The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,101
him there were pictures to prove he molested some girl and that if he helped us, we’d give them back to him,” Manny said. His tears were starting to dry up.
“Did you see the pictures?” Pollack asked.
“No. Melissa showed them to Ron and told him that Strunk was dating one of her students. I guess she wanted Strunk arrested or something. When I called Strunk, I just repeated what Ron told me to.”
“What happened next?” Pollack asked.
“That Strunk guy shows up fifteen minutes later, I guess about eight forty-five P.M., maybe a little bit earlier. We put Melissa …” Manny hesitated. “We put her in the trunk of his car. Ron told him to toss her off the bridge in Taos to make it look like a drug deal. And it got her out of our police district.”
“And you went back on patrol?” Pollack asked.
“Yeah. I went to an alarm check.”
“And Ron was at his mom’s house fixing the washing machine when you called him?” A nod from Manny. “Whose idea was it to lie to Detective Montoya about seeing Melissa buy drugs the day she died?”
“Ron’s. We did it to throw you guys off the track. He said it would be okay because we’d be getting Hector Morales off the streets. And we told the newspaper that she did drugs.” The anonymous sources Lucy had tried to tell Gil about.
“Did you talk to Ron Baca again the night Melissa died?” Pollack asked. Gil was pretty sure he knew where Pollack was headed with the question.
“Don’t you mean was murdered?” the DA said.
Manny answered Pollack. “I called Ron on his cell phone. I wanted to turn myself in to the state police and call the OMI, but he talked me out of it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he didn’t think I should ruin my career over something that wasn’t my fault.”
“What time was the phone call?”
“About eleven thirty P.M. or so.” Pollack looked directly at Gil through the two-way mirror. Gil knew what he was thinking: Cordova’s call to Ron Baca on Monday night was the cell-phone call that Scanner Lady had overheard. Lucy was right.
“Manny, were you on patrol Tuesday night?”
“Yeah. A rookie was doing a ride-along with me.” Which meant that he was with someone all night, making it impossible for him to have killed Scanner Lady.
“Manny,” Pollack said, “why do you think Ron helped you get rid of Melissa’s body?”
Without hesitating, Manny said, “Because Ron’s a good friend. He’s like my brother.”
Taking a break from the questioning, Pollack and Gil stood in the parking lot of the state police station. Pollack had wanted to get as far away as possible from the DA. When they left the interview room, Gil had heard Pollack say to the DA, “He’s still a police officer,” overlapped by the DA saying, “He’s a cold-blooded killer.”
Now, in the parking lot, Gil watched Pollack pace. Pollack was smarter than Gil had given him credit for. Much smarter. Pollack had purposely not asked Manny about Patsy Burke’s killing. If he had, the defense would have known that there were more charges to be added against Manny, and they would have ended his confession.
Plus, their case for Mrs. Burke’s murder was weak. The sheriff’s deputies had recovered very little physical evidence at the crime scene. If they told Manny Cordova’s lawyer about it now, before they had a chance to question Ken Strunk or Ron Baca, they would ruin their chances of making the case.
“We have got to find Ron Baca. It was him, wasn’t it?” Pollack asked. Gil nodded. He knew what Pollack was talking about: Ron Baca had killed Patsy Burke. There was no one else left. Manny had been paired with a rookie cop Tuesday night. Strunk had been at the hospital with his wife. That left Ron.
“But how the hell did Ron know that Mrs. Burke was what’s-her-name—this Scanner Lady that editor told you about? How did he know that Mrs. Burke was the one who overheard their cell-phone call? He couldn’t have known her name. Dammit. How did he know to kill her?” Pollack said, kicking at a gum wrapper on the ground. “But I’m starting to think Ron Baca is a goddamn genius. He gets Cordova to call Strunk and gets Strunk to toss Melissa’s body, and the whole time Ron’s playing fix-it man at his mom’s. This guy is good. He had no real involvement. We can’t really prove a goddamn thing. All we have is that maybe