“I thought Padrino was a little shifty-eyed at lunch, Bobby.”
Torrez grunted with amusement. “Yeah, right. And maybe in a day or so someone in the clerk’s office will find a half million in petty cash missing, and we’ll know Zeigler’s sittin’ on a beach down in Colima, sippin’ tequila.” He managed a full-fledged smile. “And then Mr. Page will track him down and kill him.” His face almost immediately settled into its usual serious mask. “Jackie and Linda finished up out at the house. Nothing.” He held out a hand. “And Jackie told me about the photo of Mauro.”
“I don’t think it means anything, Bobby.”
“Maybe not.” He gazed at Estelle, eyes heavy-lidded. “You think Mr. Page might be a little torqued to think Kevin’s got another boyfriend?”
“That doesn’t matter, Bobby-if that’s what it means in the first place. And we don’t know that for sure, either. But we do know that William Page was in Socorro when Carmen was attacked and when Kevin went missing. He had nothing to do with it.”
To her surprise, Torrez relaxed back against the desk and nodded in agreement. “I know that. We’re not lookin’ at a solution that simple. Might be nice, but it ain’t going to happen.” He shrugged. “Where are you headed now?”
“I’m going to take ten minutes and type out a press release for Frank, and hand deliver it. And then go looking, I guess.”
“Everybody who isn’t pinned down with another job is out searching for Zeigler, Estelle. Come here a minute.” He turned toward Zeigler’s office, where a large map of the county rested on an easel. “I got this from the county assessor before I sent him home,” the sheriff said. He reached out and smoothed the plastic overlay. As he did so, Eddie Mitchell stood up, a manila folder in hand.
“Here you go, Holmes,” Mitchell said to Estelle, and held out the folder without waiting for an answer. “The village was trying to convince the county to sign an agreement with the Village of Posadas for maintenance out at the airport,” he said. “It’s a municipal airport, but the land where it’s situated is outside the village limits. So the county collects the gross receipts tax for things like fuel sales, hangar rental, all that stuff, but it’s the village that has to do the maintenance.”
“Whoopee,” Torrez commented dryly.
“Well, it’s one more thing,” Mitchell said. He flipped open the folder. “‘The county is not prepared to assist with Municipal Airport funding at this time,’ “he read. “Signed by Mr. Zeigler.” He shrugged.
“We’ve got a billion letters signed by him, for one thing or another,” Torrez said. He turned to the map and tapped the overlay, where a series of quadrant lines had been drawn slicing up the county. “This is where we’re lookin’,” he said. “Hell, I even sent Linda out.” He covered the far southwestern corner of the county that included the village of Regal. “She took her own vehicle down here, cruisin’ wherever she can get to.”
Estelle grimaced. Linda Real was a civilian photographer, not a deputy. Torrez caught her expression.
“She’s got a radio, a phone, and she’s not in a county vehicle, Estelle. She’ll be all right. She wanted something to do. Anyway, she’s down there. Pasquale is checkin’ all the roads, two-tracks, arroyos, and whatever the hell else, right in here.” He indicated the open country between the fork tines formed by the three state highways, Fifty-six to the south, Seventeen parallel to the interstate, and Seventy-eight, northwestbound out past the airport.
“Bishop is up north around Newton, Taber is takin’ the area around the mesa, and Mears is snoopin’ around between County Road Nineteen and Forty-three, to the northeast. Just lookin’, lookin’, lookin’. Mike Sisneros is staying in the village, checking every alley, every Dumpster, every empty building, every vacant lot, every culvert. He’s got Dennis workin’ with him.”
The sheriff slapped the lower-right corner of the map. “And Abeyta is down in Maria.” He stepped back and looked at Estelle expectantly. “That’s all the people we got, Estelle. And in between, the State Police are giving us all the help they can. If there’s a better way to organize it, I need to hear it.”
“That’s all we can do,” she said. “Is Zeigler’s truck in the county yard?”
“Yep. We took it over there after Mears was through with it.”
“I want to take a digital picture of one of the wheels,” Estelle said. “Each deputy should have one.”
“A killer’s going to bury a body,” Mitchell observed. He nodded approval at Estelle. “They aren’t apt to bother with a flat tire.”
Chapter Twenty-three
William Page sat with his elbows on his knees, head bowed, eyes closed. As Estelle approached, his eyes opened groggily. He lifted his head just enough to be able to turn and look at the undersheriff.
“A long day, Mr. Page,” she said. She noticed that he’d changed his clothes. He was now in faded blue jeans and a carefully wrinkled, outdoorsy, brown cotton shirt. Estelle sat down in the hard plastic chair beside him. “Any thoughts?”
He shook his head, discouraged. “You’re right. I don’t think I’ve ever spent a longer day than this one.”
“Let’s take a ride,” Estelle said. “Are you up for that?”
“Anything,” he replied. “I’ve never felt so useless in my life.”
Page rose stiffly and followed her out of the building. He settled cautiously into the passenger seat of the unmarked county car. Estelle smiled sympathetically. “There’s not a whole lot of room, I’m afraid.” She reached back and tapped the heavy steel screen and framework that separated the rear passenger compartment from the front. “This keeps the seats from going any further back.”
“I’ll be all right,” he said, and shifted his knee away from the shotgun that stood vertically on his side of the computer and radio cluster. He fell silent, watchful as Estelle pulled the car over to the fuel island where she pumped in fourteen gallons before the filler snapped off. She settled back in the car, flipped open the cover of the aluminum clipboard, and made the required notations.
She closed the log and lifted the mike. “PCS, three ten.”
“Go ahead, three ten.”
“PCS, mileage is eight seven seven thirty-two. I’m ten-eight, ten eighty-four. Phone’s fine.”
There was a pause before Gayle Torrez acknowledged. Estelle could picture her glancing over at the ten-code reminder card taped to the corner of the dispatcher’s desk. Informant in unit wasn’t a call that was used routinely enough that it would pop quickly to mind.
“Okay,” Estelle said to Page. “Bureaucracy is satisfied.”
“Have you been able to establish any leads at all?” Page asked as they pulled out onto Bustos Avenue, eastbound.
“We’ve established that we’re frustrated, Mr. Page,” she replied. “I’m sorry that I can’t be anymore forthcoming than that. I thought that it might be useful if you would help me locate some of the places that Kevin would be likely to frequent around the area.” She glanced over at Page. “Some of the favorite spots that you and Kevin might visit when you’re out hiking, or out on your bikes.”
“We head up the mesa a lot,” he said.
She slowed the car as they approached the intersection of MacArthur and Bustos. “County Road Nineteen goes off to the north here,” she said, and he nodded as she turned left.
“We ride this way all the time,” he said. “For one thing, there aren’t any dogs.” Within a thousand yards of the intersection, the village gave way to scruffy prairie. The road was traveled so infrequently that grass tufted through the asphalt along the shoulders. Estelle slowed the car to a crawl as they passed the remains of the VistaPark Drive-in, the huge, looming screen nothing but a ragged framework, all its panels blown out long ago. The speaker posts had all been removed, leaving the ocean-rolls of the parking lot to be taken over by kochia, greasewood, and tumbleweed.
At the entrance a single, rusted chain hung loosely between two posts fabricated out of concrete-filled steel pipes. The midpoint of the chain sagged to within six inches of the ground.