In Desperation (27 page)

Phoenix, Arizona

A
s TV helicopters circled overhead Cora stared blankly into the press and police chaos at the NewIron Rail yards.

“Tilly's dead. That's it, isn't it?” she said, waiting in her car with Gannon while he left another cell phone message in his attempt to reach Hackett.

“I know this is hard, Cora.” Gannon tried to console her. “But until we know everything, we know nothing.”

“Henrietta Chong said that they'd found Lyle's car, that witnesses saw a body. I can't take it anymore, Jack, I just can't.”

She covered her face with her hands.

“You've got to hang on to hope while we still have it.”

Someone tapped on Gannon's window. He turned to the clean-cut face of a uniformed deputy, who'd approached from behind.

“Jack Gannon and Cora Martin?”

“Yes.”

“Deputy Wadden. Agent Hackett is in there at the scene.” Wadden nodded to the storage tank tower and the lines of railcars. “He got your message and requested we get word to you.” Wadden's shoulder microphone bleated with a coded transmission. “One moment, please.”
Wadden leaned into it, responding with a numeric code before resuming matters with Gannon and Cora.

“I'm parked behind you. Please follow me in your vehicle.”

“What's going on?” Gannon asked.

“I'm going to lead you to a location a few blocks from here. Agent Hackett said he'd meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

 

The sign in the window of The Bluebird Diner said, Today's Special $1.99 Fish N' Chips. Two men in their fifties were hunched over the counter, wearing faded T-shirts and jeans. The talk wafting from under their worn ball caps concerned pensions and a major league pitcher.

Gannon and Cora waited alone in a booth for Hackett.

From his days on the police beat at the
Buffalo Sentinel,
Gannon knew that investigators often took people away from the scene and the cameras in order to tell them the worst news. He steadied himself by staring at the milk clouds swirling in his coffee while Cora took deep breaths, her fear tightening around her.

Sitting there with his sister in the ominous air pulled Gannon back to Buffalo.

He is eight; Cora is thirteen. They are terrified waiting at their kitchen table. They'd been in the yard, Cora lobbing a baseball to him when he popped one that went up, up, so far up that it landed with enough velocity on their father's new Ford to leave a fracture that spider-webbed across the windshield. Mom's aghast. “Holy cow, Jack, Dad's new car. He's going to be sick about this, just sick!” Cora telling her, “Don't blame Jack. It was my fault, Mom. I should have caught it. It was an accident, I swear.” At that moment Cora is his hero. Dad says nothing, works overtime and fixes the problem. That's the way he did things. Jack felt horrible but loved Cora for being the big sister protector.

Despite all the pain-soaked years between them, despite her mistakes, his misgivings and the wounds, she was still his sister.

And she needed him.

He clasped his hand over hers. “Hang in there, okay? It's going to be all right. Just hang on.”

Cora took his hand, squeezing it, until they saw Hackett's sedan arrive out front. He was alone and sober-faced when he entered, pulling a chair to the end of the table.

Cora steeled herself and hit him with her question.

“Is my daughter dead? If it's true, I want you to tell me right now?”

The two men at the counter turned.

Hackett kept his voice low, choosing his words carefully.

“We found no evidence at this scene to confirm that.”

“Please stop talking that way,” Cora said. “I took a polygraph, like you wanted. I told you everything, like you wanted. I may not have lived a perfect life, but please, can't you show me a scrap of respect. She's my child and I think I deserve to know the truth.”

Hackett loosened his collar.

“Two homeless men who'd been drinking in a boxcar claim they witnessed a possible drug deal go sideways. They say they saw two figures deposit a body into the trunk of a car. Then the car drove off. The men were frightened and stopped a patrol car. They led the deputy to the location, where he found an abandoned Cherokee SUV matching the vehicle we've linked to Galviera,” Hackett said.

“Our people have been working the scene since 3:00 a.m., going full bore. Fingerprints in the SUV match Galviera's and we found blood traces consistent with his type.”

“What do you think happened here?” Gannon asked.

“In his call to Cora,” Hackett said, “Galviera indicated
he was going to fix things. He said that he was going to see Tilly. We suspect the cartel lured him here with the intention of torturing him into giving them their money.”

“Oh Jesus, what about Tilly?” Cora asked.

“They may have used her as the bait. The cartel may have lured him with the promise of seeing Tilly.” Cora moaned.

“We can't rule it out,” Hackett said.

“They're just theories, Cora.” Gannon tried to comfort her.

“He's right,” Hackett said. “Just theories, but we can't discount another concern—that Cora was present when Eduardo Zartosa, the youngest brother of Samson Zartosa, leader of the Norte Cartel, was murdered.”

“But I never knew who that boy in San Francisco was until now.”

“It doesn't matter. We have to assume that Samson Zartosa knows now and take that into account. Think about it. Through circumstance, he is now holding the child of the woman involved in his little brother's murder, the woman whose boyfriend has stolen from his operation. That's about as bad as things can get. You wanted the truth. Well, that's it.”

Cora tried to keep herself from coming apart, staring off at the helicopters in the distance, circling the rail yards like giant vultures.

Please, God, help me find her.

Hackett's cell phone rang. He turned away slightly to take the call. It was short and he finished by saying, “I'll head that way now and meet you there.”

Cora saw something troubling in his expression.

“What is it? What's happening?”

“I can't tell you right now, I have to go.”

“Please!”

“I'm sorry, I'll keep in touch.”

When Hackett got to his car, Gannon stood, tossed some bills on the table. “Let's go. I could hear part of the call, something about a homicide. We'll follow him.”

Phoenix, Arizona

“O
h, Jesus.”

Salazar's and Johnson's severed heads stared up at Galviera. Across from him, Tilly's screams were muffled by the tape over her mouth.

“You have thirty seconds to tell us where you've put our two million dollars,” Angel said. “Or I will add a new one to the collection.”

Galviera turned white and was breathing hard.

“There's more money. Please take them away. I'll tell you where it is.”

“They will remain to inspire you to tell the truth.”

“I rented several storage lockers under the name of Pilsner at JBD Mini-Storage in Phoenix. The two million is in locker 787A, northwest sector of the yard. You need the gate code and the key for the steel lock on the unit. The money is in two sports bags. The code and key are in the hollowed section of the heel of my right boot.”

Angel nodded to Tecaza, who yanked off Galviera's right boot and twisted the heel, extracting a metal key and a folded business card with numbers jotted in pen on the back.

He held them up for Angel.

Tecaza and Limon-Rocha entered JBD's address into
a GPS, preparing to go retrieve their cash now as Angel stood before Galviera.

“To ensure you are not working with police, I'll call my associates every twenty minutes. If they do not answer me, I will remove the girl's head.”

 

In the time that Limon-Rocha and Tecaza were gone, Galviera tried to soothe Tilly.

“It'll be okay, I promise. Soon they'll have what they want and they'll let us go. I am so sorry for this, Tilly. It'll be okay now. Soon you'll see your mom and everything's going to be fine. I promise.”

Tilly could not stop shaking. Her widened eyes seemed even larger as she kept them on Angel. Her stomach knotted each time he made a phone call. She thanked God each time his call was answered.

Angel occupied himself by eating potato chips and chocolate cupcakes, drinking Coke and playing a hand-held computer game, the soft beeping and ponging sound a cruel juxtaposition to the horror he'd put on hold.

An hour after they'd left, Limon-Rocha and Tecaza had returned. They placed two sports bags on the table and started counting the bundled cash, counting twice to verify the amount.

The total: $2,176,000.

“Back the car into the hangar close to the table—” Angel nodded to Galviera “—and load all the money in the trunk, with the shovel and the pick.”

“Wait.” Galviera struggled. “Aren't you going to let us go?”

No one responded. As Limon-Rocha and Tecaza loaded the car, Angel checked Galviera's bindings and the handcuffs on his wrists and ankles.

“What are you doing?” Galviera winced when Angel tightened the cuffs.

“Get him ready,” Angel said.

“Please,” Galviera said. “I'm begging you, please!”

“Mr. Galviera, did you believe for one moment that after stealing from us you would come out of this alive?”

No more pleading or begging. This was how it was done.

Angel pulled on a large rubber apron and a surgeon's clear face shield, then set a gas-powered chain saw on the floor next to Tilly.

Galviera bucked wildly against his restraints. Tilly screamed under her tape. Angel kept the saw on the ground, expertly threw the
on
switch, the throttle, and adjusted the choke. He jerked the engine's crank cord. It popped to life, filling the hangar with a deafening roar.

Gently squeezing the throttle trigger, Angel lifted the saw and very carefully leveled it at Tilly's neck. The engine was turning at nearly thirteen-thousand rpm, powering the teeth in the semichisel chain. Tilly could feel the air rippling as Angel brought it closer. Her eyes bulged as she thrashed in vain away from the eighteen-inch blade.

As the saw's raging teeth came within half an inch of Tilly's skin she prayed and thought of her mother.

Angel was practiced.

A quick touch was all it took.

Phoenix, Arizona

A
Maricopa County patrol car blocked the entrance to Virginia Dortman's property. Cued by an approaching vehicle, the sheriff's deputy got out, adjusted his hat and went to the driver.

Hackett extended his FBI credentials. The deputy studied them and waved him on. Hackett drove nearly a quarter mile down the lane leading to Virginia's double-wide trailer, where he counted ten emergency vehicles lining the road. Yellow crime scene tape zigzagged among the trees surrounding Virginia's house. He heard a yelp and saw a K-9 unit scouring the property. Another deputy stood at the tape.

“Sir, Agent Larson is by the ambulance.” The deputy nodded to a far corner.

Larson was with two county investigators standing at the open rear doors of an ambulance, where a distraught woman in her sixties was being tended to by paramedics. Upon seeing Hackett, Larson stepped away, paged through her notebook and updated him.

“The deceased is Virginia Dortman, the apparent victim of a home invasion. She was discovered by her friend, Olive McKay, the woman in the ambulance.”

“And the link to our kidnapping?”

“When Olive found Virginia, she was alive and talking. Olive is trying to remember her friend's last words. She insists it was about our case.”

Hackett and Larson joined the other investigators respectfully listening while Olive, contending with her shock, did all she could to decipher Virginia's last words.

“I'm sorry,” Olive said, “but this is so hard.”

“We understand, ma'am,” Sheriff's detective Hal Atcher said. “If you could just try for us again, it's very important.”

“It was something like, the missing girl on TV, and bad please.”

“‘Bad please?'” Atcher repeated.

“That's what it sounded like.”

“Could it be bad
police?
” Hackett offered.

“It could be, but I'm not sure. This is awful, awful, awful!” Olive sobbed.

“Thank you, Olive. Thank you,” Atcher said. “We'll give you a little break while you wait for your husband to get here.”

Atcher and his partner, Brad Gerard, introduced themselves after stepping aside to give Olive a respite with the paramedics.

“What do you make of this, Earl?” Atcher asked.

“I don't know. I just got here. Did you find anything that places our people at this scene?”

“Nothing yet. It's all fresh, like the thing you got going at the rail yards.”

“Right.” Hackett took stock of the area's isolation and the cluster of buildings dotting the horizon. “What's that way over there?”

“That is the old Spangler Airfield. Used to service crop dusters until it closed in the 1950s and was abandoned. I believe the family estate is hoping for a mall development but over the years parceled off some of the border property, like this lot that Virginia and her husband bought.”

“What's the Dortman family situation?”

“No records. Lem is former military. He was a trucker until he died a year ago. Virginia was a librarian. Their
son, Clay, is a U.S. Marine posted overseas. We've sent word to him. We're going to start a canvass, but the neighbors are about an eighth of a mile apart on property surrounding the airfield.”

“Excuse me, Agent Hackett?” A deputy nodded to the police tape. “That gentleman there talked his way to the line. He says he needs to speak to you.”

Hackett winced, recognizing Gannon and Cora at the tape. They'd followed him. He signaled that he would speak to them later and returned to the detectives.

“Okay, what I would do—” Hackett nodded toward the abandoned airfield “—is send a few units over there right away because—”

“Hal, we got something!” The radio in Gerard's hand blurted and they heard a bark. The group turned to a county crime scene tech approaching, gripping a large digital camera in her gloved hands. “Clarkson and Sheba found it. It's a shoe, child-sized. I flagged it. It's in the yard out back. Alone. No other items. Have a look.”

The investigators crowded around the screen and examined the photo of a small sneaker. Larson thumbed through her notebook to Tilly's clothing description, then went back to the photo.

“Earl, that pretty much fits… Earl?”

Hackett waved to the deputy to admit Gannon and Cora to the scene and the group.

“We'll get an identification from the mother.”

Gannon and Cora, questions written on their faces, hurried to the group and looked at the photo.

“Is that Tilly's shoe?” Hackett asked.

Two seconds of intense concentration was all Cora needed before her eyes brimmed with tears and she nodded.

A dog yelped and the group's attention turned to the expanse of shrub and grass stretching beyond them to the airstrip. Sheba, the police dog, was tugging Sheriff's Deputy Clarkson toward it.