The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,34
but I thought they just always ask that.”
Gil looked at her carefully. He said softly, “Mrs. Baca, I’m going to have to ask you the same question the state police did, but this time I really want you to think about it. Take your time. Looking back, did anything seem out of the ordinary, anything that would make you think Melissa might have been using drugs?”
She collapsed onto the hard tile floor before Gil could catch her.
Mrs. Baca woke up a few minutes later. Gil had called an ambulance, but she didn’t want to go to the hospital. The paramedics checked her out and said that she was fine. He called Ron but got his voice mail. In the end, Mrs. Cordova came and took Mrs. Baca off to bed.
Gil was outside, about to call his mom, when Kline called back. The state police were launching an internal investigation into the leak to the media. Kline had somehow used the problem to get Gil added as a limited member of the investigation team. He would be required to submit a daily written report and call Pollack twice a day to update him on any progress. In return, the state police would decide on a case-by-case basis what information they would release to him.
The situation felt, as The Judge used to say, hinky. It was strictly a state-police investigation, and Gil was wondering why they had agreed to have him as part of the team.
After hanging up with Kline, Gil called Pollack back to get his assignment and see if there was anything else the state police hadn’t told him.
Pollack answered by saying, “Gil, man, we’re going to partner. Cool. I guess that’s the upside of this whole leak thing.” Pollack sounded like a middle-school kid who had finally found someone to share his adolescent secrets with.
“Anyway,” Pollack continued, “we sent the syringe and the drugs to be tested at the crime lab, but we won’t have those results back anytime soon. We also interviewed her family last night. The mom and brother are in the clear. I guess they were together when the girl got popped.” Pollack stopped for a second, then said, “Sorry, dude, I shouldn’t have said it that way. That was really cold. I forgot you knew the family.” Pollack went on to say that Ron Baca had asked for permission to go to a cabin in Pecos for a while, which the state police and Chief Kline had granted.
“I guess he’s really broke up about his sister and wanted to be by himself out in the woods,” Pollack said. “You know how it is. It’s what I’d do. I talked to him a little bit. He wants us to call as soon as we get anything.”
“He’s leaving his mother by herself?” Gil asked, surprised. “She really isn’t doing very well.”
“Seriously?” Pollack asked. “She sounded fine last night. I’ll call and tell him to check on her.”
Before he hung up, Pollack told Gil to go to Melissa’s school. Gil’s job was to reinterview the boyfriend, a fellow teacher named Jonathan Hammond, whom the state police had already talked to, and find out where Melissa had been the day she died, from four P.M., when she was seen leaving school, to five P.M., when she came home. The state police were focusing on what had happened after she left home at eight P.M. Gil’s assignment was less juicy—for all they knew, she’d spent the hour getting food at McDonald’s—but he didn’t mind. He was doing necessary police work but staying out of the state police’s way.
Gil had to make one more phone call—to his mom—before he could get on the road. She answered after the fifth ring. She sounded tired.
“Mom, did you check your blood sugar today?” he asked. As always, she didn’t answer. He tried something different: “What did you have for breakfast?”
“Oh, just coffee.”
“Mom, you really need to eat more than that.” “I’m not hungry, hito.”
He gave up and said good-bye. It was nine A.M. before he got to the Burroway Academy. The school had several square, flat-topped buildings connected by covered walkways. Gil stopped and checked in at the front desk, then wandered the hallways of the school, walking past drug-awareness banners and posters urging abstinence. No hand-drawn pictures of ponies and rabbits like at his daughter’s elementary school. A few students were in the halls, opening lockers plastered with pictures of Beyoncé as well as other entertainers he didn’t recognize.