She touched the glass jar of seashells she’d collected from the beaches in Ireland. A memento from their honeymoon, it brought back happy memories of early morning walks with Kerney along the wild, misty western coast, whitecaps breaking in ink-black water against the shore.
She turned her attention back to Spalding’s 201 file. The CID investigator, Chief Warrant Officer Noah Schmidt, who’d cleared Spalding of any involvement in the decades-old stolen property case, might very well be an important source of information for Kerney.
She put in a request to personnel to see if Schmidt was a lifer still on active duty or retired military now working as a civilian for DOD or a branch of the armed services. Then she called the Defense Finance and Accounting Services in Kentucky, which handled military retirement pay, and the Armed Forces Record Center in St. Louis, and asked for a fast check on the man. Hopefully, she’d know something by the end of the day.
Down the hall, Master Sergeant Wilma Lipinski, who worked for Sara, was at her desk. With twenty-eight years of active duty service, Lipinski had recently rotated into the Pentagon from a first sergeant posting with a military police company. Only exceptional noncoms were authorized to stay in the ranks for thirty years, and Lipinski was one of them.
“Ma’am?” Lipinski asked as Sara stepped into her cubicle.
“Have you read my briefing summary on our new assignment?” Sara asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Lipinski replied cautiously. A sturdily built, middle-aged woman, the daughter of a retired Chicago fireman, she’d won the Bronze Star for valor while serving in Bosnia.
“What do you think about it?” Sara asked.
“On or off the record, Colonel?”
“Off the record, Sergeant.”
“It sucks, ma’am.”
“Exactly,” Sara said, taking a seat. “How many of the sexual assault cases are still carried as active?”
Lipinski consulted a binder. “Thirty-eight at JAG awaiting disposition, and twenty-six are still being investigated by CID.”
“The general doesn’t want us to touch the closed cases in our report,” Sara said. “But he failed to say anything about those that are still active.”
Lipinski blinked. “I think it’s pretty clear that we’re not to do any investigating, Colonel.”
“I’m thinking more along the lines of research, Sergeant, that gets to the core issues of what we’re charged to address in our report.”
“Field research?” Lipinski asked.
“Yes, with information we can append to the report.”
“Aren’t you splitting hairs, ma’am?”
“Definitely.”
Lipinski smiled. “Your orders, ma’am.”
Sara’s team of six noncoms and officers had been drawn from military police corps personnel assigned to area bases. “We’ll field survey one-third of the active cases: nine that are still under investigation, and twelve at JAG. Pick cases that are within a reasonable striking distance and divide the work as equally as you can among the team.”
Lipinski scribbled a note. “I could take on some of the cases, ma’am.”
“Don’t jump into deep water too fast, Sergeant.”
Lipinski smiled broadly. “I know how to swim, Colonel.”
“Okay, you’re on the team. Find an off-site facility where we can meet and go over the details. Did you read Spalding’s 201 file?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Get me what you can on that sergeant Spalding worked for in Vietnam who was busted for theft.”
“I’ve already put in a priority request through channels, Colonel.”
“You have a degree in criminal justice and twenty-eight years of service, Sergeant. Care to tell me why you never pursued a commission?”
“A long time ago, I decided it was better to be part of the backbone of the Army rather than part of its head. I’ve observed that when heads roll, it’s frequently the wrong heads.”
At lunch, Kerney made it a point to sit next to Ed Ramsey, who talked amiably while packing away a meal of meatloaf and soggy mashed potatoes smothered in gravy.
In his fifties, Ramsey looked fit in his brown suit. He had a full head of hair, a ruddy complexion, and blunt, strong-looking hands. Kerney picked at a dry chicken breast and nibbled his salad as Ramsey made small talk.
“I understand you’ve taught here before as a visiting lecturer,” Ramsey said affably.
“Once, some years ago,” Kerney replied.
Ramsey nodded. “I’ve never been to Santa Fe.”
“Tourists love it.”
Ramsey touched the corners of his lips with his napkin. “Any good golf courses?”
Kerney finished the salad and pushed his plate aside. “Far too many for my taste.”
“Why is that?” Ramsey asked, laughing.
“Santa Fe is high desert country. It takes a lot of water to keep fairways green, and we don’t have enough to go around. Is golf your game?”
Ramsey grinned. “I hack at the ball every chance I get. If I’m not on the links, I’m sailing. Last month, I taught a police media relations class in Chicago. Stayed over on the weekend and spent two days on Lake Michigan. Pure magic.”
“Do you live near the water?” Kerney asked.
Ramsey shook his head. “It’s too high-end for me. I have to haul my boat from home, but it isn’t that far.”
“Where is home?” Kerney asked.
“Do you know the area?”
“Not at all.”
“Stafford,” Ramsey said with a half smile. “It’s a small city south of here. If you have time, you can meet me at the river this weekend, and I’ll take you sailing.”
“Thanks,” Kerney said, “but I’m not much of a water person. Do you miss Santa Barbara?”
Ramsey dropped his napkin on the table. “Not really. As long as I’m near water, I’m happy. Listen, if I can’t take you sailing, how about sitting in on my class next week? That civilian task force on community policing and the mentally ill you established last year was really innovative. I plan to use it as an example of how to build good media and community relations. It would be great to have you there to do a Q amp;A with the students.”
“I’d be glad to participate,” Kerney said as he got to his feet. The luncheon was winding down. An attractive female agent was gathering the other adjunct instructors around her to take them on a tour. “Guess I’d better join up for the tour.”
He shook Ramsey’s hand and followed the group out of the building, mulling over his conspiracy theory. Ramsey hadn’t said a word about the Spaldings. Maybe Ramsey and Captain Chase hadn’t colluded with Clifford Spalding to keep Alice in the dark about her son. Maybe Clifford Spalding had finessed the whole thing.
Kerney decided there were too many maybes. Soon his attention was drawn away by the tour. The new indoor range was a marvel, with high-tech, small-arms combat shooting stations that tested accuracy, judgment, and reaction times in deadly force situations. He got a huge kick out of seeing the Behavioral Science Unit, made famous by a number of movies about serial killers.
Windowless, with mazelike corridors, hidden away in a sub-basement, the unit was unlike the neat, tidy, well-appointed office suites everywhere else in the complex. There were stacks of boxes in hallways, piles of research books spilling off shelves, desks cluttered with reports and paperwork, movie posters tacked to office walls, and dusty, unused typewriters and broken office machines heaped on steel gray work tables.
But the piece de resistance, the object that truly defined the eccentricity of the staff, was the framed picture of a space alien prominently displayed among the official staff photographs that lined a wall near the elevator.
Outside, within easy walking distance, they strolled the streets of Hogan’s Alley, a self-contained, completely functional village built to train agents in crime scene scenarios. They finished up the tour with a peek inside the new forensic building and the DEA Training Academy.