Michael Mcgarrity - Slow Kill

“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.”

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.”