“The police captain I spoke with told me George’s father provided the military documents to his department, and from what I saw in the file they looked authentic to me.”
“They had to be forged,” Sara said. “I researched the helicopter crash. No such event occurred in Vietnam on that date. George Spalding was killed in an RPG attack at the Tan Son Nhut Airbase.”
Kerney dropped the paper and swung into a sitting position. “Do you have his complete service jacket?”
Sara shook her head. “Not yet. I’ll get it tomorrow. When do you expect the forensic results on the skeletal remains?”
“In a week, I hope.”
“I’ll alert the Armed Forces DNA lab and ask them to give it high priority when the results arrive.”
“Jerry Grant, the forensic anthropologist I used, suggested the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii might also be helpful.”
Sara rose and raised the window blinds. Muted evening light bathed the oak floor. “I agree, especially given your theory that the remains in the casket aren’t those of George Spalding.”
“Why do you say that?”
Sara sat back down. “You raised it in your case notes. George Spalding was five-feet-eight, and nineteen years old at the time of his death. Not five-eleven and in his thirties, as Grant’s preliminary findings of the remains suggest.”
Kerney nodded in agreement. “There’s a cover-up of some kind going on.”
“A cover-up of what?” Sara asked.
“I don’t know. Clifford Spalding did everything possible to thwart his ex-wife’s quest to find her son, and we now know he probably gave forged military documents about George’s death to the police. Why? Did George fake his death, desert his post, and somehow make his way back to the States from Vietnam?”
“Possibly,” Sara said. “As a graves registration specialist he could have been in a position to send home the remains of another soldier under his name. But that deception should have been caught stateside. The Army goes to extraordinary lengths to confirm the identity of every KIA.”
“So how could he get away with it?” Kerney asked.
Sara tapped her fingers together. “He couldn’t, without help. In the material you sent me, you noted that Clifford Spalding started building his wealth right around the time his son was reported KIA.”
“Up until then, he operated a less than successful mom-and-pop motel in Albuquerque,” Kerney said. “But the story of how he got the money, or where it came from, can’t be substantiated.”
“Maybe George supplied the money,” Sara said. “Graves registration is part of the quartermaster corps, which controls the flow of massive amounts of material and equipment. Toward the end of the Vietnam War, there were hundreds of reports of black marketeering in stolen military property, drug trafficking, and currency smuggling, that were run by networks of soldiers in the quartermaster corps. Army CID was swamped with cases. Although a lot of contraband was seized before it was shipped to the States, quite a bit of it got through and was never recovered.”
“How do you know so much about this?” Kerney asked.
Sara smiled. “I wrote a paper about it when I was at the Command and General Staff College.”
“What would it take to do a CID records search to see if George Spalding was a target of an investigation in Nam?”
“I don’t know,” Sara said, rising to her feet. “The information may be in Spalding’s service jacket. If not, I’ll have my first sergeant look into it.”
“When is your report on sexual assaults due?” Kerney asked.
“In ninety days. But let’s not talk about that now.”
“Okay, what should we talk about?”
She reached out, took Kerney by the hand, and pulled him close. “Come into the bedroom and I’ll tell you,” she whispered playfully.
Early Monday morning, Kerney took Sara and Patrick to the Metro rail station and drove Sara’s SUV through the insane Beltway traffic south toward Quantico. Weak light in a gunmetal gray sky dulled the thick woodlands that bordered the road to the FBI Academy. On a 385-acre enclave smack in the middle of a U.S. Marine Corps base, the academy had the feel of an austere college campus isolated from the outside world.
Marine guards in combat fatigues reviewed his credentials at a roadside checkpoint and then passed him through to the main gate where a police officer verified his authorization to enter the secure facility.
In the years since Kerney’s last visit, much had changed. A new indoor shooting range had been added, a state-of-the-art forensics center had been built, and the Drug Enforcement Agency had opened a separate academy on the grounds. Kerney was eager to see it all.
A cluster of stark concrete buildings, each ornamented by ground-to-roof pillars and connected by glassed-in breezeways known to the staff as gerbil tubes, defined the main campus. Three high-rise towers served as student dormitories, all within easy walking distance of the classrooms, pool, gym, dining hall, and conference halls in the various buildings laid out in a tight geometrical pattern.
The grassy lawns and stands of trees that surrounded the buildings didn’t suppress the Spartan feeling. Woodlands bordering the athletic fields and outdoor shooting ranges were rigorously pruned back and held in check. North, behind the red-and-white-striped water tower, the forest spread down to a lake, reserved for the use of military and academy personnel and their families.
In the reception area of the administration building, Kerney’s credentials were reviewed again and a temporary visitor’s pass was issued. While he waited for his escort, he wondered if J. Edgar, the groundhog who lived in one of the enclosed patio areas, was still in residence.
A secretary from the Leadership and Management Science Unit came through the glass door and greeted him. The woman wore the conservative attire favored by the FBI, a pair of black slacks and a white blouse with a subdued bow around her neck. She led him through a maze of hallways and breezeways to a suite of offices, where he was introduced around to the few staff members who were at their workstations.
Assigned to a small office crammed with three desks, chairs, and file cabinets, he settled in to prepare for his two-week stint as a visiting instructor. First, he looked over his schedule. He would teach two morning-long classes, attend a three-hour seminar on terrorism, participate in a roundtable discussion on leadership development, and speak at an evening conference on community policing for midsize law enforcement agencies. All in all, it was light duty with plenty of free time built in.
Classes were already in session, and his first order of business was to attend a luncheon meeting with full-time and visiting faculty in the executive dining room. He reviewed the list of assigned instructors. Edward Ramsey, of the FBI Law Enforcement Communication Unit, was scheduled to teach an afternoon class next week on public speaking and media relations.
Kerney wondered if he was the same Ed Ramsey who’d once headed up the Santa Barbara PD. The instructor resumes inside the three-ringed binder of student course materials confirmed he was. That meant it should be easy to approach Ramsey and engage him in conversation. He’d be interested to learn if Ramsey knew about his meetings with Captain Chase. He hoped so.
He put the binder aside, took out the lecture notes he’d prepared before leaving Santa Fe, and started adding to them.
After a lengthy morning meeting, Sara returned to her cubicle at the Pentagon to find George Spalding’s military service jacket on her desk. Known as a 201 file, it contained, among other things, information on Spalding’s military training and occupational specialty, performance ratings and promotions, awards and decorations, medical/dental records, pay and allowances, permanent duty assignments, and disciplinary actions.