The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,61
killed and didn’t leave until after her body had been dumped. The state police were right; it meant that Ron wasn’t involved. His running off to the mountains wasn’t out of guilt. It was nothing more than mourning.
Gil made it to his mother’s house in twenty-five minutes. He found his mother pulling a fresh batch of bizcochitos out of the oven. She still made the cookies out of lard, not shortening, and put sliced almonds on top instead of the way Susan made them with the colored sprinkles.
“Oh, hito, I’m almost done with these,” she said as she put the next dozen into the oven. “Your dinner is in the refrigerator.”
He took out a plate of leftover green-chile enchilada casserole and sat at the table to eat.
“Mom, you never called and told me what your blood sugar was,” he said.
“Oh, I didn’t want to bother you at your work.”
He shook his head. “What was the number?”
His mother didn’t answer right away. She was taking the cookies one by one from the baking sheet and putting them on the cooling rack. “You know, hito, I don’t remember. I’m sorry. I think I wrote it down but I don’t know where I put the paper….”
“That’s okay, the machine keeps a record of it. I’ll go check.” He got up from the table and found the blood-glucose machine in the bathroom. He hit a few of the buttons and a list of numbers came up. The last date recorded was from two weeks ago. He carried the machine back into the kitchen and said, “Mom, you didn’t check your blood.”
She didn’t look up as she said, “I know, hito, I’m sorry. I know you wanted me to.”
He got the machine and the test strip ready and said, “Mom, come here.” She came over to the table and sat down, giving him her left hand. He pricked the side of her finger with the lancet and let a few drops of blood fall onto the test strip. He put a Band-Aid on her finger as he waited for the machine to read the strip. She went back to work on the bizcochitos. The machine beeped and he looked at the number. It was a little high but within the normal range.
He ate a few of the bizcochitos while he called the girls to wish them a good night. But all he got was the answering machine at his house. He left his good-night message on it.
CHAPTER TEN
Thursday Night
The vinyl seat made a soft sound, like a slowly deflating whoopee cushion, when Lucy plopped into the booth opposite Detective Montoya at Denny’s. She tossed a copy of Melissa’s autopsy report on the table without saying anything.
Lucy summed it up for him: “There was no rape.” She refused to use the cop’s term—criminal sexual penetration. It made something inhuman sound acceptable. “She had pizza shortly before she died. Time of death was about 2030 hours. I guess that means about eight thirty P.M. on Monday.” Lucy couldn’t get the bitterness out of her voice. Patsy Burke deserved to have this kind of attention paid to her death, too. Garcia still hadn’t called her back about the answering machine.
She continued. “Oh, and she was strangled. The OMI thinks someone used their hands, no rope or anything. They think there were some defensive wounds, like she put up a fight. She had a couple of scrapes that don’t add up. But I guess everything is messed up from the fall.”
“She was dead when she was tossed off the bridge,” Montoya said.
Lucy nodded and asked the waitress for coffee. “The toxicology report won’t be in until tomorrow, so we don’t know about drugs. But the autopsy says something like ‘no marks consistent with intravenous drug use.’ So, shooting drugs were a fairly new thing for her. I guess she could have been doing coke or whatever.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes, Montoya reading the autopsy and Lucy rat-a-tat-tating a straw on the napkin holder.
“So, can I talk to you about Scanner Lady?” Lucy asked. That was her real reason for being there.
Montoya closed the autopsy report, folded his hands on the table in front of him, and said, “Absolutely.” She smiled. Good. He knew the score.
Lucy told him about talking to Claire Schoen and finding the cell tower. Montoya nodded without comment. Then she asked, “What do you think?”
“It sounds completely circumstantial.” Lucy made a sour face at him, and he smiled and added, “But plausible.”