The Replacement Child

by Christine Barber

  Someone across the squad room was yelling something, and Gil looked up. It was his chief, Bill Kline, saying, “Montoya, I need you in my office.”

  “Mom, I’ve got to get off the phone.” He waited for her to say something. She didn’t. He said, “So, I’ll come over later tonight, okay?” She still didn’t say anything. It was a full thirty seconds before she said weakly, “Bye, hito. Have a nice day.” He heard her fumbling to put the receiver back into its cradle before the line went dead. She must not be wearing her glasses. She must have lost them again.

  Gil headed to his chief’s office. Standing outside the door was Sergeant Ron Baca, pacing back and forth like a pit bull.

  As Gil approached, he nodded at Baca, who stopped pacing and eyed him as he walked into the chief’s office. In a chair in the corner a woman sat huddled. It took Gil a moment to recognize her. Maxine Baca, Sergeant Ron Baca’s mother. Her blouse had a crusty, brown stain on the sleeve. Her head was bowed, and her fingers picked at the stain. She didn’t even look up as he came in.

  Gil sat in the other chair. He was about to greet Mrs. Baca but thought better of it. He kept his eyes on her to see if she would look at him. She didn’t.

  “Mrs. Baca has had some bad news. Melissa—you know Melissa, right?” Gil nodded; Melissa was Maxine’s youngest. Kline continued: “Melissa was found this morning up by Taos Gorge Bridge. It looks like she was thrown off.”

  Mrs. Baca, suddenly realizing that the officers were looking at her, deliberately pulled her hands from the stain on her blouse and placed them folded on her lap. She tried to sit up straighter, but the effort seemed too great and she gave up.

  Gil got up and crouched next to her, pushing his gun belt down as he did so. “Mrs. Baca, how are you doing? Do you need anything?” She shook her head violently. Gil looked at her for a moment longer before going back to his chair.

  “The state police have already started their investigation, but Mrs. Baca has asked us to help her by checking into it ourselves,” Kline said. He motioned for Ron Baca, who was peering through the window of Kline’s office door, to come in.

  “Mrs. Baca,” Kline said, “we’ll do everything we can.”

  Ron Baca stood in the doorway, not quite entering the office. He looked at the floor, not meeting the chief’s gaze. His shoulders were tense, as if he were ready to fight, but when he finally raised his head, Gil saw that there was no fight in him. He didn’t have tears in his eyes, only emptiness—raw and painful.

  “Ron, I’m very sorry for your loss,” Gil said. Ron only nodded curtly, as if words were beyond him.

  Ron helped Mrs. Baca gently to her feet, their heads almost touching for a moment as son supported mother.

  “Now Ron is going to take you home, Mrs. Baca,” Kline said.

  The pair, with Maxine leaning heavily on her son’s shoulder and grasping his hand tightly, shuffled out of the office.

  Gil closed the door behind them.

  “Now, we have no jurisdiction in this case,” Kline started before Gil had a chance to ask. “The state police are handling it. But we’ll do what we can to help. This family doesn’t need any more tragedy. They’ve had enough.”

  Gil knew the Bacas a little through the department. Maxine’s husband, a Santa Fe police officer for more than thirty years, had been killed during a drug shootout seven years earlier. Another son had died of a heroin overdose.

  “Ron is one of us, for God’s sake,” Kline said. “If Melissa Baca was into drugs, or prostitution or whatever, I want us to be able to find out and tell the family before they have to hear it from the state police or the damn media. I want you to be a sort of liaison for the family—handle the press, talk to the state police for them.”

  Gil hesitated before asking, “How much leeway do I have?”

  “That’s up to you,” Kline said. “Just try not to piss anybody off, and low-profile it. I already told the state police officer in charge of the investigation—that Lieutenant Pollack guy—that you’re going to be looking around.”

  “How do they know it’s her?” Gil asked.

  “They found Melissa’s purse on the bridge with her driver’s license in it, and state police says the body down below matches the photo on the license. But someone, I guess Ron, will have to do a formal ID later.”

  “How’d they find the body?”

  “Some early-morning tourist looking at the gorge spotted it and called it in.”

  “They don’t think it’s a suicide?” The bridge was popular with jumpers. Last year, a man had come all the way from Wisconsin just to commit suicide there.

  “No car at the scene. Her car was found in Oñate Park in Santa Fe this morning about an hour ago. State police crime techs are checking it.”

  “Has anybody seen the body close-up yet?” Recovering the body would be hard. The gorge was 650 feet below the bridge and there was no path down.

  “Some rescue worker has seen her but they won’t tell us anything. But they’re calling it a homicide.”

  Kline’s phone rang and Gil took that as his cue to leave. He was just closing the door of the chief’s office behind him when he heard Kline say to him, with his hand over the phone receiver, “By the way, Gil, nice work on that interrogation last night. I’ll be sending a formal memo of congratulations out later. Oh, and Manny Cordova is going around the office doing a fairly good impression of you.”

  Gil just nodded and closed the door.

  Lucy flipped her alarm clock right-side up; she had put it facedown on her nightstand when she went to bed. If she couldn’t see the clock, that meant she didn’t have to wake up, right? It read 8:45 A.M. in big green numbers. She stuck out her tongue at the clock. When she went out drinking, she could never sleep past 9 A.M. It didn’t matter if she’d gone to bed at 8 A.M.; she was instantly awake an hour later. She stood up, swaying. The blue drink had been her undoing. What had it been called? Something bird. Something sexual. Moaning bird? Screaming orgasm bird? Kicking bird? No, wait—that was the chick from Dances with Wolves, and not a very sexy-sounding alcoholic beverage.

  She went into the bathroom to get some aspirin, but all she could find was an old bottle of Pamprin. Did that work on hangovers? She popped two into her mouth and turned on the faucet, which groaned in protest and then spit out a trickle of water. She cupped her hands and took a drink to wash down the Pamprin, dribbling enough cold water down her pajama top to make her jump and curse. She quickly brushed her teeth, trying to scrape off the remnants of last’s night drinking.

  Going back to her bedroom, she got down on all fours in front of her closet and began tossing shoes out, trying to find a pair that matched. After two minutes of searching, and one minute of lying on the floor when the room began to sway, she ended up with black pumps with two-inch heels. She slipped those on and almost tottered over when she tried to walk. She steadied herself on her dresser. She just needed to get outside to the mailbox. She walked out into the kitchen and got a pot of coffee brewing, then pulled her long coat over her pajamas and opened the front door. A blast of cold air hit her and she pulled her coat tighter around her.

  It was sunny out, of course, as always. She smelled the sweet piñon smoke coming from the Martinezes’ chimney across the street. She looked over at the Sangre de Cristo Mountains just peeking over the top of her neighbors’ house. The mountains were slipping in and out of the morning shadows. Santa Fe Baldy was white capped but the lower elevations still had no snow even in January.

  Through her hangover, Lucy navigated her way to her mailbox across the street, her high heels clicking happily over the pavement. It was the only sound in the morning air except the rustling of the cottonwood branches and the far-off closing of a car door.

  Lucy lived on Alto Street in a neighborhood that couldn’t decide if it was up-and-coming rich or down-and-out poor. It was in the old part of Santa Fe. The Martinezes across the street had been living on the land since it had been given to them by the king of Spain. The tiny
streets were horse-and-carriage size. The houses were squished together with no room for backyards or front lawns. In the closeness, everyone had walls or fences, to keep out the neighbors’ eyes and the dust.

  All the houses were flat topped and square, Santa Fe–style. And they were beige, just like every other home, office, hotel, gas station, and utility shed in Santa Fe. Lucy could write a dissertation on the color beige. Dark beige, light beige, pink beige. Beige like the desert sand. The houses in her neighborhood tended more toward the dark beige, with white trim. It was so unlike where she’d grown up in Florida, where everything was big and overdone, bright and new.

  Lucy looked back at her brown/beige bungalow, with its Spanish tile flat roof and tall elm trees around it. It had windowsills painted purple and pink and a tile mosaic of Our Lady of Guadalupe next to the front door. The mosaic was the reason why Del had wanted to rent the place. He’d said that it was a good omen. He had gotten into the habit of touching the mosaic as he entered and left the house.

  From her mailbox Lucy could count three images of Our Lady of Guadalupe on walls and doors. The one across the street was painted on the side of a garage, all in earth tones. Either that or it was dusty.

  Lucy opened her black mailbox and pulled out three envelopes—all bills. She sighed and clicked her heels back across the street and, without thinking, touched the mosaic next to the door with her left hand as she turned the doorknob with her right. She tossed the mail onto the coffee table, took off her coat, and poured a cup of coffee as she kicked off her pumps, which were already digging into her toes. She went into the bathroom and started the water running in her old-fashioned tub.

  She was in the shower before she remembered that she hadn’t flossed her teeth yet. Damn. Whenever she made a detour from her normal morning routine, she always ended up forgetting something. She said out loud, “Floss your teeth when you get out of the shower; floss your teeth when you get out of the shower.”

  She was already dressed and in the car a block from her house before she realized that she had not flossed her teeth. Damn.

  She stopped by the newspaper to pick up her paycheck, then drove across town to the Santa Fe Police Department. The building was out toward the interstate, in brand-new Santa Fe, surrounded by very wide sidewalkless streets that smelled strongly of baking asphalt even in the weak winter sun. Unlike her cozy, old neighborhood, this was an area of empty lots and strip malls. The police station itself was a squared-off, utilitarian “facility”—that was the only word for it—that had none of the usual Santa Fe charm. No rounded corners or curved archways. You could tell that it was a government building without seeing the SFPD sign out front. The only bow to Santa Fe architecture was the beige that the building was painted, but it was washed out and seemed an afterthought, as if the builders would have preferred a steel gray.

  Lucy sat in her car, peering at herself in the rearview mirror as she fixed her makeup, which she needed badly today. The sunlight was only accentuating the dark circles under her eyes. She decided on bright red lipstick in the hope that it would overpower her unfocused eyes.

  Lucy got out of her car and walked up to the reception area of the police department while the officer manning the desk, a young man with acne scars on his cheeks, watched her.

  “Hi. I’m with the Capital Tribune. I need to look over the hot sheets for today.”

  The acne-scarred officer slid a manila folder to her without saying anything.

  She opened the folder and looked over the reports, writing down any interesting information. Two men had gotten into a knife fight last night over a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, sending one to the hospital with minor wounds. That would become a brief for tomorrow’s paper or a small six-inch story inside the local section, depending on how badly they needed news. The only other report that caught her eye was about a female teenager getting picked up at Santa Fe High School for drug possession.

  She closed the folder. The officer was still watching her.

  “Are any of the detectives around? I have a quick question.”

  The officer disappeared behind a closed door. When he came back, a tall officer followed him.

  “I’m Detective Montoya. Can I help you?” His eyelashes were long and dark, making his eyes look like they were lined with black eyeliner. He could have been a banker in his business shirt and tie. Lucy glanced at his shoes. You can always tell a cop by their shoes. She had expected the usual cowboy boots that the Santa Fe detectives wore, but his were generic men’s dress shoes. Brown. Obviously at least a few months old, but not even scuffed. He was tall, cute, dressed well, and took care of his shoes … and had a wedding band on his left ring finger. Damn.

  “I need to ask you about some scanner traffic we picked up last night involving you guys and the OMI and the state police,” Lucy said.

  The acne-scarred officer said something quickly in Spanish that Lucy didn’t understand.

  “What makes you think she doesn’t know Spanish?” Detective Montoya said to the officer, as he escorted Lucy into the squad room. Lucy smiled to herself. She had lived in Santa Fe for a year and still knew only gracias and cerveza. With that word combination all she could say was “Thanks for the beer.” Which, while useful in certain situations, didn’t help in most.

  The detective gestured to the chair next to his desk and took his own chair.

  She took her seat and looked around. The police station was designed like the newspaper office, with its fluorescent lights, endless cubicles, and windowless walls. But instead of being painted a sea-foam green it was a not-very-macho baby blue. The office was too new to be grungy, but the desks were cluttered with papers, folders, and computers. Officer Montoya’s desk was one of the only clean ones, its cool gray surface clear of everything but a day planner and a filing basket. No picture of wife and kids. Maybe he’s divorced but still hanging on to the past by wearing the wedding ring?

  He was looking at her without unblinking, without curiosity. Without interest. Like she was an interruption to his day that he would tolerate politely but could really have done without. It made her want to poke him. He was neat, calm, professional, clean-cut. And she really wanted to poke him. Really.

  Instead, she said, “We got a strange phone call at the newspaper last night. This elderly woman who always calls in tips to the paper said she heard two Santa Fe police officers on the scanner talking about the state police and the OMI. I was just wondering if you knew anything about it.”

  Several male officers at the desk next to them started laughing suddenly. At first she thought they were laughing at her question. Hastily, she looked over at them, but they were listening to a young, good-looking officer who was sitting casually on the desk.

  “I’m sorry, what was your name?” she heard Detective Montoya say to her. She gave it to him as he typed away on his keyboard.

  “Well, Ms. Newroe, I’m looking at the reports from last night and I don’t see anything unusual. About what time was this at?”

  “Right around eleven thirty P.M.” She felt him trying to rush her out of the office with his tone and manners. She didn’t like it.

  He kept typing at his computer. After a few minutes, he said, “I’m sorry, I still don’t see anything. Can you give me any more information?”

  “That’s all I know,” Lucy said.

  “Could you call the woman back and ask her about it?”

  “I’d love to, but she never gives her name. We just call her Scanner Lady,” Lucy said. She still felt the urge to mess with him somehow. She wanted a reaction from him. She needed one. She had never been good at feeling dismissed, ignored, tolerated. She wanted his acknowledgment. And she was going to get it.

  “I’m not sure I can be of any more help, Ms. Newroe. Sorry.” He started to rise from his seat to usher her out.

  “So, how is your day going so far, Detective Montoya?” she asked, smiling, leaning back in her seat, making it obvious that she wasn’t about to get up. Montoya st
ood up and sat on the edge of his desk, not retaking his seat as Lucy had expected. He looked at her, still without curiosity, considering.

  “Any interesting cases pop up?” she asked, still smiling. “Maybe a dead body or some such thing? Maybe someone tossed off a bridge somewhere?”

  When Lucy had stopped by the newspaper earlier in the morning to pick up her paycheck, the managing editor had told her about a body being found in the Taos Gorge. They didn’t know much. A purse was found on the bridge, which probably meant that the victim was a female. No car around, so most likely not a suicide. Tommy Martinez had been pulled off the Gomez trial to cover it. He was on his way to Taos with one of the photographers.

  Detective Montoya showed no surprise when she mentioned it, but maybe a hint of interest. Maybe. She said, “So, let’s play a little game here, Detective. A game of ‘what if.’ What if that body that the police officers were talking about on the scanner last night was the one found in Taos Gorge?”

  “Taos is a long way away and that body wasn’t found until just this morning, but you heard this conversation last night,” Detective Montoya said.

  “Yeah, but what if,” she smiled again, and, surprisingly, he smiled back, “there was prior knowledge of the death?”

  “You mean what if one of my officers knew about the killing last night? That seems very unlikely, considering the circumstances.”

  “But what if they committed the murder?” she said.

  “Well, it couldn’t have been a Santa Fe police officer because none of us are dumb enough to talk about murdering someone over the scanner,” he said, really smiling now. “Maybe try over at the state police.”

  Lucy started laughing at his unexpected humor. She had been trying to piss him off, but instead he’d made her laugh out loud. She pulled her business card out of her wallet and said, “Can you call me if you hear anything? I’ll be at work until late tonight.”