Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

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.”