As she watched Harold edit the story, she wondered what Major Garcia had said when they interviewed him. She moseyed over to the fax machine, which sat next to Richards’s desk. She pretended to look over a faxed press release while she glanced at the computer screen over his shoulder: “‘A 63-year-old woman who was found dead in her home on Wednesday was murdered,’ said Major Ed Garcia of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department. However, Garcia would not release the cause of the woman’s death.” That’s where Lucy stopped.
She knew the cause of Patsy Burke’s death—she’d been strangled. She tossed the fax into the recycling bin and went over to Tommy Martinez’s desk. Tommy was on the phone, so she stood nearby, wondering how she could tell him what she knew about Patsy’s death without breaking any rules. Ethically, she couldn’t say a word about it. Patsy Burke had been her patient and the same patient-confidentiality laws that governed doctors also governed lowly medics like herself. She also was bound by those pesky journalism-ethics rules, although those were slightly bendable.
But telling Tommy would serve a dual purpose. The Capital Tribune would scoop the Santa Fe Times on Mrs. Burke’s cause of death. (Take that, Del.) And if the newspaper put enough pressure on Major Garcia, he would have to look into whether Patsy Burke was Scanner Lady and if her phone call to Lucy had had something to do with her death.
The power of the press at its finest.
Lucy would have to stay vague when telling Tommy. Maybe something like, The investigation isn’t considering everything. She wouldn’t even be mentioning Patsy Burke and therefore, technically, not breaking any rules. Maybe say, Did you ask Garcia if she was strangled?
Hanging up, Tommy said, “What’s up, boss?”
She started, then stopped. She knew that what she was doing was exactly what Garcia expected her to do: compromise the investigation by leaking what she knew to the newspaper. She would be proving him right: she was untrustworthy. If the newspaper printed Patsy Burke’s cause of death, he would know that she had given it to them. And then Garcia would never seriously investigate whether Patsy was Scanner Lady.
Lucy said, “Forget it,” and walked away.
Gil sat on Joy’s bed reading Little House in the Big Woods. They had started the book, at Joy’s request, a week ago. The first night, eight-year-old Therese had developed a new habit—asking questions every other sentence. The situation so exasperated eleven-year-old Joy that she held her hands over her ears. Gil knew that Therese was doing it only to annoy her sister.
In the end, they had come to a compromise.
Therese was allowed to ask three questions per reading session. But she usually asked only one question, wanting to save up the two others in case something she genuinely didn’t understand came up.
Gil read six pages and stopped when he noticed that Therese was drifting. Joy was still wide awake. He marked the page and closed the book. He went over to Therese’s bed and turned off her reading light. Putting his hand on her head, he repeated in Spanish the same blessing his father had said over him every night—”May the angels watch over you as you sleep and may God smile on you when you awake.” He kissed her forehead as she smiled a little and turned on her side. Joy looked disinterestedly at the ceiling. He put his hand on her head and repeated the blessing. She kept staring straight up. He expected her to pull away as he kissed her forehead, but instead she said, “Please tell Mother I need to speak to her.”
He found Susan sweeping the kitchen floor.
“I was hoping we had a few years before Joy started the teen-angst thing,” he said.
Susan laughed. “She’s just had a bad week.”
“Our daughter would like a word with her mother.”
Susan put the broom against the wall, then he heard the door close to the girls’ room. Gil picked up the statue of St. Joseph, still sitting on the kitchen counter, and pulled a clear plastic bag over it. He took it out to the garage, got a shovel, and headed to the backyard. He picked a spot away from the trees so that he wouldn’t hit any roots and started digging. The ground should have been frozen at this time of year, but only the top layer was hard. The lights from the house gave a glow to the backyard, enough for him to see what he was doing in the dark. He stopped for a second and looked back at the house. He needed to clean out the gutters and trim the elm tree. He had been thinking about planting an apple or apricot tree in the spring, like they had had at his house when he was a kid. But they might be living in Eldorado in the spring.
Gil put St. Joseph upside down in the ground, facing east for good luck, then filled the hole back in. He put the shovel away and went inside. Susan was still in the girls’ room.
He got a beer out of the fridge and sat on the couch to watch ESPN. It was forty-five minutes before Susan came back.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Just girl stuff,” she said and went back to her sweeping.
At ten P.M., he turned on the local news. The investigation into Melissa’s death was the lead story. They had picked up the Capital Tribune’s article about her drug use. But they went further than the newspaper article: they mentioned her brother Daniel’s drug death and had talked to the Bacas’ next-door neighbor, who said into the camera with enthusiasm, “If I thought one of my kids was doing drugs, I’d kill them.”
Lucy was bored. She was reading articles on the Associated Press wire on her computer when she heard a voice behind. She spun around in her chair without thinking.
And came face-to-face with Mrs. Claire Schoen. Hell. Damn. Dear God, please make her have Alzheimer’s or dementia or maybe a bad case of glaucoma so she can’t see me.
“I thought you were an EMT?” Mrs. Schoen said shrewdly.
Oh, hell.
“Um … I am a medic, but I just do that as a volunteer. I really work here.” Smile brightly, Lucy thought, smile brightly.
“You could have told me that when we talked before. How much of what you told me was bullshit?” Mrs. Schoen’s voice was cold. Help. Change the subject.
“So can I help you with something?” Keep smiling brightly, Lucy.
Mrs. Schoen watched her closely for another moment before saying, “Someone named Tommy Martinez asked me to drop off this photo of Patsy.”
Lucy noticed that she was clutching a picture. She could just make out the image of a group of women who looked like they were playing cards.
“Right. I didn’t know Tommy had asked you to do that,” Lucy said. “Um … Well … We just need a photo of…” Lucy almost said “Scanner Lady.” “We just need a photo of Mrs. Burke to put in the story for tomorrow’s paper. That way the readers know what she looked like. We do that a lot in cases like this.”
Claire Schoen just stared at her.
“Let me have you talk to the photo editor,” Lucy said as she steered Mrs. Schoen to the darkroom and made the introductions.
Lucy sat back down at her desk and cursed up a holy storm, trying to remember what lies she had told Mrs. Schoen. Lucy had purposely tried to give her the impression that she was a full-time medic. Damn. This was karma coming back to bite her in the butt.
As Mrs. Schoen was leaving, Lucy stopped her. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before about working here. I’m an idiot. I wasn’t trying to trick you. I’m … I’m very sorry about Mrs. Burke. Honestly.”
Tears came to Mrs. Schoen’s eyes as she said, “Thank you, bless your heart.” She wiped away the tears with a Kleenex she pulled out of her bra and said, “The more you cry, the less you pee.” Then she walked away.
Lucy was finished with work by eleven forty-five P.M. and by midnight she was sitting at the Cowgirl bar with a table of drunk journalists from both local papers. No wonder the public had no faith in the press. They were all alcoholics.
The letter of the night was S. Lucy had started with a screwdriver and a stinger. Now she was waiting for the waitress to deliver her snakebite—whatever that was—while she and the copy editors debated whether a slow c
omfortable screw counted as two S’s or one. She had wanted a tequila sunrise but a cute sports reporter from the Santa Fe Times had nixed that, saying that the drink had to start with an S to count, not end in one. Lucy could have argued the point. The game was of her creation, after all, but she decided instead to go sit on the sports reporter’s lap. It seemed like a good solution.
She hadn’t even considered not drinking tonight. She thought she would go insane if she kept thinking of Patsy Burke. Or kept trying not to think of her. Lucy took a sip of her snakebite and changed it to a gulp in midsip. She would give up drinking tomorrow. Maybe. If she didn’t find another dead body. If she didn’t get someone else killed. Help. Another gulp.
She tried to focus her attention on the man whose lap she was sitting on. She took his beer out of his hand and put the mug on the table. Then she took his now-free hand and wrapped it around her waist.
“I was falling off,” she said, smiling. He smiled back. They talked in the slurry voices of drunks. She felt slightly sluttish at how brazen she was being. She smiled to herself. Brazen. Now there was a Harlequin-romance word. She had been having a mild flirtation with the man for months, but she didn’t know him well. She knew that he was from Alabama, wasn’t a very good writer, and needed to learn Associated Press style. He also didn’t quite have the knack with women. His movements were always a bit off. He was the kind of guy who needed a set of sex instructions: insert tab A into slot B. But he had sweet lips. She planned to kiss him. Maybe a lot. But that was all. She needed a distraction from her messed-up life, not an addition to it.
The waitress returned with Lucy’s next drink—a screaming orgasm. Lucy took a big swig out of the glass and poured the rest of her snakebite into it. She mixed the two drinks into one, slopping some liquor over the side.
The sports reporter asked what she was doing. Lucy smiled. A hard smile. “I’m making a new drink. I’m calling this one the Scanner Lady.” Lucy winced at the taste as the drink hit her throat. But she tipped it back farther and kept gulping, not stopping until the dregs were running down her blouse.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Thursday Morning
The police station was freezing when Gil got there just after eight A.M. The receptionist told him that the repairmen were working on the heat. He kept his coat on as he dialed his mother’s number.
She answered on the fifth ring. “Mom, I’m going to go buy a new blood-sugar machine for you today. I’ll bring it over later.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it, hito. Aunt Sally is bringing mine back. I told her how upset you are about it.”
“Okay. But you have to do the test as soon as you get the machine back and call me with the number.” She didn’t say anything and they hung up.
Next, Gil called Pollack to make his morning report. He didn’t have much to tell. Pollack answered with a cheery “Good morning.” Gil told him about his interviews from the day before. Pollack said little, not giving Gil even an idea of where their investigation was headed. He told Gil to stay focused on what had happened during the hour before Melissa had gotten home. Pollack was saying, “Okay, thanks, good-bye,” when Gil asked, “Did you get the autopsy results?”
Pollack hesitated. “Yes, we did, but I’m afraid that information is being restricted, Gil. Sorry.” The state police had agreed to release information to him, but only on a case-by-case basis.
“Can I ask why?”
“We don’t want it getting into the hands of the media.” That intrigued Gil. The autopsy must have turned up something. “Could you at least tell me the cause of death?”
Gil heard Pollack put his hand over the receiver and say something to someone in the background. When he got back on the phone, all he said was, “I’m afraid not.”
“How about the toxicology results?”
“We don’t have that yet, but when we do, the answer will probably be no. You know how it is. If it wasn’t for that damn press leak, I could tell you. Sorry.”
Gil hung up and called the OMI, but the clerk told him that access to the file was restricted. Gil tried getting around the clerk by calling all the medical investigators he knew. He left five messages.
He spent the next hour calling other officers at the state police, the Taos Sheriff’s Department, and the Taos police. They were just as frustrated as Gil. Pollack wasn’t releasing the information to anyone.
At nine thirty A.M., Lucy locked her front door and got into her car, pulling on her leather gloves in the cold.
It was a little too early for her to be out of the house, but her hangover had had her up at 7:58 A.M., and now the headache was keeping her awake. Her search under the bathroom sink had yielded only an empty bottle of Pamprin.
She remembered little of the night before, although she was fairly sure that she had done some almost-illegal things with the sports reporter in the parking lot of the bar. She hoped he wouldn’t call her. Sort of. She needed to stop getting drunk. Really. She was getting pathetic.
She went to Albertsons to get some aspirin and spent five minutes reshelving two oranges and some toilet paper. On her way home, she decided to make a detour.
She parked her car across the street from Patsy Burke’s house, unremarkable and adobe colored. There were old newspapers collecting in the driveway—Lucy counted two Santa Fe Timeses. But no Capital Tribunes. Someone must have swiped those. It was the only newspaper worth stealing. The crime-scene tape across the door had come loose and fluttered in the wind like the tail of a yellow kite.
She waved at the man across the street who had come to watch her. The neighbors probably loved this—their own little Cops show.
Lucy had called Mrs. Burke’s number an hour ago only to be greeted with “this number has been disconnected.”
She had considered trying to break in and listen to the answering machine, assuming it would just be a matter of trying all the doors and windows. But she was too chicken and paranoid to try it.
She sat in her car just watching the house, wondering about Patsy Burke’s life. Lucy had been in too much of a hurry to ask Claire Schoen about Mrs. Burke’s children. Lucy wasn’t even sure she had kids. The pictures in her house could just as easily have been of nieces and nephews.
The flower beds in front of the house were brown, but obviously well tended. A wreath made of pink ribbons and dried flowers hung on the front door. Lucy was sure that Mrs. Burke had made it herself. Old ladies did that type of thing, didn’t they?
Lucy glanced in her rearview mirror and saw a gray sheriff’s car coming down the street toward her. She quickly drove down the block and into the cul-de-sac, careful to keep her car out of sight.
She got out of her car and made a show of checking a house number against a piece of paper in her hand, which was actually a receipt from Burger King. She glanced back up the street. Major Garcia and a gray-uniformed deputy were going into the house.
She got back into her car and sighed. The only way for her to get out of the cul-de-sac was to drive past Scanner Lady’s house. And Garcia might see her. And think she was nuts.
She noticed a dirt road leading from the cul-de-sac, likely a utility road or a very well-worn ATV path. Some Santa Fe neighborhoods got around the county street planners by making their own back-door roads: short dirt paths that led to major streets.
As she started down the road, her Camry made loud complaints about the ruts and grooves. Thankfully, the road was dry. Chalk up one good thing to the lack of snow. She went over a huge bump and almost walloped her head on the ceiling. Just like a roller coaster. She started scanning for a country-music station. Dirt roads called for country music. She turned up the volume on an old Tim McGraw song and tried to sing along. He was saying something about still loving a woman who had dumped him for another man. Country-music love always sounded like stalking.
The road twisted around piñon trees and dropped down into an arroyo. She’d been driving for only a few minutes when the road made a sharp curve right. She had t
o cut the wheel to avoid hitting the cement base of a cell-phone tower.
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.
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