Convenient Disposal (5 page)

Chapter Six

The young EMT’s ruddy face faded to the color of bleached linen, but he didn’t move his hands from Carmen’s head. Out of reflex, he ducked so that he could see the girl’s right ear as if he expected to see the point of the hat pin protruding there.

“It’s six inches long?” he asked, and Estelle nodded. She knelt on the floor, her face close to Carmen’s. The girl’s eyes were half open, her lips parted. If she was breathing, her respiration was too shallow and fleeting to notice. And the EMT, Cliff Gates, was panting so loud that he was apt to need oxygen himself.

“It
could
be,” Estelle whispered. The display in Mary Anne Bustamonte’s Great Notions shop included hat pins that ranged from three to six inches—and teenagers would lean toward excess. Estelle rose to her feet and moved out of the way as two EMTs brought the spinal board into the small bedroom. Working quickly, she snapped half a dozen photos of the girl, including close-ups with the hat pin in place, all the while sidestepping the frantic bustle of the rescue crew. She glanced up to see Sheriff Torrez’s towering figure appear in the bedroom doorway.

“Did someone notify Carmen’s mother?” Estelle asked, and the sheriff nodded.

“She’s on the way.”

Estelle stepped across the room and took Torrez by the arm, steering him back out of the bedroom. “Someone needs to ride in the ambulance with Carmen,” she said. “We’re going to need her clothing, for one thing.” Chief Eddie Mitchell joined them.

“I’ll arrange that,” Mitchell said. “Is there anything in particular that you’re after?”

“Just all her clothing, Eddie. If there’s blood evidence, I don’t want that going in the incinerator. And if they cut off her jeans, make sure they don’t disturb the inseam.” She ran a hand down the inside of her own leg.

Mitchell frowned. “Related to the school business this morning, you think?”

“I don’t know yet. But I don’t like coincidence.”

“It don’t look like we’re going to get a statement from her,” Torrez said. “Everything we can find is going to count for something.” He lowered his voice. “You want me to swing around and pick up the Hurtado girl?”

“Not yet,” Estelle whispered. “That looks like the same sort of hat pin that I confiscated this morning, but there’s no doubt in my mind that there are others in town.” She shook her head. “Six inches of hat pin.”

“Christ,” Mitchell muttered.

“She’ll almost certainly be airlifted to Albuquerque if she survives the transfer out of here.” She glanced back inside the room. Now five in number, the EMTs were tackling the challenge of moving Carmen’s limp body from facedown on the bed to face-down on the spinal board without changing the position of her head relative to the rest of her body. Nina Burns was on the radio. Estelle recognized her husband’s voice as the EMT fired information to the physician and received instructions in return.

“No,” one of the EMTs said, and took the oxygen mask from Cliff Gates. “You’ve got to stay away from the ear.” Estelle felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. “Get me an ear cup,” Nina said. In a moment they had secured the padded plastic cup—nothing more than half of a set of inexpensive earphones—over Carmen’s left ear, sheltering the handle and stem of the pin from contact. With that taped securely in place, they lifted Carmen off the bed in slow motion, ten hands working in concert so that the position of her body didn’t shift.

Padded, strapped, and taped, with IVs dripping and rich oxygen flooding her injured brain, Carmen Acosta started her long ride to Posadas General Hospital.

As the EMTs orchestrated their way through the narrow bedroom door with the spinal board and its passenger, Nina Burns caught Estelle’s eye. “Dr. Guzman has arranged air transport to Albuquerque,” Nina said. “The air ambulance just left Las Cruces, so it shouldn’t be long.”

They crossed the small living room, and Village Officer Mike Sisneros appeared in the doorway just as they reached it. He immediately backtracked out of the way. Estelle saw Juanita Acosta behind Sisneros, rushing up the sidewalk toward the house. The village officer caught Juanita by the arm. He transferred his grip to a shoulder hug, keeping her out of the EMTs’ path.

Someone had released her husband Freddy from the back-seat of Mitchell’s patrol car, and he now stood in the dirt beside the sidewalk, hands thrust in his pockets, looking as if he wanted to punch someone.

Juanita’s heavy-featured face reflected fury more than anything else, perhaps through long years of practice. But her hands told a different story, clasped tightly together between her breasts as the EMTs approached carrying her motionless daughter.

“Por Dios,”
she said. “Now what?” Estelle had a fleeting image of the heavy, powerful woman lunging forward, knocking the carefully balanced EMTs and their burden in six different directions.

“Mrs. Acosta,” the undersheriff said, and she reached out a hand to grip Juanita’s right wrist. Sisneros didn’t release his hug, and the two of them guided the woman out of the way. “Juanita, we don’t know what happened yet, but they’re taking Carmen to the hospital. She’ll be transferred by air ambulance to Albuquerque as soon as she’s stabilized. It’s important that you go with her.”

“Por Dios,”
Juanita said again, and she turned toward Freddy as if he were responsible.

“You can ride right in the ambulance with us, ma’am,” Nina Burns added as she passed. “There’s lots of room.”

“Mrs. Acosta, I’ll go with you,” Chief Mitchell said, and he replaced Sisneros at the woman’s elbow.

A school bus nosed into Candelaria and eased to a stop, the driver facing the sea of flashing emergency lights. Estelle released Juanita’s arm with a final pat and crossed the scruffy grass toward Freddy.

“Sir, I need your help,” she said. The man nodded absently, eyes locked on his daughter’s silent form as it was whisked toward the yawning doors of the ambulance. “Sir?” She touched his shoulder.

“I just don’t know what happened,” he said, voice distant. “I came home, and there she was…”

“Mr. Acosta, are the other kids on that bus?”

He looked up quickly. “Oh. Yes. Lucinda and Josie.” Another Sheriff’s Department vehicle had swung into the street from MacArthur, blocking the bus’ path so the driver wouldn’t inadvertently block the ambulance. Deputy Dennis Collins got out of the Bronco and advanced on the bus, and Estelle saw the door flick open. Immediately behind Collins’ unit, Linda Real arrived. The Sheriff’s Department photographer weaved her small Honda around the bus and patrol unit, then accelerated quickly down the block, parking directly behind Estelle’s car.

“Here’s what I need you to do, Mr. Acosta,” Estelle said. She moved in front of Freddy, forcing herself into his line of vision. “Do you have somewhere that you and the kids can stay tonight?”

“Stay?”

“For tonight. You can’t stay here.”

Sheriff Torrez appeared behind her. “Freddy, take the kids on over to Armand’s.” It didn’t surprise Estelle that the sheriff knew the Acostas’ relatives; he may have shared a few of them. “Where are Mauro and Tony?”

“There are the girls now,” Freddy said, taking a step forward. Five backpack-toting youngsters had stepped off the bus. Deputy Collins ushered them as a group to the sidewalk, talked to them briefly, and ushered three of them around the corner to the first house on MacArthur. The other two children waited with the deputy.

Torrez keyed his handheld radio. “Dennis, keep the kids right there for a little bit,” he said. “Mr. Acosta will be up there in a minute.”

The sheriff pointed the stubby radio antenna at Freddy Acosta. “Freddy…where are Mauro and Tony? We got to know,” he asked again.

Apprehension buckled Freddy Acosta’s eyebrows together as if he had just remembered that he had two older boys to consider as well. “They don’t ride the bus,” he said.

“No shit,” Torrez said. “They have their own car?”

“Oh, no,” Freddy said quickly. “No…they usually ride with somebody, or walk. You know, when you cut right across, it’s not very far.”

Torrez leaned his head toward Freddy. “We know where the damn school is, Freddy. You don’t know where they are, then?”

“Well, you know,” Freddy said helplessly. “Sometimes Tony rides his bike. Well, until it broke, he did. Not Mauro. He usually catches a ride with somebody.”

With the ambulance now safely away, the school bus had backed out of Candelaria, and Estelle could see the two Acosta girls sitting on the sidewalk, backpacks making convenient chair backs.

“Sir,” she said, “you said that you walked uptown? When you did that, you left Carmen alone in the house?”

Freddy nodded. “I shouldn’t have left her like that,” he murmured.

“That’s not the issue, sir,” Estelle said. “When you walked up the street, you didn’t see anyone in the neighborhood who you didn’t know?” He shook his head slowly. “You don’t remember seeing any vehicles?” His head had settled into a methodical rhythm. “Do you remember what time that was?” The oscillation slowed, but Freddy didn’t reply.

“Sir, whatever you can remember is going to help us.” The dispatcher had taken the father’s desperate 911 call at 2:38
PM
Estelle could picture Freddy plodding home, ambling up the driveway, entering the house through the kitchen door, and taking several minutes to notice the results of the ruckus. If he had paused in the kitchen, it was conceivable that he wouldn’t notice anything amiss for some time.

“I guess,” Freddy started slowly. “I guess that I walked up to the car place, there, right around noon. I was going to see if Juanita could break away for lunch, maybe. We sometimes do that. Right there at the burger place.”

“And that’s what you did today?”

Freddy nodded and then brightened a little. “You know, I walked in and Juanita was on the telephone. I remember her looking at the clock, and then she just shook her head at me. I remember that.”

“What time was that?”

“Just like…like twelve oh one. Something like that. Right at noon.”

“And then after that, what? You walked downtown?” Torrez asked.

“I thought maybe I’d get a pizza or something. But then I just went to Tommy’s and got some chips. I talked to a few people, you know…just people I know. I had a cup of coffee. I guess…”

“When you came back home, you didn’t see anything out of the ordinary?” Torrez said, clearly irritated at the man’s wandering reminiscence. “Nobody outside, no traffic, nothing?”

Freddy shook his head. “Just like…you know? Like always, I guess.”

Like always
, Estelle thought.

“And then I came inside…” His lip quivered. “The first thing I saw…the first thing was the telephone on the floor. I almost stepped on it. I looked across the living room and that’s when I saw the television set, all smashed.” He looked helplessly at Estelle. “Who would do such a thing to Carmen?”

Estelle turned and regarded the house and driveway toward the east. “Mr. Acosta, you said that the county manager’s truck was
not
there when you left to walk uptown?”

“It sure wasn’t. I’m sure of that. I went out that side door, you know. It wasn’t there then.”

“But it
was
parked there when you returned?”

He nodded and turned to look at the small white county truck. “He’s not home, though.”

“We hope not,” she almost said, but Freddy Acosta’s assumption was a natural one to make. If the peripatetic Kevin Zeigler had stopped home for a quick nap—and he would have had to be incapacitated with the flu, or worse, to do something like that—the hubbub next door would have rousted him out of bed. She shot a glance at Sheriff Robert Torrez. He was jotting something down in a tiny notebook.

“I’ll give Judge Hobart a call,” he said to Estelle, and then turned back to Freddy. “You’ll take the kids to Armand’s?”

“I guess so. They’re going to need some things from inside…”

Torrez shook his head quickly. “Nobody goes inside, Freddy. Not until we’re finished. Maybe by later this evening. We’ll keep you posted. Right now, you need to go get the kids settled and then make arrangements to meet your wife at the hospital. They might let both of you ride up to Albuquerque on the plane. If not, you’ll need the car.” Juanita Acosta had parked diagonally, the older-model Fairlane’s massive rear end blocking much of the street.

“I got my keys, I guess,” Freddy said. He glanced at the house and Estelle saw his eyes flick to the yellow crime-scene ribbon. “You’ll let me know?” he asked.

“Of course,” Estelle said. “Right now, you need to be with Juanita and your daughter. And you need to find the boys.”

He nodded and set off toward the car.

“What?” Sheriff Torrez said when he saw the expression on her face. The sudden question jerked Estelle’s head around. He tapped the side of his head and lifted his chin at her in question.

“Where’s Zeigler?” she asked.

“That’s a hell of a good question,” Torrez said.

Chapter Seven

With the Acostas’ home cleared of the hubbub of paramedics and members of the family, Estelle stood for a moment at the kitchen door, looking across the side yard toward Kevin Zeigler’s neighboring house. There might be a perfectly simple explanation for the truck’s presence. But the key ring, loaded with not only ignition keys, but a wad of other county keys as well—office, gates, who knew what all? People didn’t go far without their keys.

Estelle forced her attention back to the evidence directly in front of her: the Acostas’ kitchen door. A tear in the screen immediately beside the latch looked as if someone had punched through to flip the flimsy lock, but there were so many tears, so many dents and buckles in the door’s aluminum frame that it was impossible to tell what was recent and what was simply the result of several seasons’ worth of rambunctious children.

The inner door had been flung open so hard that the cheap brass doorstop had broken, and the doorknob had slammed into the wall. A spattering of paint and Sheetrock dust marked the floor below the strike.

“I think she was tryin’ to lock the door,” Torrez said. With the cap of his ballpoint pen, he touched the brass lock in the middle of the doorknob. It was one of those smooth, difficult-to-grasp things that projected a bare minimum from the knob. “I got one of these that’s a real pain in the ass…it hangs up all the time. I can see old Carmen struggling with it, and whoever’s on the outside just busts right through.”

He turned and pointed at the small table that sat askew, far too close to the kitchen range. “That got scooted back.”

Estelle looked from the kitchen toward the small dining room. “And then she headed for the telephone,” she said. The telephone answering-machine combination rested on one wing of an impressive oak hutch in the dining room, but the wireless receiver was in the bedroom, where Freddy had left it when he called 911.

“Lemme show you something,” Torrez said. He stepped through the doorway into the dining room. “I think she
got
to the phone,” he said. “Either that, or they struggled in that doorway between the dining room and living room, right about where the phone
was
. That’s the direction she was headed.” He knelt down and touched a gouge in the wallpaper beside the doorway that led into the living room.

While the kitchen was smooth-plastered Sheetrock painted in ubiquitous eggshell white, the dining room was mid-’40s fancy, with paneled wainscoting below a painted wood-trim strip. Above the strip, the wallpaper was dark Victorian, the dense curlicues and floral patterns stained in several places from roof leaks.

Estelle knelt beside the sheriff and peered closely. The overhead light fixture wasn’t much help, and she pulled a tiny flashlight from her jacket pocket and snapped it on, examining the gouge. The mark began three inches above the wainscoting trim, digging through the wallpaper into the Sheetrock behind it. The gouge stopped abruptly with a diagonal bruise across the horizontal painted strip.

“Took a pretty good lick,” the sheriff said.

Going to her hands and knees, she bent low, playing the flashlight beam on the old carpet, her face so close she could smell the musty fibers. She could imagine a dusting of gypsum from the wallboard. If so, that trace was mixed with a fair coating of dust, lint, human and cat hair that the vacuum cleaner had missed.

“The only thing I see in the living room is that busted TV,” Torrez said. “One of ’em got into the TV somehow, but I didn’t see anything else broken except the busted glass.”

Estelle straightened up, trying to imagine Carmen’s path through the house. Freddy Acosta had said that he entered the kitchen door, then walked through toward his daughter’s bedroom. It would have taken his eyes a while to adjust to the dim light after time spent outside, but he had seen, or almost tripped over, the telephone on the floor, and he would have had to be blind to miss the shattered television.

And Freddy’s intrusion had been only the beginning of evidence trampling. Beyond the dining room, traffic had complicated matters further. After Freddy’s discovery of his daughter’s battered body in the bedroom and his call to 911, half a dozen emergency personnel had mobbed through the place.

“Seein’ this mess, he’d head right for the bedroom to check on her,” Torrez said.

“Maybe so.” Estelle avoided the glass as she crossed the small living room and stood in the doorway of Carmen’s bedroom. On the nightstand beside the bed, a much-loved teddy bear leaned against the lamp base. The bed had been bumped toward the wall, and other stuffed animals had scattered as the bedding and pillows were thrashed. A thick, dark stain marked where the blood from Carmen’s cracked head had puddled.

“I called Mears, Abeyta, and Taber to give us a hand,” Torrez said. “We’re going to have to spend a good bit of time combing this place.”

Estelle nodded. “I want that,” she said, pointing at the telephone receiver. It lay beside one of the pillows where Freddy had tossed it. “Did you find anything outside?”

The sheriff shrugged. “There’s about a thousand prints in the dirt. Could be that half the neighborhood’s gone in or out that door in the past twenty-four hours. And half a dozen Acostas.”

“We need to make sure we don’t add any more,” Estelle said as she turned from the bedroom. “His tracks are out there somewhere.”

“His or hers,” Torrez said.

“His.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Someone slammed the back door open hard enough to punch a hole in the wall? Then swings something and puts a deep gouge in the plaster of the dining room? And on top of that, Carmen Acosta was a tough little girl. She probably weighs, what, a hundred and thirty or forty pounds? And an attitude to match. This wasn’t some tussle with another kid.”

“Not someone like Deena Hurtado, you mean?”

Estelle shook her head. “Besides, if the intruder was a kid, Carmen wouldn’t have tried to call nine-one-one, Bobby. I get the impression that she’s a great one to settle her own disputes. For her to call the cops puts the whole thing in a different light.” She hesitated. “But stranger things have happened,” she added. “I don’t want to rule anything out just now.
Nos vemos
.” She glanced at her watch as she slipped her phone out of her pocket. She walked back across the living room, and before she reached the dining room, Penny Barnes answered the call in the county manager’s office.

“Penny, this is Estelle,” the undersheriff said. “Did Kevin check in yet?”

“Nope,” Penny said. “That rascal’s playing hooky.”

“You’ve tried all the easy places? The maintenance barn, stuff like that?”

“Everywhere,” Penny said emphatically. “I need his signature on a bunch of checks, and Tinneman is still breathing hard down my neck. They’ve had to cancel a whole bunch of things off the meeting agenda. I don’t know what Kevin was thinking, not letting me know even a little something.”

“He didn’t leave with someone?”

“Oh, Estelle, I don’t remember. At lunch, you know, everyone just sort of scoots. He went out saying he had some errands, and was maybe going to stop at the county barn. What’s going on over there, anyway? We’re listening to the scanner, and it sounds like the end of the world or something.”

“Nothing like that,” Estelle said. “If Kevin had some personal errands to do, who would know, do you think?”

Penny hesitated. “He probably talks to me as much as anybody,” she said.

“Who did he talk to this morning? Do you recall?”

“A million people. You know how it goes.”

“No one out of the ordinary that you remember?”

“I know that William Page called the office first thing this morning, before the meeting. They chatted for quite a while…and Kevin seemed upbeat about something. He didn’t say what.”

“William Page…?”

“That’s his roommate.”

“Okay,” Estelle said, “I guess I knew that. Do you happen to know where Page works? It’s Belen, isn’t it? Someplace like that?”

“He’s up in Socorro,” Penny said.

“You don’t know where, exactly?”

“Oh…” A pause followed and it sounded as if Zeigler’s secretary was flipping through a Rolodex. “William Page,” Penny murmured. “William Page.” Estelle waited, and she glanced up as Torrez sidled past her, headed for the front door.

Penny Barnes came back on the line. “Estelle, I don’t have it here. I know he has a company in Socorro.” She paused again and her tone changed a fraction. “That’s about all I know. Big help, huh. But they talk all the time.”

“Can you check Kevin’s desk for me?”

“Oh…”

“On second thought, don’t,” Estelle said quickly, hearing the indecision in Penny’s tone. “It’s not all that important. I’m sure Kevin will show up in a few minutes. When he does stick his nose back in the office, please tell him I need to see him? And I mean before he talks with anyone else, okay?”

“Is everything all right?” Penny asked.

“I just need to catch him,” Estelle replied cheerfully. “We have a lot to go over after the commission meeting this afternoon.”

“Which he skipped,” Penny said reprovingly. “That’s the mess he left me in.”

“We’ll nail him for you,” Estelle said. “Thanks a lot, Penny.”

“If I find William Page’s card or something, I’ll get right back to you.”

“Thanks. He probably won’t know anything, but it’s a place to try.” Estelle followed Robert Torrez outside. The sheriff was standing on the gravel driveway with his hands in his pockets. He appeared to be regarding Zeigler’s pickup truck.

“Zeigler’s front door is locked,” he said as Estelle approached. “I checked earlier. Nobody answered the bell or my knock.” Through the side window off the front step, Estelle could see a neat, thoroughly appointed living room. A mammoth entertainment center faced a large, pillowy, winged sofa.

She and Torrez circled the house but found nothing of interest, nothing that might hint what Zeigler’s activities might have been, beyond driving off to work in the morning.

“I have a warrant comin’ from Judge Hobart,” Torrez said. “Not that we need one. Pasquale’s bringing it.” Two more county units pulled into the street, and Torrez left to brief the officers.

Estelle sat down on Zeigler’s back step and fished her phone from her jacket pocket. After a brief a moment, she jotted down the Socorro phone number for William Page that the electronic voice from directory assistance provided. The phone rang five times before connecting.

“Hello. You’ve reached the residence of William Page. Either leave a message, or try me at PageLink, Incorporated.” The number he gave was also a Socorro listing.

Estelle dialed again.

“Good afternoon,” a cheerful voice responded. “This is Marci at PageLink. How may I help you?”

“Hi, Marci,” the undersheriff said as if they were old, close friends. “This is Estelle Guzman down in Posadas. Is William there?”

“Sure,” Marci replied brightly. “Hang on just a sec.”

In a moment, a soft tenor voice came on the line. “This is Page.”

“Mr. Page, this is Undersheriff Estelle Guzman, calling from Posadas.”

There was a pause. “Yes?”

“Mr. Page, we’re trying to reach Kevin Zeigler. An emergency has come up, and it’s something where we need the county manager’s input. I was hoping maybe he’d called you…that perhaps you knew where he was at the moment.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Mr. Page, apparently Kevin had some urgent business out of the office. He left a meeting of the county commissioners at noon and hasn’t returned. He didn’t tell his secretary where he was going. I thought maybe you might know.”

The line went silent, and Estelle gave Page a few seconds to think before she continued on, keeping her tone conversational. “I thought there was a possibility you might have talked to him this morning.”

“I did,” Page said. “I called the office and we chatted for a while, yes. It’s my impression that there was quite an important county meeting today.” Page sounded as if he was leaning into the phone, keeping his voice intimate. “But I have no idea where he might be. I’m not clairvoyant. What’s going on, Undersheriff?”

Estelle hesitated, loath to share any more information than necessary. “Mr. Page, we may need to gain access to Kevin’s house here on Candelaria. There’s been an incident next door.”

“At the Acostas’, you mean?”

“Yes. I need to talk with Kevin.”

“His secretary at the county office always knows where he is,” Page said. “But why do you need to get into the house? Did something happen there?”

“I don’t know yet. That’s why we need to find him. As I said, Kevin left the county meeting around noon. He didn’t return.”

“I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” Page said. “I thought this had something to do with county business. That’s what you made it sound like. Now you’re talking about his neighbors. What happened down there?”

“It’s an incident involving one of the Acosta children, Mr. Page. Because it’s next door to Kevin’s, and because his county truck is parked here in the driveway, it’s logical that we would want to find out if he saw anything that would be of help to us.”

“Is his car there?”

“The little blue Datsun? Yes, it is. But the house is locked, and no one answers. I was hoping that you might be able to help us, since you talked to him this morning.”

“You’ve got me thoroughly confused,” Page said. “Look, you said that he was next door at the Acostas’?”

“No, sir, I didn’t say that. He
isn’t
home. We responded to an emergency call at the Acostas’ address. There is reason to believe that Kevin might have been home, next door, at some time during a critical period in that incident. We have a warrant to search the premises, but I thought it would be helpful—”

“A
warrant
? Jesus H. Christ, what for?” Page said.

“It’s imperative that we talk with Kevin, Mr. Page.”

“Well, I can see that, but look. If he’s not at home, then he’s not at home, right? He’s off somewhere, running errands. His secretary should know.”

“His secretary
doesn’t
know, sir. And his vehicles are both here.”

“The county has more than one truck, for God’s sake.”