Always Time to Die

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Yikers,” Carly muttered, bracing herself on the dashboard when the truck bucked.

  “Yeah. We’ll have to remember that one on the way out.”

  The windshield wipers moved sluggishly, compacting snow to the side of the rubber blades. The truck turned around the toe of Castillo Ridge and headed into the valley that held the Quintrell ranch. Gradually the snow squall thinned and vanished. The sky showed a few pale ribbons of blue and a glow where the sun was shrouded in clouds.

  Except for security lights along the driveway and walkways, all of the ranch buildings were dark despite the gloomy day.

  “Looks like Lucia was right,” Carly said. “Sunday is everyone’s day off.”

  Lucia had been very glad that Carly and Dan didn’t want to see her, so glad that she’d chattered on for several minutes before Dan could gracefully hang up.

  Dan pulled up to the front of the house and turned off the engine. “Ready?”

  “Even with Winifred’s permission, I feel like a thief.”

  “That’s why we’re going to go right up to the front door, turn on all the lights, and in general behave like lords of the manor.”

  Carly got out with her digital camera, computer, and a box in case she found anything really interesting to take with her. Dan followed, carrying his own electronic equipment in a suitcase. She’d watched while he packed what looked to her like at least one hard drive, various cables and connections, a portable computer, a beefy camera, and some stuff she couldn’t identify. All she knew for sure was that he’d spent fifteen minutes on the cell phone with some people from St. Kilda Consulting before they left Taos.

  “You start in Winifred’s room,” Dan said.

  “Then Sylvia’s room, then the Senator’s office,” Carly said. “I remember. What are you going to be doing?”

  “You didn’t ask that question.”

  Carly thought about it, started to object, and thought about it again. “What question?”

  She went to Winifred’s room, flipping on every light she could reach along the way.

  As soon as Carly disappeared, Dan pulled on exam gloves. Without turning on any lights, he walked quickly to the Senator’s office, booted up the office computer, got past the laughable security in less than three minutes, and began copying the contents of the ranch’s hard drive onto the one he’d brought with him.

  While the computers were mating, he went through the desk with a competence that would have made Carly really nervous. Nothing caught his eye. No keys to files. No P.O. Box keys. Nothing but the usual paper clips and pens. The file folders were empty of everything except a few invitations to attend local groundbreakings. The most recent was nine months old.

  With economical motions Dan examined the few books in the office. Decoration only. No papers slipped inside the pages, no pages dog-eared, nothing hidden beneath the endpapers. The closet held only supplies. The locked filing cabinet came unlocked in a few seconds and had neatly bound files with SCANNED IN stamped across them. Apparently the ranch records were fully computerized.

  That would make his work a lot easier. Quicker, too.

  Dan went back to the computers, saw that they were still passing bytes from one to the other, and went to the end of the house where Melissa and Pete had their apartment. The glassed-in walkway was frigid. The locked door could have been opened by a monkey with a credit card. No office, just a master bedroom. The dresser drawers were stuffed with the usual things. Nothing had been taped underneath. Nothing surprising was between the mattresses or under the bed. The closet had clothes, shoes, boots, shoe boxes…

  Bingo.

  One of those shoe boxes was bound with a new rubber band. The box was worn at the corners and the lid was broken. Carefully Dan pulled out the box and took off the lid. There was a batch of postcards, letters, and photos inside.

  He laid everything out on the bed in the order it had come from the shoe box. Then he flipped on the lights and began photographing. The Nikon digital camera he used had a built-in wireless connection to his computer. The wireless was good for four hundred feet. The Senator’s office was a lot closer than that. He photographed the front and back side of every item from the box.

  As soon as he had the last image, he flipped everything over again, stacked it in the same order he’d found it inside the box, slipped the worn lid into place, snapped on the rubber band, and replaced the shoe box precisely as he’d found it. Each of his motions was quick, economical, and spoke of practice. A lot of it. What the Feds hadn’t taught him, other members of St. Kilda Consulting had.

  He turned off the lights and headed for the Senator’s office again. The computers were finished. He disconnected his own, instructed the Senator’s to forget it had ever been booted up, shut it down, and positioned the computer exactly within the faint rectangle of clean desktop where he’d found it.

  The maids were getting careless about dusting. No surprise there. Nobody but Pete and Melissa lived here anymore.

  As soon as Dan checked that the documents he’d photographed had been received by his computer, he packed everything into the suitcase and headed out for his truck. He swapped the suitcase for a tool belt with a battery-powered drill and a selection of twenty-four-inch bits which had been designed for drilling through everything from concrete to steel. There were several small containers from Genedyne Lab held like oversize bullets in the loops of the tool belt.

  Dan grabbed the pick and shovel from the bed of the truck and headed for the Quintrell graveyard.

  TAOS

  MONDAY AFTERNOON

  62

  HUNCHED AGAINST WIND AND BLOWING SNOW, GUS KNOCKED HARD ON THE DOOR of Dan’s rental and simultaneously turned the doorknob. It was locked, even though his truck was out front. Gus shook his head. His brother was the only person he knew who locked his doors when he was home.

  “Dan, it’s Gus! I’m freezing my butt off out here!”

  Thirty long, miserable seconds later, the front door opened. Carly peeked out, stepped aside, and slammed the door shut again one second after Gus got in the living room. Even so, Carly heard Dan swearing as various genealogical charts and papers went flying, courtesy of a frigid gust of wind.

  “Sorry,” Gus said. He gestured to the boarded-over window. “What happened?”

  “Brick meets glass. Glass breaks,” Dan said. “Snarky renter gets plywood and covers the hole.”

  “Somebody deliberately broke your window?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did the sheriff say?” Gus asked.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Carly said, disgusted. “I don’t think we bothered him with that incident.”

  “We didn’t,” Dan said, “because there were others we did report and he didn’t care. That’s why she’s living here rather than at the ranch.”

  “Dang, and here I was getting ready for nieces or—”

  “Gus, shut up,” Dan cut in.

  Gus made muffled sounds like he was talking around a hand over his mouth.

  Carly snickered.

  Dan shot his brother a green glance that was halfway from amused to outright irritated.

  “Okay, okay,” Gus said. He turned to Carly. “When my older—much, much older—brother gets that look in his eyes, he’s about to kick something. I don’t want it to be me.” He reached inside his snow jacket and pulled out a big envelope with the newspaper’s logo on it. “This is a list of all the children in the area who were born within ten months of a visit from the Senator. The ones with an asterisk by the file name were born to women of the right age to attract the Senator.”

  “Puberty to menopause?” Carly asked.

  “Near as I can tell, he didn’t have many women who were over twenty-nine,” Gus said. “Certainly none who looked it. The older he got, the younger he liked them, if you can believe gossip.”

  Carly thought of the picture of the middle-aged Senator with his hand on his thirteen-year-old daughter’s leg. “Oh, I can believe it. What I
can’t believe is that nobody ever called him on it.”

  “Just one of the prerogatives of power,” Dan said.

  “Like leaving office richer than when you went in?” she retorted.

  “Just like it.” Dan opened the envelope, saw the CD he’d loaned his brother, plus a new CD. “How many names?”

  “Didn’t count,” Gus said cheerfully. “Too many. We’re a fertile bunch in Taos.”

  “You see Mom lately?” Dan asked.

  “This morning.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s pretty shocked about losing Pete and Melissa, but—”

  “Losing?” Carly interrupted, startled. “Did the governor fire them?”

  Gus looked from one to the other. “You don’t know.” It was a statement, not a question. “They were killed in a car accident yesterday on the way into town.”

  Carly just stared at him.

  “Where?” Dan asked flatly.

  “Do you know where the ranch road comes around the toe of Castillo Ridge and winds back along it on the way to the highway?”

  Carly stopped breathing.

  “I know it,” Dan said. “What happened?”

  “They must have been running late, because Pete was going along too fast. He hit ice, lost it, and went over the edge. They weren’t found until early this morning. The Sneads were coming in with some emergency supplies for the line cabins, so if someone got lost they could survive until help came.”

  Dan nodded. It was a common, and decent, thing for ranchers to do.

  “The Sneads saw light glowing under the snow at the bottom of the ridge, on the town side. It was headlights. They went down and found Melissa.” Gus shook his head. “Took them a while to find Pete, about a hundred yards uphill from the truck. He must not have worn a seat belt. If the wind hadn’t been blowing snow around, and Jim’s dog hadn’t had a good nose, no one would have found Pete until spring.”

  “What does the sheriff have to say about it?” Dan asked.

  “There hasn’t been a formal autopsy yet, but all the injuries look like what you’d expect from a nasty wreck. Why?”

  Carly barely heard. All she could think of was the sniper on Castillo Ridge, able to fire toward the ranch or toward the far side of the ridge.

  She looked at Dan.

  He shook his head slightly. “Thanks for all your help, Gus. Now go back and spend time with your family. Give them all hugs for me, okay?”

  “Here’s my hat, what’s my hurry, is that it?” Gus asked Dan.

  “Yes. Don’t call me, Gus. Don’t be seen with me. And I’d stay clear of Mom, too. Just for a while.”

  “What’s going on?” Gus demanded.

  “I don’t know. Until I do, stay away from me, and from her.”

  “What about Carly?” Gus asked.

  “Same goes,” she said in a low voice. “Stay away. Think of it as a temporary quarantine.” At least I hope it’s temporary.

  “Please,” Dan said to his brother. “Think of your kids.”

  “You’re serious.” Gus stared at his brother. “You’re really serious.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Mom know?”

  “Don’t ask her,” Dan said. “Don’t ask anyone. Don’t trust anyone.”

  “Even—”

  “Anyone,” Dan said curtly.

  Gus blew out a breath, turned, and stalked to the front door. “See you around, bro. And when I do, you’d better have an explanation for me. A good one.”

  The door closed behind him. Hard.

  TAOS

  MONDAY AFTERNOON

  63

  CARLY STARED AT THE FRONT DOOR, THEN AT DAN. “ARE YOU THINKING WHAT I’M thinking?” she asked.

  “That somebody could be getting away with murder around here?” he said.

  “Isn’t it the only statute that doesn’t have any limitations?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I’m having a tough time connecting the past with the present.”

  “So am I. There are too many people who hated the Senator, and too many good reasons for someone to kill him. Or…”

  “What?”

  “Blackmail him.”

  “Does that help us?”

  “Just one more handful of pieces that don’t fit anywhere. Why?”

  Carly frowned. “When I get to this point in a genealogy, too many facts and no coherent pattern, I stop and take another approach, another way of looking at or getting to information.”

  Dan nodded. It was what he did, too. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it just confused the issue more. Either way, it was a new wall to beat against.

  “What if we approach this a different way?” Carly asked slowly. “What if we assume that Winifred wasn’t clinical on the subject of the Senator and the Senator’s son? So we assume there was a rational aspect to her hatred.”

  Dan went still. “Go on.”

  “What if we also assume that your grandmother was more than a pathological liar and an addict? That maybe she knew what she was talking about, at least some of the time? Again, a possible rational basis for her actions.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “That’s a stretch.”

  “Wait.”

  Carly went to the bedroom, returned with her recorder, and found what she wanted on the second try. Diana Duran’s voice whispered into the room, followed by Dan’s.

  “It’s happening again.”

  “What is?”

  “Evil. Death that shouldn’t have been. My mother, screaming and laughing, then just screaming.”

  “Why was she screaming?”

  “Because the dead walk among the living. I know this for truth. My mother’s friend saw it. Susan. She told my mother and my mother told me. My mother saw the ghost of another man. A dead man walking, using the name of life. Two days later she was dead.”

  Then Carly’s voice, gently questioning, “What other man did she see?”

  “Cain.”

  After a moment, Dan’s voice asked another question.

  Diana’s haunted voice answered. “I remember. I remember the exact words. They live in my dreams. Nightmares. She said, ‘The dead walk and eat at my father’s ranch. Cain lives and Abel is dead.’”

  Carly stopped the recorder. “The Senator had two sons to speak of.”

  Dan looked at the envelope he still held. “And a lot he didn’t speak of.”

  “Is it possible that Josh killed his older brother?”

  Dan’s eyes narrowed. He went to his computer, called up files, searched. “Not likely. The newspaper articles about the Senator’s valiant sons in Vietnam make it clear that Josh wasn’t there when the heir apparent was. In any case, there were witnesses to the older son’s death. Viet Cong. He died saving the lives of his fellow rangers. If he’d survived, he’d have so many medals he’d have a hard time standing up straight.”

  “Okay. So Cain and Abel aren’t an exact description.” Carly paused. “But what if one of the bastards—”

  “Somehow took the place of a legitimate son?” Dan cut in.

  “Yes.”

  “How? When?”

  She fiddled with a strand of her hair. “It would have to be after Sylvia had her stroke, or whatever happened to put her in a coma.”

  “Why?”

  “No way Sylvia would let the Senator put one of his bastards in the family line of succession.”

  “I agree. Especially if she thought he was shagging their daughter.”

  Carly winced. “Not to put too fine a point on it.”

  “There’s no nice way to talk about incest.”

  She let out a breath. “You’re right. I just find the whole idea hateful.”

  “I’d be worried if you didn’t.” Dan kissed her gently, then released her, only to find she didn’t let go.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot for a moment that your mother…”

  “Might be a child of incest?”

  Carly nodded.

  �
��That’s no one’s fault but the Senator’s, and he’s dead.”

  Dan led Carly back to the work area they’d set up. They were using the bed as a table, the card table as a computer center, and various cowhide chairs as storage units for files. The floor took the overflow.

  “Okay,” he said, feeling the excitement of the chase humming in his blood. Even if the ideas went nowhere, they went nowhere in new territory rather than trudging through the same old same old. “Following your assumptions, the switch had to take place no earlier than Sylvia’s stroke.”

  “Unless the switch was what set her off so that she jumped the Senator,” Carly said. “My point was simply that she wouldn’t have sat still for it.”

  “Agreed.”

  Dan sat down in front of one of the three computers they were using—two were his and one was hers. He woke up his own, which had a much more flexible program for retrieving data than Carly’s, and which now held everything about the Quintrell family that hers did. Plus the ranch records he hadn’t told her about yet.

  “At that time,” Dan said slowly, “Josh would have been about twenty-seven. Anyone doing a switch with him would have to be close in age and build. Probably no more than five years on either side, and an inch either way in height. Also, that person would have to have ‘died’ when the switch was made. So I’m looking for a male senatorial bastard who was between six feet and six feet two inches in height, and between twenty-two and thirty-two years old, who died a few years on either side of 1967. Death certificates don’t give height, so I’ll do the age thing first.”

  He pulled out the CD Gus had left, fed it into the slot, and downloaded it. Very quickly he was querying his data pool.

  “Vietnam,” Dan said after a moment. “Has to be.”

  “Where he died?”

  Dan nodded. “And where the switch was made. If there was a switch.”

  “If there wasn’t, our assumption will fall apart pretty fast, won’t it?”

  “You’d be surprised,” he said absently. “Assumption is the mother of all fuckups and has many children.”