St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

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
53
    “ 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