St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

blankets shrouded her body. While she slept, the oxygen tube had fallen away from her nose.
    Easy. They make it so easy for me.
    Gloved hands shifted the blankets, pulling them higher and then tucking them tightly around the old woman. Gently, relentlessly, blankets flattened down over Winifred’s face.
    Her nostrils flared, seeking oxygen, finding only cloth too dense to breathe through. Her mouth opened, dry as the pillow itself. Her head jerked. Nothing changed except her body’s hunger for oxygen. It raged through her, twisting her. She tried to free her arms, to kick, but it was too late. All she could do was open her eyes and look into the face of her murderer.
    Finally her motions stilled completely.
    Gloved hands pulled blankets back as they had been. Fingers hesitated over the transparent flexible tube connected to the steel oxygen tank. Then the hand passed on, leaving the oxygen tube as it had been found, hissing faintly against Winifred’s neck.
    That’s two he owes me.
    The shadow withdrew, taking with it a woman’s life.

QUINTRELL RANCH
VERY EARLY SATURDAY MORNING
50
    PETE MOORE WOKE UP WITH A STIFF NECK AND DROOL MARKS ON THE SPREADSHEET he’d been reading when he fell asleep in the Senator’s office. Groaning, he straightened and reached for the mug of coffee that was as cold as the room.
    Now that the old bastard was dead, maybe he could sneak a microwave into the office; he really hated cold coffee. But it was better than no coffee at all. These days Melissa was too busy taking care of Winifred and packing up the house for sale to keep him in hot coffee.
    He took a swig of the bitter brew, shuddered, and took another. The clock struck three. In the silence, the chimes were almost like distant church bells. The Senator had loved that sound.
    Pete stared at the numbers on the spreadsheet he’d used as a pillow. The figures and their meanings were as blurred as his mind. It was time to give up and go to bed.
    He turned off the office light as he went out. In the wide gallery/hallway, moonlight was bright enough to see by. Even if it hadn’t been, he’d walked this way many times before at night while the household slept and Melissa waited in their small apartment watching television. The glassed-in walkway was as cold as the night. He walked quickly.
    He opened the door to the apartment and hurried inside, shutting the door behind him. The flickering bluish light and vague colors of the TV screen lit the room. The laugh track of an old comedy show drowned out the lonely wind and silence of the night.
    Melissa was on the sofa, snoring along with the laugh track. Pete bent down and shook her shoulder lightly.
    “Time to go to bed,” he said.
    She woke up and yawned. “I’d better check on Winifred. Did you hear any more shooting?”
    “No. Probably some fool tripped over his own feet with a loaded rifle.”
    Melissa shook her head. “Poachers shouldn’t drink.”
    Pete grinned. “Maybe he killed himself rather than a cougar. But I’ll go with you and make sure the outer doors are locked, just in case our poacher has a little winter larceny in mind.”
    “Jim Snead would track him down and skin him out like a coyote, and everyone around here with a rifle knows it.”
    Rubbing her eyes, yawning again, Melissa followed Pete back to the main house and to the suite of rooms at the end of the house. At every exterior door, she waited while he checked the lock. Finally he pushed open one of the double doors to the suite and went on through to check the outside entrance at the far end.
    “What a smell,” he said as he locked the outside door. “Has she become incontinent?”
    “I hope not.”
    The night-light gleamed on the steel oxygen cylinder. Melissa walked quietly to the recliner, saw that the oxygen tube was displaced, and reached for it. Winifred’s skin felt cool.
    Too cool.
    And the room was too quiet.
    “Winifred?” Melissa asked in an odd voice.
    Pete walked back quickly. “What is it? Is her fever worse?”
    “I think she’s dead.”
    With a muttered word, he bent over Winifred. No sound of breathing. No pulse in the lean wrist. No tension in the muscles.
    And the smell.
    “Call the doctor,” Pete said. “I’ll call the governor.”

TAOS
EARLY SATURDAY MORNING
51
    THE GRAY-BLUE CURTAINS SURROUNDING HOSPITAL BEDS IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM gave an illusion of privacy, but the confusion of the ER surrounded them. Dan and Carly would have been long gone from there, but