St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

going to go right up to the front door, turn on all the lights, and in general behave like lords of the manor.”
    Carly got out with her digital camera, computer, and a box in case she found anything really interesting to take with her. Dan followed, carrying his own electronic equipment in a suitcase. She’d watched while he packed what looked to her like at least one hard drive, various cables and connections, a portable computer, a beefy camera, and some stuff she couldn’t identify. All she knew for sure was that he’d spent fifteen minutes on the cell phone with some people from St. Kilda Consulting before they left Taos.
    “You start in Winifred’s room,” Dan said.
    “Then Sylvia’s room, then the Senator’s office,” Carly said. “I remember. What are you going to be doing?”
    “You didn’t ask that question.”
    Carly thought about it, started to object, and thought about it again. “What question?”
    She went to Winifred’s room, flipping on every light she could reach along the way.
    As soon as Carly disappeared, Dan pulled on exam gloves. Without turning on any lights, he walked quickly to the Senator’s office, booted up the office computer, got past the laughable security in less than three minutes, and began copying the contents of the ranch’s hard drive onto the one he’d brought with him.
    While the computers were mating, he went through the desk with a competence that would have made Carly really nervous. Nothing caught his eye. No keys to files. No P.O. Box keys. Nothing but the usual paper clips and pens. The file folders were empty of everything except a few invitations to attend local groundbreakings. The most recent was nine months old.
    With economical motions Dan examined the few books in the office. Decoration only. No papers slipped inside the pages, no pages dog-eared, nothing hidden beneath the endpapers. The closet held only supplies. The locked filing cabinet came unlocked in a few seconds and had neatly bound files with SCANNED IN stamped across them. Apparently the ranch records were fully computerized.
    That would make his work a lot easier. Quicker, too.
    Dan went back to the computers, saw that they were still passing bytes from one to the other, and went to the end of the house where Melissa and Pete had their apartment. The glassed-in walkway was frigid. The locked door could have been opened by a monkey with a credit card. No office, just a master bedroom. The dresser drawers were stuffed with the usual things. Nothing had been taped underneath. Nothing surprising was between the mattresses or under the bed. The closet had clothes, shoes, boots, shoe boxes…
    Bingo.
    One of those shoe boxes was bound with a new rubber band. The box was worn at the corners and the lid was broken. Carefully Dan pulled out the box and took off the lid. There was a batch of postcards, letters, and photos inside.
    He laid everything out on the bed in the order it had come from the shoe box. Then he flipped on the lights and began photographing. The Nikon digital camera he used had a built-in wireless connection to his computer. The wireless was good for four hundred feet. The Senator’s office was a lot closer than that. He photographed the front and back side of every item from the box.
    As soon as he had the last image, he flipped everything over again, stacked it in the same order he’d found it inside the box, slipped the worn lid into place, snapped on the rubber band, and replaced the shoe box precisely as he’d found it. Each of his motions was quick, economical, and spoke of practice. A lot of it. What the Feds hadn’t taught him, other members of St. Kilda Consulting had.
    He turned off the lights and headed for the Senator’s office again. The computers were finished. He disconnected his own, instructed the Senator’s to forget it had ever been booted up, shut it down, and positioned the computer exactly within the faint rectangle of clean desktop where he’d found it.
    The maids were getting careless about dusting. No surprise there. Nobody but Pete and Melissa lived here anymore.
    As soon as Dan checked that the documents he’d photographed had been received by his computer, he packed everything into the suitcase and headed out for his truck. He swapped the suitcase for a tool belt with a battery-powered drill and a selection of twenty-four-inch bits which had been designed for drilling through everything from concrete to steel. There were several small