Convenient Disposal

by Steven F Havill

  “Actually, that’s not true,” Torrez said, and it sounded more like an aside.

  “What’s not true?” Tinneman looked up sharply.

  “The village department has three and a half employees,” Torrez said slowly. “The chief already testified to that. One secretary, one chief, one patrolman, and a part-time, noncertified officer who also serves as the animal control officer.”

  “We’re aware of that.”

  You’re aware of all of this, Estelle thought, wondering how many times the same issue needed to be mauled before a decision could be made.

  “You can’t cover twenty-four/seven with two and a half people, Mr. Tinneman. It’s physically impossible,” Torrez said.

  “Three and a half,” Tinneman interjected.

  “The secretary doesn’t go out on patrol,” Mitchell said from the audience.

  “Well, all right,” Tinneman persisted. “But we’re covered most of the time, are we not? During the busy times, like evenings, weekends?”

  “I suppose,” Torrez conceded. “If you can predict when ‘busy’ is going to be.”

  “Well, see…I want to know how the county can provide better coverage than that from outside the village. That’s all I’m saying. And that’s what I’ve been arguing all along, ever since we first had this notion tossed on the floor.”

  “Eighty-five percent of our responses to emergency calls are within the village limits,” Torrez said. “Not counting traffic stops.”

  “That’s most of them,” Tinneman said, and Swartz muttered an aside that drew a chuckle from Dr. Gray. Tinneman ignored them. “So in your mind, there’s no trouble picking up the slack.”

  “I don’t see it as slack,” Torrez responded. “For one thing, we plan to increase our manpower by two full-time officers.”

  “Isn’t it true that there are times now when there is only one deputy on the road? One deputy for the whole county?”

  “Yes.”

  “One deputy for the entire county?”

  “Yes,” Torrez responded patiently.

  “So if there’s a call within the village, that leaves no one on the road out in the county?”

  “There’s usually a state police officer within range.”

  “Usually. But not always.” When Torrez didn’t respond, Tinneman relaxed back in his chair. “Sheriff, who’s on duty for the county right now?” He rapped the dais with a stiff index finger. “Right at this moment? Who’s working?”

  “Me, the undersheriff, and one deputy.”

  “Is that deputy certified?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “So essentially, it’s you two, then.” He swept a finger to include Torrez and Estelle. “And you’re stuck in here. Right now, who’s on duty in the village?”

  Mitchell shifted in his seat. “Officer Sisneros,” he said.

  Tinneman frowned, looked first to the right, and then to the left as if caught in a profound conundrum. “See, that’s the thing. Is Tuesday afternoon considered a high-crime time around here?” Someone in the audience laughed, but Tinneman held the pose until Torrez responded.

  “No, sir. It’s not.”

  “And yet we have five officers on duty.”

  “No, sir, we don’t.”

  “Well, explain to me, then.”

  “Myself, the chief, and the undersheriff are always on call,” Torrez said. “We don’t work any particular shift. We’re around when we need to be. We’re here right now because of this meeting. As far as working officers are concerned, cops who are out in cars and able to respond to dispatch, you’ve got Sisneros in the village, and one uncertified deputy in the county.” A flicker of a smile touched the sheriff’s handsome face. “And if something major happens, you’d see the three of us headin’ out this door.”

  “And so how is that coverage going to improve with this merger?”

  “It’s not.” When Tinneman looked triumphant, Torrez added, “The only way coverage is going to improve is to hire more staff. Merging the two departments saves some money spent on—”

  When he stopped short, groping for the right word, Gray leaned forward. “Infrastructure?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Now here’s the question,” Tinneman said. “Is the amount of money that the village will spend to contract with us instead of having their own department sufficient …”—he lingered on the word—”is it sufficient to provide the extra patrol officers that you say you need?”

  “Probably not.”

  The silence hung for a moment as Tinneman assumed that the sheriff planned to amplify his answer. When Torrez didn’t, the commissioner shrugged his shoulders. “I just don’t see how we can take this on,” he said wearily.

  “No one will ever spend enough to do the job right,” Commissioner Dulci Corona said. She shook her head in disgust.

  “Well, that’s not the case—,” Tinneman started to say.

  “Yes, it is the case,” Corona snapped, sounding like the grade school teacher she had been for thirty years. “No one wants to pay for police, but everyone will complain when an officer doesn’t show up in ten seconds when he’s called. We have an opportunity now to do something right. We can have a well-organized department that’s responsive in both the village and the county. We just might have to pay for it.”

  “And that money comes from where?” Tinneman asked.

  “There’s always money,” Corona said. “That’s the county manager’s job. To find it.”

  Tinneman glanced back toward Zeigler’s still-empty desk. He ducked his head, turning toward Dr. Gray. “Was Kevin coming back this afternoon?”

  Gray nodded. “As far as I know.”

  “I have a couple of budget questions I want to explore with him,” Tinneman said. Torrez was already headed for his seat. “Sheriff, do you have your budget with you?”

  Torrez hesitated, frowning. He settled into his seat when he saw Estelle raise her hand in response.

  “Ah, you’re the departmental budget guru, Undersheriff?” Tinneman asked. He smiled benignly as Estelle rose and walked back to the podium. “Do you need to borrow some paperwork?” He held up a thick document.

  “No, sir. I don’t think so.”

  Milton Crowley swiveled the video camera so that its glass eye stared at her, and Estelle could hear it adjusting for the distance and dimmer light in the back of the room.

  “Undersheriff Guzman, the chief told us this morning that his village department costs something like thirty-seven thousand dollars per person. Do I have that right?” Tinneman riffled through papers, stopped and underlined something with his pencil. “Counting salary, workman’s comp, benefits, vehicles, everything else, right down to the tissue paper in the restroom, it comes to just over a hundred thirty-one thousand for the department. That’s a little over thirty-seven thousand per person, if we divide it out that way.” He looked up at Estelle expectantly.

  “Thirty-seven thousand four hundred seventy-three and sixty-nine cents,” Estelle said.

  “Exactly,” Tinneman said with satisfaction. “I was going to ask Mr. Zeigler what the comparable figure for the sheriff’s department is. Would you happen to know?”

  “If you take the total budget and divide it by the number of employees, the figure is just under forty-two thousand,” Estelle said.

  “So the village PD actually costs less to operate than the sheriff’s department?” Somehow, Tinneman made it sound as if this astounding revelation hadn’t been hashed and rehashed in a half dozen meetings and conferences.

  “We also run a small jail unit, sir. On top of that, we have civil law responsibilities that the village does not have. We also have a considerable fleet of vehicles. As you know, most deputies now take their vehicles home to cut response time.”

  “It’s my understanding, though, that the village is offering right around one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars for the merger, though. That’s not even three officers, is it?”

  “No, sir.”<
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  “Great deal for the village.”

  Dulci Corona tossed her pencil on the desk. “I say that we accept the village offer and kick in enough for the Sheriff’s Department to hire three full-time officers. Let’s do this right.”

  “I’d want to see the figures on that,” Tinneman said. “Can somebody give Kevin a call? We need him here. I think he fell into his martini or something.”

  “Do you have any more questions for the undersheriff?” Dr. Gray asked.

  “No, actually, I want to talk to the county manager,” Tinneman said doggedly.

  “I’ll check for you,” Estelle said. Torrez turned and shot her an expression of impatience as she left the podium and slipped out the doors, irritated that she’d made her escape and he’d missed his chance. Across the foyer, Estelle saw Penny Barnes at her desk in the manager’s office.

  “Barney wants to talk to Kevin,” Estelle said, and Penny made a face.

  “Barney always wants to talk,” she said. “He’s not back from lunch yet?” She reached for the phone, dialed, and waited, then shook her head. “I’ll put a message on his pager.”

  “He told me this morning that he had some errands.”

  Penny reached forward and pulled the calendar closer. “He wanted to talk to one of the men over at the highway barn about some workman’s comp thing. That’s the only one I know about.” She looked up helpfully at Estelle. “You know…just errands.”

  “How about at home?”

  Penny tried that number without success. “He’s about the hardest man in the world to keep track of,” she said, snapping off the phone. She tapped a pile of papers at her left elbow. “If you see him before I do, tell him I need to bend his ear, too.”

  Estelle reentered the commission meeting to find Dulci Corona once more holding the floor, determined this time to head off Barney Tinneman before the commissioner settled into yet another lengthy examination of things already well known. Gray glanced at Estelle with raised eyebrows, and the undersheriff shook her head and shrugged.

  Undeterred, Corona offered the motion that would provide police services to the village. To Estelle’s surprise, and evidently to Barney Tinneman’s as well, Patric Sweeney immediately offered a second. When Tinneman ducked his head and appeared as if he was winding up to launch into another round of discussion, Dr. Gray straightened his shoulders and thumped his pencil down on the table.

  “We have a motion and a second. Let’s call the question.”

  County Clerk called the roll, and when his name was called, Tinneman wearily shook his head and voted in favor, making it unanimous. Estelle leaned toward Chief Eddie Mitchell, who had already agreed to return to the Sheriff’s Department as its only captain should the politicians actually make up their minds. “Welcome back, sir.”

  Chapter Five

  At first glance, what the political decision set in motion seemed simple enough. The Village of Posadas had voted to dissolve its small police department if the county would then agree to provide law enforcement within the village limits. The centralized dispatch housed at the Sheriff’s Department already dispatched both county and village, so Dispatcher Gayle Torrez and her crew wouldn’t miss a beat.

  The county department had no officers ranked between the patrol sergeants and the undersheriff, and when asked if he’d rather be called a lieutenant or a captain, Eddie Mitchell had shrugged and said, “Captain’s easier to spell.”

  The two village patrol cars, both bright blue and white and boldly lettered with various emblems including the large DARE, logo, would wear out soon enough and would be replaced with county units. Estelle counted all those things as minor concerns.

  But she knew that in reality, the changeover would be a paperwork nightmare. Five enormously heavy filing cabinets waited in the small, musty village police office, cabinets filled with confidential criminal records dating back who knew how long—the “secrets of Posadas,” as Mitchell called them.

  Eduardo Martinez, the affable, low-key police chief before Mitchell, had started the process of updating the village department to the computer age. Some of the material from files generated within the past decade had become part of the NIBRS database system—a pool of information to which all agencies in the state contributed. From those files, it was another instant electronic step to the National Crime Information Center’s data files.

  Somehow, the vast backlog of village files—all of them, not just a select few—would have to be merged with the existing county records to form a single, cohesive, accessible unit. Physically moving the files from village to county was a simple afternoon’s work using one of the county vans. Then the real work began. Someone would have to filter through every last scrap of paper, every photo, every deposition in order to merge village and county files.

  “Put it on the computer” was easy to say. That meant that someone actually had to sit at the computer keyboard and type every scrap of information into the system…without error, without omission, without editing.

  And, because of the nature of law enforcement, it was a task that couldn’t wait to be done over months or years. Estelle knew that Posadas County was as much a part of mañana land as the rest of the state, maybe more so. But files and information had to be accessible for ongoing investigations. Further, since there were issues of maintaining both confidentiality and the chain of evidence, the Sheriff’s Department couldn’t simply hire a couple of high school kids at minimum wage to clean up the records.

  After leaving the county meeting, Estelle returned to her office. Without a doubt, her best source for organizational strategy was County Manager Kevin Zeigler. She planned to spend the afternoon preparing a list of questions and proposed strategies to discuss with Zeigler, since she knew that Sheriff Robert Torrez wouldn’t.

  Regardless of the sheriff’s many talents, his allergies to paperwork and bureaucracy were legendary. He had wasted no time in outlining his own strategy.

  “If these politicos decide to do this,” he had said to Estelle Reyes-Guzman before the first exploratory meeting between county and village, “the project is yours.” He had glowered at her for a long moment and then added, “If I have to do it, it’ll be a major screwup, and we both know it.”

  When she’d mentioned the conversation to Chief-soon-to-be-Captain Mitchell, he had laughed.

  “If I had to go into a dark warehouse against fifty guys with Uzis, there’s nobody I’d rather have at my back,” he said. “But if I had to figure out a paperwork problem, Bobby is the last person I’d ask for help.”

  But that Tuesday afternoon after her return to her office, the focus to deal with the challenge of merging dusty, yellowing files filled with decades of unhappy moments eluded Estelle. After fifteen minutes and a dozen senseless doodles on her desk pad, she found her mind circling back to the image of her small son standing in the dim light, delicate hands exploring the black and white mysteries of the piano keyboard.

  Finally she tossed down her pencil and swiveled her chair around to face the bookcase behind her. She pulled a Las Cruces telephone directory from the bottom shelf and in a moment found the number she wanted.

  Holding the book open with her left hand, she reached for the phone and punched in the numbers with her thumb.

  “Hildebrand and Sons Music,” the cheerful voice greeted. “Good afternoon. This is Ryan.”

  “Good afternoon. Sir, this is Estelle Guzman over in Posadas. I—” She paused as the office door opened and Gayle’s head appeared. “Just a minute, sir.” Gayle waited until the undersheriff had the mouthpiece covered.

  “They’ve got something going on over on Candelaria,” the dispatcher said. “Eddie’s not sure if it’s a domestic or not. He wanted you to come over.”

  Estelle stood up quickly. “Sir, I’ll call you back.” She hung up the phone as she rounded the desk, not waiting for the salesman’s acknowledgment.

  “One oh eight Candelaria,” Gayle said. “Right next door to Zeigler’s.”
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  “Eddie didn’t say what it was?”

  “He just got there,” Gayle said, retreating back toward dispatch. “We’ve got one ambulance on the way. He said he’s got one female down and then he told me to find you.”

  “I’m on my way,” Estelle said, then paused. “If the county manager should happen to call, don’t let him escape. I need to talk with him.”

  “Kevin’s probably over there already,” Gayle said. “The call is from his next-door neighbors, and you know how they are.”

  Estelle nodded wearily. “I know exactly how they are.”

  Candelaria Court was a small cul-de-sac off MacArthur on the east side of Posadas—like nearly everything else in the village, less than a minute from the Sheriff’s Office on Bustos. As Estelle turned the county car south on MacArthur just beyond the small and shabby Burger Heaven restaurant, she could see the intersection of Candelaria Court, and beyond, filtered through the elms, an array of winking emergency lights.

  Burrowed in her office with door closed and radio switched off, she had missed the initial call…but this one was no surprise. As soon as she had heard whom Deena Hurtado had tried to fight at the school volleyball game, as soon as she had heard that Carmen Acosta had been suspended for six days, Estelle had anticipated a blowup at the Acosta residence.

  Of all the village domestic disturbance reports that some lucky records clerk would transfer into the computer, half a hundred of them would include the name of the Acostas, stretching back fifteen years.

  The postfight commentators at the middle school had agreed that, on the previous Tuesday, Carmen Acosta had won a clear decision over Deena Hurtado before referees had stepped in to separate the two scrapping girls. What the unfortunate Deena might not have realized was that her opponent had had lots of practice. The middle of five children, Carmen regularly thumped on her two younger sisters while her two older brothers whupped up on her.

  With five children who had grown too fleet of foot for him to catch, Freddy Acosta regularly took out his frustrations on Juanita, his fiery spouse. Slow but stout, Juanita usually was able to defend herself, and more than once had sent Freddy to the emergency room for stitches. On one occasion when Estelle had happened to be the responding officer, Freddy had shaken his head ruefully, sitting bloody and battered on the emergency room table. “I guess I said the wrong thing,” he had muttered, and refused to tell Estelle just what it was that his esposa had hit him with, opening up a gaping hole in his scalp that required twelve stitches.