Convenient Disposal (15 page)

Estelle nodded as if the information was old news. “Do you recall what time that was?”

“Well, I get here at seven-thirty, and it was just a little after that. Maybe quarter till.” Tyler stretched upward in his seat and twisted his head hard to the right as if to ease a painful kink in his spine. “He had a tire on his truck that he thought was goin’ soft.”

Estelle’s pulse kicked. “Had he changed it, you mean?”

“No. But I told him that he needed to.” Tyler shrugged. “I gave him a squirt of air from the pump over there to keep him goin’. He said he’d try to drop it off later in the day. He said he didn’t have a whole lot of time.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it. He was down to eighteen pounds, though. In that tire, I mean. I told him that if he put it off much longer, he’d be walkin’.” He twisted his wrist, looking at a nonexistent watch. “He don’t have a lot of extra time.”

“So you aired it up, and he left?”

Tyler nodded emphatically. “That’s what I did.”

“Did you see him after that?”

“No, ma’am.” He leaned forward a bit and lowered his voice. “What’s goin’ on, do you know? Ralph told me this morning that nobody’s seen him since yesterday.”

“That’s exactly what we’re trying to find out, Mr. Tyler. That’s why I appreciate the information.”

“Well, like I said, that’s the only time I seen him, all day.”

“He never came back to have the tire fixed, then.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Was anyone with him at the time?” Estelle asked, and Tyler shook his head. “And he was driving that little white Ford Ranger? His usual county truck?” Tyler nodded. Estelle patted the tire once more. “Did he happen to mention where he was headed after here?”

“Ma’am, if he did, I don’t remember. Old Kevin, you know. He’s kinda different. Keepin’ track of him is like trying to nail down one of them dust devils that goes spinnin’ across the yard here.” He grinned at his own poetic imagery. He reached forward toward the ignition key, but didn’t turn it. The hint was clear.

“Thanks, sir,” she said, and stepped back from the machine, waving a hand in salute as she did so. The diesel fired up, chuffing out a bilious cloud. As she walked back, Estelle found herself wanting to break into a sprint. She had learned only that Zeigler had stopped by the county yards, concerned about an air leak in a tire. Not many hours later, the lug wrench from his truck had been used to mash the back of Carmen Acosta’s skull. The link was invisible, but tantalizing nevertheless.

She slipped into the county car and stabbed the key into the ignition. There was no way that the killer would lean the Ranger’s passenger seat forward and unscrew the wing nut and clamp that held the lug wrench in place. The tool had to have been a weapon of opportunity.

What did fit was seeing Zeigler, intent on being four places at once, changing a flat tire in a fury, tossing the wrench and jack back into the cab, to be properly stowed later when time permitted. The flat tire had been tossed somewhere, too—but not into the most logical place, the bed of the truck.

Chapter Nineteen

Simple things. The ideas tumbled inside Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s head as she paused at the front door of Kevin Zeigler’s home on Candelaria Court. Jackie Taber’s county vehicle was parked in the driveway, immediately behind Zeigler’s pickup.

The deputy opened the door and greeted Estelle with a sober nod, then looked at her more closely, eyes narrowing. “What’d you find out?” she asked, then added, “Come on in.”

“I was just over at the county barns,” Estelle said. “Zeigler stopped there early yesterday morning with a soft tire. He added some air, but didn’t take time to change the tire. At least not then.”

“Really.” Taber settled against the arm of the sofa, her latex-gloved hands held away from her clothes. Technically off duty, she’d traded her uniform for an aging pair of army trousers and a brown T-shirt, neither of which did anything to flatter her powerful, stocky figure. “Now that’s interesting,” she said.

“
If
the tire went flat later in the day, like maybe when he was running errands at noon, that could explain why the wrench and jack were loose. He changed the tire, and didn’t want to take time to stow them properly.”

“Well, they’re a pain in the ass,” Jackie said. “So where’s the flat tire? It wasn’t in the truck.”

“That’s right—it wasn’t. And I don’t know where it is. But
if
Zeigler changed the tire, the most logical thing to do would be to clean up a little before he returned to the county meeting.” She held out her hands. “I mean, what’s anybody do after changing a tire? You can’t
do
it and stay clean.”

“Huh,” Jackie grunted. “I see where you’re going. That would be a good reason for Kevin to stop back here. Clean up a little. Maybe.” She looked at Estelle skeptically.

“But there’s a simple reason he might have come here, rather than just use the restroom at the county building. If he just wanted to wash his hands, a sink is pretty easy to find. There’s one or two in the restroom right beside his office.”

“Maybe he needed to change his clothes,” Jackie said.

“That’s exactly right. I picture him kneeling down to put that jack in place, or scrunching down to lower the spare tire out from under the back, drag it out, put it in place, swing the old dead tire up into the truck.” She stopped. “And at some point, what if he gets dirty, or tears his trousers or catches his shirt on something—it’s almost bound to happen. Especially if he’s in a hurry and not paying attention.”

Jackie gazed off toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms. “Okay. If that’s what happened, then there are some soiled clothes to show for it.”

“Maybe. We need to check.”

“That still doesn’t tell us much, though.”

“Jackie, it tells us
something
, and that’s a lot more than we had.”

The deputy regarded her quietly for a moment. “You don’t like the idea a whole lot, do you?”

“No, I don’t. What I’m seeing puts a truck lug wrench in Kevin Zeigler’s hand. It puts him
here
sometime yesterday.”

“None of that means that he swung the wrench against the back of Carmen Acosta’s head,” Jackie said.

“He didn’t do that,” Estelle said vehemently. “I know that as surely as I
don’t
know what actually happened.”

“And there’s another possibility, too. What if Zeigler wasn’t driving the truck?”

Estelle nodded. “I think it’s going to come around to that, Jackie. I sat in that truck yesterday. I could smell Zeigler’s cologne, or aftershave—whatever it is. When Bobby and I went through this place yesterday, it’s the same smell, right from that bottle on the bathroom vanity.”

“Leatherworks.”

“That’s it.”

“Nice stuff.”

“Yes, it is. But I also smelled cigarette smoke, and maybe something else, too. I’m not sure. Bobby thought it might be booze, and I think he’s right. Kevin doesn’t smoke; neither does William Page. Someone was in that truck who did—and it couldn’t have been long before, or it would have faded pretty quickly.”

“Too bad the aroma won’t fit in an evidence bag.”

“The assumption is that it’s Kevin’s truck, so he was driving it.” Estelle shrugged. “Maybe not so.”

“Or someone was
with
him.”

Estelle ran her hand through her hair in frustration.

“Caramba,”
she muttered. “Too many directions. I came over to check his clothes, Jackie. Let’s do that. Then I want to talk with Doris Marens again.”

“And she is…”

“The lady who lives up the street. Right at the intersection with MacArthur. She told Mike that she didn’t see a thing, but it wouldn’t hurt to put the thumbscrews on her a little. There might be something. It’s beginning to look as if she’s the only person who was home on the entire street at the time—other than Carmen. We don’t have ourselves a whole herd of willing witnesses.”

“In the meantime, there’s a dirty-clothes hamper in the master bedroom,” Jackie said. She stood up and beckoned. “Linda’s back there now, riffling through his drawers. Sounds kinky, huh?”

In the bedroom, Linda Real was sitting cross-legged on the floor with the bottom dresser drawer open in front of her.

“Hey there,” she said as Estelle and Jackie entered the room. She paused, one hand resting on the edge of the drawer.

“Anything?”

“A ton of slides,” Linda said, indicating the yellow boxes that filled a third of the wide drawer, “I checked a few at random. They appear to be what the box labels say they are. Vacations, bike races, that sort of thing. None of them are newer than 2000, the year before he moved here. And these”—and she tapped two large scrapbooks—“are family stuff, newspaper clippings, those sorts of things. I learned some interesting stuff that maybe I don’t need to know.”

“For example?”

“Well,” Linda said, “for example, I didn’t know that Kevin Zeigler was married before. His son is in second grade in Socorro.”

“Ay,” Estelle breathed. “I didn’t know that either.”

“I always thought he was the swinging bachelor type since day one. Apparently not. Anyway, that and a few other old things.” Linda reached up and ran a hand down the three upper drawers. “These are clothes, and this one is memories.”

“We need to rummage through his dirty clothes,” Jackie said.

The scarred eyebrow over Linda’s blind left eye lifted a fraction. “Ooookay. Maybe better you than me, kid. The basket’s in the bathroom.”

“I’ll get it,” Jackie said, and in a moment she returned with a small wicker hamper. “We might as well use the bed.” They removed each article of clothing from the hamper, shook it out, and laid it on the bedspread.

“This would be a good time for Kevin to show up,” Estelle said. “Come home to find three women riffling through his underwear.”

“‘But I just had a meeting in Deming,’” Jackie said, doing a fair imitation of the county manager. “‘Did I forget to tell you?’” She glanced at Estelle, not smiling. “Don’t we wish.”

Five minutes later, Estelle tossed the last sock into the pile. She snapped the cuff of her latex glove in frustration. “Nothing.” Two pairs of Zeigler’s habitual light chinos had been in the laundry, and neither showed any soil—much less tears, cuts, or stains. And other than a few wrinkles, the shirts appeared unworn—except for the aroma of cologne, concentrated by the confines of the hamper.

“That would have been too simple,” Estelle said with a sigh. She moved the hamper closer to the bed and swept the dirty clothes back in.

Jackie took the hamper back to the bathroom. “We wanted to show you one other thing,” she said.

“Okay. And Linda—the slide boxes? If you have the time, we need to check every one. I know it’s probably wasted effort, but you never know. He might have something hidden away that’ll tell us something.”

“I think we’re seeing the answer,” Jackie said. “This is a house that the owner left first thing in the morning to go to work. Everything’s put away, everything’s in order. I don’t think Kevin Zeigler’s been here since yesterday morning.” She nodded back toward the bathroom. “If he came home to change his clothes, the offending article would be in the hamper.”

“The ‘offending article,’” Linda repeated. “I like that.”

“Or in the trash, if he just flat ruined it. But we checked. There’s nothing other than coffee grounds and an empty orange juice container in the trash under the sink. There’s no article of clothing in the garbage can in the pantry. And there’s nothing in the wheel-out at the side of the house.” Jackie shrugged. “I mean, the guy’s just too neat for his own good.”

“He could have dropped things off at the cleaners,” Linda offered.

“Maybe. And a telephone call will answer that,” Jackie said. She beckoned Estelle to follow her out to the living room. “What the hell,” she said. “As long as we’re going through everything right down to the man’s underwear, you might as well see this. I don’t know if it makes any difference or not.”

She halted near the center of the bookcase and pointed at a Rolodex containing several hundred photos. The one facing the living room was a color portrait of William Page and Kevin Zeigler astraddle their racing bikes, holding a large trophy between them. Zeigler was wearing a helmet, Page was not.

“Family and friends,” Jackie said, turning the large black knob on the side to flip pictures by. She stopped at another that showed the Acostas’ backyard, smoke billowing from a large barbecue grill. Freddy grinned at the camera, a bottle of beer in one hand, large chrome fork in the other. Behind him, Juanita and Carmen were working at the picnic table. “Lots of things like this.” She spun the dial some more. “And a few like this.”

The photo that stopped was one of Mauro and Tony. Tony, the chubby one, was twisted, one foot high behind him as he stabbed at the Hacky Sack. Mauro was obviously bellowing something, either curses or encouragement.

“The interesting thing is that this is taken through the window in Kevin’s office,” Jackie said. “You can see by the background that’s where he had to be standing. This”—and she touched the right side of the photo—“is a blur from the window frame. That’s what Linda thinks.”

“Okay,” Estelle said.

Jackie flipped another picture. This one was just of Mauro, standing with one hand on the back of his head and the other on his hip, looking thoughtfully at the ground. He was wearing low-slung, ragged denim cutoffs and nothing else, the planes of his chiseled torso catching the light and shadows.

“A bit on the provocative side,” Jackie said.

Estelle sighed. “Okay, again.”

“I just thought you should know,” Jackie said.

“I
do
know,” Estelle said a little more testily than she would have liked. “I know that William Page and Kevin are gay, I know they’re living together as time allows. And I guess this doesn’t surprise me much either. I mean”—and she flipped the Rolodex several photos beyond Mauro to an innocuous print taken from the top of Cat Mesa—“I could argue that if Carmen looked like a starlet and liked to pose half naked in the backyard, Kevin would probably have snapped her picture, too, assuming that his interests were directed that way…which they don’t appear to be. Find me a basement full of whips and chains and black leathers, and then I’ll admit that maybe it makes a difference.”

Jackie nodded silently.

“We need two things, Jackie. We need Carmen Acosta to pop out of her coma by some miracle of modern medicine and tell us who fractured her skull and then drove a hat pin through her head. And then we need to find Kevin Zeigler, alive and well.”

“I don’t think we’re headed for either one.”

“And I wish you weren’t right,” Estelle said.