Convenient Disposal

Chapter Thirty-three

There was nothing surreptitious about Sheriff Robert Torrez’s approach. He pulled up to the Posadas County Landfill’s main gate, got out with his bundle of keys that included the master for all of the county’s heavy Yale padlocks, popped the lock, and swung the gate wide open.

“Let’s lock it,” he said as he climbed back in the Expedition. “You never know what bunch of kids will be out lookin’ for a place to party.” He pulled the Expedition forward. Estelle climbed down, closed and locked the gate behind them.

“Where do you want to start?”

Estelle nodded at the small shack that served as the landfill office. “Right there.” Torrez swung in close but didn’t switch off the ignition. “You know what you’re lookin’ for?”

“No.”

Torrez swiveled the spotlight to illuminate the little building, then swung the light to the left. “The bike’s not here.”

“He’s had lots of time to take it home in the back of his pickup.”

The sheriff snapped off the spot and then switched off the ignition. “Darker’n shit,” he muttered, and slid the large aluminum flashlight out of its boot in the center console. The new moon was far down on the horizon. A light breeze swirled around the shed, enough to set the symphony of landfill smells into motion.

Torrez unlocked the office door and pushed it open. “Let there be light,” he said, and snapped the switch. One of the two fluorescent bulbs flickered into dust-filtered life. The office was stuffy and cluttered. A constant flow of boots carrying mud and dirt had ground the original vinyl flooring bare, leaving recognizable patterns only in the corners, where feet never ventured.

A set of metal shelves bulged with various tools and machine parts, some boxed, some lying loose in the clutter. A single window on the east wall could open, but probably hadn’t in years. The glass was opaque, crusted on the inside from smoke, dust, and insects; on the outside from the constant clouds of landfill dirt that shifted with the wind.

Estelle opened each of the three desk drawers, lingering at the last one when she saw the half-full bottle of Canadian whiskey. “I could smell an additive in his coffee this morning,” she said.

“Don and the bottle are no strangers,” Torrez observed. “I know that for a fact.” He didn’t say how he knew, but Estelle was well aware that Bobby Torrez was determined when it came to busting drunk drivers; years before, shortly after joining the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department, he’d lost a younger brother to a weaving drunk. Other deputies swore that Torrez could now smell an open bottle of beer even before the driver lowered his window. She could not imagine him cutting Fulkerson any slack if he caught the landfill manager-county employee or not-weaving down the highway under the influence.

A computer sat in the middle of the desk, dusty and note-stuck. Directly above it on the wall was the load scale’s read-out, the glass of the digital window as filthy as everything else.

“Hi-tech operation,” Torrez said. He held a small plastic bag as Estelle transferred a dozen of the freshest cigarette butts from the overflowing coffee can that served as an ashtray. “Which ones are his?”

“Today he was rolling his own,” Estelle said, “but he had a pack of Camel filters in his shirt pocket. Kurtz was smoking Marlboros.”

“You know we’re lookin’ at a week or more for a DNA profile off these.”

She nodded with resignation. “I don’t care if it takes a month. I need to start somewhere. This afternoon, I asked Francis to find Fulkerson’s blood type for me, if it was on file anywhere over at the hospital. It’s not. Nothing’s going to be easy.”

“Could be that Bart might have had something to do with all this. That’s a possibility.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, Bobby. Maybe he’s in on it. He was the more reserved of the two when I talked with them today. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous or not. But he struck me as a little evasive.”

“Bart’s just plain dumb,” Torrez said. “He’s firing on two out of four.”

“Maybe so, but he wasn’t the one drinking whiskey at nine in the morning.”

“Fulkerson seemed confident, did he?”

“Oh, yes. Pretty smug.” She gingerly lifted a grimy jacket off the back of the swivel chair. “This is Bart’s,” she said. “It’s too small for Don.” She held out the sleeves, then checked the pockets, finding a butane lighter, a quarter, a penny, and a piece of peppermint candy minus its wrapper.

They spent another five minutes in the shed, but found nothing of interest. Once more outside, Estelle took deep breaths, enjoying the relatively clean air and letting her vision adjust once more to the darkness.

“This is Fulkerson’s trailer,” Torrez said. “I’ve seen him pullin’ it around.” He walked across to it, playing the flashlight on the contents. “Lots of good shit. Looks like somebody tore down an old fireplace or something. Old Don scarfed up the bricks.” He leaned on the side of the trailer, methodically examining the load. “I could use some of those.”

“They may end up on sale, cheap,” Estelle said, and Torrez nodded judiciously.

“Yep, they might.” He thumped the side of the trailer, turned and shined the flashlight across the landfill. “Lots of traffic since Tuesday,” he said. “That’s the frustrating part. And it wouldn’t come as much of a surprise to find out that Zeigler had a flat tire up here, either.” He walked a couple of paces away from the truck, playing his light on the ground. “Too damn many tracks since then. No way to find where he had the jack.” He directed the light toward the pit and the beam reflected off the bright yellow of the dozer. “I’d like to take a look over there,” he said. “I ain’t walkin’, though.”

As they drove across the rough, litter-strewn ground toward the pit, Torrez swung the windshield-post-mounted spotlight this way and that. “Did you walk over there?” he said at one point, holding the spot on the large pile of branches, slash, and limb wood a hundred yards away in the back corner of the landfill.

“No. I visited the appliance showroom and the tires. Then I walked across to the pit.”

“They burn that pile every once in a while,” Torrez said. “Fire department brings the marshmallows and they have a grand old time.”

“That’s a cheerful thought.”

“Next time it’ll be barbecue-flavored smoke.”

Estelle grimaced at the graveyard humor. “If I was going to dispose of a corpse, it wouldn’t be under a pile of branches. That would be both hard to do and time-consuming.”

“Me neither.” He swept the light back, and Estelle saw that the day’s pile of refuse had been dozed into the pit, leaving a neat apron for the next day’s offering. Torrez maneuvered the Expedition carefully between the parked dozer and the side of the pit, the left front and rear tires no more than a stride from the edge. He swiveled the spotlight and played it down into the depths.

With barely enough room to open the door, Estelle climbed out and walked around the front of the truck. The sheriff remained inside, and Estelle crossed through the beam of the spot, keeping a hand on the truck for balance.

“Stay away from the edge,” Torrez said unnecessarily. “That’s a hell of a first step.”

“I was over on the other side earlier,” she said.

Torrez crisscrossed the spotlight beam methodically across the bottom of the pit, pausing now and then at points of interest. After several minutes, he leaned his head on one hand, elbow propped on the doorsill. “How sure are you?” he asked quietly.

“I’m not sure at all,” Estelle replied. “It’s just that in various conversations since Tuesday, the landfill keeps cropping up. It’s the only thing that’s consistent, and that makes me edgy. Hear it one time, that’s one thing. But over and over again, things keep circling back. Tony Acosta mentioned it. William Page mentioned it. The tire shows up down at the county yard, but it’s got a paint smear on it that might match the black paint on Fulkerson’s headache rack.” She shrugged and leaned against the truck’s door. “That’s thin, I know.”

“You ain’t kidding. Like it ain’t the only rack in town. It’s going to take the state lab a week to run a match.”

“It’s just that there is a rack here, too, Bobby. And there are some things that are even thinner. Like the smell in Zeigler’s truck. You walk into that shack over there, and it’s a megaversion of that same stink.”

“It’s just cigarettes.”

“Well, no, it’s not. It’s smoke mixed with alcohol, Bobby. I know. I could be wrong. But then you add Fulkerson’s motive. That’s intriguing, and on top of that it’s the only motive we’ve stumbled across that’s immediate.” She thumped Torrez on the arm. “We know that there are some ill feelings between Fulkerson and Zeigler. At the very least, some dislike. And it runs both ways, beyond just one man’s contempt for another’s lifestyle. If a private company from out of town takes all this over, Fulkerson stands to lose…and lose big time.”

“‘All this will be yours one day, my son,’” Torrez intoned. “What a kingdom. Too bad he don’t have a son.”

“And Fulkerson comes up again in Crowley’s video.”

“Just because he was at the meeting.”

“A little more than that. He was there and then left the meeting, right at the time that Zeigler disappeared. And returned late. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like he changed his clothes. Or at least took off his coat.”

“He had the opportunity. I agree with that.”

“Sure enough he did. Now think about the grease on Carmen’s bedroom wall? Fulkerson’s the right size, and he works with machines all the time.” She jerked her head toward the bulldozer and shined her flashlight over the roof of the Expedition. “It’s not there now, but he stuffs his jacket under the seat and uses it as a pad for his thermos of coffee. There’s grease all over the place. These little things, Bobby. They just keep adding up. Fulkerson could have walked from Zeigler’s to his own place on Camino. It’s only a couple of blocks, and makes sense. He wouldn’t want to be seen. After what happened with Carmen, he’d want to be out of there. He’d be nervous.”

“More’n that. He probably hurt like hell from bein’ jabbed with that freakin’ hat pin.”

“That, too. It makes sense that he’d duck out the back. And suddenly, both his vehicles end up here at the dump. Explain that to me.”

“Do you feel sure enough to shut this place down? Put a lock on the gate, close it off for however long it takes to dig it all up? I’m thinkin’ that a dog will help. I know they have a rescue canine in Deming. Get him up here to nose through all this shit.” Estelle didn’t respond. “That’s what you’re talkin’ about, you know. That’s what we do if there’s reason to believe that Zeigler’s buried down in that pit somewhere.”

“Ay. I really hate thinking that he’s here.”

“Well…” Torrez shot the spotlight all the way down to the far end of the pit again, where the dozer would climb up and out when it dug the pit in the first place, pushing the load of dirt to the storage pile. Each week, a layer of dirt would be graded back as a cover blanket for the trash. “It don’t make any difference to Kevin Zeigler whether he’s lying down there, or under a juniper up on Cat Mesa, or in the bottom of an arroyo someplace. We go with what we got. So you call it. You’ve relied on your intuition before.”

“I feel really, really uneasy about this place.”

He switched off the light and they listened to the silence for a while, broken occasionally by the light rustle of the breeze touching the loose plastic of a garbage bag down below. “That’s good enough for me. Let’s go take a look,” he said after a minute. “What’s to lose? Maybe rummaging through trash in the middle of the night is just the ticket. At the very least, we might find some really good shit, and stiff Fulkerson out of his flea market profits.”

Estelle moved away from the door, careful to stay back from the edge of the pit. “I’m leavin’ the truck right here,” Torrez said. “It’ll give us something to see by.” He turned the spot back on, centering it to cover the most area. “You have your light?”

“Yes,” Estelle said.

“Gloves?”

“Sure.”

He tossed his bulky handheld radio on the seat. “I don’t need to lose that,” he said. He got out and stood for a minute with his hands on his hips. “I think we can just kinda slide down over here.” He walked back toward the drop-off apron of the pit, where the slope was nearly seventy degrees, as opposed to the gently sloped exit end.

The bed of trash was heaped below the drop-off, not yet pushed out and compacted as it would be at the end of the week. Balancing on both feet as if she were sliding down an icy hill, Estelle slipped and slid down to the pile. Because the collection represented only two days, the pile of refuse stretched out for no more than twenty yards. She stopped and surveyed the pile dubiously.

“I think that if I’d dumped somebody here, I’d make a little more of an effort to cover them thoroughly,” she said. “Especially if I owned a bulldozer. I don’t think any of this trash has been spread out yet.”

“Good-sized pile, though. But I was thinkin’ the same thing.”

“A sign of confidence, maybe.”

Torrez flashed light to the far side, where the smooth dirt layer from the week before was still visible. “Could be over there, too. Could be just about anywhere. The only good way to do this is to get Howard up here on one of the county backhoes.”

“He’ll love that,” Estelle said. She could imagine the stolid Sergeant Bishop on excavation duty, reliving his years as a private contractor.

Bent in a crouch with the light in one hand and the other reaching out for something to provide stability, Estelle made her way across the pile, heading toward the west wall of the pit. Torrez went east, moving with more assurance. The light from the Expedition’s focused spot hindered as much as it helped forming harsh shadows that hid treacherous footing.

“Incongruities,” Estelle said aloud.

“What?” Torrez shouted.

“Nothing. I’m talking to myself.” She worked her way beyond the highest mound, toward the open soil that covered the previous week’s collection, and in a moment reached the old refrigerator that she had seen earlier in the day. Battered and dented, the fridge lay facedown, just at the edge of the fresh trash. Several pieces of random-sized, rotted plywood had sailed down on top of it. She pushed the wood aside, and rocked the appliance with one foot. “Why aren’t you with the others?” she said.

Fifteen yards away, Torrez was rooting his way through trash, muttering all the while.

“Hey?” Estelle called.

Torrez paused. “What?”

“Help me turn this over?” She waited until the sheriff had made his way over before saying, “Just one more little thing. Bobby. Why isn’t this in the pile across the way, there? With all its brethren?”

“’Cause it makes a neat coffin?” Torrez replied. He rocked the fridge tentatively, then grabbed a bottom corner and heaved. With the appliance on its side, they could see that a hasp had been screwed into the door, perhaps when the original latch gave up the ghost.

“I should be taking pictures,” Estelle said.

“If the county manager’s inside, I promise I’ll put it back exactly the way it was.” The hasp was latched, secured with the type of staple that passed through a slot and then turned a quarter turn. Torrez pulled a ballpoint pen from his pocket, inserted it in the latch and turned. He then flicked the hasp clear.

He glanced up at Estelle and grinned. “I wish you could see your face right now.” He didn’t wait for a reply, but worked the door away from the frame, forcing it against the cushion of earth that jammed the hinges. The smell that erupted was ferocious, and even Torrez recoiled back.

“Christ,” he blurted. Estelle’s pulse was hammering so hard she almost didn’t hear him over her heartbeat. He shined his flashlight inside and grimaced. “Somebody got tired of the family dogs,” he said. “Looks like one, two, three, four of ’em.” He turned his head and grimaced up at Estelle. “You want to take a look?”

“If it’s dogs, I’ll take your word for it,” she said.

He screwed up his face, opened the door a little farther, and probed with the flashlight beam. “Nothin’ else.” He kneed the door shut and flicked the hasp. “Who the hell would do something like that?”

“I don’t know, but they never get charged with murder,” Estelle said. She retreated a step, then froze as she heard what sounded like the metallic rattle of chain in the distance.