The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,12
interesting cases pop up?” she asked, still smiling. “Maybe a dead body or some such thing? Maybe someone tossed off a bridge somewhere?”
When Lucy had stopped by the newspaper earlier in the morning to pick up her paycheck, the managing editor had told her about a body being found in the Taos Gorge. They didn’t know much. A purse was found on the bridge, which probably meant that the victim was a female. No car around, so most likely not a suicide. Tommy Martinez had been pulled off the Gomez trial to cover it. He was on his way to Taos with one of the photographers.
Detective Montoya showed no surprise when she mentioned it, but maybe a hint of interest. Maybe. She said, “So, let’s play a little game here, Detective. A game of ‘what if.’ What if that body that the police officers were talking about on the scanner last night was the one found in Taos Gorge?”
“Taos is a long way away and that body wasn’t found until just this morning, but you heard this conversation last night,” Detective Montoya said.
“Yeah, but what if,” she smiled again, and, surprisingly, he smiled back, “there was prior knowledge of the death?”
“You mean what if one of my officers knew about the killing last night? That seems very unlikely, considering the circumstances.”
“But what if they committed the murder?” she said.
“Well, it couldn’t have been a Santa Fe police officer because none of us are dumb enough to talk about murdering someone over the scanner,” he said, really smiling now. “Maybe try over at the state police.”
Lucy started laughing at his unexpected humor. She had been trying to piss him off, but instead he’d made her laugh out loud. She pulled her business card out of her wallet and said, “Can you call me if you hear anything? I’ll be at work until late tonight.”
Montoya glanced down at her card. “I didn’t know editors did this kind of legwork.” His smile was now gone. She had a feeling that his smiles were rare. Maybe only a once-a-day event, not like her once-every-few-minutes.
“Once a cops reporter, always a cops reporter.” She wished him good-bye and left, followed out by a fresh burst of laughter from the group of officers.
Gil was getting up to leave when Officer Joe Phillips stopped by his desk.
“Good job last night,” Phillips said. Gil said thanks and was about to leave when Officer Manny Cordova came up.
“Gil, man, you are the man,” Cordova said with a slap on Gil’s back and a handshake. “I mean, you are my hero. You should have seen the look on that Mexican kid’s face when you read him his rights. The kid was like, ‘What the hell happened?’”
“What did happen?” Phillips asked Cordova. “All I know is that Montoya here,” he poked a thumb Gil’s way, “solved a murder case in two hours. Like it’s some office record.”
Cordova smiled and started the story before Gil could put a stop to it.
“So we get a 10-44 and I’m first on scene,” Cordova says with a swagger in his voice. “It’s a Mexican national. He’s already way dead, I mean door nail. He was stabbed or something. Lots of blood. So Gil gets there and does his thing and finds out that the dude was arrested for drug dealing last month along with his cousin. But no one knows where the cousin is. So Gil tells the wife to have the cousin come down to the police station as soon as he shows up.”
Gil glanced at his watch, wishing that Cordova would hurry up so he could leave and get started on the Melissa Baca case, but Cordova was just warming to his story.
“So the cousin shows up here like within a half hour, wearing like jeans and a black shirt with one of those tye-dyed T-shirts underneath, and we take him to interrogation. The kid keeps whining and saying,” Cordova changed his voice to a Speedy Gonzales accent, “‘I didn’t do nothing.’” Phillips started to laugh, but Cordova shushed him with a wave of his hand before saying, “So Gil has me get the kid a Coke, which I’m thinking, ‘Why am I getting this a-hole a Coke?’ As soon as I set it down in front of the kid, Gil ‘accidentally,’” Cordova made quote marks with his fingers, “spills the Coke on the kid’s pants, right on the crotch, so it looks like he peed himself.”