“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.
During lunch, Ramsey had mentioned that he owned a home in Stafford, a commuter community halfway between Quantico and Fredericksburg. Kerney decided that finding out how Ramsey lived might go a long way to answering some of his questions about the man. With the afternoon still young, Kerney drove south on the congested interstate that ran the length of the eastern seaboard from Maine to Florida.
After a failed attempt to locate Ramsey through the phone book at a gas station in Stafford, Kerney stopped at the county administration building and visited the public utilities office on the first floor, where a very helpful clerk provided Ramsey’s mailing address along with driving directions to the house.
Located in a private subdivision surrounding a golf course, the house looked out on a fairway with water hazards, sand traps, stands of big trees, and a paved golf cart lane that wandered up and down the gently rolling terrain. Dense, overgrown woodlands bordered the houses and the golf course. From the lay of the land Kerney could tell the developer had carved the subdivision out of the forest to create a duffer ’s paradise. A dozen or so golfers were out on the links teeing off and scooting around in their carts.
Ramsey’s house was a big, two-story, modern structure with a tall, overwhelming entryway and a redbrick facade under a series of pitched roofs. Outside the two-car garage was an expensive sailboat on a trailer and a high-end touring motorcycle. Ramsey obviously liked his toys.
The subdivision was completely built-up and looked fairly new, expensive, and exclusive. Nothing about it felt like an enclave for civil servants. The houses along the streets consisted of a half dozen different floor plans in varying sizes, all with similar exterior treatments and rooflines, probably required by homeowner covenants.
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.