“Well,” Pollack said, “we think it’s possible Mr. Strunk was seeing one of his students.”
Mrs. Strunk said with resignation, “I wondered if it was something like that.”
“What made you think so?” Gil asked.
“Oh, little things. He’s been acting strange for a month. He was secretive yet had a new kind of energy. He spent more time out of the house and seemed anxious that I get increasingly involved in my work. I’m on several committees for nonprofit groups.” She sighed. “It seemed he wanted me gone all the time.” She didn’t seem too distraught, only disappointed. Maybe a little relieved to have an answer to her husband’s behavior.
“How have things been this week?” Gil asked.
“More of the same. He got an odd phone call on Monday that he took in his study. He never takes calls in his study, even work calls. He purposely lets me overhear those. He said he wanted me to know what was going on with his work, that it would keep us close.”
“What did you think the call was about?”
“I don’t know. I answered the phone. It was an Hispanic man.” She quickly looked at Gil as if she had offended him. “I mean, he sounded like he had a local accent, a typical Northern New Mexico accent.” She stopped, embarrassed. Gil wasn’t. It was a fair description.
“What time was this call?” Pollack asked.
“Just after eight thirty P.M..”
“And did your husband do anything after he got the call?” Pollack asked.
“He went out.”
“Do you know where he went?” Gil asked. She shook her head. “How long was he gone?”
“Until after midnight. And he wouldn’t come to bed. He just sat up the rest of the night. That’s when I knew there was another woman.”
An officer came in to tell Pollack that the search warrant had arrived, and Pollack excused himself and went outside.
“How about Tuesday night? Where was he then?” Gil asked. He wondered if Strunk was somehow connected to Scanner Lady’s murder as well.
Mrs. Strunk looked down at her hands. “Well, after he was so distant on Monday, I decided we needed to see my therapist.”
“What time did you go there?” Gil asked, as Pollack came back and sat down quietly.
She got more embarrassed. “Ken won’t go see Dr. Shepard, so I invited her over for dinner to kind of ease us into the discussion. It didn’t go very well. Dr. Shepard was here when Ken came home from work, about five thirty P.M. We had dinner about an hour later. Ken felt very defensive. Dr. Shepard left about nine P.M.”
“And then?”
“We got into a disagreement.”
“You mean a fight? When did you finally go to bed?”
She shook her head. “I had to …” She paused. “When I get agitated, I sometimes can’t breathe very well, so we went to the hospital. We didn’t leave there until after three A.M.”
“You have panic attacks?”
Mrs. Strunk nodded. “I have to be careful. If someone even raises their voice to me, it can start up.”
The time frame meant that Strunk couldn’t have killed Lucy’s Scanner Lady.
Gil got up and found some coffee mugs made of glass. They seemed impractical: why have a coffee mug that won’t hold the heat? Gil pretended to busy himself pouring the coffee, but he was really trying to figure out how Manny Cordova was involved. Had he and Strunk worked together to kill Melissa? Maybe Manny knew that Strunk had killed Melissa and was blackmailing him? The two of them could have met when Manny went to the school to arrest Sandra Paine. Maybe Manny was blackmailing Strunk about his relationship with Sandra?
Pollack must have been thinking along the same lines. “Mrs. Strunk, is it possible that your husband was being blackmailed?”
“I don’t see how. He doesn’t really have any money. Everything is in my name, the house, the cars, our portfolio. It was to make sure his ex-wife never got it. The bank account is mine; we don’t have a joint one.”
“What if he needed cash?” Pollack asked.
“Well, he used to have a credit card, but I took that away from him months ago. Ken had to declare bankruptcy after his divorce. When we first got married, he had real problems saving his money. We have this system in place to help him control his spending habits.”
“What if he needed to get a large amount of cash?” Gil asked. Then he realized that to the Strunks, a large amount of cash would be in the hundreds of thousands, and added, “Or even a little bit of money. Say, a thousand dollars at a time?”
She thought about this and shook her head. “I really don’t see how. He doesn’t have access to his own salary. He’s on a budget.”
“Do you mean an allowance?” Pollack asked.
She looked down and smoothed the tablecloth. “I guess that’s more accurate. He has to explain to me what the money is for before I give him any cash. I know how this sounds, Officers, but Ken wanted to get his spending back on track. He was determined to do it.”
“Does he own anything of value?” Gil asked. Maybe Strunk had sold something to pay off a blackmailer.
“Everything we own is mine. He sold off all his things when he went bankrupt. We talked about him buying some pieces of art as an investment, but that was a few years down the line, when he had proved himself.”
Gil sipped his coffee. Manny Cordova couldn’t have been blackmailing Ken Strunk since Strunk had no access to money. But how were Strunk and Manny connected to Melissa’s murder?
Gil watched Mrs. Strunk stare at her coffee, wondering if she knew that every forced therapy session and every talk about an allowance backed her husband, step by step, into a corner. All of Ken Strunk’s life was under her complete control. He was inadequate at home; Sandra Paine was his way to regain some power. A twelve-year-old has no expectations, only devotion. Strunk might have been happy to see Melissa killed if it meant that he could keep Sandra.
Gil watched Manny Cordova through the two-way glass. Cordova was surrounded by people—his lawyer, a district attorney, Pollack, and a state police officer Gil didn’t recognize. He looked scared.
The search of the Strunks’ home had been almost over when the call came that Cordova’s lawyer had finally made it through the storm. Pollack had wanted to go lights and sirens back to the state police station, but Gil had talked him out of it.
On his side of the window, Gil was joined by three state police officers, another DA, and Chief Kline, who watched impassively through the glass as the two lawyers jockeyed. Cordova’s lawyer wanted a deal. The DA wanted to hear what Manny had to say. Their fight made Gil happy that he’d dropped out of law school.
Ten minutes later, it was all sorted out. Manny Cordova would tell what he knew, and for his testimony the DA would drop some of the charges.
“Tell us what happened, Manny,” was how Pollack started.
“Last week, on Thursday, I was at the mall when I ran into Melissa Baca. She and I dated a few years ago. She …” He stopped and rubbed his eyes. When he continued, his voice was tired. “I had just gotten off work, so I was in uniform. She stopped me and we got into an argument.”
“What were you fighting about? The time you beat her up?” the female DA said scornfully.
“I didn’t beat her up.” Manny’s voice went up an octave. “I sort of just lightly slapped her. Just once. Not a hard slap. That’s it. I didn’t mean to. I was just trying to show her that I was angry….”
“Weren’t you angry when you met her at the mall? Did you hit her again?” the DA asked. Pollack was staring at her, hard, but she was ignoring him. The DA was new; Gil had never met her before. He didn’t even know her name. She had long brown hair and was about thirty. Her gray suit seemed not to fit her.
Cordova’s voice shook when he said, “Ma’am, I never …” Manny’s lawyer reached out a hand to calm him. Manny took a rough breath. “I love Melissa. I’ve always loved her. Maybe you can’t see that, but I did.”
The DA snorted.
&n
bsp; Pollack clearly had had enough of her questioning. He said, “Officer Cordova, please, if you could just continue with your story.”
Manny looked sideways at the DA before saying, “When she saw me in my uniform she got upset. She said she was going to report me. She said it was wrong for a police officer with a history of violence to be out serving the public, or something like that.” Gil nodded. That sounded like Melissa Baca. She would do the right thing and tell the police advisory committee that Officer Manny Cordova had hit her three years ago.
Manny continued. “I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen. I tried calling her and stopping by the house, but she wouldn’t see me. On Monday, I saw her driving down Cerrillos Road, so I pulled her over at Oñate Park.”
“You used your police vehicle in the commission of a crime?” the DA asked. She sounded like she was trying to think up new charges.
Pollack, ignoring her, said, “About what time was this, Officer Cordova?”
“About eight fifteen P.M. She got out of her car and we started talking. I tried talking her out of turning me in. I tried to tell her she was overreacting, but she wouldn’t listen….” His jaw was clenched; his hands, not knowing where to go, went everywhere as he talked.
“So you hit her?” the DA asked.
Manny nodded. He wiped his eyes with his fingers and stared at the tears. “She fell backward and … and … I …”
“You choked her?” Pollack asked with a gentleness that surprised Gil.
Manny nodded again, not bothering to wipe away the tears anymore. They fell on his shirt, making dark spots. When he spoke, his voice was hard to understand. “She just stopped moving. I didn’t know what to do. She was just lying there and I didn’t know what to do. She wouldn’t move….”
Pollack quietly prompted Manny. “What did you do next?”
Manny took a long breath. “I called Ron Baca. I knew he would be able to figure it out. He told me to call some guy named Ken Strunk and tell him that if he didn’t help me, Ron would bring him up on statutory-rape charges.”
“What did Strunk say?” Pollack asked over the voice of the DA, who was saying something about birds of a feather.
“Strunk didn’t really want anything to do with it, but I told him there were pictures to prove he molested some girl and that if he helped us, we’d give them back to him,” Manny said. His tears were starting to dry up.
“Did you see the pictures?” Pollack asked.
“No. Melissa showed them to Ron and told him that Strunk was dating one of her students. I guess she wanted Strunk arrested or something. When I called Strunk, I just repeated what Ron told me to.”
“What happened next?” Pollack asked.
“That Strunk guy shows up fifteen minutes later, I guess about eight forty-five P.M., maybe a little bit earlier. We put Melissa …” Manny hesitated. “We put her in the trunk of his car. Ron told him to toss her off the bridge in Taos to make it look like a drug deal. And it got her out of our police district.”
“And you went back on patrol?” Pollack asked.
“Yeah. I went to an alarm check.”
“And Ron was at his mom’s house fixing the washing machine when you called him?” A nod from Manny. “Whose idea was it to lie to Detective Montoya about seeing Melissa buy drugs the day she died?”
“Ron’s. We did it to throw you guys off the track. He said it would be okay because we’d be getting Hector Morales off the streets. And we told the newspaper that she did drugs.” The anonymous sources Lucy had tried to tell Gil about.
“Did you talk to Ron Baca again the night Melissa died?” Pollack asked. Gil was pretty sure he knew where Pollack was headed with the question.
“Don’t you mean was murdered?” the DA said.
Manny answered Pollack. “I called Ron on his cell phone. I wanted to turn myself in to the state police and call the OMI, but he talked me out of it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he didn’t think I should ruin my career over something that wasn’t my fault.”
“What time was the phone call?”
“About eleven thirty P.M. or so.” Pollack looked directly at Gil through the two-way mirror. Gil knew what he was thinking: Cordova’s call to Ron Baca on Monday night was the cell-phone call that Scanner Lady had overheard. Lucy was right.
“Manny, were you on patrol Tuesday night?”
“Yeah. A rookie was doing a ride-along with me.” Which meant that he was with someone all night, making it impossible for him to have killed Scanner Lady.
“Manny,” Pollack said, “why do you think Ron helped you get rid of Melissa’s body?”
Without hesitating, Manny said, “Because Ron’s a good friend. He’s like my brother.”
Taking a break from the questioning, Pollack and Gil stood in the parking lot of the state police station. Pollack had wanted to get as far away as possible from the DA. When they left the interview room, Gil had heard Pollack say to the DA, “He’s still a police officer,” overlapped by the DA saying, “He’s a cold-blooded killer.”
Now, in the parking lot, Gil watched Pollack pace. Pollack was smarter than Gil had given him credit for. Much smarter. Pollack had purposely not asked Manny about Patsy Burke’s killing. If he had, the defense would have known that there were more charges to be added against Manny, and they would have ended his confession.
Plus, their case for Mrs. Burke’s murder was weak. The sheriff’s deputies had recovered very little physical evidence at the crime scene. If they told Manny Cordova’s lawyer about it now, before they had a chance to question Ken Strunk or Ron Baca, they would ruin their chances of making the case.
“We have got to find Ron Baca. It was him, wasn’t it?” Pollack asked. Gil nodded. He knew what Pollack was talking about: Ron Baca had killed Patsy Burke. There was no one else left. Manny had been paired with a rookie cop Tuesday night. Strunk had been at the hospital with his wife. That left Ron.
“But how the hell did Ron know that Mrs. Burke was what’s-her-name—this Scanner Lady that editor told you about? How did he know that Mrs. Burke was the one who overheard their cell-phone call? He couldn’t have known her name. Dammit. How did he know to kill her?” Pollack said, kicking at a gum wrapper on the ground. “But I’m starting to think Ron Baca is a goddamn genius. He gets Cordova to call Strunk and gets Strunk to toss Melissa’s body, and the whole time Ron’s playing fix-it man at his mom’s. This guy is good. He had no real involvement. We can’t really prove a goddamn thing. All we have is that maybe he planted the drugs in Melissa’s car.”
Adam Granger had called back while they were interviewing Manny Cordova to confirm that the dirt on the syringe in Melissa’s car could have come from the Bacas’ backyard. Gil figured that Ron had planted the syringe and heroin in Melissa’s car after leaving his mother’s house. But Granger admitted that the dirt had very few unusual characteristics, so it could have come from more than a dozen places in Santa Fe—something any good defense lawyer would point out. Or Melissa could have simply dropped the needle in her yard before putting it in her car.
Pollack continued his rant. “If we’re really lucky, we can get Ron Baca on accessory for Melissa’s murder. But as it stands, with the evidence we have right now, we’re looking at conspiracy. A goddamn conspiracy charge. He gets out in time for the Super Bowl next year—hell, he may not even do time—and Manny Cordova gets to rot behind bars.”
“How many guys do you have out looking for Ron Baca?” Gil asked.
“Pretty much everybody we could scrape up.”
“How about a search warrant on Ron’s trailer and his car?”
“We’re working on it.” Pollack started snapping again. “You know, I get why Cordova did it. I get why Strunk did it. I just don’t get Ron Baca. I mean, he helped his sister’s killer clean up. He must really be a helpful kinda guy. How does Manny’s conversation with him go: ‘Hey, Ron, I’m really sorry, dude, I killed your sister. Can
you give me a hand?’”
Gil thought he might ask Mrs. Baca to explain it.
Lucy flipped through stacks of pictures in the photo department at the Capital Tribune. She had been searching for ten minutes but still hadn’t come across the photo of Scanner Lady that Mrs. Schoen had dropped off. The newsroom was deserted. It was late Saturday afternoon. No one would be in for hours yet. It had taken her a while to get used to a newsroom that basically shut down on the weekend, but Santa Fe was a small town. The newspaper didn’t need to have a staff twenty-four/seven.
She finally found the photo five minutes later in a mailbox marked TO BE ARCHIVED. The picture showed Patsy Burke sitting at a kitchen table with three other women, playing what looked like a card game. Oh, that’s right. Mrs. Schoen had said they had a bridge team. Mrs. Schoen sat across from Patsy Burke, smiling into the camera. Lucy went into the darkroom and got out a photo-magnifying glass. She peered at the face of Patsy Burke. Lucy had remembered right. Scanner Lady’s eyes were brown. Her hair was full gray. Lucy frowned. She had thought that Mrs. Burke’s hair was darker. Maybe she had dyed it recently. Lucy flipped the photo over to see if the date was written on the back. It wasn’t—but the names of the other players were. It took a second for the names to jar Lucy’s memory. When they did, she almost had to keep herself from yelling out.
She felt the need to batter her head against something. She had been the worst type of racist—someone who believes she’s not a bigot but still completely buys into the ethnic stereotypes. She had assumed that the bridge club Mrs. Schoen mentioned was made up of all Anglo women. Hispanic women don’t play bridge, right? Her and her stupid southern mentality. Idiot, idiot, idiot.
Lucy glanced again at the picture on the desk. A smiling Patsy Burke sat across from her bridge partner, a smiling Claire Schoen. And seated between them were two women Lucy had never met, but she knew their names. An unsmiling Veronica Cordova sat across from her partner, a smiling Maxine Baca.
As Lucy dialed Claire Schoen’s number, she knew that she should have been calling the sheriff’s office or Detective Montoya. But that meant having to endure long conversations with them and the hope that they would call her back and tell her what Mrs. Schoen had said. It meant waiting. She couldn’t wait. Mrs. Schoen picked up on the third ring and Lucy asked her about the bridge club.
The Replacement Child Page 24
