Always Time To Die (33 page)

Carly’s skin crawled.

Dan’s voice continued, relentlessly neutral. “Some abusers prefer the postpubescent child. The Senator seems to have been in the last category. Young, but not obscenely so. I believe thirteen is still considered a marriageable age in some states. In some countries, menstruation is the only division between a child and a woman. Between one week and the next, a girl becomes a sexually available woman.”

Pieces of a puzzle.
Carly forced herself to breathe.
Just pieces.

“In other words,” Dan said, “yes, the incest probably lasted until Liza left the house and possibly continued until she was thirty. So, yes, Susan could have had knowledge that would be useful to blackmail the Senator. Whether or not that happened…” Dan shrugged.

“If she did have knowledge, she could have told her daughter, Betty.”

Dan nodded.

“Who could have told Melissa,” Carly continued, “who could have decided to continue the blackmail.”

“Only until the Senator died.”

Carly nodded.

“Then why arrange an accident for Melissa?” Dan asked. “The only reason—other than bad luck—for the Moores to die is that someone
alive
had something important to lose if Melissa lived.”

“If there was an impostor, and Melissa knew, couldn’t she have blackmailed him—the Senator and/or impostor—over that?”

“Yes. So could her sort-of cousins, if they knew.”

Carly blinked. “Sort-of cousins? Oh, the Sneads. I hadn’t thought about them. Their father Randal Mullins could have known about the incest, and he could have passed the information on to his lover—”

“Folks were pretty clear on that point,” Dan cut in. “Randal and Laurie Snead were a one-night stand, if they got it on at all.”

Carly sighed. “So you don’t think the Sneads are involved?”

“Jim Snead has my nomination as the sniper. He knows the land better than any man alive and is a dead shot at any distance under five hundred yards. I just haven’t found a decent circumstantial thread to connect him to you.”

“Me?” She sat up straight.
“Me?”

“Jim or his brother empties live rattraps at the house.”

Carly remembered the rat in her room. A rat, according to Dan, that had still been warm. Dead and gory all over her pillow, but still warm.

“Jim is the official Quintrell ranch predator control. He comes and goes from the place at will. He goes to town with the mail and brings back supplies. Sometimes Blaine does the errands. It depends on how straight Blaine is when he shows up wanting work.”

“You’re saying it was Jim Snead.”

“No,” Dan said, “I’m saying he has the skill and the opportunity. I just can’t find a reason, and without a motive the rest is just so much circumstantial blue smoke and mirrors.”

“Besides, there are the Sandovals,” Carly said.

“You lost me.”

“Given the number of Sandovals dodging in and out of the Senator’s life, and Liza’s, it easily could have been a Sandoval who had knowledge of the incest and/or the substitute son, and therefore a reason to blackmail the Senator and/or the governor. God and the county sheriff know that some of the Sandovals have the means and mind-set required for crime.” Carly muttered unhappy words under her breath. “The list of possible circumstantial suspects has just exploded. No wonder that kind of evidence is viewed with suspicion.”

Dan closed his eyes and tried to do what he’d been trained to do. Find patterns.

Forget how close you are to the problem. Take your own advice.

Pieces of the puzzle. That’s all. Not people. Just pieces.

But he kept remembering how it had felt to have Carly go dead limp against him, kept remembering the endless time marching up and down that frozen road, kept realizing how close Carly had come to dying.

CHIMAYO
MONDAY EVENING

“
IT
’
S RUBIN
,”
ANNE SAID
,
HOLDING JOSH
’
S CELL PHONE OUT TO HER HUSBAND
.

“He won’t take no for an answer.”

“I was expecting it,” Josh said, taking the cell phone. “Hello, Mark.”

“You sound like a frog.”

“I told you I needed downtime. Now I’ve got a cold.”

“Flu,” Rubin corrected instantly. “Only plebes get colds.”

“What couldn’t wait until Wednesday?” Josh asked, then covered the phone and sneezed. “Sorry, what was that again?”

“Dykstra,” Rubin said. “She’s on the air every ten minutes pumping the blood test thing. The networks have picked it up. Even the
New York Times
is looking interested.”

“Slow news week.” He sneezed again.

“Yeah. So let’s put our spin on this. I want you to do a sit-down with Jansen Worthy.”

Josh looked surprised. “Going right to the top, aren’t you? He’s been anchoring a major news show longer than most people have been alive.”

“It’s called clout and credibility. He has enough of both to bury Dykstra. So go on his show and tell the voters about your personal and recent losses, that sort of thing.”

“You want me to play the sympathy card.”

“Hell, yes. You’ve lost a father, a mother, and a beloved aunt—”

Josh’s sneeze sounded more like a laugh of disbelief.

“—and now this wannabe news bitch is doing the vulture thing with your life. Not satisfied with intruding on your grief, she’s demanding that you prove what everybody already knows, and she’s only doing it to hype up her flat ratings. She hasn’t even waited for the test results to begin baying after you. Why? Because there won’t be a story afterward. Now you know that elected officials are legitimate targets of interest to the media yada yada yada, but this is too much. If you can’t make the interview good for a huge sympathy vote, you’re no politician, and we both know you’re a hell of a pol.”

“How soon?”

“Tomorrow. Jansen is in Arizona on his ranch. He’s agreed to fly with you to the ranch for an interview. The satellite relay stuff will be in place by noon.”

“The ranch? Why not the governor’s mansion?”

“Because this is personal,” Rubin said patiently. “You’re a grieving son, yada yada yada. Wear a dark sport jacket, plain cowboy boots, and jeans. Pale blue shirt, not western, just a shirt. When you’re asked questions about your parents and aunt, pause a little, keep a stiff upper lip, and face the camera with manly emotional restraint. You know the drill. Any questions?”

“Just one.”

“What?”

“I could have the blood results as soon as tomorrow. Is this charade really necessary?”

“I get you a freebie on the evening news with a powerful, sympathetic national institution, and you ask me if it’s
necessary
?”

The governor sighed. “Sorry. Must be the fever.”

“Take something for it. This is too important to blow. If you have the DNA results before the interview, give them to Jansen and let him shove them up Dykstra’s ass. Then we can get on with something that matters, like winning votes.”

Josh hung up and went to look for aspirin.

TAOS
TUESDAY 10:00
A.M.

“
HOW
’
S IT GOING
?”
CARLY ASKED DAN
.

He didn’t look up from either of the computers he had in front of him. “I’m getting there.”

“Where’s that?” She stood and stretched the kinks out of her back. She and Dan had been working for four hours already.

“To the end of the charity food chain.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“If it means what I think it does, somebody was hosing the Senator for about nine thousand a month since at least 1986. Eighteen thousand, really. Two separate payments, separate charities.”

Carly pushed back from the most recent of the diagrams of people and circumstances and geography she was drawing. She felt like a spider on acid, spinning a crazed web.

“Why two separate payments? Why not one?” she asked.

“Federal law requires banks to report any transaction over ten thousand dollars. It’s a way to slow down money laundering.”

Carly started to ask another question.

“Gotcha,” Dan said, his voice oozing satisfaction.

“What?” she asked, forgetting her own question.

“Two of the automatic monthly charitable contributions the Senator made were to a laundry. Nine thousand bucks in the charity accounts, but somehow the amount never gets recorded. The amount minus transfer fee goes on to an account in Aruba. No name. No number. No way of tracing who’s getting fat. At least there’s not supposed to be, but there always is. Otherwise no one could collect on the Aruba end.”

She started to ask another question, stopped, and waited while Dan’s fingers flew over the keyboard. There was no hesitation now. He was a hound on a hot scent, running flat out to overtake the prey. He typed in a final sequence of commands and sat back, waiting for the computer to run some names to ground.

“Looks like you’ve done that before,” she said.

“That’s what I do, chase black money. Charities are a particular favorite. It looks really tacky to investigate good intentions. Like asking your mother if she was a virgin when she got married.”

Carly stayed with the part of the conversation that mattered to her. “Okay, you find black money. Then what happens?”

“Depends on what the client requested. Usually there’s a finder’s fee, anywhere from twenty to forty percent of what’s recovered.”

“Recovered?”

“The ransom in a kidnap. Blackmail like this. Property stolen in such a way that the client has no recourse in law. Black money in a warlord’s or
narcotraficante
’s account. That sort of thing.”

“Is that legal?”

“Mostly.”

“And when it isn’t?”

“It isn’t.” Dan looked away from the line on the screen that showed how close the program was to being fully executed. “That a problem?”

“Um…”

He smiled. “I’m not talking civil penalties if I’m caught, Carolina May.”

“You’re talking ‘climbing accidents’?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She blew out a breath. “You go, um, climbing very often?”

“This was the first time since I quit working for Uncle Sam. Somebody else was supposed to make the physical connection, but her baby came a month early so I pinch-hit for her.”

Carly opened her mouth. Closed it. “Does that happen often?”

“Early babies?”

“Pinch-hitting.”

“No.”

“Thank you, God.”

Dan pulled her down onto his lap. “Does that mean you’re not going to run screaming because I don’t have a regular nine-to-five gig?”

She combed her fingers through his thick, dark hair. “Do I look like I’m running and screaming?”

His computer made an
I’m finished
sound.

Both of them looked at the screen.

“Who is this Pedro Moreno who has over two million bucks in a numbered account on Aruba?” Carly asked.

“Pete Moore. His real name, by the way. He just anglicized it to make life easier.”

“Nine thousand a month?” Carly asked, remembering what Dan had said.

“Two payments of nine thousand each.”

“That’s not their wages, is it, Pete and Melissa?”

“According to the ranch records, Pete was paid three thousand a month and change. Melissa made about a thousand a month less.”

“How do you know that?”

Dan shrugged. “Somehow the contents of the ranch computer ended up on my hard drive, and you never heard me say that.”

“You’re scary.”

“Actually, a half-smart twelve-year-old could have hacked into the ranch computer. What’s interesting is that at least one other charity fed ‘contributions’ into this same account. Minus three percent, of course.”

“Three percent?”

“Transaction fee,” Dan said dryly. “Once the amounts get into the high eight figures, the fee goes down. By the time you get to a billion, the transaction fee is usually one percent or even less.”

She did the math and stared at him. “That’s ten million dollars just to move money electronically from one place to the next,” she said. “A little steep, don’t you think?”

“Not if you have a dirty billion and get a clean nine hundred and ninety million back. Clean money that you’re happy to pay taxes on and invest in legitimate enterprises because otherwise you’d have to hide all of it—in cash. At any given moment, there are trillions of black dollars zipping around the world, and every e-transaction takes a little bite of the overall pie.”

“My head hurts.”

“So think about what Pete Moore had on the Senator and/or the governor that would be worth eighteen thou a month to keep quiet.”

“The governor, too?”

“According to the records, Josh had—and exercised—power of attorney for the Senator for the past four years. Unless the governor just let Pete do everything on the ranch bookkeeping, the governor had to know that about two hundred thousand bucks a year was going to questionable charities, so questionable that the Senator didn’t even try to deduct them from his income tax payments.”

“You’re sure?”

“You want to see the tax returns?” Dan asked, his fingers poised over the keyboard.

“No. I don’t even want to know you have them.”

“Have what?”

“Ha ha.” She twisted hair around her index finger. “So we’re back where we started. Something that affected both father and son.”

“At least we have a good reason for someone to kill Pete and Melissa. Blackmailers aren’t real popular with their victims.”

“But why kill the Moores now?” Carly asked. “Why not years ago, after Josh got the power of attorney? He must have known about the blackmail, or at least guessed that something was rotten in Denmark.”

“Having power of attorney isn’t the same as exercising it. He could have had a live-and-let-live attitude toward the Senator’s expenses. It was, after all, the old man’s money,” Dan said. “Did you have any luck eliminating potential bastards who could have swapped places with the real Josh in Vietnam?”

“It sounds so bizarre when you say it right out. You only have to look at Josh to know he’s the Senator’s son.”

“Yeah, but
which
son?”

“Too bad Melissa’s dead. I’d ask her,” Carly muttered.

“That reminds me,” Dan said.

“What?”

“Somehow a file full of Melissa’s family mementos found its way onto my hard drive.”

“I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Print it out.”

Smiling, Dan set up the printer, checked the paper, and went to work. As the computer spit out the first paper, Carly grabbed it and went to work.

“Both sides,” Dan said.

“What?”

“I’m printing them the way I found them. A lot of the stuff had material on the back.”

Carly nodded and went back to reading while the printer spit out paper at frightening speed.

Dan set up the last part of the file and turned to her. “What do you have?” he asked.

“A letter. The handwriting is…I’m getting used to it, okay?”

“What’s the date?”

“November. Nineteen eighty-five.” She flipped the paper over and saw the signature. “Betty Schaffer.”

He connected the genealogical dots in his mind. “Susan Mullins’s daughter by her husband, Doug Smith. Betty would have been closing in on forty when she wrote that. Wait, isn’t that the year she killed herself?”

Carly didn’t answer. She was concentrating on making sense of the jumbled, irregular handwriting.

Dan went to Carly’s computer, searched old news files, and found the brief death notice in the obits. Betty Schaffer, née Smith, daughter of Susan Smith, née Mullins, had died on Christmas Eve, 1985. Recently divorced by husband. Reading between the lines, Betty had faced the family holiday with a load of booze, pills, and self-pity. Either she miscalculated the doses or she wanted out of her life. Whatever, she died. Survived by one daughter, Melissa Moore, née Schaffer. At the time of death, Betty had been living on welfare in a room on the wrong side of town. No religious services mentioned.

“Is that a suicide note?” Dan asked Carly.

“No. Betty’s crowing to her daughter about the new ‘source’ she has. Fifteen thousand bucks. And there’s more, a lot more. Betty is sending the key to Melissa for safekeeping.”

Dan’s eyebrows raised. He’d photographed the documents but he hadn’t tried to read them. He had been in too much of a hurry to get out of the Moores’ apartment before Carly caught him where he wasn’t supposed to be.

“Do the blackmail payments go back that far?” Carly asked.

“Not quite. First one—at least in the account I cracked—was in ’86. She died in ’85. A few days after she put the bite on her ‘source’ for fifteen grand.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Carly asked.

“Blackmail can be a dangerous game. I’m betting she was helped into suicide. Backtracking Josh’s whereabouts at the time is a job I’ll leave for someone else.”

Carly picked up the next sheet.

Dan leaned past her, grabbed the bottom half of the print pile, and started reading. When he was finished, he swapped for the sheets Carly was reading.

Other than a few disbelieving sounds from Carly, it was quiet.

Dan wasn’t shocked. He’d spent quite a few years studying the underbelly of humanity. Without a word he started arranging the photos and documents in rough chronological order.

“I…” Carly cleared her throat. “Am I crazy or is there a vile kind of logic in these documents?”

“You’re not crazy.”

“Never again will I ask how people’s lives get so screwed up.” She blew out a breath and shook her head.

“Nobody starts out to end up the way they do.”

“Just pieces of a puzzle, right?” she asked.

“Right. Let’s begin with the piece called Susan Mullins,” Dan said neutrally. He picked up one of the letters they had both read, but didn’t look at it. “In 1941 Susan gave birth to Randal Mullins, called Randy, the Senator’s bastard. The Senator had been shagging her, thinking she was of legal age. She wasn’t. He dumped her when he found out, but kept her in drugs so she didn’t care too much one way or the other.”

“Lovely man.”

“A real prince. Six years later she gets married. The guy is a drunk and an abuser. She sticks anyway. Her bastard by the Senator starts running away when he’s seven, and usually ends up with Angus Snead.” Dan paused, frowned. “Somehow, by the way Jim talked about the past, I always assumed Randy was his older cousin.”

“Given the intimacy of the local gene pool, maybe he was. Wait a minute, let me refresh my memory.” Carly flipped through the notebook she’d made and found the section marked Randal Mullins. “Randy grew up wild, hooky and sealed juvie record, hunting and trapping, poaching, public drunkenness, bar brawling, signed up for Vietnam, was a forward scout, several medals, killed in ambush in 1968.”

“The same year that Josh Quintrell was injured,” Dan said.

“Right. Over to you.”

Dan looked back at the paper he was holding. “This is dated 1968. It’s chaotic—obviously Susan was loaded when she wrote it—but the bottom line is that she truly believed she’d seen her son Randy in Taos.”

“After he was dead?”

“Yes. What really knocked her sideways was when she approached him, looked him in the eyes, and started crying with happiness, he told her she was mistaken. Like she wouldn’t recognize her own son. She started yelling and he just shook his head, said he was sorry for her loss, and walked away. It freaked her out.”

“Understandable. And,” Carly added, “it’s likely that she shared her freaky experience with her good friend and fellow sex worker, Liza Quintrell, who apparently said something to her daughter, your mother.”

“Likely, but not yet proved for a court of law.”

“I know. Just one more strand of the circumstantial web.”

Dan smiled. “You’re spinning a beaut. Now we go back and check the geography and make sure no one was out of town when we have them in town, and vice versa.”

“I understood that. Does that make me certifiable?”

“No, what makes you certifiable is that you’re enjoying this as much as I am, even though we both know that, rationally, there’s a very good chance that a hype and booze hound might indeed mistake a blue-eyed half brother for a blue-eyed son who started making himself scarce when he was seven.”

“I followed that, too. Now I’m worried.” She smiled at him. “As long as I keep thinking of this as a game, it’s fun. When I think of it as real…”

“Don’t think of it that way,” Dan said instantly. “Right now, it
is
a game. If we get to the point of going to the law, then it’s not a game. We’re not there yet. We might never be.”

“A game. Right.” She entered the date of the letter on the list she was keeping. There were other entries for the year. “That was the year Liza died. And Susan.”

“No date on the letter itself?” Dan asked, leaning forward.

“No, just our assumption that she wrote the letter the same year Josh came back from Vietnam, where her son died. Maybe there’s internal evidence in the letter itself.” Frowning, Carly read the sprawling, jumbled lines again.

“Anything?”

“No. Wait. She mentions sneaking a picture of him the next day after he walked off.”

Dan dived for the papers and went through them in a rush. “Baby pictures, kiddie pictures, teen pictures in front of various dead animals—really nice buck by the way—standard army photo, and one in town of a man feeding a parking meter.”