The Replacement Child Read online

  Mrs. Schoen blended into the scene with her cowboy boots, broom skirt, and checkered vest. An elderly Dale Evans. With a touch of alcohol on her breath and smeared, bright pink lipstick. Old-lady-colored lipstick.

  They sat down on the geometric couch with Mrs. Schoen twisting a Kleenex in her hands and occasionally dabbing at her eyes. Lucy guessed her to be about seventy. Mrs. Schoen was drinking a brown liquid from a coffee cup, but Lucy was sure that it wasn’t coffee.

  “How are you holding up?” Lucy asked.

  “Like hell,” Mrs. Schoen said. “The police asked me if I heard anything last night but I didn’t hear a thing. I wish I had; maybe I could have done something. I would have given that robber a piece of my mind. I just saw Patsy yesterday and she felt fine.”

  As if getting murdered has something to do with your health, Lucy thought.

  She nodded. “So, tell me about Mrs. Burke.” Lucy hadn’t been a reporter in more than a year, but she asked open-ended questions out of habit.

  “We were going to go to Hobby Lobby today to get her a job. And tomorrow we were supposed to get together with a bunch of blue widows and play bridge like we always do.”

  Lucy was nodding and saying things like, “You don’t say?” at places where she thought it was appropriate.

  Mrs. Schoen started crying again. “Why would someone hurt Patsy? She was just an old lady. She would have let the robber take whatever he wanted. That goddamn asshole.”

  Lucy tried to hide a smile. An old lady who cursed and drank. Maybe that would be Lucy in fifty years. As Mrs. Schoen continued to talk, Lucy considered how to broach the real reason why she was there. She was too tired to be truly devious, so she decided just to switch the subject. Maybe Mrs. Schoen in her grief-and-alcohol-induced haze wouldn’t notice.

  “When I was in Mrs. Burke’s house, I noticed a police scanner.”

  “Oh yes, she loves to listen to that thing, bless her heart.”

  “Why did she have it? It’s an odd thing to have around.”

  “She likes to have it for background noise. I never understood why she doesn’t just turn on some music, but it’s her business.”

  “You know, I have a friend who has a scanner and calls up the newspaper whenever she hears anything interesting.” Which was a lie.

  Mrs. Schoen jumped in excitedly. “Patsy does that, too.” Lucy let out the breath she’d been holding. “She loves to call the newspaper about something she hears and see if it’s in the paper the next day. She just crows and crows about it when that happens, bless her heart.”

  “Do you know how often Mrs. Burke would call the newspaper?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe once a week or so. It depends on what she hears. She doesn’t talk to me about it much because she knows I think it’s a damn waste of time. You’ve got better things to do in life than to call up the newspaper.”

  Lucy changed the subject again. Mrs. Schoen didn’t seem to notice the jumping around.

  “I didn’t see any ashtrays in the house. Was Mrs. Burke a smoker? It’s just good to know for our medical files.” Lie number two.

  “Hell no. She hates the stuff. I think it gets her sick.”

  “Did she have any breathing problems? Maybe asthma?”

  “She had some bronchitis last year that she was having a hard time getting rid of. And of course she has allergies.” Of course. Everyone in Santa Fe had allergies. Allergies and bronchitis would account for Scanner Lady’s raspy voice and occasional coughing fits.

  “Mrs. Schoen, I was also wondering if you had a videotape of Mrs. Burke or maybe a tape recording? Maybe an old message she left on your answering machine? I sometimes like to hear the voices of patients I was never able to meet.” This last lie was the biggest but Lucy breezed past it.

  “Oh, that is so sweet.” Lucy cringed. “But I don’t have anything like that. Sorry.”

  Lucy rose from the couch and said her good-byes. At the door, Mrs. Schoen said, “Thank you for stopping by, bless your heart. I just hope they catch that asshole before I do.”

  Gil stayed at the station doing reports and trying to get hold of Pollack. At five P.M., he got into his car and took the interstate north, toward Eldorado and his mom’s house. He triple checked his speed before he set his cruise control for five miles under the seventy-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. Twenty minutes later he got off the freeway and slowed as he drove into Eldorado, where he stopped at a Texaco to fill up. As he pumped his gas he stared across the highway at the Eldorado subdivision. He and Susan had looked at three houses in the area. She liked the elementary school, which was better than the public schools in town. Eldorado was also only ten minutes from his mother’s house. They were looking at four-bedroom houses, planning ahead to when his mom came to live with them.

  He turned and looked at the other cars at the gas station, checking for strange behavior or stolen cars. But this was Eldorado. The four SUVs in the parking lot showed signs of doubling as minivans. In one car, Gil saw a child’s car seat correctly buckled in, and another car had a bumper sticker that read MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT ELDORADO ELEMENTARY.

  He went inside the gas station to pay. It took him a second to realize that he was the only Hispanic in the store. There were an elderly couple, a woman and her two young kids, and a man in a business suit. Gil paid the female cashier, who had a sunny smile and wished him a nice day.

  He took the highway south into the grassy Galisteo Basin, then turned to follow the train tracks past more new ranches. At some point his family had owned this land, but the deed to the property had been eaten by mice, so when the Americans came, his family couldn’t prove that they owned it. Back then, one of his relatives had tried to stay on the land to protect the acequia that irrigated the family gardens and orchards. But someone had hit the man over the head with a shovel and killed him. The acequia had since grown over. Gil and Elena had gone on expeditions as kids to try to find the acequia, pretending that they were conquistadores. He had made them aluminum-foil helmets and swords and carefully made maps of their route. They found petroglyphs and an old kiva left by the Galisteo Pueblo Indians, but not the irrigation ditch.

  He pulled up to his parents’ house and went inside to the kitchen. His mom had made an enchilada and green-chile casserole. He kissed her cheek as she pulled the casserole out of the oven.

  “Here, hito, I was keeping this warm for you,” she said as she scooped out a spoonful and set it at his usual place at the table.

  “Mom, before I eat, I’m taking your blood sugar. Where’s your machine?”

  She waved her hand and said, “I lent it to your aunt Sally. She thinks Uncle Benito is having a problem.” His mother never used the word diabetes. She always called it a problem.

  “Mom …” he started, ready to question her about it. But instead he said, “I’ll get you a new one.”

  He took a few bites of the casserole, then got up to get milk out of the refrigerator. As he pulled the fridge door, the hinge Jammed. The open door settled below the outer frame and pulled the entire weight of the fridge forward.

  “Mom, how long has this door been like this?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A month or so.”

  He opened and closed the door several more times to see how the hinge was broken so that he could fix it. He also opened the freezer to check its hinges. It was fine. He was about to close the freezer door when the movement dislodged one of the packages in the freezer. It came sliding out slowly. He caught it like a football. The package was wrapped in butcher paper. He saw “10/11” written on it in his father’s big handwriting. Below it was “Brown Trout. Rio Chama.” He remembered when his dad had caught the fish; he had called Gil at college and told him about it, laughing as he remembered how he had slipped into the river as he reeled the fish in. Gil put the package back in its place on top of the other frozen fish. He had never asked his mother why a stack of fish Dad had caught ten years ago was still in the freezer, and he probably never wo
uld.

  Gil closed the freezer door and went outside to the workshop to get the tools he needed. The workshop was a shed almost attached to the house. It was a small room with two windows. A collection of old fishing rods stood in the corner. There were a few made of hazel and some of ash. His father had believed in using a six-foot rod, saying that it gave him the precision he needed in the fast mountain streams. Gil’s old rod had also been six feet. Susan and the girls had gotten him a new one for Christmas. An eight-and-a-half-foot carbon fiber rod, zero weight, with titanium line rings, a cork grip, and a light trout reel. He hadn’t used it yet.

  He found the Phillips screwdriver and took it and the pliers back into the kitchen, shutting off the workshop light behind him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Wednesday Night

  Maxine Baca sat in her car in the driveway, not able to remember why she was there. She had been left alone to sleep while Veronica Cordova went to pick up some groceries. As soon as Veronica closed the front door, Maxine had gotten out of bed and into the car. But she didn’t know why.

  She watched her breath on the windows. She thought about driving her car through the closed garage door, but there was no one left who would care if she did. She climbed out of the car and tried to pull open the garage door, remembering too late that Ron had put in an electric door last month. She got back into her car, found the door opener, and pulled her car in.

  Still she didn’t get out of her car. She sat in the dark garage and thought about Ernesto. He had built the garage five years after they were married. He had said that he wanted her to have a place to put her washer and dryer, but he’d really built it to have a place to put his worktable. His tools that used to hang on the walls of the garage were at Ron’s mobile home. Almost everything that was Ernesto’s was gone. She had made sure of that. There was only one box left on the shelf in the back of the garage. She shifted in her seat so that she could see it. In it were his awards from the police department and things from his desk at the station.

  When she’d heard that Ernesto had been killed, she wanted all his things out of the house. She gave his clothes to the Salvation Army and his car to Manny Cordova. She’d thrown his favorite coffee cup in the trash. She didn’t remember much of his funeral. She remembered being helped by Melissa into a wheelchair she had gotten from somewhere. Melissa had pushed her into the church for the funeral and pushed her into the cemetery for the burial. Ron might have been around somewhere, but she didn’t remember. She thought she remembered Melissa putting her back into bed. The whole thing seemed like she was watching TV. The morning after the funeral, Maxine had gotten up and put on her apron. She’d cooked up some eggs and swept the front porch. Ron had shown up for breakfast in a police uniform. She hadn’t cried. What did it matter? It would be better if Ron died quickly, so that they could buy the plot next to Ernesto and Daniel and bury him there. Everything was out of her hands and in God’s.

  That same day, a police officer had brought over the box of things from Ernesto’s desk. She didn’t care enough to throw the box out. Melissa had sat on the living-room floor and gone through it. Whoever had emptied out his desk had tossed everything into the box—paper clips, a half-eaten Milky Way bar, a few pens. All Maxine had been able to think about was that it was getting her living-room carpet dirty. She’d had Melissa put the box on the shelf in the garage and hadn’t thought about it for seven years.

  But there was something in the box that she wanted now. Something she had just remembered was in it. Ernesto’s police revolver. Maxine got slowly out of her car, wondering if she could reach the box without getting out a stepladder.

  Gil sat at the head of the dinner table, taking a helping of mashed potatoes. Susan sat at the other end, with their two daughters between.

  “Joy, how did the Bandelier trip go yesterday?” he asked.

  “Boring and stupid,” she said sullenly.

  Gil pretended that he hadn’t heard her. “Remember when we used to go there when you were little?”

  She glared at him and said to Susan, “Can I be excused?”

  They had been sitting down for only a few minutes, but Susan nodded. Joy went running to her room.

  Susan, who was acting as if nothing had happened, said to Gil, “When you bury St. Joseph, make sure and put a garbage bag over him. I don’t want him to get dirty….”

  “But, Mommy,” Therese interrupted. “If you put one of the black bags over St. Joseph he won’t be able to see.”

  “That’s true,” Gil said. “How about I put a clear bag over him?” Therese nodded her approval.

  She and Susan talked for the rest of the dinner about her classroom’s newt and a friend named Zookie, whom Gil had never heard of.

  He was in the kitchen, rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, when Susan came up behind him.

  “Don’t take it personally, she just doesn’t like any man right now,” she said as she rubbed his shoulder. “The Bandelier trip didn’t go well.”

  “Why not?” He turned to look at her, softly brushing the hair out of her eyes.

  “The boy she likes completely ignored her and instead talked to Jennifer Vigil the whole time.”

  “What boy?” This was the first he had heard of a boy.

  “I promised I wouldn’t tell,” was all she would say before shooing him out of the kitchen.

  He changed into his sweatpants and went out into the freezing garage.

  He did three sets of twenty jumping jacks to warm up. The only sound was the slapping of his tennis shoes against the concrete floor. He opened the garage door and started out at a brisk run. He jogged every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday right after dinner. He started slowly, waiting for his muscles to warm up, then took it up a notch. He checked his watch as he rounded a corner, then took it up some more.

  His basketball coach had made him start running when he was fifteen. He was at St. Michael’s High School and just starting to reach his eventual six feet two inches. By his senior year he’d been an all-state point guard. He’d been good enough to get a basketball scholarship to the University of New Mexico to play for the Lobos.

  As he rounded a corner he slipped a little on some ice he hadn’t noticed in the dark. He kept going, picking up the pace, mostly to fight off the cold.

  He had never played a game for the Lobos. He had torn his rotator cuff during a practice the second week of school, when his shoulder hit the head of another player. His shoulder had never completely healed: that was why he couldn’t wear a shoulder holster and had to wear a gun belt.

  He’d started dating Susan his junior year. Two weeks after graduation they were married. He’d gone to UNM law school while she supported them with an accounting job at a doctor’s office. Two years away from graduation, Susan had become pregnant. A week later, his father had died. He’d dropped out of law school, and they moved back to Santa Fe. And he’d gotten the only job he could take with some dignity.

  He slowed as he came near a suspicious-looking car parked in the street. There was a man sitting in the driver’s seat in the dark. Gil jogged slowly, making sure to stay in the driver’s blind spot. As he neared the passenger-side door, the man got out of the car and walked into a house. Gil sped up again, feeling the cold starting to work on his toes.

  His family disapproved of his becoming anything other than a lawyer. Supposedly, back in the 1600s, one of the first Montoyas had been appointed acalde, the colonial equivalent of a judge, but that Montoya had been thrown out of office by the locals and sent back to Spain. The Judge would pull out newspaper clippings written in Spanish about Montoya mayors and governors and articles in English about Montoya state senators and congressmen. All of them had been lawyers, just like Gil’s father.

  At the family fiestas, relatives would still say things to Gil like, “The Judge had such hopes for you,” or, “The Judge must be turning over in his grave.” Gil would just walk away.

  At a fiesta last year, his father’s
cousin, his face red from alcohol and with tamale crumbs clinging to his black mustache, had said, “Your dad would be so disappointed in you.” Gil turned slowly to look at him. Gil was about a foot taller and could see the bald spot on the back of his cousin’s head. The cousin backed up quickly, almost tripping over a picnic bench. Elena was suddenly next to him, putting a hand on his arm and steering him away from the crowd. She said, “Did you know that the first Montoya to come to New Mexico with the conquistadores was out chasing ambulance carts within a day?” He didn’t answer her, so she squeezed his arm and said, “There are fifteen generations of Montoyas going to a hell made especially for lawyers. I’m just glad you won’t be there with them.” She smiled. “Besides, I’ll be there to keep them company.” Elena had been in her first year at UNM’s law school at the time. Now she was finishing up an internship at the state attorney’s office.

  He saw the lights of his house down the street and slowed to a trot.

  Lucy had gotten to work late and missed the editors’ meeting. Now she was at her desk, trying to concentrate. She was having a hard time of it. The photo caption she was editing seemed not to make any sense. Half the words were misspelled and no one was identified. The photo itself was great—the director of the Santa Fe ski area was looking forlornly at the ugly brown patches of dirt on his ski slopes. The photo was running tomorrow with a story about the weather. No snow was in the forecast for the next week.

  Her boss, City Editor Harold Richards, was editing the article about Patsy Burke’s murder. Harold didn’t normally read stories. He was doing it because Lucy couldn’t. It would have been a conflict of interest for Lucy to edit the story since she had been at the crime scene as a medic, not a journalist. It was one of those ethics rules that her University of Florida professors had hammered into her. She hadn’t actually told Harold why he needed to edit the story instead of her. And she didn’t plan on telling him. She would never have this problem again—never inadvertently run across a dead body—since she wasn’t planning on staying a volunteer medic at Piñon.