The Replacement Child by Christine Barber

Author:Christine Barber
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Crime & mystery, Elementary school teachers, Fiction, Investigation, Women Sleuths, Crime & Thriller, Mystery And Suspense Fiction, Murder, Murder - Investigation, Mystery fiction, Mystery, Detective, Detective and mystery stories, Elementary school teachers - Crimes against, Crimes against, Women journalists, Mystery & Detective - General, Mystery & Detective, Fiction - Mystery, General, Suspense, Santa Fe (N.M.)
ISBN: 9780312385545
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2008-09-30T10:07:45.855000+00:00

Gil was still at his desk at the police station when Officer Manny Cordova came over and sat heavily in the chair next to Gil’s desk.

“I have two things,” Cordova said with his usual smile. “The first one is that I talked to Ron, and he said to give him a call if you need any help. He’s still up in the Pecos.”

“When is he coming back to town?” Gil asked.

Cordova shrugged. “I don’t know. He did this exact same thing when his dad died. He stayed up there for weeks. It’s just his way.”

“What’s the second thing you had to tell me?”

“I remembered something last night,” Cordova said. He kept scanning the office from side to side. “It really didn’t hit me until then. I think I saw Melissa Baca at Oñate Park about four thirty P.M. the day she was killed.”

Gil looked at him, considering. There was only one reason why Melissa Baca would have been there.

“Tell me about it,” was all Gil said.

“Well, I was driving down Cerrillos Road going to an MVA on St. Francis and Alameda when I passed the park. I always drive slow when I go by there, you know, to check it out, no? So I drove past slow and saw a purple Dodge Reliant lowrider with New Mexico plates next to a car that looked liked Melissa’s brown Chevy.”

There was only one purple Dodge Reliant in town. It belonged to Hector Morales. Morales wasn’t usually at the park himself—he usually had one of his runners take care of the small deals. But occasionally he would take a buy at the park to show his employees how it was done. He believed that trafficking drugs was all about the marketing and the personal relationships with his clients. It was based on some idea he’d gotten from watching a late-night infomercial when he was on cocaine. He used his MySpace page to drum up customers, but he and his clients wrote in a code that the police had never broken. Morales had had three dealing arrests in the early 1990s. Since then, he had been arrested dozens of times but always found a loophole. Morales’s street nickname was Pony but the police called him Teflon.

“Anything else, Manny?” Gil asked.

“Well, I was pretty far away but it looked like the driver of the Dodge Reliant handed the driver of the Chevy something.” Cordova sounded like he was testifying before a grand jury. “That’s all I saw.”

“Are you sure it was Morales’s car?”

“Oh yeah. I’ve busted him plenty. I’m one hundred percent sure it was him.”

“How about Melissa’s car? How sure are you that it was hers?”

Cordova thought for a second. “I’d say about seventy percent. If I hadn’t been going to that MVA, I would have stopped to check it out. You know that, sir, right?”

“Manny, I guess I’m concerned that you didn’t bring this up before. Didn’t you think it was important?”

“Sorry, Gil. I just didn’t think of it. Melissa wouldn’t be at a place like that.

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