The Replacement Child (11 page)

The newspaper article had used the phrase
sources close to the investigation.
He wondered who the state police’s leak was. And he wondered why the state police, who had been acting so cooperatively, hadn’t told him about finding drugs in Melissa’s car.

Gil used his cell phone to dial Chief Kline. Kline answered groggily. Gil read to him from the article’s third paragraph: “‘Baca’s car was found in Oñate Park, which Santa Fe Police Chief Bill Kline called “a haven for drug dealers” during an interview last month. Sources close to the investigation said heroin and a syringe were found on the front seat of Baca’s car. The sources also said Baca was a frequent drug user.’”

All Kline said was, “I’ll get back to you.”

Next, Gil called Lieutenant Pollack, who answered his phone with a “yo.” Before Gil could say anything, Pollack started. “I bet you’re calling about the newspaper article.” Pollack sighed and said, “Look, if it had been up to me, I would have told you that we found heroin and a syringe in Melissa’s
car, but my hands were tied by my bosses. You know, all that need-to-know crap. The good news is you’re pretty much the only one I can trust right now because I know you’re not the leak since you didn’t know about it.” Gil thought this reasoning was pretty flimsy but didn’t say anything. Pollack continued. “Things hit the fan here this morning. I’ll have to get back to you.” Pollack hung up.

Gil pulled up in front of Maxine Baca’s house just before seven
A.M.
She opened the door and walked away without inviting him in. The house was cold—colder than the morning air outside. As he followed her into the kitchen, he wondered where all the family and friends were from last night.

She sat at the table, a shoe box full of magazine clippings in front of her. He stared at her for a second as she rifled through the box. She took out an article with the headline new
STUDY SHOWS DRUG USE MORE FREQUENT IN MIDDLE CHILDREN.
She was still wearing the same blouse as she had the day before but with different pants. Without a word, he started making coffee. As it was brewing, he went in search of the heater and relit the pilot light, which must have gone out during the night. He found some bread that was starting to turn stale and put it into the toaster. Maxine jumped when the toast popped but didn’t look up. He put the toast and coffee in front of her.

He touched her hand. It was as cold as the air in the house.

“Where’s Ron and Mrs. Cordova and everyone else?” he asked.

“I sent them away.”

“But you need someone to look after you.”

“No,” was all she said. She took another clipping out of the box. He could only read part of the headline—
DRUGS: THE KILLERS IN
…

He said, as gently as he could, “You could have told me the newspaper asked you about Melissa using drugs. I would have taken care of it.”

“They called so late. It was close to nine
P.M.
Your children
must have already been in bed. I didn’t want the phone to wake them.” She picked up the toast and put it back down without taking a bite.

“The story in the
Capital Tribune
says you denied she ever used drugs. Did you say anything else to them?”

When she spoke, she didn’t answer his question. “The state police last night asked about drugs, but I thought they just always ask that.”

Gil looked at her carefully. He said softly, “Mrs. Baca, I’m going to have to ask you the same question the state police did, but this time I really want you to think about it. Take your time. Looking back, did anything seem out of the ordinary, anything that would make you think Melissa might have been using drugs?”

She collapsed onto the hard tile floor before Gil could catch her.

M
rs. Baca woke up a few minutes later. Gil had called an ambulance, but she didn’t want to go to the hospital. The paramedics checked her out and said that she was fine. He called Ron but got his voice mail. In the end, Mrs. Cordova came and took Mrs. Baca off to bed.

Gil was outside, about to call his mom, when Kline called back. The state police were launching an internal investigation into the leak to the media. Kline had somehow used the problem to get Gil added as a limited member of the investigation team. He would be required to submit a daily written report and call Pollack twice a day to update him on any progress. In return, the state police would decide on a case-by-case basis what information they would release to him.

The situation felt, as The Judge used to say, hinky. It was strictly a state-police investigation, and Gil was wondering why they had agreed to have him as part of the team.

After hanging up with Kline, Gil called Pollack back to get
his assignment and see if there was anything else the state police hadn’t told him.

Pollack answered by saying, “Gil, man, we’re going to partner. Cool. I guess that’s the upside of this whole leak thing.” Pollack sounded like a middle-school kid who had finally found someone to share his adolescent secrets with.

“Anyway,” Pollack continued, “we sent the syringe and the drugs to be tested at the crime lab, but we won’t have those results back anytime soon. We also interviewed her family last night. The mom and brother are in the clear. I guess they were together when the girl got popped.” Pollack stopped for a second, then said, “Sorry, dude, I shouldn’t have said it that way. That was really cold. I forgot you knew the family.” Pollack went on to say that Ron Baca had asked for permission to go to a cabin in Pecos for a while, which the state police and Chief Kline had granted.

“I guess he’s really broke up about his sister and wanted to be by himself out in the woods,” Pollack said. “You know how it is. It’s what I’d do. I talked to him a little bit. He wants us to call as soon as we get anything.”

“He’s leaving his mother by herself?” Gil asked, surprised. “She really isn’t doing very well.”

“Seriously?” Pollack asked. “She sounded fine last night. I’ll call and tell him to check on her.”

Before he hung up, Pollack told Gil to go to Melissa’s school. Gil’s job was to reinterview the boyfriend, a fellow teacher named Jonathan Hammond, whom the state police had already talked to, and find out where Melissa had been the day she died, from four
P.M.
, when she was seen leaving school, to five
P.M.
, when she came home. The state police were focusing on what had happened after she left home at eight
P.M.
Gil’s assignment was less juicy—for all they knew, she’d spent the hour getting food at McDonald’s—but he didn’t mind. He was doing necessary police work but staying out of the state police’s way.

Gil had to make one more phone call—to his mom—before
he could get on the road. She answered after the fifth ring. She sounded tired.

“Mom, did you check your blood sugar today?” he asked. As always, she didn’t answer. He tried something different: “What did you have for breakfast?”

“Oh, just coffee.”

“Mom, you really need to eat more than that.” “I’m not hungry,
hito.”

He gave up and said good-bye. It was nine
A.M.
before he got to the Burroway Academy. The school had several square, flat-topped buildings connected by covered walkways. Gil stopped and checked in at the front desk, then wandered the hallways of the school, walking past drug-awareness banners and posters urging abstinence. No hand-drawn pictures of ponies and rabbits like at his daughter’s elementary school. A few students were in the halls, opening lockers plastered with pictures of Beyoncé as well as other entertainers he didn’t recognize.

Jonathan Hammond was teaching a history class. From the hallway, Gil listened to him lecture on the Civil War battle of Glorieta Pass.

Hammond’s voice was almost a monotone as he spoke. “In 1862, a group of Texans invaded New Mexico with the idea of raiding Union forts and recruiting the locals. By March 13, the Confederate flag flew over Santa Fe. The Texans pushed north, camping in Apache Canyon near Glorieta, not knowing that a Union camp was just nine miles away.” It sounded like Hammond was reading a speech, but as far as Gil could tell, it was all off-the-cuff.

Only a few students were taking notes. Most were staring off into space. Hammond continued. “The two groups battled off and on for two days. On the third day—March 28—the Texans claimed victory, but it wasn’t without a price. While the battle was raging, a group of Union soldiers snuck behind the Confederate line and destroyed all their supply wagons. The
Texans had no choice but to retreat back to Santa Fe and eventually Texas. The great Confederate plan to conquer the West ended in Glorieta, New Mexico.”

Family history had it that a great-great-great-uncle of Gil’s had fought in the battle. Major José Montoya. He had been the commander of the troops that destroyed the Confederate supply wagons. But Elena had never been able to find any record of him. Or of any other Montoya during the Civil War.

The bell rang and the students started to move. Gil went into Hammond’s classroom and introduced himself. Hammond looked tired, his blond hair carefully combed but his wire-rimmed glasses slightly askew.

“I don’t know what else I can tell you,” Hammond said. “I already told the state police everything.”

“When was the last time you spoke to Melissa?” Gil asked.

“I talked to her Monday when we were leaving school at four o’clock. We just said good-bye and I told her I’d see her the next day.”

“That’s it?”

“That was it.”

“Doesn’t sound like a very intimate conversation for a boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“She was tired, I was tired. And we’d been dating for six months, so that banging-like-rabbits phase was long over,” Hammond said. The vulgarity was out of place, but Hammond seemed not to notice. “Look, Officer. I know what you’re going to ask: Did we have a fight recently? No. Did she have any enemies? No. Did she do drugs? No. Do I do drugs? No. Have I noticed anyone strange hanging around lately? No. Does that about cover it? Oh yeah, you want to know where I was Monday night, since the boyfriend is always the prime suspect. I was directing a dress rehearsal of
‘night, Mother
in the gym from six to ten that night. I’m also the drama teacher.”

“That’s a pretty intense play for a bunch of twelve-year-olds,” Gil said.

“I’m surprised, Officer. I thought all you cops read was Tom Clancy and Dr. Seuss.”

Obscenities and insults. Gil wondered if this was normal behavior for Hammond or a result of his grief.

“Mrs. Baca thought Melissa was on her way to see you at your house when she was killed,” Gil said.

“Well, she’s wrong. I was directing the play. Why would Melissa come see me at home if I wasn’t there?”

“Do you know where she was going?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

Hammond pushed his glasses back on his nose, but they were still slightly askew. Gil realized that the lopsidedness wasn’t from Hammond’s carelessness in putting them on, as he’d first thought—one earpiece was crooked, as if they had been sat on.

“She wasn’t having any trouble here with her job or any of the students?” Gil asked.

“No. Everything was fine. Who said otherwise?”

Gil didn’t answer and instead looked around. The classroom was almost full again, but the students were ignoring him and Hammond.

Hammond, now clearly annoyed, said in an exaggeratedly irritated tone, “If you will excuse me …”

Gil handed him his business card and was leaving the classroom when he heard Hammond begin: “In 1862, the Civil War came to New Mexico….”

L
ucy showed up at the Piñon fire station at ten thirty
A.M.
; she was late because she’d had to go back into her apartment twice—once to take her vitamin, the second time to floss her teeth. By the time she got to the station, Gerald Trujillo was waiting for her. The beige building—of course it was beige—was made of a flimsy metal, like a warehouse with huge garage
doors. If it had been built in Florida, the first hurricane to hit would have swept it away. The ambulance bay smelled of gasoline and plastic. Its rooms were cluttered with old bunker gear and handheld radios stripped of their parts.

She and Gerald got into the ambulance, where Gerald proceeded to show her where the medical equipment was kept. In theory, she was supposed to know how to use it all, but in actuality, she had very little idea. For most of the week-long first-responder class she had paid little attention—she’d been too busy drooling over Gerald or not crying over Del.

She and Gerald hopped out of the ambulance and headed over to the fire engine, where Gerald opened a compartment filled with axes, saws, and what looked like really painful sex toys.

She tried to concentrate as Gerald talked. She liked the idea of being a volunteer medic, but somehow she couldn’t see herself doing it. Honestly, she wasn’t really the selfless type. Just being at the station made her feel inadequate. All the other volunteers had other jobs but were firefighters or EMTs in their spare time. Hell, she couldn’t even manage to take a Spanish class in her spare time; these people went out and saved lives on their way home from the grocery store. The worst part was, they did it for free, out of the goodness of their hearts. It intimidated Lucy. She felt like she had no right to walk among these gods. Was that a line from a poem or was she getting high off the fire engine’s diesel fumes?

Gerald was explaining how a halogen bar worked when his pager went off, making Lucy jump.

He turned up the volume on the pager as a dispatcher said, “Piñon; Highway 102, MVA; vehicle versus semi.”

“Want to go on a call?” he asked.

Lucy nodded and smiled, not sure what else to do. They got into the ambulance as Gerald said into the radio, “Dispatch, Piñon Medic One responding; one paramedic, one first responder onboard.”

She listened to the radio as other Piñon volunteers came up. She had been on a total of only three calls in the six months she had been with Piñon, including one other car accident. It had been a little fender-bender and all five patients hadn’t needed to go to the hospital. She had tried to take one patient’s blood pressure—something she had supposedly learned how to do in class—but couldn’t find the pulse at the brachial artery in the crook of the arm. A brisk EMT from another department gave her a scathing look and did it instead. That was the last call she had run, almost two months ago. She had her own pager like Gerald’s, but it was in the glove compartment of her car under old Taco Bell napkins and a burned-out flashlight.