Slow Kill kk-9

by Michael McGarrity

  “Not since I was a little kid,” Ramona replied.

  “Let’s say you did, and you took a bad fall from a horse and strained the muscles in your back. Not severely, but enough to cause discomfort. The muscle relaxant, in a very low dosage, provides relief.”

  “That helps,” Ramona said. “What about the narcotic painkiller?”

  “It had to be forged,” the doctor said. “Mrs. Spalding has no medical condition I’m aware of that requires it.”

  “Your records confirm that?”

  “Absolutely,” the doctor said before hanging up.

  Baldridge hovered next to her with the hard copy scripts in hand. Both looked real, but who better to forge a doctor ’s prescription than a pharmacist?

  “Tell me about this painkiller,” Ramona asked.

  “It’s hydrocodone acetaminophen, a Class III controlled substance,” Baldridge said, “which means it doesn’t have to be as strictly inventoried and accounted for as Class II drugs under federal regulations.”

  “How is it accounted for?” Ramona asked.

  “We do an annual report and give an estimate of how much was dispensed and what’s on hand. It doesn’t have to be absolutely accurate.”

  “Would the painkiller give the user a high? Make them nod out?”

  “It’s a downer, so I’d imagine so,” Baldridge said. “In normal dosages, other than relieving pain, it tends to cause drowsiness, dull the senses, and flatten the affect.”

  “Can you find out how many other people have had this medicine dispensed to them at this pharmacy?”

  “Easily,” Baldridge said, returning to the computer. He came back with the names of twelve individuals, all with scripts written by Claudia Spalding’s doctor.

  “Did you fill any of these?” Ramona asked.

  Baldridge shook his head and pointed to a line on one of the scripts. “Each prescription must be numbered and initialed by the pharmacist who filled it. All of these were filled by Kim.”

  “What about phone-in prescriptions?”

  “That’s in a different computer file,” he said, stepping back to the monitor. He printed out another ten names of persons receiving the medication, all supposedly phoned in from the same doctor who’d treated Claudia Spalding.

  Ramona called the doctor again and asked about the names on both lists Baldridge had provided.

  “I’ve never treated any of those people,” the doctor said.

  “You’re certain of that?”

  “I don’t like your implication, Sergeant,” the doctor snapped. “I do not supply narcotics to drug users. You can come here any time you want and look at the master chart log and my patient appointment calender.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Ramona replied. “We may have to do that.” She disconnected and turned to speak to Baldridge, who was pulling hard copy files and printing information from the computer. He brought everything to her, and she scanned them quickly one by one. On the hard copies, she noticed that although the doctor’s signature and prescription information looked real, the patients’ names seemed to have been written with a slightly different slant. The printouts from the phone-in scripts showed Kim Dean’s initials as the dispensing pharmacist.

  “Do you have a sample of Dean’s handwriting?” she asked Baldridge.

  He nodded, stepped into the back office, and brought out a large, leather-bound address book.

  Ramona paged through it and noted the same slight backward slant. She wrote out a list of all the scripts, added Dean’s address book to it, gave a copy of the list to Baldridge, and told him that he needed to keep it as part of the inventory of seized evidence.

  “Show me the narcotic medication,” she said.

  Baldridge took her to rows of freestanding medication shelves and handed her a large, almost empty white plastic bottle.

  She looked at the pills, snapped the lid back on, and shook the bottle. “How frequently does Dean reorder this?”

  It took Baldridge a while to dig out the invoices. He finished with a distraught look on his face, and asked Ramona to give him back the hard copy prescriptions and printouts.

  One by one, Baldridge tallied up the total number of narcotic pills Dean had dispensed, including refills. He shook his head sharply, mouth tight with disapproval. “Kim’s been ordering three times the amount he needs,” he said.

  “Anything else?” Ramona asked.

  “There should be two unopened bottles of five hundred pills each in inventory,” Baldridge replied as he peeled off his pharmacist’s smock and stuffed it under his arm. “They’re not on the shelf.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home. I can’t work here anymore.”

  Ramona gave Baldridge a sympathetic smile and touched him on the arm. “You’ll need to stay for a while longer, Mr. Baldridge. Lock the front door, arrange for another pharmacy to handle any prescriptions that still need to be filled, and work with me. It might mean the difference between leaving tomorrow on that vacation with your wife or being delayed.”

  Baldridge sighed and looked glum. “Very well, if you insist.”

  Three hours into the record search at the pharmacy, the detectives had uncovered enough evidence with Baldridge’s help to prove that Kim Dean had been moving large quantities of drugs containing narcotic painkillers, barbiturates, morphine, and amphetamines onto the streets of Santa Fe. Forged and phony call-in prescriptions from a number of local physicians had been used to falsify the records. To hide inventory shortfalls, Dean had altered invoices from suppliers and lied on required reports to the state pharmacy board.

  Although they were only halfway through the prescription and inventory records, Ramona decided to call a halt and bring in the Drug Enforcement Administration, which by law had jurisdiction. She told her team to switch their attention to Dean’s financial records, and gave Grady Baldridge the news that he would have to delay his vacation trip with his wife. Clearly disgusted by what had been unearthed, Baldridge made no complaint.

  Sitting in her unit outside the pharmacy, Ramona reported in to Chief Kerney. “When we stopped tallying, the street value of the drugs was at least a hundred thousand dollars,” she said. “Who knows how high it will go once the final count is in. I need DEA here, Chief.”

  “I’ll get them on it,” Kerney said. “Do you know if Dean was selling the drugs directly or supplying a dealer?”

  “We haven’t gotten that far yet,” Ramona replied.

  “What about the forged prescriptions? Are the patients’ names real?”

  “Except for Claudia Spalding, we don’t know.”

  “I doubt that they are,” Kerney said. “But I know a man who might be able to tell us quickly if any of those people on the list are part of Spalding’s or Dean’s social circle. He knows just about everyone with money in Santa Fe. He’s been helpful to me in the past.”

  Kerney read off a name and address. The man worked as a stockbroker in a professional office building on St. Michael’s Drive.

  “Got it,” Ramona said, wondering if the chief was sending her to meet with a confidential informant or an undercover cop.

  “I’ll let him know you’re coming,” Kerney said.

  “Ten-four.”

  For the past year, DEA Special Agent Evan Winslow had masqueraded as an estate, retirement, and wealth management consultant in the Santa Fe office of a national brokerage house. Only the branch manager, a naval academy graduate and former JAG lawyer, and the local police chief, who’d arranged his cover, knew Winslow was a DEA cop.

  Winslow wasn’t interested in the low-end market that catered to the street junkies. Instead, he was in place to go after a supplier with Bogota cartel connections who was using a new drug pipeline that stretched from California to New York. Based in Los Angeles, the man flew in a private jet to deliver his goodies to high-end customers across the country who wanted to get loaded in the privacy of their million-dollar homes while remaining under the radar of the local cops.


  Winslow was one of four agents in different cities tasked with gathering enough evidence to seize the drugs in the pipeline, bust the supplier, and provide intelligence to DEA agents in South America about the traffickers. If everything worked as planned, a major national roundup of celebrity addicts and users would go down, drawing national media attention, and victory in a battle of the war on drugs would be proclaimed.

  So far, Winslow had hard evidence to burn the supplier’s Santa Fe customers, including a fading film actor, a famous jazz musician, a world-renowned chef, a New York City fashion designer, a minor British royal, and a network television producer. But he still hadn’t been able to score directly from the source, which was key to breaking up the cartel.

  The call from Chief Kerney had surprised Winslow. But after hearing the chief out and being reassured that his cover wouldn’t be blown, he’d agreed to meet with Ramona Pino.

  The receptionist showed Pino into his office. No more than five-three, she was a looker, with perfectly round dark eyes, high cheekbones, and a shapely figure.

  “I understand you have some names of people you think I might be able to tell you something about,” Winslow said before Pino had a chance to speak.

  “Yes.” Ramona sat in front of the desk and passed Winslow the list of names taken from the forged prescriptions.

  “These aren’t people I know,” Winslow said, lying through his teeth. At least six were part of the upscale drug party scene, and one, Mitch Griffin, when he wasn’t building houses, dealt stolen pharmaceutical drugs to his trendy friends. Winslow had always wondered where Griffin got his drugs. Now he knew.

  “You’re absolutely sure?” Ramona asked.

  Winslow scanned the list again.

  “Nobody?” Ramona asked.

  “I’m sorry, no.” Winslow tapped his finger on the desk. “Unless a first name might be helpful.”

  “Which one is that?” Ramona asked.

  “Mitch,” Winslow said, waving the paper. “I don’t know his last name, but it’s down here as Griffin.”

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  “If it’s the right Mitch, he’s a general contractor.”

  “Do you know him personally?” Ramona asked.

  “Just in passing.”

  “Describe him to me.”

  “Six-foot-three, in his forties I’d guess. He’s a big guy who likes to work out and party.”

  Ramona took back the list. “Thanks for your help.”

  Winslow smiled and stood. “I don’t think I’ve done anything helpful at all.” He ushered Pino to the door. “If you ever decide to invest in the stock market, come back and see me.”

  He waited for Pino to leave the building before calling Kerney.

  “Did Pino make you?” Kerney asked.

  “I doubt it. But let’s not make a habit of this, Chief Kerney.”

  “Not a chance. Thanks.”

  Finding where Mitch Griffin lived took one phone call to the state agency that licensed general contractors. With the chief’s blessing, Ramona assembled a team of officers, including two narcotics detectives and some uniforms, and drove to Griffin’s house in La Cienega, a few miles south of Santa Fe. The house was sited behind a hill on a private dirt lane. In among the surrounding trees were piles of lumber, beams, doors, and windows, some of them covered with clear plastic sheeting.

  Griffin’s extended-cab pickup truck sat in front of a detached garage, and parked next to it was Kim Dean’s SUV. Ramona laughed out loud. Maybe the gods had heard her plea for an easy bust after all.

  She spread her troops around the building and used a bullhorn to call out Dean and Griffin. After checking the firepower in his front yard through a window, Mitch came out first, totally stoned and shirtless in his six-foot-three, buff glory. Dean followed behind, rumpled and scared, pumping his hands up and down in the air.

  She ordered them facedown on the ground with their hands clasped behind their heads and watched as they were cuffed and frisked. Then she had her officers stand them up while she told them the charges and read them their rights.

  She looked Dean over carefully. He wasn’t anything to write home about. Maybe the fear in his eyes and his trembling chin made him seem insignificant and ordinary.

  “We need to have a nice long talk about Claudia,” she said as a uniform led him away.

  “Claudia Spalding?” Griffin mumbled lethargically, his eyes blinking rapidly in the harsh afternoon light. “Man, I built her house.”

  “It’s such a small world, isn’t it?” Ramona replied cheerily.

  Chapter 7

  K im Dean was scared, but he wasn’t stupid. He asked for an attorney and immediately dummied up. Ramona took him directly to the county jail, booked him on a murder one charge, and left him with a detention officer. The officer let Dean make his phone call to a lawyer and put him in an isolation cell, the first step on the way to being processed, fingerprinted, and strip-searched.

  Ramona used the time to fill out additional booking forms on Dean, charging him with drug trafficking, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, forgery, distribution of controlled substances, and possession with intent to distribute. Although it only counted as a misdemeanor, she threw in an evading arrest charge for good measure.

  She had a detention officer bring Dean to an interrogation room where she read off the additional charges, Mirandized him again, and asked if he’d like to make a voluntary statement.

  Dean shook his head and said no.

  Ramona knew his refusal barred her from asking questions, but that didn’t stop her from talking.

  “Just in case you’re interested,” she said, “each prescription you forged counts as a separate charge. Let’s be conservative and say you did fifty. That’s a hundred and fifty years, if a judge sentences you to consecutive terms. Throw in all the other counts and I’m guessing you’ll get about 250 years in the slam. Of course, you may get time off for good behavior.”

  “I want to talk to my lawyer,” Dean said. Color had come back to his face and his rosy cheeks clashed with the orange jail jumpsuit. He sat with his feet crossed under the table and his hands hidden from view.

  Chief Kerney thought that Dean might break easily under interrogation, but it wasn’t happening. Maybe he wasn’t the kind of bully who pushed people around to hide his own inadequacies. Maybe, instead, Dean was the control freak type who got off on dominating and manipulating people.

  About six feet tall, Dean had light brown hair that receded over his temples and exposed his tiny ears. He had a long, slightly turned up nose that gave him a haughty look. But his rapidly blinking brown eyes signaled underlying stress.

  “When the lawyer comes,” Ramona said, gathering her paperwork, “ask him about the federal sentencing laws for drug trafficking, possession, and distribution.”

  “Why should I do that?” Dean asked.

  Ramona stared past Dean at the dull gray concrete wall of the room. Jail was a grim place nobody ever really got used to. It always gave her the willies.

  “The feds have harsher penalties,” she replied curtly. “You may want to deal with us instead of them.”

  She left Dean and went to check in with Matt Chacon, who’d booked Mitch Griffin into custody. Ramona stepped into the interrogation room and found that big, buff Griffin had waived his Miranda rights and was talking.

  He had a pretty face with even features. Combined with the day-old stubble on his chin, he vaguely resembled a country music singer who’d been a teenage heartthrob some years back before quickly fading into obscurity.

  Ramona wondered if Mitch had ever slept with Claudia Spalding. She asked him about it, and he shook his head. Matt Chacon told her Mitch was willing to testify against Dean on the drug trafficking charge if he could cut a deal.

  “You didn’t promise him anything?” Ramona asked, eyeing Griffin.

  “Nada,” Matt replied.

  “Let’s hold off on asking the assistant d
istrict attorney to make any offers until we search Mitch’s house. I’ll call for a warrant.”

  “Why do you want to do that?” Griffin asked, his glance nervously flitting from Chacon to Ramona.

  “Do you ever gamble at the Indian casinos, Mitch?” Ramona asked.

  “Yeah, sometimes.”

  “Then you know what a punt is, right?”

  “Yeah, you bet against the banker in faro and games like that.”

  “Consider me the banker in this game,” Ramona said, smiling cheerfully at Griffin. “Depending on the amount of product we find, you may be facing the possibility of life without parole. If I seize enough to put you away for life, I’ll be holding all the cards. So, there will be no plea bargain until I know exactly what your maximum bet is going to be.”

  Griffin slumped in his chair. “How much stash do you have to find?”

  Ramona waved a finger at Griffin. “No fair asking, Mitch. That’s cheating.”

  Ramona stepped into the hallway to the sounds of an opening door and footsteps down the corridor. Chief Kerney, an ADA, and Dean’s lawyer walked in her direction. The ADA peeled off into the room where Mitch Griffin was parked, and Ramona directed the defense attorney to the room where Dean waited.

  “Where are we?” Kerney asked.

  “Dean’s not talking,” Ramona said.

  “How many charges did you lay on him?” Kerney asked.

  “Seven felonies, including multiple counts of forgery,” Ramona said, “plus one misdemeanor.”

  “That should get him talking eventually,” Kerney said with an approving nod. “A DEA team is at the pharmacy. I told our people to stay and assist.”

  The ADA poked his head out the door of the interrogation room. “You’ve got Griffin’s voluntary permission to search his house,” he said. “His drug stash is in a cabinet above the refrigerator.” He handed Ramona a signed search release form.

  “What did you promise him?” Ramona asked.

  “Nothing,” the ADA replied in a voice loud enough for Griffin to hear. “He wants immunity from prosecution. He isn’t going to get it. At least, not yet. Maybe not ever.”