Slow Kill kk-9

by Michael McGarrity

  Kerney knocked at the front door and a sour-looking, middle-aged Mexican woman greeted him.

  “I’m looking for Lou Ferry,” he said.

  “He don’t know you,” the woman replied.

  “I’m a police officer,” Kerney said, displaying his shield.

  “Just a minute,” the woman replied, closing the door.

  Soon she was back, gesturing for Kerney to enter. “He’s in the bedroom,” she said, pointing to a passageway before walking away.

  The sound of clattering dishes from the kitchen followed Kerney down the short hallway. In the back room, he found Ferry sitting up in bed watching television.

  “Mr. Ferry?”

  “Yeah,” Ferry said in a wheezy voice as he turned off the TV, “and don’t make any wisecracks about my name. I’ve heard them all.”

  The nightstand held an array of prescription bottles and an empty drinking glass.

  “My wife, who wants me to hurry up and die so she can sell the trailer park and move back to Mexico, says you’re a cop.”

  “That’s right.”

  Ferry made a gimme motion with his hand. “Let’s see your shield.”

  Kerney handed him the badge case and watched Ferry reach for his reading glasses. He was a short man who’d lost weight and had the frail look that comes with an end-stage illness.

  “Santa Fe Police Chief,” Ferry said, handing back the badge case with a slight smirk. “Impressive. What you want from me?”

  “I hear you retired from the job,” Kerney said.

  “After thirty-six years. I started when I was twenty-one. I’ve been on a pension for over twenty. You do the math.”

  “You were a PI for a time.”

  “Eighteen years, until I got sick.” Ferry dropped his reading glasses on his lap and coughed into his fist. “Get on with what you came here for. I could die before you finish asking your questions.”

  “You did some private work for Clifford Spalding. I’d like to know about it.”

  Ferry shook his head to ward off the inquiry. “That’s it. End of questions. Get out.”

  “He’s dead,” Kerney said.

  Ferry absorbed the information and relaxed slightly. “How did it happen?”

  “We’re still looking into it.”

  Ferry smiled sardonically. “Crazy Alice Spalding didn’t kill him, did she?”

  “Why do you say that?” Kerney asked.

  “For giving her the runaround all these years,” Ferry said as he adjusted the pillow behind his head.

  “Explain that to me.”

  Ferry propped himself up against the headboard. “Since he’s dead, I guess I finally can tell somebody. Spalding came to see me soon after he moved to Santa Barbara. Walked in the door of my office one day with a legal document he’d had drawn up. Said he would hire me to do some work for him if I agreed to do exactly what he wanted and sign a binding nondisclosure agreement. I looked it over. It basically said I couldn’t reveal any information I gathered about George Spalding or Debbie Calderwood to anyone but him, and that I’d forfeit any sums paid to me if I did.”

  “And?”

  Ferry took a deep breath that rattled in his chest. “I told him I needed a hell of a lot more information before I’d even consider taking on the case like that. That’s when he showed me the official Army documents of his son’s death in Vietnam and explained the situation with his wife. He said he’d tried everything to help her accept the fact that George was gone, and since that hadn’t worked he’d been forced to live with an obsessive wife who was driving him crazy and hounding cops all over the West to find her lost son. He gave me copies of missing person reports Alice had submitted to a half dozen police departments in three or four different states.”

  Kerney scooted a straight-back chair to the foot of the bed and sat. “So you took the case.”

  “After he put ten one-hundred-dollar bills in my hand as an advance and told me what he wanted me to do.”

  “Which was?”

  Ferry chuckled. “Nothing. Make stuff up. The deal was that he’d call and ask me to follow up on one of Alice’s crazy leads. Then I’d write up a report about my phony investigation into it, wait a week or two, and mail it to him. He paid me five hundred dollars a pop.”

  “Easy money,” Kerney said. “How many reports did you concoct for him?”

  “About twenty, twenty-five, over the next couple of years.”

  “What made the cash cow dry up?”

  Ferry laughed. “I blew it. When I started running out of creative ways to lie, I decided to do some actual investigating to freshen up my reports.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “Alice had tracked down an old college friend of Debbie Calderwood living in Portland, who said she’d gotten a card from her about a year after Calderwood disappeared. So, I called the friend, who told me Calderwood had written to her from Taos, New Mexico, where she was living on a commune at the time. Remember, that was back in the early seventies when all that flower power and antiwar stuff hadn’t completely faded away yet.”

  “What else did the note say?” Kerney asked.

  “That she was moving with an unnamed boyfriend to a small town in southern Colorado. But she’d didn’t say exactly where. So, I got out the atlas and phone book and called a bunch of places trying to locate her. When that didn’t work, I phoned some town marshals, sheriffs, and police departments, and still came up empty.”

  “Did you tell Spalding that you’d actually done some real work on the case?” Kerney asked.

  “Nope. But I put everything I’d learned in my report. That’s when he fired me. End of story.” Ferry coughed hard into his hand again. “It got me to thinking that maybe Spalding was up to maybe something more than trying to appease his unbalanced wife.”

  “Like what?”

  “Don’t know,” Ferry said breathlessly, waving the question away as if it was an angry hornet buzzing around his head.

  “Did you check out Spalding before you spent the retainer he gave you?” Kerney asked, switching gears.

  “Smart question.” Ferry smiled slyly and held up a trembling index finger. “Rule number one for a PI, always know who you’re working for. I made some calls, but I can’t remember most of what I learned.”

  “What stands out?”

  “He’d made a lot of money in the hotel business in a relatively short period of time. He went from owning a mom-and-pop motel in Albuquerque to building a resort hotel outside of Tucson in something under five years. That’s what got him started playing with the big money boys.”

  Ferry’s head sank against the pillow and his eyes closed. The fatigue in his face ran deep into the wrinkles of his cheeks and cut into the furrows of his forehead. A vein throbbed in his skinny neck.

  “Did you keep copies of your reports?” Kerney asked.

  “No copies,” Ferry said in a weak voice. “That was part of the deal.”

  “You need to sleep,” Kerney said as he stood.

  Ferry’s eyes fluttered open and he winced in pain. “Yeah, maybe I’ll get lucky this time and won’t wake up.”

  Kerney left the bedroom quietly. In a dining area off the front room, Ferry’s wife sat at the table talking softly in Spanish on the telephone. She looked at him with cool disinterest when he waved good-bye and left.

  Outside under the street lights, some kids were kicking a soccer ball around, and two teenagers sat in an old primer-gray Chevy smoking cigarettes and playing loud rap music on the car stereo.

  It wasn’t the Santa Barbara in the travel posters or real estate ads. Not that there was anything mean or menacing about the area. It was just another one of those tucked-away places you could find in any city that the underclass lived in and everyone else avoided.

  Kerney drove away thinking about Lou Ferry. He’d spent a lifetime on the job as a cop and a PI. All he had to show for it was ownership of a run-down trailer park and a woman who couldn’t wait for him to die. I
t wasn’t the happiest of endings.

  What Kerney had learned about Clifford Spalding’s efforts to defeat his ex-wife’s search to find her son gnawed at him, as did the New Mexico connection that kept popping up. He decided, if time allowed, to speak to Penelope Parker again and get a little more background on the man.

  He glanced at the dashboard clock. But first there was Sergeant Lowrey to deal with. He hoped she was stationed outside his motel room waiting for him to show.

  Five blocks from his motel, Kerney’s cell phone rang. He pulled to the curb and answered. It was Ramona Pino.

  “What have you got for me, Sergeant?”

  “Interesting stuff, Chief. We’ve just finished up with Nina Deacon. It seems like Claudia Spalding and Kim Dean started out as horseback-riding buddies and the relationship segued into a hot love affair about two years ago that’s still going strong. Recently, Claudia has been crying on Deacon’s shoulder about the prenuptial agreement she signed with her dead husband.”

  “She wanted out of the marriage?” Kerney asked.

  “Affirmative,” Ramona replied. “But she didn’t want to lose the Santa Fe house or her lifestyle. According to Deacon, any divorce caused by infidelity on Claudia’s part cuts her out of Spalding’s will. The way Deacon tells it, the Santa Fe property is in his name as the sole owner, with a legal agreement signed by Claudia to back it up. About all she could walk away with would be her horses, other gifts he’s given her over the years, a half interest in the furnishings they bought together for the house, and whatever is in her personal checking account.”

  “What else?” Kerney asked.

  “Spalding was out here about two months ago for ten days. He got sick about halfway through the visit. Fatigue, heat intolerance, the sweats. Deacon said Spalding thought he was just having a reaction to the dry climate and the change in altitude.”

  “Did he see a doctor?” Kerney asked.

  “No, Claudia nursed him, cared for him hand and foot until he left.”

  “The loving wife. Where is she now?”

  “At the Albuquerque airport waiting for a flight to Burbank. According to Deacon, she keeps a car in Burbank and drives up to Santa Barbara.”

  “Did Deacon see her before she left?”

  “Yeah. Claudia told Deacon that probably Spalding’s heart had given out.”

  “Will Deacon keep her mouth shut about your visit?” Kerney asked.

  “She’d better. Both Thorpe and I made it clear that warning Claudia about our inquiries would make her liable to be charged as an accessory.”

  “Did that sink in?”

  “Big-time, Chief,” Ramona said. “She squirmed in her seat and promised to be a good girl.”

  “Put somebody on Kim Dean to keep an eye on him. I don’t want him suddenly disappearing.”

  “It’s already done.”

  “Have you got Sergeant Lowrey’s cell phone number?”

  “I do.”

  “Call her now and brief her.”

  “You don’t want me to do time-delayed information sharing on this go-round?” Ramona asked with a hint of a smile in her voice.

  Kerney laughed. “No, let’s get this over with so I can come home without a black cloud floating over my head.”

  “Ten-four to that, Chief. Thorpe is on the horn to Chief Baca with the news right now. Get ready to have him rib you about all of this when you get home.”

  “He’s already started,” Kerney said. “Good job, Sergeant. Pass on my appreciation to Officer Thorpe.”

  “Thanks, Chief. Will do.”

  He disconnected, sat back against the car seat, sighed with relief, and looked at the dashboard clock. He’d give it five minutes before driving to the motel in the hopes that a sheepish Sergeant Lowrey would be waiting for him with an apology in hand.

  Ellie Lowrey watched Chief Kerney enter the motel parking lot and ease to a stop next to her unit. Although she’d been rehearsing what to say to him, her mind suddenly went blank and her mouth got dry. She motioned at him to join her.

  He slid into the passenger seat, closed the door, and nodded a silent greeting.

  Ellie waited a few beats, hoping Kerney would say something to break the ice and let her off the hook. When the silence between them became unbearable, she said, “I guess I had my eye on the wrong target, Chief Kerney.”

  “Your instincts were good,” Kerney said, keeping his voice flat.

  “It wasn’t personal,” Ellie said, hoping Kerney would make eye contact with her.

  Kerney stared straight ahead. “I know that.”

  “I’m sorry for the hassle.”

  Kerney glanced her way and smiled. “It’s okay, Sergeant. You were doing your job, and doing it well.”

  “You’ve talked to Santa Fe?” Lowrey asked, trying to keep the relief she felt out of her voice.

  “I have. Now it’s your turn to fill me in.”

  Ellie told Kerney about the preliminary findings from the postmortem, the discovery of the hormone replacement medication in a pill case in Clifford Spalding’s clothing, and Price’s telephone conversation with Spalding’s doctor.

  “You only found one pill?” Kerney asked.

  “Yeah. Is that important?”

  “I talked to a caretaker at Spalding’s estate who told me Spalding had been on a business trip for the past two weeks before he went to the ranch. I doubt he’d be foolish enough not to keep a supply of medication on hand.”

  “We didn’t find a prescription bottle,” Ellie said.

  “Did you search his car?” Kerney asked.

  Ellie shook her head.

  “It might be a smart thing to do. The caretaker also told me that Clifford Spalding forgot to take his medication with him while visiting his wife in Santa Fe two months ago, and had to get his prescription refilled locally. Don’t you find that interesting, given who Claudia Spalding has been sleeping with?”

  “I do,” Ellie replied.

  “Who better to tamper with or alter medication than a pharmacist? And if it was Dean who filled the prescription, did he dispense a one-month, two-month, or three-month supply?”

  Ellie mulled it over. “Claudia Spalding told Nina Deacon her husband probably died of heart failure, which comes pretty close to the autopsy findings. Now, how would she know that, given the fact that Spalding was in good health at the time of his last checkup?”

  “Exactly,” Kerney said.

  “So how would Dean have done it?” Ellie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kerney replied, as he opened the passenger door. “But the caretaker mentioned that since his return from Santa Fe, Spalding had been complaining about sleeping poorly and blurred vision.”

  “Which means his condition may have been deteriorating,” Ellie asked, reaching for her cell phone.

  Kerney got out of the unit.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find an address for an all-night pharmacy while you call in for a search of Spalding’s car.”

  The on-duty pharmacist at the discount drugstore, a woman with a button chin and a long, narrow nose, stood behind the counter at the back of the store and listened carefully as the female police officer described a well-known brand of thyroid medication.

  “Yes, it’s used as a hormone replacement.”

  “If, as a pharmacist, you wanted to alter or tamper with it, how would you do it?”

  “The easiest way would be to coat it with a clear substance. That way the pill would look perfectly okay.”

  “Barring that, what could you do?” Ellie asked.

  “I’m not sure I understand the question.”

  “What if you wanted to change the actual composition of the pill?” Ellie asked.

  “Well, this is a medication that you can get in a powdered form. Some pharmacists who specialize in mixing their own compounds like to fill prescriptions that way. But it wouldn’t look anything like the pharmaceutical version.”

  The tall, good-looking man w
ith the female officer smiled at her.

  “How could you change the dosage or ingredients and yet have it look identical to the real thing?” Kerney asked.

  “Same size, shape, color, and brand name?” the pharmacist asked.

  “Yes. Could it be done?”

  “I suppose, if you made it with a mold. But it would be painstaking work.”

  “How would you go about it?” Ellie asked.

  “Well, I’d start with making an impression of the lettering on the pill so I could duplicate it,” the woman said. “Then I’d have to build a mold to form it based on the precise measurements of the pill and its lettering.”

  “What kind of a mold?” Kerney asked.

  The woman tapped her finger against her chin. “Ceramic perhaps, but certainly something that wouldn’t break under pressure when you formed the pill, especially if you wanted to imprint a brand name.”

  “What about the coloring?” Ellie asked.

  The pharmacist smiled. “That would be the easy part. I’d use a natural dye.”

  “Could you duplicate the shape of the pill by hand?” Kerney asked.

  “Sure, but it would take some time to make a good supply, and the brand name would still need to be stamped on the pills to make them look authentic.”

  “What’s the usual refill supply that’s given to patients?” Kerney asked.

  “Three months is the norm, if the patient is stabilized on the dosage.”

  “You’ve been a big help,” Ellie said.

  The woman looked from the female cop to the man. “Now, please tell me what this is all about.”

  “Crime, of course,” Kerney said, stepping away from the counter.

  Ellie waited until they were in the parking lot before asking Kerney what he thought should be done next. He suggested having the pill found in Spalding’s pocket analyzed and getting started on the paperwork for a search warrant of Dean’s pharmacy and residence in Santa Fe.

  “I don’t have enough evidence to get a search warrant approved yet,” Ellie said as she unlocked the passenger door to her unit.

  “I bet you will have after the lab results come back tomorrow,” Kerney said as he ducked into the cruiser. “But you may not need to have the search warrant served right away. If you play your cards right, Claudia Spalding might just crack under questioning. Then you can go for an arrest warrant on Dean and serve both simultaneously.”