“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?”