Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

“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 Money had been withdrawn and not entered as expenditure and, worse, it had been paid not to an institution but to an individual named Houghton.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—”