“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….”
Lucy 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.
Gerald took a turn too fast and Lucy braced herself against the door. A minute later, he pulled the ambulance up to the scene. Two cars pulled up behind them, the other firefighters coming POV. When Lucy first joined the fire department, she’d had no clue that POV stood for Privately Owned Vehicle. At first she’d thought it referred to some complicated firefighting device. Positive Oxygen Ventilation. Partially Obscure Velocity. Gerald had set her straight without laughing.
In the middle of an intersection sat a semi-trailer and an old Honda Civic. Or at least it looked like a Civic. Lucy was bad with cars, plus this one was barely recognizable as a car.
She saw the driver of the semi gesturing wildly as he talked to a deputy. The man looked unhurt.
As Lucy hopped out of the ambulance, Gerald told her to put on two sets of latex gloves. She had no idea why, but she didn’t question him. Gerald handed her the oxygen bag and the medical pack from the ambulance. As she followed close behind Gerald, she silently reminded herself to keep her mouth shut and just listen, something she’d never been good at.
The front of the semi was slightly dented, but the entire driver’s side of the Civic was crushed in more than two feet. The car had been spun around by the impact of the crash. A sheriff’s deputy was directing traffic away from the scene. Broken glass and plastic crunched under her feet, and somewhere in the distance she heard more sirens.
Gerald got into the passenger seat of the Civic and motioned her into the backseat. She climbed in with a sheriff’s deputy who was trying to keep the driver—a man in his forties—talking. Lucy glanced at the damage to the car’s interior. The metal from the driver’s-side door was crushed over the man’s legs. He would need to be cut out of the car. What did the firefighters call it? Extrication? It was obvious from his injuries that he hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, and the car was too old to have an airbag.
Gerald calmly said, “Hold his neck.” Lucy squeezed past the deputy in the backseat and held the driver’s head and neck in place from behind—keeping his head straight to maintain C-spine, the only thing she remembered from class. Gerald checked the man’s breathing and heart rate.
The man was bleeding heavily from his head. Lucy was glad that Gerald had made her put on two sets of gloves—her first pair was now covered in blood.
The deputy was occasionally calling out, “Sir, sir? How are you doing, sir?” The man let out a groan.
“Do you know what his name is?” Lucy asked the deputy.
“No. He was talking just a minute ago.”
Gerald used a stethoscope to listen to the man’s lungs, as Lucy tried to calm her own breathing.
A firefighter appeared at the back door with a backboard and a C-collar—a medieval-looking contraption that was supposed to fit around the man’s neck. And she was the one who was supposed to know how to work it. She looked around. She had no idea what she was doing. This man needed experienced emergency medical help, not some stupid girl who had taken a medic class just to get over her boyfriend. She felt the panic rise in her stomach and move up her throat.
Gil waited outside the principal’s office. The chair he sat on felt like it was going to fall apart if he moved. He adjusted himself slowly. Principal Ken Strunk’s secretary had said that he would be right out. That had been fifteen minutes ago.
Strunk appeared about five minutes later. He was about five feet eleven inches and trim, his brown hair graying at the temples. Gil guessed he was about forty-five. His shirtsleeves were carefully rolled up to just below his elbows and his tie was slightly loose. Gil thought that the casual image seemed very practiced.
They went into Strunk’s office. It was nothing like the metal cabinets and linoleum of public schools. Abstract paintings hung on the paneled walls and the rest was done in tones of brown, with the carpeting and drapes in a deep shade of peach. It wasn’t pink but peach. Gil knew the difference. When he and his wife were remodeling their house, she’d made him go to paint stores as far away as Albuquerque looking for the right shade. Twice he’d brought home colors that his wife frowned over—saying that they were light pink, not peach. Gil started to wonder if he was color blind. They’d ended up with a shade called peach-kissed that looked the same as every other shade. Gil wondered whether Strunk or his wife had decorated his office.
Gil sat in one of the fake antique chairs and Strunk sat at his desk.
“It’s a tragedy, what happened to Miss Baca. She was a fine teacher who cared for her students,” Strunk said, looking grave.
Gil wondered if Strunk had prepared that speech during the twenty minutes he had been waiting. “What can you tell me about her, Mr. Strunk?”
“Not much. Just as I said, Miss Baca was a fine teacher.”
“How long had she worked here?”
“About six months. It was her first job after graduating from college in August. She was a dean’s-list student at the University of New Mexico. Her teachers recommended her highly.”
“She came to work on time? Didn’t have a lot of sick days?”
“Miss Baca was very punctual and reliable. She never had a sick day.”
“Do you know that for sure? You don’t want to look it up?” Gil was still wondering what Strunk had been doing during that twenty minutes.
“Actually, I do know that for certain. I checked her records before you came in.”
“What else do her records say?”
“Nothing more.”
“Can I see them?
“No. They are confidential. I believe that since you’re not the official investigating officer, you have no reason to look at them.” Strunk smiled kindly after he’d said it. “I don’t mean to be rude, Detective. I must be very careful in a situation like this to not involve the school in any lawsuits. I hope you understand.”
“Mr. Strunk, I understand completely. You have been very helpful so far,” Gil said as he watched Strunk, who loosened his tie more.
“Oh, I wish you hadn’t said that,” Strunk said with another small smile and a feminine wave of his hand. “I might as well be honest. In those few minutes I made you wait, I called our attorney and he told me exactly what to say. I even wrote the first part of my little speech down.” Strunk held up a sheet of school stationery that was covered with very precise—almost draftmanslike—writing. “But it feels strange not to help the police fully. I guess I can still hear my mother saying to me when I was little, ‘Kenneth, if you ever get lost, go find a police officer.’ So, maybe we can try this again, and I’ll be a little more forthcoming. What other questions do you have?”
Gil studied him for a second before he asked, “Do you allow relationships between teachers?”
“You mean between Melissa and Hammond?” Gil noticed that Strunk called Melissa by her first name and Hammond by his last. “I don’t encourage teachers’ dating.”
“Did you discourage Melissa and Hammond, Mr. Strunk?” Gil asked.
“No. They were professional about it. I would have …” Strunk searched for the word, “prompted them to end the relationship if they had public fights or obvious signs of affection, that sort of thing.”
“As far as you know, they got along fine?”
“Yes. Not that I actually would know.” He smiled again. “The boss is always the last to find out.”
“What did you think about Melis
sa personally?”
“I thought very highly of her. She was an excellent teacher who cared about her students very much…. Lord, that sounded rehearsed again, but it’s the truth.”
“What do you think about Hammond?”
Strunk considered the question for a moment before he answered carefully, “He is very studious.”
Gil waited for more but nothing came. “Mr. Strunk, I thought you were trying to be more helpful?”
Strunk stared at the abstract painting on the wall behind Gil before he answered. “The truth is, Mr. Hammond has a hard time guiding his students. He doesn’t have Melissa’s natural abilities. When they started dating, I had hoped Melissa could communicate to him a little more about what it means to be a teacher, that it’s not all about studying. Students need emotional guidance as well.”
“Did Mr. Hammond ever do anything inappropriate in the classroom?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. He just thinks we should give the students free rein. Melissa believed in very traditional mores. For instance, one of the younger girls came to class with quite a bit of makeup on and Melissa made her go wash it off and then sent her to my office. And I sent her to the school counselor.”
“How old was the girl?”
“She was eight. Melissa realized, and rightly so, that it was dangerous for a girl that young to be putting too much emphasis on her looks. At our teachers’ meeting later that day, Mr. Hammond said he thought we had overreacted. He said if the girl had chosen to wear makeup to school, who were we to tell her that it was wrong?”
Gil wondered what else Hammond let the students get away with.
“Did Melissa ever have any problems with students or parents?” Gil asked.
“Just the usual. Nothing untoward.” Gil smiled to himself. That wasn’t a word he heard every day in his line of work.
“How was Melissa the past few days?” Gil asked.
“She seemed normal, very dedicated as always,” Strunk said, as he picked a pen up off his desk and started to play with it. Without looking at Gil, he added, “What you’re really asking is did she seem like she was on drugs. I read the article in the newspaper this morning. I’ve already had three phone calls from parents. They all said things like, ‘How could you let a woman like that work here.’ And the TV stations have started calling. Our attorney told me to say ‘no comment.’ The truth is, she was fine. I didn’t notice anything.”
The Replacement Child Page 9