The Replacement Child (3 page)

She listened to the
Santa Fe Times
reporters debate whether cheerleading was a sport while the waitress set the Sprite in front of her. She felt a hand reach under her hair to touch the back of her neck. Del Matteucci. She turned around. He was holding a beer and giving her that crooked smile that she loved. Damn.

“Where’s your woman?” she asked, her voice colder than she’d intended. Was she still that angry?

“She’s working late,” was all he said as he slipped into a
chair next to her, left vacant by a copy editor heading off to the bathroom.

Lucy nodded and turned back to her Sprite, not able to think of anything else to say. They hadn’t really spoken that much since they broke up six months ago. They had seen each other. Said hi. The usual. But talk about the breakup? Never.

“You aren’t drinking?” he asked. She could smell the beer on him. She looked down at her Sprite.

“Actually, I’m just getting started.” She leaned over and draped her arm across the back of the sports reporter next to her, asking “What’s your favorite color?”

“Green,” he said and pulled her closer.

“Green it is.” She motioned to the waitress as Del watched her curiously.

“I want a green drink,” she told the waitress. Lucy smiled brightly as she turned back to the sports reporter. She knew what she was doing. Exacting her own sort of revenge. Flirt with all the boys and make Del watch. It was petty, but it would do. She needed alcohol for courage. She asked the sports reporter if she could use his shoulder as a pillow as the waitress showed up with something called a green iguana. It smelled of tequila and sweet-and-sour mix. She took a gulp. It didn’t make her throw up, so she took another.

An hour and three more colors later—red, orange, and blue—Lucy felt Del’s hand on her knee. It stopped her cold. She resisted the urge to move his hand higher up her thigh. She got up silently and went to the bathroom. Alone. She wished for a second that she had some version of a female friend, so that they could gab to each other about boys while they peed. She would have to manage this on her own.

Her boyfriend—she never quite remembered to put the “ex” in front of that—was hitting on her. Del was hitting on her. She had daydreamed of something like this. Of course, her fantasy involved him begging and crying. And beating on his chest in agony at her indifference. Make it very
All My Children.

Two top-heavy blondes with Texas hair came tripping into the bathroom. They had tiny purses that matched their completely inappropriate sundresses. Had these women never heard of January? They jiggled their way into the bathroom stalls, talking about someone named Tracy.

Lucy stared back at herself the mirror, concentrating not on her face but on the weird reflection made by the salmon-colored walls. She had moved to Santa Fe a year ago for Del. He had wanted to come; she had wanted to stay in Florida. But she was in love. So they moved. She became night city editor at the
Capital Tribune
and he took a photography job at the
Santa Fe Times.
Six months later, they split up.

She washed her hands in the bathroom sink without thinking and crumpled a paper towel into the wastebasket. She crushed a few more paper towels into balls for good measure, resisting the urge to stomp them into the floor. She was too drunk to make sense of her feelings. And the blondes sounded like they were about to leave their stalls, so she took a deep breath and walked back to the table, stumbling a bit from the alcohol. She sat back down—next to Del, out of habit. He said, “Hey, baby,” in the sloppy language of drunks and leaned over to massage her shoulder with one hand, his other holding a Heineken. Something in Lucy quickened, not with pleasure but with rage. Fury. Wrath. All those good Old Testament words but with a tinge of heartbreak. How dare he? How dare he think that she would get drunk and go back to him as if nothing had happened? How dare he destroy her, unmake her, unmold her, and then come back for seconds?

Lucy had the Wonder Twins power that most women possess: the ability to flirt outrageously with a repulsive man. Or a despised man. There are various reasons women do it: It’s a power trip for the pretty, and it can be turned into a fast-acting man-bug repellent. Lucy always used it for the latter reason. The flirt-and-destroy combination had served her well in college. A man who assumes that women must kneel in worship
when faced with his magnetism can be tortured into a bloody, humble pulp with charm and the right words. The girl starts with normal flirting, whispered tones, and a soft smile. Make him think he stands a chance. The amateurs will quickly begin to lick their lips and excessively toss their hair. The pros move right into an accidental brush-of-hand-against-back and a few well-placed out-of-corner-of-eye looks. If the girl is enjoying herself, she can continue; but Lucy usually stopped it at that point, using one swift word or phrase to cut the man. Not deep, but fatally. If the girl is very good, she can do all this within a matter of minutes. Lucy liked to think she was that good.

She grabbed Del’s bottle of beer out of his hand and took a sip of it while he watched. She fondled the long neck of the bottle as suggestively as she could. She frowned. She was a little too drunk to be convincing. Her timing was off. She put the bottle down and almost spilled it. She started to laugh. Maybe she wasn’t as good at this as she’d thought.

Del touched her hand on the table and said, “I’ve always loved your laugh.” He turned her palm up and traced her lifeline with his index finger, the touch giving her a shiver. “And I’ve always loved your hands,” he said.

“That’s not the only body part of mine that you’ve loved,” she said with an out-of-the-corner-of-her-eye glance.

“But it’s the only part I can love in public unless you want people to stare.”

“There’s a lot of fun things we can do in public with our hands. We just need to get imaginative.”

“Like what?”

Lucy switched her voice to that of a scolding schoolmarm. “Well, I can’t believe that you spilled your drink all over yourself.” She picked up a napkin and pretended to wipe off his shirt, her fingertips tracing a slow swirl across his neck, then slipping lower down on his chest, sneaking toward the waist of his pants, all the while saying “tsk, tsk,” in her schoolteacher tone. And all the while smiling.

He grabbed her wrist just as she was nearing his belt. “If you go any lower I’ll be spilling more than my drink.”

“Really? I’d like to be around for that.” Del’s face changed when she said that. What had been a boyish smile was replaced by the hard edge of lust.

“We can go back to my place,” he said in a low tone.

“Cockroaches are scared to go to your place,” she said back softly. They had always had this teasing tension. It was part of their sexual combat.

“You can come over and help me clean. Remember the time we spent all night dusting off the kitchen table?” He squeezed her hand—their fingers interlaced, their legs touching under the table. Lucy put her head on Del’s chest and took a deep breath. He smelled of cigarettes and sweet sweat.

She had him. She could crush him. Destroy him like he had destroyed her. All she had to do was go home with him, feed him a few more beers, and bring him to the edge. Slowly kiss his clothes off, but keep her own on. Then, as he stood there naked, anticipating, she could say, “Oh that’s right, we broke up,” and leave.

It was then that she realized what she wanted more than to destroy him: She wanted to get back together. That thought alone saved her.

She smiled up at him and pushed him away, saying, “How about instead I find you a ride home, and then tomorrow morning you call your girlfriend and buy her flowers for no reason.”

D
etective Sergeant Gilbert Montoya of the Special Investigations Team shifted in his desk chair, his .45-caliber Smith & Wesson digging into his side. He pushed his gun belt lower on his waist and wished that he still had his .357-caliber revolver. Six months ago the Santa Fe Police Department had switched to standardized weapons. Administration said that the stainless-steel Smith & Wesson, with its fixed sight and nine-shot magazine, was the weapon “best suited for the police mission”—at least according to the memo. The officers were still complaining about having to take three full-day training sessions in order to pass the shooting qualifications.

Gil had spent most of the morning entering reports. They had just finished a fairly routine drug murder the night before, with Gil in charge of the suspect interrogation, which took only a few hours. He looked at the clock on his desk. 8:22
A.M.
He kept glancing at the time every few minutes until it said 8:30. Yesterday he had called fifteen minutes late and he could tell that she had been worried. His picked up his phone and hit speed dial. His mother answered with a weak “Hello?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi,
mi hito.”
He waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.

“How was church?” His mother went to morning Mass
every day, walking the quarter mile down the dirt road to the small chapel.

“Just fine.” She paused a little and said, “Father Adam wants to know when you’re going to go to church again.”

“Mom, I go every Sunday with Susan and the girls to Santa María de la Paz. You know that.” This was a familiar conversation, one they had almost once a month. He was never quite sure if his mother was becoming senile and forgot that they had talked about it, or if she disapproved of Gil’s going to the newly built Santa María instead of driving the thirty miles every Sunday to their family church in Galisteo. The one his great-great-grandfather had helped build. Or at least paid to have built.

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.”