Always Time To Die

Chapter 61

QUINTRELL RANCH ROAD

SUNDAY MORNING

DAN WASN'T HAPPY WITH CARLY COMING ALONG, BUT THE IDEA OF LEAVING HER alone with his mother hadn't appealed, either. Besides, Carly was the one with permission to come and go at the ranch. What she would be doing wasn't, technically, breaking and entering. She still had the keys to the ranch house, plus she had a copy of Winifred's holographic will.

What Dan planned to do was a lot more dicey, legally speaking. So he wasn't telling Carly about that part. If it went from sugar to shit, he wanted her to be able to say she didn't have the faintest idea what he'd planned and was shocked, really shocked.

The only good news was that the snow came and went in squalls, rather than in endless veils that clung and buried everything. The ten inches they'd already had was quite enough. If the storm cleared later tonight as it was supposed to, the wind would begin to blow and powdery snow would blow with it. Dan wanted to be back in Taos before that happened.

Besides, if he entered one more picture into the computer, or filled out one more genealogical form, or thought any more about what his mother had said, he was going to go nucking futz.

There were two sides to his personality; the other side wanted some exercise.

There was only one bad patch of ice on the road, but since Dan was driving like every foot of the way was black ice and hugging the road cuts, he kept control of the truck without a problem. The fact that he had large, studded snow tires helped.

"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.