The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,43
stupid reason and that was that.”
“Did she ever see the guy again?”
“You mean recently? Not that I know of. If she did, she didn’t mention it.”
“What about the new boyfriend—Jonathan Hammond?”
“I think they were having a little trouble … not that she ever said anything. With Melissa you had to watch the way she said things. Like last week I asked how things were going between them and she said, ‘As well as might be expected.’ In Melissa-speak, that meant something was wrong. But she wouldn’t tell me any more. My guess is that she was going to break it off.”
“What do you think of her boyfriend?”
He could tell that she didn’t like the question. She answered it carefully. “I think he was a step up from her usual loser.”
“But still a loser?”
She hesitated again. “I think he’s not a nice person.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighed. “He never really thought about her. This one time he wanted her to spend the night at his place, but she had the flu. She wanted to go home. He gave her this long speech about her lack of commitment to their relationship and how she only thought of herself. He even took out this psychology book and read to her something in it about narcissistic people. She was so achy she could hardly move, and she was being selfish?”
“But he never threatened her? Was he the jealous type?”
“No. He was too snooty for that. Truthfully, I think he was a white boy who liked having a morenita girlfriend that he could show around to all his white friends.”
“What makes you think so?”
“He was always saying stuff. Like whenever he had to repeat something to Melissa if she didn’t hear him, he’d say, ‘Maybe I should say it in Spanish so you’d understand.’ He was just being condescending. He knew she didn’t speak Spanish.”
Gil nodded. Melissa was like many Hispanics native to Northern New Mexico: of Hispanic descent but not Spanish-speaking. Most of Gil’s family didn’t know Spanish, either. The Judge had made sure that Gil learned it.
Judy Maes was wiping tears from her eyes with her fingertips.
“Let’s get back to the drugs,” he said. “Did you ever see her do any? Pot? Anything?”
“Are you insane? She would have died first.” Realizing what she had just said, Judy covered her eyes.
“Can you think of any reason why she might have had drugs in her car?”
“She wouldn’t even know how to buy drugs. That person who wrote that story in the paper should be shot.” Her voice turned cold. “Melissa wasn’t a tecata. She wasn’t an addict. She hardly drank caffeine. I smoked a joint once in college and she bought me books on the dangers of pot. She wanted me to go with her to some Narcotics Anonymous meeting. All this for taking just one hit off a joint. She said drugs were the devil.”
Gil wondered what could possibly have happened to make Melissa give in to the devil. Going from no drugs to injecting heroin in just a few months was a long, hard fall. Who or what had given her that push?
Lucy watched the Santa Fe County deputies secure the dead woman’s home. The first officer on scene had instructed her and Gerald not to leave. Not that she would have. They sat in the ambulance, waiting.
She had no way of knowing whether the dead woman was Scanner Lady. She had never seen Scanner Lady, never known her name, never known where she lived. All Lucy knew was her voice.
“Gerald, how many old ladies in Santa Fe do you think listen to police scanners? A few, right? At least more than one? Maybe more like six? With a population of a hundred thousand between the city and the county, maybe more like ten or twenty. How unusual is it? It can’t be that weird a hobby.”
She knew she was rambling. She had been for the past ten minutes. Gerald sat quietly, listening to her, not commenting. She had told him everything—about Scanner Lady’s call, about talking to Detective Montoya.
She kept talking. “This is just a coincidence. Maybe the dead woman ran a meth lab in her guest bedroom and that’s why she had a police scanner. Who knows? Just because a woman who owns a scanner gets killed right after I look into a phone call from a woman who owns a scanner doesn’t mean the two incidents are related.” She winced at her words—not only was she rambling, she wasn’t making