The sergeant got on the horn to Chase, explained that he had a police chief from Santa Fe who needed to see him, and turned the phone over to Kerney.
Kerney gave Chase a rundown of the events that had brought him down to Santa Barbara.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Chase growled. “Okay, I’ll be there in a few. Wait for me in my office.”
Chase’s office was also standard issue: a desk, several chairs, a file cabinet, a desktop computer, and the usual personal and cop memorabilia displayed on the bookshelf and the walls. Kerney spent his time waiting reading a back issue of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin that featured a cover article on criminal confessions. Through the window he could see the sky darkening into dusk. He was almost through the article when a burly man with a day-old beard and a broad face stepped into the open doorway.
“So Clifford Spalding is dead,” the man said with a rueful smile. “God help me. Now I’ll never get his ex-wife off my back.” He offered his hand. “Dick Chase.”
Kerney set the bulletin aside, stood, grasped Chase’s hand, and introduced himself.
“So, is this a homicide?” Chase asked as he settled into the chair behind his desk.
“Possibly,” Kerney said, “possibly not.”
Chase grunted. “That clarifies things. What brings you into it?”
Kerney decided to level with Chase. “For now, it appears that I’m a person of interest to the investigation.”
“You’re a suspect?” Chase asked as he gave Kerney a hard, sideways look.
“Not yet,” Kerney replied. “I’m trying to extricate myself from that possibility.”
Chase leaned back in his chair, his tight smile showing no teeth. “You’d better lay it all out for me.”
Kerney told Chase about his reasons for coming to California and his early morning discovery of Spalding’s body at the ranch. He emphasized that Claudia Spalding had been in the company of a man on a remote, high country trail-riding trip when notified of her husband’s death, and finished up by summarizing the conversations he’d had with Alice Spalding and Penelope Parker. He deliberately skipped over his visit to the Spalding estate.
He put Sergeant Lowrey’s business card on the desk. “That’s the San Luis Obispo sheriff’s deputy who’s handling the inquiry,” he said. “Give her a call, Captain, and get her side of the story.”
Chase nodded. “Wait out in the bullpen, and give me a few minutes.”
Chase closed the door behind Kerney and spent a good ten minutes on the phone with Lowrey. When he reappeared he didn’t look too happy. He motioned for Kerney to enter.
Kerney’s cell phone rang as he sat.
“It’s Sergeant Pino, Chief,” Ramona said when he answered.
“What have you learned about Kim Dean?” he asked.
“He’s a divorced father of two. The ex-wife and kids reside in Colorado. He’s a pharmacist and the owner of one of those franchise pharmacies. He’s got a house in Canada de los Alamos and keeps a couple of horses. The neighbors say Claudia Spalding’s vehicle is frequently parked at his house overnight.”
“Find and talk to a friend of Claudia Spalding’s named Nina Deacon,” Kerney said. “She lives in Spalding’s area. Learn what you can from her about Dean’s relationship to Spalding.”
“Will do. Anything else, Chief?”
“Who’s working with you?”
“Russell Thorpe.”
Thorpe was a young, capable state police officer Kerney knew personally through his involvement in several major felony cases.
“Good. Check your facts carefully,” he said, hoping Ramona and Thorpe would get the hint and sit on what they’d learned for a little while.
“Will waiting thirty minutes before we pass on the information do?” Ramona asked.
“Perfect,” Kerney said, then disconnected and looked at Chase. “Well?” he asked. “What did Sergeant Lowrey have to say?”
“You’ve pissed her off, big-time,” Chase said flatly, “and frankly, I’m feeling that you’ve put me in an awkward situation. I don’t know whether to hold you for questioning or let you walk.”
“I’m not going anywhere for a while,” Kerney said. He gave Chase the name of the motel where he’d rented a room. “What did Lowrey tell you?”
Chase ran his hand over the stubble on his chin. “You know the drilclass="underline" no details or information gets released to potential suspects or targets of investigation.”
“Fair enough,” Kerney replied. “Can you talk about Alice Spalding and her search for her missing son?”
“That I can do,” Chase said with a small, derisive laugh. “There is no missing son. George Spalding was killed in a helicopter accident in Vietnam near the end of the war. He was a military policeman transporting one of the last prisoners from the stockade at Long Binh when the chopper went down. Both Spalding and the prisoner were killed in the crash.”
Kerney knew about the Long Binh Jail, located on a U.S. Army base near Bien Hoa, twenty miles north of Saigon. The troops referred to it contemptuously as the LBJ, for Lyndon Baines Johnson, the president who’d escalated the war through deceit, misinformation, and lies.
Kerney had been in-country as a lieutenant at about the same time as George Spalding, serving as a member of the last U.S. Army combat unit in Nam, the Second Battalion, Twenty-first Infantry.
“You’ve got DOD verification of George Spalding’s death?” he asked.
“Up the wazoo,” Chase replied.
“So why is Alice Spalding convinced her son is still alive?”
“Long before the Spaldings ever moved to Santa Barbara, she saw a wire service photograph in a newspaper of some people with injuries being treated at a traffic pile-up on the interstate. One of the victims in the photo looked like her son, and I grant you he did. But a check with the California Highway Patrol and the EMT who treated the man confirmed that it wasn’t George Spalding. As I understand it, that started the whole thing.”
“How did Clifford Spalding handle it?” Kerney asked.
“It was his cross to bear,” Chase said. “He asked me to contact him every time Alice called to report another sighting. She sees George everywhere, on television, in the newspapers, walking down the street, at shopping malls in Timbuktu. Most of the time the subject doesn’t even resemble George. I’ve been dealing with her obsession about her son for the past fifteen years.”
Kerney nodded sympathetically. “Why is she so obsessed?”
Chase shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“How do you handle her?” Kerney asked.
“In the past, she used to call me herself. But now it’s mostly her personal assistant who phones in to report a new sighting. I take down the information, tell her we’ll look into it, and then let Mr. Spalding know about it. He’d take it from there. He had a way of calming her down, at least for a while. Usually it would be a month, maybe two, before I heard from her or her assistant again.”
“Didn’t Spalding at one time hire a private investigator at Alice’s urging?” Kerney asked.
“Yeah, Lou Ferry,” Chase said. “He retired from the department about twenty years ago. I heard he got sick and had to shut down his business. Spalding used Ferry once or twice right after he moved here to placate Alice when she felt like we weren’t doing enough.”
“What about Debbie Calderwood?”
Chase held out his hands in a gesture of supplication. “Oh yeah, the girlfriend from Albuquerque. Wouldn’t it be great if she just dropped out of the sky into our laps? According to an Albuquerque PD report from back in the early seventies, she quit college and left town soon after George died. Nobody knows where she went or where she is. She’s just another person out there somewhere in the great unknown who doesn’t want to be found.”