Other paperwork in the case pertained to Spalding’s hotel holdings. Lowrey recognized a few of them by name: very swanky places in upscale California resort communities. A sleeve held a small number of business cards. Lowrey thumbed through them. One was from a Santa Barbara police captain who headed up the Major Crimes Unit. What was that all about?
Lowrey wrote the information in her notebook. Tomorrow was Sunday. She doubted the autopsy would be done quickly, given the likely absence of foul play. If the results came back as death due to natural causes, she’d drop the matter completely. Until then, she would keep the case open and call the Santa Barbara PD captain on Monday to satisfy her curiosity.
Ellie got up and poured a cup of coffee. She felt good about how the morning had gone. She’d spent five years as an investigator before earning her stripes and taking a patrol assignment. It was fun to work an investigation on her own again. In truth, she missed her old job, but accepting a promotion to the patrol division had been the only way to move up in the ranks.
She returned to her desk and started in on the paperwork, hoping it wouldn’t take all day for the New Mexico cops to find Spalding’s widow and report back.
Chapter 2
A fter his retirement as an Army nurse, William Price had returned home to California and started a new career as a deputy sheriff. He’d put in three years as a patrol officer and then transferred into the detective unit as an investigator/coroner. During his ten years on the job, Price had seen just about every possible kind of dead body, from gruesome murder victims and gory traffic fatalities to little old ladies who died peacefully in their sleep.
Until her promotion and transfer out of investigations to patrol, Ellie Lowrey had worked with Price on a number of homicide cases. He admired her meticulous attention to detail. Although Price saw no evidence of foul play in the death of Clifford Spalding, Ellie was right to assume a worst-case scenario until it was proved otherwise.
The department contracted for autopsy space with a mortuary in the town of Los Osos, close to the coast. In an office outside the embalming room, Price went through the clothing he’d removed from Spalding’s body. The scent of flowers from the viewing rooms at the front of the mortuary made his nose itch.
In a pocket of the expensive Italian slacks he found a small gold pill case with Spalding’s initials engraved on the hinged lid. It contained a single, small, pale yellow pill shaped in the form of two blunt arrow points with the name of the manufacturer stamped on it.
Price reached for the Physicians’ Desk Reference he carried in his briefcase, known by all who used it as the PDR, and looked up the drug. It was a hormone replacement medication used in the treatment of Graves’ disease, a form of hyperthyroidism. He read through the entry and called Ellie Lowrey to give her the news.
“Would having a thyroid condition kill him?” Lowrey asked after listening to Price’s report.
“I’m no expert on immune system diseases,” Price replied. “But not taking the medication would be dangerous, perhaps even life threatening, especially if Spalding had other health problems.”
“Wait a minute,” Lowrey said. “There was a physician’s business card in Spalding’s briefcase. Here it is, Dr. Daniel Gilbert. His office is in Santa Barbara.”
Price reached for a pen. “You want me to call him?”
“Right away,” Lowrey replied. “Get all the information you can and call me back.” She read off Gilbert’s phone number. “And pull the pathologist in to do the autopsy right now.”
“Aren’t you rushing things a bit?” Price asked, knowing that Ellie might catch some flack from the brass for authorizing a priority autopsy for what appeared to be nothing more than a routine unattended death.
“I’ve got a feeling about this,” Lowrey replied, “and a possible suspect I’d rather not lose sight of before I get some answers.”
“Who’s your suspect?”
“The man who found Spalding’s body. His name is Kevin Kerney. He’s the chief of police in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which coincidentally is where Spalding’s wife has a house.”
“This could come back to bite you,” Price said.
“Just because he’s a cop doesn’t mean he gets a free pass,” Lowrey said.
Price hung up, contacted the pathologist, and then by phone tracked down Dr. Gilbert, who fortunately was handling weekend calls and emergencies for his group practice.
Gilbert responded to the news with surprise. “Clifford was in three months ago,” he said. “His health was good and his blood work results were fine.”
“What about the original course of treatment for the Graves’ disease?” Price asked.
“Radioactive iodine was used to destroy the thyroid gland and stop production of the hormone. It was completely successful.”
“When was that?” Price asked.
“Ten or eleven years ago,” Gilbert replied. “Clifford had all the classic symptoms, but he’d let them go untreated thinking it was just stress related. He’d recently divorced his first wife and was about to remarry. He came in for a prenuptial physical exam and that’s when I made the diagnosis.”
“Were there any complications?” Price asked.
“It caused some weakening of his heart muscles,” Gilbert answered. “But I put him on a diet and exercise program that he religiously maintained. I saw no further deterioration.”
“Would not taking his pill cause heart failure?”
“Certainly not by forgetting to take his medication for a day. But in the long term, too little or too much of the drug can put the patient at risk for a variety of medical problems. The key is to maintain the patient on a stabilized thyroid hormone replacement regime. That’s why periodic blood work to determine medication levels is vital.”
Price described the pill he’d found, and the dosage for it listed in the PDR.
“That’s what I prescribed,” Gilbert said. “I haven’t changed the dosage in two years.”
Price thanked the doctor, hung up, and reported back to Lowrey.
“Bag and tag everything you have,” she said, “and turn it in to evidence.”
“Will do,” Price said, nodding to the board-certified forensic pathologist, who stood in the office doorway looking not at all pleased and rather impatient.
He dropped the headset in the cradle and stood.
“Am I here because of one of Ellie Lowrey’s legendary hunches?” the pathologist asked.
“You could say that,” Price said. “Mind if I assist?”
“You damn well better,” the pathologist said. “I have a dinner party to go to tonight.”
Using a borrowed western saddle lent to him by one of the trainers, Kerney rode each of the four geldings around the track, first in a slow trot using the reins to see how they responded to the bit, then moving them quickly from a canter to a gallop, letting them run for a while to test their endurance. Of the four, he favored a red roan and a gray, because of their smooth gaits, calm dispositions, and swift, tight turns.
He watched Sergeant Lowrey drive up to the stalls just as he finished saddling Comeuppance, the stud horse. Other than the sheer fun of having a racing stallion under him, he had no compelling reason to check out Comeuppance on the track. He’d already decided to buy him, ship him home, and get him started servicing the mares. But he wanted the experience of running him full-tilt along the rail of the racetrack.
Lowrey was still a good thirty feet away as Kerney swung into the saddle and nodded at the stable hand, who opened the gate to the track. He adjusted the strap to the helmet Wheeler had asked him to wear, touched his heels against Comeuppance’s flanks, and the horse surged through the gate at a full gallop.