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.
Chapter Twenty-five
“I heard the screen door open,” Teresa Reyes said. “You know, I’m not very fast.” She shifted position on her walker and watched Estelle pick up the package that had been slipped between the screen and the solid door. “I could see out the window, though. I saw this old outdoorsman.” She leaned hard on the fourth syllable of the Spanish word, naturalisto, as if it were some sort of disease. She shuffled back and gestured out the front window of the living room.
“He was wearing a checkered shirt?” Estelle asked.
“Maybe that’s what it was,” Teresa said, switching effortlessly to English. “He had on one of those…what do you call it…” She tugged at her own blouse. “A chaleco.”
“A vest,” Estelle offered.
“That’s what it was. One of those quilted ones, like the sheriff wears. When I looked outside, this man who didn’t have an extra minute to wait for an old lady was walking back down the sidewalk to his old truck. Like the one your Uncle Reuben used to drive.”
“An older-model Ford Bronco?” Estelle said.
“I don’t know one from the other. It was old and white. That’s all I know.”
“You didn’t happen to see the license, did you?” Estelle asked more to gently kid her mother than because she needed any further verification that the visitor to her home had been Milton Crowley.
“Ay, cómo soy menso!” Estelle’s mother sniffed with feigned injury. “Silly me. I should have run right out there. You think I have binoculars built right into these old eyes? You’re the famous detective who’s never home half the time. So who’s this old friend of yours, that leaves you things?”
“His name’s Milton Crowley, Mamá. He lives way out, past the end of the mesa.”
“Well, he’s impolite, not to knock on the door and come in with his package.”
“Maybe you don’t want to talk with this one, Mamá. He’s a little bit chiflado.”
“So if he’s so crazy, what are you doing with him?”
“I talked with him this morning,” Estelle said, and slipped the end of the plain brown envelope open. A single video cassette lay inside, and she smiled with delight. “I was trying to talk him into letting me borrow this.”
“I won’t ask,” Teresa said, and settled into her rocker. “Your husband took the boys somewhere and left me here.”
“Sorry, Mamá. Where did they go?”
“The engineer needed about twenty-five miles of aluminum foil.” She shook her head in despair. “What they do in school nowadays.”
“Different, huh, Mamá? ” Teresa had taught in the one-room school in Tres Santos, and Estelle could remember how stern and formidable this tiny woman had seemed to her then. “I hope you’ll go in with us tomorrow night.”
“Of course. I have to see what this one is doing.” She zipped her fingers across her lips. “I know I’m going to have
to bite my tongue.”
“You’ll manage.” She slipped the cassette out of the envelope. None of the stick-on labels that came with blank tapes had been affixed, and there was no note in the envelope. “Thank you, Mr. Crowley,” she said.
“Sofía’s coming tomorrow.”
“For sure?”
“Francis said so.”
“Ah, that’s good,” Estelle said, with satisfaction. “You know what we need to do, Mamá? ” Her mother lifted her dark eyebrows. “We’re going to buy a piano.” One of the eyebrows settled a little bit. “I talked to hijo’s teacher. You know what he does at lunch? He slips off to the music room and plays the piano. All by himself.”
“When did you find this out?”
“Yesterday. I saw him do it. All by himself. Ms. Delgado says that he’s been doing this for three weeks or more.”
“You’re just now noticing that music is in his heart?” The question came quietly, without the usual good-natured chiding, and it took Estelle by surprise—all the more so when Teresa added nothing to the question, but just let it hang there, waiting to be answered.
“No, I hadn’t noticed,” Estelle replied after a while. She tossed the video on to the end table beside the sofa and settled into the deep cushions.
“You watch his hands, mi corazán. And you watch him read when he thinks he’s alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“You may call me vieja chiflada, too. But I see it. The stories make music in his head when he reads.”
“You mean they remind him of songs?”
Teresa’s wrinkled face wrinkled a bit more. “I don’t know. I can’t see in there.” She tapped her forehead. “All I know is that when he reads, he makes music in his head. He does both—los dos —at the same time.” She shrugged. “What was he playing on that piano at school?”
“I couldn’t tell. I didn’t want to interrupt him.” Estelle leaned her head back and covered her eyes. “I didn’t want him to stop. It sounded like he was trying to work out chords, somehow. He didn’t know I was there.”
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