Slow Kill kk-9

by Michael McGarrity

  Kerney swatted a mosquito. “Does she have a back door out?”

  “If she can climb the cleft, she does,” Suazo said. “But it would take her deep into the back country, miles from anywhere. Outsiders who go in there often get lost and some don’t ever come out.”

  He pointed at the rimrock mesa six hundred feet above their heads. “We’ll ride single file from here. The cabin was originally an old line camp on two sections surrounded by state trust land. Hadn’t been used for years until Dean bought it and fixed it up. Got it dirt cheap, according to county records.”

  They moved slowly ahead, climbing the mesa, until the horses started lunging and stumbling on the trail, kicking up stones and puffs of gray dust. They dismounted and finished the ascent on foot, pulling the animals along.

  At the top, they paused and sipped water from Suazo’s canteen. Kerney could see Hermit’s Peak, fifty miles distant, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Beyond, the Colorado Rockies were dense and black against the horizon.

  Suazo remounted and Kerney followed suit. They rode down an easy switchback trail off the mesa, cut across a dry streambed, and stopped at the sandstone chute at the mouth of the canyon.

  “You don’t sit a horse like a city cop,” Suazo said as he swung out of the saddle.

  Kerney dismounted and pulled his rifle out of the scabbard. “I’ve been riding some recently.”

  “You’re thinking Spalding’s armed and dangerous?” Suazo asked as he reached for his rifle.

  Kerney studied recent boot prints in the sand. They were small, the right size for a woman. “Best to err on the side of caution. But my hunch that she’d be here looks like it was a pretty good guess.”

  “Let’s go find out for sure,” Lucky said as he started into the canyon.

  From behind a pinon tree, Suazo covered Kerney’s back, as he ran zigzag across the meadow toward the cabin. A redtail hawk screeched out of a pine tree, and Kerney looked up to see the figure of a woman climbing the cleft in the canyon wall.

  He motioned Suazo forward, skirted the cabin, laid his rifle aside, and started up the cleft.

  “There’s no way out, Spalding,” he yelled. “Climb down.”

  Spalding shook her head and kept moving. Kerney paused for a better look at her. She carried a backpack strapped to her shoulders and had a canteen on her hip. He didn’t see a weapon. He glanced back at Suazo, who’d rounded the cabin and pointed at an outcropping twenty feet above Spalding’s head.

  “One round,” he called out.

  Suazo got the message and fired once. The round tore into an outcropping and showered rock fragments down on Spalding, who froze momentarily.

  “Come down,” Kerney ordered. “Do it now.”

  Spalding shook her head and started climbing again.

  Kerney went up the split, using footholds where he could find them. Spalding cleared the outcropping before he could reach her and disappeared from sight. He looked down at Suazo, eighty feet below, with his rifle aimed and ready.

  “Where is she?” he called.

  “Standing on the ledge, staring at me,” Suazo said. “She can’t go any farther. It’s slick rock from there to the top.”

  “Any weapons?”

  “Nothing in her hands,” Suazo answered. “I think she wants to jump.”

  “If she moves toward the edge, blow her fucking head off,” Kerney yelled.

  “She’s at the edge now.” Suazo raised his sights a bit, but held his fire.

  Kerney reached for the lip of the outcropping, and felt Spalding’s boot come down hard on the fingers of his left hand. She looked down at him, red-faced and angry.

  He pulled his hand free, found a crevice for his foot, swung up and over the ledge, kicked out a leg, and knocked Spalding back. He scrabbled to his feet, spun her around, and pushed her hard against the slick rock wall.

  Spalding yelled in pain and slammed her boot down on Kerney’s instep. She turned, and broke for the edge of the outcropping. Kerney grabbed for her with his injured hand but couldn’t hold on. He lunged and caught her around the waist as she stood staring down at the barrel of Suazo’s rifle. He pulled her back to safety.

  He put her facedown on the outcropping, planted his knee on her neck, cuffed her using his uninjured hand, and raised her to a sitting position, holding on tight to the cuffs.

  She turned and looked at him. Her nose and forehead were scraped raw and bleeding, and her eyes were riveted on Kerney’s face.

  “How are you going to get us off this ledge?” she asked matter-of-factly. “I’m handcuffed, and your hand looks broken.”

  Kerney’s left hand ached badly. Except for the thumb, his fingers were swollen. He tried to move them, and pain shot up his arm. He wondered how many Spalding had broken. He tried to wiggle his wedding band off his finger with his thumb, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “We’ll use rope and rig a sling.”

  “You’re an interesting bastard,” Spalding said. “Blow my fucking head off, indeed. How could you possibly know that would make me hesitate?”

  “Call it a lucky guess,” Kerney said.

  “Seriously,” Spalding said, “how did you know?”

  “I read your diary,” Kerney replied.

  Above him, the redtail hawk swooped across the canyon, skimmed above the far rim, and veered out of sight.

  Chapter 16

  B y the time Kerney and Suazo got back to Mills Canyon with Spalding in tow, Kerney’s left hand was badly swollen. From the top of the mesa, Suazo had called ahead by cell phone and his chief deputy was waiting for them. He drove Kerney to the Las Vegas hospital while Suazo took Spalding to the Santa Fe County Jail.

  The ring and little fingers of Kerney’s left hand were broken and his wedding band was squashed. An ER doctor cut the ring off, took X-rays, which revealed that the breaks were clean, and immobilized the fingers with splints. He gave Kerney a prescription for codeine and told him to go home and rest, which in Kerney’s mind wasn’t an option.

  The chief deputy drove Kerney to Santa Fe, where Suazo was waiting in Kerney’s office at police headquarters. Together, the three men prepared the necessary reports, talked to the DA by phone, entered Spalding’s arrest into the National Crime Information Center data bank, and notified the California authorities that Spalding had been taken into custody. After dealing with the outstanding homicide and fugitive warrants on Spalding, they did the paperwork charging her with the attempted murder of a police officer.

  As soon as Suazo and his deputy left, Helen Muiz buzzed him on the intercom.

  “Your wife is on the phone,” she said.

  “You called her?” Kerney asked.

  “Darn tooting, I did,” Helen replied.

  Kerney punched the blinking button. “I’m all right,” he said quickly.

  “A smashed hand is not all right,” Sara said emphatically.

  “It’s only two broken fingers. I’ll be fine.”

  “You are not a twenty-something cop without a family, Kerney. Stop acting like one. Tell me exactly what the doctor said.”

  “I don’t need surgery, and I’ll be able to use the fingers when the bones heal. It’s no big deal.”

  “It is to me. Are you going home now?”

  “Yes, as soon as I send Sergeant Pino to the DA’s office with all the paperwork.”

  “Good. I’ll call you at home. Put Helen back on the line.”

  “What for?”

  “Since I can’t be there to take care of you, Helen has volunteered.”

  “To do what?”

  “Whatever needs doing, but mostly to grocery shop, fix some meals to put in the fridge for you, and act as my spy.”

  “I suppose I have no choice in the matter.”

  “You do not,” Sara said. “You could have been killed, Kerney.”

  Kerney looked at his mangled wedding ring. Without a crevice toehold he might well have fallen eighty feet to his death. “Don’t be upset, Sara.”


  “I am upset. Put Helen on. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Because of the swelling and pain, Kerney’s hand was useless for the next several days. He got through the nuisance of it as best he could. Helen’s home-cooked meals in the fridge made caring for himself easier, but getting dressed in the morning remained a bit of a challenge.

  On Thursday morning, he called Penelope Parker and told her the remains in the coffin were not those of George Spalding. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s alive,” Kerney cautioned. “Will you let Alice know?”

  “I will, although I can’t promise that she’ll understand,” Parker said. “She’s already forgotten that Claudia has been arrested for Clifford’s murder, and she’s taken to calling me Debbie, which she’s never done before.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Kerney said.

  “Perhaps if you came out and told her yourself,” Parker said wistfully, “it would sink in more readily.”

  “I’ll have to leave that in your good hands, Ms. Parker,” Kerney said.

  Ramona Pino stepped through the open door to his office with a pleased expression on her face. Kerney made his excuses to Parker and hung up.

  “I’ve got news, Chief,” Ramona said. “The Canadian Customs and Revenue Agency reports that Edward Ramsey and Richard Chase have both received annual consulting fees of a hundred thousand dollars U.S. each from the High Plains Charitable Trust over the past fifteen years. The deposits were made to a bank in Toronto.”

  “That’s a nice sum of money to put in your pocket. Has it been reported as earned foreign income on their tax returns?”

  “Not according to the IRS agent I spoke with.”

  Kerney smiled, “Good work, Sergeant. Any word on George or Debbie?”

  “That’s not going well, Chief. The Calgary PD has stopped talking to me. It seems that the U.S. Army has stepped in and wants to keep the investigation all to themselves.”

  “Let them have it,” Kerney said.

  “You want me to drop it?”

  “It’s a military matter that doesn’t concern us now.”

  “Okay, Chief, but I hate to leave loose ends untied,” Ramona said.

  “That’s one of the reasons you’re good at what you do,” Kerney replied with a laugh. “Give me a copy of your supplemental report on Ramsey and Chase as soon as it’s done.”

  “It’s on your computer, Chief,” Ramona said as she waved from the office door.

  Kerney pulled it up on his screen, read through it, and dialed the number of the resident FBI special agent.

  “Would you be interested in a bribery case involving an FBI employee and a city police captain?” he asked.

  “I always like a good bribery case,” the agent said. “Is the officer from your department?”

  “Nope, Santa Barbara, California.”

  “What kind of FBI employee?” the agent asked.

  “A GS 12 who teaches at Quantico,” Kerney answered, “who also happens to be the retired chief of the Santa Barbara PD.”

  “Intriguing. How big a bribe are we talking about here?”

  “One point five million each, spread out over fifteen years.”

  The agent whistled. “You’ve got proof?”

  “I do.” Kerney printed Pino’s supplemental report and stuck it in his case file.

  “Can you bring it to me now?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  He left the building thinking how absolutely grand it would be if the feds busted Ramsey and Chase at work.

  Two months after the Army started looking for George Spalding and Debbie Calderwood, Sara called Kerney from her office with an update on the investigation.

  “Debbie Calderwood is in custody,” she said as she scanned the CID investigator ’s report.

  “That’s good news,” Kerney replied. “Where was she found?”

  “At the Toronto airport about to board an international flight to Europe under the name of Caitlin Thomas,” Sara replied. “It’s her legal name. She changed it after gaining Canadian citizenship.”

  “What about George?” Kerney asked. “Did he change his name to Dylan Thomas?”

  Sara laughed. “That’s unknown, as are his whereabouts.”

  “Is Debbie cooperating?”

  “Yes, indeed. She divorced George twenty years ago and hasn’t seen him since. But she got a multi-year, multimillion-dollar settlement. The Canadian Customs and Revenue Agency is auditing her income tax records for a paper trail that should eventually lead us to him.”

  “You sound very confident about it,” Kerney said.

  “I am. No matter where George might be, he’s about to discover that the world is a very small place. We’ll get him.”

  “I’ve never understood why George colluded with his father to deceive his mother. Has Debbie shed any light on that?”

  “According to Debbie, Alice sexually molested George until he got old enough and strong enough to resist her. He hated his mother.”

  “When I first spoke with Alice, she said that she never should have let George go. At the time, I thought she meant she should have talked him out of enlisting in the Army.”

  “Apparently, it was far more twisted than that,” Sara said.

  “Yeah,” Kerney replied, thinking about Clifford Spalding. When it came to women, the man had picked two real humdingers to marry.

  “I’ve got to go,” Sara said.

  “I’ll call you at home tonight,” Kerney said.

  Sara hung up, put the report aside, and returned to the task of compiling all the data that had been gathered on the active rape cases her team had surveyed.

  In six cases, vital evidence had been misplaced or lost. One CID investigator had been ordered by a post commander to destroy evidence, which the officer had refused to do. A victim with ten years’ service had accepted an honorable discharge after being threatened with a letter of admonishment for a trumped-up minor rule infraction that had occurred after the rape.

  In another case, an accused rapist, a master sergeant, had been allowed to retire before the paperwork could be forwarded to JAG for action. At JAG, several prosecutions had been dropped when victims had recanted their allegations after receiving spot-promotions and transfers.

  Of all the cases surveyed by her team, only two investigations had been conducted without any evidence of interference or inappropriate meddling by higher-ups. The findings made Sara boil.

  She entered the last of the information, saved the file to the computer hard drive, and made a backup copy. With the case sampling data now complete, Sara decided it was time to pass the results on to her Teflon-coated, chickenshit boss. In all probability, she would pay a price for submitting hard, disturbing facts the general didn’t want to hear. At the very least, a butt-chewing was likely.

  But whatever the outcome, for the first time in weeks, Sara felt good about doing her job.

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