The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,25

plenty of room on the inside front pages, but the local section was going to be tight.

Lopez said nothing, just looked at her intently. Lucy hoped that she hadn’t just gotten herself in trouble. Not that Lopez would ever say anything. He wasn’t that kind of manager. He was more like Beaver Cleaver’s dad. He didn’t get mad, only deeply disappointed, but his disappointment was something she didn’t want.

“What’s the story with the Baca killing? What do we have?” Lucy asked.

Her boss, City Editor Harold Richards, looked at Lopez, who nodded.

“Melissa Baca was killed sometime yesterday,” Richards said. “She was from Santa Fe. I sent Tommy Martinez to talk to the family. He called an hour ago. He got a little info from some of his sources. Looks like she was twenty-three years old and a seventh-grade teacher at that private school, the Burroway Academy. Her father was a cop. He was one of the officers killed during that shootout seven years ago.” A few of the heads around the table nodded. They remembered. Richards went on, but Lucy stopped listening. She wondered if it meant something that Melissa Baca’s father had been a cop.

Gil drove up to the cinder-block house. Its white paint contrasted with the adobe-brown houses that surrounded it. The neighborhood was middle-class and had few crime problems. Only a minor break-in every few months. The Baca house had a neat mesh-wire fence around it that was covered in ivy turned brown in the winter weather. There had been an attempt at grass in the front yard, but the dirt was taking over. There were cars everywhere. He would have suspected a party if he’d been just a neighbor passing by.

He knocked on the door. It was answered by a woman he didn’t know. He asked for Ron Baca first, but the woman said Ron wasn’t there, adding that she thought he was at work. Gil knew that Kline had given Ron some time off, but Ron might have picked up a shift. It was what Gil would have done. Get out of the house and get your mind on something—anything—else. Next he asked for Mrs. Baca. He had to show the woman his badge before he was let in. The house was crowded. Children sat on the floor watching Sesame Street on television. The letter of the day was M. Adults sat on couches and chairs along the walls. No one noticed him.

He heard voices in a back bedroom. All the lights in the room were on, even the closet light. Mrs. Baca sat on the bed and she wasn’t alone.

Gil recognized the woman with her—Veronica Cordova, Officer Manny Cordova’s mother. Manny had said that the two women were friends. Their husbands, both police officers, had died in the same shootout seven years ago. Their sons had grown up together and had been in the police academy together. Ron was now Manny’s sergeant.

Mrs. Baca and Mrs. Cordova sat on the bed, holding some blue cloth between them. Gil stepped into the room and they looked up, guiltily. He saw that the cloth was a bath towel.

Veronica Cordova dropped her edge of the towel and spoke first. “We were just looking at Melissa’s things. We found this on the bathroom floor. I thought … I thought if Maxine could just feel something … something that was one of the last things that Melissa used, it would …”

Gil said nothing. Grief made people do strange things. Mrs. Baca was still wearing the same stained blouse. She gripped her half of the towel, wringing it.

Gil sat down next to her on the bed.

“I just came to see how you are. I haven’t learned anything yet,” he said.

Maxine nodded.

He went on. “What can you tell me about …” He was about to say Melissa’s name but had the sudden thought that if he did so, Mrs. Baca would break down. “What can you tell me about Monday night?”

He leaned closer as she started quietly. “She came home from school about five o’clock. She stayed in her room until dinner. We had cold pizza, leftovers from Pizza Hut. She left right after eight o’clock. I thought she was going to see Jonathan.” Gil assumed that Jonathan was Melissa’s “gringo” boyfriend that Manny Cordova had mentioned.

“But you actually didn’t know where she was going?” Gil asked. Maxine shook her head.

“Do you have a guess? Did she say anything during dinner that might have given an indication of where she was going?” He