Deena heaved a shuddering breath. “Do you think she’ll be all right?”
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
“What happens if she’s not, then?”
“If Carmen dies, we’ll be looking to charge someone with murder, Deena. It’s that simple.”
Chapter Sixteen
A brief stop at the high school confirmed that Mauro and Tony Acosta had enjoyed more than just an extended lunch. Both had been present in their morning classes; both walked out for lunch and hadn’t returned. The attendance records also provided an interesting portrait for the pair.
Margie Edwards, the principal’s secretary, beckoned Estelle around the end of her desk, and scooted her chair to one side so that the undersheriff could see the computer screen. The two student office aides had been sent on errands, the principal himself was somewhere out on campus, but Margie still talked as if the walls had ears.
“See here?” she said. “This is our ninth grader. What a pistol he is.”
Estelle scanned across the grid. “He’s been absent fourteen times since school started, if I’m reading this right.”
“That’s not counting today, by the way. Neither one of them are here today.”
“They’re up in Albuquerque with the family,” Estelle said. “I see that Mauro was absent yesterday afternoon.”
“I’m not surprised. Both of those boys are absent a lot. And this is only early November.” Margie shifted in her seat, glancing toward the office doorway. “Now mind you, there are some teachers who would say”—and she dropped her voice another notch—“that a day without Mauro is a day improved.” The smile was one of resignation. “I kind of like the kid, myself. I can’t imagine what’s going to become of him, but he can be a charmer.” She moved the mouse so that the cursor stopped in several places along the march of days. “Of those fourteen absences, though, nine are only afternoon skips. He comes in the morning and then adiós, muchacho. So yesterday’s absence isn’t unusual.”
“And Tony?”
The screen winked and Margie highlighted Tony Acosta’s attendance record. “Here’s our good influence,” she said. “Mr. Tony has twenty-three absences since August Twenty-first.”
“Caramba.”
“And that includes thirteen that are afternoon absences only, including the one yesterday.” She looked up at Estelle. “You might wonder how he manages to have a three point four GPA, huh.”
“Yes, I would.”
“The rest of us, too. I guess he does all his thinking by correspondence.” She tapped the mouse. “You want copies of these two guys?”
“If you can. But I have another question.”
“Shoot.”
“I need to know if yesterday Mauro and Tony were in their—what, fifth-hour class? Am I reading that right?”
“Fifth is the one just before lunch. Let me check.” She pushed back her chair and hesitated. “How am I going to do this, now. See”—and she turned toward Estelle—“the teachers send in a slip each period…one of our office aides picks them all up. They’re supposed to send in a slip, and if a youngster who is absent isn’t already on the morning’s absentee list, they send his name in.”
She turned back to the computer. “Fifth period, Mauro has math with Mr. Hode, and Tony is a library aide. We’d have to ask the teachers to be sure the boys were there, but Hode and Kerner are both pretty good about attendance. Would you like me to do that?”
“Yes, I really would. If it’s possible to do it confidentially.”
“Well, quietly, anyway,” Margie said. “There’s nothing much confidential around this place. Let me print these while we’re here.” The printer near Estelle’s elbow came to life. “And I’m not even going to ask…,” she added, then hesitated just long enough to see if Estelle would volunteer information.
“Thanks,” Estelle said, knowing exactly what Margie wanted to ask.
Margie pulled the pages out of the printer and handed them to Estelle. “Both Hode and the library are just down the hall, so it’ll only take a minute. Do you want to wait here?”
“I should,” Estelle said.
Margie cleared the computer screen. “I’ll be just a minute.”
She grinned at Estelle. “If the phone rings, just beckon one of the slaves.” She nodded toward the two office aides who orbited the foyer, both wondering why they’d been quarantined from the office. “They can get it. Pick that thing up, and you never know what you’re going to get into.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
In less than two minutes, Margie Edwards bustled back up the hallway. She closed the office door, and turned her back as if the two student aides might be able to read her lips through the glass partitions. “Both boys were here until the end of the period,” she said, and Estelle heard relief in her tone. “That means they left during lunch.” She nodded conspiratorially. “I think that’s what they usually do.”
“Thanks, Margie.”
“I’ll be here if you need anything else.” Her expression softened. “And we all hope that Carmen is going to be all right. That’s such a shame.” She beckoned to a disheveled youngster waiting to come into the office. The boy, certainly no older than ninth grade and smaller than many of the middle-school students across the parking lot, held an ice pack against his left wrist.
“Thanks again,” Estelle said.
“Come see us when you’re not so busy,” Margie said. As Estelle slipped past the youngster, his huge blue eyes, a little bloodshot from an earlier bout of tears, looked up at her. Flecks of perspiration dotted his pale forehead.
“Hi,” he said to Estelle, hoisting the wrist for better view, sounding pleased that he had a badge of honor to show for his collision with some immovable object. Moving close to Margie’s desk, he added, “Mr. Banks said that you need to take me to the emergency room. He says my wrist is broken.”
Estelle glanced at Margie, and the secretary looked heavenward. “Let me see it again,” Margie groaned.
“Have a great day,” Estelle said, stepping out of the way.
Back outside in the car, she perused her notes. Attendance records showed that the day before, the day of the attack on their sister, both Mauro and Tony had been in school until 12:40 PM It had been nearly an hour before that time when she’d talked with Kevin Zeigler. Freddy Acosta had called 911 at 2:38 PM, and if his memory was accurate, he had left his residence sometime around noon to check with his wife at the auto dealership.
Estelle frowned. When she had talked with Zeigler, it was just seconds before noon, straight up. Mauro and Tony were still in class, and Freddy had just left the house a few moments before in search of lunch. By his account, it would be nearly two and a half hours before he returned home.
A two-and-a-half-hour window of opportunity. That the amiable, ambling Freddy Acosta should take a two-and-a-half-hour stroll, talking to this person and that, was entirely reasonable. That he would hustle to the store and back without wasting a moment would have been unusual.
Zeigler would not have arrived home in time to see Freddy leave, but he might have driven by and seen Acosta walking into, or out of, the auto dealership on Bustos where his wife worked. He might have seen Freddy on Grande, ambling toward Tommy’s Handi-way where the chips, coffee, and conversation waited.
The window of opportunity was there for Kevin Zeigler. It yawned open for Mauro and Tony, too, but Estelle shook her head with impatience. There was nothing about the attack that was characteristic of the two boys, although clearly Mauro was lying when he had told Eddie Mitchell at the hospital in Albuquerque that he knew nothing of the hat pin. That was a typical “I didn’t do it” teenager, though. According to Deena Hurtado, Mauro was intimately familiar with the weapon, right down to its neatly filed tip.
Frustrated at no instant response from the state forensic lab to guide her thinking, Estelle drove out of the school parking lot and headed for the county complex. She was certain that Zeigler would not have attacked C
armen Acosta.
That left the possibility that Bobby Torrez was at least partially correct: What if Carmen Acosta had witnessed something next door that she shouldn’t have? The evidence fitted two versions of that scenario. If Zeigler had driven home, and had then been confronted by the attacker, Carmen might have been attracted to the back door by the ruckus and seen what she shouldn’t have seen.
The inside of Zeigler’s home appeared untouched; no struggle had taken place there. If there was an incident, it occurred outside, where it would attract the attention of neighbors. Carmen would have heard it. Farther up the street, five doors to the west, Doris Marens was home, but that was far enough away that all but the most violent sounds would have been indistinguishable.
Mrs. Marens had been standing on the front porch watching the light show as all the emergency equipment arrived, but she had told Officer Sisneros that she’d heard or seen nothing before that. Estelle made a mental note to talk to the woman again. In the flurry of trying to be a helpful witness, Doris Marens might have been searching her memory for the unusual. The answer might have been hiding instead among the usual sights and sounds of the day.
The county building complex was less than five blocks from the school, with the downtown blocks in between. Estelle parked in her own reserved spot and walked around the small brick patio. Just inside were the commission chambers and various county offices, with visitors greeted first by the clerk/treasurer’s and assessor’s offices. Beyond, just to one side of the doors to the commission chambers, was the county manager’s office.
Penny Barnes was on the phone when Estelle entered, elbow on the desk, using the phone as a cradle to hold her head. “I know,” she said, and waited a moment. She beckoned toward Estelle. “I know. Believe me, I’ll let you know the instant I hear anything. Okay?” She waited again, looked wearily at the undersheriff, and at the same time mimed biting the knuckles of her left hand in frustration.
“Right. I know. Okay, I’ll get back to you right away, then.” She straightened up, and dropped the phone back into its cradle. “Frank Dayan,” she said. “That’s the fourth time he’s called this morning, and it’s what, not quite nine o’clock? I’m surprised he isn’t hounding you.”
“I’ve made a point not to hold still long enough,” Estelle replied.
Penny’s pleasant face crinkled in misery. “What is going on?” she wailed, and turned to follow Estelle’s gaze. The door to Zeigler’s office was closed, with a large hasp now screwed on the door and an authoritative lock snapped in place. A short length of POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS yellow tape was stretched across the door at eye level. Bob Torrez hadn’t lost any time.
“I was so sure that when I walked into the office this morning, Kevin would be sitting in there, all hunched over his computer the way he always is. Instead, all I see is this ugly thing.” She waved at lock and ribbon with distaste.
“We don’t know any more than we knew yesterday, which is nothing.” Estelle drew a chair closer to Penny’s desk and nudged the outer office door shut at the same time. “I saw Kevin at the elementary school, right at noon yesterday. That’s it. His truck shows up at his house, maybe as much as two hours after that. And no Kevin.”
Penny let her hands drop into her lap. She turned and stared through the glass of Zeigler’s office door. “I just don’t know what to think. I look in there and tell myself, ‘Look, it’s just been a few hours. He got called away on some kind of emergency or something.’ I mean look at that.” She held out both hands helplessly. “His reading glasses are lying right there by his computer, like he just dropped them there for a minute, planning to be right back. When I left yesterday afternoon, his computer was still turned on the way it always is. Even that little radio over in the corner is on, just like it always is.” She waved her hands. “Everything is still on, as far as I know.”
“When you saw him yesterday before the commission meeting, was he upset about anything? Did he talk about anything?”
Penny shook her head. “Just nothing , ” she said. “I mean, he’s always talking to people, you know. Always. It seems like every single minute, he’s on that darn phone. That’s the job.”
“No particular arguments lately that you can pinpoint?”
“No. He was excited about the vote yesterday, and Estelle, that’s how I know something is just dreadfully wrong with all this. When the commission broke for lunch, they had some more presentations on the agenda—like you and Bobby and the chief. There were budget questions, a zillion details to discuss. With all that coming up, Kevin would never have willingly missed the afternoon session.”
“And he would have certainly called, in any case.”
Penny’s face crumpled in agony. “I’m scared, I guess. I heard about what happened next door with the Acostas, and it just gives me the willies.”
“Yesterday morning,” Estelle said. “Did anyone call here while the morning session was going on, asking to speak to Kevin?”
“A number of calls,” Penny said. “I know that Kevin had a whole list of things to do over lunch break. One of the things he wanted to do was touch bases with you, and make sure you’d come to the afternoon session.”
“He did that. But what else? Earlier, you mentioned an errand or two, including something at the county barns.”
“He had to see someone over at the maintenance yard about something. Some workman’s comp thing.” She paused and put her hand over her mouth, deep in thought. “He had to go to the bank. He asked me when he came in yesterday morning to help him remember.”
“His own personal banking?”
“Yes. Normal, so normal. Just day-in, day-out kind of stuff.”
“Was there anything in particular that Kevin asked you to do for him?”
Penny swept her hand over the avalanche on her desk. “Just this,” she said. “The county goes on.” She reached out and grasped a fistful of papers. “Bids. That’s always a popular one. We can’t buy a gosh darn pencil without an RFB. Now we have to figure out how to work the village PD financing into the sheriff’s budget. That will be just a wingding. You and I will be losing sleep over that.” She grimaced. “Bobby will just shrug and go hunting.”
“But nothing out of the ordinary?”
“No, nothing.” She picked up another paper. “Not unless you consider the September landfill records interesting and fascinating stuff, second only to October’s landfill records.”
“Yesterday,” Estelle persisted. “No phone calls out of the ordinary. No errands out of the ordinary. How about right out there?” She turned and nodded at the lobby outside the commission chambers. “You have a grandstand view from here. Did you see anyone that you don’t normally see at these things?”
This time, it was a long, slow shake of the head, as if the last straw had been broken. “Same old, same old,” Penny said. “But I have to admit, I don’t pay much attention. If I did, I wouldn’t get anything done.”
“You didn’t happen to see Kevin talking to anyone in particular? Or no one came in here before the meeting, hoping to have a few minutes alone with him?”
“No, no, and no. If they did, they all just passed me by, you know?” She reached out and rested her hand on the impressive pile that filled the “in” basket. “This is what drives my day, this little friend right here.” She fell silent, waiting for Estelle, who was gazing off across the lobby toward the commission chambers.
“You know, if you want to know who attended the meeting, that’s simple enough,” Penny said. “Stacey Roybal keeps notes. Most of the time, she jots down who-all attends. And then they always pass around that sign-in sheet.” She held up a finger in sudden inspiration. “And then, if you’re really desperate, you could ask Milton Crowley. If it moves, he films it.”
“Ah, Mr. Videotape.”
Penny nodded. “I’d like to see the inside of his house sometime.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “The bizarre thing is imagining him sitting in his home in the ev
ening, watching old tapes of County Commission meetings. That’s pretty kinky.”
“Milton Crowley,” Estelle repeated.
“You’re really going to talk to him? You’re nuts.”
“Probably.”
Penny looked genuinely alarmed. “You’re not going out there alone, are you? Have you ever seen that sign he has at the entrance to his driveway?”
“No, but I’ve heard about it. Maybe it’s time to see if he really means it.”
Chapter Seventeen
The county car thumped through the potholes and ruts, juddered across patches of loose blow-sand, and kicked gravel over the last steep rise in the two-track. The hill was so steep that for a moment Estelle couldn’t see the tracks ahead over the hood of the car. The narrow path leveled and within a few yards was blocked by a gate in the barbed-wire range fence.
She could not see Milton Crowley’s home. Beyond the gate, the two-track wound through runty piñon and juniper, twisted cacti and creosote bush, skirting the next rise in the prairie. Behind her to the southeast lay the village of Posadas, twelve miles away. She had turned off the state highway a few miles northwest of the airport, following Forest Road 26 around the western flank of Cat Mesa to Crowley’s gate.
He had a wonderful view from his property—the San Cristóbals to the south and west, the great sweep of the prairie to the east, the imposing flat-crowned bulk of Cat Mesa at his back door. Estelle sat quietly for a moment with the windows open. A light breeze hissed through the fat junipers that crowded the lane.
It wasn’t likely that visitors to this spot first admired the view. Their attention would be attracted instead to a two-foot-square sign of painted plywood wired securely to the top and second strands of the fence immediately beside the gate. The lettering was simple block letters, painted in shiny black enamel on a weathered white background.
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