Slow Kill (14 page)

He went back through his notes. Parker had said the developer had wanted to buy Spalding’s old motel, tear it down, and put up a franchise hotel next to the mall.

He thumbed through the bankruptcy paperwork. The motel Spalding had listed as an asset was several miles away from the shopping mall. Kerney wondered about the disparity. Maybe Parker’s version of how Spalding had started his hotel empire was flawed. Kerney didn’t doubt her honesty, just her knowledge of events prior to her involvement with the family.

Putting that issue aside, Kerney still wondered how Spalding had been able to bail out of his financial difficulties so quickly and come up with enough cash to pay for land next to a major shopping mall. Did he have help from a national hotel chain, as Parker reported? If so, why would any large corporation partner with a small-time operator who was about to go broke? It made no sense.

He had Helen Muiz fax copies to Joe Valdez, and took a call from the Harding County sheriff, Luciano “Lucky” Suazo, who reported that his horseback trek along the Canadian to look for Dean at his cabin had been fruitless.

“Nobody’s there,” Lucky said, “and I saw no sign of anybody coming or going.”

“What about his vehicle?” Kerney asked.

“Didn’t see it. His closest access would be at the Mills campground. He’d have to leave his vehicle there and cross the river on horseback or on foot to get to his land. From the campground, it’s two hours by horse, three on foot, to get to his cabin.”

“Are there any other jumping-off points?”

“Yeah, on private land. I’m calling all the ranchers up and down the river now,” Lucky replied. “So far, nobody has seen Dean or his vehicle, and believe me, they’re out there looking.”

“What about the cabin?” Kerney asked.

“Locked up tight, with shutters over the windows. No fresh footprints. Looks like it’s been a couple of months since anyone has been around.”

“Thanks, Sheriff,” Kerney said.

“No need for that, Chief,” Lucky replied. “Just doing my job. I’ll get back to you if anything turns up.”

Kerney hung up and went looking for Ramona Pino, who was in her cubbyhole of an office, fingers clacking away at a computer keyboard.

“I just got off the phone with the Harding County sheriff,” he said, as he sat in a straight-back chair. “Dean wasn’t at his cabin. Do you have any news?”

“Nothing yet, Chief,” Ramona replied. “We’ve got the Denver PD staking out Dean’s ex-wife’s house, and I just finished calling all the airlines. He hasn’t flown out of either the Santa Fe or Albuquerque airports.”

“Did you talk to the ex-wife?” Kerney asked.

“Yeah, and she’s not a big fan of her ex-hubby. She’s about to file against him for failure to pay child support. He’s in arrears for almost fifty thousand dollars.”

“What’s up with the evidence?” Kerney asked.

“The knives are on the way to California,” Ramona said. “Hopefully the lab out there will be able to match one of them to the tool marks on the pill. The stuff I pulled out of the trash bin at Dean’s house had traces of thyroid medication on it, and we lifted Dean’s prints off both packets the drug wholesaler shipped to him. The packet we found in the workshop contained a mixture of all the ingredients Dean used to make the pills. I guess Dean decided to keep his concoction for another attempt on Spalding’s life in case the first batch of pills didn’t kill him.”

“So, where the hell is he?” Kerney asked.

Ramona shook her head. “I wish I knew. Ellie Lowrey has the Montecito estate under observation in case he shows.”

“Okay,” Kerney said.

“I’d like to rework the arrest affidavit on Claudia Spalding and have it ready to resubmit, Chief.”

“What can you add to it?” Kerney asked.

“The only way Dean could possibly have known the specifics about Spalding’s medication and heart condition is through knowledge he gained from Claudia Spalding. Where else could he have gotten it?”

“I agree that it’s a good supposition,” Kerney said. “But a defense lawyer would argue that the information was innocently passed on to Dean by Claudia Spalding. We need something that irrefutably ties the two of them together as coconspirators.”

“We’ve also got the last phone call Claudia Spalding made to Dean at the pharmacy just before he took off.”

“Again, unless we can prove that Claudia actually warned Dean of the arrest warrant, it’s circumstantial. What’s Sergeant Lowrey up to?”

“She’s on her way to Clifford Spalding’s corporate offices in LA. He stopped there before driving to Paso Robles. She’s hoping to find the prescription bottle from the Santa Fe pharmacy. She thinks Spalding may have transferred the contents into his pill case, knowing he’d have a refill waiting for him when he got home.”

“As a pharmacist, Dean had to be fingerprinted, right?”

“And photographed,” Ramona said. “I’ve sent both his prints and picture to Lowrey by computer.”

“Hold up for now on reworking the Spalding arrest affidavit until you hear back from Lowrey. Go for another search warrant on Dean’s business instead. Focus on his finances. It’s possible that we may have multiple motives for murder. Not only does Claudia Spalding inherit a considerable estate, she frees herself to have an open relationship with Dean and bail him out of his financial woes. Use the statement you took from Nina Deacon about Claudia wanting out of the marriage to back it up.”

“But what about the amendment to the prenuptial agreement that validated her right to extramarital affairs?” Ramona asked.

“Her lies to Nina Deacon went way beyond what was necessary to adhere to that agreement,” Kerney said. “She told Deacon that she wasn’t happy in the marriage but didn’t want to get off her husband’s gravy train.”

“Should I go after Claudia Spalding’s financial records also?” Ramona asked.

Kerney stood up. “Not yet. Let’s see what kind of backdoor information we can get from Dean’s records. Has he increased his borrowing lately? Does he have large or overdue accounts payable? Are there frequent cash transactions? Has he been bouncing checks? If Dean is hurting for money, he has a ready supply of drugs he can peddle illegally. Make sure the warrant covers his pharmacy inventory and prescription records.”

“Anything else?” Ramona asked.

Kerney smiled. “Find Dean.”

“He’s either still traveling or has already gone to ground.”

Kerney nodded. “Probably some place that’s familiar enough where he can stay low and feel safe. Get people started talking to everyone who knows him. Contact the ex-wife again and get a list of the names and addresses of family members and old friends. Where does he like to vacation? Where does he go on business trips? Is there someone-a sibling, a parent, a college chum-he visits regularly?”

“Dean and Spalding may have scouted out a hiding place for him on their trips together, in case things went sour,” Ramona said. “I’ll check his credit card charges. That may give us a lead.”

“Keep me informed,” Kerney said as he stepped into the hallway.

Century City, an incorporated municipality of 176 acres, had once been the backlot of a major motion picture studio. Now its office towers, high-rise condos, and luxury hotels filled the West Los Angeles skyline. It boasted a major outdoor shopping center with trendy, high-end stores and retail businesses that drew people from all over Southern California and beyond.

In the stop-and-go traffic of the freeway, Ellie Lowrey had a view of Century City through her windshield for a good twenty minutes before she could ease onto an exit ramp and park in an underground garage. Until today, she’d been here only once, a long time ago, on a weekend shopping spree with her kid sister. She’d left suffering from sticker shock and sensory overload, wondering why all the beautiful clothing, expensive jewelry, fine art, and custom home furnishings had left her feeling so dejected. Did people really need all that stuff to be happy?

She took an elevator to street level and made her way to one of the twin office towers that rose behind a large water fountain. Inside, a security guard directed her to the floor where Spalding’s offices were located.

On the top floor, Ellie explained to a receptionist the reason for her visit and was asked to wait. While the woman whispered into a telephone, Ellie gazed out the plate glass windows at the barely visible Santa Monica Mountains, veiled by brown smog. Far below, she could see traffic flowing on the streets. Except for a package delivery man rolling a dolly into a store there was nobody else on the sidewalks.

She turned back to the receptionist, who gave Ellie a nervous smile as she quickly dialed another extension. On the wall behind the woman’s desk were three rows of framed, enlarged color photographs, eighteen in all, displaying Spalding’s hotel properties. One of them showed the high-rise hotel Ellie had just been looking at out the window.

After a few minutes, a man in a suit came down a hallway, introduced himself as the corporate counsel, and took Ellie to his office, where he questioned her closely about the investigation.

She told him what she was looking for and why. Satisfied that her visit was tied to a murder investigation and had nothing to do with corporate matters, he accompanied her to Spalding’s corner office, and watched while she searched.

Light flooded the big room through two window walls. It was sparsely furnished with two angular leather couches separated by a low coffee table, and a large, highly polished writing table with steel legs and a matching desk chair.

Ellie looked through the drawers of a built-in cabinet behind the desk and glanced at the framed photographs on the shelves above. There were several of Claudia Spalding, but most were of Clifford Spalding posing with movie stars and politicians.

There were no drawers in the desk and the wastebasket was empty. In Spalding’s private bathroom, Ellie found some personal toiletries in a travel kit and another empty wastebasket, but no prescription bottle.

“Was anyone here when Mr. Spalding returned to his office from his business trip?” she asked the lawyer.

“I doubt it,” the lawyer said. “We were closed for the weekend.”

“Where does he park his car?”

“In the underground garage,” the lawyer said. “But when he travels on business, he leaves his car at our hotel here and takes the VIP limo to the airport.”

Ellie thanked the lawyer for his cooperation, went back to the garage, found Spalding’s reserved parking space, and searched the area. There was the usual accumulation of trash under and around the nearby cars, but no prescription bottle.

She drove to the hotel and spoke to a bell captain, who called inside for the limo driver. An older, skinny man wearing a black suit, white shirt, and black tie hurried out the lobby doors.

“Did you pick up Mr. Spalding at the airport last weekend?” Ellie asked.

The man nodded. “Yes.”

“Did he leave anything behind in the limo?”

“Yes, he left an empty prescription bottle on the backseat. It had refill information on the label, so I kept it in case he needed it.”

Ellie broke into a big smile. “Where’s the bottle?”

Ramona Pino wanted her next case to be a cake-walk. Maybe a gang member who popped a round into somebody’s ear in front of ten witnesses, or a body dump case with enough physical evidence at the crime scene to lead her right to the perp, drinking a beer and watching the tube at home, just waiting to be arrested. Even a good old-fashioned domestic disturbance that had escalated into a murder of passion would be a welcome change of pace.

Santa Fe averaged only two homicides annually, but last year had been a real bitch, in terms of numbers and complexity. A lone, smart killer with a bad attitude had chalked up seven victims. One of them, the perp’s mother, had been killed years ago and buried under some backyard shrubbery. The rest were all fresh kills done within a matter of days. The perp had been stopped just short of adding Chief Kerney, his wife, and their newborn son to his tally.

Since Spalding had died in California, Ramona wondered if the case even technically qualified as a local homicide. Maybe an argument could be made that murder was committed the instant Spalding’s medication had been switched. That made it a slow kill, Ramona thought.

With a new search warrant in hand and three detectives to assist her, Ramona walked into Dean’s pharmacy to find Tilly Gilmore, the clerk, and a pharmacist talking in low voices behind the counter. The pharmacist wore a name tag on his white smock that read GRADY BALDRIDGE.

She showed them the warrant and explained what the detectives were about to do.

“Where is Kim?” Baldridge asked. “He should be here for this.”

“I wish he was here,” Ramona said as she motioned to the officers to get started. Matt Chacon steered Tilly to a back office, while the other two men began looking through the filing cabinet and desk behind the pharmacy counter.

“Do you work for him full-time?” she asked Baldridge.

He shook his head and the folds below his chin jiggled. Ramona put him in his late sixties. The smock he wore bulged at his hefty waistline. His pasty skin almost perfectly matched his gray hair.

“No,” Baldridge said. “I’m basically retired. Kim uses me as his relief pharmacist. This is the last day I can be here for three weeks. The wife and I are leaving tomorrow on vacation.”

“Were you supposed to work yesterday?” Ramona asked.

“No, Kim called me at home early in the morning and asked me to come in.”

“Did he say why?”

“Just that he needed coverage,” Baldridge replied.

“Was that unusual?”

“I’d say so,” Baldridge said. “In fact, Tilly and I were just talking about it. He’s only called me to come in on short notice before when he’s been sick. We don’t know what to do if he doesn’t come back tomorrow, except refer his customers to other pharmacies. I only came in today because people were waiting to have their prescriptions filled.”