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.”
“Not missing?”
“Who knows?” Chase replied. “She was never entered into the national missing persons data bank. For the life of me, I don’t see how any of this has any bearing on Spalding’s death or your situation.”
“When you don’t have a suspect, you focus on the victim,” Kerney said.
“That would be a smart thing to do,” Chase said, “especially if you did kill Spalding. It makes everybody think you’re just trying to clear yourself, protect your good name, and keep your
“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.”
“Not missing?”
“Who knows?” Chase replied. “She was never entered into the national missing persons data bank. For the life of me, I don’t see how any of this has any bearing on Spalding’s death or your situation.”
“When you don’t have a suspect, you focus on the victim,” Kerney said.
“That would be a smart thing to do,” Chase said, “especially if you did kill Spalding. It makes everybody think you’re just trying to clear yourself, protect your good name, and keep your
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