St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

the sheriff had made it clear that he would be the one to interview them. Then he’d told them it could be at the ER or at the jail, their choice.
    Carly had voted for the ER.
    She was beginning to wonder if it had been the right choice. It had been a busy night. One facial numbness of unknown origin lay on the bed just beyond the left curtain, waiting for test results. In the other adjacent bed lay a slip and fall, which was headed for knee surgery just as soon as the doctor finished with an emergency appendectomy. Another slip and fall, broken wrist, was waiting for a second X-ray to make sure the cast was keeping the bones properly aligned. A screaming child with a high fever and a frantic mother were just beyond the curtains.
    Then there was Dan, the gunshot wound. He had a bandage over a short, nasty-looking furrow at his hairline. He’d been X-rayed and CAT-scanned, cleaned up and disinfected, and given pain pills, which he ignored. The doctor had also told him he was lucky to be alive, which Dan already knew.
    Carly looked at the grim line of his mouth. “Are you sure you don’t want the pain pills? I’m driving whether you take them or not.”
    “The stuff they hand out doesn’t work on me any better than aspirin and a pat on the cheek,” he said. “And yes, you’re driving. If you hadn’t been there to help me on that last part down to the truck and drive us out, I don’t think I’d have made it.”
    “Then why didn’t you ask for something that works?”
    Because I don’t want to be halfwhacked if a sniper draws down on you again.
    But all he said was, “It doesn’t hurt that much.” Which was true. Once the burning and dizziness had worn off, the dull pain was easy to ignore. He’d been hurt a hell of a lot worse. “It’s a scrape.”
    “From a bullet.”
    “Yeah, velocity does add a certain bite. Good thing I have a hard head.”
    She muttered under her breath and gave up trying to get him to take something stronger than aspirin.
    Sheriff Mike Montoya’s voice carried clearly through the background noise of the ER. “I’m looking for the gunshot wound.”
    “Curtain five,” the nurse answered. “Don’t take long. He’s ambulatory and we need the bed.”
    A few seconds later, the curtain whipped aside and a sleepy, irritated sheriff glared at Dan.
    “Nice to see you, too,” Dan said. “I’d have been happy with the night duty officer.”
    “What the hell is going on?” the sheriff demanded.
    “Why don’t you shout?” Carly asked. “That way people won’t have to strain to hear what’s none of their business.”
    “You want privacy,” the sheriff said, “we can go to the jail.”
    “No thanks,” Dan said. “Whatever we say will be all over town anyway, just as soon as your clerk types up your report. Good old Doris has a mouth a lot bigger than her IQ.”
    “She’s not the only one,” Montoya retorted. He flipped open a notebook, took out a pen, and said, “What happened?”
    Carly and Dan had already agreed that Dan would be the one to answer the sheriff’s questions. She was exhausted, had never liked Montoya or his attitude, and was likely to let him know just how much. Then, Dan had assured her, what should have been a brief interview would take hours. Dan pretty much felt the same way about the sheriff, but had gotten over it a long time ago.
    “Carly and I went out to see Winifred at about eight o’clock last night,” Dan said. “Afterward, we decided to spend some time on the ranch outside, so Carly could get the feel of the place.”
    “Or the feel of something,” Montoya said under his breath.
    Dan’s fingers curled around Carly’s hand and squeezed gently, a reminder of their deal.
    She gave the sheriff a smile that was all teeth.
    “We spent some time in the graveyard, looking for gravestones and taking pictures,” Dan said.
    “How much time?”
    Dan shrugged. “Half an hour, forty-five minutes. Long enough to get cold.”
    Montoya waited, pen poised.
    “Carly wanted to climb to the top of the ridge—Castillo Ridge—to see the view from there,” Dan said.
    “In the dark?” The sheriff’s voice was rich with disbelief.
    “The moon was quite bright,” Carly said, giving the man another double row of teeth.
    Montoya grunted. “So you decided to go flounder in the snowdrifts. Then what?”
    “We went up the windswept side of the ridge,” Dan said. “It was an easy walk.”
    “Beautiful,” Carly said softly, then