Always Time to Die

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “A chip off the rotten old block.”

  Dan’s smile wasn’t pleasant. “Yeah. No wonder Mom was too frightened by the past to talk about it.”

  “Do you think she knows?”

  “I—” He stopped abruptly and pulled the buzzing, vibrating cell phone out of his pocket. The caller was from Genedyne. “Duran here,” he said into the phone. “What do you have for me?”

  “Do you have a pen and paper,” Cheryl said, “or do you trust your memory?”

  “Both.”

  “All females share the same mtDNA, with a very minor variation in the fourth female. Perfectly normal. Nothing stays the same forever. And I went the whole nine yards on this one. The chance of these women not being from the same mtDNA line isn’t worth mentioning. Probably within the same three- or four-generation group.”

  “Translation?” Dan asked, writing quickly on a tablet.

  “Same grandmother or great-grandmother. As far as mtDNA goes, they could have been sisters. When you throw in the Y-DNA it turns out you have two sisters and two daughters.”

  Dan wrote quickly.

  “The male sample you sent me has precisely the same Y-DNA as two of the female samples. Ergo, they’re his daughter.”

  Dan’s eyes narrowed. Not unexpected, but not nice. The Senator indeed had had a child with his daughter, and that child was Dan’s mother.

  “Got it,” Dan said. “Is the second male sample done yet?”

  “Just finished.”

  His pulse kicked. “And?”

  “Definite match for mtDNA on mother’s side and Y-DNA on father’s side.”

  Dan couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “What? You’re certain?”

  “It’s my job, sweetie. I’m certain. And considering the stature of the people involved, I’m really certain.”

  “Well, shit.” He rubbed his eyes wearily. “Send me e-files of the tests on all subjects.”

  “Can I take a coffee break first? I’ve been working fourteen straight hours.”

  “Go ahead,” Dan said. “And thanks.”

  He was talking to a dead phone. Cheryl had disconnected.

  “You don’t look happy,” Carly said.

  “I’m not. A bulldozer just drove through our beautiful circumstantial web and ripped it to atoms.”

  “What?”

  “Josh Quintrell is Sylvia’s son.”

  TAOS

  TUESDAY NOON

  66

  THE SOUND OF HELICOPTERS RATTLED THE SILENCE OF THE SNOWY PASTURES AND penetrated through ancient adobe walls.

  “World War III?” Carly asked sardonically.

  Dan glanced away from his computer, where he was writing reports, and looked at her. She looked flat, exhausted, and altogether on the losing side of the war. He looked and felt the same way. That will teach me to fall in love with a glittery chain of circumstantial evidence.

  “Probably the governor and the press corps heading for the ranch for the ‘intimate’ interview they’ve been promoting every fifteen minutes for the last four hours.”

  Carly grimaced. Dan’s TV was small, but loud. She had heard every single word of every single promo for Jansen Worthy’s exclusive interview with Governor Josh Quintrell at the home ranch, with hints of a breathtaking exclusive announcement, exclusively on this channel, exclusively for you.

  “You’re a masochist,” she told Dan, gesturing at the TV.

  “It helps to remind me of just how wrong circumstantial evidence can be. And it reinforces the roll of coincidence and randomness in everyday life.” He shook his head. “Gotta admit, it’s the first time my instinct for patterns has led me so far astray. Like to a whole different universe.”

  “I was with you every step of the way.”

  He smiled crookedly at her. “Best part of the trip.”

  His cell phone rang. He looked at the window and switched to message text.

  Open your e-mail, sweetie.

  “Anything interesting?”

  “I’m guessing it’s the Genedyne file of test results.”

  “Print them, okay?”

  “Now who’s the masochist?” he asked.

  “Except for your mother’s results, they’re part of the history Winifred paid for.”

  Dan opened his e-mail and started printing stuff that looked like nothing he’d seen before. “If you can understand this, you can be a computer programmer.”

  “I’ll leave that to you.” She collected the tests results, labeled each with the name of the person.

  Carly spread the charts out on the bed. The Senator and Josh shared the same Y-DNA to the limit of testing ability. He was the Senator’s son. She pulled out the mtDNA for Sylvia and Josh, compared them, and sighed. A very slight variation in haplotype number, the kind of subtle, meaningless mutation that happened in the DNA of a germ cell.

  “Well, damn,” she muttered.

  “Hoping Cheryl was wrong?” Dan asked.

  “Yes.”

  “She wasn’t.”

  Carly didn’t bother to answer. She lined up Sylvia’s and Winifred’s results and checked the haplotype number. Exactly the same. The mutation in the mtDNA had occurred in Sylvia’s germ cell and was passed to her son, where it stopped. Unless it was also passed on to her daughter, Liza…

  After shifting papers quickly, Carly had Liza and Sylvia together. Their haplotype sequence was precisely the same.

  “Okay,” Carly muttered. “One got it and one didn’t, which means the mutation was limited to one egg. So Diana won’t have it.”

  Carly put the last chart in place and looked at it.

  And looked again.

  Then she started twisting a strand of hair around her finger.

  “What is it?” Dan asked.

  She shifted some of the sheets around without answering. Then she picked up a yellow marking pen and began highlighting parts of each chart.

  “Carly?”

  “The haplotypes—”

  “English, please,” he cut in.

  She looked up. “That’s going to be tough. Like putting a computer program into English.”

  “Give it a try.”

  “Y-DNA, mtDNA, any DNA is just a series of sequences of compounds. The makeup and order of those compounds determines if you get a man, a woman, an elephant, or a guppy.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Apparently there are a lot of nonsense sequences in germ cell DNA, sequences that don’t appear to do anything to the final organism. Some of those nonsense sequences are called haplotypes. Every so often a mutation will occur when a sequence is being reproduced and you’ll have two identical sequences where before you just had one. And if my genetics professor could hear me now, he’d be tearing out his hair with all the stuff I’m not mentioning.”

  “Keep skimming the surface,” Dan said, smiling.

  Carly blew out a frustrated breath. “The change in the sequence is passed along to the next generation. To way oversimplify, you have a haplotype 5 where you had a haplotype 4, that is, five repeats of a specific sequence instead of four, but nothing material changes in the organism that is born. It’s a mutation that doesn’t matter to anyone but geneticists. Still with me?”

  “Just don’t give me a pop quiz.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Hey, you’re the one who asked me to explain. I’m doing my best.”

  “I’m listening, Carolina May.”

  She looked at his intent, intensely green eyes and believed him. “The numbers going down the right-hand column on each page of the sheets are various mtDNA haplotype sequences. Winifred’s and Sylvia’s and Liza’s are exactly the same through all haplotype sequences. The Senator’s is very different, of course. He got his mtDNA from his own mother. Josh got his from Sylvia. See this number? Then this one?”

  Dan leaned down to look at a highlighted number. “It’s not the same.”

  “Right. All the other haplotype sequences are a dead match except for that one, which means there was a
mutation in Sylvia’s germ cell that was passed on to her son, Josh.”

  “What about Liza?”

  “Nope. But your mother has the same mutation.”

  Dan looked at the sheets, absorbing the implications of the highlighted numbers. “Is that possible?”

  “Anything’s possible. But this one is about as probable as two people having identical fingerprints.”

  “Not worth betting on.”

  “Not with my money.”

  “What do you need to sort this out?”

  “I’d like to see if you have the same mutation.”

  “No problem.” He punched up a familiar number on the cell phone. “Cheryl? Yeah, it all came through perfectly. Now we need mine for comparison.” He winced at whatever she said. “Two pounds of really fine dark chocolate? A bottle of two-hundred-dollar champagne? Both. Right.” He punched out.

  “Bribery?” Carly asked, smiling.

  “Grease makes the wheels go round.”

  “I’ll get one of the test kits for you.”

  “No need.” He went to his computer. “My genetic profile is already on record with the lab.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “To make double-damn sure any remains that are found in some backwater are really mine.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “So far, so good. Gotta watch those climbing accidents, though.” Dan’s e-mail pinged. He opened the file and printed it. “Here you go. Without your highlighting it all looks like the same old same old to me.”

  Carly grabbed the paper and looked at it. And looked again. She checked the date on the file. It had been created three years ago.

  “That’s because it is,” she said, frowning.

  “What?”

  “The same old same old.” Carly put Dan’s genetic profile down next to Josh’s.

  They were identical.

  TAOS

  MARCH

  EPILOGUE

  CARLY SMILED AS SHE WORKED TO TRANSLATE A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SPANISH document describing boundary markers on Castillo family common woodlands. Through a series of twists and turns that would have made Winifred grin, Diana Duran was now the legal owner of the Quintrell/Castillo lands, livestock, and buildings. At first Dan’s mother had refused anything to do with the Senator’s ranch. Then Dan had pointed out how much good would come if she turned the ranch into a safe place for children whose own homes were violent.

  “Here it comes,” Dan said.

  Gus wandered in from Dan’s kitchen, gnawing on a chicken wing. Garlic chicken, of course, and the house smelled like it.

  Jansen Worthy’s solemn face filled the TV screen at Dan’s house. Slowly the camera pulled back. Behind him Governor Josh Quintrell, hands duly cuffed behind him, was being led by Taos County sheriff Mike Montoya to a waiting squad car. Whatever Jansen Worthy was saying was muted. Dan didn’t need a media spinmeister to tell him what was happening.

  Carly set aside the papers and sat next to Dan on the bed. Together they stared at the governor as he stopped to face the herd of reporters shoving microphones in his face. He stood tall, straight, and faced the camera directly. Wind ruffled his silver hair and his eyes were as clear and blue as high-country sky.

  “It took two months of legal wrangling,” Dan said, “but they finally got the perp walk.”

  “Told you they would,” Gus said. He tossed the chicken bone in the trash and wiped his hand. “It’s not often you arrest a sitting governor and presidential hopeful for assault with intent to kill—that would be on you, brother—impersonation of a rightful heir, and two counts of murder one.”

  “Murder?” Carly asked. “Which ones?”

  “Melissa and Pete,” Dan said. “I had a talk with Jim Snead as soon as I saw the identical gene results. We scouted Castillo Ridge, found where the sniper waited, where he went down to the wreck, finished off Melissa, and took a roundabout way to a car he’d left along the road. It was the same blind he used when he nailed me,” Dan added. “When the ice wasn’t enough to send the Moores’ car over, he shot out a tire and the truck took a dive over the edge. The bullet took a bite out of the wheel rim as well. It’s now Exhibit A for the prosecution.”

  Carly shivered. “If we hadn’t gone for a walk in a graveyard, that could have been us at the bottom of the ravine and no one would have known.”

  Gus made a rough sound. “Don’t tell Mom.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dan said.

  “It doesn’t seem real.” Carly shook her head and stared at the man standing erect in front of the camera. He managed to look sad and confident at the same time, a man worn down by family deaths and a vindictive prosecutor. “He looks too…honest. A jury won’t buy his guilt.”

  “They will when the medical examiner gives testimony that Melissa’s broken neck wasn’t due to the accident,” Dan said.

  Carly rubbed her eyes. “Then why does the governor look so confident?”

  Dan lifted her onto his lap and tucked her head into its familiar niche under his chin. “He’s got a great game face. But he’s going to lose just the same.”

  The instant the governor opened his mouth to talk to the reporters, Dan turned on the sound.

  “I want to thank all the citizens who have written and called to tell me they are with me in my hour of trial.”

  “I’m going to hurl,” Carly said.

  “I’m sure that this foolish tangle of circumstance and malice will come unraveled in a court of law.”

  “Not a chance,” Dan said. “No matter how good that murderer looks in a suit, he can’t explain away the fact that his mtDNA and mine are different, and he sent mine to Genedyne under his name. He’s no more the real Josh Quintrell than I am.”

  Gus smiled slightly. “I have to say, bro, your friends at the St. Kilda Society are ring-tailed terrors when it comes to digging up bodies.”

  “Mr. Steele takes a real hard line when someone shoots at one of his consulting team,” Dan said with a certain grim satisfaction. “Especially when said shooter is being financed in large part by laundered Sandoval money. Steele hates narcotraficantes.”

  Gus straightened. “Now that’s a story—”

  “No,” Dan cut in swiftly. “You have to live here. Settle for an inside exclusive on the governor’s dual identity and murderous life. Let some East Coast hotshot break the story about the governor’s laundered campaign money.”

  On-screen, the governor was tucked into the squad car by Sheriff Montoya. The way the sheriff closed the door said he didn’t expect to be turning loose his prisoner anytime soon.

  Dan turned off the TV. He’d seen all he had to. Randal Mullins, a.k.a. Josh Quintrell, was history.

  “So what’s the latest news you called me over to hear?” Gus asked.

  “That’s your cue,” Dan said to Carly.

  She reached behind him and pulled out a file that was as thick as Dan’s thumb. Thicker, actually. The cover was stamped ST. KILDA CON-SULTING. She riffled through the file rapidly.

  Gus’s eyes glazed over when he saw the stream of intricate color charts, graphs, numbers, and the like. “If I grovel, will you give me a summary?”

  Dan snickered. “I said the same thing.”

  “You didn’t grovel,” she said.

  “You didn’t complain,” Dan said.

  She gave him a sidelong look and a very female smile.

  Gus shuffled his feet.

  “Okay,” Carly said. “The year is 1968, the place is Vietnam. Randal Mullins is working as a forward scout aiding the outfit Josh Quintrell is in. There’s an ambush. Everybody dies but Randal Mullins.”

  “According to the autopsy St. Kilda performed on the remains that were buried as Randal Mullins, the death wound was one shot to the back of the head from a rifle,” Dan added. “Very close range. Execution style. The remains, by the way, have the Senator’s Y-DNA and Sylvia’s mtDNA. The dead man was the real Josh Quintrell.”

  “Are you saying that
Randy killed Josh Quintrell in Vietnam?” Gus asked.

  “Probably, but we can’t prove it,” Dan said. “All we can prove is that there was an ambush and a wounded man wearing Josh Quintrell’s dog tags and suffering partial memory loss was the only survivor. A heavily mutilated corpse wearing Randy Mullins’s dog tags was returned to the U.S. and buried in a Taos County graveyard.”

  Carly pulled a list of dates out of the file. “Senator Quintrell flew to the military hospital to see his wounded son, stayed overnight, and flew back to D.C. Two months later, Josh Quintrell came home to the ranch to recuperate. A few weeks after that, Susan Mullins sees her son in town. Her dead son, who claims he isn’t her son at all. She tells her friend, Liza Quintrell, that Randy is calling himself Josh and pretends not to recognize his own mother. Two days later, three prostitutes are stabbed and mutilated by a hippie on angel dust.”

  Dan watched the car on the TV drive away and said, “A recent reevaluation of the crime scene records and autopsies indicates that the women were killed in different places and carried to the place where they were discovered. The hippie either tripped over them or was given the murder weapon and pushed into the scene. Either way, they were all together and the hippie took the fall for the deaths.”

  “Liza and Susan,” Gus said.

  Dan nodded.

  “Do you realize,” Gus said, “that if what we think is true, the man cold-bloodedly murdered his own mother along with two other women, and then dressed the scene so that it looked like they were all killed at once by some crazed hippie?”

  “He also killed his half brother in Vietnam,” Dan said. “But unless the governor confesses, we can’t nail him for those deaths.”

  “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” Gus said heavily, shaking his head. “It’s hard to believe that someone you know…”

  “It gets worse,” Dan said.

  Carly took his hand, squeezed it, and went on with the list. “Again, unless the governor confesses, we can’t prove that he blackmailed the Senator into going along with the identity-swap scheme, but we think he did.”