Slow Kill (33 page)

Somewhere Kerney had read, “Americans like sameness.” Personally, he found it boring.

A sign at the clubhouse announced that the course was for the use of residents, members, and their guests only. On a putting green near the pro shop, Kerney spoke to an older fellow wearing a golfing cap, and shorts that showed his tanned, spindly legs.

The man chuckled when Kerney said he liked the neighborhood, was looking to buy, and wondered if there were any homes for sale.

“All the houses sell within twenty-four hours after they hit the market,” he said. “Your best bet is to get on a Realtor ’s waiting list.”

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Kerney said, “what’s the price range?”

The man pushed his cap back. “The smaller homes are in the $750,000 range. Those are mostly snapped up by empty-nesters or retired couples like me and the wife.”

“I’ve got a growing family,” Kerney said, thinking about the size of Ramsey’s house.

“Then you’re looking at right around seven figures,” the man said. “Of course, that gives you equity in the club and unlimited use of the golf course.”

Kerney smiled. “That’s what I want.”

The man nodded knowingly. “What’s your handicap?”

Kerney, who’d never golfed in his life, shrugged. “Not very good.”

The man laughed again. “I know what that’s like. Well, this is the right place to work on your game. We’ve got a great resident pro.”

“That’s what I need,” Kerney said, looking out at the greens. “Are the natives friendly?”

The man smiled at the comment. “Folks here get along well. There’s a good mix of people.”

“Civil servants?” Kerney asked.

The man shook his head. “Not too many of those. Some mid-level government appointees live here, but mostly we’ve got lawyers, doctors, think tank analysts, scientists, and of course old duffers like me.”

Kerney left the man to his putting practice, and during the stop-and-go drive to Arlington, with tractor-trailers cutting in and out of lanes and drivers tailgating madly, he did some math in his head. Could a federal employee on a civil service salary and a police retirement pension afford a million-dollar home?

Kerney wasn’t sure. Even with a large amount of equity from the sale of a previous house in Santa Barbara, could Ramsey afford a five- or six-thousand-dollar-a-month mortgage payment? What would his annual property taxes be? Was he still paying for his adult toys on top of the mortgage?

Ramsey seemed to be living large, and until he found out more, Kerney decided to keep him in his sights.

He called Sara on his cell, told her he’d pick Patrick up from day care at the Pentagon, and asked if she’d be home for dinner.

“What are you fixing?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Sounds good,” Sara said. “See you for dinner.”

Sara came home to fresh-cut flowers on the dining table, Yo-Yo Ma playing a Haydn cello concerto on the stereo, the smell of dinner cooking in the kitchen, and Patrick dressed for bed in his pajamas. She picked Patrick up from his playpen and found Kerney at the stove adding mushrooms and onions to a skillet of browned chicken.

She kissed him on the cheek. “How was your day?”

“Good,” Kerney said. “And yours?”

“Fine.” On the way home, Sara had decided not to tell Kerney about her planned end run around the brass at the Pentagon. She didn’t want the evening to spiral into a discussion of why it would be best for her to resign her commission. “Did you get some playtime with your son?”

“He wore me out,” Kerney said.

After dinner, Patrick got cranky. Sara examined his mouth, called Kerney over, and pointed out the tip of a small front tooth showing through his gums. She gave him a teething ring to chew on, which helped, but his discomfort kept him awake long past his bedtime.

Once he was finally asleep, they sat at the kitchen table, Sara sipping the last of her wine, Kerney reading the paperwork from George Spalding’s 201 file.

“What about this CID investigation?” Kerney asked.

Sara put the wineglass down. “I talked by phone with the case investigator, a retired chief warrant officer named Noah Schmidt. He says the sergeant he busted, Vincent DeCosta, was involved in illicit gemstone trafficking. Mostly high quality rubies and sapphires smuggled into Vietnam from Thailand, transported stateside, and sold on the black market to dealers. But he couldn’t prove it. He had enough on DeCosta to charge him with theft of personal property, which he did, while he continued to work the case. However, DeCosta escaped from the Long Binh Jail in Vietnam before he could be tried. He’s never been seen since. He’s still carried on the books as a deserter.”

“Did Schmidt ever prove his smuggling case against DeCosta?”

Sara shook her head. “His informant in Bangkok went missing.”

“How did DeCosta get away?” Kerney asked.

“During the pullout, the Army was shutting down the stockade at Long Binh and sending all the prisoners stateside. Schmidt thinks someone bribed one of the MP guards to look the other way.”

“Schmidt is sure George Spalding wasn’t involved in the gemstone smuggling?”

Sara shook her head. “Not at all. He thinks the smuggling ring consisted of a small group of enlisted personnel who worked with DeCosta. He just couldn’t prove it. Spalding and the other cohorts were cleared solely on the basis of insufficient evidence. They alibied each other.”

“Did Schmidt have a handle on the volume of smuggled gems?”

“Only one shipment was intercepted at the Oak-land Navy base. According to the experts who examined the stash, countries of origin for the stones included Burma, India, Thailand, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. All of the gems were cut, polished, and ready for sale. The estimated street value was a quarter of a million dollars for the shipment, at early 1970s prices.”

“What kept Schmidt from following up on the case?” Kerney asked.

“He got promoted and reassigned. The investigator who took over the case was a short-timer who dropped the ball.”

Kerney closed the file. “What do you know about Sergeant DeCosta?”

“Nothing more than you do, yet,” Sara replied “We’re waiting on his 201 file.” She handed Kerney a slip of paper. “Schmidt is more than willing to speak with you. That’s his home phone number.”

“Thanks.” Kerney put the paper on top of the Spalding documents. “How’s your project coming along?”

“It’s getting under way.”

“Are you just too tired to talk about it, or trying to avoid the topic altogether?”

“Don’t try to use your interrogation skills on me, Kerney. When are you taking me out to dinner?”

“Is tomorrow night soon enough?” he replied.

“That will work.”

Later, as Sara slept beside him, Kerney tired to figure out what was bothering her. Was she in a bind at work because of her assignment to prepare a report on the sexual assault of servicewomen? Was she avoiding the issue for his sake while he was here? Or was it something he’d completely missed, something he had done?

It wasn’t like Sara to hide her feelings or skirt an issue. He didn’t know what to do other than wait it out.

K erney’s time with Sara and Patrick passed quickly, but not without incident. By the end of his first week in Arlington, Sara seemed preoccupied and distant. She slept poorly at night but wouldn’t talk about what was bothering her. As a result, their evening conversations kept to chitchat about Patrick, her plans to build a covered patio in the backyard, the events of Kerney’s day at the academy, and similar mundane subjects.

Over the weekend, Kerney forced down every instinct he had to confront her uncharacteristic reserve. Sunday night, he could no longer contain himself.

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong,” Sara said in response to his question. She shifted her position on the couch to look at him and put her after-dinner liqueur on the coffee table.

“That covers a lot of ground,” Kerney said from the other end of the couch.

“Meaning?”

Kerney sipped his cordial. “You’re not one to leave things unsaid.”

Rain began pattering on the side of the house and coming in through the old wooden window screens. Sara got up and closed the windows. “Don’t get bullheaded on me, Kerney. Just give it a rest. Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re irritable, not sleeping well, and evasive every time I ask you what’s wrong.”

She returned to the couch. “If so, it’s for good reason.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

She gave him a feisty look. “Okay, I’ll make it short and sweet. I don’t want to tell you what’s going on because you’ll harangue me about resigning my commission.”

“I harangue you?”

“You have a tendency to lecture.”

Kerney shook his head in rebuttal. “I don’t mean it to sound that way.”

“I believe that’s true,” Sara said. “But you knew what you were getting into when you married me. I’m career Army, and that fact alone makes family life hard. We live apart by your choice, and that makes it even more difficult. But never once have I asked you to quit your job, leave Santa Fe, and follow me from post to post until I retire. You could give me the same consideration.”

Kerney was silent for a time. Finally he said, “I can see how you might think I’ve been pestering you to quit the Army. I won’t do it anymore.”

“Thank you.”

“But I don’t think you’re telling me the whole story. Does it have something to do with that assignment on the rape of servicewomen?”

“Mostly,” Sara replied.

“Want to talk about it?”

“Not yet.” She slid closer to Kerney and ran her hand up his leg. “I know I’ve been a bit preoccupied with work, but I haven’t been unapproachable, have I?”

“Are you trying to distract me with sex?” Kerney asked, breaking into a smile.

“Is it working?” Her hand moved to his crotch. “Oh my, what’s this?”

Late in Kerney’s second week at Quantico, Claudia Spalding was still on the loose despite intensive efforts to locate her, and Ramona Pino, who was back in Santa Fe, had been unable to find a money trail between Clifford Spalding and any past or present members of the Santa Barbara Police Department. However, fresh information about the George Spalding investigation had begun to come in. First, Jerry Grant, the forensic anthropologist, called.

“The narrowly angled pelvis, the rounded head of the femur, and the length of the femur, confirm it to be the skeleton of a male, slightly less than six feet in height,” Grant said.

“You already told me this in Albuquerque,” Kerney said.

“But I needed to verify my observations,” Grant replied. “Now it’s fact. The joints were completely fused with the bones and showed only slight wear, which is consistent with an age range of thirty to thirty-five years.”

“Did you find anything that would help ID the remains?” Kerney inquired.

“Nothing,” Grant said, “and lacking a skull, I couldn’t even determine race. But there were no tool marks that would indicate the body had been dismembered.”

“That’s interesting.”

“I thought so. What I did find was microscopic evidence that the body had decomposed badly before interment.”

“I thought you said the bones had been cleaned.”

“Yes, but not well enough. The evidence suggests the remains were exposed to the elements for a period of time. In Vietnam, a body could decompose down to cartilage, bone, and sinewy ligaments in a matter of a few weeks. That could explain why the skull, hands, and feet were missing. Predators could have easily scattered those bones.”

“But you’re sure the man was shot?”

“Absolutely. My best guess is by an automatic weapon, but I couldn’t swear to it in court. I asked the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii to run all the information through their database. It yielded a list of seventy-six military and civilian Americans and thirty-nine foreign nationals who fall within the parameters. I’ll fax it to you.”

“Great.”

“By the way, the Armed Forces DNA lab at Walter Reed has the results from the bone sample I took. They said they were expecting it when I called to tell them it was on the way. You must know people in high places.”

“I do,” Kerney said. “Has the lab in Albuquerque finished the mitrochondrial DNA comparison tests?”

“You should hear from them today,” Grant replied. “I’ll fax my report to you along with the list from Hawaii.”

Sara called shortly afterward. “Vincent DeCosta, the sergeant George Spalding served with in Vietnam, has a cousin. He says DeCosta’s younger brother, Thomas, emigrated to Canada during the Vietnam War to avoid the draft, and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”

“Where in Canada?”

“I don’t know,” Sara replied. “We’ve asked the Canadian authorities to locate him if possible.”

“Debbie Calderwood said she lives in Calgary, Canada.”

“That’s why I thought you’d like to know. I’ve got to run. I’m a busy girl.”

Kerney called Ramona Pino. “Was there a Canadian connection in any of Clifford Spalding’s personal or corporate financial records?”

“He owns several hotels in Canada, and a third of the proceeds from his estate will go to a foundation he established in Canada, the High Prairie Charitable Trust.”

“What do you know about the foundation?” Kerney asked.

“Nothing, Chief.”

“Look into it,” Kerney said. “I want as much information as you can get. When it was incorporated, who directs it, what its purpose is, who the board members or trustees are, and any financial statements and annual reports.”

“Didn’t Debbie Calderwood tell her old college roommate that her husband ran a philanthropic organization in Calgary?” Ramona asked.

“She did,” Kerney replied. “Query the Calgary police for information about her, her husband, a man named Vincent DeCosta, and his brother Thomas. They may have changed their names. Fax them the police sketch of Debbie.”