Michael Mcgarrity - Slow Kill

“I came along to help, Sergeant,” Kerney replied. “Put me where you want me.”

“We’ll start on this floor,” Ramona said, wondering if Kerney was testing her on search protocol, “and clear an area for Detective Chacon to use.”

The sun was low on the horizon when they finished searching the ground floor and started on the lofts. One served as the master bedroom, and the other was a combination library and music room with a baby grand piano, writing desk, soft leather reading chairs with matching ottomans, and built-in bookcases.

Kerney had just finished with the contents of the writing desk in the library/music room when Ramona came up the loft stairs.

“Have you found anything interesting, Chief?” Ramona asked.

Kerney fanned the stack of papers in his hand. “Not really. Closing documents on the house, property tax notifications, canceled checks, paid veterinary and feed bills for the horses. The usual stuff. How about you?”

“The same. What about the laptop?”

“It’s password protected,” Kerney answered as he rose with the laptop in hand to turn over to Chacon.

“What about the books?” Ramona asked, looking at the shelves lining the walls. There had to be at least a thousand volumes, and each one had to be checked.

“That’s next on the list,” Kerney said from the ground floor.

Ramona glanced at some of the titles on the spines. Carl Jung’s complete works; books by Boswell, Swift, Yeats, Samuel Johnson, Oscar Wilde, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Jorge Luis Borges; Shakespeare’s sonnets; Joseph Campbell’s works on mythology; a complete shelf devoted to art and architecture.

She passed in front of a cushioned banco below a large window and inspected the next stand of shelves. A book at eye level, Premier Nudes, caught Ramona’s attention. Next to it was a tome on the erotic world of wrestling, followed by a book of erotic drawings. In fact, the entire set of shelves was given over to erotica, with many of the titles in French, German, and Italian.

She flipped through several volumes. Some were nothing more than photography books of nude men and women, not at all provocative, while others had more explicit sexual content with heavy sadomasochistic and homosexual themes.

“Well, well,” Ramona said quietly to herself.

“Find something?” Kerney asked as he returned to the loft.

She turned and handed him a small softcover German book entirely devoted to photographs of a dominatrix with various men.

Kerney opened it to the first photograph, which showed the finely sculpted buttocks of a woman wearing garter belts, stockings, and spike heels. At her feet kneeled a fat, elderly, nude man with downcast eyes.

“Well, well, indeed,” Kerney said.

“There’s a whole wall of this stuff, Chief.”

“Let’s see if Claudia Spalding left any messages inside these tantalizing little volumes,” Kerney said, fanning through the pages.

They carefully searched through every book in the library, discovering an errant bookmark or two, a forgotten postcard, an occasional cash receipt for a book purchased but never read. They emptied one shelf at a time, and soon the floor, the desk, the chairs, and the top of the baby grand piano were covered with wobbly stacks of books.

Ramona finished first, thumping down an enormous old copy of The Oxford Universal Dictionary of Historical Principles on the last empty bit of floor space. She cleared off the piano bench, sat, and watched Kerney as he pulled a book off the lowest shelf and inspected it in the dim light of dusk that filtered through the window.

Ramona switched on the desk lamp. Her fingers were dirty gray, the creases in her palms etched with grit. During the time they’d been searching Claudia’s library, Ramona had learned that the chief shared her love of books. They’d exchanged comments about interesting titles, the discovery of favorite authors, and some of the more valuable signed first editions.

Kerney fanned through the last book to be checked, put it down, and rubbed his hands on his jeans. “That does it. Have we missed anything?”

“I don’t think so,” Ramona said.

“Have you looked inside the piano bench?”

Ramona opened the bench. Inside there was a stack of sheet music, and under it a diary bound in red leather with gilt edging and a sterling silver clasp lock.

“Is there a key for this in the desk?” she asked, holding up the diary.

Kerney found the key and passed it over. Ramona unlocked the diary and read a random, dated entry, written in neat script.

K has a lovely penis, medium in size, but he uses it enthusiastically. He lets me fondle it, but I haven’t yet taken him in my mouth. I wonder if he’s afraid to give up control.

She scanned another entry.

I’m as twitchy and horny as a broodmare in heat. Masturbated three times this morning.

Ramona flipped back to a longer entry.

Dinner out with K last night. The lovely blonde who arrived soon after us with her escort was enchanting. Tiny waist, long legs, perfect hips, and just a sexy hint of a round tummy. I told him she’d be perfect for us to share, and he made some inane comment that he’d have to sleep with her first before he could suggest a threesome. I’m beginning to wonder if I can take him to the next level. He’s sexually possessive and not as open-minded as he’d like to believe. But I’ll continue to hold my tongue and stroke his little-boy’s ego.

She read aloud an entry made soon after Claudia’s move to Santa Fe.

Putting distance between Clifford and myself hasn’t worked. It’s still bondage of a certain kind, no matter how much freedom I’ve managed to broker for myself in this marriage. It’s all an anachronism, lacking only the lordly robes of some duke or earl hanging from Clifford’s aged body in testimony of his right to possess me. Even his generosity is a two-edged sword, designed to bind me to him to do his bidding, right down to his need to have me at his side at some absurdly boring event. This cannot continue. I will not be owned.

“I think this clears up a few things,” Ramona said as she handed the diary to Kerney.

He scanned a few passages. One detailed how Claudia had used her erotica collection to stimulate Kim Dean’s interest in more adventuresome sex. It read like a sex manual. Another spoke directly of Claudia’s growing desire to rid herself of Clifford.

Kerney closed the diary. “She may have never put her murder plan on paper, but what’s here is damaging.”

“What do you make of her?” Ramona asked.

Kerney shook his head. “I don’t know, but the psychiatrists on both sides will have a field day in court.”

Ramona shook her head. “I never imagined sex could be so devoid of any feelings.”

Kerney smiled at the comment. “Perhaps you just didn’t expect it from a woman.”

Ramona laughed and headed for the loft stairs. “Good point, Chief.”

“Make a copy of the diary for me, if you will.”

“It will be on your desk in the morning.”

A full moon hung in the clear evening sky, shedding a silvery light over the Galisteo Basin and spilling pale shadows across rangeland, low wood-land mesas, and grassy hills.

Kerney’s earlier attempt to locate Jennifer Stover, the woman who’d owned the gallery where Debbie Calderwood’s college roommate once worked, had failed. He was determined, if possible, to find and talk to Stover before calling it a day.

He knew the village of Galisteo well. For a time, he’d worked on the basin as a caretaker of a small ranch while recovering from gunshot wounds, and now he had his own spread on the north lip of it.

Although some of the land near the village had been carved up into residential parcels, most of the surrounding countryside remained open range owned by ranchers who still ran cow-calf operations and cowboyed every day. There were outfits that encompassed ten and twenty thousand acres, but the largest ranch took up almost ninety thousand acres of grassland, canyons, low-slung mesas, and wide sandy creeks that ran west toward the Rio Grande.