Slow Kill - Michael Mcgarrity [52]
Winslow scanned the list again.
“Nobody?” Ramona asked.
“I’m sorry, no.” Winslow tapped his finger on the desk. “Unless a first name might be helpful.”
“Which one is that?” Ramona asked.
“Mitch,” Winslow said, waving the paper. “I don’t know his last name, but it’s down here as Griffin.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“If it’s the right Mitch, he’s a general contractor.”
“Do you know him personally?” Ramona asked.
“Just in passing.”
“Describe him to me.”
“Six-foot-three, in his forties I’d guess. He’s a big guy who likes to work out and party.”
Ramona took back the list. “Thanks for your help.”
Winslow smiled and stood. “I don’t think I’ve done anything helpful at all.” He ushered Pino to the door. “If you ever decide to invest in the stock market, come back and see me.”
He waited for Pino to leave the building before calling Kerney.
“Did Pino make you?” Kerney asked.
“I doubt it. But let’s not make a habit of this, Chief Kerney.”
“Not a chance. Thanks.”
Finding where Mitch Griffin lived took one phone call to the state agency that licensed general contractors. With the chief’s blessing, Ramona assembled a team of officers, including two narcotics detectives and some uniforms, and drove to Griffin’s house in La Cienega, a few miles south of Santa Fe. The house was sited behind a hill on a private dirt lane. In among the surrounding trees were piles of lumber, beams, doors, and windows, some of them covered with clear plastic sheeting.
Griffin’s extended-cab pickup truck sat in front of a detached garage, and parked next to it was Kim Dean’s SUV. Ramona laughed out loud. Maybe the gods had heard her plea for an easy bust after all.
She spread her troops around the building and used a bullhorn to call out Dean and Griffin. After checking the firepower in his front yard through a window, Mitch came out first, totally stoned and shirtless in his six-foot-three, buff glory. Dean followed behind, rumpled and scared, pumping his hands up and down in the air.
She ordered them facedown on the ground with their hands clasped behind their heads and watched as they were cuffed and frisked. Then she had her officers stand them up while she told them the charges and read them their rights.
She looked Dean over carefully. He wasn’t anything to write home about. Maybe the fear in his eyes and his trembling chin made him seem insignificant and ordinary.
“We need to have a nice long talk about Claudia,” she said as a uniform led him away.
“Claudia Spalding?” Griffin mumbled lethargically, his eyes blinking rapidly in the harsh afternoon light. “Man, I built her house.”
“It’s such a small world, isn’t it?” Ramona replied cheerily.
Chapter 7
Kim Dean was scared, but he wasn’t stupid. He asked for an attorney and immediately dummied up. Ramona took him directly to the county jail, booked him on a murder one charge, and left him with a detention officer. The officer let Dean make his phone call to a lawyer and put him in an isolation cell, the first step on the way to being processed, fingerprinted, and strip-searched.
Ramona used the time to fill out additional booking forms on Dean, charging him with drug trafficking, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, forgery, distribution of controlled substances, and possession with intent to distribute. Although it only counted as a misdemeanor, she threw in an evading arrest charge for good measure.
She had a detention officer bring Dean to an interrogation room where she read off the additional charges, Mirandized him again, and asked if he’d like to make a voluntary statement.
Dean shook his head and said no.
Ramona knew his refusal barred her from asking questions, but that didn’t stop her from talking.
“Just in case you’re interested,” she said, “each prescription you forged counts as a separate charge. Let’s be conservative and say you did fifty. That’s a hundred and fifty years, if a judge sentences you to consecutive terms. Throw in all the other counts and I’m guessing you’ll get about 250 years in the slam. Of course,