Estelle Reyes’ black eye brows narrowed a bit at that. She’d learn soon enough that ninety percent of the criminal cases that the Sheriff’s Department dealt with blossomed first as a family dispute of some kind. And most of the time, kids were caught painfully in the middle.
“Jason lives and breathes 4-H, and we have fairs coming up. He could be busy with that, although how he does it caught between two places is beyond me.” Archer smiled gently. “That’s one of the amazing things about kids, sometimes. They can bounce back from the darnedest things.” He nodded at the computer. “Now Maurice ‘Mo’ Arnett? There’s no telling. He’s a senior, and I’m proud to report that he has an early admission at the University of New Mexico. He’ll be leaving us in January, and I know he’s pretty excited about it. He’s signed up for R.O.T.C., with a military career in mind. Military might be just what that kid needs. He’s one of those rascals who is seventeen going on eight, if you know what I mean. Some military discipline will do him good. Now,” and he scrolled the computer display to another screenful, “Mr. Thomas Pasquale? Again, who knows. He’s a junior, and if it has an engine, Tommy is operating it.”
“Let’s start with the other two,” I said. “The ones in school. Matt Singer and the Zapia kid. Two birds in the hand.”
“We can do that. Hang on just a minute.” He rose and left the office, this time leaving the door open.
I leaned closer to Estelle. “Something to watch. The Zamora kid? His older brother is Mike, over at the Highway Department. The one who worked directly with Larry Zipoli.”
Chapter Twenty-five
In the next few minutes, we learned little from Matt Singer and Eric Zapia that we didn’t already know. Both boys certainly knew Larry Zipoli, and had taken part in various recreational outings with him. There was no formal arrangement, no calendaring of events. Their participation was a spur of the moment thing. Eric Zapia’s folks hadn’t been thrilled with his taking part in the excursions over to Elephant Butte, and I got the impression that Eric was kept on a pretty short leash.
Still, Zipoli didn’t actively recruit these boys from around the neighborhood. It appeared that he was a kid magnet whether he wanted to be or not. Fancy truck, fast boat, not the least bit circumspect about supplying the odd can of suds now and then…and his youngest attractive daughter who was home often enough to inspire lust in teenaged minds.
During the brief interviews, Estelle Reyes kept her own council. She watched each kid, each twitch of the hand, each squirm in the chair. Matt Singer tried to ignore her for the first few minutes, then ended up talking directly to the young lady, despite the questions coming exclusively from me. Had the opportunity presented itself, he probably would have asked her out on a date.
Watching the interplay between the two young people-and it was a one-way attraction, obviously-was fascinating. When he’d first come into the room, Matt Singer had been a bit stooped, affecting that backpack induced posture so many teens suffered, but now he sat with shoulders square, trying to add a couple of years of maturity. He had a nice smile, and apparently had decided during a session in front of the mirror that a slight Elvis curl of the lips added to his charm. He tried several versions of that on Estelle, all to no avail.
For his turn, Eric Zapia impressed me as a harmless airhead, a kid who’d spent too long with the earphones cranked up to ten. It took him a while to find the superintendent’s office, and he sort of sidled through the door as if concerned that he might be entering the wrong room. I didn’t care what he wore, or how ridiculous his spiky hair looked, but he certainly did, and I think he hoped one of us would say something. His favorite word was, “whaaa?” as if either his hearing or his comprehension had headed south. Our interview with him didn’t last long-he was either dim-witted or a consummate actor. Apparently he enjoyed the lake outings because of the “chicks,” the parading laker groupies.
We left the school with one little tidbit of information that pointed us toward something we already knew. Eric Zapia didn’t ride a bike-I’m not sure his reflexes were sharp enough for that, but he fingered two who did. Both Tom Pasquale and Jason Packard-two of the students enjoying hooky-were cyclists of some repute, and Larry Zipoli had been seem talking to cyclists sometime during his last hours on earth.
In a world where the automobile was God, here were two kids who still pedaled. Jason missed his horses, I would guess, and Tommy Pasquale would have preferred something with a V-8. But according to Eric Zapia, both Pasquale and Packard were rabid fans of the professional teams-enough so that they wore the bright racing jerseys from time to time, even wore them in public, risking the scorn of peers. They had proposed a bike club at school, and were greeted with underwhelming enthusiasm.
Riding bikes didn’t seem a likely thrill for either of them. Maybe some of the roads on the side of Cat Mesa were sufficiently vertical that they could reach escape velocity. Adrenalin junkies, both boys must have loved Larry Zipoli’s boat, with its rumbling V-8, chrome-plated air cleaners, and ear-busting exhaust stacks.
“What do you think?” I asked Estelle as I eased the county car out of the school’s circle driveway. “Did that little session at the school bring back memories for you?”
“In what regard, sir?”
Well, of course she wasn’t going to babble on about her own high school experience, regardless of how recent it might be. I was coming to learn that Ms. Reyes’ reticence wasn’t just a passing phase. Most of us humans took some small delight in chatting about ourselves. Somebody tells us a yarn about their adventures, even if it was just a flat tire on the way to Walmart, and we respond with our own version, usually flavored with a little one-upsmanship. “Why, I had two flats last night in the middle of the worst electric storm of the century.”
Estelle Reyes apparently didn’t feel even the slightest need to chat about her high school years, challenging as they must have been. I had no doubt that her thoughts were focused on El Jardin de los Tres Santos, but she didn’t continue her suppositions about that, either. She’d spoken her piece, displayed what little evidence there was, and got on with her day. And I liked that, from the very start. She kept her focus on the job at hand. That didn’t mean some small room in her brain wasn’t reserved for the welfare of the three saints.
“Schools are a culture all their own,” I said by way of explanation.
“Yes, sir.”
I chuckled at that. “Who do you want to find first?”
“The cyclists,” she said, cutting to the chase. The radio crackled, and I slowed and nodded at the mike. Sheriff Eduardo Salcido’s voice sounded tired.
“Three ten, ten twenty.”
Without a fraction of a second’s hesitation, Estelle unclipped the mike and replied, “Three ten is just leaving the high school, eastbound on Piñon.”
“Stop for a minute at Handiway.”
“Ten four.”
I could see the sheriff’s vehicle at the convenience store before the young lady had racked the mike. “He sounds as if he spent a long night,” I said.
The sheriff leaned against the fender of his unmarked county car, arms folded across his chest, boots crossed at the ankles. He didn’t shift position as I drove up, but surveyed 310 critically.
“When are we going to get you a new car?” he greeted as I pulled myself out of the low-slung LTD.
“Any decade now,” I replied, and patted the faded front fender. New vehicles, when they infrequently arrived, went to road deputies. “Old men get old cars.” Salcido smiled at that, and raised a hand to tip his hat at Estelle, who had remained in the car.