility, maybe even chatted to him, found out that he had a criminal record, decided to set him up. It would be very interesting to talk to Hector Martinez, could be he’d met the murderer or at least come into close physical contact with him. And it pointed again to that Boulder office.

It was noon. I was so tired. The temperature hovered around ninety degrees. Being five thousand feet up didn’t seem to help cool things down. I decided to skip lunch and walk over to the CAW building, which was just off the main pedestrian mall.

The narrow building sat on an empty lot with construction all around it. Four floors, built in the fifties, air conditioners jury-rigged in most of the offices. Maybe this was one reason CAW was moving out. Now that Boulder had become rich this was prime real estate, whoever bought the building would probably demolish it and build a new, much taller, more modern office block.

I put my tie back on and went through the swing doors.

An empty reception desk on the first floor. A large sign that said

CAW call Denver 303 782 9555.

Not an expert on fonts, but that looked like New Courier to me. I stood in the lobby for a minute or two.

“Hello?” I said.

No answer.

I walked to the elevator and pushed the button for the second floor. When the elevator doors opened on two the lights were off, the floor empty, no one around. I got back on and tried three and finally four. Here the lights were on and I could hear the sound of a photocopy machine. The whole floor had been stripped down to a stained white carpet, deserted except for one corner where a man was working at a computer. He was surrounded by boxes, a photocopier, a few black filing cabinets, a chrome filing cabinet, a minifridge, a shredding machine, and black plastic bags. He didn’t see me walk up to him.

“Hello,” I said.

He stood. Six five. Pale, thin, tall, balding, saturnine, around forty-five years old. The sort of lived-in face that hinted at experience, though once he spoke you saw that it wasn’t experience, just years of rage, you could take your pick why: thwarted ambition, unhappy marriage, poor health. His nose had a network of dying capillaries. A bit of a drinker, too.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” he said sharply, advancing toward me like a huge praying mantis.

“My name is, uh, Jones,” I said, still for some reason reluctant to give my real identity.

“We’re closed, we’re done here. The whole organization has moved to Denver, there’s just me and Margaret and a couple of students and they left this morning and I’m supposed to be gone too. You have to take up your business with the Denver office, it’s already opened. How did you get in here, anyway?”

“I just walked in.”

“Well, walk out.”

“Listen, uh, Mister…”

“Name’s Klimmer, vice president in charge of operations. How did you get past Margaret?” he said accusingly.

“I didn’t see anyone,” I said.

“Hold on,” he said, and picked up a phone. He dialed a number. No one picked up.

“She must be getting me lunch, ok, well, what do you want? If it’s about leasing the floor space you can forget it, this building’s coming down,” he said.

“I wanted to speak to someone about Victoria Patawasti,” I said.

“What?” he said, visibly shaken. He backed away from me and sat down.

“It’s about her murder. I’m a private investigator, sent by her family.”

“Uh, oh, ok. Um, yes, of course. Ok, you better sit, look, there’s a chair over there, you can move that box. What did you say your name was?”

“Jones.”

“Jones, and her family sent you, from Ireland?”

“Yes.”

“Well, well, well,” he said with a half smile.

“Did you know her?”

“You want a Coke? I have a cooler full of Coke,” he said, crossing his long legs.

“No. Thank you.”

“You’re very lucky to catch anyone here. I’m finishing up, today, at the latest tomorrow. We’re closing the office here completely, moving everything to Denver.”

“Did you know Victoria?” I asked.

“Did I know her? I knew her very well. Very well indeed.”

“Did you work with her?”

“Yes. She was a bit of a floater between departments. She worked for me and the brothers. Supposed to be getting her own secretary when we moved. Much bigger building, accommodate more staff.”

I looked at him for a moment. He had said all this very quickly. Cheerfully. It was a little suspicious.

“How many people worked here?” I asked.

“At CAW we had about twenty-five employees. A dozen full-time staff, a dozen campaigners. Something like that. We’re a very small organization. Before the move we let most of the campaigners go. CU students. Of course, some of them will come to the Denver office. It’s only a forty-five-minute commute, if you avoid the rush hour. I do it every day. Bus, easy.”

“So you don’t live in Boulder?”

“No, almost none of us did. That’s why the move is good. I live in Denver, Victoria lived in Denver, the Mulhollands. Boulder is a very expensive town.”

“What does CAW stand for again?” I asked, although I knew the answer.

“The Campaign for the American Wilderness.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“We’re a nonprofit organization, we lobby government to get changes in environmental policy, we have a membership, a growing membership, we’re a very young organization, one of the youngest, in fact. Charles and Robert founded it just three years ago.”

“Charles and Robert?”

“Mulholland. Ryan Mulholland’s boys,” he said significantly.

I gave him a blank expression.

“You’ve heard of Ryan Mulholland?” he said.

“No.”

“No. No, why would you? You’re from Ireland. Yes? Well, Charles and Robert are the boys from his second marriage.”

“Well, who is he?”

He’s a banker, a financier. He runs the Mulholland Trust. Rich guy. One of those. You know the type. Fortune 500.”

“His second marriage?”

“Yeah, one girl from the first marriage, Arlene, the two boys from the second. He just got married for the third time. Wife’s expecting, the boys are pissed, I could tell.”

“How old are the boys?”

“I suppose they’re not really boys. Robert’s thirty-two or thirty-three. Charles is about thirty-eight or thirty-nine, something like that.”

“Why are you moving to Denver?”

“More space, higher profile, closer to the networks. We’re growing very fast, we need a bigger building. Boulder City Council wouldn’t let us expand. You don’t have to be a genius to see that that would be a clash of temperaments. They call it the People’s Republic of Boulder up here. We’re a right-of-center organization. Boulder is slightly to the left of Che Guevera. Also, in terms of media coverage Boulder might as well be on the moon. Denver’s a better fit. It’s the state capital, HQ of all the media outlets, new airport, new library, fastest-growing city in the West next to Vegas and LA.”

“And what do you do here?” I asked.

“I’m in charge of mass mailings and, for my sins, this big move we’re doing,” Klimmer said with a trace of annoyance. I inched my chair a little closer to him.

“How long did you know Victoria?”

“Nearly a year,” he said hesitantly.

“And you said she worked for you?”

“She worked for me and she worked for Charles and Robert, she had virtually no administrative experience at all. Actually, she’d been working for one of Ryan Mulholland’s companies in England. They head-hunted her. She was very intelligent, very gifted.”

“What did she do for you?”

“Oh, well, everything’s been upside down for the last couple of months, she’s been helping me coordinate the move. It’s very complex, you know. The two cities are only a few miles apart, but, my God, you wouldn’t believe the crap we have had to deal with.”

“What sort of crap?”

“Well, the new building, the lease, putting in the phones, that kind of thing. Also the company that owned this building, Hughes Developments, owned several apartments in Denver that CAW leased. Giving up the lease on this building meant giving up the Denver apartments, too. Mine, for one. So several of us have had to look for new apartments in the middle of all this. You wouldn’t believe the hassle.”

“Was Victoria one of the people who had to look for a new apartment?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I think she was,” he said, his eyes narrowing with the recollection. He dabbed at a bead of sweat on his forehead. He got up and grabbed a Coke to conceal how tense he was. I was glad when he sat that big skinny frame down again. He opened the can and drank little sips.

“When did the rest of the organization leave for Denver?” I asked.

“More or less everyone was gone by the tenth. I know that because it was Robert’s birthday and they had the party at the new building in Denver. So neither Peg or I were there, although you would have thought it was bad taste having a party in light of what happened,” he said a little angrily.

“Victoria’s murder,” I said.

“Yes.”

“So everyone was gone by the tenth?”

“Pretty much.”

“And it’s just been you here since then?”

“No, myself, Margaret, two of the CU students, Julie and Anne. But I was put in charge of winding things up. We needed a senior person for that.”

“What’s the command structure? Where are you in the hierarchy?”

“Why do you need to know that?” he asked.

“I’m just curious.”

“Oh, ok, well, Charles and Robert at the top, joint presidents, and then myself, Steve West, Abe Childan are vice presidents. I know what you’re thinking — three vice presidents for a permanent staff of twelve, but we plan to grow and—”

“Did Margaret, Julie, or Anne know Victoria?”

“Well, it’s a small organization, everyone knew everyone.”

“Let me put it another way. Did they know her well, were they confidantes?”

“Uh, I really don’t know.”

“So, Mr. Klimmer, for the last ten days you’ve been more or less running the show since the move to Denver?”

“At this end, yes.”

“And Victoria was killed right before the move?”

“That’s right. A very difficult time.”

“On June fifth. Just days before the move,” I said flatly.

“Yes.”

“That’s interesting, isn’t it?” I said.

“What is?”

“That she was killed just before she got a new apartment in Denver, a whole new set of circumstances. If someone was going to murder her at her old apartment they were running out of time. They had to strike soon.”

“I suppose,” he said, again taking tense sips from his soda.

“What was the name of the moving company that you used to relocate from Boulder to Denver?”

“I can’t quite remember, it was a Spanish name, I could find out pretty easily. I can ask Charles when I talk to him.”

“Yeah, I’d like to know. Tell me, Mr. Klimmer, where did you go to college?”

“Cornell University.”

“Good school. Charles and Robert?”

“They went to Harvard. Why do you want to know that?”

“If you’ll bear with me.”

“Fine,” he said submissively.

“Did you have access to Victoria’s personnel file?”

“What are you saying?” he asked, again a trace of irritation in his upper lip.

“Did you have access to her personnel file?”

“Yes, but what’s that got to do with anything?”

“What about Margaret and the students, would they have had access to it?”

“Of course not. It’s confidential.”

“Ok. Let me ask you something else. I see you don’t have a printer here. If you wanted to print out a document, where would you print it out?”

“What?”

“If you could answer the question, please,” I said.

“All the printers have been moved to Denver. Margaret has one at her desk, I believe. What exactly is the relevance of that question?”

“Could I see Victoria’s personnel file?”

“Again, most of the personnel files have been sent on to Denver,” he said, but from his tone I knew that Victoria’s had not.

“But not hers, because she’s not personnel anymore,” I said.

He nodded and put down his soda. For some reason he had kept the file. And of course he knew exactly where it was. He stood, unlocked the big chrome filing cabinet, reached inside, and handed it over without another mutter about it being confidential or none of my business. He smiled weakly, sadly. Victoria had clearly meant a lot to him.

“Did you know her back in Ireland?” he asked. The question threw me a little.

“No, I didn’t,” I managed.

“Oh, she was really a wonderful person. Not just beautiful, clever, too,” he said absently, putting the filing cabinet key back in his pocket.

The cream folder contained six sheets of paper. I scanned them, checked that she had written “Tiny Taj” as part of her home address. Of course she had. I gave the folder back. He put it carefully back in the file cabinet. I looked at him for a moment. He and three other people could have sent the anonymous note. It was postmarked June 12 and by then everyone else had left for the Denver office. He worked closely with Victoria. I would have to check out Margaret, Julie, and Anne but my gut told me it was him. He was educated, at a very good university, pretending in the note not to be. A secretary might not have thought to do that. But a secretary would have had time to reprint a letter if she was interrupted. A boss using the printer, say while the secretaries went for lunch, would be in a rush, possibly making do with a faded copy. Most telling of all, only he of the four people here could have found out Victoria’s home address in the personnel file. Probably he sent the note. It all fit. Why? Why did he do it? Because he liked Victoria? Why not go to the cops? Was he afraid of something? Someone? Frightened for his own life? If Hector Martinez had dropped his driver’s license here at CAW, the murderer had picked it up to frame him. Someone here. Someone in CAW. Perhaps Klimmer was the murderer himself and this was his oblique confession.

“What’s the difference between CAW and Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth or the Sierra Club or whatever?” I asked.

“Oh, we’re quite different,” he said.

“How so?”

“Well, we’re in favor of a policy called Wise Use.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a more balanced approach to the environment. We’ve become very successful at counteracting some of the more biased approaches to environmental policy foisted on us by the media.”

“Who do you think killed Victoria?”

Klimmer blanched for a second. It was standard cop procedure to throw a lot of secondary questions and then hit the person with the big question. Standard procedure, but it often worked.

“I–I don’t know,” he stammered, telling me, incredibly, that he did know. Or at the very least he didn’t buy the story about the burglar. Hector Martinez killed Victoria Patawasti. The police had him in custody. It was an open-and-shut case. Or so it appeared to be. Unless you had a different piece of evidence. Unless you thought you knew who really did it. The phone rang.

Klimmer picked it up.

“Yes… oh, yes… uh-huh, it’s been very busy.”

He put his hand over the receiver.

“Mr. Jones, I am extremely busy, perhaps we can meet here again in a few days or maybe early next week.”

“You said you would be gone by the weekend.”

“Oh, oh yes, sorry, yes, well… here, take a card, and give me a call and we can talk, this isn’t a good time.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to go, I felt I was right on the verge of a breakthrough. I remained in my seat.

“I have a few more questions,” I said.

Klimmer suddenly stood, towering above me, his face paler.

“I said this isn’t a good time, give me a call and we can talk,” he said more forcefully, almost angrily.

“It will just take a minute,” I said, wanting to push him a little.

“No, I’m on the phone, I’m busy, it will have to be another time,” he said, his voice rising half an octave, becoming more aggressive.

I didn’t want to upset him that much. He was important to the case. I nodded, took his card, walked back to the elevator, left the office. When I got outside I dialed the number on the card. The operator informed me that this number had been disconnected.

It didn’t matter. If he didn’t send the note, then at the very least he knew something that he was having a hard time trying to hide. I would have to see him again.

I sat for a minute in the pedestrian mall. A busker came up to me and began singing Phish songs. I got the bus back to Denver, returned to the motel. John appeared, haggard, out of sorts. He hadn’t been able to get into Victoria’s building to interview the neighbors. Because of the murder, they had beefed up security, you needed the code to enter.

“John, you just press all the buttons and someone will buzz you in,” I said, exhausted now.

John was chagrined, but excited by my news. His voice poured in my ear and I listened to him.

“Alex, we should press our advantage, we should see him tonight, as soon as possible, crack him, you’ve rumbled him, see? You did it, mate. We’ll go over there together, sort it out, make him come with us to the peelers, free an innocent man, get the investigation on the right track. Crack the case, get a big bonus from Mr. Patawasti.”

John spoke and I stared, tired, through the windows. The sun in the sky, heavy, loitering. Planes. Helicopters.

Oh, take from me this day. Unmake it. Please. All it needs is for me to say, no, John, tomorrow will do. All it takes is for me to say no. In Irish there is no word for “no.” Maybe that’s the trouble. All I have to do is refuse and none of the bad stuff goes down.

But I didn’t say no. I was knackered from the rave and the sleepless night. I was weak.

I said nothing.

I took the easy way.

“Come on,” John said and helped me to my feet.

Another of those wee things that fuck you up. Little things with big consequences. Paul of Tarsus has a fit and Christianity is born. Franz Ferdinand’s chauffeur turns left instead of right and a hundred million Europeans die.

Poor John. I will not be there at your tide burial. Tractors and the cries of seagulls will wing you to your resting place. Seagulls a thousand miles from the ocean, in the landfill on the road to Kansas, your body rotting there under earth and garbage piles.

Lead on chaos, pandemonium, death. And weary, I muttered:

“Ok, eejit. Let’s go.”

We went to the bus station at three o’clock and took turns staking it out. I read the newspapers on John’s watch. Very different from the UK. In America, the main story wasn’t the Oklahoma bombing, which had taken place just two months ago and killed 168 people. No, it was all about a former American football player I had never heard of, O. J. Simpson, who apparently had murdered his wife and was now on trial in California.

In Colorado the big story was the continuing drought, the bankruptcy of several ski resorts, and the dreary prospects for a long, hot summer.

Klimmer showed up at the Denver bus station just after four-thirty. He was carrying a briefcase and didn’t look nervous in the least. John and I followed him. We were both wearing baseball caps and sunglasses. We didn’t stand out.

He walked to the Sixteenth Street pedestrian mall and cut up through the park next to the hideous central library.

It was our first chance to really see Denver in the daylight. It looked ok. Dead grass in the parks, granite government buildings, a world trade center, office towers, a university building, several imposing masonic lodges within a block of the state capitol, which must have given conspiracy theorists food for thought.

Klimmer resided in a large apartment building overlooking Cheesman Park in the Capitol Hill section of Denver. John pointed out that he lived only a couple of hundred yards from Victoria Patawasti’s building, though whether this meant something or not, I didn’t know.

We waited outside his building for about fifteen minutes until he was settled, then we buzzed his apartment.

“Mr. Klimmer?”

“Yes?” he said through the intercom.

“Mr. Klimmer, it’s Peter Jones from this morning, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind answering a few more questions.”

There was a long pause on the intercom but finally he said:

“Come on up. It’s apartment 714.”

He buzzed us in, we took the elevator.

“Remember, my name’s Jones,” I told John.

“Why did you tell him that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, my name’s going to be John Smith then,” John said.

“You can’t have Smith and Jones, for God’s sake,” I muttered.

“Well, what then, we’re nearly there,” John said in a panic.

“You’re Wilson, now you just shut up and leave the talking to me, ok?”

We got off the lift and walked to 714. Klimmer answered, wearing flipflops, sweatpants, and a thin cotton T-shirt. He was drinking from a large brandy glass. It wasn’t his first one, either. His breath stank of booze, and he’d been home only fifteen minutes. I’d forgotten how tall he was too, taller than even John, and that was something I didn’t see much.

“Mr. Klimmer, allow me to present my partner, John Wilson,” I said.

Klimmer nodded, looked John up and down thoughtfully.

“Delighted to meet you. Why don’t you all come in,” Klimmer said demurely.

We stepped inside. The apartment was bare, save for a sofa and a few lounge chairs. It was a big space with a balcony that looked west toward the mountains. Doors to bedrooms. Boxes with shipping labels on them.

“Spartan, I’m afraid, everything else in transit, I’m moving just across the park. Bigger, of course, but I’ll lose the sunset,” Klimmer said.

“You’ll get the dawn,” I said.

“The dawn’s nothing. Can I get you fellows anything to drink?” Klimmer asked.

“Whatever you’re having.”

Klimmer went to the kitchen unit, came back with two more large brandies.

“This is the good stuff,” he said, giving John a wink.

“Oh aye?” John said. Klimmer grinned and patted John cheerfully on the back.

“Let’s sit on the balcony,” Klimmer said. “When the sun sets behind the front range, it’s really quite spectacular, the light’s diffused because it’s so dry, so much dust in the air, ash, too, from wild fires, quite lovely, you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

We moved to the balcony. It was narrow, with barely room for the three wicker chairs. I put my hand on the safety rail, which was only as high as my waist, and it came back covered in a thick layer of dust or possibly ash. Everything was coated in this thin red film, the chairs included.

“Very dry summer,” Klimmer said apologetically, attempting to wipe my chair before I sat on it.

He seemed relaxed, not at all surprised to see us, not irritated by our visit. Unusual behavior, I would have said, in a busy man organizing his firm’s move from one city to another while he himself is getting a new apartment.

He sat there and waited for me to begin. They always did that. It was as if the last half year had never happened. I was back in the old routine. They wait for you to start. On television or in books, people are always doing something interesting while they’re being questioned, but in real life, they sit there, patient, ready, marshaling their thoughts. How to begin? How to approach the conversation? Start off with chitchat, build up slowly like this morning, or hit him with what I knew and get him to deny it?

“Mr. Klimmer,” I asked, “why did you write Victoria Patawasti’s father an anonymous letter stating that the police had arrested the wrong man in connection with her murder?”

Klimmer’s smile evaporated. His face had become instantly gray, nervous, he was no poker player, that’s for sure.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said calmly and finished his brandy.

“I’ll lay it out for you in easy steps. The letter was postmarked from Boulder on the twelfth of June. By someone who knew Victoria’s home address. None of her neighbors knew her home address, so it had to be someone at work. Crucially, only someone with access to her personnel file could know that her house was called the Tiny Taj. Victoria never told anyone that. You and three others were the only ones left at CAW. You were the only one with access to her personnel file. There was a partial print on the inside of the envelope itself, and I’ll bet if I took it to the police they’d find it matched your fingerprints.”

“That’s impossible,” Klimmer said angrily.

“It’s impossible that there was a print on the envelope? Impossible because you used gloves? Is that right, Mr. Klimmer? Perhaps we’ll let the police decide that.”

Klimmer groaned. The bluff had worked. He wasn’t used to this sort of thing. He was no informer, or blackmailer. He really thought that he had screwed up somehow and left a print. He frowned in disbelief.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I should never have sent that letter, I should never have got involved,” he said, putting his head in his hands.

John opened his mouth to speak, but I shook my head at him. We had to go very carefully now.

“Mr. Klimmer, I feel you wanted me to find you. You wanted this. The mere fact that you postmarked this in Boulder. That you sent it at all. You wanted someone to come looking for you, to investigate. Please, Mr. Klimmer, tell me what you know,” I said.

“Oh, God, I don’t know anything, not really, not anything,” he said.

“Mr. Klimmer, you liked Victoria and you seem to know that the man the police are holding didn’t kill her. You think you know who did kill her, so tell me. You sent the note because you didn’t want him to get away with it. Tell me who did it, tell me what you know. I’ll take care of everything, you won’t have to be involved.”

Klimmer looked at me and then at John, went to the kitchen, took a drink, and came back with another full glass of brandy. His eyes suddenly bleary, red, tired.

“What if I ask you to leave right now?” he said.

“We’ll go straight to the police,” I said.

“Damn it,” Klimmer said, taking a gulp from his glass. “I am so stupid, I’ll be next. He’s killed two people. I’ll be next. What was I thinking? I should have stayed out of it. I should have stayed on for a couple of months and then resigned. It would have been ok. Work till Christmas, say I don’t like the new atmosphere, quit. I had to stick my stupid nose in.”

“Who has killed two people?” I asked.

“Are you taping this?” he said suddenly, his eyes wild. He stood up awkwardly. He came over to John and patted him down, then he lurched to the other side of the balcony, did the same to me.

“No wire, your word against mine,” he said with triumph, his tall frame blotting out the sun.

“Mr. Klimmer, take a seat, we’re not taping you, we want to help. Now tell me who has killed two people?” I said very softly.

“One of them. One of them,” Klimmer muttered, sitting, wiping his mouth.

“Who are you talking about?”

“One of them, one of the brothers,” he said with irritation, his knuckles white around his brandy glass.

“The Mulhollands?”

“Yes, the Mulhollands, of course the Mulhollands, who else? Either Charles or Robert, I don’t know which one, but it is one of them, that’s the only possibility.”

I sipped my brandy and remained silent. I had to go easy, tease out the information, slowly, deliberately.

“Mr. Klimmer, why don’t you start at the beginning? Tell us everything.”

“The beginning. Ha. You don’t know,” he said, smiling sadly.

“Tell me about Victoria,” I said.

“Victoria, oh, God … She was charming. We got on wonderfully. She couldn’t sleep. Woke up a lot at night. I bought her a Go-to-Sleep Sheep. It played ‘Beautiful Dreamer.’”

“Ok, go on, please.”

“I suppose I was almost jealous when the brothers wanted her to work for them, too, coordinating the move, before that, you see, she worked for me. She was sweet. Charles and Robert probably just wanted her around. She didn’t have the experience to do all that stuff with the move. She did mass mailings for me.”

“She was killed because one of them was in love with her?” I asked.

“No, why don’t you listen? Robert wasn’t interested and Charles’s wife is Amber Mulholland. Have you seen her yet? Amber Mulholland. Believe me, he wasn’t going anywhere. Very beautiful. Drop-dead gorgeous. Even put Victoria in the shade.”

“So what if she’s beautiful?” John said. “That never bloody stopped anyone before. People cheated on Marilyn Monroe.”

“No one cheats on Amber Mulholland, but anyway, this is way off the point. We’re not talking about an affair. No one had a goddamn affair with Victoria,” Klimmer said testily.

“How can you be so sure?” John said, and I glared at him.

“No, no, no, if you would just listen. It was the stupid move to Denver. Victoria would never have seen the accounts. She’d be alive today,” Klimmer said with marked irritation. He was a little spiky now, jumping out of his skin. Pale, sweating.

“Mr. Klimmer, take it easy, you’re going to tell me everything very slowly,” I said.

“I need a drink,” Klimmer said, draining his glass.

“John, get the man another brandy,” I said, giving him Klimmer’s glass. “Just a small one, John.”

John went, made a large one, brought it back. Klimmer took it greedily.

“There we go, the sun’s setting, now we’ll see some stuff,” Klimmer said.

“Just start at the beginning,” I said again softly.

“The beginning again. Ok. Victoria kept a computer diary. The only people who had access to her office were Charles, Robert, and myself. I didn’t kill her, so it had to be one of them. You see?”

“Or both of them,” John said, looking at me. I shook my head at him again. I didn’t need him bloody interrupting.

“Tell me more,” I said.

“Victoria was helping me coordinate the move. She had a lot of new responsibilities. One of them was to close down our bank accounts in Boulder and open new ones in Denver. We were with the Bank of Boulder, it was too small, anyway. We should have done that years ago.”

“Mr. Klimmer, back to Victoria,” I said.

“She noticed some sort of discrepancy, a payment problem. Victoria was discreet. It had come from an account owned by CAW but only accessible to Charles and Robert. They’re not as rich as you would think, did you know that? Obviously millionaires and their father is a billionaire, but their trust income is tiny. CAW pays them a good salary and Charles is a partner in his firm, but clearly it wasn’t enough to pay Houghton. You see?”

“I don’t see, who is Houghton?”

“He probably thought they had more money than they really had. Everyone does. It’s part of their image. Look at Charles. He’s a successful lawyer, but that doesn’t put him in Bill Gates territory. Right? You understand now? Not if he’s being asked to pay millions.”

“Who’s paying millions?” I asked, desperate for Klimmer to slow down a bit.

“One of the brothers. Maybe both, I don’t know. The point is, they’re wealthy, but not wealthy enough. But that’s fine, you see, because obviously they began tapping the CAW accounts, get it? You see what I am saying?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Klimmer, but I don’t see. Who’s Houghton? What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You should pay attention then. It’s ok for Charles or Robert to take money from the CAW account for purposes related to the organization, but those sums have to be itemized, accounted for. CAW is a charity, not a slush fund. The thing is, these payments didn’t show up in the accounts. Money had been withdrawn and not entered as expenditure and, worse, it had been paid not to an institution but to an individual named Houghton. Victoria tracked the payments over two years. It was more than a million dollars. It worried her. She came to me, I was her boss.”

“What did you do?”

“I told her to forget it. I told her it was none of her business. I told her it was none of our business. That CAW was Charles and Robert Mulholland’s baby and if they wanted to pay their contractor or their fucking driver or gay lover or whatever out of CAW money, it didn’t matter. I said that she was very young, and she had a lot to learn and she should concentrate on her job and forget she ever saw those payments. I meant it too, I was only looking out for her.”

“What did she do then?”

“She took my advice. She took no further action, but Victoria was a smart girl and she wanted to protect herself.”

“How?”

“She said she was going to keep a journal so that if we ever got audited or investigated she’d be in the clear.”

“What did you say to that?”

“I hit the ceiling. I told her that she couldn’t leave a paper trail, that that was how they fucking got Nixon.”

“And what did she say?” I asked.

“She told me it was the only way she could stay at CAW,” Klimmer said sorrowfully.

“And you wanted her to stay, you liked her, you liked her very much.”

“I wanted her to stay. I said fine, keep your journal, but not on paper, encrypt it on your computer and leave me out of it and never mention it to me or anyone else again.”

“And what then?”

“She was murdered,” Klimmer said, fear creeping into his voice and eyes.

“That doesn’t prove Charles or Robert did it,” I said.

“Don’t you listen? Only Charles, Robert, and myself had access to her office.”

“The cleaning lady? The secretaries. The sandwich delivery boy. I’m sure there were more people in her office than that.”

“Yeah, sure, the sandwich boy did it, Mrs. Mulholland did it when she was playing secret Santa. The electrician fixing the lights decided to risk his job, break into a stranger’s computer, read Victoria’s journal, brutally kill her, and frame a Mexican for it. Listen to me, you idiot. Only Charles and Robert had access to the private bank account records. Only Charles and Robert could have accessed her computer journal. Don’t you see?”

“Frankly, I don’t,” I said.

Klimmer pursed his lips, bit his tongue, stood, sat down again. He was exasperated. Angry.

“Why can’t you understand this? Whatever brother was making the payments must have noticed that someone had been looking into the private bank account. I don’t know, an access log, a trace back. In any case, it could only have been Victoria. He must have found that she’d been looking at the account, checked her computer, and then discovered her journal. Killed her. Fraud on this level would mean jail time, public disgrace.”

“I don’t know, it’s not enough to kill someone,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I thought so too for a while. For a couple of days, I almost believed that cock-and-bull story about the break-in at Victoria’s place. That is, until Alan Houghton disappeared. And Alan Houghton, my dear Mr. Jones, was the man who was receiving the payments, the one getting the money from the secret account. The police found his car abandoned near Lookout Mountain. It was on the local news. I remembered the name. He’s vanished off the face of the Earth. Call the cops if you don’t believe me. Missing persons. Never find him, know why? Because he’s dead. Do you see now, the man who killed Victoria killed him, too. Don’t you see that that’s why Victoria had to die? Because Alan Houghton’s murder had already been planned. He disappeared the same night Victoria was killed.”

“It’s possible,” I said, and nodded. Klimmer had been clever. Maybe he was right. This Houghton person was getting payments from one or perhaps both of the brothers. Blackmailing them? A million dollars. That’s not nothing. Maybe the demands were going up. The murderer had had enough. He had been getting ready to kill him. He had already planned out Houghton’s whole death. But then Victoria had been put in charge of closing the bank accounts. She had found out about the illegal payments. The killer discovered that someone had seen the secret accounts, reckoned it was Victoria, checked her computer. Made a decision.

I would have to check out who Alan Houghton was and whether he had really disappeared. If there actually was a missing persons report. If so, things might be fitting nicely into place. Perhaps whichever brother did it had left some physical evidence at the murder scene, or perhaps at Alan Houghton’s house. The police could find out. Undoubtedly, the killer would have swept his trail, destroyed Victoria’s computer, wiped the accounts evidence, scoured Houghton’s apartment, but there might be something left. The police would need some convincing that they had arrested the wrong man, that the real killer was a respected and influential member of the community, but Klimmer was a convincing person. He had convinced me.

“What happened to Victoria’s computer?”

“Oh, it disappeared, believe me, I looked, I was told it had probably been sent back for repairs. Likely story.”

“But you said Victoria’s computer journal was encrypted, how could they have broken the encryption?”

“I don’t know, both brothers went to Harvard, they’re sharp, I really don’t know. Victoria told me she had encrypted the files herself, maybe she did it wrong.”

“Maybe she did it right, the brothers never found out about her, and she was killed for some other reason,” John said.

“Maybe a million things, I’m telling you what I know, someone killed her and I think I know who,” Klimmer said angrily. A tic in his left eye now. He fought it down.

I needed him to be a lot calmer. I needed him to come with me to the police station. We had to get him there while he was in a cooperative mood. Tonight, tomorrow, soon. Perhaps we could have this wrapped up quicker than any of us hoped.

The killer had undoubtedly been clever but had already made one dreadful mistake. He had completely discounted the possibility that Victoria had told someone of her suspicions, assuming she had not. But how could he have been so sure of her? He must have known her intimately. Maybe, despite what Klimmer said, he’d even been having an affair with her. So why not try and buy her off? Why resort to murder? No, he’d known Victoria was not the type. And he was putting a stop to the rot, ending the blackmail. He couldn’t afford to have around someone else who knew — someone who could start the blackmail again. And he couldn’t set her up as a fall guy, he didn’t want her speaking, telling her side. She had to be got rid of. Doubling her salary and posting her to South America wouldn’t work. He knew Victoria and he knew if ever she was asked, she would tell the truth. That was my girl, honest, smart, beautiful. He had seen all that and had chosen to end her life.

“Tell me about Charles and Robert Mulholland,” I said.

“They both have doctorates in some pointless social science thing, Charles has a law degree. Grew up rich in Boulder. Robert never had a proper job. Never worked a day in his life. Charles became an attorney with Cutter and May. A firm here. He worked in environmental law. They both wrote for those magazines, you know, Commentary, The National Review, that kind of paper. One of them had a brainchild to found an environmental group, get start-up dough from Daddy, I told you this before—”

“Tell me again, please.”

“Ok, so they set up CAW. Charles got made partner at Cutter and May and when CAW really started to take off, everyone benefited. I believe they have political ambitions. That’s why we’re moving the office to Denver, plus Daddy has remarried, so who knows, maybe they’re worried about the will,” Klimmer said with a leer, wiping brandy off his thin lips with a big clumsy paw.

“How long have you worked for them?” I asked.

Klimmer drank some more of his brandy, went to the kitchen, crashed something down on a tabletop, groaned, came back with the bottle.

“You know what I think?” he said.

“What?”

“I think I’m done with these fucking stupid questions, that’s what I think,” he said bellicosely.

“Well, Mr. Klimmer, don’t get—”

“I think I’ve told you more than enough, in fact, I’ve told you far too much,” he said loudly.

I nodded.

“Mr. Klimmer, you have been very cooperative and I’m very grateful. I, I suspect we’ll just have to do this one more time.”

“No more times,” Klimmer said, laughing, slurring his words. He sat down heavily, dropped the bottle, brandy spilling everywhere.

“Mr. Klimmer, you know we’re going to have to go to the police with this information,” I said.

“Go, I don’t care, I’ll deny everything. I’ll deny I ever saw you. Margaret was on lunch, she can’t back up your story, you were never at CAW today. You never came here. Don’t you see, if he can kill Victoria and Houghton he can kill me.”

“No, the police will protect you.”

“The police. The police can’t do anything. I don’t know what I was thinking. I never told you anything. I never saw you. I never fucking saw you,” he said, raising his voice and gripping the sides of his chair. He pointed his finger at me and shook his head.

“Ok, Mr. Klimmer, well, look, I think we’ll go, we’ll discuss this tomorrow,” I began.

“We’re discussing nothing tomorrow, I make a huge mistake, I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought I wanted someone to come looking for me, but I was wrong. Goddamnit, you tricked me, you tricked me. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I invented the whole thing. No, I never saw you.”

“Mr. Klimmer—”

“You weren’t here, you made it all up,” Klimmer said, angrily, on the verge of hysteria. It was time to leave, we had to let him calm down. I gave John the nod.

John tried to get up.

“Where are you going?” Klimmer said, furiously, “what are you doing? I’m not going with you. Sit down, sit down, I tell you.”

Klimmer was right on the edge. We had pushed it too far. Shouldn’t have come here again today. This was a catch to be taken easy, on a light line, not brutally hauled in. Tomorrow morning, the three of us walking to the police station together. Bad call hounding him again today.

Klimmer got up and backed away from us. He was furious. He looked unhinged. More than just the drink. He slapped himself on the face. Made a fist. John was standing right next to him on the balcony. Three chairs, me and two big guys, we could barely fit at the best of times. Now, with all of us standing, it was crowded, horribly tense.

“Back off,” he shouted at John. “I’m not going with you.”

“Calm down, mate, we’re leaving you alone, we’re not touching you,” John said.

“I don’t know who you are, leave me alone,” Klimmer said, his body shaking with fury. Was he drunk? Was he having a breakdown? All those pent-up weeks, knowing what he knew, and now it was released. Now it was all coming out, his anger, his fear, his love for the dead girl. His fury at the spoiled rich kid who had killed her. And it was John and me who had stirred these emotions in him. Somehow we were the enemy.

The veins throbbed in his head, his pale skin had turned red.

“Leave me alone,” he yelled at John, standing a few inches from him, his face almost up against John’s.

“Steady on, mate,” John said.

“Everything’s fine,” I assured him.

But his eyes were wild. His cheeks crimson, then white, then ashen. He bit his lip. He bit it until it bled.

“Get out, get out, both of you, I don’t know anything.”

“We’re leaving,” I said, and started backing away, except there was nowhere to back to.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Klimmer said.

“It’s ok, everything’s fine,” I said. “Come on, John, we’re leaving.”

“Go, leave, now,” Klimmer said.

John turned his back and began squeezing past the chair, trying to go back into the living room. Klimmer shoved him. John grabbed Klimmer’s hand. Klimmer shoved him again.

It all happened in slow motion now. Time paused on its journey to eternity. I don’t know what John was doing. Steadying himself? Shoving Klimmer back? What did Klimmer think? That John was trying to grab him, trying to wrestle him to the ground as a precursor to frog-marching him to the police station? He punched John, hit him in the throat, started shoving him back into the seat, John reacted violently, pushed Klimmer away from him. Klimmer snarled, went for John again, grabbed at his collar, John pushed Klimmer off him. Harder this time. Cop fashion. Aggressive. John had big shoulders. Klimmer was all height, but John had bulk, too. The balcony was very narrow. Too crowded. Klimmer six-five, six-six, with that high center of gravity. The rail came up only to the top of his hips. I could see it before it happened. I reached out my hand.

Klimmer stumbled. The momentum carried him into and onto the balcony rail. He toppled backward, lay horizontal on the rail for a fraction of a second.

“John,” I said in a frozen whisper.

Klimmer clawed the air. John made a grab for him but Klimmer had lost his balance, the momentum carrying him tumbling over the balcony. He fell at a rate of thirty-two feet per second per second, his eyes stunned, his mouth open, his voice gone. He had, perhaps, a second to prepare himself. He landed on his feet but his femurs burst out through his knees. His internal organs smashed into one another. Parts of his brain liquefied inside his skull. The body snapped and crumpled sickeningly on the concrete path. He died instantly without uttering a sound.