The Replacement Child by Christine Barber Read Free Book Online Page B

Gil had grown up near the Galisteo River.
    He got up and went back out the front door, bolting it again, and settled into his car. He had gone home to tell his wife about Melissa Baca, whom Susan vaguely knew, and to let her know that he wouldn’t be home until late. But watching Susan ease through making lunch, he realized he couldn’t tell her. He didn’t know why.
    He picked up his cell phone and dialed his home number. The phone rang four times and then he heard his own voice urging callers to leave a message. He would tell the answering machine instead.

CHAPTER THREE
Tuesday Afternoon
    G il drove his unmarked Crown Victoria past Oñate Park on Cerrillos Road, where Melissa’s car had been found, but the crime-scene techs had already towed it away. He continued driving, noting the time and mileage. He followed the highway north out of Santa Fe, past the pueblo casinos and roadside vendors, to Española. He spent his time watching the cars as he drove, noting the beat-up Suburban that quickly did a U-turn as soon as he showed up in its rearview mirror. Other cars slowed as he neared, not sure if he was a real police officer or just a man in a dark blue Crown Victoria.
    He kept just under the fifty-five-mph speed limit as the flat road slowly made its way into the canyon of the Rio Grande. He passed the apple and apricot orchards of Velarde, Embudo, and Rinconada. The highway climbed up the canyon, the walls getting steeper. Descansos marked the roadside every few miles, the crosses showing where people had died in car accidents.
    On the right side of the highway were mostly tall cliffs and a few rock piles. To the left, the wide river moved along the gorge floor, flowing past cottonwood trees and rough mesas.
    Gil caught sight of a man fishing the river far below, throwing a long cast and cranking the reel, pulling the lure with the current. Fishing the Rio Grande in winter was always slow, especiallyin the canyon stretch. Gil and his dad had fished the Rio Grande only a few times, not liking the noise of the traffic on the highway. His dad had always wanted to be in the most out-of-the-way stretches of water.
    During the drive to mountain streams, they would spend long hours debating which casting grip to use or whether bright synthetic fibers were better than natural ones for fly tying. His father, always a lawyer, would never let the argument die. Once there, they would fish in silence, usually with only the bend of the river between them. When Gil was in grade school, he would get bored within an hour or two and then would try to sneak up on his dad, who seemed to spend as much time looking at the scenery as fishing. By the time Gil was in high school, he could stand all afternoon in the water, placing cast after cast with accuracy.
    His dad had taught him how to make ties, showing him how to wind and twirl the fur and feathers. But the last time he and his dad had gone fishing together, almost ten years ago, his dad had changed to using premade ties, Royal Wulffs and Humpys. Their white wings made it easier for his dad, with his bad eyesight, to see. His father, who had prided himself on his fly tying, shrugged when he pulled them out of his fly box and said, “Sometimes you do what you have to do to catch fish.” And then he smiled. He died of a heart attack a month later. Gil had been just twenty-three.
    The highway popped out of the canyon and Gil took the road toward the town of Taos. The brown plains stretched toward the Truchas Range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, where the creases of the peaks were lined with snow.
    He parked on the Taos plaza and went into a diner to get a green-chile burrito and a Coke. He ate it outside, sitting on a bench on the plaza, watching the tourists who were there for the ski season. The ski area had only some of its runs open. The winter had started with a good snowfall of five inches in October. But now the temperature most days was about sixtydegrees. The tourists who