Slow Kill (22 page)

“Why not?” Ramona asked, refusing to budge. In the rearview mirror she could see Matt Chacon’s unit coming down the road.

Winslow gauged the angry look on Pino’s face. “Well, I suppose you deserve some explanation.”

“Damn right I do,” Ramona said, picking up her radio microphone, “and if I don’t get one, I’m calling in this little undercover DEA raid so that every citizen with a police scanner can hear what’s going on. It will be in tomorrow’s paper, along with your name.”

Winslow considered the threat and nodded slowly. “Ask your partner to stay back and I’ll tell you what I can, if you promise to discuss it only with your chief.”

Ramona pulled her car door closed, radioed Chacon to hold his position, and told Winslow to get in.

Winslow settled into the passenger seat and turned to face her. “I need your promise, Sergeant Pino.”

“Yeah, you got it,” Ramona said, still steamed.

“Griffin may be able to give me a major drug supplier we’ve been trying to bust and flip for the past year, so we can shut down a Colombian pipeline.”

“How does Griffin figure into your plan?” Ramona asked.

“The supplier offers one-stop shopping to wealthy clients in the privacy of their homes-coke, heroin, speed, grass, designer drugs. He imports the hard stuff and buys whatever else he needs from independent wholesalers here in the States. That ten pounds of grass you found in Griffin’s garage put us on to him. We knew the supplier was buying weed locally, but we didn’t know from whom.”

“Who in the hell told you about the ten pounds of grass?” Ramona demanded. “That’s confidential information. Nothing has been released about it.”

“Think it through, Sergeant,” Winslow said.

Ramona leaned back against the headrest and let out a frustrated sigh. It all made sense; the chain went from Chief Kerney to Special Agent Winslow to Griffin. “What’s in the construction trailer?”

“About three-quarters of a million dollars of high-quality marijuana freshly imported from Mexico. According to Griffin, it arrived right after you busted him. He was planning to hitch the trailer to his truck and tow it away when we got here.”

“So you bailed Griffin out of jail and put a tail on him,” Ramona said. “Where is he?”

“Inside the house,” Winslow answered.

“I need to speak to him now.”

“Not yet,” Winslow replied, opening the passenger door. “Maybe never.”

“You can’t be serious,” Ramona snapped. “He’s a major witness in a homicide case. I need his testimony.”

Winslow got out of the car, bent down to look at Pino, and nodded in the direction of Matt Chacon’s unit parked on the road at the top of the hill. “Talk to your chief, Sergeant, and tell your partner nothing about me or this conversation.”

“What in the hell do I say to him?”

“You’re a sergeant. Pull rank, if you have to. Tell him he has no need to know. If that doesn’t work, I suggest you tell him to ask for a sit-down with Chief Kerney.”

Winslow closed the door and walked away just as dispatch asked Ramona for a status update. She cleared herself from the twenty, and told dispatch she and Chacon were returning to headquarters.

Matt came on the air, asking for information. Ramona had him switch to the secure channel, gave him the ten code for an undercover operation, and told him they’d talk more back at headquarters. Frustrated by Chief Kerney’s actions, she squealed rubber backing out of the driveway.

K erney’s attempts to hurry along the approval process for the exhumation of the body buried at the Fort Bayard National Cemetery ran into some serious snags. He thought that Alice Spalding’s permission and a judge’s order would be all he needed, and hadn’t considered the additional layers of bureaucracy he had to go through to get final authorization.

Because George Spalding was a soldier buried at a national cemetery, Kerney faced the daunting task of dealing with the federal government. Both the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Albuquerque and the Department of Veterans Affairs had to sign off on the petition, and they wanted extensive documentation, plus authorization from the Department of Defense.

While Helen Muiz faxed documents to the agencies, Kerney decided to call Sara at the Pentagon. As a military police corps lieutenant colonel, perhaps she could tell him how to push things along with the Army.

“You rarely call me at work,” Sara said. “Are you missing me?”

“Badly,” Kerney said, “but this is business. What would it take to get expedited permission for me to exhume the body of a soldier buried at a national cemetery?”

“Well, that just wiped a cheery smile off my face,” Sara said crossly. “Start at the beginning and tell me why this is such an emergency.”

He gave her the full rundown on George Spalding and the very real possibility that there was a misidentified body in a military grave.

“Okay,” Sara said, “that’s serious and definitely needs to be looked into. But why the urgency?”

The question pulled Kerney up short. “You’re right. I’m being impatient.”

“You always get frustrated when you have to wait for other people to get things done,” Sara said. “I don’t know what I can do to help. I’ll look into it. Have Helen fax me copies of everything you have and I’ll call you back when I know something. You’re going to owe me for this one, Kerney.”

“What’s the price I’ll have to pay?”

“We can dicker about it once you’re here. I’ve got to run. Talk to you soon.”

Over the radio, he heard Ramona Pino and Matt Chacon announce their arrival at headquarters to dispatch. Within minutes, Pino poked her head inside his open door and moved briskly to the nearest chair, her back straight and shoulders squared. Kerney could tell she was steamed, and why not? Losing the chance at a slam dunk major felony conviction would piss off any good detective.

“You gave Mitch Griffin to Winslow,” she said, “and I’d like to know why.”

“I’m sure Agent Winslow told you what he could.”

“Not nearly enough,” Ramona said, “and he won’t give me access to Griffin.”

“To use an old cliche, Winslow has bigger fish to fry right now. If you’re concerned about not getting credit for the good work you’ve done, don’t be. I’m aware of the significant contribution you and your team have made. So is Winslow.”

Ramona blushed angrily. “That’s not what’s on my mind, Chief. Griffin made a deal with us, got major charges dropped because of it, and now he walks, free and clear courtesy of the DEA, with no commitment to testify against Dean on the murder one and trafficking charges. That weakens my case substantially.”

“The lab results from California pretty much confirm that Dean substituted Spalding’s thyroid medication.”

“That doesn’t get me any closer to filing charges against Claudia Spalding.”

“We’ve talked about this,” Kerney replied. “If Dean doesn’t crack, you’ll have to take a different route to implicate her.”

“That’s already under way,” Ramona said. “We’re checking to see if Claudia made overtures to other men to help murder her husband. Griffin told me a story about a guy who turned down such an invitation before Dean arrived on the scene. It may be a tall tale, but we’ve got a name and we’re trying to find him.”

“Establishing prior intent helps,” Kerney said. “But we haven’t nailed down a clear motive yet.”

“We know she stands to inherit a bundle of money,” Ramona said.

“It would be reasonable to assume that she was eager to get her hands on Clifford’s wealth. But why the hurry? Spalding indulged her. She lacked for nothing, including his permission to get her sexual needs met elsewhere.”

“Right now, I’m stymied, Chief,” Ramona said, “and losing Griffin as an informant and a witness doesn’t help matters.” She stopped short of saying more and took a deep breath.

“You’re angry because I kept you in the dark about Winslow.”

Ramona gave a tight nod of her head.

“Until now, except for me, no one in this department or any other local law enforcement agency knew about Agent Winslow’s undercover operation. I have full confidence that you and Detective Chacon will also honor that commitment to silence. Or do I need to be more emphatic?”

“No, sir,” Ramona said tersely.

“Good. Don’t let this situation shake your focus, Sergeant. Griffin still may do time. But if not, he’s permanently out of business and DEA has gained a major informant. You’ve got Dean for murder one. Make the same thing happen with Claudia Spalding.”

Ramona smiled thinly and rose. “Yes, sir.”

Kerney smiled. “Put your frustration aside, Sergeant. Most of the time you handle it well.”

Ramona got the sugarcoated warning. “I’m sorry if I seemed abrupt, Chief.”

“No harm done,” Kerney replied.

Ramona left and Kerney thumbed through a plan Larry Otero had prepared for rearranging offices and renovating space in the building now that the department’s dispatch and 911 unit had moved to the new regional communication center housed at the county law enforcement center.

It was a good plan, but it didn’t capture Kerney’s interest. He wanted Sara to call with word that she’d cleared the decks and he could get on with the exhumation.

He occupied himself by working on the details of the George Spalding matter that he could control. He lined up a forensic anthropologist, arranged for a private lab to do the DNA testing, confirmed that Alice Spalding’s saliva sample had been sent by overnight express, and got the judge’s signed exhumation order faxed to Sara, the VA, and the U.S. Attorney.

When he finished, he thought about calling Sara and dismissed the idea. He’d already asked her for a big favor. The least he could do was wait patiently to hear back. Holding that thought in mind, Kerney forced his attention on a fresh stack of documents Helen Muiz had deposited on his desk.

Dressed in stonewashed blue jeans, lightweight walking shoes, and a peach-colored pullover top, Ellie Lowrey left her house, greeted by a fair evening with calm, blue skies showing the first hint of sunset. The air, still moist from a brief shower that earlier in the day had brushed the coastal mountains, felt cool against her face.

She drove with her car windows down, trying hard to put the Spalding murder investigation behind her. Lieutenant Macy’s lecture should have been warning enough. But over a light dinner, a summer salad with orange slices, greens, and a vinaigrette dressing, Ellie couldn’t convince herself to leave things well enough alone. She’d promised Ramona Pino she’d take a closer look at Claudia Spalding’s extramarital love life, and she felt honor-bound to follow through.

According to her phone message, Ramona had scored a possible lead on one of Claudia’s former lovers, a man named Coe Evans. Supposedly, Evans had been approached by Claudia to join in a murder plot that predated Kim Dean. For now, it was nothing more than hearsay. But Ramona had made some progress, which was more than Ellie could claim.

She took a back road out of Templeton past soft, hilly pastureland dotted with cattle resting under oak trees, yearlings and colts trotting along enclosed white fences bordering the lane, and tidy rows of grapevines winding up gentle inclines.

She drove quickly through Atascadero, a city gutted by the El Camino Real and Highway 101, a place with no true heart left, no real sense of community. Outside of town, she stayed on country roads, driving aimlessly, trying without much success to shake thoughts of Claudia Spalding from her mind.

Spalding was an attractive, sophisticated, calculating, and smart woman, with a smugness and a cold edge to her. She’d swatted away Ellie’s attempts to crack her defenses. What would it take to break her down?

Ellie sat in her parked car looking down at the training track of the Double J Ranch. Across the way, perched on a small rise, was the house where Ken Wheeler, the ranch manager, lived.

She wondered if Wheeler felt lucky to live on a picture-perfect ranch, working with beautiful, pampered animals, spending every day inside an enchanted bubble sheltered from ugliness, crime, depravity, and violence.

Cops were supposed to be cavalier about the grotesque and monstrous things people do to each other, immune to the hideous and the horrible. At least, that was the way Hollywood and the hard-boiled crime writers portrayed them. Ellie hadn’t gotten to that point yet, and doubted she ever would. She didn’t even know any cops with that kind of invisible emotional shield.

Sometimes she yearned to be inside an enchanted bubble, away from it all. It was pure fantasy. As an alternative, she’d settle for bursting Claudia Spalding’s bubble.

She gazed at Wheeler’s house. White clapboard siding beneath a slanted roof with a single chimney, a porch with a neat front lawn enclosed by a low fence, a detached single-car garage with doors on hinges that swung outward. It was far more lovely and appealing to Ellie than the Spalding mansion.

At the house, Ellie knocked on the screen door and was greeted by a pleasant-looking woman, who identified herself as Lori Wheeler and went to fetch her husband.

When Wheeler arrived, he offered Ellie a seat on the porch and a refreshment.

Ellie accepted both and sat sipping raspberry iced tea from a tall glass, enjoying the scenery and the coolness of the evening. On the enclosed dirt track below, a rider exercised a spirited gray along a quarter-mile straightaway, close to the infield railing. On the rise behind the open-air stalls and barn, a small herd of yearlings, bunched tightly together, wandered up the hill. The smell of wet grass from the afternoon shower still clung in the air.

Wheeler remained silent while Ellie watched a noisy killdeer, clearly recognizable by two black breast bands, circle and dip, piercing the silence with its call.

“What can I do for you?” Wheeler finally asked, after the bird had gained altitude to join a scattered flock. An ex-jockey, he was small and thin, but rail-hard. He exuded the quiet confidence of a competent man comfortable inside his skin.