Convenient Disposal

Chapter Fourteen

Roy Hurtado listened without interruption. If he was surprised that Wednesday by the early-morning telephone call from the Sheriff’s Department, and if he wondered about a version of events other than the one he had heard from his wife and daughter, he kept it to himself.

“We’ll have her there,” he said brusquely.

“Have you talked with Deena about what happened at school?” Estelle asked.

“Sure. And I heard about yesterday with the Acosta girl. You close to an arrest?”

“We’re making progress,” Estelle replied, and let it go at that. “We’ll see you at seven-thirty, then.”

“We’ll be there,” Hurtado said, and hung up.

Across the kitchen, Francisco and Carlos industriously tackled their generous breakfast. As she put down the phone, Estelle watched the two boys, enjoying the intensity of a discussion about whether raisins should float on top of an island of oatmeal or be mixed in.

Dr. Francis Guzman had left the house already, headed for his early rounds at Posadas General Hospital before the day at the clinic began. Francisco’s bus would slide up to the curb in a few moments, and he would disappear.

Estelle took a long sip of the strong herbal tea that she had brewed and listened as Francisco chattered nonstop about this and that, inconsequentials that tumbled from his agile little mind without pause, and that prompted an occasional sage nod from his little brother. Carlos ate with a studious frown, his eyebrows puckered in concentration.

The thump of the rubber-capped aluminum legs of Teresa Reyes’ walker announced Estelle’s mother as she made her way along the hallway toward the kitchen.

“What nasty thing kept you up all night?” she asked in Spanish by way of greeting. She thumped up close to Estelle, long brocade robe brushing the floor, her iron gray hair gathered in a single loose braid that touched her waistline. She accepted a peck on the cheek, running a hand up the back of Estelle’s arm in return.

“You want coffee, Mama?” Estelle reached across the counter for her mother’s cup, an enormous mug with a souvenir logo of Mexico City.

“Of course I want coffee,” Teresa replied. She watched as Estelle filled the cup to within a half inch of the rim and then set it on the kitchen table for her.

“Sofia’s coming!” Francisco announced loudly. Teresa grimaced at the volume.

“That’s good, Ruidoso,” she said. “Maybe I’ll have someone to talk to who makes sense.” She settled in the chair, swinging the walker out of the way. “What time did you come home?” she asked Estelle.

“About one, I suppose.”

“About one.” Teresa shook her head as she took a tentative sip of the coffee. “All these nasty things going on.”

“It happens once in a while,” Estelle said. The long weeks, sometimes months, of serenity in the county made the brief moments of harsh reality seem all the more intrusive.

“Sofia called last night? Is that what all this means? I heard the telephone,” Teresa said.

“Yes. Francis talked to her.”

“Well, that’s good. Don’t forget to tell Padrino,” Teresa said. “Maybe we can all have a nice dinner together.” She paused for emphasis. “If you’re going to be home.”

“Ah,” Estelle said, and set her cup down. She slipped a small notebook from her pocket and jotted a short message. “You reminded me,” she said. Bill Gastner, retired Posadas County sheriff, dear friend and godfather for the boys, would want to see Sofia Tournal. The two were unlikely friends-the polished, stately woman of the world and the gruff, paunchy New Mexico livestock inspector. More selfishly, though, Gastner represented the perfect solution to a nagging challenge-although she could imagine his immediate reaction to what she was going to suggest. “I’ll make a point of seeing him today.”

She glanced at the clock. Irma Sedillos, nana, housekeeper, and close friend, would arrive in a minute or so. Later in the morning, Irma would escort Carlos to the Little Bear Day Care Center.

Even with the day organized, Estelle found it hard to leave the warm kitchen. With the lassitude of a brief night’s sleep, it would have been comfortable to sit at the breakfast table with her mother, enjoying no schedule at all. Once out the front door, her world was one of unanswered questions.

But ten minutes later, she hefted the packet of photos from her mailbox in the Public Safety Building, the pictures accompanied by a concise report from Sgt. Tom Mears. Dispatcher Brent Sutherland leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, and waited until she finished reading.

“No word yet,” he said when she looked up. “On Zeigler, I mean.” She knew he hadn’t meant the report in her hand, which he wouldn’t have read. Mears’ memo told her only that the blood samples on the lamp shade, as well as other physical evidence, had been sent to the state lab in Las Cruces by courier-Deputy Sisneros this time.

If the county manager had been located, someone would have called her, no matter what the hour. “You wouldn’t believe the places Jackie’s checked out during the night,” Sutherland added. “And the sheriff, too.”

“I can imagine,” she said. The enigmatic Deputy Taber moved about the county like a phantom, working graveyard shift through preference. Ex-military herself, she would have looked at home in one of the recruitment ads that showed special forces troopers lurking with faces painted and uniform and hardware camouflaged.

And through thirty years of hunting and camping since his early teens, Bob Torrez knew every back road and deserted two-track down to the Mexican border…and many beyond. Both sheriff and deputy preferred to work alone and in the cover of darkness. Estelle empathized.

“The sheriff said to ask you about what I should tell Frank or Pam when they come in.”

Estelle grimaced. A middle-school student expelled for carrying a weapon on school grounds, another teenaged girl the victim of attempted murder in her own home, and a missing county manager-such would be the stuff for the front page of the Posadas Register this week, a monumental break in routine for publisher Frank Dayan.

With a newspaper printed late Thursday afternoons, Frank longed for important news that was fresh during the first part of the week, before events were pounded stale by the large metro papers and television stations. Frank was smart enough to wonder about possible connections, too.

“I’ll figure something out,” she said. “What time did Linda and Sgt. Mears go home?”

“Just about four, I think. He said for you to call him if you had a question about that.” Sutherland nodded at the papers.

There wasn’t much to question. Estelle scanned the terse report again as she walked toward her office. She paused in the doorway and glanced up as the “employees only” outer door clicked open between the dispatch island and the foyer. The brawny figure of Bill Gastner appeared.

“Great minds are on the same wavelength,” she said, and smiled at Padrino.

“You got Sutherland trained yet?” Gastner said gruffly. “Goddamned kid can’t figure out how to make coffee.”

“That’s because he doesn’t drink the stuff,” Estelle replied.

“Matters not. He should be able to read my mind, know when I’m going to walk through the door, and have the coffee made. I saw your buggy outside.” He jerked his chin at the stack of photos in her hand. “Progress?”

“Some, I think. Come on in.” She held her office door for him. “I made myself a note to catch up with you today.”

“That’s generally not too tough,” Gastner said. “Consider me caught.”

“Sofia’s coming up for a visit in the next day or two.”

“Well, good,” he said pleasantly. “Hopefully, I can pry myself away from my busy schedule long enough to say hello. No word yet on Zeigler?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. It doesn’t look good.”

“I see what’s-his-name out in the lobby…the boyfriend.” Estelle looked up quickly. While it was true that Bill Gastner was a walking gazetteer of Posadas County, it surprised her that he knew about Zeigler and Page. Gastner had been retired for most of Zeigler’s term as county manager, and wouldn’t have worked with him on a regular basis as a livestock inspector. “Has he been out there all night?” Gastner asked.

“I hope not,” Estelle said. “I came in the back, and didn’t even look out that way.”

“You had breakfast yet?”

She grinned at Gastner’s reflex question. Any time between midnight and noon was time for breakfast, as many times as convenient. “You’re going to need breakfast after I get done with you, sir.”

“Uh-oh.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m due out at the Triple Bar T in about…a little while.” He sat down heavily, stretched out his legs, and folded his hands over his ample belly.

“Yesterday, the County Commission put their stamp on consolidation,” she said. “I don’t know if you were able to attend any of the meeting or not.”

“Actually, they agreed to provide services,” Gastner corrected. “And no, I avoided the pleasure of their company.”

“Consolidated or services, it amounts to the same thing,” Estelle said. “And that’s why I wanted to talk to you and twist your arm. What we have to do is merge all of the village records-” She stopped when she saw the grin spread across Gastner’s broad face, and brought her hands together, fingers meshed, “-with ours. The problem is about the size of five big filing cabinets full of confidential information, more or less.”

“Mostly more, stretching back to the Mexican Revolution,” Gastner muttered.

“Just about. All of that has to merge with everything that we have in county records. And you know exactly what’s in those.”

Gastner straightened up, sitting forward in his chair. “The commissioners didn’t think about that little job, did they? In all their infinite wisdom.”

“Of course not, sir. Kevin was well aware of what’s necessary, though.” Estelle saw the older man move his hands to the chair arms and shift his weight forward, preparatory to rising. “The thing is, Padrino, we’re going to have to go through every file, every scrap of hard copy, and merge, and add, and just generally combine, the two record systems.”

“I’m aware of that. More power to you, sweetheart.”

“And the other problem, as I’m sure you know better than I, is that this is something that needs to be done by certified police officers, sir. It’s not something that we can just farm out to a couple of high school kids, or a couple of office temps.”

“God, I hope not.” Gastner rose with a loud cracking of knees. He glanced at his watch again. “I need to find some decent coffee. You got time?”

“No, I really don’t. The Hurtados are coming in at seven-thirty.”

“I don’t envy you that.”

“This is the deal, sir,” Estelle pressed. “You know more about this county than anyone on the planet. You know the law, you know criminal and investigative procedure backward, forward, and sideways, and there probably isn’t a single name in those files that you don’t know.”

Gastner’s eyes twinkled. “I probably talk about half of ’em in my sleep. Thank you. Keep going, though. Flattery will get you everywhere.”

“There’s a time constraint, too,” Estelle said. “This isn’t something that can drag on and on. It’s not something that we can nibble away at, a little at a time. What I need is a team that knows what it’s doing, working full-time until the job is finished.”

“Sounds like a plan. A ghastly plan, but a plan nevertheless.”

“You’ll consider heading it up?”

“I didn’t say that. I said it sounds like a plan…for someone.” He grinned and shook his head. “I think I’d rather go find a nice big pile of rocks and drop ’em on my foot, one at a time, than slog through all that shit.” He stepped toward the door. “How’s your mother doing? I haven’t seen her in a week or so.”

“She’s fine, sir.” She waited patiently. Gastner hadn’t actually walked through the door yet, and she could see the wheels turning in his head.

“Who else?” he asked.

“Mike Sisneros…” She couldn’t help hesitating. “And Dennis.”

“Collins? I don’t think so.”

“It would give him the opportunity to learn the system, for one thing,” Estelle said.

“You’re too generous,” Gastner said. “I’m sure the experience would do him good, but that’s not the point. I can’t see him with that level of concentration.” He held up his right hand, tapping fingers against thumb. “He talks more than he thinks. He’d be the first one to take shortcuts. I’d shoot him out of frustration before we made it through the first filing cabinet.” He held the door thoughtfully, and Estelle waited. “Mike’s good. I like him a lot. In fact, he’s one of the two best things about this whole merger deal.”

“Captain Mitchell is the other,” Estelle agreed.

“Ah, ‘Captain’? Is that what you guys settled on? You bet he’s good. Tell you what. Here’s the deal of the century for you. You spring Mike free, full-time…that’s one. Give me Linda for the other.” He grinned at Estelle’s pained expression. “Look, she’s not a road deputy, so using her won’t cut into your patrol schedule. She’s smart. She’s meticulous. Well hell, why am I telling you all this. You know what she is. She’s probably also indispensable to what you’re doing right now, but in a day or so.…”

“I wish.”

Gastner waved a hand in dismissal. “And guess who also knows how to use a camera, par excellence-who in fact taught Linda most of what she knows about cops and robbers.” He swung open the door. “Give me those two, and I’ll do it for you.”

“I’m not sure Linda-”

“Whoa, whoa,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re not going to tell me that you were planning to give these guys a choice, are you? Linda’s a smart girl. She can see that this isn’t just busywork that we’re talkin’ about here.” He grinned and swept one hand grandly through the air. “We’re talking about building the foundation of a modern, cohesive law enforcement department.” He chuckled. “How could she refuse, assuming she had any choice in the matter? Besides, tell ’em I’ll buy ’em lunch every day until we’re done. You’re not going to get a better deal than that today.”

He opened the door fully and glanced out into the hall. “Let me know, all right?”

Estelle nodded and picked up the folder of photographs. “One of the things I was going to talk over with Kevin was how much we have in the budget for this sort of thing.”

“That’s the least of your worries right now,” Gastner said. They heard muted voices, and he added, “The Hurtados are here.” But instead of leaving, Gastner stepped back and gently closed the office door. “Are you giving some consideration to what Bobby thinks happened?”

“He hasn’t talked much about what he thinks,” Estelle said.

Gastner nodded philosophically. “Yeah, there is that. But I chatted with him for a minute out at the gas pumps just a bit ago,” Gastner said. “He thinks there’s reason to believe that it wasn’t Kevin Zeigler who walked into the middle of something as an innocent bystander.”

“He’s talking about Carmen, then?”

“Yup. What if she witnessed something that she shouldn’t have?”

“You mean that Kevin was up to something, and saw her watching?” Gastner shrugged.

“The obvious route right now is the flip side of that,” Estelle said. “I understand why Bobby thinks the way he does. He walked into Zeigler’s house, saw the evidence that he and Page share a bed, and his expression looked like he’d stepped in something a dog left behind.”

Gastner laughed. “I can imagine.” His face settled into sober. “I just wanted to pass the conversation along. That’s all. You follow your instincts, sweetheart.”

“At the moment, I’m not sure that I have any,” Estelle said. “We’ll see what Deena has to say.”