The Replacement Child

by Christine Barber

  Mrs. Sanchez continued, not expecting Gil to comment. “Miss Baca called last Friday to say she had a complaint to make against a police officer. I told her about the advisory committee, and she asked me to put her on the agenda. We didn’t discuss who the officer was or the circumstances of her complaint.” If Gil had actually become a lawyer, he would have wanted a witness like Mrs. Sanchez—precise and articulate.

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “She did not. That’s it. I mailed out the agendas as usual.”

  “Including the ones to the newspapers,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Of course.” She realized the problem and looked at Gil accusingly. “Of course, at the time I mailed out the agendas to the newspapers, Miss Baca was still very much alive.”

  “There’s an article about it today in the Capital Tribune.”

  “That’s why they were calling me last night. I swear, they called every five minutes. It was well after ten P.M. I saw their name on the caller ID and didn’t answer. I decided if they wanted to talk to me, they could do it during business hours.”

  Gil called Pollack at the state police to tell him about the article and what Mrs. Sanchez had said.

  “Yeah. I got a thousand messages from the Capital Tribune last night,” Pollack said. “I had already given them their daily briefing so I didn’t call them back. I figured they were just being pushy. I guess you can tell I’ve only been the PIO for a few months. I’m not too bright sometimes. At least that’s what my boss told me when he called me an hour ago, yelling.”

  “I’m going to head over to Mrs. Baca’s to see if she knew what Melissa was going to say to the advisory committee.”

  “Actually, you better come over here. I’m not really sure what this means, but Officer Manny Cordova turned himself in to us a few minutes ago.”

  Gil watched Manny Cordova through the two-way mirror in the interrogation room. Cordova sat alone, drinking a Coke and reading an old People magazine.

  “What did he say when he showed up here?” Gil asked Pollack.

  “Nothing really. He said his lawyer told him to turn himself in but not to say anything. The lawyer is on his way here, but got stuck in some snowstorm in Farmington.”

  “How long will it take him to get here?”

  “Well, it’s a four-hour drive normally. In a snowstorm, I’d say closer to five or six. I think the weirdest thing is that it’s gonna snow. I thought the forecast was clear.”

  Pollack went on about the weather but Gil had stopped listening. He wondered if Manny was the police officer Melissa had been planning to lodge a complaint against.

  “Actually, I’m glad you’re here,” Gil heard Pollack say. “Someone has to call your boss and tell him that one of his officers turned himself in to us. And don’t ask me how, but the press already knows.

  “Oh, and something else. The sheriff’s office called and said they might have an investigation connected to ours, but they don’t seem to think there’s much to it. You know that old lady who died out in the county? A Mrs. Burke? They’re seeing if there was some association to Melissa Baca. We haven’t combined the cases yet. For now, they keep their dead body, we keep ours, until we can prove the two are connected.”

  Pollack gave Gil the details of the case, calling Lucy “some newspaper editor” and calling Mrs. Burke “some tipster.” Gil smiled. Lucy had finally managed to get someone to listen.

  Pollack started snapping his fingers and said, “And just so you know, we checked some more on Ron Baca’s alibi. It seems a next-door neighbor was outside working on his car most of the night. The neighbor saw Ron Baca go into his mom’s house around eight P.M. and leave after eleven P.M. The neighbor says he was outside all night and would have seen Ron Baca if he had left the house at all. I guess the guy was trying to change the oil, which is a five-minute job, so he must suck at it.”

  So Mrs. Baca had told the truth when she said that Ron had been fixing the washing machine. But that still didn’t explain why Ron hadn’t told anyone that Melissa had shown him the photos of Sandra Paine. Ron was not a sloppy police officer. Maybe Melissa’s death had made him forget about it? But Gil doubted it. Maybe Melissa had asked Ron not to mention it? Maybe.

  Gil called Chief Kline, who didn’t say much about Manny Cordova. Kline was just about to hang up when Gil said, “Sir, I really feel that it’s time for me to stop being a part of this investigation. Manny Cordova is a fellow officer. This is strictly state police territory. I believe it’s a conflict of interest for me to continue to be involved.”

  Kline didn’t answer, but asked to speak to Pollack. Gil handed the lieutenant the phone. The two men talked for a few minutes. Pollack said, “I’ll tell him,” and hung up.

  He started jingling the change in his pocket as he turned to Gil. “Sorry, buddy, you’re in for the long haul.”

  Pollack’s phone rang. Gil went over to survey the snack machine. The Doritos might start to look good after a few hours of waiting for Manny’s lawyer to show up.

  He felt someone clasp him on the shoulder. Pollack.

  “I’ve got a job for you, buddy. That was Judy Maes on the phone. She says she needs to talk to us. I think you’re perfect for the job.”

  Judy Maes lived on Alameda Street, her adobe house sporting a nice view of the now-dry Santa Fe River. He waited for her to answer the door. A four-inch-high santo of St. Anthony sat in a niche next to the door. The santo was beautifully carved, a tiny cardinal perched on its hand. Gil picked it up and looked on the bottom, where R. MAES was carved. Judy opened the door, greeting Gil and noticing the santo he was still holding.

  “Rudy Maes is my father,” she said as she let him into the living room. “He normally doesn’t do santos. He did that one when he was eighteen.”

  Rudy Maes was a sculptor. Gil had once handled a case in which an art collector had hired a man to steal some Maes pieces. But he didn’t count on the huge sculptures being so heavy. The next morning, when the gallery opened, the owner found the man still trying to move a granite piece called In My Eyes.

  “Do you do any art?” Gil asked as they sat down.

  Judy laughed. “Good lord, no. Just stick figures.”

  Maes had on red lipstick, but it didn’t hide how tired she looked.

  “Do you have any idea when they’re going to release Melissa’s body?” she asked.

  “In a few days,” Gil said.

  “It may be a weird thing to say, but I could really use the funeral. It’s so hard to deal with this all without seeing her body, you know?”

  Gil doubted that it would be an open-casket funeral. When Melissa was thrown off the bridge, she had landed face-first. He didn’t tell that to Judy.

  “So, you said you had something to tell us?” Gil prompted.

  “I remembered who the boyfriend was who hit Melissa. I racked my brain after you left. I finally looked in my diary. I knew I had written about it. It was some asshole named Manny Cordova.”

  Gil nodded. He had expected that answer. But it didn’t give him any pleasure. He had hoped it wouldn’t be a fellow cop. He wished it could have been Hammond.

  “Did you ever meet Manny?” Gil asked.

  “No. They only went out for a few weeks before he hit her. And that was a couple of summers ago.”

  “What did they get in a fight about?”

  “They were in her car, and she was driving, and he got it into his head that she was too close to the wheel. They got into a fight about it. He decided to push her seat back while she’s driving. She freaks out and pulls over and yells at him. He slaps her.”

  “Did he ever hit her again?”

  “She never gave him the chance. She made him get out of the car and left him there.” Judy smiled. “Good for Melissa. That girl’s got balls. Anyway, she never saw him again. But she said he kept calling.”

  “Was he stalking her?”

  “Probably not in the way you’re thinking—I mean, not according t
o the legal definition—but ask any woman, and they’d say he was stalking her.”

  “Was he threatening her?”

  “See, that’s what I mean. He never threatened her and didn’t follow her to the grocery store or anything like that. He was just weird. He would call and try to small-talk her. She would make it clear that she didn’t want him talking to her, so he’d hang up. And a month or so later he’d do it all over again. He was a pest. A weird pest. I think he finally stopped it a year or so ago.”

  “Did she know that he’s now a police officer?”

  “That asshole is a police officer? You’ve got to be kidding. Melissa would have had a real problem with that.” Which was what Gil was thinking.

  Manny had told Gil that he had seen Melissa recently. What would Melissa do if she saw the man who hit her three years ago in a police uniform? She would call Mrs. Sanchez and put her name on the agenda for the police advisory committee, planning to register a formal complaint against him.

  “Did she ever mention to her brother that Manny slapped her? Ron could have helped her with him,” Gil asked.

  “Ron? I doubt it.”

  “Didn’t they get along?”

  “That’s an understatement. They played happy family for their mom, but otherwise steered clear of each other.”

  “Was there ever any violence?”

  “Only really low-key stuff, kind of threatening stuff on his part. Like this one time when Melissa was six, he put her in the fold-up couch, closed it up, put the cushions back on the couch, and left her there. Her mother found her a few hours later.”

  “Sounds like the typical brother-sister relationship.”

  Judy shook her head. “But Melissa was six and Ron was twenty. He was an adult. An adult doing that to a child is just cruel.”

  She got up, obviously bothered by the conversation, and paced along a Chinese rug. She continued. “He was always doing stuff like that. He once put her in the dryer when she was three. He told her it would be like some kind of roller-coaster ride. She was in there for five minutes before the door came open. He didn’t even take her out—she fell out. He just sat there and watched. She could have died.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Saturday Afternoon

  As Gil was saying good-bye to Judy Maes, his cell phone rang. It was Officer Joe Phillips. “Hi, Gil. I have someone who wants to see you in the interrogation room. Says he has something on the Baca killing.”

  “Who is it?” Gil asked.

  “Hector Morales.”

  Five minutes later, Gil was back at the police station, looking for Phillips. Gil found him picking through a salad, eating only the croutons.

  “Hey, Joe. What did you pick Morales up for?” Gil asked.

  “For beating up his girlfriend.” Phillips smiled coldly as he popped a crouton into his mouth. “It seems Morales’s two-year-old son was sick, so the girlfriend put the kid into bed with her. The kid pukes his guts out all over the bed. Morales gets home and finds the girlfriend changing the sheets. He gets the wrong idea and beats the shit out of her.”

  “How bad is she?”

  “Bad. She’s at St. V’s. They think her jaw is broken.”

  “How many times have you arrested Morales for aggravated battery against her before? This is, what, his fourth time? She won’t press charges again and he’ll be out tomorrow.”

  “Not this time.” Phillips’s smile got bigger.

  “What happened?”

  “It was the neighbor who called it in when she heard all the yelling. Valdez is the first cop on scene, and she sees Morales hit his girlfriend through the open door. Valdez goes in and orders Morales to stop. Morales doesn’t see the uniform, he only sees another woman. So he hits Valdez in the stomach and kicks her.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. She had her armor on, so Morales banged up his knuckles pretty good, the poor baby.” Phillips was grinning widely now. “We finally got him on agg battery, agg assault against a police officer, resisting arrest, and disturbing the peace. We’re going to have the DA think up a couple of new charges later today.”

  Gil followed Phillips to the interrogation room. Inside sat a disheveled and handcuffed Hector Morales, who looked high and smelled drunk. Gil guessed that he was on cocaine.

  Morales started talking as soon as he saw Gil. “Hey, man, I knew you wouldn’t let me down. I knew you’d help me.”

  “Hector, let’s get one thing straight: I’m not here to help you. Do you know something about Melissa’s murder?”

  “Yeah, man. I think I do, but you gotta get these assholes to let me go. I’m innocent. I didn’t hit no cop.” Phillips, standing in the corner, snorted his disbelief.

  “Hector, just tell me what you know.”

  “Hell no, man. I ain’t telling you anything until you get them to let me go.”

  Gil, still standing, leaned forward, bracing himself against the table. “You hit a police officer, Hector.”

  “The cops drove me to it. They set me up. I hit that bitch cop after she came into my home for no reason. She violated my rights.”

  Gil stared at Morales. This wasn’t getting him anywhere. “Why don’t you just tell me what you know about Melissa’s killing, and I’ll see what I can do.” Gil made it sound as noncommittal as he could.

  “Okay, man. So, this is it. I sold Baca some heroin a couple of times a few months ago.”

  Gil was confused. “You told me Melissa Baca didn’t do drugs.”

  “Not her, man. The other one.”

  “Her brother?” If Ron Baca was on drugs, that would explain a lot.

  “Not him. The other one. The other bitch. You know which one I mean.”

  Gil didn’t know what Morales was talking about. Melissa had no sisters. She had several aunts, but he didn’t know their names. Did Morales mean Judy Maes? “Can you describe her to me?”

  “You goddamn asshole cops,” Morales said, spit collecting at the corners of his mouth. Phillips started toward Morales, but Gil put out an arm to stop him. Morales kept yelling. “You know which one I mean. Stop screwing with me, man.” Morales was rocking back and forth. He must have been starting to come down from his high.

  Gil let Morales calm down for a minute before he asked again, “Can you describe her to me?”

  Morales didn’t answer. He was starting to sway in his seat, his glassy eyes fixed on the tabletop. Gil started pacing, then stopped cold as the thought came to him. “Hector, do you mean Mrs. Baca, Melissa’s mother? Maxine Baca?”

  Morales smiled. “That’s the bitch.”

  Lucy tried to go back to sleep after her bath, but after an hour or two of trying, she gave up. Her shoulders felt better, but she knew that the only way to get rid of the pain was to stop avoiding the problem that was bugging her—Gerald Trujillo. She pulled her hair back in a ponytail and decided to forgo the makeup. She didn’t need to look good to beg for forgiveness and tell him that she was quitting the medic-training program.

  She scanned radio stations as she drove, too nervous to settle on one song. She took a couple of deep breaths as she pulled up to the fire station. She had no clue what she was going to say. The only speech she could think of started and ended with “hello.” She opened her glove compartment and rummaged around. She tossed out a windshield wiper and some old insurance papers before she found her EMS pager.

  She got out of the car and squinted at the sun as it was making a halfhearted attempt to warm up the January air.

  Gerald was in the ambulance bay, sitting at an old desk covered with dust and speckled with grease. As she came in, he looked up but didn’t speak.

  Lucy took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t show up yesterday. I know I’m a flake.”

  Gerald looked at her, measuring. She continued. “I thought you might want this back.” She held out the pager to him, but he didn’t take it. She shifted on her feet. He didn’t even look mad.

  She sighed and decided just t
o come out with it. “Gerald, how come you’re the only person who can’t see that I suck at being a medic?”

  “You remember Earl Rivera?” he said, annoyingly calm.

  Lucy was confused. “Yeah. The guy from the car accident on Wednesday. What about him?”

  “I saw you with his wife. No one else would go near her because she wouldn’t stop screaming, but you went right up to her.”

  “I just wanted her to shut up. She was giving me a headache.”

  “You can joke about this all you want, but you were the only one with enough guts to try to comfort her. You really helped her. You have a way with people. You care, and they can tell. That’s all that being a medic is.” Lucy stared at an oil stain on the garage floor, embarrassed. She had never been good at accepting compliments. Gerald got up from his chair and took a few steps toward the office before he stopped and said, “You just refuse to be a grown-up.”

  “Wait a second. That’s a little harsh. Just because I can’t do the work …”

  “It’s not that you can’t do it. The blood doesn’t scare you. The patients don’t scare you. You were one of the best students in my class when you paid attention. It’s that you refuse to try. If you tried and failed, that would be one thing, but you won’t even try. I have no respect for that.” He walked into the office and closed the door.

  “What? You won’t even talk to me about it?” she yelled at the closed door. He didn’t answer. She sighed. Exasperated. She was trying to do the right thing. She was trying to quit. Wasn’t that best for everyone? What did he want from her? She could throw open the office door and confront him. But, to be honest, she was much better at being passive-aggressive. A confrontation would require energy. Passive-aggression just required her to be snarky. And she could be really snarky.

  “Fine, Gerald, I’ll keep the damn pager,” she yelled at the closed door. “Here, look, I’ll even turn it on.” The pager made a weird beeping noise as she flipped the switch. He didn’t answer.