The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,68

by sight? Does he know Morales by sight? Come on, Manny, let’s do better than that.”

Manny still didn’t look up.

“Manny, what are you doing? Are you trying to sink your career? Just tell me the truth.” Cordova didn’t move. “For God’s sake, what is this?” Gil asked.

Manny stared at his hands. “Sir, can I go back to work now? I have to finish my run sheets.”

Gil leaned back and sighed. “Why did you go 10-7 for twenty minutes at eight nineteen P.M. on the night Melissa died?”

Manny was still looking down. Gil had thought for sure the question would shock him enough that he would look up. He didn’t answer for a few seconds.

“I went to get something to eat,” Manny said.

“According to the call logs, you already ate. Two hours earlier.”

“I was hungry again.”

“Where did you eat?”

“I grabbed something at Burger King.”

“Burger King takes five minutes. You were unavailable for twenty.”

Twenty minutes was enough time for Manny to have killed Melissa but not to have transported her body to Taos. At nine P.M. Manny had been seen at an alarm-check call by another officer. “Manny, if you know anything about Melissa’s murder …”

“I don’t. I was eating,” he answered dully.

Gil sighed. Pollack was outside in the hall, listening to them talk. Gil’s job was to shake Manny loose. He was more likely to confess to someone he knew. Since Gil couldn’t get anything out of Manny, it was Pollack’s turn.

“Good luck, Manny,” Gil said as Pollack came in.

Gil left and found Chief Kline in the next room, watching through the two-way mirror and listening to Pollack question Manny. Kline looked both controlled and tense, like a man on a tightrope. His gray hair was cut whisker-short, his black uniform crisp.

“What are you going to do? We don’t have enough to hold him,” Gil said.

“He’ll be suspended until we can figure out what the hell is going on,” Kline said.

“He was seen at an alarm-check call at around nine P.M. the night Melissa was killed.”

“I know. Enough time to kill her but not bring her anywhere,” Kline said. His light Texas accent skipped over the word anywhere.

Gil watched Pollack and Manny through the glass for a minute before he said, “Sir, I think maybe it’s time I get off the case. Now that one of our own may be involved—”

“I think it’s premature,” Kline interrupted.

“Sir, I feel strongly that this is a state police investigation—”

Kline cut in again. “Lieutenant Pollack and I agree that this is not the time for you to be excused from the case.”

Lucy rolled over and looked at the clock. It was 9:07 A.M. Hell. She really needed to sleep more; her night out drinking with drug dealers had given her a hangover. She tossed for two more hours, trying to get back to sleep, but finally gave up at 11 A.M. Two vitamins served as her breakfast. She called a cab and went to get her car, which was still in the parking lot at the Silver Cowboy.

A few minutes later, she was parked in front of Patsy Burke’s house, the crime-scene tape hanging limply. She heard a crow making a racket somewhere nearby. She craned her neck to look up. The bird was swaying on a power line that drooped over Scanner Lady’s house. Wasn’t a crow an omen, a warning of impending death? Sorry, you’re too late, buddy, she thought.

She yelped as her cell phone rang. It was Major Garcia.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called you back, but things here have been dicey,” he said kindly, surprising her. She wanted to be mad at him.

“Um, no problem,” she said.

“I’ve been looking into whether or not Patsy Burke was Scanner Lady. Her neighbor, Mrs. Schoen, confirmed Mrs. Burke was in the habit of listening to the police scanner and calling the newspaper.” Garcia hesitated. “In fact, Mrs. Schoen told me that you asked her the same thing.”

“Oops. Sorry. I didn’t mean …”

“Don’t worry about it. I know you were just trying to come to terms with it,” he said gently. Wow. Maybe he was a nice guy. Lucy silently took back all the times she’d wished he were dead. Garcia continued. “We do have a problem, though. The answering machine won’t be much help in confirming if she’s your Scanner Lady. The voice on the message isn’t Mrs. Burke. It’s a man’s voice. We called her son, and he confirmed that he made the message for her so people would think a man lived in