Convenient Disposal (8 page)

“And the assault happened right in the house?”

“That’s what we’re in the process of determining, sir.”

“Is she going to be all right, do you think?”

“No, sir. I don’t think she’s going to be all right.”

He slumped deeper into the sofa. “Raped?”

“We don’t know yet, sir.”

He heaved a deep sigh and clasped his hands tightly.

“Do you have a place to stay where I can reach you tonight?” Estelle asked.

“I’ll be here,” he said, surveying the living room as if he expected it to have somehow changed.

“That’s not possible, sir. Not until the area is cleared as part of the crime scene. Even the Acostas have made other arrangements.”

“Christ.”

“It’s inconvenient, I know. It can’t be helped.”

He rose from the sofa, dusting a piece of lint from his trouser leg. “At the Posadas Inn, then, I guess. You’ve got a lobby down at the Sheriff’s Office?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I think I’ll go find myself a chair and just wait. Is that all right?”

“Whatever suits you, sir. I just need to know where to find you should something come up.”

“I mean, who can sleep with something like this.” He shook his head. “One minute everything is normal as all hell, and the next minute, the world is coming apart.” He reached down and repositioned one of the sofa pillows. “I didn’t take time to stop by the house to pick up any clothes. How long will it be before I can…before this place is open to me?”

“I’ll let you know tomorrow, sir.”

He nodded absently, reluctant to leave the room. “Did you know about Kevin and me?”

“No, sir,” Estelle said, and let it go at that.

Page moved toward the front door, then stopped. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes, sir.”

He smiled at the clipped, matter-of-fact response. “Kevin’s county truck in the driveway…you said that Mr. Acosta claims it wasn’t there when he left home, but a while later, however long, the truck was parked there when he returned home and then found Carmen.” He paused, waiting for a response. When there was none, he continued, “Is there something else that makes you think Kevin is involved? I mean, the bit about the truck…that doesn’t mean much.”

“Mr. Page, we have to explore every avenue. That’s all I can tell you at the moment.”

It looked as if William Page wanted to smile, but couldn’t.

Chapter Ten

With one hand over the other ear, Estelle pressed the telephone close so that she could hear Chief Eddie Mitchell. At the same time, she stepped out of the Acostas’ living room where Tom Pasquale, Tom Mears, and Jackie Taber were industriously combing the carpet, and found a quiet corner in the dining room.

“You’re still out there, huh?” Mitchell’s soft voice lowered another notch, as if he was sitting in a crowded library, loath to be overheard. In the background, she heard traffic. “I’m southbound on I-Twenty-five,” he added.

“Who with?” Estelle asked.

“Ah, I called in a few favors,” said Mitchell. “Hank’s giving me a ride to the county line.” Estelle heard the Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputy say something in the background, and Mitchell replied, “Yeah, right,” obviously in response to the deputy. “Valencia’s got a quiet night, and one of their deputies is waiting for us on down the interstate a bit. He’ll run me south so I can grab a ride with Doña Anna. Won’t be long.”

“How’s Carmen? Have the doctors been able to tell you anything yet?”

“Now there,” Mitchell said, and paused. Estelle heard the patrol car’s engine noise subside for a moment, then bellow. She wondered how fast Mitchell’s “shuttle service” was eating the miles. “She’s a lucky girl, Estelle.”

“You have the clothes with you?”

“Yup. Every stitch. And I talked with a physician named Hans Deakman at University Hospital. He says he knows your husband. Anyway, he thinks that Carmen will be in surgery for about another hour.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, an hour
more
,”
Mitchell amended. “She’s a lucky, lucky kid, at least as far as that damn hat pin goes. From what they can tell from the pictures, her head was turned hard to the right when she was hit, and that makes it likely that the pin was driven in from behind. Deakman says that it broke through the ear canal headed forward, so it pretty much avoided her brain.”

“Pretty much.”

“Yeah, well. We can’t have everything.”

“There’s some brain damage?” Estelle sagged against the wall, suddenly bone weary.

“Not from the hat pin, I don’t think. Somebody fetched her a real stout clip from behind, too. Look for something like a hammer, fireplace tool, something like that.”

“How about a lug wrench?”

“Sure. That would do it. You come up with one?” She told him about the wrench under Kevin Zeigler’s county truck. “That makes sense,” Mitchell said. “There’s some intracranial bleeding going on. That’s what they were working on when I left.”

“You have the hat pin, too?”

“Yup. And an amazing X-ray. I think your hubby took some while they were prepping her for the plane ride, too. They actually did the removal surgery up here. You might want to check with him.”

Estelle glanced at her watch. Mitchell was on the road at 7:55
PM
That would put him back in Posadas—given perfectly executed hand-offs and lead-footed deputies in four counties—at close to midnight.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

“Well, when her assailant rammed that pin into her head, it angled forward and up.” The hair on the back of Estelle’s neck prickled. “It kind of bounced around through her hard palette, up into her sinuses, and then glanced off the inside of her right cheekbone. Bent hell out of the pin, that’s for sure. Maybe it was a good thing for her that it wasn’t the absolute best grade of spring steel. She might have ended up like one of those frogs we pithed in high school biology.”

“Can you tell how long it is?”

“What, the hat pin? Just a second. Hang on.”

Estelle waited, hearing mumbles from the deputy. Mitchell came back on the line after a moment. “Nobody’s written anything up yet, but I got me this handy-dandy pocket rule and a full-size X-ray. Lemme see.” After another pause, he said, “It’s got to be four inches.”

“Four, not six.”

“Nope, four. Any longer, and it would have popped out her right eye.”

“Okay. Thanks, Eddie. I have some people I need to talk to, but that’ll have to wait until we can look at the clothing.”

“What are we looking for?”

“I don’t think we’ll be able to see it without a lens, but I want to know if Carmen was carrying that thing. The spot that’s in favor right now seems to be the inseam, up along the inside of the thigh.”

“Just like young what’s-her-name.”

“Deena Hurtado.”

“Just like her. Look, I already called Gayle and asked her to have a deputy at the line to play taxi for me. If you guys are all tied up, she said she’d ask the State Police to give me a lift.”

“I’d like to look at those clothes the minute you get in, Eddie.”

“Hell yes. Why should you have a life?” Mitchell laughed. “It’s going to be after midnight.”

“That’s okay. You said you have the pin with you?”

“That’s affirmative.”

“Is it handy?”

“Nothing’s handy in this car,” Mitchell said, and that prompted a guffaw from the driver. “I got a shotgun killing my left knee, the damn computer under my elbow, and God knows what else. I’m not used to being a passenger. Just a second.” In a moment, he added, “Here that baby is. Nasty, nasty.”

“Do you have enough light to see the tip?”

“Sure.”

“Has it been sharpened? Ground or filed down?”

After a brief pause, Mitchell replied, “I would think so. The pin is finished somehow, like gun bluing. The color is ground off around the tip.”

“Okay. That’s what I needed to know.”

“Maybe they dip these things in curare.”

“That’s all we need,” Estelle said.

“We’re coming up on my Valencia County ride here in just a second. Anything else you need to know before I get there?”

“Are the Acostas settled down some? Did Freddy get there all right?”

“Yeah, he did. He even avoided all the radar somehow. Damn near drove that old car as fast as we flew. He found the two boys, and brought them up, too. That just leaves the two little girls. They’re staying with relatives, Bobby says.”

“We’ll want to talk with the boys,” Estelle said. “No one had a chance this afternoon. Did you have a minute to sit down with them?”

“Yep. I chatted with ’em a little at the hospital. Neither one of ’em knew anything about the hat pin, or where it might have come from.”

“If the hat pin was Carmen’s that’s hard to believe, too. We’ll see,” Estelle said. “I’ll have a talk with the girls. Maybe this evening, if I get a chance.”

“Whoa,” Mitchell said. “Here’s the next leg of my ride. Just a second.”

Estelle listened to the muffled conversation, then heard first one door slam, and then another.

“My new chauffeur is Deputy Melissa Gabaldon,” he said, and Estelle could hear the car accelerating hard for the run down through the center of Valencia County.

“Tell her thanks for me,” Estelle said.

“I’ll do that. Now, about this lug wrench thing…You still haven’t heard from Zeigler? No trace of the guy?”

“We haven’t found him yet, Eddie.”

“No shit?”

“Not a trace. His roommate from Socorro arrived not long ago. A guy by the name of William Page. Runs a computer design business up there. He doesn’t have a clue either. I believe him.”

“That’s the guy that Zeigler’s romancing at the moment?”

“I guess you could put it that way, Eddie.”

“I kinda thought so. I met the both of them a time or two. Interesting, interesting. Wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to come up with an interesting scenario for that whole mess. Zeigler comes home just after Freddy leaves, Carmen sees something she’s not supposed to see, and old Kevin does a botched-up job. Then he runs. He’s smart enough not to take the county truck, and smart enough not to take his own car.”

“And goes where?”

“That’s what we have to be smart enough to figure out,” Mitchell said. “The only trouble is, I’ll bet my miniscule paycheck that’s not the way it happened at all.”

“I don’t think so either.”

“Zeigler’s not a lug wrench man.”

The last time Estelle had seen Zeigler, less than nine hours before, he’d been tending to county business, with a couple of errands to fill his lunch break. She could still see him brushing his chinos after leaning against the truck. What else had he been wearing? The sleeves of his dress shirt had been rolled up loosely, the diagonally striped red and black tie pulled away from an unbuttoned collar.

Her last memory of Zeigler had been of a neat, dapper young fellow who might have just stepped through the front door of his college fraternity house.

“No, sir. Kevin Zeigler isn’t the lug wrench type,” Estelle agreed.

“What’s the sheriff think?”

“He hasn’t said,” Estelle replied. “Ever since he saw there wasn’t a guest bed in Zeigler’s house, he didn’t say much. Apparently that came as a surprise to him.”

Mitchell chuckled. “I bet. What the hell. There’s probably half the county that doesn’t know. Bobby’s one of ’em. This whole thing probably touches his conservative nerves. Anything else you need at the moment?”

“I don’t think so.”

“We’ll see you in a bit then, all right? You have this number if something comes up.”

“Thanks, Eddie.” She switched off the phone and walked back into the living room.

“I don’t think we’re going to find anything,” Tom Mears said, pushing himself to his feet. “How’s Carmen?”

She described the injuries, and Mears grimaced.

“It sounds like someone was wrestling her from behind,” Pasquale said. “That would take some strength.”

Estelle nodded. Once again, she tried to imagine Kevin Zeigler tussling with Carmen Acosta…first slugging her on the head with a lug wrench, then ramming a hat pin into her ear. It made no sense. Even if the hat pin had been jabbed first, followed by the savage blow to the back of the girl’s head, Estelle found it impossible to picture the county manager wielding either weapon.

“We have to find him, that’s all,” she said.

Chapter Eleven

The sheriff regarded the cuticle of his thumbnail for a long moment, glanced up at the wall clock, and then fixed William Page with his best heavy-lidded, unblinking gaze. Page shifted in the military-surplus straight chair that served as most of the furniture for guests in Bob Torrez’s Spartan office. The molded plastic seats in the Public Safety Building lobby would have been more comfortable.

Estelle closed the door of the sheriff’s office, feeling a stab of sympathy for Page. It wasn’t difficult to guess what was going through the sheriff’s mind, and it was equally obvious that Page was ill at ease and on the defensive.

“Mr. Page, thanks for being patient,” Estelle said. She pulled the remaining straight chair out of its corner where it had been wedged between a gray filing cabinet and a vertical heater duct. The sheriff’s office reminded her of a janitorial closet.

As far as she knew, Page had spent the last three hours sitting in the small lobby outside the dispatcher’s communications center, waiting for the clock hands to move. His only company had been the comings and goings of various Sheriff’s Department personnel, and the various visages captured in the large, framed portraits of the former sheriffs of Posadas County, mounted on the foyer wall. Most of the retired law officers in the photo gallery were either seated behind their mammoth desks or posed beside an American flag. The most recent photo showed Robert Torrez leaning against his patrol unit, binoculars poised. He had glanced at the camera just in time, his skeptical expression captured.

Estelle liked the sheriff’s gallery photo that Linda Real had captured. It showed Bobby Torrez doing what he did best: hunting.

“It’s been a long day for you, too,” Page said.

“And bound to be longer before we’re through,” Estelle added. Eons ago, she had anticipated the afternoon session of the county meeting as a way to pass the time until the school bus brought home her son. So close. She’d even managed to greet the salesman at the piano store before her telephone call was interrupted.

Now, at 9:45
PM
on that Tuesday, they sat in Torrez’s stuffy little office, and Estelle was sure that each of them wanted to be somewhere else.

“Mr. Page, the sheriff and I need your help.”

“All right.” He lifted his hands off his thighs helplessly. “Whatever I can do.”

“First of all,” she began, and found herself hesitating. “It’s not reasonable to assume that Kevin Zeigler suddenly remembered he had an important errand out of town somewhere, and that he then left without any notice to his secretary, or to the County Commission who were expecting him to attend an afternoon session.”

“He would never walk out on a job,” Page said, shaking his head emphatically. “When someone is missing, don’t police post something? Like an APB or something like that?” He leaned forward. “Don’t you have to wait twenty-four hours or something?” Page asked, and immediately grimaced and rubbed his face with both hands in frustration. “That’s stupid, I know.”

“As far as anyone can determine, Mr. Zeigler has been missing since shortly after noon. It’s unreasonable to assume that in the normal activities of his day, he would disappear for almost ten hours without word to his office, especially in light of some of the important matters before the commission. So no…we don’t wait.” She paused, and Torrez relaxed back in his swivel chair, hands locked over his belly.

“Not in light of what happened next door,” he said.

It was the first time he had spoken since Page had entered the room, and Estelle caught the accusatory edge in his tone. Page took the statement at face value.

“What can I do?”

“Tell us what you know about Kevin Zeigler’s habits, Mr. Page,” Estelle replied. She scooted her chair closer and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Right now, we’re grasping at straws. If we had some idea who Kevin saw during the course of his day, other than at work, if we had some idea about where he spends his time—again, other than at work…”

“That’s what Kevin does, Ms. Guzman. He works. He’s one of those type A people who has to have things done
right
now, if you know what I mean.” He ducked his head in a little shrug. “I mean, you must see Kevin around the county offices all the time. You work with him, don’t you? So you must know what I’m talking about.”

“He’s a busy man.”

Page nodded. “That’s one thing that I’ve tried to do, I suppose…to slow him down a little bit. I’m a great believer in leaving the office
behind
at the end of the day. Kevin is the opposite.”

“How did you two meet?”

“Oh, this and that. He worked for the city of Socorro, I was doing some consulting for them, so we worked together. But mostly it was the biking, I guess. That’s been one of my passions for a long time. I invited Kevin along on a couple of rides that our group organized, and he seemed to enjoy it.”

“I saw the four bikes in the house.”

Page nodded. “Yeah. We just got the new road bikes a couple of months ago. That may have been a mistake. The only place Kevin knows how to ride is out front. He doesn’t understand the concept of second place, or of just riding along to enjoy the weather and watch the birds.”

“Were there any other bikes?”

“Others? No. Four’s enough.” He grinned, revealing a movie star’s set of teeth, and then his face immediately fell sober. Kevin Zeigler hadn’t simply grown weary of county politics and taken one of his expensive bikes for an extended spin…or crashed one of the mountain bikes, leaving him lying somewhere with a busted hip, waiting for rescue.

Estelle turned sideways in her chair so that she more directly faced Zeigler’s roommate. “Mr. Page, did Kevin have any enemies?”

“Enemies?” He blinked.

“Yes, sir. Anyone that you’re aware of with a grudge? Any old scores to settle?”

“God, not that I know of…”

“Who was he hooked up with before he met you?” Torrez’s question came so abruptly that Page appeared startled.

“I don’t follow.”

Torrez regarded him expressionlessly, waiting for Page to figure out for himself what the sheriff had meant.

“Any former acquaintances?” Estelle prompted. “Any bad feelings between Kevin and anyone else?”

“No…I mean, I don’t think so.”

“You’re livin’ with him, right?” Torrez asked.

“I visit when I can.”

“You and him spend weekends together?”

“When we can.”

“For instance, were you planning to come down Thursday or Friday, and stay over until Monday?”

Page glanced at Estelle. “Yes,” he said simply. “Those were my plans.”

“Mr. Page,” Estelle said, “when I asked if there were any bad feelings between Kevin Zeigler and anyone else, you replied that you ‘didn’t think so.’ I’d like to ask you to think more carefully about that.” Estelle spoke slowly. “Did Kevin ever talk to you about problems he might have had in the past with anyone—anyone at all? Employees, relatives, special friends.”

“No,” Page said. “Kevin always thought
that
way,” he said, and stabbed a finger outward. “He thought about the future…like what he was
going
to do.”

“He didn’t ruminate much about things?”

Page laughed, a quick, loud, nervous guffaw. “
Ruminate
. That’s about the
last
word I’d associate with Kevin.”

Estelle leaned back, and the room fell silent except for the faint, occasional creak of leather as Torrez rocked absently in his chair.

“When the two of you go out socially in Posadas,” Estelle asked, “where do you frequent?”

Frowning, Page looked out through the narrow window at the plastered wall of the county courthouse. “I like to cook, so we don’t ever eat out,” he said. “Unless we go to Cruces or something like that for a show.” He turned away from the window view. “I guess other than when we go riding sometimes around Cat Mesa, sometimes down in the San Cristóbals, we don’t go out much. Not here, anyway.”

“Not much to do?”

He shrugged. “I guess you could put it that way.”

“Is there a circle of friends or acquaintances whom you’ve come to know in Posadas?”

“No.” Page’s answer was immediate, and he didn’t amplify the answer.

“Is that because of Kevin’s position with the county?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Mr. Page,” Estelle said, “your relationship with Kevin Zeigler is obviously most discreet.” She watched a faint flush create a small island of white on the arch of each cheekbone.

“My relationship with Kevin Zeigler is no one’s business but our own,” he said evenly.

“Sir, I understand that,” Estelle said. “And our intention is not to invade your privacy. But we’ll dig for any scrap of information that we can. I’m sure you can understand that.”

He sighed deeply. “Of course.”

Estelle leaned forward and lowered her voice. “That’s why I want you to think over every moment you’ve spent in Posadas with Mr. Zeigler. Is there anyone—anyone at all—who Kevin talked about? Any frustrations he brought home from the office and discussed with you? Anything at all.”

“Believe me, Officers, I’ve been sitting out in that lobby now for quite a while, doing nothing but that.” He shook his head, face grimaced. “Of course Kevin and I were
discreet
, as you suggest. Posadas isn’t exactly the western hemisphere’s cradle of liberal opinion. His job with the county was important to him, if for no other reason than he wanted to do a good job for them, and then move on to something more interesting or challenging.”

“Like what?” Torrez asked.

“He was thinking about applying for an administrative position that one of the state universities has posted.”

“Where?”

“Albuquerque. He thinks he has a good shot at it.”

“He’s done a good job for this county,” Estelle said.

Page smiled at her. “Kevin refers to Posadas County as ‘my problem child,’ Ms. Guzman. He keeps talking about ‘the long, painful trek toward the twenty-first century.’”

Torrez scoffed. “How about the twentieth first,” he said.

“I’m sure that in his work, he’s had plenty of disagreements,” Page said, and Estelle gazed at him speculatively. “The one thing I
do
know, absolutely for sure, for positive, for one hundred percent, is that Kevin did not go next door to the Acostas’ on some perverted whim and attack that girl.”

“Do the Acostas know you?” Estelle asked.

“What do you mean, do they
know
me? Of course they do. I’ve been visiting Kevin almost every weekend and on longer holidays for going on two years. We’ve talked with them—the parents, sometimes the kids—a lot, mostly just in passing.”

“Mostly,” Torrez muttered.

Page shot him an impatient look. “Yes,
mostly
. Once last summer, they invited us over when they were barbecuing a goat. And it was pretty good, too. A couple of times, Tony—he’s the oldest boy—has gone on bike rides with us. He didn’t enjoy it much, I don’t think. He’s got a mountain bike, but it’s one of those really cheap ones. It’s broken half the time. We let him ride one of ours when we all went up on Cat Mesa a few weeks ago. I think the ride was about twenty miles too long for him.”

“Not in shape, eh?” Torrez said.

“No, he wasn’t.”

Estelle could picture the chubby, moonfaced Tony Acosta, sweat pouring off in rivers, pushing his bike up the steep switchbacks of County Road 43 while Zeigler and Page rode patient circles around him.

Page restless on the uncomfortable chair, rose and squared his shoulders. “I would think you’d be investigating the obvious, Sheriff.”

“And what would that be?”

“The Acostas impress me as a noisy, rambunctious family. Their kids are scrappy. I mean, more than a few times Kevin and I heard rows over there, one kid taking out his aggressions on another, or Fred beating on Juanita, or some other round-robin. And the kids all have some pretty squirrelly friends, too. If Kevin came home for a minute during lunch and walked into the middle of something…”

“Was Kevin concerned about the general behavior next door?” Estelle asked.

Page hesitated. “I think that sometimes he was. He saw Mrs. Acosta—Juanita—wallop one of the little girls with the handle of a garden rake once. I mean, that’s not some little willow switch. And a couple of times, the two boys got into a real bloody fistfight, and their parents didn’t do anything to break it up. Kevin thought we should do something, but
I
sure wasn’t going to step into the middle of that hornet’s nest. If mom and dad don’t mind the kids beating each other to a pulp, then I guess it’s none of my business. It bothered Kevin, though. He told me once that the cops were going to respond to the Acostas’ address sometime, and someone was going out of there in a body bag.”

“They’ve come close,” Estelle said.