Always Time To Die by Elizabeth Lowell Read Free Book Online Page A

“Gus. Miss Winifred isn’t feeling well today, so she sent me here to search through the morgue for clippings on the Quintrell and Castillo families. Is that all right?”
    “Sure,” Gus said.
    “Are they computerized?” she asked.
    Gus laughed. “Do we look computerized?”
    “Um, microfilm?”
    “It’s our standard archive method. Actually, a lot of the info is in searchable computer files, thanks to Dan. He made it a crusade, back when he was thirteen and a real computer geek.”
    She glanced warily at the man leaning against the wall. Although he appeared to be relaxed, she sensed he wasn’t. What she didn’t know was why.
    Maybe he hates women.
    “So, you’re an archivist?” she asked Dan.
    “No.” He really didn’t want to encourage the lithe young woman who was out stomping on everything in sight, looking for land mines.
    “Yes, no, nope,” she said. “You’re the kind of interview that makes me want to kick something.”
    “Me, for instance?” Dan asked against his better judgment.
    “Yeah.” Then she smiled, pulled her scarf off her hair, and shook out a loose tumble of red-brown curls. “You spend words like hundred-dollar bills. Good thing you’re not a Quintrell.”
    Gus started to say something. A look at his brother’s face changed his mind.
    “The newspaper archives are always available for research,” Gus said after a moment. “Only rule is no smoking and no food or drink.”
    “I don’t smoke and won’t eat or drink in the archives.”
    Gus glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a paper to put together.” He looked at Dan. “Take her to the archives and show her what she needs. You know more about it than anyone else.”
    Dan started to refuse, but didn’t. Beneath his smile and warm manner, Gus was tired, overworked, and worried about his family.
    “Right,” Dan said. “You keep the key in the same place?”
    “Lost the key.” The phone rang. “Broke the lock.” He reached for the phone. “Never fixed it. Yeah?” he said into the phone. “Mano? Did you get the perp walk?”
    Carly waited until they were out in the hall to ask, “What’s the—”
    “Perp walk?” Dan cut in.
    She nodded.
    “That’s the photo op that comes when the cop slaps cuffs on the presumed bad guy and marches him in front of the media,” Dan said.
    Carly digested that while they walked down the hallway, away from the reception area. The back of the building opened out onto a small, deserted, and neglected courtyard. Maybe in summer it served as a retreat for workers in the surrounding buildings, but right now it looked as inviting as a meat locker.
    “Perp walk,” she said. “Got it. Who was it?”
    “Armando Sandoval, cockfighter and drug smuggler.”
    “Drugs? He’ll be going away for a long time.”
    Dan shook his head. “He was busted for the cocks. He’ll pay a fine and be home for dinner.”
    She closed her eyes against the wind lifting grit and snow from the courtyard. Her ankles and fingers stung from the cold. She yanked her scarf over her head and held it in place. “Does this happen all the time?”
    “The wind?”
    “No. The perp walk and the arrest and the fine.”
    Dan shrugged. “As often as it has to.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “You ask a lot of questions.”
    “I need a lot of answers,” she said. “It’s what I do. Like a reporter, except that a lot of my subjects aren’t alive to speak for themselves.”
    “So you suck up hearsay, rumor, gossip, and innuendo.”
    “You can go back to one-word answers anytime.”
    “Okay.”
    He grabbed the handle on a door that sat crookedly in its frame and gave it a yank. Frozen wood scraped over icy stone. She stepped past him quickly, eager to be out of the wind.
    “Wait.”
    She stopped when she felt the strength of his fingers gripping her arm. “What?” she said.
    “Bad footing.”
    Instead of the uneven wooden floor nearly all the old, single-story buildings had, this doorway opened abruptly