The Replacement Child (19 page)

She got awkwardly out of the chair and offered him some coffee. Two relatives nearby spoke up at once, saying, “Let me do that, Tia,” and, “Maxine, I can get that.” Betsy Sanchez gave him a cold, accusatory look, as if he should have stopped Mrs. Baca from suggesting the coffee. Now he remembered—Betsy had gotten mad at him about how much time he spent playing basketball.

Gil took Mrs. Baca’s elbow and led her into the kitchen. A woman in her fifties stopped in midsentence to watch them seat themselves at the table. Gil asked the woman and her two friends to leave. They shuffled out, saying, “Maxine, we’re right here if you need us.”

Mrs. Baca waited until they were out of the kitchen before she said with a strange intensity, “Can’t you make these people leave my house? I can’t have them here.”

Gil didn’t know what to say, so he kept quiet. He had stopped by to ask how she was. He now realized that she had changed her clothes and drunk her coffee probably to make her relatives leave her alone. Mrs. Baca got up, rinsed a washcloth under the faucet, and started wiping down the kitchen counters.

He tried to think of kind words, something to make her feel better, feel something. But there was nothing to be said. Instead, he asked, “Have you heard from Ron?”

“He’s not here.”

That, Gil already knew. “When was the last time you talked to him?”

“He called today, this morning. I don’t know what time.”

“Did he give you a number to call him at?”

“No. He said his cell phone wouldn’t work where he was.”

He had avoided asking Mrs. Baca the next question for days, hoping that if he waited, she would be more up to answering. “Mrs. Baca, what did you do after Melissa left Monday night?” It was probably one of the first questions Pollack had asked her. Mrs. Baca was automatically a suspect since she had been the last person to see Melissa alive.

“I cleaned the dinner dishes, then Ron came over and worked on the washing machine. It’s been broken.” She kept wiping as she talked. She was now working her way across the kitchen table.

“What time did he get here?”

“Not too long after Melissa left.”

“This is important, Mrs. Baca. Do you remember exactly what time he got here?”

“I hadn’t finished loading the dishwasher. I said good-bye to Melissa when I was putting the glasses in. He got here when I was putting the plates in. Maybe five minutes after Melissa left.”

“And how long did he stay?”

“He fixed the washing machine, however long that takes.”

Gil asked gently as she wiped down the refrigerator, “When did he leave?”

“I was watching the end of Jay Leno. I wanted to go to bed, but I didn’t want Ron to have to stay up alone.”

“And did Ron leave at all while he was here?” Gil asked

“No. He never left.”

That would have made it around eleven thirty
P.M.
when Ron went home. He was at his mom’s house before Melissa was killed and didn’t leave until after her body had been dumped.
The state police were right; it meant that Ron wasn’t involved. His running off to the mountains wasn’t out of guilt. It was nothing more than mourning.

G
il made it to his mother’s house in twenty-five minutes. He found his mother pulling a fresh batch of
bizcochitos
out of the oven. She still made the cookies out of lard, not shortening, and put sliced almonds on top instead of the way Susan made them with the colored sprinkles.

“Oh,
hito,
I’m almost done with these,” she said as she put the next dozen into the oven. “Your dinner is in the refrigerator.”

He took out a plate of leftover green-chile enchilada casserole and sat at the table to eat.

“Mom, you never called and told me what your blood sugar was,” he said.

“Oh, I didn’t want to bother you at your work.”

He shook his head. “What was the number?”

His mother didn’t answer right away. She was taking the cookies one by one from the baking sheet and putting them on the cooling rack. “You know,
hito,
I don’t remember. I’m sorry. I think I wrote it down but I don’t know where I put the paper….”

“That’s okay, the machine keeps a record of it. I’ll go check.” He got up from the table and found the blood-glucose machine in the bathroom. He hit a few of the buttons and a list of numbers came up. The last date recorded was from two weeks ago. He carried the machine back into the kitchen and said, “Mom, you didn’t check your blood.”

She didn’t look up as she said, “I know,
hito,
I’m sorry. I know you wanted me to.”

He got the machine and the test strip ready and said, “Mom, come here.” She came over to the table and sat down, giving him her left hand. He pricked the side of her finger with
the lancet and let a few drops of blood fall onto the test strip. He put a Band-Aid on her finger as he waited for the machine to read the strip. She went back to work on the
bizcochitos.
The machine beeped and he looked at the number. It was a little high but within the normal range.

He ate a few of the
bizcochitos
while he called the girls to wish them a good night. But all he got was the answering machine at his house. He left his good-night message on it.

T
he vinyl seat made a soft sound, like a slowly deflating whoopee cushion, when Lucy plopped into the booth opposite Detective Montoya at Denny’s. She tossed a copy of Melissa’s autopsy report on the table without saying anything.

Lucy summed it up for him: “There was no rape.” She refused to use the cop’s term—
criminal sexual penetration.
It made something inhuman sound acceptable. “She had pizza shortly before she died. Time of death was about 2030 hours. I guess that means about eight thirty
P.M.
on Monday.” Lucy couldn’t get the bitterness out of her voice. Patsy Burke deserved to have this kind of attention paid to her death, too. Garcia still hadn’t called her back about the answering machine.

She continued. “Oh, and she was strangled. The OMI thinks someone used their hands, no rope or anything. They think there were some defensive wounds, like she put up a fight. She had a couple of scrapes that don’t add up. But I guess everything is messed up from the fall.”

“She was dead when she was tossed off the bridge,” Montoya said.

Lucy nodded and asked the waitress for coffee. “The toxicology report won’t be in until tomorrow, so we don’t know about drugs. But the autopsy says something like ‘no marks consistent with intravenous drug use.’ So, shooting drugs were
a fairly new thing for her. I guess she could have been doing coke or whatever.”

They sat quietly for a few minutes, Montoya reading the autopsy and Lucy rat-a-tat-tating a straw on the napkin holder.

“So, can I talk to you about Scanner Lady?” Lucy asked. That was her real reason for being there.

Montoya closed the autopsy report, folded his hands on the table in front of him, and said, “Absolutely.” She smiled. Good. He knew the score.

Lucy told him about talking to Claire Schoen and finding the cell tower. Montoya nodded without comment. Then she asked, “What do you think?”

“It sounds completely circumstantial.” Lucy made a sour face at him, and he smiled and added, “But plausible.”

That was twice she had gotten him to smile. She was hoping for a third.

“Please, Detective Montoya, let’s not go overboard with enthusiasm here.”

“Lucy,” she raised her eyebrows; this was the first time he had called her by her first name, “you’ve still got a lot of problems with your theory that the killer was a police officer who overheard you and me talking at the police station. Mainly, how could the killer know you were talking about Patsy Burke when you didn’t even know her name?”

“Yep, that sure is a big hole,” she agreed in a fake Texas accent. “But isn’t there a way to triangulate cell towers or something? I mean, I’m sure that’s not what you call it, but you police-type people must have some gadget to find cell towers. The killer finds the cell tower and he finds Scanner Lady.”

“That’s the kind of equipment they have at the FBI and big-city departments. We just can’t afford something like that,” he said. “I think it’s more likely that it has nothing to do with you or the cell-phone call. It was probably someone who knew her. Or a robbery. Sometimes coincidences are just coincidences.”

They both thought quietly for a moment before Lucy said, “You haven’t asked me who the police sources were who leaked the newspaper the info about Melissa’s drug use.”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t tell me.”

“That’s right, I wouldn’t, but a girl still likes to be asked.”

He smiled again. His third smile.
So he likes to be teased.
She could do that.

Detective Montoya looked at his watch. Lucy wondered where he was in a rush to be at ten to midnight. He finished off the rest of his coffee and started making it’s-time-to-leave movements.

“So you headed home to curl up with your gun?” she asked, flinching for a second at the sexual innuendo, which she hadn’t meant.

“No. I have some things to take care of,” he said.

“On the Baca case?”

He didn’t answer her and said instead, “Thank you for your help, Miss Newroe. Good night.”

She watched him leave, wondering what had happened to their joking ease. Was it because of her gun comment? And why had he switched back to using her formal name? She realized that it bugged her. Really bugged her. She finished her coffee and left her money on the table. She reached the parking lot just as he was pulling out in his unmarked police car—so obvious for what it was. She jumped into her car and turned onto Cerrillos Road. There was enough traffic for her to blend in. And even if he did see her, she could just as easily have been on her way home. He stopped at the light. She was four cars back. He turned into the Silver Cowboy parking lot, and she continued on her way, pretending that she was just driving past. She took the next left and made a U-turn, going back down the street. She slowed as she passed the bar. She saw him get out of his car and go inside. She wondered what he was doing. He didn’t seem the bar type.

She made another U-turn and pulled into the parking lot.
She parked well away from his car, on the other side of the lot. She skirted around the quiet side of the bar and stood outside the door for a second, waiting until a big group of people headed inside. She fell in with them and made her way through the door. The bar was huge and crowded. She thanked her genes for making her short. She could hide in the forest of tall people all night. She looked around for Detective Montoya. She didn’t see him at any of the tables. Maybe he was in the bathroom.

She didn’t know what to do next. She wasn’t even sure why she had followed him. She tapped her fingers nervously against her leg. She didn’t know how to move. She needed a drink. She went to the bar and asked for a Coke, which the bartender gave to her quickly, then he moved away. She took a drink and started drumming her fingers against the plastic cup. She should have asked for a rum and Coke. Maybe she should sit down. Maybe she should go home. She turned around, and came face-to-face with Detective Montoya. Or, in her case, face-to-chest. She swore out loud before she could stop herself.

G
il took a sip of his club soda as they sat at a table near the dance floor. He had noticed her following him as soon as they had left Denny’s. She hadn’t even denied it when he asked her. She’d just sworn and said, “You caught me,” with one of her laughs. She had agreed to leave as soon as she finished her soda.

“So is it Gilbert or Gil?” she asked him over the music. He must have looked confused, so she added, “I have to call you something. I think calling you Detective Montoya seems kinda weird.” He told her, then they sat quietly for a few minutes, with Gil watching Hector Morales across the bar.

Morales was wearing a silver shirt with black jeans and black boots. He was standing at the bar with four men who seemed to be acting as unofficial bodyguards. Gil had arrested
one of the men—Jesse Kurt—for heroin trafficking less than a year ago. Gil wondered what Kurt was doing out. He had been given a seven-year sentence.

Gil had gone to high school with one of the other men. They had been in an English class together, but he couldn’t remember his name. Robert something.

“Why are you so interested in that guy at the bar? He doesn’t look like your type,” Lucy said. She was trying to get a rise out of him, as she had been since she’d first met him. He didn’t answer her.

She didn’t give up. “Okay, Detective. You don’t have to say anything. I’ll figure it out myself. The guy at the bar must be connected with the Baca case somehow. I know Melissa Baca’s boyfriend is a teacher at the school and a white guy, not Mexican like this guy here. So, this isn’t her boyfriend. Is this a guy she was doing on the side?”

She waited for his response. He ignored her and kept watching Morales. She saw something in his expression and said, “Okay, so she wasn’t having an affair. But she was doing drugs. With that outfit, that guy has to be a drug dealer. I interviewed a million guys like that back in Orlando. So I guess he was Melissa’s dealer, right?”

Now Gil looked at her and said, “I think it’s time for you to go.”

Then she did something completely unexpected—she laughed out loud and said, “You know, Gil, that cop face of yours was perfect and the monotone voice was right on. Beautiful.”

She chuckled for a few more seconds before saying, “So, are you going to beat this guy up when you question him?” She was smiling.

He had never known someone who smiled so much. It was hard to stay annoyed with her. “I’ll try to restrain myself,” he said.

“If you feel any violence coming on, just let me know so I can pretend I didn’t see it.”

“Will do.”

“So, how can I help?” she asked, finishing her soda.

“You can go home. I’ll go find Morales tomorrow at some point when there are fewer people around, and he doesn’t have any buddies nearby.”

“Oh, okay. No problem. Let me just go to the bathroom.” She flashed him a smile as she got up.