Forester had an eager, intelligent look about him, which was offset by dark circles under his eyes and a skin condition that turned his forehead bright pink.
Kerney explained he’d like to take a look at the George Spalding case file, and Forester gave him a quizzical look.
“Why bother with that piece of garbage?” he asked, gesturing at an empty chair.
“Professional curiosity,” Kerney said as he sat. “There are some New Mexico connections that interest me.”
“Well, actually, we don’t really work it as an active case.”
“So I understand,” Kerney said. “How is it handled?”
“You know about the situation?”
“Your captain filled me in,” Kerney replied.
“Then he probably told you we do nothing more than take down the information Alice Spalding gives us and forward it to him. He takes it from there.”
“Where does he take it?” Kerney asked.
“He talks to Alice and then gives the ex-husband a heads-up on the situation.”
“Talks to Alice about what?”
“Just to reassure her that we’ve looked at whatever she told us and there is nothing to report. Of course, we really don’t do squat.”
“Do you have the case record?”
“Do I ever,” Forester said with a laugh. He opened a desk drawer, removed a thick file folder, and put it in Kerney’s hands. “Have at it, Chief,” he said, grinning. “You can use the other desk.”
Kerney spent an hour paging through the file. Most of what Chase had talked about was documented in the record. A U.S. Army report described the helicopter accident in Vietnam that had caused George Spalding’s death. The chopper had gone down for unknown reasons, probably due to mechanical defects. There was nothing in it that spoke about a secret mission or hush-hush duty, as Penelope Parker had mentioned.
Kerney had been in-country during the same time as George Spalding. He wondered if he’d ever met the man.
According to the rescue and inspection team sent to the crash site, only two passengers, who’d been thrown free upon impact, had survived. Everyone else-four people-had been fried to a crisp when the bird exploded.
He scanned the missing person reports that Alice Spalding had called in to the department over the years. In the material he found an old memorandum from a former police chief assigning Detective Chase to the investigation.
Kerney thought that a bit unusual, but not completely out of the realm of possibility. Perhaps Clifford Spalding had taken his initial request for special handling straight to the top.
It was also curious that Chase had remained involved with the case over the years. Why did he find it necessary to be the primary contact with Alice and Clifford Spalding? Why hadn’t Chase passed the job on to somebody else as he rose through the ranks? After all, it was supposedly nothing but a big nuisance.
Kerney looked up from the file and asked Forester about the ex-chief who’d given Chase his initial assignment.
“Ed Ramsey?” Forester replied. “He retired about five years ago, just after I joined the force.”
“Where is he now?”
“Teaching at the FBI Academy. Management, or something like that.”
Kerney shook his head, smiled at Forester, and patted the folder. “Man, if I’d been Chase, I would have dropped this baby in somebody’s lap the first chance I got. Somebody like you.”
Forester chuckled. “Then I’m sure glad you’re not running the show here, Chief. Cap says he’d rather not have us wasting our time on it. Besides, Clifford Spalding likes to deal directly with him.”
Forester’s choice of words suggested that he didn’t yet know that Spalding was dead. “But Alice doesn’t seem to mind whom she talks to in the department,” he said.
“Yeah, but then, she’s crazy,” Forester said. “Crazy Alice, we call her.”
Kerney handed the file to Forester and stood. Asking more questions about Chase might raise a red flag. “Thanks for letting me have a look-see,” he said.
“Learn anything helpful, Chief?”
“Yeah, it’s time to stop spinning my wheels and go home.”
Kerney left police headquarters telling himself to put the riddle of George Spalding aside for a time and think about something else, anything else. He walked past the rental car in the direction of State Street, turned the corner at the busy boulevard, and joined the tourists wandering along the crowded sidewalk.
A red light held Kerney up at an intersection and soon a throng of people waiting to cross the street surrounded him. The walk sign flashed and Kerney stood his ground as pedestrians surged around him. Chase had mentioned an old newspaper photograph of a traffic accident that had triggered Alice Spalding’s search for her son.
Although noted in the case file, the newspaper photograph wasn’t in the record. Kerney changed directions and walked down a less busy side street. Chase had told him that one of the victims in the news photo resembled George Spalding, which meant that he must have seen the picture.
Also missing from the record was any documentation of the attempt Chase said had been made to identify the man. Supposedly, a highway patrol officer and an EMT who’d responded to the accident had been queried about the victim. But there was nothing in the file that noted their names, any statements taken from them, the true identity of the man Alice had believed to be her son, or even the date and place of the accident.
Additionally, there was no mention of Debbie Calderwood in the file. Was there another record? Perhaps one that Chase kept in his office?
As Kerney strolled back toward the car, another inconsistency surfaced in his mind. Chase said Alice always called in her sightings. But when Kerney had first met Alice, she mistook him for Chase. Did Chase visit Alice periodically? If so, why?
Kerney stopped in front of the old courthouse, where a group of tourists led by a guide were getting the scoop on the historic building and the fabulous view of the bay from the bell tower. He called Penelope Parker on his cell phone.
“Does Captain Chase stay in close contact with Alice?” he asked when she answered.
“Not so much since she got sick,” Parker replied.
Kerney moved out of the way as the tour group hurried inside. “And before that?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” Parker said. “Alice relied on him heavily. He would even visit her to report in person.”
“On a regular basis?”
“Monthly, I’d say.”
“Did she know Chase was passing on what she told him to Clifford?”
“Alice never would have stood for that,” Parker said.
“Did Chase give her verbal or written reports?”
“Only verbal, as far as I know. It’s interesting that you should mention Captain Chase. He called here after you left this morning, asking questions about you and what you were up to. I told him what we’d talked about.”
“You did the right thing,” Kerney said, responding to the anxiety in Parker ’s voice.
“Oh, good. I was worried that perhaps I had caused you some problems.”
“Not at all,” Kerney said. “Thanks.”
He disconnected before Parker had a chance to get chatty, and the phone rang almost immediately.
“I’ve been trying to ring you,” Ellie Lowrey said.
Kerney chuckled. “Ring me? What a terribly British thing to say.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes I also like to say lorry instead of truck, and knickers instead of underpants.”
“How revealing. What’s up, Sergeant?”
“Can you meet me for coffee?” Ellie asked.
“Tell me where,” Kerney answered.
The diner was, of course, the kind favored by penny-pinching cops, who were always on the lookout for a decent meal and a good cup of coffee at a reasonable price. Kerney sat with Lowrey in a booth and read the prenuptial legal amendment that gave Claudia Spalding the right to seek sexual fulfillment outside her marriage without penalty.
“My, my,” he said as he returned the document to Lowrey.
“It’s valid,” Ellie grumped, “and moreover, the attorney I met with said Claudia Spalding is due to get one-third of her husband’s estate after probate; Alice Spalding, by the terms of her divorce settlement, gets a third; and the rest goes into a trust foundation that Spalding established to do good works.”
Lowrey motioned at the waitress for a coffee refill. “I confirmed Spalding’s operation with the doctor who removed his prostate. He told me it is not uncommon after surgery for men, especially the elderly ones, to become unable to perform in bed.”
“Are you taking Claudia Spalding off your suspect list based on what you’ve learned?” Kerney asked.
Lowrey paused for the waitress to fill her cup and move away before giving Kerney a sour look. “Not necessarily, but it weakens the circumstantial evidence, which is further undermined by the fact that Kim Dean did not fill the prescription for Spalding in Santa Fe. It was handled by a different pharmacy.”
“That’s not what we wanted to hear,” Kerney said. “What about the neighbor’s assertion that Claudia was unhappy in her marriage?”
“Mrs. Spalding said she lied to Deacon and Dean so as not to violate the confidentiality clause in the agreement. But there is some good news. I asked the lab to test first for the presence and levels of thyroid medication in the blood sample that was drawn during the autopsy. The results came back way below what they should have been, given the daily dosage Spalding was supposed to be taking.”
“Would that have killed him?” Kerney asked.
“Over time, quite possibly, according to our pathologist. Too little thyroid hormone would cause a slowing of the heart rate and force the endocrine system to overcompensate. So while the heart struggles to pump blood, the patient could simultaneously have symptoms such as blurry vision, heat intolerance, restlessness, digestive disorders, and the like.”
“Some of which Spalding had been complaining about,” Kerney said.
Ellie nodded. “Exactly. Given Spalding’s already damaged heart muscles, our doc suggests he could have easily gone into cardiac arrhythmia and thrown a clot that blew his pump.”
“What about the pill you found?” Kerney asked.
“It’s under the microscope,” Ellie said, crossing her fingers. “Here’s hoping we find something. But even if the lab does confirm it was altered or duplicated to look like the real thing, I doubt I can get a search warrant approved.”
“What if Dean was acting on his own and somehow managed to switch Spalding’s medication?” Kerney asked.
“Give me the evidence to nail that idea down,” Ellie said, “and I’ll get a warrant signed today.”
Kerney shrugged. “It’s speculation, but worth looking into, nonetheless. Let’s say Dean bought into Claudia’s fairy tale about how unhappy she was with her hubby, and that Dean truly didn’t know about the confidential agreement. Maybe he decided, without Claudia’s knowledge, to set her free from her burden.”
“So he could claim her as his own,” Ellie added. “Good thinking, Chief. Now, tell me how we get from your theory to hard facts.”
Kerney took the check from the waitress and paid the bill. “I’ll have my peelers look into it.”
“Your what?” Lowrey asked with a grin.
“Peelers,” Kerney said, grinning back, as he slid out of the booth. “It’s an Irish slang word for cops.”
Ten blocks from the diner, a city police cruiser with headlights flashing came up behind Kerney’s car. He pulled off the road and the cop car followed, slowing to a stop when he braked and killed the engine. With his eye on the rearview mirror, Kerney watched as the officer called dispatch by radio, trying to figure out exactly what traffic ordinance he’d violated. He rolled down the window as the officer approached, his driver’s license and badge case in hand.
The cop took the license, glanced at it, handed it back, and looked at the open badge case Kerney held out the window.
“Captain Chase would like to see you in his office, Chief Kerney,” the officer said politely. “If you’ll follow me, please, sir.”
“Certainly,” Kerney said, wondering what he might have done to draw Chase away from his all-day meeting and require an escort to headquarters.
At his office, Chase greeted Kerney with a big smile and a hearty handshake.
“Sergeant Lowrey tells me you’re off the hook as a possible suspect,” he said.
“The truth is a persuasive argument for innocence,” Kerney replied.
“That’s for sure,” Chase said, settling into his chair. “Jude Forester said you came by and looked over the Spalding materials.”
“I did,” Kerney said as he sat across from Chase.
“Well, he didn’t show you everything,” Chase said, sliding a slim file folder across the desk. “That’s my file I keep here in the office. Have a look.”
Kerney scanned the contents. It contained Chase’s brief handwritten notes of conversations and contacts he’d had with Clifford and Alice Spalding over the years.
“There’s not much here,” Kerney said.
Chase laughed as he took the folder back. “What did you expect?”
“I was hoping there would be a copy of that newspaper article and photograph about the interstate traffic accident that originally caught Alice Spalding’s attention,” Kerney said. “It wasn’t in Detective Forester ’s file, nor were the statements of the cop and the EMT on the scene who confirmed that the man in the photograph wasn’t George Spalding.”
“It’s not in Forester ’s case material?”
“I didn’t see it,” Kerney replied.
Chase shook his head apologetically, but his expression was wary. “I haven’t looked at that file in years, but it should be in there. Maybe it’s just misplaced.”
“Probably,” Kerney said with an easy smile. “I guess it really doesn’t matter, since Spalding, his ex-wife, and their dead son are no longer of any concern to me.”
“Lucky you,” Chase said with a laugh. “Did you get a chance to talk to Lou Ferry?”
“Yes, last night,” Kerney answered. “But he was in too much pain to tell me much, and now it doesn’t matter.”