He opened the door fully and glanced out into the hall. “Let me know, all right?”
Estelle nodded and picked up the folder of photographs. “One of the things I was going to talk over with Kevin was how much we have in the budget for this sort of thing.”
“That’s the least of your worries right now,” Gastner said. They heard muted voices, and he added, “The Hurtados are here.” But instead of leaving, Gastner stepped back and gently closed the office door. “Are you giving some consideration to what Bobby thinks happened?”
“He hasn’t talked much about what he thinks,” Estelle said.
Gastner nodded philosophically. “Yeah, there is that. But I chatted with him for a minute out at the gas pumps just a bit ago,” Gastner said. “He thinks there’s reason to believe that it wasn’t Kevin Zeigler who walked into the middle of something as an innocent bystander.”
“He’s talking about Carmen, then?”
“Yup. What if she witnessed something that she shouldn’t have?”
“You mean that Kevin was up to something, and saw her watching?” Gastner shrugged.
“The obvious route right now is the flip side of that,” Estelle said. “I understand why Bobby thinks the way he does. He walked into Zeigler’s house, saw the evidence that he and Page share a bed, and his expression looked like he’d stepped in something a dog left behind.”
Gastner laughed. “I can imagine.” His face settled into sober. “I just wanted to pass the conversation along. That’s all. You follow your instincts, sweetheart.”
“At the moment, I’m not sure that I have any,” Estelle said. “We’ll see what Deena has to say.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Sit over there,” Roy Hurtado said, directing his daughter toward a chair on the opposite side of the small conference table. He pointed to the seat next to the one he had chosen for himself, and his wife, Ivana, settled into it. Ivana was dry-eyed, her jaw set firmly-whether from twenty-four hours of resignation to the ugly events that had caught up her daughter, or from confidence gained from being told what to do by her husband, Estelle couldn’t tell.
“Ivana, can I get you something? Water, tea, coffee?” Estelle asked.
“We’re fine,” Roy said.
Estelle held eye contact with Ivana until Deena’s mother found her voice.
“No, thanks,” Ivana echoed. “We’re fine.”
“Deena?”
The teenager shook her head.
“We need some answers,” Roy Hurtado said. He stretched out his arms on the table, hands forming a bowl. “We need to know what the hell is going on.” The index finger of his right hand extended, aiming at Deena across the table. “From the beginning,” he ordered. Hurtado wasn’t a large man, but he impressed Estelle as physical-quick with the hands as well as the mouth.
Estelle had placed her briefcase on the table, and she picked up the folder of photographs that was resting on top of it, at the same time circling around the end of the table. She pulled out the chair nearest Deena.
With his order to start talking ignored by his daughter, Hurtado snapped, “I mean, for the rest of the year, she’s out of school. What the hell are we supposed to do with that?” He managed to make it sound as if the entire incident was the school’s fault.
Still ignoring his heated outburst, Estelle slid the eight-by-ten glossy photo of Deena’s hat pin in front of the middle schooler. She saw Deena’s eyes flick to the evidence tag attached to the upper right corner. “Deena, when you purchased this from your Aunt Mary Anne, the tip wasn’t sharpened.” Estelle reached across and touched the photo lightly with the tip of her pen, indicating the polished, filed tip. “You can see clearly that it has been. By comparison”-she drew back and riffled through the photos, finding one she had taken of the display at Great Notions-“you can see that none of these have been.”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” Roy said. “Let me see those.” He stretched out his hand, middle finger and thumb going through the soundless motions of snapping.
“In a minute,” Estelle said without looking at him. “Deena, did you sharpen this yourself, or have it sharpened for you by a friend?”
“Well, she wouldn’t have done it,” Roy snapped.
Estelle turned and regarded him with interest. “Why do you say that, sir?”
“Well…,” Roy began, and stalled.
“You don’t have hand tools in the house?”
“I don’t see what difference it makes whether or not she sharpened the damn thing. I mean, after all…”
Estelle turned back to Deena. The youngster had settled back into herself, waiting for her father to wind down. Dressed in a simple, frilled white blouse and new jeans with her hair pulled back into a ponytail, she looked exactly like what she was: a frightened child.
Although Deena was wiry and fit, Estelle saw that she could easily encircle the youngster’s wrist with thumb and index finger. There was no way that Deena, or anyone like her, had chased the chunky, scrappy Carmen Acosta through the house, wielding a heavy lug wrench so hard that a missed swing had shattered wall plaster and a television set. Had Deena arrived on the Acosta doorstep, Carmen wouldn’t have run in the first place.
“Deena, it would be helpful if you’d share certain information with us,” Estelle said. “I’m sure that you heard about what happened to Carmen yesterday.”
Deena nodded slightly.
“Is she going to be all right?” Ivana asked.
“We don’t know yet,” Estelle replied. “I wish I could be more optimistic.” She tapped the photo again. “Tell me about this.”
“Mauro fixed it up for me,” Deena said without hesitation.
“Mauro Acosta?” Estelle managed to keep the surprise out of her voice. Deena had done some introspection since the day before. “Tell me about that.”
“That little punk,” Roy muttered. “Ought to take him out back-”
Estelle held up a hand to stop the tirade. “Do you know about this?” she asked Roy.
“No, I don’t know anything about it. I just-”
“Then let your daughter explain without interference, all right?” She let the silence deepen for a moment to make sure that he had finished blustering. She watched his jaw muscles twitch, but then he nodded curtly. She then turned back to Deena. “Tell me about Mauro.”
“A while ago, he had one of these, and we thought they were neat,” Deena said.
“Neat,” Roy grumbled.
“That’s where you got the idea? From Mauro? He had one first?”
“I guess so. I mean, I don’t know where he got the idea, but one day he had one at school and was showing it around out on the parking lot. That’s where I saw it.”
“Mauro’s in ninth grade, right?”
Deena nodded. Ninth grade and the source of all things important, Estelle thought. “How long ago was that?”
Deena’s head settled back until she was staring at the ceiling. “A while,” she said, then looked at Estelle directly, unflinching. “I don’t remember for sure. It was back when Carmen and me were talking and stuff, though.” What could have been the trace of a philosophical smile twitched the corners of her mouth. “Mauro said that one of his cousins up in Albuquerque had one of those pins, and showed him how to stow it so no one would see it.”
“Do you know if Carmen wore hers to school?”
“All the time,” Deena said emphatically. “All the time.”
“Christ,” Roy Hurtado muttered.
“The night of the volleyball game,” Estelle said, “when you and Carmen fought. Did you have the hat pin with you that night?”
The girl shook her head. “I didn’t. I forgot to take it.”
“What about Carmen?”
Deena looked back down at the photo, and Estelle saw the moisture gather in the corners of her eyes. “That’s how close you came, Deena,” the undersheriff said, and she bent closer. “Carmen had hers that night, didn’t she?” Deena
nodded. “That’s why you wore yours to school?” She nodded again.
“When we were fighting…” Deena paused, looking up at Estelle. “That’s all I could think about was what would happen if she got that thing out.” She slowly shook her head. “I grabbed on to her left hand, thinking that I could keep her from getting to it. I grabbed on and wouldn’t let go.” Deena blinked. “Even when she thumped my head against the pavement. I wouldn’t let go.”
“You thought that she really would stab you?”
“I know she would have,” Deena replied. “Carmen? Sure. When she gets all mad and crazy, she’ll do anything.”
“She’s pretty strong, isn’t she?”
Deena looked heavenward. “She is so bad. There aren’t even any boys who want to tangle with her.”
“What about her brothers?”
“Well, they’re different. They’re worse.”
“So when you purchased this”-and Estelle tapped the photo again-“when you bought this from your aunt, you gave it to Mauro to fix up? To sharpen for you?”
“Yes. Carmen said I should.”
“To make it more deadly, or what?” Estelle glanced at Roy Hurtado, who had fallen uncharacteristically silent. Maybe knowing how close his daughter and only child had come to imitating a shish kebab had diluted some of his bravado.
Deena shook her head quickly. “It’s easier to thread into the seam of the jeans if it’s pointy.” She leaned forward and slipped the photo taken at Great Notions toward Estelle. “They’re kind of blunt and stuff?”
“And it’s a better weapon when it’s sharp.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Mauro did this at home?” Deena nodded. “What, you bought the pin, then took it-or them-over to the Acostas’?” The girl nodded again. “When was that?”
“A couple weeks ago.”
“And then came the argument about Paul,” Estelle said.
“I guess.”
“Between the fight at the volleyball game and when I saw you yesterday at school, had you talked with Carmen? Phone calls, threats, anything like that?”
Deena shook her head sadly. “One of my friends said that Carmen was going to get me. But she doesn’t scare me.”
I bet, Estelle thought. “Going to get you-meaning she might jump you at school, or going and coming?”
“I guess.”
“But you never actually saw her?”
“No.”
Estelle rested her index finger on the photo of the hat pin. “But you wanted to be ready.”
“I guess.”
“Did you talk with Paul since the fight?”
Deena frowned in disgust. “No, I didn’t talk with him. This is so stupid. I didn’t even really like him.”
“Have you talked with Mauro recently?”
“No. Why would I talk with him?”
Estelle nodded sympathetically. “After you and I talked at the middle school yesterday…were you home all the rest of the day?”
That prompted Roy Hurtado out of his silence. “Now look, Deena didn’t have anything to do with what happened over at the Acostas’. That’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t think she had anything to do with it either, Mr. Hurtado,” Estelle said. “And that’s not what I asked her. I asked if she was home.”
“Of course she was home. She was grounded, for God’s sakes. And I mean grounded. She’s expressly forbidden to leave the house.”
“Deena?”
The girl slumped back in her chair. She picked at the cuticle of her left thumbnail. “After Mom went back to work, I went over to the store and stuff.”
“Which store is that?” Estelle ignored Roy Hurtado’s whispered expletive.
“Tommy’s. The convenience store.”
“What time, do you remember?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Maybe around one.”
“Did you happen to see Mr. Acosta there?”
“No. But Mauro was there. Him and Tony.”
“That’s after the high school’s lunch hour, isn’t it?”
“I guess.” She shrugged. “But I left right away.”
“For where?”
Deena shifted uneasily and glanced at her father, then at Estelle. “I went to talk with Auntie.”
“MaryAnne Bustamonte?”
“Yes. She said that you’d come by the store and hassled her.”
Roy Hurtado let out a hiss of compressed air.
“That’s one way to look at it, I suppose,” Estelle said. “Did you buy any more of these, Deena?”
“No,” the girl said petulantly. She glared sideways at Estelle and then dropped her eyes.
“I have the others,” Roy said quickly. “She had four of ’em.” He glowered at his daughter. “In four different sizes.”
Estelle caught the trace of gloat in Deena’s eyes. And how many more, she thought. Taking her time, Estelle tidied the photos and slipped them back inside the briefcase. Before closing the lid, she removed the evidence bag that held the hat pin confiscated from Deena at the middle school.
“Deena,” she said, and slipped the hat pin out of the bag, removing the small rubber-tip protector, “I want you to look at this carefully. This is the one that you carried yesterday.” She laid it on the table directly in front of the girl, arranging it meticulously to parallel the table’s edge. “Someone broke into the Acostas’ house and attacked Carmen, Deena. They chased her through the house, and at some point in the fight, Carmen managed to pull a weapon just like this from the left inseam of her jeans.” She paused, watching the girl’s face carefully, no more than a dozen inches from her own.
“Now, you know how dangerous Carmen can be when she’s mad or threatened.” That earned the faintest nod. “As tough as she is, the person who attacked her tore the hat pin out of her hand, struggled some more, and then held her from behind while he drove that thing into her left ear.”
If either Ivana or Roy Hurtado were still breathing, Estelle couldn’t hear them.
“All the way through, Deena, until it bent against her jawbone on the other side of her head. And then whoever did that tossed her down on her own bed and bashed in the back of her skull with a truck lug wrench.” Estelle bent even closer and slipped her arm around Deena’s thin shoulders. “I know you didn’t do that. You couldn’t do that. But we’re going to find the person who did, Deena. You can help us.”
She remained motionless with her arm around the girl, watching the tears course down Deena’s cheeks.
“This isn’t something to play with,” Estelle whispered, and reached out to touch the hat pin, just enough to make it roll half a turn. “This isn’t a toy, and carrying it into a school full of children isn’t cool, or funny, or smart.”
She withdrew her arm, capped the hat pin, and slid it back into the bag. “If you have any more, get rid of them,” she said brusquely. “And if you’re not smart enough to do that, think very hard before you threaten someone with it. If you don’t, the odds are good you’ll be joining Carmen. And that would make me very sad indeed.”
“We were thinking that maybe she’ll go live with her sister up in Albuquerque,” Roy Hurtado said.
“That’s up to you,” Estelle said cryptically.
“Well, she can’t stay at home all day without someone watchin’ her. Both me and Ivana work, and I guess we just found out how good she minds.”
“How old is Samantha?”
“Twenty-three.”
“And she’s home all day?”
“Well, no, but…”
“You might want to rethink that idea, then,” Estelle said. She stood up and rested both hands on the briefcase, regarding Deena. “Now’s the time to prove how smart you really are, Deena,” she said.
Deena heaved a shuddering breath. “Do you think she’ll be all right?”
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
“What happens if she’s not, then?”
“If Carmen dies, we’ll be looki
ng to charge someone with murder, Deena. It’s that simple.”
Chapter Sixteen
A brief stop at the high school confirmed that Mauro and Tony Acosta had enjoyed more than just an extended lunch. Both had been present in their morning classes; both walked out for lunch and hadn’t returned. The attendance records also provided an interesting portrait for the pair.
Margie Edwards, the principal’s secretary, beckoned Estelle around the end of her desk, and scooted her chair to one side so that the undersheriff could see the computer screen. The two student office aides had been sent on errands, the principal himself was somewhere out on campus, but Margie still talked as if the walls had ears.
“See here?” she said. “This is our ninth grader. What a pistol he is.”
Estelle scanned across the grid. “He’s been absent fourteen times since school started, if I’m reading this right.”
“That’s not counting today, by the way. Neither one of them are here today.”
“They’re up in Albuquerque with the family,” Estelle said. “I see that Mauro was absent yesterday afternoon.”
“I’m not surprised. Both of those boys are absent a lot. And this is only early November.” Margie shifted in her seat, glancing toward the office doorway. “Now mind you, there are some teachers who would say”-and she dropped her voice another notch-“that a day without Mauro is a day improved.” The smile was one of resignation. “I kind of like the kid, myself. I can’t imagine what’s going to become of him, but he can be a charmer.” She moved the mouse so that the cursor stopped in several places along the march of days. “Of those fourteen absences, though, nine are only afternoon skips. He comes in the morning and then adios, muchacho. So yesterday’s absence isn’t unusual.”
“And Tony?”
The screen winked and Margie highlighted Tony Acosta’s attendance record. “Here’s our good influence,” she said. “Mr. Tony has twenty-three absences since August Twenty-first.”
“Caramba.”
“And that includes thirteen that are afternoon absences only, including the one yesterday.” She looked up at Estelle. “You might wonder how he manages to have a three point four GPA, huh.”
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