Michael Mcgarrity - Slow Kill

Dean looked up from the table. “Call the DA.”

“Are you willing to talk to them right now?”

Dean nodded.

Ingram stood. “Stay put. I’ll make the call and be back in a few minutes.”

After Ingram left, Dean dropped his head on the table and cried like a baby.

Early in the morning, long before dawn, Ellie Lowrey dressed for work. She set aside the freshly laundered and pressed uniform she’d picked up at the dry cleaners the day before, and instead put on her best pair of black slacks, a white linen blouse, and a loose-fitting jacket cut long enough to adequately hide the holstered weapon strapped to her belt.

Today, Claudia Spalding would be arrested and charged with murder, and it was Ellie’s job to make it happen without a hitch.

It had all begun last night, when it seemed that her telephone would never stop ringing. First, Ramona Pino called to share the news that Kim Dean had given up Claudia Spalding as his accomplice. Bill Price followed with a call soon after to report that Coe Evans had made a sworn statement accusing Spalding of proposing a prior murder plot against her husband.

Then it was Lieutenant Macy on the line, who’d been assigned to coordinate the arrest of Claudia Spalding. Since Ellie was the only officer who had met Spalding face-to-face, Macy wanted her to lead the team assigned to make the collar.

“She may let her guard down with you, and implicate herself,” Macy said.

“Maybe,” Ellie said doubtfully. “She’s not the nervous Nellie type by any means, but it’s worth a try.”

“Think on it,” Macy said. “Be empathetic and give her a reason to show you how smart she is.”

Twenty minutes later, Macy called again, this time to pass along instructions from the sheriff and district attorney. In order to avoid adverse publicity and controversy, Spalding was not to be picked up at the cemetery or during the wake. There were to be no leaks to reporters, no lingering guests at the estate when the bust went down, and any employees on-site were to be held for questioning after Spalding was booked into jail. As soon as Spalding was locked up, the sheriff and DA would hold a joint press conference to announce the arrest.

With instructions from the brass out of the way, Macy talked about operational specifics. Surveillance was back on Spalding to make sure she stayed put until Ellie had her team in place. Only plain-clothes detectives in unmarked cars would be used, and all exits and entrances to the estate would be watched. Macy would partner-up with Ellie during the operation, and if any adjustments needed to be made to the plan, he would have the final say.

After talking to Macy, Ellie had settled down to a cup of tea and thoughts about how to approach Claudia Spalding. Then the sheriff called. Did Ellie understand she was to make no statements to the press after the arrest? That the case would get national attention? That there could be no procedural screwups?

An hour later, Ellie lay wide-awake in bed, puzzling over how to get Claudia Spalding talking. What was it Ramona Pino had said about Kim Dean? She couldn’t remember the exact words, but it boiled down to Dean being easily manipulated by Claudia. Bill Price had noted the same trait in Coe Evans.

Claudia Spalding apparently thrived on domination and control. Prickly and imperious, she was beyond a doubt a formidable woman. Ellie could easily imagine how she used her sexuality, intelligence, and guile on Dean and Evans. Or anybody else she needed to. It was one thing to guess at Claudia’s motives for murder, but quite another to understand the forces that had made her act. For a woman who’d been given so much, who had so much, it surely went far beyond simple greed.

A restless night finally over, Ellie was starting the day with no brilliant inspirations or new insights. She checked her appearance in the mirror and left the house, hoping that during the drive to headquarters she would think of some way to get Claudia to take that first small step toward admitting guilty knowledge.

It was a soft summer morning in Santa Fe, unusually cool with moist tropical air coursing up from the Gulf of Mexico, yet without a cloud in the sky or any haze to dampen the sunlight. Kerney found it unusual for other reasons as well. Although the downtown shops were about to open, traffic was light and the tourists had not yet begun to stream out of their hotels to fill the sidewalks.

By the time he reached the turnoff to Canyon Road the brief moment of serenity had passed. People wandered up the middle of the narrow street snapping pictures of the quaint pueblo-style adobe buildings, drivers backed up traffic waiting for parking spaces to become available, and the open-air sightseeing trolley just in front of Kerney’s unit was filled with visitors listening to a tour guide’s thumbnail sketch of Santa Fe history blaring out from a loudspeaker.

Santa Fe, a city of 65,000 people-not counting the untold numbers of undocumented residents from Mexico and Central America-was the third largest art market in the country. It was awash with art galleries, private art dealers, art consultants, conservators, appraisers, and studio artists. There were foundries, lapidaries, glass-blowing studios, weaving shops, wood-carving shops, and ceramic studios all over town. But the largest concentration of businesses that made Santa Fe an art mecca were to be found around the Plaza and on nearby Canyon Road.

Years ago, old-timers had decried the rapid changes to the street, once a quiet, sheltered neighborhood of adobe homes, a bar or two, and a small grocery store along a dirt lane. Now the transformation was complete: shops, studios, galleries, and restaurants dominated, and the tourist dollar ruled.

Kerney parked illegally in a loading zone and walked over to the art gallery next to the restaurant where Mrs. Kessler had last seen Debbie Calderwood’s college roommate. The gallery was gone, replaced by an upscale boutique that sold fringed leather jackets, handmade western shirts, silk scarves, flowing dresses, gaudy, flowered cowboy boots-everything a gal needed to show that she had Santa Fe style.

Kerney wasn’t surprised; retail shops along the road came and went with such frequency it was almost impossible to keep track of them.

The store owner told Kerney she’d been in the same location for five years, didn’t know who had leased the space before her, and had never met the prior occupants. However, she did provide Kerney with the name of her landlord.

Kerney called the landlord from his unit and learned the building had previously been leased by a woman who now ran a gallery out of her house in the village of Galisteo, southeast of Santa Fe.

“She deals in abstract, modern art,” the man added. “A lot of it by well-known European and East Coast artists.”

“How long did she lease from you?” Kerney asked.

“About ten years.”

“What’s her name?”

“Jennifer Stover. Her number is in the business directory under the Stover-Driscoll Gallery. Driscoll is her ex-husband’s name. She sees clients only by appointment.”

Kerney got the listing from information, dialed the number, listened to a recorded message, and disconnected. He called information back and learned there was no published residential listing for either a Stover or a Driscoll in Galisteo.

When he got to his office, he’d ask the phone company to search for an unlisted number and then try to make contact with Stover again. If that didn’t work, Galisteo was ten minutes away from Kerney’s ranch. He’d swing by the village before going home in the evening and track Stover down.

From a distance, Ellie Lowrey and Lieutenant Macy watched the hushed, somber crowd assembled at the grave site. Men and women dressed in dark blue, black, and charcoal outfits stood quietly, eyes cast downward. The young children present were anchored close to their mothers’ sides to keep them still. Claudia Spalding held a bouquet of flowers and a pure white linen handkerchief in her gloved hands. An ocean breeze ruffled skirt hems, jacket lapels, and ties, and carried away the minister ’s words.