Slow Kill (20 page)

“What?” Kerney asked, staring at the head shots of a young Debbie Calderwood and her boyfriend Breeze, also known as U.S. Army Specialist George Spalding, killed in action. His mother had been right on the money all along.

“I looked up the date I took the pictures,” Winger repeated, “in my journal.”

“When was that?” Kerney asked.

Winger told him.

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

“So what happens now?” Winger asked.

“I’m going to find out where Spalding’s grave is located and see who’s buried in it.”

The day’s events had forced Ellie Lowrey to focus solely on her duties as a patrol supervisor. She’d been called out to three major incidents: a domestic disturbance at a trailer park, a fatal traffic accident on a busy county road, and the pursuit and apprehension of an armed robber who’d knocked over a convenience store. At the Templeton substation, she hurried through her officers’ shift and arrest reports, daily logs, and supplemental field narratives, before starting in on her own paperwork.

She left the office late, wondering what was up with Bill Price. Much earlier, he’d reported the midmorning arrival of the evidence sent from Santa Fe by overnight air express, and had promised to walk it through the lab and get back to her with the results.

On Highway 101, heading toward San Luis Obispo, Ellie tried with no luck to reach Price by radio and cell phone. She called the detective unit main number, got put through to Lieutenant Macy, her old supervisor, and asked for Price.

“Where are you?” Macy asked.

“Halfway to headquarters,” Ellie said, wondering why her question about Price’s whereabouts hadn’t been answered.

“Good,” Macy replied. “See me when you get here.”

Located outside of San Luis Obispo on the road to Morro Bay, headquarters consisted of the main sheriff’s station, the adjacent county jail, and a separate building that housed the detective unit. Both the jail and the main station were flat-roof, brick-and-mortar structures landscaped with grass, shrubs, palm trees, and evergreens. The detective unit, on the other hand, was in a slant-roof, prefabricated building with aluminum siding. From a distance, it looked like a large industrial warehouse.

She found Macy in his office with Bill Price, who gave her a slightly woebegone glance and sank down in his chair.

“Ellie,” Lieutenant Dante Macy said heartily, flashing a big smile. “Take a load off.”

Ellie’s antenna went up. Cordiality wasn’t Macy’s strong suit. She sat and studied her old boss. A former college football player with a degree in police science, Macy had fifteen years with the department. Big, black, and bright, he’d cleared more major felony cases than any other detective in the unit, past or present. Except for the rare times when Macy lost his temper, Ellie had enjoyed working with him.

Macy’s quiet manner hid a strong-willed, compulsive nature. His passion for order, thoroughness, and adherence to rules showed in the way he dressed and the almost obsessive neatness of his office. Every day he came to work wearing a starched white dress shirt, a conservative tie knotted neatly at the collar, slacks with razor-sharp creases, highly polished shoes, and a sport coat. Ellie had never seen him with the tie loosened or his sleeves rolled up.

Macy’s work space was no less formal: family pictures on the desk arranged just so, file folders neatly stacked in labeled bins, and behind the desk, rows of books and binders perfectly aligned.

Ellie fixed her gaze on Macy. “What’s up, Lieutenant?”

“We got some results back from the lab on that evidence the Santa Fe PD sent us,” Macy said, staring back at her. “The compound recovered from Dean’s garage matches perfectly with the altered pill found in Clifford Spalding’s possession. And there were traces of it on several of the tools.”

“Was it the same potency?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah,” Price interjected, mostly to break up the locked-in eye contact between the two officers. He’d seen them clash before and didn’t want any part of it. “Way under the amount Spalding’s doctor had prescribed.”

“That’s great,” Ellie said, giving Price a glance. “I’ll call the Santa Fe PD and give them the news.”

“Already done,” Macy said softly.

“I drove down here for you to tell me that?” Ellie asked hotly, her eyes riveted on Macy’s face.

“Listen to me, Sergeant,” Macy said calmly, “you’re a patrol supervisor, not a detective anymore. You should have wrapped up the preliminary investigation at the ranch and immediately referred the case to my unit. That’s procedure. If any uniformed officer had done differently while you were serving under me, you would have been in my office bitching up a storm about it. Correct?”

Ellie flushed and nodded.

“Instead, you call out the pathologist to do a rush autopsy without getting authorization, put an out-of-town police chief on the spot as a primary suspect, and then go tearing down to Santa Barbara where you manage to piss off the victim’s widow, not once but twice.”

“Is that your version of what I’ve been doing?” Ellie asked.

Macy spoke with care, giving equal inflection to every word. “That is what the sheriff would have heard if Detective Price hadn’t been covering your ass, with my permission, I might add. Otherwise, I would have been compelled to write you up for failure to follow policy and engaging in activities outside the scope of your present assignment.”

“I did most of that work on my own time,” Ellie retorted, sending a quick smile of thanks in Price’s direction, “and you’ve been getting all my field interview and follow-up narrative reports.”

Macy nodded. “True enough.” He looked at Price. “Give us a minute.”

Price nodded, slipped out of his chair, and hurriedly left the office, closing the door behind him.

Macy leaned forward in his chair, clasped his hands together, and paused before speaking. “The question is, Sergeant, do you want to remain a patrol supervisor or voluntarily give up your stripes and return to your old job?”

“I worked hard for my promotion,” Ellie said, shaking her head.

“But you didn’t like the idea that you had to leave the detective unit to get it,” Macy said.

“It’s a dumb policy,” Ellie said, “when officers have to leave their specialty to move ahead.”

“If you want to rise through the ranks, you take the opportunities as they come,” Macy said. “That’s the name of the game.”

“So it seems,” Ellie replied.

“I am not faulting the work you’ve done on the case. In fact, I can easily understand why you were drawn to it. The complexity of the situation intrigued you. But you are a supervisor now, in a position that requires you to apply the rules to those who serve under you. Failing to do so weakens the entire command structure.”

“Duly noted,” Ellie said.

“Be glad this one-time warning comes from me and not your immediate superiors,” Macy said, his tone edgy, a stern look fixed on his face. “Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Macy relaxed and leaned back. “Do yourself a favor, Ellie,” he said, now much more friendly. “Put in two full years as a patrol sergeant and then ask for a transfer back to my unit. I’ll be looking to add another sergeant around that time.”

“You’d take me back?” Ellie asked.

“In a flash,” Macy said, breaking into a smile, “if you learn to lead by example.”

Price walked Ellie out to the parking lot and said nothing until they reached her cruiser. Before retiring as an Army nurse, he’d supervised an intensive care unit, overseeing other nurses, technicians, and support staff, coordinating services with physicians, therapists, and pharmacists, managing the day-today operations.

Price wholeheartedly supported Macy’s position. Ellie had to stop being a loose cannon for her own good and the department’s.

“You don’t look too badly chewed on,” he said as Ellie unlocked the cruiser door.

“I’m not. Is Macy going to keep you on the case?”

“Yeah. Why do you ask?”

“Because unless Claudia Spalding’s lover confirms her complicity in the murder, which he hasn’t done yet, we won’t be able to charge her. The hard evidence just isn’t there.”

“What are you saying?” Price asked.

“Right now, the only way to implicate her is by building a circumstantial case. Spalding showed me a legal document that supposedly gave her permission from her husband to engage in extramarital affairs. The lawyer who drew it up said it was valid, but is it truly?”

“Good question. I’ll get a warrant for the original and run it through questioned documents.”

Ellie began to say more, shook it off, and got into the vehicle.

“What?” Price asked, holding the door open.

“Nothing,” Ellie replied. “But if a Sergeant Ramona Pino from the Santa Fe Police Department passes along any anonymous tips, you might want to check them out.”

Ellie’s intuition, her ability to absorb details, her perseverance, and her superior intelligence put her far beyond the pack as an investigator. But she could be bull-headed, a trait that had caused her trouble in the past.

“Don’t risk your stripes, Ellie,” he said.

“I wouldn’t think of it,” she said, pulling the car door closed.

Price watched her drive off, wondering if he should share his gut feeling about her with Macy. He decided to let it ride. Maybe Ellie could keep herself from going over the line.

The six-hour interrogation of Mitch Griffin combined with other details and facts developed during the day made Ramona Pino feel overloaded with tasks to accomplish, information to sort through, and assignments to make.

First off, Kim Dean had been denied bail and remained in jail, just where Ramona wanted him. He’d fired his lawyer, hired an experienced criminal trial attorney, and still wasn’t talking.

Even if Dean continued to stay dummied up, the lab results from California added heavy weight to the evidence against him. As for the other charges, Griffin’s testimony would go a long way toward securing multiple convictions.

But that still left Claudia Spalding in her California mansion as free as a bird. Finding Coe Evans, the man Claudia Spalding had allegedly asked to help murder her husband, was critical if Ramona had any hope of turning that situation around. But Evans, who no longer worked at the horse rescue ranch, had dropped out of sight, whereabouts unknown.

Ramona had detectives on the phones, talking to Evans’s former coworkers and old acquaintances, checking with utility and phone companies and the postal service, querying banks and credit card companies. So far, he remained off the radar screen.

Locating Evans was just one of the tasks Ramona was juggling. Griffin had identified his framing subcontractor, Greg Lacy, as the man who’d left the ten pounds of grass in his garage. A detective sent out to Lacy’s house had reported no one at home. A neighbor confirmed Griffin’s statement that Lacy was camping somewhere down in the Gila National Forest.

Ramona had questioned Griffin closely about why Lacy’s toolbox had been stored in his garage, and his response had sounded plausible. Many of the subs he hired used his garage and land to store tools and excess materials. They would often come to pick things up or drop things off even when he wasn’t home. Besides, his current building projects were just a few miles away from his house, which made it all the more convenient as a storage site.

Still, Ramona hadn’t bought it. Was the grass really Lacy’s, or was it all a big lie on Griffin’s part? Until they found Lacy and talked to him, that question remained unanswered.

Through her open office door, Ramona could hear her team at work. All of them were well into their second shifts, clacking away at keyboards, talking quietly on phones, stapling reports and shuffling papers, compiling information. Before she turned out the lights and called it a day, she would screen every bit of it.

Two narcotics officers, with the assistance of a member of the Tri-County Drug Enforcement Task Force, were working to verify the identities of the users, dealers, and suppliers Griffin had named. Detective Matt Chacon was on the horn calling around to learn more about Greg Lacy’s personal life, business dealings, employees, and friends. Other team members were working up evidence sheets, doing field reports, writing narratives.

Her phone rang and she picked up.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to arrest Griffin on harboring a fugitive charges?” Barry Foyt asked, his voice sputtering with anger.

“Did you really want to let him completely off the hook?” Ramona replied calmly.

“You blindsided me.”

“No, I upheld my sworn duty,” Ramona said.

“Don’t give me that technical bullshit. You were there when I struck the deal with Delgado.”

“Nothing pertaining to dropping any future charges was agreed to, as I recall.”

“I can recommend to the DA that we decline to prosecute.”

“I’m sure Delgado and Griffin would appreciate that,” Ramona said, trying to bite back on the heavy sarcasm without success. “Is there anything else you wish to say to me?”

“Griffin made bail thirty minutes ago.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

Foyt grunted in reply and disconnected.

The phone in Ramona’s hand brought to mind Ellie Lowrey. Earlier, she had left Lowrey a brief voice mail message summarizing the events of the day, particularly the news that Claudia Spalding might have tried to mastermind her husband’s murder with another lover long before Kim Dean took up the gauntlet and actually did it. Surely, that should have sparked Ellie’s interest enough to return her call.

She shrugged Lowrey off for the moment, put the phone down, and turned her attention back to matters at hand, only to be interrupted by Matt Chacon, who swooped into the office waving a piece of paper.

“This came in from Lacy’s credit card company,” he said as he settled into the straight-back office chair. “In the last four years, he’s taken five international trips, one to Haiti, two to Amsterdam, and two to Bangkok, all sex tourist destinations.”