Setting the county meeting back into motion, Estelle listened to herself respond to questions until the tape reached the point where Commissioner Tinneman petulantly repeated that he wanted to talk with the county manager. At that point, it appeared that Crowley wasn’t sure whom he wanted to capture on tape. The camera actually wavered a bit with indecision. He swung it hard to the left and recorded Estelle as she left the commission chambers, then panned back to where Zeigler should have been.
Dulci Corona’s sharp voice could be heard on the tape, and in a moment, the camera’s view returned to the podium. After a few minutes, it filmed Estelle’s return as she walked down the aisle and sat beside Mitchell. In a flurry of activity, the final vote was pushed through. The camera caught Tinneman’s discomfiture, then captured Estelle leaning toward Chief Mitchell for a final comment before she rose to leave and the commission moved on to other matters.
With a quick stab at the remote, Estelle stopped the tape and ran it in reverse, watching Dr. Gray’s gavel spring up from the desk and herself waddle backward to her seat. She kept rewinding until she reached the point where she had left the chamber to inquire about the missing Zeigler, then replayed the tape.
When Crowley panned the camera to the left to catch her exit on tape-and what was so important that he would film that particular moment? — the rear of the chambers was also visible, all the way across the spotty audience to Kevin Zeigler’s desk and microphone. A number of people hadn’t returned from lunch, including Commissioner Tina Archuleta and Posadas Register editor Pam Gardiner. The seat where Don Fulkerson had been sitting, directly in front of Zeigler’s desk, was also empty. Predictably, several new faces had joined the audience as well, including an elderly couple at the far side of the chambers. The husband stood his walker in the outside aisle.
Estelle ran the tape forward again. Fifteen minutes after the session resumed, Tina Archuleta returned, grimacing with apology as she took her seat. The others ignored her, except for a pleasant nod of recognition from the commission chairman. Crowley filmed her arrival from the moment the door opened, panning as she walked down through the audience.
The meeting plodded onward through two breaks, and as if concerned that his high-density tape would run out too soon, Crowley became more conservative with his recording, cutting off the video during discussion that he considered to be of no consequence. Estelle wondered how he decided, since not a great percentage of what he taped appeared to be much higher on the consequence scale.
At 4:02 PM by the video camera’s timer, Crowley panned left once more, as the old man with the walker stood to briefly address the commission about the condition of his undedicated two-track that had once been a county road but no longer was and should have been. In the row behind him and close to the aisle, Don Fulkerson had returned, but Ralph Johnson had left, leaving Fulkerson to doze alone.
Estelle glanced at the agenda. The discussion item concerning the contracted services was looming on the agenda’s horizon, and Fulkerson had timed it well. Estelle sat forward a little in the rocker and frowned at the screen, but the light in the back of the commission chambers was uncertain, turning individual audience members into shadows.
With Zeigler absent, the commission dropped several agenda items and adjourned early to executive session. The camera panned across the audience, many now standing and milling toward the exits, apparently deciding not to remain and wait for the commission to return from session. The noise level rose as people took the opportunity for chatter and the exchange of gossip tidbits. As she watched their images-some smiling, some sleepy, some bludgeoned numb with boredom-Estelle wondered if someone in those chambers knew exactly where Kevin Zeigler was.
The camera must have been its own form of intimidation, since not one of the audience stopped to talk with Milton Crowley. Maybe sometime in the past, they too had read the sign on his fence, and didn’t care to trespass on his personal space.
Far in the back of the house a toilet flushed, its noise muffled by Estelle’s earphones. Estelle looked at her watch. She had another hour before Francisco would appear, bright-faced and with mouth in gear.
The tape went blank, then flickered and sprang into life as the commissioners filed back into the hall after the executive session. Dr. Gray pushed them through what little business remained, and at 5:03 by the video timer, he rapped his gavel to end the meeting.
Crowley continued to videotape, the camera intruding into the various private conversations that took place in the natural course of a meeting’s end. Finally, the tape ended.
Estelle sat back in the rocker, tapping the remote on her thigh after pressing Rewind. She had seen nothing to pique her interest, other than Zeigler’s absence. The huge, numbing possibility loomed clearly. What if…what if? she thought. What if she was stumbling blindly down the wrong road entirely? What if Kevin Zeigler’s disappearance had nothing whatsoever to do with his work as county manager? Estelle realized with growing frustration that she could say the same thing about every other avenue, too.
For nearly an hour, she sat in the rocking chair, doodling on the legal pad. In half an hour, she’d blackened in enough semicircles to represent a fair-sized pile of discarded tires, with a little one standing at the top.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Behind Kevin Zeigler’s home on Candelaria Court, a neat but homely concrete wall four feet high defined the backyard. On the concrete slab patio, two white wire chairs and an umbrella table occupied one side, and a fancy propane barbecue grill dominated the other. Two large ceramic pots sat empty at each far corner of the patio, as if Zeigler had planned something colorful but had never slowed down enough to add potting soil, seeds, and water.
Estelle sat at the umbrella table and watched the morning sun boil up over the eastern prairie. The light breeze out of the north was cool, a delightful mix with the promised unseasonable heat of that early November morning.
Earlier, during the few moments with her family, she had reveled in their simple presence. She had enjoyed little Francisco’s excitement as he bundled his cache of aluminum foil into his backpack. The bus had picked him up, and Estelle had driven Carlos to Little Bear, leaving her mother a few treasured minutes alone with Dr. Francis-next to her daughter, the old woman’s favorite person on the planet.
But during all of the morning rituals, something nagged in the back of Estelle’s mind. Now, she sat quietly at Zeigler’s table in his backyard, the insulated cup of hot tea held between both hands, the metal of the table refreshingly cold to the touch. To the north, the prairie rumpled into a series of dips and rolls. The sun shadows created a dramatic dark scar out of Arroyo del Cerdo, and Estelle watched the patterns change, letting her mind roam.
The early-morning report from Albuquerque listed Carmen in guarded condition, but physicians had been optimistic. Although still in a restless semicoma, the teenager’s vital signs were strong. Estelle had felt a sharp twinge of sympathy as she tried to imagine what sort of images might still be rampaging in the girl’s mind…a torture that would likely continue for years, surfacing without warning to drag Carmen through the experience yet again.
Freddy and Juanita Acosta remained in the city, but Armand Acosta, Freddy’s cousin, had driven to Albuquerque and picked up Mauro and Tony, returning to Posadas on Wednesday evening. Armand’s home on MacArthur was four doors from Sheriff Robert Torrez’s, and Torrez said that he had kept an eye on the place during the night. The boys hadn’t roamed. Torrez, who knew the Acosta tribe well, was certain that Armand and Tawnya would make sure that all four youngsters would be in school. Whether the two boys would stay there for the entire day was open to question.