Slow Kill Page 16

  “I have some business interests in Santa Fe,” Winger replied, “so I spend a lot of time there. What can I do for you, Chief?”

  “I’d be interested in what you could tell me about Debbie Calderwood.”

  Winger laughed. “Boy, I haven’t heard that name in years. Debbie Calderwood. I may be the only person around who knew her real name. At the commune, she called herself Caitlin, after Dylan Thomas’s wife. She was always quoting his poems to anyone who would listen. She liked to say he was the only true poet of the twentieth century.”

  “Certainly one of the best,” Kerney said. “What was she like?”

  “Waiflike in a very sexy way. She was tiny, but perfectly proportioned, with these huge innocent eyes. Every guy who saw her wanted to sleep with her, but she’d have none of it. She was really smart and had a steel-trap mind. You could talk to her about something and weeks later she’d remember the conversation almost verbatim.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “She just wandered into the commune with a sleeping bag and a backpack one day and stayed. Said she need to crash with us until her old man returned from Guatemala. Things were going downhill at the time. People were bailing to go back to the city, couples were breaking up, cash was tight, and the cops and the locals were hassling us. She had money, which helped a lot.”

  “How much money?”

  “I don’t know, but she was pretty free with it. She’d pay for the supplies we needed and put gas in the bus without anyone asking.”

  “How did you learn her real name?” Kerney asked.

  Winger smiled. “We were all a bit paranoid about newcomers who showed up back then, worried about the lowlifes who wandered in, or outsiders nobody knew who might be narcs. This one guy showed up, stayed for a week, and then stole the International Scout we used to till the garden with an old plow. So I searched through her stuff one day after she came back from town, and found some general delivery letters addressed to her.”

  “Did you read the contents?”

  “Yeah, they were innocent, chatty notes from some girlfriends in Albuquerque and Oregon.”

  “Did you confront her about her name?”

  Winger laughed and shook his head. “No. We were all into giving ourselves or each other new names. Jimmy called himself Beaner; Sammy, a surfer guy from Hawaii, was Bear; Judy had an acid ceremony to change her name to Peachy Windsong. We had girls who called themselves Star, Feather, Aurora, Chamisa; guys who went by Owl and Rabbit. Owl held a drum circle to celebrate his new name.”

  “And you were Montana,” Kerney said.

  Winger looked sheepish. “You heard about that. I guess I grew up watching too many cowboy movies. In retrospect, it’s funny now. But we were all just kids who’d dropped out of the establishment to create a brand-new society, live peacefully, and change the world. Free love, flower power, new identities, and lots of dynamite drugs. We wanted truth, enlightenment, sex, and freedom to get high without any bullshit.”

  Winger shifted in the chair, with a sunny look on his face as he warmed to the memories. “Looking back, we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. We built chicken pens and then let the birds run wild, put up a big dome—sort of an aboveground kiva we used for family meetings—that almost blew down during the first big storm. Hell, the most substantial structure on the whole place was the outhouse. It had six seats and was made of scrap slat lumber.”

  “Looks like you came through it all right,” Kerney said, thinking of his year in Nam, which occurred probably right about the time Winger and his friends had been trying to build their utopia.

  Winger smiled. “Yeah, and most of it was fun. The one thing I learned was that you can’t live without rules. It’s a great idea but it doesn’t float.”

  “Did Debbie do a lot of drugs?”

  “She smoked some pot, but that’s about it.”

  “How long did she stay?”

  “Three, maybe four months, until her boyfriend showed up. They split two days after he arrived.”

  “When was that?” Kerney asked.

  Winger closed his eyes and thought hard, “Shit, I don’t know. Sometime in the summer. I was on a really bad head trip at the time. People were staying wasted, not pulling their share, or just bitching each other off right and left about the crops we couldn’t raise, the goats that got into the garden, the pig nobody knew how to slaughter, the tools that had gone missing. There were maybe a dozen of us left and nobody was getting along or doing any work.”

  It was clear that Winger had told the story of his youthful, hippie escapades many times. Kerney decided Winger wasn’t a rogue or ruffian, fraud or fugitive. He was just a guy who wore his counter-culture experiences as a mark of his individuality.

  “Tell me about the boyfriend,” he said.

  Winger made a face. “Now, that was strange. He showed up one day driving a new truck with Mexican license plates. It was like he didn’t want to talk to anybody but Caitlin. They went off together in his truck. Two days later they came back, picked up her stuff, and left. That was the last time I saw her.”

  “Describe him to me.”

  “Average height, real fit looking, with a shaved head that he covered with a bandana. Oh yeah, and a fairly new mustache he was cultivating. Somebody asked him what had happened to his hair, and he said he’d picked up head lice and had to shave it off in Guatemala.”

  “Did he have a name?”

  “Caitlin called him Breeze.”

  “Can you give me a little more detailed description of him?”

  Winger chuckled. “I can go one better than that. Photography was my thing back in those days. I was documenting communal living and keeping a journal. My plan was to write a book about it someday. Never did get around to it. Anyway, I snuck around taking pictures of everyone and everything with a telephoto lens. Before Caitlin and Breeze left, I snapped a couple of frames from a distance for my rogues’ gallery. Got a nice tight head shot of both of them.”

  “I need to see those photographs,” Kerney said.

  “Hell, I’ll give you copies if you’ll tell me what this is all about.”

  “If I’m right, Breeze may be a solider named George Spalding who faked his death in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. Why he did it, I still don’t know.”

  Winger’s eyes widened. “A deserter. Isn’t that something?” He scribbled on a piece of paper and passed it across the desk. “Meet me at my house in an hour. It shouldn’t take longer than that for me to dig through my archives and find the photographs.”

  “One more question,” Kerney said, pocketing the address. “Do you have any idea where they went?”

  Winger shook his head. “They could have gone anywhere. South to Silver City. There was a commune down there. Maybe up to Trinidad, Colorado. All I know is that they didn’t hang around Taos.”

  Ninety minutes later, Kerney waited patiently in the library at Winger ’s house, a spacious room with massive ceiling beams, double adobe walls, and tall casement windows, painted on the outside in turquoise blue. Bookcases along three walls were filled with Native American artifacts, pre-Columbian pots, and rare first editions of early Southwestern archaeology studies. The room held two oversized antique Mexican tables that served as desks, each laden with books, old maps, file folders, photographs of high-end artwork, and related provenance documents.

  He sat in front of the stone fireplace, impatiently waiting for Winger ’s return from what he called his archives room, located somewhere in the back of the rambling adobe. The sound of hurrying footsteps brought Kerney to his feet. Winger appeared, photographs in hand, which he passed to Kerney.

  “Sorry to take so much time,” Winger said. “I had to make copies and dig out my journal to look up when I took the photos.”

  “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.”

  Chapter 9

  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 Spal
ding’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.