He held up his hands again, then let them drop in frustration. “What about the girl. What about Carmen?”
“She’s being airlifted to University Hospital in Albuquerque.”
“And the assault happened right in the house?”
“That’s what we’re in the process of determining, sir.”
“Is she going to be all right, do you think?”
“No, sir. I don’t think she’s going to be all right.”
He slumped deeper into the sofa. “Raped?”
“We don’t know yet, sir.”
He heaved a deep sigh and clasped his hands tightly.
“Do you have a place to stay where I can reach you tonight?” Estelle asked.
“I’ll be here,” he said, surveying the living room as if he expected it to have somehow changed.
“That’s not possible, sir. Not until the area is cleared as part of the crime scene. Even the Acostas have made other arrangements.”
“Christ.”
“It’s inconvenient, I know. It can’t be helped.”
He rose from the sofa, dusting a piece of lint from his trouser leg. “At the Posadas Inn, then, I guess. You’ve got a lobby down at the Sheriff’s Office?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I think I’ll go find myself a chair and just wait. Is that all right?”
“Whatever suits you, sir. I just need to know where to find you should something come up.”
“I mean, who can sleep with something like this.” He shook his head. “One minute everything is normal as all hell, and the next minute, the world is coming apart.” He reached down and repositioned one of the sofa pillows. “I didn’t take time to stop by the house to pick up any clothes. How long will it be before I can…before this place is open to me?”
“I’ll let you know tomorrow, sir.”
He nodded absently, reluctant to leave the room. “Did you know about Kevin and me?”
“No, sir,” Estelle said, and let it go at that.
Page moved toward the front door, then stopped. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes, sir.”
He smiled at the clipped, matter-of-fact response. “Kevin’s county truck in the driveway…you said that Mr. Acosta claims it wasn’t there when he left home, but a while later, however long, the truck was parked there when he returned home and then found Carmen.” He paused, waiting for a response. When there was none, he continued, “Is there something else that makes you think Kevin is involved? I mean, the bit about the truck…that doesn’t mean much.”
“Mr. Page, we have to explore every avenue. That’s all I can tell you at the moment.”
It looked as if William Page wanted to smile, but couldn’t.
Chapter Ten
With one hand over the other ear, Estelle pressed the telephone close so that she could hear Chief Eddie Mitchell. At the same time, she stepped out of the Acostas’ living room where Tom Pasquale, Tom Mears, and Jackie Taber were industriously combing the carpet, and found a quiet corner in the dining room.
“You’re still out there, huh?” Mitchell’s soft voice lowered another notch, as if he was sitting in a crowded library, loath to be overheard. In the background, she heard traffic. “I’m southbound on I-Twenty-five,” he added.
“Who with?” Estelle asked.
“Ah, I called in a few favors,” said Mitchell. “Hank’s giving me a ride to the county line.” Estelle heard the Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputy say something in the background, and Mitchell replied, “Yeah, right,” obviously in response to the deputy. “Valencia’s got a quiet night, and one of their deputies is waiting for us on down the interstate a bit. He’ll run me south so I can grab a ride with Dona Anna. Won’t be long.”
“How’s Carmen? Have the doctors been able to tell you anything yet?”
“Now there,” Mitchell said, and paused. Estelle heard the patrol car’s engine noise subside for a moment, then bellow. She wondered how fast Mitchell’s “shuttle service” was eating the miles. “She’s a lucky girl, Estelle.”
“You have the clothes with you?”
“Yup. Every stitch. And I talked with a physician named Hans Deakman at University Hospital. He says he knows your husband. Anyway, he thinks that Carmen will be in surgery for about another hour.”
“That’s all?”
“Well, an hour more,” Mitchell amended. “She’s a lucky, lucky kid, at least as far as that damn hat pin goes. From what they can tell from the pictures, her head was turned hard to the right when she was hit, and that makes it likely that the pin was driven in from behind. Deakman says that it broke through the ear canal headed forward, so it pretty much avoided her brain.”
“Pretty much.”
“Yeah, well. We can’t have everything.”
“There’s some brain damage?” Estelle sagged against the wall, suddenly bone weary.
“Not from the hat pin, I don’t think. Somebody fetched her a real stout clip from behind, too. Look for something like a hammer, fireplace tool, something like that.”
“How about a lug wrench?”
“Sure. That would do it. You come up with one?” She told him about the wrench under Kevin Zeigler’s county truck. “That makes sense,” Mitchell said. “There’s some intracranial bleeding going on. That’s what they were working on when I left.”
“You have the hat pin, too?”
“Yup. And an amazing X-ray. I think your hubby took some while they were prepping her for the plane ride, too. They actually did the removal surgery up here. You might want to check with him.”
Estelle glanced at her watch. Mitchell was on the road at 7:55 PM That would put him back in Posadas-given perfectly executed hand-offs and lead-footed deputies in four counties-at close to midnight.
“Tell me about it,” she said.
“Well, when her assailant rammed that pin into her head, it angled forward and up.” The hair on the back of Estelle’s neck prickled. “It kind of bounced around through her hard palette, up into her sinuses, and then glanced off the inside of her right cheekbone. Bent hell out of the pin, that’s for sure. Maybe it was a good thing for her that it wasn’t the absolute best grade of spring steel. She might have ended up like one of those frogs we pithed in high school biology.”
“Can you tell how long it is?”
“What, the hat pin? Just a second. Hang on.”
Estelle waited, hearing mumbles from the deputy. Mitchell came back on the line after a moment. “Nobody’s written anything up yet, but I got me this handy-dandy pocket rule and a full-size X-ray. Lemme see.” After another pause, he said, “It’s got to be four inches.”
“Four, not six.”
“Nope, four. Any longer, and it would have popped out her right eye.”
“Okay. Thanks, Eddie. I have some people I need to talk to, but that’ll have to wait until we can look at the clothing.”
“What are we looking for?”
“I don’t think we’ll be able to see it without a lens, but I want to know if Carmen was carrying that thing. The spot that’s in favor right now seems to be the inseam, up along the inside of the thigh.”
“Just like young what’s-her-name.”
“Deena Hurtado.”
“Just like her. Look, I already called Gayle and asked her to have a deputy at the line to play taxi for me. If you guys are all tied up, she said she’d ask the State Police to give me a lift.”
“I’d like to look at those clothes the minute you get in, Eddie.”
“Hell yes. Why should you have a life?” Mitchell laughed. “It’s going to be after midnight.”
“That’s okay. You said you have the pin with you?”
“That’s affirmative.”
“Is it handy?”
“Nothing’s handy in this car,” Mitchell said, and that prompted a guffaw from the driver. “I got a shotgun killing my left knee, the damn computer under my elbow, and God knows what else. I’m not used to being a passenger. Just a second.” In a moment, he added, “Here that baby is. Nasty, nasty.”
“Do you have enough light to see the tip?”
“Sure.”
“Has it been sharpened? Ground or filed down?”
After a brief pause, Mitchell replied, “I would think so. The pin is finished somehow, like gun bluing. The color is ground off around the tip.”