Slow Kill (34 page)

“Who’s this DeCosta?” Ramona asked.

“He’s an Army deserter who served with George Spalding in Nam.”

“I’ll get on it, Chief.”

Kerney put the phone down and went back over his notes on Ed Ramsey. During the past few days he’d used his free time at the academy checking into Ramsey’s background.

Ramsey had started his law enforcement career in Missouri and worked briefly for a small department in Illinois, before moving to California and joining the Santa Barbara Police Department as a patrol officer and then moving up through the ranks. The police standards and certification boards in all three states had no disciplinary reports or formal complaints about him on file.

Ramsey’s credit history proved to be more interesting. He had a sizable mortgage on his Stafford home, as well as personal loans for a boat, motorcycle, and two automobiles. Additionally, the report showed another real estate loan in the amount of two hundred thousand dollars for property in Maine. The bank that held the note reported it was for a summer home on the coast near the town of Camden and that Ramsey had purchased it two years ago. Ramsey’s total loan payments added up to a six-figure annual nut.

He used his credit cards frequently, occasionally for big ticket items, but always paid the balances in full each month.

From the FBI Personnel Office, Kerney learned that Ramsey’s civil service position was rated as a GS 12. From the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, Kerney learned how much Ramsey received annually through the pension fund. Even if Ramsey was at the top end of his salary scale, his combined income from wages and retirement pay fell far short of the money needed to fuel his lifestyle. It pointed to an additional income stream that Kerney couldn’t find until he knew where to look.

That afternoon, Kerney sat in on Ramsey’s media relations class and did a Q amp;A about his efforts to improve coordination between his department and community agencies serving chronically mentally ill patients. Kerney explained how the deaths of two seriously mentally ill individuals had prompted him to appoint an ad hoc citizen task force to develop and implement a special training program for all sworn personnel.

After class, Ramsey shook Kerney’s hand and thanked him for his participation.

“When do you head home to Santa Fe?” Ramsey asked as they walked down the hallway.

“I’m at work Monday morning, with a full plate waiting for me.”

Ramsey flashed an understanding smile. “Isn’t that always the case? From what I’ve been reading in the newspapers, you’ve still got the Spalding homicide hanging fire.”

“She’s still out there, but we don’t know where. I understand you met her husband some time back.”

Ramsey laughed and nodded. “When he was married to his first wife. We called her Crazy Alice. I spoke to him a few times.”

“How did that come about?” Kerney asked as they descended the stairs to the ground floor.

“The woman had some hare-brained idea that her dead son was still alive. She was obsessed by it, and kept calling my department to report alleged sightings. Spalding found out what she was doing and came in to set the record straight. He brought full documentation with him of his son’s death in Vietnam. He said he couldn’t control her behavior, and asked for my understanding in the matter. From that point on, I had my detectives humor her whenever she called with a new lead.”

Kerney nodded knowingly. “Cranks and crazies, they’re everywhere.”

“That’s what makes a chief’s job so much fun. But when they’re rich and influential, you’ve got to placate them a bit more than the average civilian. Any ideas of why the current Mrs. Spalding killed her husband?”

Kerney stopped in front of his office. “A few.”

“Probably for the money,” Ramsey said. “He had a shitload of it.”

“Interestingly, that hasn’t popped up as a motive.”

Ramsey shrugged. “I guess there are as many motives to kill as there are victims. We need to get you back here to teach again.”

“I’d like that.”

“Good. I’ll make it happen.”

After Ramsey waved good-bye and disappeared around a corner, Kerney smiled. From what he’d said about Alice Spalding, Ramsey clearly knew Kerney had been snooping into the case, and his most likely informant was Dick Chase. Ramsey had stopped short of probing the subject more deeply, but his curiosity about it had been real. It was also interesting that Ramsey had focused on money as a motive for Clifford Spalding’s murder. Did he have a personal interest in Spalding’s wealth that made him jump to that conclusion?

Kerney was now convinced, in spite of what Ramona Pino had told him to the contrary, that there had to be a money trail connecting Clifford Spalding, Ed Ramsey, and Dick Chase.

On his desk he found a note to call the lab in Albuquerque. He dialed the number and spoke to a senior tech, who gave him the results of the DNA comparison testing. The remains were not those of George Spalding.

Friday night, Sara came home at a reasonable time with news from the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Walter Reed. As she fed Patrick his dinner in his high chair, she told Kerney what had been discovered.

“The remains in Spalding’s casket belong to a chief petty officer. He was lost overboard when his strike assault boat came under fire during a mission to pick up a SEAL team operating near the Cambodian border in 1972. According to eyewitness reports, he took rounds in the chest. Several other sailors were wounded.”

“At least he wasn’t a murder victim,” Kerney said, “which means we have one less crime to worry about. How was his body retrieved?”

Sara wiped Patrick’s chin with a napkin. “There’s no record that it was, at least by our personnel. The file does show that South Vietnamese naval commandos mounted several search and recovery missions for his body after the SEAL pullout. But there are no follow-up action assessment reports. They were probably burned before Saigon fell. Lots of official documents were destroyed to keep them out of the hands of the North Vietnamese.”

“What about mortuary records?”

Sara held out the spoon to Patrick. He took it and banged it on the high chair. “According to the quartermaster corps, the sailor ’s remains were never received at either Da Nang or Tan Son Nhut. From what we now know, the likely scenario is that after Spalding faked his death, someone at the mortuary sent the body bag home under Spalding’s name, and whoever processed it stateside made sure no questions were asked.”

“I wonder how many gemstones were in the body bag, and how Spalding left Nam without getting caught.”

“Given his job, it would have been easy for him to assume a dead soldier ’s identity. He probably came home on a chartered troop transport flight.”

“He would have needed orders to do it.”

“Which a processing clerk could have provided for a hefty bribe.”

“That makes sense,” Kerney said. “Has the sailor ’s family been notified?”

Sara shook her head as she tried to get Patrick to eat more dinner. He pushed the spoon away. “No, but when they are told, there will be no mention of the fact that his remains were unearthed in a casket buried over thirty years ago under another man’s name.”

“I think he’s finished eating.” Kerney took Patrick out of his high chair and plopped him on his lap. “That would be an embarrassment to the military.”

Sara gave him a guarded look. “Do you think they should be told the truth?”

“I don’t think that would be wise,” Kerney said. “The family has had over thirty years to wonder, hope, and grieve. Let them bury him and move on. What are the Army’s plans to find George Spalding?”

“JAG and CID have mounted a full-scale investigation into the entire gemstone smuggling operation. It’s quite possible that a quartermaster officer, who has since retired at a fairly high rank, may have been involved.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The officer in question authorized the release of the remains to Clifford and Alice Spalding and logged in the body bag containing the gemstone shipment that was intercepted.”

Patrick smeared a sticky hand on Kerney’s shirt and burped. “Are you still in the loop on the case?”

Sara shook her head. “Only peripherally, but I’ll keep an eye on it. When will you tell Alice Spalding about her son?”

“Not right away,” Kerney replied. “Although with her deteriorating mental condition it might not matter when I did. Are you busy tomorrow night?”

“Of course not, it’s Saturday.”

“Good. I’ve booked dinner reservations at a Georgetown restaurant. Afterward, we have tickets for a chamber music concert in the city. I’ve already arranged for a babysitter.”

Sara smiled. “That sounds nice.”

Kerney lifted a very smelly Patrick off his lap. “I think our young friend needs his diaper changed.”

“Your turn,” Sara said. “I’ll do the dishes.”

Kerney took Patrick away and cleaned him up. Through the open door he could hear Sara loading the dishwasher. She was still a bit preoccupied and overworked, and not her usual self. But the tension between them had diminished.

Kerney thought it best to let the situation ride. He didn’t want anything to spoil his last two days in Arlington.

He put a clean diaper on Patrick and tickled his belly. “Let’s have a great weekend, Champ, before I head back to Santa Fe.”

Patrick giggled in agreement, burped, and kicked his little feet in the air.

A late afternoon summer sky greeted Kerney upon his return to New Mexico. The sun flooded golden light on the desert and made the distant peaks behind Santa Fe flutter miragelike against a hot blue horizon.

The thought of returning to the solitude of his empty ranch house depressed Kerney. After two weeks with Sara and Patrick, he didn’t want to face the feeling of loneliness that would surely come as soon as he got home. Instead, he went to his office. On his desk was a memo from Ramona Pino and some material on the High Prairie Charitable Trust. According to the memo, the Calgary Police Department and Canadian federal authorities had not yet completed background checks on the staff and board members of the trust. Efforts to locate Debbie Calderwood, George Spalding, and the DeCosta brothers had just gotten under way.

Kerney turned to the charitable trust documents. Established twenty-eight years ago as a private foundation, its mission was to conserve, protect, and restore native prairies in Alberta and Saskatchewan, preserve historical sites in both provinces, and provide scholarships to agricultural students at Canadian colleges.

A small staff of four people ran the organization: a CEO, a director of development, a grants manager, and an administrative assistant. The board consisted of three individuals, including Clifford Spalding. It met twice annually to make grant awards and allocate funds. Except for Spalding, no familiar names were listed as staff or board members.

The permanent endowment came solely from gifts made by Spalding, and in the last two years, he’d tripled his annual contribution of cash and investments to the trust, which currently exceeded sixty million Canadian dollars.

The most recent annual report showed funding of program activities by category only. Over four million dollars had been disbursed in the reporting period, but there was no breakout of the organizations that had received funding or the amounts allocated.

Kerney eased back in his chair. The last light of evening had passed, along with his hope Pino would have found a money connection between Clifford Spalding, Ed Ramsey, and Dick Chase through the foundation. If one existed, it was hidden. He’d ask Pino to dig deeper.

Kerney had also hoped that the Canadian connection would lead him to George and Debbie, but nothing had surfaced. Still, it was conceivable that Clifford had been secretly bankrolling his son through the trust over the past twenty-eight years. Or perhaps, as Sara had suggested, George had bankrolled his father, and the trust was a blind used to launder and deliver George’s cut of the corporate profits.

Kerney had strong evidence that Clifford Spalding had falsified his son’s military records, probably with George’s help. Did the two men do it to keep Alice Spalding in the dark about their ill-gotten gains? By making George out to be a good soldier who’d died in combat, did they hope she’d accept his death more readily? If so, it had back-fired.

But what motivated Alice to keep searching for George? Did she have suspicions about Clifford’s sudden financial windfall that got him started building his hotel chain? Or had Clifford tripped himself up in the lies he’d told to keep the truth from her? And why had she been kept from knowing the truth in the first place?

Kerney figured with Clifford dead and Alice mentally out of it, only George could answer those questions, if he could be found. Otherwise the reasons would stay buried in the past.

Kerney wondered why Spalding had tripled his contributions to the trust during the last two years. His will divided his estate in thirds, shared equally by Claudia, the trust, and Alice, who was entitled to her slice through the divorce settlement.

Had Spalding been moving cash and investments into the foundation to reduce the amounts Claudia and Alice stood to inherit? Did he want to penalize Alice for being a thorn in his side for so many years, and punish Claudia financially for violating the terms of their amended prenuptial agreement?

Kerney wrote out his questions, knowing he might never learn the truth. He attached them to a note to Ramona Pino asking her to look deeper into the trust, put it on her desk, and went home.

At the ranch, he heard the whinny of a horse through the open truck window. He drove toward the barn, and the two geldings he’d bought in California, a red roan and a gray, scampered to the far end of the corral away from the glare of the truck headlights. There was a note taped to the barn door from Riley Burke saying he had put Comeuppance in a stall across from the geldings to keep the animals separated, and the brood mare was stabled at his father ’s place.