The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,70

gave Lucy some comfort. The rest of the story didn’t reveal anything new.

She got into her car and threw the paper on the passenger seat before the thought struck her. What did it matter which newspaper got the story first? Strangled or not, Patsy was still dead. And Lucy was responsible.

Lucy looked at her watch. She was supposed to meet Gerald Trujillo at the fire station in a half hour. She still had time to run home and take a shower. She would only be a few minutes late.

She waited at an intersection, trying to make a left turn out of the community center. Just as the traffic broke enough for her to merge into the lane, she took a right instead of a left toward her house. The road she was on intersected with the highway and she turned onto it, the traffic becoming lighter, then turning into a trickle. She headed east, not toward the mountains but toward the plains, unrelenting in the distance.

She didn’t know where she was going.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Friday Afternoon

I’m curious why you didn’t mention that you and Melissa were having problems,” Gil said as way of greeting Jonathan Hammond. Gil stood in the doorway to Hammond’s apartment. He hadn’t been invited in. He had called the school after Mrs. Baca’s visit, only to be told that Hammond had the afternoon off.

“It wasn’t problems,” Hammond said. “It was just a rough patch.”

“What do you mean ‘rough patch’?”

“We had a disagreement.”

“About what?”

“It was something minor.”

“What was it about?”

“It really isn’t something that needs to be discussed.”

Gil realized that he wanted Hammond to be Melissa’s killer. But twelve students and several teachers had seen Hammond directing the dress rehearsal. The state police had talked to all of them. Not a second of Hammond’s time was unaccounted for the night Melissa died.

Tired of standing in the cold doorway, he walked into Hammond’s apartment without being invited. It was decorated in brown and the furniture was mostly large antique pieces. The place was fairly neat, except for an overflow of books in piles on the floor and a half-finished bottle of Jose Cuervo on the coffee table.

Gil took a packet of photos from his pocket and tossed them onto the oak dining-room table, watching for Hammond’s reaction. There wasn’t one.

“You don’t seem too surprised to see these photos. You must have seen them before?” Still no reaction. “Maybe you took them?” That barely got a rise out of him.

“No.”

“Who did take them?”

“I have no idea.” Hammond stared at the photos without touching them.

The pictures were of a redheaded girl who looked twelve. She was in poses that rivaled those in the Kama Sutra. There were eleven pictures in all. And in every one she only wore a string of pearls. In a few, she covered herself with a Japanese fan.

The photos were copies; Gil had given the originals to the state police. The chain of evidence on this case was going to be a nightmare if they had to go to court. The photos had passed from an unknown someone to Melissa, to her mother, to Gil, to the state police. A good defense attorney would rip that apart, if they ever got a suspect.

The pictures had been dusted for prints. Melissa’s and Maxine’s were on them along with about a half-dozen others that couldn’t be identified. Gil already knew that one set on them was Hammond’s; he had been fingerprinted three years ago after a DWI arrest, which meant that Hammond could have been the one who took them.

The photos themselves didn’t offer any clues. The only thing visible in the background was the couch the girl posed on—pastel blue with dark blue swirls. The couch hadn’t been sold by any of the furniture stores in town. It had been a longshot, but Gil had given it a try. “The work is either custom done or an antique,” one store manager had offered. From where Gil stood now, he could see clearly into the only other room in Hammond’s apartment—the bedroom. There was no blue couch with dark swirls in sight.

Gil had had no luck in finding out who the girl was. Burroway Academy didn’t have a yearbook. He had left messages at Principal Strunk’s home and office. His secretary said that he was out of town and she didn’t know how to reach him. The secretary was of no further help; she’d been working at the school for only a few weeks and said she barely knew who