Convenient Disposal

Chapter Twenty-four

A county car with lights flashing blocked the narrow County B-1, the access road that led directly from County Road 43 west to the maintenance yard off Third and Hutton Streets. Deputy Dennis Collins stood at the front fender of the unit, and Estelle slowed enough to avoid skidding broadside into his car. She heard the squeal of brakes behind her. Collins pointed down the road toward the maintenance yard and Estelle nodded, accelerating. The young deputy didn’t look pleased.

“Three oh seven, three ten.”

“Three oh seven.” Sergeant Mears’ voice sounded as if he was on the fringes of radio reception, somewhere north beyond the hump of Cat Mesa.

“Tom, we’re probably going to need you down here, too. County yard at Hutton and Third.”

“Ten-four.”

They drove along the fence that enclosed the county maintenance yard. The flatbed trailer with the large section of culvert still rested exactly where it had been earlier in the morning. The front loader was parked next to a pile of gravel on the other side of the yard. Rounding the west corner of the yard and turning left onto Third Street, Estelle braked hard. Mike Sisneros stood beside his village unit. Across Third Street, four county employees were standing in a small group on the sidewalk, facing Chief Eddie Mitchell.

“Stay in the car,” Estelle said to Page. She didn’t wait for a reply, but got out, hesitating at the door for a moment so that Torrez’s vehicle had room to slide to a stop.

Sisneros approached, pointing through the maintenance-yard fence as he did so.

“Right there on the tire pile, just down from the top.”

Estelle stepped only as far as the edge of the pavement. Between the fence and the asphalt of Third Street was a narrow, even spread of graveled shoulder, and she knelt and peered first up and then down the street. Inside the fence, the pile of tires was bordered on the south side by a retaining wall of concrete blocks. A row of three fuel tanks stood on tall legs just beyond the wall, and then the large steel building that included repair bays and offices stretched all the way to the yard gates.

“Well, shit,” Bob Torrez said as he joined her. The mound of tires was at least ten feet high, a relatively neat pyramid twenty feet in diameter at the base. Many of the tires were enormous, retired from road graders, loaders, dump trucks. The small tire on the north slope would have been easily missed under normal circumstances, hooked halfway through the gaping center of a five-foot-tall behemoth. Sunlight winked off the wheel on which the tire was still mounted.

“Who saw that?” Torrez said, turning to Sisneros.

“Dennis was driving through here,” Sisneros said. “I guess he just happened to glance that way, and there it was.”

“Well, shit,” Torrez said again. “Give the kid a medal.”

“He called the chief on the phone,” the village patrolman said. He turned to Estelle as she rose from her kneeling position. “I didn’t see any tracks on the shoulder, but not much is going to show. The chief looked too, but…” He shrugged.

“Has anybody been in there?” Torrez asked. “I mean, other than those guys?” He nodded at the group across the street.

“No one,” Sisneros said emphatically. “The chief put Dennis out at the road, and then his own unit down at the other end, there. We called all the county guys out.” He turned to point at the small group around Mitchell. “That’s every one of ’em, right there.” Estelle glanced over at the chief, wondering why he had exiled Collins to traffic duty right at the height of the young deputy’s elation at finding such a critical piece of evidence.

“Okay.” Torrez pulled his handheld radio off his belt. “PCS, three oh eight. Have Linda respond to this location.”

“Ten-four, three oh eight.”

“Real copies,” a faint voice said. “ETA about twenty minutes.”

“She’s twenty minutes out,” Torrez muttered and glanced at Estelle. “You want to get started?”

Estelle nodded and walked quickly to the trunk of her car. Page got out at the same time. “Is that the flat tire from Kevin’s truck?”

“We don’t know yet,” Estelle said. She partially closed the trunk lid so that she could look directly at Page. “And I’m serious. You need to remain right where you are, sir. Otherwise, I’ll have one of the officers take you back to the office.”

With one camera around her neck and the other in hand, Estelle returned to the edge of the pavement. “It’s interesting,” she said. “It’s on the back side of the pile. The guys couldn’t have seen it from inside the yard unless they happened to walk around the back side of the pile. Right along the fence.” She nodded at the tanks of fuel. “Even over there, the bulk of the pile would keep it out of sight.”

“And no one’s going to see it driving up this way,” Torrez said, gesturing south to north on Third Street. “Just comin’ from the other direction, the way Collins was. The kid got lucky.”

“He was on his toes, to realize what he might be seeing,” Estelle said. “There’s a puzzle, though. I’d like photos from above,” she said, focusing the camera with the telephoto lens through the chain-link fence. “And we need to do a careful sweep of the road shoulder, too. We need to make sure everyone stays off it.”

“We can do that,” Torrez said. “Let me go see where the cherry picker is.” He turned, then stopped and lowered his voice. “I don’t like the flamingo bein’ here, Estelle.”

She shot him a withering look. “Bobby, I had a valuable talk with him. I would have dropped him off back at the office, but I didn’t want to take the time. I told him to stay right there by the car. He understands.”

“I’ll have Mike run him back,” Torrez said as he turned away. His tone made it clear there was no room for debate. He strode over to Sisneros, stopped for a moment, and Estelle saw the patrolman nod. He beckoned Page, who in turned glanced over at Estelle, frowning.

She met Page as he reached for the door of Sisneros’ patrol car.

“I’ll keep you posted,” she said.

“Thanks,” Page replied, his expression a mix of apprehension, impatience, and disgust. Estelle did not try to explain the sheriff’s motivations to Page. In a basic, by-the-book way, he was entirely correct in what he was doing, even though she knew perfectly well it wasn’t the “book” that motivated Torrez’s reaction to seeing Page at a possible crime scene.

“Mike,” she added, “after you drop off Mr. Page at the county building, will you take over for Collins at the intersection? I need him here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

While Torrez went to confer with Hobie Tyler about a bucket truck, Estelle shot a careful series of photographs beginning on the opposite side of the street, using small red distance-marker flags for scale and contrast. She had taken no more than half a dozen before Collins’ unit appeared. She waved him to the grass on the far side of the street, away from the fence.

“Well done,” she said as he scrambled out of the truck. “Tell me what happened.”

He appeared to have a hard time holding still, like a little kid boiling over with anticipation. “I was just coming through here, on my way over there,” he said, pointing toward the neighborhood to the west. “There’s a lot of old vacant lots over there that I wanted to check.” He turned back to Estelle eagerly. “I was looking for the tire, ‘cause that’s the only thing that’s actually missing, you know?”

“Other than Kevin Zeigler,” Estelle added.

“Well, yeah…other than him. And here’s this stack of tires.” He shrugged. “And there it was. Maybe he’s underneath.”

“That’s a cheerful thought. As soon as you saw the tire, you called Chief Mitchell?”

“Yeah, ’cause when I was climbing the fence, I saw his unit on the other side of the yard, over there on Hutton Street.”

“Ah,” Estelle said, trying to keep a straight face. No wonder Mitchell had exiled the exuberant young man to intersection duty. “You were on the fence?”

“Well,” he said and hesitated, the beginnings of a flush on his ruddy cheeks. “I just climbed up a ways so I could see better. I didn’t think anything about it. I guess the chief didn’t much like that.”

“Do you understand why, Dennis?”

“Yes, ma’am. I do now.”

I’ll bet you do, she thought. In the distance, she saw Bob Torrez accompany Hobie Tyler through the main gate. They walked directly to one of the county’s bucket trucks, fired it up, and in a moment, the large vehicle lumbered out of the yard.

“Make sure no one steps or drives on the shoulder, Dennis, other than you. What I want you to do is start all the way down by the entrance, where the truck just came from.” She twisted, pointing toward the intersection to the north. “I want this shoulder strip combed, all the way up to that stop sign. Anything at all. Fresh cigarette butts, tire or shoe prints, fresh digs in the gravel…you know the drill. All right? I’ll get you some help as soon as I can.”

“You think somebody threw the tire over the fence?”

“Likely so.”

After some shuffling of vehicles, Tyler had the machine parked where Estelle wanted it, outriggers extended and digging into the macadam, rather than marking up the narrow shoulder. Tyler fussed with Estelle’s safety harness until it was fitted to his satisfaction, with the tether hooked through the D-ring on the bucket.

“That way, if you fall, you’ll just kinda dangle instead of goin’ headfirst to the ground,” he told her. In a moment they were airborne, being hoisted high over the fence. As the bucket oscillated gently to a halt, Tyler said, “What are you actually looking for?”

“It’s just a good place for an unobstructed view of the pile,” Estelle said.

“It’s just a goddamn tire,” Tyler mused.

“Yes, it is. And once we get in there and move it, the scene will never be the same,” she said. The bucket was a tight fit for two people, and she could smell the diesel and grease on Tyler’s clothes. “Can you swing us a little more that way?” she asked, and the arm extended into the yard as Tyler jockeyed the hydraulic controls.

Like huge insects hovering over a pile of refuse, they surveyed the pile, the boom reaching out over the barbed wire. With the bucket suspended within a foot or two of the pile, Estelle took portraits of the wheel and tire, trying not to leap ahead with conclusions for which there was no evidence. Tyler stood behind her silently, moving the bucket obediently whenever she asked.

When she was satisfied that there was no direction she had missed from which to view the tire and wheel in place, both from a distance and nearly on top of the pile, so close that she could smell the fragrance of the sun-baked rubber, she nodded that she was finished.

“You sure?” Tyler asked.

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, then. Down we go.” He swung them back over the fence to the truck. As she was climbing out of the awkward bucket, Linda Real arrived and watched critically as Estelle found her way down to the roadway one handhold at a time.

“Bobby sends me to the ends of the earth, and look what happens,” she said. “You get all the fun carnival rides.”

Estelle grinned. “We’re just getting started, Linda,” she said. “We needed some close-ups of that wheel and tire.” She drew Linda close to the fence. “Look at the top of the tire. See how it’s lying? It’s the one that’s caught in the middle of that big tractor tire.”

Linda cocked her head first this way and that, pacing along the roadway for a better view. At one point, she stood on her tiptoes, stretching herself upward for another couple inches of height. She pointed. “There’s a portion of its tread that’s underneath that other tire…the one on the very top of the pile.”

“Exactly,” Estelle said with approval. “And how could it end up like that if it were thrown from the yard side of the pile?”

“I don’t think it could,” Linda said. “It had to come from out here. Is that what you’re thinking?”

Estelle nodded. She turned as Robert Torrez approached, this time with Eddie Mitchell.

“No tracks along the road,” Mitchell said, glancing over his shoulder at the distant figure of Deputy Collins. “I thought we might get lucky.”

“Well, this is a big step,” Estelle said. “I asked Collins to do another survey, all the way along this whole strip, right to the intersection up there.”

“And perhaps just keep on going,” Mitchell said dryly.

“He’s young and eager, Eddie.”

“Yeah, like an eight-year-old. He looked like a damn monkey on this fence when I drove up.” Mitchell regarded the pile for a moment, hands on his hips. “That’s a hell of a toss,” he said. “What’s that fence, eight feet?”

“Not counting the three strands of barbed wire on top,” Torrez said. “Unless you were the Incredible Hulk, the only way you’d toss a wheel and tire that far is by standin’ in the back of a pickup truck. And even then you’d have to give it a real good fling. It ain’t light.”

Another vehicle turned onto Third Street from the north. “Here’s the man,” Torrez said. They waited until Sgt. Tom Mears parked and joined them.

“I’ll be damned,” Mears said matter-of-factly when Torrez pointed at the wheel and tire.

“We got pictures from every which way,” Torrez said. “How do you want to do this?”

“Any prints are going to be on the wheel,” Mears said. “And that’s unlikely, since nobody messes with the wheel when they take off a flat tire. You wouldn’t even have to touch it. You grab it by the tire to shuck it off the brake drum. But”-and he shook his head slowly-“you’re not going to get diddly off the tread.”

“Unless there’s blood or something like that,” Estelle said. “We’re curious about grease, too.”

“You got quite a collection of that, standing right over there,” Mitchell said, jerking his head toward the four county employees.

“That thought crossed my mind,” Estelle said.

Mears took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks. “The first thing to do is disturb things as little as possible.” He turned and nodded at the county cherry picker, idling across the street. “You want to use that. That, and a gaff. They must have some kind of hook like they use for working electric lines or something like that. That’ll be a whole lot easier than trying to climb up that mountain of tires.”

“Nah,” Torrez said. “Let’s not make a production out of this.” He turned away. “Let me get my gloves.” In a moment he returned, pulling on a stout pair of rawhide work gloves. “Let’s use your unit, Tom. There’s no point in having a traffic jam inside there.”

Linda Real traded her still cameras for video, and walked with Estelle into the yard. Mears parked his Expedition a good distance from the tires, and he, Torrez, and Mitchell surveyed the gravel in front of the pile. “Nothing,” Torrez announced. “Too damn bad it never rains around this place.” He glanced at Eddie. “Nobody saw a thing, I suppose.”

“Not a thing,” Mitchell said. “I had a good long talk with all four of ’em. They said the last person to drive in the yard who wasn’t working there was the undersheriff, earlier this morning.”

“And I parked over in front of the garage,” Estelle said. “I talked with James Volpato right over there by the dump truck, and then I walked across to talk with Hobie. He and one of the others were loading that culvert.”

“You can’t see the back of the pile from anywhere in the yard,” Torrez said. “That’s pretty slick.” He pointed at the large metal shop building that included the maintenance bays and offices. “That fronts the fence on Third, so it blocks the view. Whoever it was just drove up and pitched. He’d be parked behind the tire pile, and the fuel tanks there, and nobody would see a thing.”

He turned to Estelle. “You got all the pictures you need of it in place?”

“And then some,” she said.

“You don’t need to film this part.” Torrez glowered at Linda, but that just earned him a sunny, lopsided smile.

“Oh, this is the good part,” she said. “I have miles of tape.”

Torrez picked his way around the base of the rubber mountain, and climbed the pile gingerly. He twisted one boot for purchase, and knelt against the huge tire near the top. “Did you happen to notice how this is sittin’?” he said.

“Do you mean about how it’s caught under the one above it?”

“Yup.”

“Yes. We have photos of that.”

“Kinda interesting.” He bent down, put one hand on each side of the tire, and grunted back, lifting it up and out of its nest. Resting it on the pile periodically for balance, he backed down, never changing his grip. Reaching the bottom and firm footing, he flashed an insincere smile in the direction of Linda’s video camera.

Mears opened the tailgate of his unit, and Torrez stood the tire gingerly on the plastic mat. “That’s a little tire,” he said, “but it would be a hell of a toss.” He beckoned toward Dennis Collins, who was still outside the fence. “Have Hobie come in here,” he called, and Collins jogged off toward the small group of men.

Mears closely examined the cast aluminum wheel, rotating the tire this way and that so the light caught the burnished metal finish.

“Like Tom says, nobody handles the wheel when they’re changin’ a tire,” Torrez observed. “That’s the whole trouble.”

Mears made a wry face and turned the tire so the tread faced him. “Few little things in the tread. Pebbles…tire stuff. And a pretty fair coating of road dust on the wheel.” He looked at Estelle. “We’ll give it a thorough dusting back at the shop, but it’s not going to tell us much.”

“It already has,” Estelle said eagerly. “I’m positive now that someone else used Kevin’s truck.” She glanced toward the approaching Hobie Tyler and lowered her voice. “It would be easy to dismiss what Doris Marens told me. She’s not my idea of a super-reliable witness. But no matter what he did, Kevin would have no reason to pitch this spare, wheel and all, up on that pile. Someone else did that.”

“Not to mention Zeigler not having the muscles,” Mitchell observed.

“Hobie,” Torrez greeted the yard foreman. “Does this look to you like the tire and wheel you saw on the county manager’s truck?”

Tyler paused, not eager to approach too close. He sidled up, and one hand reached out and took Chief Eddie Mitchell by the back of the arm as if he needed the support. “Sure as shit looks like it,” he said judiciously. “I can’t say as I paid a whole lot of attention, you know. I mean it could be the right one. It’s flat?”

“Yup,” Torrez said. He thumped the top of the tire.

“His truck’s right over there in your lockup,” Tyler said, as if Torrez might have forgotten the obvious

“Just wanted to hear you say it,” Torrez said with a grin.

“This is just about as goddamn strange as it gets,” Tyler said. “What was he thinkin’?”

“I don’t think he was,” Torrez said affably.