Always Time To Die (28 page)

CASTILLO RIDGE
DAWN SATURDAY

DAN PARKED HIS TRUCK JUST BEYOND THE PLACE WHERE ANOTHER VEHICLE HAD
parked last night.

Carly shook herself awake and reached for the door handle. “I hope we don’t need snowshoes. I haven’t used them since I was a kid.”

“You don’t forget how. It’s like—”

“Riding a bike,” she finished. “And all strange white meat tastes like chicken.”

Dan thought of some of the things he’d eaten. “Don’t you believe it. Some of it tastes like what it is—disgusting. Stay here where it’s warm while I check out the tire tracks.”

“Disgusting? What was it?”

“Do you really want to know?”

She thought about it. “No.”

“Good choice.”

Dan got out, closed the truck door, and zipped up his parka. The sky was overcast and smelled of snow. The air felt almost warm after the stark, clear-sky iciness of last night. Swirls and veils of snow drifted out of the dawn. The air was hushed, the silence thick with falling snow.

As he’d feared, the vehicle had parked on top of the tracks left from the time when Dan and his father had hiked up the back side of Castillo Ridge to watch a funeral they hadn’t been invited to. Though six inches of snow had fallen between the funeral and sunset last night, it was nearly impossible to find any pure tread marks. Obviously more than one car had used the turnout since the funeral. Tire tracks crisscrossed every which way.

He looked from the turnout to the ridge rising dark and silver with the dawn. As he’d expected, the “poacher” had used the trail that Dan and his father had already broken to the top of the ridge. Unfortunately, some sightseers and snow-sledders had done the same. The informal trail was trampled flat. Nothing to learn from it.

He went back to the truck.

“Well?” Carly asked.

“More than two vehicles have parked here the past week. More than two parties have gone up the ridge.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Not really. The locals have been playing in the snow here for decades. When wind sweeps the snow off of other, more accessible places, there’s always the back side of Castillo Ridge for an outing.”

“So there’s nothing we can find from tracks?”

“Pretty much. I’m going to take a look anyway. I might get lucky and come up with a bullet.”

“Shouldn’t we let the sheriff do that?”

“If he doesn’t get out here in the next few hours, there won’t be anything to see.”

Carly got out of the car and felt the tender bite of snowflakes. Then she thought about the chance of an overworked, skeptical sheriff bucking a snowstorm for a look-around at the site of what he was sure was an accidental and therefore unsolvable shooting.

“No harm, no foul?” she asked sardonically.

“Yeah. If the bastard had killed me, then we might see some action. As it is…” Dan shrugged. “I can’t say as I blame Montoya.”

“I do.”

Dan pulled her close, and melted the snowflakes on her lips with a kiss. “Have I mentioned how much I like you, Carolina May?”

“Same back,” she said. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the bandage on his forehead.
So close. So damn close. Why do we always think there’s more time?
She kissed the rough, cool line of his jaw. “Next time, don’t let me sleep in. Wake me up early enough to play.”

He turned his head, caught her mouth beneath his, and gave her the kiss he’d wanted to give her before dawn. When he finally lifted his mouth, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were smoky gold.

“It’s a deal,” he said. “And if I don’t let go of you real soon, we’re going to be rolling around in the snow.”

Her eyelids went to half-mast. “Really?”

“Stop it,” he said, letting go and stepping back from her. “You’re supposed to be the sensible one.”

“What? Since when?”

“Since I can’t trust myself around you.”

She licked her lips and laughed at the look on his face. “Okay, I’ll be good. Really, really good.”

“Starting when?”

“Right after I jump you.”

Laughing, shaking his head, hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t do anything stupid, Dan started off up the ridge.

“Wait,” Carly called. “What about the snowshoes we borrowed from your folks?”

“We won’t need them. This trail is pounded flat. Watch out for icy spots.”

She didn’t point out that she had on snow boots. She’d decided that watching out for others was built into Dan’s bones. Giving unnecessary directions was the vice of his virtue of caring about others. She followed him up the bumpy trail and only slipped once.

Dan slipped more than that; his excuse was that he was watching other things than the trail. He glanced back, saw that Carly was keeping up, and concentrated on his footing.

At the top of the ridge, the trail unraveled into sled runs, snow angels, and some marks that defied explanation. Dan turned left, toward the spot where he and his father had watched the Senator’s family funeral. Very quickly the trail drew together again. From the look of it, no one but Dan and his father had walked there. Jim Snead—if it had been Jim—had taken a different route to the ridgeline.

“Wrong turn,” Dan called to Carly.

She waited while he came back to her, passed her, and went in the opposite direction along the ridgeline. Again, tracks unraveled in all directions. Again, they came together in a single trail. Dan stopped and studied the blurred prints. It looked like the man had come and gone in the same tracks.

“Figures,” Dan muttered.

“What?” Carly asked, coming up beside him.

“He didn’t break trail twice.”

Carly looked down at the valley where the Quintrell ranch lay all but hidden by falling snow. “Weren’t we about over there?” she asked, pointing back to the left.

“Yes, but he didn’t know that when he started out. He worked along the ridge this way.”

“Somehow I think you know more about tracking than I learned in Girl Scouts.”

“Somehow I think you’re right.” He touched her mouth with a snowy glove. “I hunted a lot as a boy, both with Dad and the Sneads.”

“Why them?”

“They were the best hunters and stalkers in a hundred miles. At least they were until Blaine started seriously screwing with drugs and went to jail. He lost his edge real quick after that.”

Carly hesitated, looking at the valley softened by swirling white veils. “Should I be worried that the snow is falling faster than it was when we parked?”

“Not yet.”

“When?”

“About the time we’re back in Taos.” He touched her smile. “Try to stay in my footprints. It could get sloppy in the ravines and you’re such a little thing I don’t want to lose you.”

Carly looked shocked, then threw back her head and laughed. “Little! I haven’t been little since fourth grade.”

“To me you’re a fragile little flower.”

She almost fell down laughing.

He winked at her and turned back to the man’s trail. It was easy to follow. The man hadn’t worn snowshoes, so he’d left holes in the snow that wouldn’t fill up until the wind blew hard again. From the look of the storm moving in, that wouldn’t be long.

Carly was so busy leaping from footprint to footprint that she almost ran into Dan where he’d stopped by a thick, bushy piñon.

“What?” she asked.

“See how the trail has zigzagged? Almost like he was picking a blind.”

“Like he was blind?” she repeated dubiously.

“Looking for one,” Dan said. “A secure place to shoot from, a place where he wouldn’t be seen.”

“He’s sounding more like a poacher.”

“Or a sniper.”

Dan’s matter-of-fact tone made Carly wonder all over again exactly what he did for a living. She didn’t think it was selling shoes.

“So what could he see from the places he looked at and decided against?” Carly asked.

“The road from the highway to the Quintrell ranch, among other things.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“It’s about time.”

Dan followed the man’s trail, walking swiftly, mindful of the increasing snowfall. There were several more blinds or observation posts that he’d abandoned. Then he’d found one he liked and settled in.

Without hesitating, Dan went down on his belly and sighted along an imaginary rifle barrel.

Carly watched and swallowed a rising feeling of dread.

“And?” she asked finally, when she couldn’t bear to watch him shooting imaginary targets anymore.

“Whatever he was waiting for probably was on the road, but could have been on the ranch,” Dan said. “He’s got the high ground and a clear field of fire in both directions.”

“Which means?”

“Nothing useful. The sheriff would be the first to point out that poachers love roads and ranch pastures because animals have to cross them to get from one place to another, and they make such easy targets without cover around them.”

Dan stood, looked at the tracks, and began crisscrossing the area. A few minutes later he found what he was looking for. “He switched directions here. See where the tripod rested? Probably heard us talking and started tracking us through a nightscope.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“It gets better.” Dan walked to the side of the trail, where it crossed over and blended into the windswept side of the ridge. “He shifted positions again here, and here. He knows something about the country—all right, he knows a hell of a lot about the country—because he knew where the animal trail we were on would top the ridge. So he picked his spot and waited for us.”

“Cougars and bears don’t talk. If he was a poacher, why would he stalk us?” Carly said through cold lips.

“The sheriff would say he was afraid of being found.”

“What do you say?”

“He didn’t come up here on the ridge to shoot us while we walked on the ranch, because he had no way of knowing we were going to do more than drive in and drive out.”

“But you got shot.”

Dan shrugged. “Maybe he got cold and tired of waiting and decided to take the best shot he had rather than the one he’d planned.”

“Wouldn’t a poacher have come prepared to lie in the snow all night? Or are we talking an amateur here?”

“Now you’re thinking like the sheriff.”

“Quick, get me a brain transplant.”

Dan smiled despite the feeling in his gut that they weren’t talking about an amateur poacher trying out a new scope.

“He couldn’t have had much more than five minutes to find his new blind, sight in the scope, and wait for us to skyline ourselves. But this blind looks as ‘lived in’ as the first one. He spent more than a few minutes here.”

“Waiting until it was safe to make a run for it?”

“Maybe.” Dan started off along the holes the man had made once he left his blind. “Maybe not. He didn’t head right down the hill.”

“Where’d he go?”

Instead of answering, Dan walked swiftly along the tracks. “He went to check on his kill, but he waited until we were gone. See where his tracks come down on top of ours?”

“Why did he wait?”

Dan looked down at the muddled tracks and the dark splash where he’d lain and bled into the snow. The man knew what he was doing. He’d waited, shot, missed Carly, and waited some more.

And not shot again.

“Dan?”

“Maybe he came back to look for a bullet.”

“In the dark?”

“It’s possible. The truth is, I just don’t know what happened here.”

“And the sheriff doesn’t care.”

“Looks like.”

“A real clusterhug,” Carly muttered.

A grim kind of smile changed the lines of Dan’s face. “That’s one way of putting it.”

SANTA FE
SATURDAY MORNING

“
HERE ARE YOUR NUTCASES FOR THE DAY
.”
JEANETTE DYKSTRA
’
S ASSISTANT
dropped a batch of mail on the desk. Tom was a middle-aged former traffic reporter who’d nearly crashed in a helicopter once too often for his wife’s comfort. His new job was to get paper cuts opening Dykstra’s mail and pointing out the good stuff to her.

Dykstra looked up from the notes she’d been making on an exposé of the bisexual lover of New Mexico’s youngest elected member of the House of Representatives. The story had possibilities, but it wasn’t going to get her show promoted on the six o’clock news. She needed that. Her ratings were flat.

“Anything juicy?” she asked without much hope.

“Anorexic pets of neurotic owners, how about that?”

“Next.”

“Another alien kidnapping.”

“Jesus.” Dykstra shook her head. “What do these people think I am, a supermarket tabloid?”

“But this victim dropped a litter of little somethings nine months later.”

Dykstra rolled her eyes.

“How about gambling?” Tom asked.

“Don’t tell me, let me guess—Tuesdays at the Catholic church.”

“Bingo,” Tom said innocently.

She groaned.

He grinned. “The police chief is rumored to like little boys.”

Dykstra’s head tilted with her first sign of interest. “Proof?”

“He’s a Cub Scout leader. And he buys candy from grade schoolers trying to go on trips.”

“Funny,” she said in disgust. “In your next life you’ll be a comedian. And that life will begin real soon if you keep wasting my time.”

“A fighting cock got loose in the barrio and raked a kid’s face.”

“Pictures?”

“If you hurry. It happened yesterday. The neighbor reported it. The kid’s mother refused to press charges. Afraid of the dude that owns the cocks.”

“Gee, I’m shocked,” Dykstra said with a total lack of interest. She’d grown up in the barrios. She knew what it was like to be wary of neighbors who had enough money to buy fighting cocks, take bets, and carry guns.

From the mound of mail, Tom pulled an envelope with its contents fastened to the outside. “According to Ms. Mendoza—the one who wrote you—she’s complained to the police numerous times about the presence and noise of fighting cocks. The cops thank her kindly and promise to drive by when nothing else is happening in the city.”

“Even with a sad-faced kid, the day would have to be really slow before I lead with a barrio story. I did a scab picker about dogfighting three months ago. Didn’t do shit for the ratings. Who the hell cares about chickens?” But while she said it, Dykstra made a note to see if the mother would agree to an interview before the kid’s face healed.

Tits and tots, vets and pets. The grist of human interest stories hadn’t changed in a hundred years.

“Is that it?” she asked.

Tom flipped through the pile. “A bowl of posole reveals the face of the Virgin of Guadalupe.”

“You better be making that up.”

He tossed her a letter and a photograph.

She glanced at the photo. “Okay, you aren’t.” She dropped the photo and letter in the trash. “When are these geeks going to figure out that I know about digitizing? Give me a computer and I could find the Last Supper in pond scum.” She looked at her assistant. “You through torturing me yet?”

“Just about. Saving the good stuff for last.” He pulled an envelope out of the pile, waving the Quintrell ranch logo at his boss. “The governor’s aunt is a nutcase.”

Dykstra perked up. “That has possibilities. Has he been ignoring or abusing her, denying her treatment?”

“She didn’t say.”

“She who?”

Tom flapped the envelope and its contents. “The aunt.”

Dykstra grabbed the papers and read quickly. The letter was quick and to the point. The photocopied document was more difficult. It was written in old Spanish with an equally old English translation at the bottom. Both versions were signed in the precise yet flowing script that centuries of nuns and schoolmistresses had drilled into students.

Miss Winifred Simmons y Castillo’s handwriting was almost as dated, but the charge she made was very clear: in order to inherit the Quintrell ranch, Governor Josh Quintrell should have an mtDNA test to prove beyond any doubt that he is the descendant of Isobel Castillo.

Dykstra snorted. Obviously the aunt was a head case, but that didn’t matter. The governor and presidential hopeful was
news.
With luck, this could be milked for a week, maybe even get featured on the evening news show. She’d have to set up an interview with the old bat, but first…

“You know anything about, uh, mtDNA?” Dykstra asked.

“Not a clue.”

She handed back the letter. “Get busy. I want to do a brief promo on this at three o’clock.”