The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,87

the shoulder. Pollack.

“I’ve got a job for you, buddy. That was Judy Maes on the phone. She says she needs to talk to us. I think you’re perfect for the job.”

Judy Maes lived on Alameda Street, her adobe house sporting a nice view of the now-dry Santa Fe River. He waited for her to answer the door. A four-inch-high santo of St. Anthony sat in a niche next to the door. The santo was beautifully carved, a tiny cardinal perched on its hand. Gil picked it up and looked on the bottom, where R. MAES was carved. Judy opened the door, greeting Gil and noticing the santo he was still holding.

“Rudy Maes is my father,” she said as she let him into the living room. “He normally doesn’t do santos. He did that one when he was eighteen.”

Rudy Maes was a sculptor. Gil had once handled a case in which an art collector had hired a man to steal some Maes pieces. But he didn’t count on the huge sculptures being so heavy. The next morning, when the gallery opened, the owner found the man still trying to move a granite piece called In My Eyes.

“Do you do any art?” Gil asked as they sat down.

Judy laughed. “Good lord, no. Just stick figures.”

Maes had on red lipstick, but it didn’t hide how tired she looked.

“Do you have any idea when they’re going to release Melissa’s body?” she asked.

“In a few days,” Gil said.

“It may be a weird thing to say, but I could really use the funeral. It’s so hard to deal with this all without seeing her body, you know?”

Gil doubted that it would be an open-casket funeral. When Melissa was thrown off the bridge, she had landed face-first. He didn’t tell that to Judy.

“So, you said you had something to tell us?” Gil prompted.

“I remembered who the boyfriend was who hit Melissa. I racked my brain after you left. I finally looked in my diary. I knew I had written about it. It was some asshole named Manny Cordova.”

Gil nodded. He had expected that answer. But it didn’t give him any pleasure. He had hoped it wouldn’t be a fellow cop. He wished it could have been Hammond.

“Did you ever meet Manny?” Gil asked.

“No. They only went out for a few weeks before he hit her. And that was a couple of summers ago.”

“What did they get in a fight about?”

“They were in her car, and she was driving, and he got it into his head that she was too close to the wheel. They got into a fight about it. He decided to push her seat back while she’s driving. She freaks out and pulls over and yells at him. He slaps her.”

“Did he ever hit her again?”

“She never gave him the chance. She made him get out of the car and left him there.” Judy smiled. “Good for Melissa. That girl’s got balls. Anyway, she never saw him again. But she said he kept calling.”

“Was he stalking her?”

“Probably not in the way you’re thinking—I mean, not according to the legal definition—but ask any woman, and they’d say he was stalking her.”

“Was he threatening her?”

“See, that’s what I mean. He never threatened her and didn’t follow her to the grocery store or anything like that. He was just weird. He would call and try to small-talk her. She would make it clear that she didn’t want him talking to her, so he’d hang up. And a month or so later he’d do it all over again. He was a pest. A weird pest. I think he finally stopped it a year or so ago.”

“Did she know that he’s now a police officer?”

“That asshole is a police officer? You’ve got to be kidding. Melissa would have had a real problem with that.” Which was what Gil was thinking.

Manny had told Gil that he had seen Melissa recently. What would Melissa do if she saw the man who hit her three years ago in a police uniform? She would call Mrs. Sanchez and put her name on the agenda for the police advisory committee, planning to register a formal complaint against him.

“Did she ever mention to her brother that Manny slapped her? Ron could have helped her with him,” Gil asked.

“Ron? I doubt it.”

“Didn’t they get along?”

“That’s an understatement. They played happy family for their mom, but otherwise steered clear of each other.”

“Was there ever any violence?”

“Only really low-key stuff, kind of threatening stuff on his part. Like this