Slow Kill kk-9

by Michael McGarrity

  Kerney gave her the cassette tape of his recorded notes on the Spalding affair. “Have it transcribed and ask Sergeant Pino to come see me in ten minutes.”

  “As you wish,” Helen said from the doorway.

  “Did you buy any horses, or were you too busy professing your innocence to the police?”

  “I got four good ones,” Kerney said.

  Kerney’s open office door signaled that all were free to enter without knocking. Sergeant Ramona Pino stepped inside to find Kerney reviewing and signing letters. He smiled at her and raised an index finger to signal he needed a minute to finish up.

  She took a seat at the small conference table that butted against Kerney’s desk, opened her notepad, and quickly reviewed her activity log on the Spalding case to make sure she was totally up to speed for her briefing report.

  Ramona had stumbled badly on a major homicide case late last summer, but that hadn’t kept the chief from approving her promotion to sergeant. Since earning the new shield, Ramona had returned Kerney’s vote of confidence by doing her best possible work.

  Kerney signed the letter, tossed it in the out basket, and sat back in his swivel chair. “So, where are we?”

  “According to the pharmacist here in town who filled Clifford Spalding’s prescription, his wife called to say that the pharmacy in Santa Barbara was faxing the refill information to him, and she would pick it up when it was ready, which she did. She paid by credit card. Just as a matter of interest, I queried the credit card company and got a copy of her charges for that monthly billing cycle. On that same day, twenty minutes later, she charged a bottle of expensive perfume at Kim Dean’s pharmacy.”

  Kerney’s eyes glinted with pleasure at the news. He interlocked his fingers, and tapped his thumbs together. “Go on.”

  “A clerk who works at the pharmacy and knows Mrs. Spalding as a customer said Dean waited on her personally. The clerk found that odd, because Dean never bothers with customers who come in to buy sundries. She thinks, but isn’t sure, that Dean left Spalding at the perfume counter for a few minutes to do something in the back before he rang up the sale.”

  “Did Sergeant Lowrey inform you about the pill found in Spalding’s possessions?” Kerney asked.

  “She did,” Ramona said. “Not only is it a fake, but the analysis of the active ingredient in it perfectly matches the medication level in the blood sample that was drawn during the autopsy.”

  “Which suggests Dean and Claudia Spalding switched the pills,” Kerney said.

  “Yes, it does,” Ramona said. “If Spalding had lived one more day the evidence would have been gone, Chief. According to the Santa Barbara pharmacist Sergeant Lowrey spoke with, Spalding was down to his last pill when he died.”

  “Was Dean present when you spoke to the clerk?” Kerney asked.

  “No,” Ramona said. “I didn’t talk to her at the pharmacy. I hung around until she went next door to a deli for lunch and spoke to her there.”

  “Will she keep her lip buttoned about your inquiry?”

  Ramona nodded. “Dean’s a pushy, demanding boss who contradicts himself and then lays the blame on the clerk. She puts up with it because she’s older, divorced, timid, and needs the job. She promised not to say a word.”

  “What else have you got?”

  Ramona flipped back to a page in her notebook. “I checked with both Dean’s and Spalding’s cellular telephone providers. There has been a flurry of calls between the two, starting almost immediately after Sergeant Lowrey talked with Claudia Spalding in Montecito.”

  “How many?” Kerney asked.

  “Five yesterday and two this morning. Mrs. Spalding made first contact.”

  “Do you have anything that can connect Dean to the fabrication of the pill?” Kerney asked.

  “We know the inert ingredients are different, the weight is slightly off, and the shape isn’t uniform based on the manufacturer ’s specs,” Ramona replied. “So, I took a cue from your research into how he might have done it, and called a pharmacist here in town who said that duplicating the exact size and shape of the original pill wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done. He suggested we look for all the compounds Dean used.”

  “Did the pharmacist have any idea about how Dean might have shaped and sized the pills?” Kerney asked.

  “He said that except for the grooves on either size of the pill, it’s oval in shape, which is very common. Pharmacists use that kind of pill all the time, in many different sizes. He said if he were to do it, he’d make each pill as close in size to the original oval as possible, match the color, and then hand-cut the grooves to make them look right. The tedious part would be the final shaping.”

  “How does all of this help us?” Kerney asked

  “The analyzed pill shows small striations in the grooves. We’ve got tool marks, Chief.”

  Kerney grinned. “Coordinate with Sergeant Lowrey and get an affidavit done for a search warrant at Dean’s home and business,” he said. “We want to look for the tools he might have used and the raw ingredients identified by the lab findings.”

  “Will do,” Ramona said.

  “Then take everything we have that supports motive, opportunity, and means directly to the district attorney and ask if he’ll approve arrest warrants for Dean and Spalding based on circumstantial evidence. If he agrees that we have probable cause, synchronize the busts with Sergeant Lowrey so both of them are picked up simultaneously.”

  “Shouldn’t we take a statement from Dean first?” Ramona asked.

  “Normally, I’d say yes,” Kerney said. “But according to Dean’s clerk at the pharmacy, he’s a bully. If we stuff the facts we have down his throat, maybe he’ll crack.”

  “I’ll make the collar at his store,” Ramona said, “and tell him Claudia is talking. That should shake him up.”

  “Give the newspaper a heads-up and ask them to have a reporter and photographer standing by outside. Take two uniforms with you and have them take their time putting him into a unit.”

  “Make it a perp walk,” Ramona said.

  “You’ve got it,” Kerney said. “Good work, Sergeant.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Ramona said as she closed her notebook and rose. She hurried out of the office before the pleasure she felt at the chief’s compliment turned into a noticeable blush.

  District Attorney Sid Larranaga personally scrutinized carefully any arrest and search warrant affidavits prepared and submitted to his office by Sergeant Pino. He held her partially responsible for mistakes in a homicide case last year that resulted in the deaths of two innocent, mentally ill individuals, one in a totally uncalled-for SWAT gun battle, the other by suicide.

  Ignoring Pino, who sat quietly in front of his oak desk, Larranaga read through the affidavits a second time, jotting notes as he went. Because of the complexity of the facts, the suppositions, and jurisdictional issues, he wanted to be absolutely clear that probable cause existed.

  He punctuated his last entry on the legal pad with a flourish and looked at Pino. “As far as the arrest affidavits go, you and this Sergeant Lowrey have given me only the possibility of a motive for murder. The rest of it is just an interesting theory regarding opportunity.” He tapped the paperwork with his pen.

  Ramona waited a beat before responding. She and Ellie Lowrey had each put in at least three hours of intensive work preparing a strong circumstantial case. “The forensic evidence proves the victim was murdered,” she said, “and both Dean and Claudia Spalding had the opportunity to do it.”

  “Yes, but which one?” Larranaga countered, crossing his hands over his belly. “Dean? Possibly. Claudia Spalding? You can’t seriously expect a judge to approve an arrest warrant for Mrs. Spalding based on the fact that she bought perfume at Dean’s pharmacy after picking up her husband’s prescription somewhere else.”

  “It establishes a chain of events,” Pino said. “Quite likely Spalding met with Dean to switch the medication.”

  “Or Dean coul
d have switched the medication without Mrs. Spalding’s knowledge”-Larranaga shifted his weight in the chair-“at some other time or location. Dean could have been acting on his own. The fact that Dean left Mrs. Spalding alone for a few minutes in the front of the store to do something in the back room doesn’t establish collusion or conspiracy between the two parties. I’m sure if the clerk had seen the actual exchange you would have included it in your affidavit.”

  Larranaga brushed a hand over his new-look, swept-back haircut. “Also, you don’t have a strong motive for Mrs. Spalding to plot and carry out the murder of her husband. In fact, I don’t see that you have one at all. She was literally having her cake and eating it too, and she was bound by the amended prenuptial agreement to keep Dean in the dark about it.”

  “What about the arrest and search warrants for Dean?” Pino asked.

  “Again, a motive for Dean isn’t clearly articulated,” Larranaga said. “Other than noting he was Mrs. Spalding’s lover, you’ve presented nothing that points to an inducement or reason to kill on his part. Was it jealousy? Money? Did he want Spalding dead so he could marry Claudia? Or was he perfectly happy with the affair as it stood? Why hasn’t he been interviewed?”

  “Given how the victim was killed and what went into accomplishing the crime,” Ramona said, “I think probable cause has been established that Dean committed murder, and that the evidence to that effect can be found at his house or business.”

  “Even with the lack of a clear motive, I agree that it is probable that Dean, with his expertise as a pharmacist, could have done it. That’s why I’m approving the search and arrest affidavits for Dean only. If he confesses and implicates Mrs. Spalding, then your problem is solved, and the California authorities can pick her up without a warrant.”

  Larranaga signed the affidavits and Ramona went to find a judge. During a ten-minute wait outside chambers, she called both Sergeant Lowrey and Chief Kerney to give them the news about the rejected Spalding arrest affidavit. Lowrey promised to take another crack at Claudia after Dean was in custody. Kerney told her to stick with the plan to rattle Dean and break him down if possible.

  The judge issued the warrants without any probing questions. Five blocks away from Dean’s place of business, Ramona met up with two uniformed officers and went over how she wanted the bust staged. At the pharmacy, a photojournalist from the newspaper waited in the parking lot. The three officers hustled inside to find only the store clerk, Tilly Gilmore, and a female customer standing at the counter.

  Ramona gestured for Tilly to approach her at the front of the store. “Where’s Dean?” Ramona asked when she arrived.

  The woman averted her eyes. “He left in a hurry.”

  “When?”

  “About an hour ago,” Tilly said tentatively, her eyes fixed on the floor. Immobile and hunched, she looked like a tense, frightened animal trying hard to be invisible.

  Ramona let out a disgusted sigh. “What happened?”

  “He saw you follow me into the deli,” Tilly replied.

  “And?”

  Tilly looked at Ramona through glasses that magnified her anxious eyes. “I had to tell him,” she said apologetically, like a child hoping to avoid punishment.

  Ramona turned to the two officers. “Send the reporter away and put out an all points bulletin on Dean pronto.”

  At the drug counter, the middle-aged woman clutched a prescription bottle in her hand and stared at Ramona, unsure of what to do.

  “You can leave if you like, ma’am,” Ramona said to her. The woman scurried down an aisle and out the door, her shoes clacking noisily on the tile floor.

  Ramona studied Tilly’s drained, beaten-down expression. Had Dean simply bullied the woman into becoming a wet rag over the years, or had she always been easy prey? Ramona guessed the latter, but it didn’t matter. She now had to deal with the consequences of Tilly’s inability to keep her mouth shut.

  “Okay,” Ramona said soothingly, as she guided Tilly away from the front of the store. “Let’s talk about what happened.”

  At a restaurant on Cerrillos Road close to police headquarters, Andy Baca stirred sugar into his refilled glass of iced tea and listened as Kerney spoke to Ramona Pino on his cell phone.

  “Problems?” he asked when Kerney disconnected.

  “Our murder suspect seems to have disappeared,” Kerney replied, looking a bit vexed as he hooked the phone on his belt. “Pino has issued an APB and is on her way to search Dean’s house.”

  “Do you need to go?” Andy asked.

  Kerney shook his head and waved off the waitress as she approached to refill his glass of lemonade.

  “Well, then, finish your story,” Andy said.

  Kerney continued, recounting the events in Santa Barbara that had prompted his request to have Andy meet him.

  When Kerney stopped talking and sipped his lemonade, Andy jumped in with a question to back him up a bit. “What made this Sergeant Lowrey think you’d be stupid enough to kill Spalding and then stick around to report it as an unattended death?”

  “She didn’t know I was a cop,” Kerney replied, “until she questioned me. Once she picked up on Claudia Spalding’s connection with Santa Fe, she decided to probe it. I probably would have done the same thing.”

  “Still, it was no fun,” Andy said.

  Kerney pushed the glass aside. “Not really. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Alice Spalding’s thirty-year search for her dead son, George, has some unusual wrinkles to it. I think Clifford Spalding may have sabotaged his ex-wife’s quest for the truth.”

  Andy shot Kerney a quizzical look. “From what you said, it sounds more like the woman has been in total denial of the facts for decades.”

  “Has she? If so, why would Clifford Spalding continue to maintain a long-term arrangement with a local cop to stay informed of Alice’s activities? Why would he hire a PI to feed false reports to Alice and then fire the gumshoe after he’d done some real work that might have lead to finding the son’s old girlfriend?”

  “If the ex-wife was unstable, maybe Spalding was just indulging her and trying to stay on top of her obsession at the same time,” Andy suggested.

  “So he burns all the information she’d gathered over the years just before their divorce,” Kerney replied with a shake of his head, “and openly denigrates her to their mutual friends. I don’t buy it.”

  “People do ugly things when they get divorced,” Andy said.

  “I also have trouble with the scarcity of information contained in the police file I reviewed. There was no documentation that Alice Spalding’s assertion that a newspaper photograph showed her son to still be alive had ever been proven false. The photograph was missing, as were the statements of people who identified the subject as someone other than George Spalding.”

  “So track them down and talk to them,” Andy said. “That should satisfy your curiosity about whether or not Clifford Spalding was hiding something from the ex.”

  “Can’t,” Kerney said. “Neither were identified by name, just referenced in passing by the police captain I spoke with, who seemed a little uncomfortable with my questions.”

  “Do you think this captain was helping Spalding keep the truth from his ex?” Andy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kerney said. “But another point troubles me. Look at the sequence of events. Thirty-some years ago, George Spalding allegedly dies in Nam.”

  “Verified by military authorities,” Andy said.

  “Soon after the helicopter crash, George Spalding’s girlfriend goes missing, never to be found, and his father, owner of a mom-and-pop Albuquerque motel, starts building a hotel empire.”

  “Which means what, if anything?” Andy asked, throwing his hands up in the air. “Maybe Spalding cashed in his son’s G.I. life insurance policy and parlayed it into his first big step up the corporate food chain.”

  “Maybe, but again, I don’t know,” Kerney answered.

  “You’re not
going to let this drop, are you?”

  “Not yet. I’ve started background checks on all the players, but I could use some help from your department.”

  “To do what?”

  “To chase down information on Clifford Spalding’s early business dealings in New Mexico,” Kerney said. “Can you free up some of Joe Valdez’s time to take a look?”

  Agent Joseph Valdez, a certified public accountant with a master ’s in business administration, handled most of the financial crime cases for the state police, which meant he was usually overworked.

  “Not easily,” Andy said.

  “It doesn’t have to be given priority,” Kerney said.

  “Here’s what I’ll do,” Andy said after a pause. “You talk to Joe. Tell him what you know and what you want to know. If he’s interested and willing to peck away at it, then it’s okay with me. But don’t expect too much. He’s a busy man.”

  Kerney smiled. “That went a lot smoother than I expected. Thanks.”

  Andy paid the check and stood. “I know how you are, stubborn and bullheaded. Why should I waste my time letting you wear me down until I finally give you what you want?”

  Kerney laughed and added some money to the tip. “Come on, admit it. This is worth taking a look at.”

  “Either that, or you have an overactive imagination,” Andy replied with a grin.

  Ramona Pino brought in a squad of four detectives to assist in the hunt for Dean and the search of his pharmacy and residence. She assigned two of them to work the pharmacy. The others followed her to Dean’s house in Canada de los Alamos, a small settlement in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains a few miles southeast of Santa Fe.

  Once part of a land grant, Canada de los Alamos had remained a sleepy, forgotten place well into the 1960s. Situated next to the national forest in a protected valley, it held a mixture of mobile homes, small adobe houses, and a growing number of more upscale residences that had been built by newcomers over the past forty years. Anchored by a pretty church along a dirt road that cut through the center of the valley, the settlement had no businesses or stores.

  Old fences, corrals, sheds, and outbuildings that bordered an arroyo still gave the area a rural feel. But the landscape was changing, and it wasn’t only because of a recent increase in population. Drought had so dried out the pinon and ponderosa forest that the trees could no longer stave off their longstanding enemy, the bark beetle. In wetter times, the trees suffocated the beetles by releasing sap. Now, the beetles had the upper hand and were killing whole stands of trees, sometimes turning their needles brown in a matter of days.