Cold Betrayal (34 page)

“Thanks for throwing me under the bus,” Ali said with a laugh. “See you at six.”

“Wait,” B. said. “Don’t you want to hear Stu’s and my news?”

“What news?”

“He managed to collect some images from the security tapes on those ATMs at the casino in Minnesota. He ran them through a facial recognition program, and we now have a good idea of who’s been lifting the money out of Betsy’s accounts.”

“Who?”

“Her daughter-in-law, Sandra.”

Ali sighed. “I wish I could say I was surprised. Have you told Athena?”

“Nope,” B. said. “This is your investigation. As far as I’m concerned, that means delivering the bad news is your job. After all, as you pointed out to me just a moment ago, you’re the one with the bulletproof vest.”

Ali hung up then and dialed Sister Anselm. “I think we have a possible identity on the Kingman Jane Doe.”

Her announcement was greeted by a sharp intake of breath. “No! Are you serious?”

“I am. I have reason to believe Jane Doe is a girl named Anne Lowell who ran away from The Family compound when her daughter, Enid, was three or four.”

“Jane Doe is Enid’s mother?” Sister Anselm’s shock was audible. “However did you learn all this?”

“Last night, after David Upton left the hospital, he drove up to Colorado City and rescued two of Enid’s friends.”

“Agnes and Patricia, the two Brought Back girls?” Sister Anselm asked. “Enid spent the whole night muttering about them, saying that they might be in danger, but I thought it was just the meds talking. I didn’t pay that much attention.”

“David did,” Ali answered. “They’re the ones who gave Enid Irene’s number. They must have been worried, too, because when David showed up and offered to bring them here, they didn’t hesitate.”

“But how did they get Irene’s number in the first place?”

“Someone from here in Flag—someone who knew Irene—offered Irene’s information to Agnes when she showed up at a grocery store in Colorado City with a crop of fresh bruises showing. When Patricia and Agnes took off a few weeks later, they had Irene’s number with them. They never got this far, but they kept the number. When Anne Lowell was getting ready to run away, they offered the number to her, too, but Anne said she didn’t need it. She claimed someone on the Outside was helping her. Now, all these years later, Patricia and Agnes are the ones who gave Irene’s decade-old information to Enid.”

“You said someone on the Outside was helping Anne,” Sister Anselm interjected. “Do we know who?”

“A boyfriend most likely. At the time she was married to Richard Lowell, the guy who’s now in charge of the compound. She evidently had a relationship on the side with someone who wasn’t her husband—maybe even with someone outside the cult—and was afraid of what her husband would do to her if he found out about the affair.”

“That’s why she ran away—because she was carrying another man’s child?”

“So it would seem.”

“Should I tell Enid? She’s sleeping right now, but she’s improving.”

“No,” Ali answered. “Don’t tell her anything yet, not until we know for sure that the Kingman Jane Doe is Anne Lowell.”

“How do we ascertain that,” Sister Anselm asked, “especially since the evidence box in that case has gone missing?”

“The box may be missing, but Jane Doe and her baby aren’t. They’re right where you left them in a common grave in Holy Name Cemetery in Kingman, Arizona.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“We have a possible ID,” Ali answered. “Bishop Gillespie is the one who paid Jane Doe’s burial expenses. If we can’t get a court order to have the body exhumed, maybe his previous involvement will give him leeway to request an exhumation.”

“It’s a Catholic cemetery,” Sister Anselm mused. “He might be able to make that work, but won’t he need a court order? How would he get one of those?”

“I’ll check with my new BFF, Governor Dunham. She’s busy with planning tonight’s raid, but I’ll ask her to look into the exhumation problem as soon as possible.”

“Wait,” Sister Anselm interjected. “Did you say raid? What raid?”

“How long have you been gone?” Ali asked. “It turns out a lot has happened.”

She spent the next ten minutes telling Sister Anselm everything that had transpired, ending with her long conversation with Governor Dunham.

“So you’ll be going to Colorado City tonight?” the nun asked when Ali finished.

“Yes.”

“I wish I could be there, too,” Sister Anselm said.

“But you can’t. We need you to look after Enid. Let other people handle the rest of it.”

Once off the line with Sister Anselm, Ali spent the next fifteen minutes on hold with the governor’s office, waiting to be put through to Virginia Dunham. By then more than an hour of Ali’s four-hour naptime window had evaporated, and she had yet to make it back to the Crown Inn.

“Yes, Ali,” Virginia Dunham said finally. “Sorry to leave you on hold so long. I was trying to clear up the tour bus situation. For arrestees, I’m bringing along a Department of Corrections bus that’s used to transport prisoners back and forth for court dates. I’ve also hired two motor coaches. They’ll be available to handle the transportation needs of any residents who wish to leave the compound immediately. The coach company was giving my chief of staff fits about possible liability issues. I’m afraid I had to get involved and kick a few asses to make it happen.”

Ali couldn’t help smiling at that. Governor Dunham was definitely living up to her advance notices.

The governor listened patiently while Ali laid out the most recent wrinkle in The Family’s complex history.

“It sounds to me,” Governor Dunham said when Ali finished, “like you’re using the Kingman Jane Doe thing to go after Sheriff Alvarado again. You really don’t like the man, do you?”

“Liking has nothing to do with it,” Ali asserted. “And it’s not just the sheriff. There are things inside his department that don’t pass the smell test, Amos Sellers being a prime example. His being a deputy and The Family’s bounty hunter at the same time isn’t right. In fact, it’s a conflict of interest. I’m worried that Sellers may have been personally involved with what happened to Anne Lowell. He may also be the person behind the disappearance of that critical evidence box.”

“Let’s cross one bridge at a time,” Governor Dunham cautioned. “I can see that having DNA evidence constitutes a new lead in the Kingman Jane Doe case. No matter what the fallout is from tonight’s raid, I owe you an enormous debt for bringing this ungodly mess to my attention. So please let Sister Anselm know there’s no need for her to involve Bishop Gillespie in this matter. My attorney general has a cold case unit that operates statewide. I’ll turn this exhumation issue over to him, but not today, mind you. My whole team, including the AG, are up to their asses in alligators at the moment. You’ll have to trust me on this.”

“I will,” Ali said. “Thank you.”

“See you at six?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ali said. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

On the way back to the Crown Inn, Ali called Sister Anselm back and told her she could stand down from tackling Bishop Gillespie—that the exhumation problem had been handled. Once off the phone, she realized it had been a very long time since breakfast. She would have stopped by the Pancake Castle to grab a bite of lunch, but they closed at two-thirty. It was more than an hour and a half beyond that.

B. may have called ahead, but getting let back into the hotel room wasn’t easy. The discrepancy between B.’s last name and Ali’s was noted and required a detailed explanation. Ali could tell by the disapproving frown on the clerk’s face that she was better off claiming their having married recently for the name difference. She had a feeling that the gray-haired woman behind the counter would not approve of someone who had no intention of ever changing her name.

Once Ali managed to talk her way into the room, she was sorry. The bed hadn’t looked all that inviting early in the morning, and nothing had changed in the intervening hours. The faded flowered bedspread was well beyond its expiration date, and even from a distance the lumps in the worn mattress were clearly visible. Ali turned off her ringer, placed the phone on a charger, and set the alarm on her iPad for five-fifteen. Then, slipping off her shoes, she lay down on top of the covers and pulled her coat over her to keep warm.

With so many pieces about to be set in motion, she more than half expected to toss and turn. Instead, she fell asleep instantly. When the alarm went off, she awakened from a dreamless sleep, rested and ready for action.

She and Sister Anselm had started this, and now was the time to finish it.

34

W
hile Ali slept, a text had come in from David. He said he’d been called away, but he had taken Patricia and Agnes back to their new temporary housing unit and gave Ali their address.

When Ali rang the bell at an upstairs apartment, the Patricia who answered the door was barely recognizable from the woman Ali had first seen; Agnes looked totally different, too. David Upton had done exactly as he’d been asked, and the Brought Back girls were transformed. The clothing he’d helped the two women purchase was inexpensive, off-the-rack-type fare, most likely from Target, but it worked. Dressed in jeans, sweaters, and lace-up boots, the two Brought Back girls looked like normal thirtysomething Americans rather than bewildered immigrants from a bygone era.

Somewhere along the way, both women had visited a salon, coming away with short bobs to replace the long cumbersome braids. The thing David hadn’t been able to fix were the neglected and missing teeth, which were still front and center.

“I’ve never worn pants before or boots, either,” Patricia said, looking down at her legs a little self-consciously. “Women in The Family aren’t allowed.”

Wearing pants and boots aren’t the only things you weren’t allowed to do,
Ali thought. She said, “Are you ready to do this?”

Patricia nodded. “Do you think people will even recognize us?”

“They will,” Ali assured her. “They may also be more than a little envious. Come on.”

Patricia and Agnes donned a pair of down-filled ski jackets and followed Ali out to the car, where they had to be reminded and helped to put on their seat belts. When Ali pulled into the parking lot at the DPS headquarters on the dot of six, the place was full to the brim with unmarked patrol cars from any number of jurisdictions. That made sense. The thinking was that having an army of readily recognizable marked cars heading north would be far too noticeable. Parked on the street were two immense chartered tour buses along with the converted school bus, complete with barred windows and a Department of Corrections logo, that would be used to transport prisoners.

What Ali found most surprising was the total lack of any media presence. She wondered how an operation of this size and complexity had been organized and thus far operated completely under the media’s radar. She guessed that Governor Dunham had held more than a few feet to the fire to make that happen.

Inside, the spacious lobby was packed. Cops in and out of uniform chatted amiably, making the room look like the site of a mini-law-enforcement convention. No doubt the officers’ emergency response team gear was stowed in the vehicles parked outside. Faced with the crowd, Agnes and Patricia hesitated in the doorway. Ali scanned the room, recognizing a few familiar faces before finally spotting B. He stood head and shoulders above most everyone else, talking with her friend Dave Holman, a homicide detective from Yavapai County.

“This way,” Ali said, urging the Brought Back girls forward and into the crowd. “I want to introduce you to my husband.”

Before she had a chance, however, Virginia Dunham’s voice came over a loudspeaker. “May I have your attention, please.”

Looking up, Ali saw that a lectern had been set up on the landing of the marble stairway that led to the building’s second story. Virginia Dunham, clad in boots, jeans, and a fringed leather jacket, took her place behind the microphone.

“For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Governor Dunham,” she continued, donning glasses and reading from a prepared text. “Thank you all for being here on such short notice. You’re about to participate in an important operation that will take most of the night and maybe part of the morning as well. That means it’ll be a long haul. As you leave here, you’ll find a supply of boxed lunches next to the door. We’re going to Colorado City, where I’m not expecting a welcome mat or any open restaurants. Feel free to take two boxes with you, one for now and one for breakfast. I’ve got a taco truck that will be on-site later, but it isn’t scheduled to arrive until after the main event, which is planned for midnight.

“We have credible evidence that offenders from a group called The Family have been running a human trafficking organization. Earlier today, there were some doubters and naysayers when I began putting this operation together and telling people that we needed to act quickly to prevent another group of girls from being shipped off into the sex trade. I want you to know that we now have intel that corroborates my concern. The FAA has informed my office that a charter company has filed a flight plan for a Citation X that’s due to land on The Family’s private airstrip at one
A.M.
for a scheduled two
A.M.
departure.

“By the way, the final destination on the flight plan is listed as Caracas, Venezuela. Venezuela happens to be a country with which the United States has no extradition treaty. If either the victims or perpetrators make it that far, they’ll be completely beyond our reach. That’s why I’ve put this together in such a hurry—to make sure that doesn’t happen. An FBI team is being assembled to handle the airstrip aspect of the operation. The suspect aircraft will be allowed to land, but it won’t be taking off again.

“Throwing the plane’s scheduled arrival and departure times into the mix means that we must hold to our midnight timetable. No delays. It’s a four-hour drive from here to there. The FBI is overseeing the entire operation. Their command and control vehicle is on the way already and should be in position well before the rest of you arrive. Teams one, two, and three will depart ten minutes after the conclusion of this briefing. Other higher-numbered teams will launch off in groups of three at ten-minute intervals. We can’t afford to have a northbound traffic jam. Stick to the speed limits. Don’t attract undue attention. Maintain radio silence in case someone is monitoring police channels. The tour buses and my Sprinter will be the last ones to depart and head north.”