They drove along the fence that enclosed the county maintenance yard. The flatbed trailer with the large section of culvert still rested exactly where it had been earlier in the morning. The front loader was parked next to a pile of gravel on the other side of the yard. Rounding the west corner of the yard and turning left onto Third Street, Estelle braked hard. Mike Sisneros stood beside his village unit. Across Third Street, four county employees were standing in a small group on the sidewalk, facing Chief Eddie Mitchell.
“Stay in the car,” Estelle said to Page. She didn’t wait for a reply, but got out, hesitating at the door for a moment so that Torrez’s vehicle had room to slide to a stop.
Sisneros approached, pointing through the maintenance-yard fence as he did so.
“Right there on the tire pile, just down from the top.”
Estelle stepped only as far as the edge of the pavement. Between the fence and the asphalt of Third Street was a narrow, even spread of graveled shoulder, and she knelt and peered first up and then down the street. Inside the fence, the pile of tires was bordered on the south side by a retaining wall of concrete blocks. A row of three fuel tanks stood on tall legs just beyond the wall, and then the large steel building that included repair bays and offices stretched all the way to the yard gates.
“Well, shit,” Bob Torrez said as he joined her. The mound of tires was at least ten feet high, a relatively neat pyramid twenty feet in diameter at the base. Many of the tires were enormous, retired from road graders, loaders, dump trucks. The small tire on the north slope would have been easily missed under normal circumstances, hooked halfway through the gaping center of a five-foot-tall behemoth. Sunlight winked off the wheel on which the tire was still mounted.
“Who saw that?” Torrez said, turning to Sisneros.
“Dennis was driving through here,” Sisneros said. “I guess he just happened to glance that way, and there it was.”
“Well, shit,” Torrez said again. “Give the kid a medal.”
“He called the chief on the phone,” the village patrolman said. He turned to Estelle as she rose from her kneeling position. “I didn’t see any tracks on the shoulder, but not much is going to show. The chief looked too, but…” He shrugged.
“Has anybody been in there?” Torrez asked. “I mean, other than those guys?” He nodded at the group across the street.
“No one,” Sisneros said emphatically. “The chief put Dennis out at the road, and then his own unit down at the other end, there. We called all the county guys out.” He turned to point at the small group around Mitchell. “That’s every one of ’em, right there.” Estelle glanced over at the chief, wondering why he had exiled Collins to traffic duty right at the height of the young deputy’s elation at finding such a critical piece of evidence.
“Okay.” Torrez pulled his handheld radio off his belt. “PCS, three oh eight. Have Linda respond to this location.”
“Ten-four, three oh eight.”
“Real copies,” a faint voice said. “ETA about twenty minutes.”
“She’s twenty minutes out,” Torrez muttered and glanced at Estelle. “You want to get started?”
Estelle nodded and walked quickly to the trunk of her car. Page got out at the same time. “Is that the flat tire from Kevin’s truck?”
“We don’t know yet,” Estelle said. She partially closed the trunk lid so that she could look directly at Page. “And I’m serious. You need to remain right where you are, sir. Otherwise, I’ll have one of the officers take you back to the office.”
With one camera around her neck and the other in hand, Estelle returned to the edge of the pavement. “It’s interesting,” she said. “It’s on the back side of the pile. The guys couldn’t have seen it from inside the yard unless they happened to walk around the back side of the pile. Right along the fence.” She nodded at the tanks of fuel. “Even over there, the bulk of the pile would keep it out of sight.”
“And no one’s going to see it driving up this way,” Torrez said, gesturing south to north on Third Street. “Just comin’ from the other direction, the way Collins was. The kid got lucky.”
“He was on his toes, to realize what he might be seeing,” Estelle said. “There’s a puzzle, though. I’d like photos from above,” she said, focusing the camera with the telephoto lens through the chain-link fence. “And we need to do a careful sweep of the road shoulder, too. We need to make sure everyone stays off it.”
“We can do that,” Torrez said. “Let me go see where the cherry picker is.” He turned, then stopped and lowered his voice. “I don’t like the flamingo bein’ here, Estelle.”
She shot him a withering look. “Bobby, I had a valuable talk with him. I would have dropped him off back at the office, but I didn’t want to take the time. I told him to stay right there by the car. He understands.”
“I’ll have Mike run him back,” Torrez said as he turned away. His tone made it clear there was no room for debate. He strode over to Sisneros, stopped for a moment, and Estelle saw the patrolman nod. He beckoned Page, who in turned glanced over at Estelle, frowning.
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.”