Steven Havill - Convenient Disposal

Estelle knelt beside the sheriff and peered closely. The overhead light fixture wasn’t much help, and she pulled a tiny flashlight from her jacket pocket and snapped it on, examining the gouge. The mark began three inches above the wainscoting trim, digging through the wallpaper into the Sheetrock behind it. The gouge stopped abruptly with a diagonal bruise across the horizontal painted strip.

“Took a pretty good lick,” the sheriff said.

Going to her hands and knees, she bent low, playing the flashlight beam on the old carpet, her face so close she could smell the musty fibers. She could imagine a dusting of gypsum from the wallboard. If so, that trace was mixed with a fair coating of dust, lint, human and cat hair that the vacuum cleaner had missed.

“The only thing I see in the living room is that busted TV,” Torrez said. “One of ’em got into the TV somehow, but I didn’t see anything else broken except the busted glass.”

Estelle straightened up, trying to imagine Carmen’s path through the house. Freddy Acosta had said that he entered the kitchen door, then walked through toward his daughter’s bedroom. It would have taken his eyes a while to adjust to the dim light after time spent outside, but he had seen, or almost tripped over, the telephone on the floor, and he would have had to be blind to miss the shattered television.

And Freddy’s intrusion had been only the beginning of evidence trampling. Beyond the dining room, traffic had complicated matters further. After Freddy’s discovery of his daughter’s battered body in the bedroom and his call to 911, half a dozen emergency personnel had mobbed through the place.

“Seein’ this mess, he’d head right for the bedroom to check on her,” Torrez said.

“Maybe so.” Estelle avoided the glass as she crossed the small living room and stood in the doorway of Carmen’s bedroom. On the nightstand beside the bed, a much-loved teddy bear leaned against the lamp base. The bed had been bumped toward the wall, and other stuffed animals had scattered as the bedding and pillows were thrashed. A thick, dark stain marked where the blood from Carmen’s cracked head had puddled.

“I called Mears, Abeyta, and Taber to give us a hand,” Torrez said. “We’re going to have to spend a good bit of time combing this place.”

Estelle nodded. “I want that,” she said, pointing at the telephone receiver. It lay beside one of the pillows where Freddy had tossed it. “Did you find anything outside?”

The sheriff shrugged. “There’s about a thousand prints in the dirt. Could be that half the neighborhood’s gone in or out that door in the past twenty-four hours. And half a dozen Acostas.”

“We need to make sure we don’t add any more,” Estelle said as she turned from the bedroom. “His tracks are out there somewhere.”

“His or hers,” Torrez said.

“His.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Someone slammed the back door open hard enough to punch a hole in the wall? Then swings something and puts a deep gouge in the plaster of the dining room? And on top of that, Carmen Acosta was a tough little girl. She probably weighs, what, a hundred and thirty or forty pounds? And an attitude to match. This wasn’t some tussle with another kid.”

“Not someone like Deena Hurtado, you mean?”

Estelle shook her head. “Besides, if the intruder was a kid, Carmen wouldn’t have tried to call nine-one-one, Bobby. I get the impression that she’s a great one to settle her own disputes. For her to call the cops puts the whole thing in a different light.” She hesitated. “But stranger things have happened,” she added. “I don’t want to rule anything out just now. Nos vemos .” She glanced at her watch as she slipped her phone out of her pocket. She walked back across the living room, and before she reached the dining room, Penny Barnes answered the call in the county manager’s office.

“Penny, this is Estelle,” the undersheriff said. “Did Kevin check in yet?”

“Nope,” Penny said. “That rascal’s playing hooky.”

“You’ve tried all the easy places? The maintenance barn, stuff like that?”

“Everywhere,” Penny said emphatically. “I need his signature on a bunch of checks, and Tinneman is still breathing hard down my neck. They’ve had to cancel a whole bunch of things off the meeting agenda. I don’t know what Kevin was thinking, not letting me know even a little something.”

“He didn’t leave with someone?”

“Oh, Estelle, I don’t remember. At lunch, you know, everyone just sort of scoots. He went out saying he had some errands, and was maybe going to stop at the county barn. What’s going on over there, anyway? We’re listening to the scanner, and it sounds like the end of the world or something.”

“Nothing like that,” Estelle said. “If Kevin had some personal errands to do, who would know, do you think?”

Penny hesitated. “He probably talks to me as much as anybody,” she said.

“Who did he talk to this morning? Do you recall?”

“A million people. You know how it goes.”

“No one out of the ordinary that you remember?”

“I know that William Page called the office first thing this morning, before the meeting. They chatted for quite a while…and Kevin seemed upbeat about something. He didn’t say what.”

“William Page…?”

“That’s his roommate.”

“Okay,” Estelle said, “I guess I knew that. Do you happen to know where Page works? It’s Belen, isn’t it? Someplace like that?”

“He’s up in Socorro,” Penny said.

“You don’t know where, exactly?”

“Oh…” A pause followed and it sounded as if Zeigler’s secretary was flipping through a Rolodex. “William Page,” Penny murmured. “William Page.” Estelle waited, and she glanced up as Torrez sidled past her, headed for the front door.

Penny Barnes came back on the line. “Estelle, I don’t have it here. I know he has a company in Socorro.” She paused again and her tone changed a fraction. “That’s about all I know. Big help, huh. But they talk all the time.”

“Can you check Kevin’s desk for me?”

“Oh…”

“On second thought, don’t,” Estelle said quickly, hearing the indecision in Penny’s tone. “It’s not all that important. I’m sure Kevin will show up in a few minutes. When he does stick his nose back in the office, please tell him I need to see him? And I mean before he talks with anyone else, okay?”

“Is everything all right?” Penny asked.

“I just need to catch him,” Estelle replied cheerfully. “We have a lot to go over after the commission meeting this afternoon.”

“Which he skipped,” Penny said reprovingly. “That’s the mess he left me in.”

“We’ll nail him for you,” Estelle said. “Thanks a lot, Penny.”

“If I find William Page’s card or something, I’ll get right back to you.”

“Thanks. He probably won’t know anything, but it’s a place to try.” Estelle followed Robert Torrez outside. The sheriff was standing on the gravel driveway with his hands in his pockets. He appeared to be regarding Zeigler’s pickup truck.

“Zeigler’s front door is locked,” he said as Estelle approached. “I checked earlier. Nobody answered the bell or my knock.” Through the side window off the front step, Estelle could see a neat, thoroughly appointed living room. A mammoth entertainment center faced a large, pillowy, winged sofa.

She and Torrez circled the house but found nothing of interest, nothing that might hint what Zeigler’s activities might have been, beyond driving off to work in the morning.

“I have a warrant comin’ from Judge Hobart,” Torrez said. “Not that we need one. Pasquale’s bringing it.” Two more county units pulled into the street, and Torrez left to brief the officers.