Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

I stared at everyone while we sat. Mr. Patawasti looking a hundred years old. Colin: angry, impatient. Stephen: aloof, sad. Mrs. Patawasti: utterly destroyed.

“Would you like some tea, Alexander?” Mrs. Patawasti asked, her face deathly pale, her hair gray.

I shook my head. I was supposed to take charge here, ask the questions, but I wasn’t sure of the protocol, I hesitated, stumbled over words.

“Um, well, uh…”

Colin glared at me. His lips white with mounting fury.

“Look at him. Just look at the state of him. Can we end this farce now, please?” Colin said to his father.

Clearly, Colin remembered me as the screwed-up wiseass from school. And here I was confirming it all, looking like a wreck. Hadn’t I quit the police under mysterious circumstances? Didn’t I have money troubles, too? Now come like a vulture to exploit his parents’ grief.

“Colin, please,” Mrs. Patawasti said.

“Look at him, what can he do that the Denver police can’t?” Colin insisted.

“Um, Mr. Patawasti, you said in your phone call that there was an anonymous note. Maybe I could take a wee look at it, if you don’t mind,” I finally managed.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Mr. Patawasti said, standing, going upstairs. After he left, silence descended.

A clock ticking. The gables rattling. Victoria staring at me from the photograph. The unspoken person in the room so badly needed now, so adept at defusing a situation such as this.

“Sure you wouldn’t like some tea, Alex?” Mrs. Patawasti asked.

“I wouldn’t mind some tea now, please,” I said to give her something to do. She went to the kitchen.

Another long pause. Colin, Stephen, and I stared at the floor. Mr. Patawasti came back down. I took the note gratefully and examined it.

“Hmmm, very interesting,” I said. I knew I would have to bullshit them a bit to get the case. Not exactly ethical. But this was life and death.

“Why? How so? Constable Pollock said it was a crank,” Colin said.

I began slowly: “It says a lot. Obviously a great deal of thought went into this.”

“What are you talking about?” Colin interrupted. “Everyone agrees it’s a nutter.”

“No, I don’t think so. It’s a very deliberate piece of work. Taking the trouble to avoid fingerprints. And look at the mistake, ‘you’r’ instead of ‘your.’”

“Constable Pollock tells us it was an uneducated person,” Mrs. Patawasti said, coming back in with no tea.

“Aye, could be, but I don’t think so. I think that’s what he wants you to think. He wants you to think he’s stupid. He’s disguising himself by making a mistake, but would he (I say ‘he’ but of course it could be ‘she’) really make the mistake ‘you’r’ on a word-processed document? Most word processors have a spell check that would have caught that. The more common mistake is to mix up ‘your’ and ‘you’re,’ which a word processor won’t catch. Also, he doesn’t misuse the apostrophe after ‘daughter.’ I’d say that if he were an ignoramus, he would have blundered over the apostrophe first. You could say he was in a hurry, he didn’t have time to do a spell check. But it only takes a second and in any case this note was written with a great deal of consideration. An anonymous note about a murder. It’s not the sort of thing you dash off.”

“Ok, where does this get us then, Alex?” Colin asked a little less aggressively.

“Well, we want to know who wrote it. Someone that knew Victoria personally, someone who knows or suspects he knows who the killer is, someone who doesn’t believe the police have arrested the right man, someone educated enough to be worried about appearing too educated, so he makes a deliberate mistake in the anonymous note. I’d say someone who worked with Victoria or was a neighbor or close friend. He wants us to take an interest in this case and expose whoever did this crime but he’s not sure he wants to be involved. Do you still have the envelope it came in?”

“I think I threw it out,” Mrs. Patawasti said. “The RUC didn’t want to see it.”

However, she went into the back room and appeared with it a few minutes later. The envelope was more revealing than the note. A lot of times that’s the case. It was postmarked June 12 in Boulder, also slightly faded, and said:

Mr. Patawasti

The Tiny Taj

78 Empire Lane

Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim,

N. Ireland BT38 7JG

United Kingdom

“Any help, Alexander?” Mrs. Patawasti asked.

“Yes. Postmarked June the twelfth in Boulder. Your daughter was killed on June the fifth. The Denver police arrested their suspect two days after that. He thought about this for five days. He was frightened to reveal what he knew. He didn’t want to go to the police, but he wanted you to do something. To stir the pot, to lead the police in the right direction. He couldn’t do it — he’d be implicated because he’s already very close. Like I say, friend, neighbor, coworker. It’s interesting that Victoria lived in Denver, but commuted to her office in Boulder. Possibly a coworker,” I said.

“He could have just driven there, and posted it there,” Colin said sharply.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Victoria had an address book,” Mrs. Patawasti said.

“I’d like to see it,” I said.

“She didn’t know that many people, she didn’t have time to socialize much outside of work,” Colin said defensively.

“Well, I think we can eliminate some of the names. We know the writer owns or has fairly exclusive access to a computer. This isn’t the sort of thing you print out at the local library. I don’t want to leap to conclusions, but did you notice the way the note and the address were slightly faded?”

“I did,” Mr. Patawasti said.

“The cartridge was running out. Could it be that he didn’t know how to change the cartridge, that that was his secretary’s job?”

“You can’t know that,” Colin said.

“No,” I agreed. “Anyway, now I’d like to see her passport and her letters, the things that were in her apartment with her home address on them.”

With a heavy sadness, Mrs. Patawasti brought the meager box of things I wanted. I skimmed through them, saw what I needed. I knew I was on to something. Something significant.

“And do you still have an unlisted phone number?” I asked, remembering the frantic time eight years ago when I had temporarily lost her number.

“It’s not listed, so what?” Colin said.

“Well, it’s the name of the house. Victoria would never have told anyone that this house was called the ‘Tiny Taj.’ It embarrassed her. It’s not on any of her letters or her passport, or other personal items. The post office doesn’t give out addresses. So how could anyone know? It’s not here on any of her documents. When you wrote to her, did you put the name of the house on the sender’s address?” I asked.

Everyone turned to Mrs. Patawasti.

“No, I never write Tiny Taj, or mention it,” she said, “it is embarrassing.”

“So how could anyone know that this house is called the Tiny Taj? Victoria would never have told anyone. I’ll bet the only way someone could know was if he had access to her personnel file at work and saw it written there as her full postal address. She would never have spoken about it, but she might have written her full home address on her personnel file. It would fit. And who could know that but someone who worked with her in Boulder and had access to her file? It’s just a guess, but I’d say if you were to go to her office and ask around, you might be close to finding who wrote the note.”

I put the note and envelope and the effects down on the coffee table. A little silence. Some of it had been flimflam, but some of it real enough. Colin unfolded his arms. Mr. Patawasti’s face broke into a little half smile. I’d impressed them. Like I’d been trying to do.