St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

that were buried as Randal Mullins, the death wound was one shot to the back of the head from a rifle,” Dan added. “Very close range. Execution style. The remains, by the way, have the Senator’s Y-DNA and Sylvia’s mtDNA. The dead man was the real Josh Quintrell.”
    “Are you saying that Randy killed Josh Quintrell in Vietnam?” Gus asked.
    “Probably, but we can’t prove it,” Dan said. “All we can prove is that there was an ambush and a wounded man wearing Josh Quintrell’s dog tags and suffering partial memory loss was the only survivor. A heavily mutilated corpse wearing Randy Mullins’s dog tags was returned to the U.S. and buried in a Taos County graveyard.”
    Carly pulled a list of dates out of the file. “Senator Quintrell flew to the military hospital to see his wounded son, stayed overnight, and flew back to D.C. Two months later, Josh Quintrell came home to the ranch to recuperate. A few weeks after that, Susan Mullins sees her son in town. Her dead son, who claims he isn’t her son at all. She tells her friend, Liza Quintrell, that Randy is calling himself Josh and pretends not to recognize his own mother. Two days later, three prostitutes are stabbed and mutilated by a hippie on angel dust.”
    Dan watched the car on the TV drive away and said, “A recent reevaluation of the crime scene records and autopsies indicates that the women were killed in different places and carried to the place where they were discovered. The hippie either tripped over them or was given the murder weapon and pushed into the scene. Either way, they were all together and the hippie took the fall for the deaths.”
    “Liza and Susan,” Gus said.
    Dan nodded.
    “Do you realize,” Gus said, “that if what we think is true, the man cold-bloodedly murdered his own mother along with two other women, and then dressed the scene so that it looked like they were all killed at once by some crazed hippie?”
    “He also killed his half brother in Vietnam,” Dan said. “But unless the governor confesses, we can’t nail him for those deaths.”
    “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” Gus said heavily, shaking his head. “It’s hard to believe that someone you know…”
    “It gets worse,” Dan said.
    Carly took his hand, squeezed it, and went on with the list. “Again, unless the governor confesses, we can’t prove that he blackmailed the Senator into going along with the identity-swap scheme, but we think he did.”
    “Blackmail? With what?”
    “The Senator had an incestuous relationship with Liza,” Dan said neutrally.
    Gus’s jaw dropped. “Can you prove it?”
    “Yes, but Mom will be the one to suffer.”
    “I don’t see—Christ, you’re not saying—”
    “The Senator is Mom’s genetic father,” Dan said. “Liza is her genetic mother. You do the math.”
    Gus pulled over a folding chair and sank into it.
    “Once Randy was accepted as Josh, things quieted down for a time on the murder front,” Carly said, reading from the list in front of her. “Then Betty Smith, Randy’s half sister, ran out of money. Her husband had divorced her, she was turning tricks for small change, and decided to try a bit of blackmail.”
    “Over the father-daughter incest?” Gus asked.
    “No,” Dan said. “Her mother, Susan, had written down what happened when Randy/Josh claimed not to recognize her and mailed everything to her daughter. Betty sat on it for years, then got drunk enough or broke enough to make blackmail look easy.”
    “And?” Gus asked.
    “She committed suicide a few days later,” Carly said. “It could have been the Senator who did it. It could have been the governor. Both of them had a lot to lose. Or it could have been just suicide. We’ll never know unless the governor feels chatty.”
    “Suicide, huh?” Gus said. “Convenient.”
    “Oh, yeah,” Dan said. “Death has been a real convenient buddy to the governor. Again, nothing we can prove. What we can prove is that a few months later, the Senator began making contributions to a lot of charities. Two of those charities were a laundry. The proceeds ended up in a numbered account in Aruba that was traced to Pedro Moreno.”
    “So?”
    “Pedro is Pete Moore,” Carly said. “Melissa had an asset her mother didn’t—she’d married an accountant who knew how to hide money. So when she inherited Betty’s mementos, she waited a year and then took up where Betty left off.” “But the Moores were smart enough to make sure the