Convenient Disposal (4 page)

“Thirty-seven thousand four hundred seventy-three and sixty-nine cents,” Estelle said.

“Exactly,” Tinneman said with satisfaction. “I was going to ask Mr. Zeigler what the comparable figure for the sheriff’s department is. Would you happen to know?”

“If you take the total budget and divide it by the number of employees, the figure is just under forty-two thousand,” Estelle said.

“So the village PD actually costs less to operate than the sheriff’s department?” Somehow, Tinneman made it sound as if this astounding revelation hadn’t been hashed and rehashed in a half dozen meetings and conferences.

“We also run a small jail unit, sir. On top of that, we have civil law responsibilities that the village does not have. We also have a considerable fleet of vehicles. As you know, most deputies now take their vehicles home to cut response time.”

“It’s my understanding, though, that the village is offering right around one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars for the merger, though. That’s not even three officers, is it?”

“No, sir.”

“Great deal for the village.”

Dulci Corona tossed her pencil on the desk. “I say that we accept the village offer and kick in enough for the Sheriff’s Department to hire
three
full-time officers. Let’s do this right.”

“I’d want to see the figures on that,” Tinneman said. “Can somebody give Kevin a call? We need him here. I think he fell into his martini or something.”

“Do you have any more questions for the undersheriff?” Dr. Gray asked.

“No, actually, I want to talk to the county manager,” Tinneman said doggedly.

“I’ll check for you,” Estelle said. Torrez turned and shot her an expression of impatience as she left the podium and slipped out the doors, irritated that she’d made her escape and he’d missed his chance. Across the foyer, Estelle saw Penny Barnes at her desk in the manager’s office.

“Barney wants to talk to Kevin,” Estelle said, and Penny made a face.

“Barney
always
wants to talk,” she said. “He’s not back from lunch yet?” She reached for the phone, dialed, and waited, then shook her head. “I’ll put a message on his pager.”

“He told me this morning that he had some errands.”

Penny reached forward and pulled the calendar closer. “He wanted to talk to one of the men over at the highway barn about some workman’s comp thing. That’s the only one I know about.” She looked up helpfully at Estelle. “You know…just errands.”

“How about at home?”

Penny tried that number without success. “He’s about the hardest man in the world to keep track of,” she said, snapping off the phone. She tapped a pile of papers at her left elbow. “If you see him before I do, tell him I need to bend his ear, too.”

Estelle reentered the commission meeting to find Dulci Corona once more holding the floor, determined this time to head off Barney Tinneman before the commissioner settled into yet another lengthy examination of things already well known. Gray glanced at Estelle with raised eyebrows, and the undersheriff shook her head and shrugged.

Undeterred, Corona offered the motion that would provide police services to the village. To Estelle’s surprise, and evidently to Barney Tinneman’s as well, Patric Sweeney immediately offered a second. When Tinneman ducked his head and appeared as if he was winding up to launch into another round of discussion, Dr. Gray straightened his shoulders and thumped his pencil down on the table.

“We have a motion and a second. Let’s call the question.”

County Clerk called the roll, and when his name was called, Tinneman wearily shook his head and voted in favor, making it unanimous. Estelle leaned toward Chief Eddie Mitchell, who had already agreed to return to the Sheriff’s Department as its only captain should the politicians actually make up their minds. “Welcome back, sir.”

Chapter Five

At first glance, what the political decision set in motion seemed simple enough. The Village of Posadas had voted to dissolve its small police department if the county would then agree to provide law enforcement within the village limits. The centralized dispatch housed at the Sheriff’s Department already dispatched both county and village, so Dispatcher Gayle Torrez and her crew wouldn’t miss a beat.

The county department had no officers ranked between the patrol sergeants and the undersheriff, and when asked if he’d rather be called a lieutenant or a captain, Eddie Mitchell had shrugged and said, “Captain’s easier to spell.”

The two village patrol cars, both bright blue and white and boldly lettered with various emblems including the large
DARE
, logo, would wear out soon enough and would be replaced with county units. Estelle counted all those things as minor concerns.

But she knew that in reality, the changeover would be a paperwork nightmare. Five enormously heavy filing cabinets waited in the small, musty village police office, cabinets filled with confidential criminal records dating back who knew how long—the “secrets of Posadas,” as Mitchell called them.

Eduardo Martinez, the affable, low-key police chief before Mitchell, had started the process of updating the village department to the computer age. Some of the material from files generated within the past decade had become part of the NIBRS database system—a pool of information to which all agencies in the state contributed. From those files, it was another instant electronic step to the National Crime Information Center’s data files.

Somehow, the vast backlog of village files—all of them, not just a select few—would have to be merged with the existing county records to form a single, cohesive, accessible unit. Physically moving the files from village to county was a simple afternoon’s work using one of the county vans. Then the real work began. Someone would have to filter through every last scrap of paper, every photo, every deposition in order to merge village and county files.

“Put it on the computer” was easy to say. That meant that someone actually had to sit at the computer keyboard and type every scrap of information into the system…without error, without omission, without editing.

And, because of the nature of law enforcement, it was a task that couldn’t wait to be done over months or years. Estelle knew that Posadas County was as much a part of
mañana
land as the rest of the state, maybe more so. But files and information had to be accessible for ongoing investigations. Further, since there were issues of maintaining both confidentiality and the chain of evidence, the Sheriff’s Department couldn’t simply hire a couple of high school kids at minimum wage to clean up the records.

After leaving the county meeting, Estelle returned to her office. Without a doubt, her best source for organizational strategy was County Manager Kevin Zeigler. She planned to spend the afternoon preparing a list of questions and proposed strategies to discuss with Zeigler, since she knew that Sheriff Robert Torrez wouldn’t.

Regardless of the sheriff’s many talents, his allergies to paperwork and bureaucracy were legendary. He had wasted no time in outlining his own strategy.

“If these politicos decide to do this,” he had said to Estelle Reyes-Guzman before the first exploratory meeting between county and village, “the project is yours.” He had glowered at her for a long moment and then added, “If I have to do it, it’ll be a major screwup, and we both know it.”

When she’d mentioned the conversation to Chief-soon-to-be-Captain Mitchell, he had laughed.

“If I had to go into a dark warehouse against fifty guys with Uzis, there’s nobody I’d rather have at my back,” he said. “But if I had to figure out a paperwork problem, Bobby is the
last
person I’d ask for help.”

But that Tuesday afternoon after her return to her office, the focus to deal with the challenge of merging dusty, yellowing files filled with decades of unhappy moments eluded Estelle. After fifteen minutes and a dozen senseless doodles on her desk pad, she found her mind circling back to the image of her small son standing in the dim light, delicate hands exploring the black and white mysteries of the piano keyboard.

Finally she tossed down her pencil and swiveled her chair around to face the bookcase behind her. She pulled a Las Cruces telephone directory from the bottom shelf and in a moment found the number she wanted.

Holding the book open with her left hand, she reached for the phone and punched in the numbers with her thumb.

“Hildebrand and Sons Music,” the cheerful voice greeted. “Good afternoon. This is Ryan.”

“Good afternoon. Sir, this is Estelle Guzman over in Posadas. I—” She paused as the office door opened and Gayle’s head appeared. “Just a minute, sir.” Gayle waited until the undersheriff had the mouthpiece covered.

“They’ve got something going on over on Candelaria,” the dispatcher said. “Eddie’s not sure if it’s a domestic or not. He wanted you to come over.”

Estelle stood up quickly. “Sir, I’ll call you back.” She hung up the phone as she rounded the desk, not waiting for the salesman’s acknowledgment.

“One oh eight Candelaria,” Gayle said. “Right next door to Zeigler’s.”

“Eddie didn’t say what it was?”

“He just got there,” Gayle said, retreating back toward dispatch. “We’ve got one ambulance on the way. He said he’s got one female down and then he told me to find you.”

“I’m on my way,” Estelle said, then paused. “If the county manager should happen to call, don’t let him escape. I need to talk with him.”

“Kevin’s probably over there already,” Gayle said. “The call is from his next-door neighbors, and you know how they are.”

Estelle nodded wearily. “I know
exactly
how they are.”

Candelaria Court was a small cul-de-sac off MacArthur on the east side of Posadas—like nearly everything else in the village, less than a minute from the Sheriff’s Office on Bustos. As Estelle turned the county car south on MacArthur just beyond the small and shabby Burger Heaven restaurant, she could see the intersection of Candelaria Court, and beyond, filtered through the elms, an array of winking emergency lights.

Burrowed in her office with door closed and radio switched off, she had missed the initial call…but this one was no surprise. As soon as she had heard whom Deena Hurtado had tried to fight at the school volleyball game, as soon as she had heard that Carmen Acosta had been suspended for six days, Estelle had anticipated a blowup at the Acosta residence.

Of all the village domestic disturbance reports that some lucky records clerk would transfer into the computer, half a hundred of them would include the name of the Acostas, stretching back fifteen years.

The postfight commentators at the middle school had agreed that, on the previous Tuesday, Carmen Acosta had won a clear decision over Deena Hurtado before referees had stepped in to separate the two scrapping girls. What the unfortunate Deena might not have realized was that her opponent had had lots of practice. The middle of five children, Carmen regularly thumped on her two younger sisters while her two older brothers whupped up on her.

With five children who had grown too fleet of foot for him to catch, Freddy Acosta regularly took out his frustrations on Juanita, his fiery spouse. Slow but stout, Juanita usually was able to defend herself, and more than once had sent Freddy to the emergency room for stitches. On one occasion when Estelle had happened to be the responding officer, Freddy had shaken his head ruefully, sitting bloody and battered on the emergency room table. “I guess I said the wrong thing,” he had muttered, and refused to tell Estelle just what it was that his
esposa
had hit him with, opening up a gaping hole in his scalp that required twelve stitches.

School usually provided something of a haven for Carmen from her boisterous, hit-first family. The six-day suspension that was supposed to allow her to cool her heels instead merely placed her at ground zero in the Acosta household. Her mother worked long hours in the parts department of Chavez Chevrolet-Olds, but Freddy Acosta had been on disability for more than a year after slipping on a slick tile at Posadas General Hospital—part of the floor he’d finished mopping not two minutes before. He would be home.

As she turned onto Candelaria Court, Estelle saw Mike Sisneros, the full-time village patrolman, running a yellow tape from the back bumper of his patrol car to the fence that separated the Acostas’ small cinder-block house from their neighbor’s.

The ambulance was parked directly in front of the driveway, back doors agape. Farther on, Eddie Mitchell’s unmarked Chevy was nosed into the curb directly behind Sheriff Torrez’s department Expedition.

Sisneros jogged toward her as she pulled the county car to the far side of the street. Shorter than Estelle’s five seven, Sisneros had inherited his mother’s round Acoma Indian face and his father’s spare build.

“They really did it this time,” he said. “Carmen’s inside. The EMTs are workin’ on her.” He turned and nodded toward Mitchell’s car. “The chief has Freddy locked up over there.”

The Acostas’ driveway was empty. “You need to run a tape on the other side,” Estelle said.

“I was just headed that way.”

“Did anyone talk to Kevin?” she asked. The county manager’s white county truck was parked in his driveway one door east of Acostas’. Nosed in behind his personal car, an older-model Datsun 28oZ.

“Haven’t seen him,” Sisneros said. “I did a quick check, but nobody’s home. Not Zeigler or his roommate.”

Estelle frowned. “What did Freddy have to say?”

“Not a hell of a lot. He says that he walked over to the convenience store, and when he came back home, he found the place tore up and Carmen in her bedroom, beat to a pulp.” He shrugged. “That’s all I know.”

Twisting at the waist, Estelle surveyed the neighborhood. Five doors north, just before the intersection with MacArthur, Doris Marens stood on her front steps, arms tightly folded across her chest, watching. At least three neighborhood dogs carried on in cadence. In the other direction, beyond Zeigler’s house, lay an empty field, the dried kochia four feet high.

“You might talk to Mrs. Marens when you get a chance,” Estelle said.

“I’m on it,” Sisneros replied. He lifted the tape so the under-sheriff could duck under, and she walked slowly along the sidewalk to the gravel driveway. A swatch of dirt a dozen yards wide separated the Acostas’ gravel from Zeigler’s concrete drive. Choosing her path carefully, she stepped across to the county pickup truck and touched the hood. It was warm, warmer than it should have been even with the afternoon sun dappling through the sparse limbs of the single large elm in the front yard.

“Good question,” a voice behind her said. She turned and saw the sheriff standing in the side doorway of the Acostas’ home. “Freddy says the truck wasn’t there when he left to walk to the store.”

Estelle glanced through the truck’s closed driver’s window and saw that the vehicle wasn’t locked. The keys were in the ignition.

Torrez held the Acostas’ kitchen door for her until she crossed to the house. “Miss Carmen might have won the first round, but not this one,” he said. He propped the door open with a capped ballpoint pen, and he motioned for Estelle to slip past him without touching the door frame. “Someone beat the crap out of her and added a few touches for good measure.”

Estelle halted two steps into the Acostas’ kitchen. “She’s alive?”

“Just.” He gently closed the door. “There’s evidence that the fight went from here right through the house. She’s in her bedroom. They’re trying to figure out how to transport her without making matters worse.”

“Freddy found her? Or Freddy beat up on her.”

“I ain’t thinkin’,” the sheriff said, shaking his head. “This isn’t his style, though.” Another siren announced more emergency traffic, and Torrez touched Estelle’s elbow. “I want you to see her before they move her. We need to make it snappy, though. They called another crew so they’d have lots of help.”

Estelle followed in Torrez’s footsteps as the sheriff made his way carefully through the house, keeping his hands in his pockets. They crossed the littered living room, stepping around an entertainment console. The screen of the television was shattered, the entire console skewed toward the wall.

Carmen Acosta’s bedroom was part of a small, shed-roofed addition on the east side of the house that included another bedroom and a small bath. The narrow door was open but blocked by the wide shoulders of Nina Burns, one of the EMTs.

“I think right out the front door,” she was saying. “But you can’t wheel it, Rick.” She turned and glanced at Torrez, then at Estelle. “And we need to wait until we have enough hands.”

“Here’s the hands,” Torrez said.

“Nah, we got a team comin’ right behind you there.” She reached out toward Estelle. “You want to slip in here?”

Carmen lay facedown on her narrow single bed as if she’d flopped there after a hard day picking fights at school. Her clothing—a sweatshirt with an
ACTITUD ES TODO
logo across the back, jeans, and white socks—were rumpled but roughly in place.

One of the EMTs knelt on the opposite side of the bed near the girl’s head, one large hand cupped over Carmen’s right hand and the other holding an oxygen mask in place. Beside him, another emergency tech worked to arrange an IV line into Carmen’s left arm. Even as Estelle watched, the girl’s right foot lifted off the bed a couple of inches.

“It’s okay,” the EMT holding the mask said, and immediately transferred his free hand in a featherlight touch to the top of the girl’s head. He looked up as Estelle approached and made a face, shaking his head at the same time.

He lifted his hand and pointed.

“Ay,”
Estelle whispered. Blood soaked the back of Carmen Acosta’s head, some of it running down into the creases in the back of her neck under her short, spiked hair. Estelle’s attention was drawn to an object in the girl’s left ear. At first glance, it might have been mistaken for a black hearing aid, or a black plastic dangly earring that had been swept upward into the ear canal. But the girl had not been so lucky. Whatever other injuries Carmen Acosta might have suffered, the hat pin driven into her brain through her left ear would have been the finishing touch.