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.”