Convenient Disposal (23 page)

Estelle watched an old, battered dump truck wheeze across the soft earth toward the growing pile.

“Why don’t they just back up to the pit and dump it in?” she asked, and Fulkerson turned to follow her gaze.

He laughed. “You give a jackass a chance to do something stupid, and he will, young lady. If we let ’em back up to the pit, sure as hell someone’s going to go too far.” He shrugged at the inevitability of it all. “It’s just easier to doze the pile into the pit at the end of the day than have to chain someone’s ass out of there.”

“Ah—I didn’t think about that.”

“We keep a watch on ’em, just the same. You tell ten folks where to go and where to dump, and nine of ’em will do like you say.”

“And then there’s number ten,” Estelle said.

“You got that exactly right.” He winked.

“I’d better let you get back to work,” Estelle said. She handed Fulkerson one of her cards. “Just in case.”

“Best of luck to you,” he said. “You need anything else, you know where we are.”

Instead of returning to her car, Estelle walked the fifty yards to the north edge of the pit, taking her time across the deep ruts chewed by the dozer. She reached the edge and looked down. Ravens working the pile ignored her, talking to each other about their discoveries, occasionally flapping up and out to perch on the boundary fence or soar off toward the mesa.

The landfill was no place for a retired bulldozer with no muscle, she reflected. The pit appeared to be about a hundred feet wide and perhaps three or four hundred feet long. The dozer had bladed at least twenty feet deep, right down to bedrock. Dirt from the original excavation had been pushed up and out the opposite end into a respectable mountain that, when the trench was full of refuse, would be bladed back as fill and cover.

At the moment, the pit had swallowed a tiny fraction of its capacity. Maybe it would be months before Fulkerson had to gouge another trench parallel to this one. She knew that the county owned nearly a thousand acres, enough to bury trash for a long, long time.

Estelle thrust her hands in her pockets, paying attention to the edge of the pit. Far in the bottom where it had bounced clear was a baby carriage. From a distance, there appeared to be little wrong with it. Estelle wondered if it would appear on Fulkerson’s table at the Las Cruces flea market.

The aroma from the pile was moderate, but as the sun baked and fried, and by the time the dozer pushed a blanket of soil over the week’s offerings, the effluvia would pack a punch.

The sides of the trench were neatly cut and perfectly vertical. In two places, Estelle saw telltale gouges where someone—the one out of ten—had backed too close, crumbling the edge. Most of the refuse was bagged household trash, but Estelle could see where a few customers had managed to ignore directions. A handful of tires were mixed in with the rest, instead of making it to the recycling pile. An old refrigerator, facedown in the dirt, had been pitched in before either Bart or Don could direct it toward the appliance mountain. Twenty feet from the growing pile, a huge tree stump had crashed into the pit and rolled to a stop.

The driver of a fancy dually pickup truck paused after slamming the tailgate shut, and watched Estelle as she walked along the border of the pit toward the dump station.

“You lose something?” he called. A young man, he appeared dressed for a game of golf.

“No, thanks. Just checking for bodies.” She smiled at the man, and he started to reply when he noticed the sheriff’s badge on her belt. He looked uncertain, glancing back down into the pit.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, as if he’d caught the joke.

“You have a nice day,” Estelle said. By the time she’d reached her car, two more vehicles had entered, and the constant clouds of red dust settled in her hair and on her clothes.

“Find what you need?” Bart Kurtz asked.

“Thanks a lot,” she replied, then stopped suddenly in afterthought. “When do you guys cover the trash? You don’t wait until the trench is full, do you?”

“Every Sunday night, Sheriff.”

“Just kind of a thin layer, then?”

“Enough to keep things from blowin’,” Kurtz said. “Maybe six inches or a foot. Pack ’er down, cover it up.”

“And every Sunday you do that?”

“Yup. Sunday after we close. Lots of folks come out on weekends, you know. Come Sunday afternoon, we push the day’s drop-off pile into the trench, then we cover it all up.”

“Pretty simple. But you push the drop-off pile into the pit every day?”

“Sure enough we do. Otherwise it’d blow all over hell and gone.”

“I would think so.”

“Yeah, it don’t take no rocket scientist.” He looked off toward where Don Fulkerson still worked on his thermos of coffee and the bulldozer.

“Thanks again,” Estelle said. Back in her car, she sat for a moment, looking out the side window at Fulkerson’s pickup truck, an ’80s-vintage four-wheel-drive Chevy C20. A black headache rack, the kind favored by plumbers who need to haul lengths of pipe, reached out over the cab. Fulkerson had parked between a trio of fifty-five-gallon drums labeled
WASTE OIL PRODUCTS
and a trailer loaded with what appeared to be used concrete blocks and paving bricks.

She turned the county car’s ignition key. In the distance she heard the staccato bellow as the landfill’s bulldozer surged into life, almost as if the one key had connected both machines.

Chapter Thirty-one

“I have a question,” Dr. Francis Guzman stage-whispered in Estelle’s ear. “What does the work of an engineering prodigy look like?”

“I don’t think we need to worry,” Estelle whispered back. She straightened up from her examination of something made from Popsicle sticks labeled
Moon Bace
in strong, red crayon. Her husband was doing his best to keep a straight face.

Across the room, Sofía Tournál had both Francisco and Carlos in tow…actually it was Francisco doing the towing while Sofía provided the guidance. A safe distance behind the trio, Estelle’s mother shuffled from one display to the next, keeping a firm grip on her walker, with Myra Delgado at her elbow. The two appeared to be exchanging professional secrets.

Sofía was maintaining a resolute face, despite a day spent traveling from Veracruz, Mexico, to Posadas—a trip fraught with more than its share of delays and frustrations. A stocky woman of medium height, Sofía favored tailored suits, with just a touch of ruffle and lace at the collar of her white blouse. She could have been the school’s principal.

Immediately upon their arrival at the elementary school, the two older generations had been led on the grand tour of the sky-scraper constructed by Francisco and his partner, Rocky Montaño. The creation did indeed nearly scrape the sky—or the acoustical ceiling tiles of the first-grade room. The two boys had assembled a conglomeration of dowels draped under yards of foil, with windows, doors, and occupants drawn with black marker. Estelle had to turn the small camera sideways to capture the full majesty of the structure, and she managed to include
Moon Bace
in the same photo—both structures remarkable for first graders.

Francis frowned and poked at a section of the skyscraper’s aluminum foil that had collapsed inward, perhaps because of a massive winter gale off the Great Lakes.

“Emergency exit,” he said.

“On the fiftieth floor,” Estelle added.

“Neat, though.” He nodded at the moon base. “I like the idea of transporting a million Popsicle sticks to the moon to make
bachees
.”

Estelle laughed. “Be kind.”

“This is the future of the human race—or
rachee
—that we’re talking about here,” Francis added, and she elbowed him sharply. At the same time, he saw her glance up at the wall clock. “Uh-oh,” he said.

“What?”

“You’re clock watching. That’s not a good sign.”

“I will stay until the bitter end,” she said. “Until Sofía collapses from jet lag, or Carlos and
Mamá
fall asleep, or Francisco runs out of things to show off.”

“How about the best two out of three,” Francis said. “Leave it up to Mozart, there, and we could be here after they turn all the lights out.” He looked over his shoulder at his eldest son, then back to Estelle. “Show me the piano room,” he said. “They won’t even know we’re gone.”

They walked hand in hand down the hall, examining all the other art displays from the various grade levels as they went. At one group of watercolors, Francis stopped short. Estelle saw a fleeting expression of sadness cross his handsome, dark face.

“Look at this,” he said. He touched the bottom margin of a watercolor showing what might have been a cabin on the shore of a violet lake, surrounded by jagged, indigo mountains. The image was so advanced it appeared out of place, surrounded by other work so obviously created by children. “Fourth grade,” he said. “Sheri Monaghan.”

“You know her,
oso
?”
Estelle asked.

Francis nodded. “She’s a neuroblastoma patient of mine. We just transferred her to Lovelace.”

“ Ay
.
”

“Uh-huh.”

“How’s she doing?”

Francis lingered at the landscape. “Well, I don’t think she’ll be coming home,
querida
.”

“Is that the Monaghan who works at United Insurance?”

“Yes.” He sighed. “Her mother said that before she got so sick that she couldn’t lift a paintbrush, she did two or three paintings
a day
. Sheri’s been homeschooled for quite a while.” He shook his head and looked down the hall. “Anyway, show me.” He quickened his pace, ignoring the remainder of the art.

When they reached the music room, he stood in the doorway for a moment. Estelle hooked her arm through his and didn’t interrupt his thoughts.

“Kind of a dismal place, isn’t it?” he said finally. He clicked on the lights and looked up at the ceiling. “I always wondered why school roofs leak. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a classroom where at least a few of the ceiling tiles weren’t water strained.”

“You’re not supposed to waste time looking up,
querido
,” Estelle said. She jerked his arm in mock discipline. “Pay attention, now.”

“So he comes in here, all by himself, and stands at the piano,” he said, and stepped over to the battered and scarred instrument. He bent over, spread his hands, and played a chord. Cocking his head to listen, he shifted his hands and played another. “That’s just about the sum total of what I remember,” he said, and sat down on the bench. He frowned at the keyboard, and then played several measures of a flowing, melodic piece.

“Fur Elise,”
he said, and stopped. “That’s all I remember. Everyone who ever takes a piano lesson has to learn it. And learn it. And learn it.” He grinned up at Estelle. “Are you ready for this?”

“Sure,” she said. “Even
Mamá’s
excited.”

“
Excited
? Your mother? I don’t think so.”

“Well, eager, then.” A telephone was ringing, and Francis looked at her.

“Is that yours or mine?”

“Mine,” Estelle said in resignation. She headed for the exit in the back of the music room, and pushed the heavy door open, letting in a welcome wash of cool air. “Guzman,” she said into the receiver.

“Hey there,” Sheriff Bob Torrez said. “Where are you at?”

“Down at the school. It’s open-house night.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember you talkin’ about that. Listen, guess who opened her eyes.”

“Oh, you’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not kidding. Carmen managed about thirty seconds of consciousness, according to the patrolman who’s assigned to her room.”

“Her folks were there?”

“Yep.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“She didn’t say anything, by the way.”

“That’ll come with time. But that’s just great news, Bobby.”

“Yep. Look, the reason I called—and I don’t guess there’s anything about this that we can do tonight, but Tom Mears finished processing Zeigler’s flat tire. Something kind of interesting.”

Estelle stepped out away from the building. “What?”

“Well, there’s a pretty good smear—ah, it’s not really a smear, but anyway—some flat black paint on the
back side
of the tire. Not a lot, but sort of a little crescent. Might be something, probably not. Linda figured out a way to take some pretty good pictures of it.”

Estelle realized that her pulse was racing, and she reached out a hand to the steel doorjamb for support.

“You still there?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You workin’ tomorrow?”

“Of course I’m working tomorrow, Bobby.”

“I thought you were headed to Cruces or something.”

“That’s Saturday.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, we need to talk,” Estelle said.

“Yep.”

“Are you in the middle of something?”

“Some lasagna that Gayle made. You guys want to come over? We’ve got enough for about eighteen people. Bring the whole mob.”

“Thanks, but how about meeting me at the office in a few minutes?”

“Not too few, now. I’m hungry.”

She backed into the room and looked at her husband. Francis nodded wearily and mimed crashing huge chords on the piano.

“How about an hour?”

“Ten-four. What did
you
find?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. I’ll be interested to see what you think.”

“Uh-oh. I gotta think?”

“Oh, sí,”
she said. She switched off and slid the phone back in her pocket.

“I heard that,” Francis said.

“Carmen was awake for a little while,
querido
.”

“Fantastic. Did she say anything?”

“No. Apparently not. But Tom Mears found something on the spare tire. And I’m pretty sure I know exactly what it is.”

She saw her husband’s eyes narrow a little as he looked at her. With a sigh, he closed the cover of the piano and stood up. “You’ve got that hunter’s look,
querida
,” he said. “We have an hour though, right? Is that what I heard you tell Bobby?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go back and rescue Sofía.”

The other parents, children, and art in the hallway were a blur to Estelle as they returned to the first-grade classroom.