The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,19

woman who lives near Oñate Park saw Melissa’s car there when she came home at exactly nine ten P.M. She remembers because she was late for some TV show she watches. Anyway, the woman remembers seeing Melissa’s car. She thought maybe it belonged to a hooker or a drug dealer. You know what that park is like. Oh, and we found blood on the back bumper that we think is Melissa’s.”

Gil thought for a minute. “Her body must have been already cold when she was dumped, or the snow on top of her would have completely melted. She was probably killed in Oñate Park around eight thirty P.M. and brought up here in another car.” He watched a sedan full of gawkers slowly roll by.

She hadn’t been alive when she fell. He felt no relief.

It was only one P.M. when Lucy started back to Santa Fe from the santuario. She toyed with the idea of stopping at one of the pueblo casinos, just to see what they were like inside, but she didn’t have enough nerve to play blackjack or enough quarters to play slots. She contented herself with driving too fast and singing along with a 1980s radio station. She was well into an old Journey song when she crested the top of Opera Hill and saw the city of Santa Fe sprawled out below her. There were no high-rises to block the view, only earth-hugging houses that flowed into the curves of the hills. Not obstructing the landscape but being a part of it. None of the usual “we must dominate the world with our massive structures” city-building mentality.

Santa Fe was set up like an amphitheater, with the Plaza as its stage and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains as its backdrop. Throughout the years, the city had been built in semicircles around the Plaza, with the older houses closest to it and the newest subdivisions out in the cheap seats. The Plaza, built as the center of the conquistadores’ fort, was still the center of everything Santa Fe.

Lucy drove into town and made her way through traffic. She had two hours to kill before she had to be at work. She decided to get some errands out of the way. She went to the bank to deposit her paycheck and then over to Wal-Mart.

A half hour later, she was on her way to the checkout line to pay for her merchandise—Clearasil and Lysol—when she saw Gerald Trujillo walk in. Lucy dodged into the greeting-card aisle and peeked around the corner. She watched him select a grocery cart.

Gerald was someone she liked, someone she respected. He was also someone she would rather not see. When she and Del had first broken up, she’d done the usual five stages of grief, although in her case it was twenty stages, with most being variations on anger and denial. Her mother had suggested that Lucy keep herself busy—take classes, explore Santa Fe. Like all things in Lucy’s life, she overdid it. She signed up for yoga, rock climbing, gardening, and Spanish. She also signed up for a week-long emergency-medic class. Her main reason for taking the class was purely lust driven: The man teaching it—Gerald Trujillo—was beautiful. She had met him—and ogled quite a bit—when he dropped off a press release at the newspaper announcing the class.

But she had a secondary reason for taking the class: it was held the week she and Del were supposed to have taken a fun-filled trip to L.A. She thought that spending her vacation flirting with her teacher would be better than sitting at home crying over her failed relationship.

But things didn’t go as she’d planned. Somehow, she managed to get herself signed up as a first-responder medic for the Piñon Volunteer Fire Department, where Gerald was a paramedic. Then she found out that Gerald was very married.

Gerald glanced Lucy’s way, and she ducked down the aisle, pretending to be very interested in the sympathy-card selection. She was absentmindedly reading a belated-birthday card when she noticed a boxed Barbie doll perched in the get-well-soon section.

It was a Tropical Scent Barbie, with the smell of exotic flowers built right into her skin. Lucy had the sudden urge to throw a rope around the Barbie’s neck and hang her from a rearview mirror. It could be a new marketing ploy—Tropical Scent Barbie: She’s fun to play with and makes a stylish air freshener!

Lucy picked up the Barbie, tucked it under her arm, and went off in search of