In Desperation (24 page)

Near Phoenix, Arizona

A
ngel gazed upon the girl in the trunk.

So this was the famous face that had stared at him from newscasts. He took his time appraising her, the way a collector assesses art.

She exuded fear.

But he saw something more. A mixture of courage, defiance and, despite her ordeal, the polish of a privileged middle-class American life that was a universe away from the barrio he had known at her age.

Bound with silver tape, gagged with a blue bandanna, packaged in jeans and a pink embroidered T-shirt, this was the prize in his final job, his ticket out of narco world before someone put him in his grave.

He lowered the trunk with consideration, closing it gently with a snap.

“Let's go,” he said to Limon-Rocha and Tecaza.

Angel sat in the rear seat of the car among their luggage and the equipment he required for finishing the job. Tecaza, behind the wheel, found him in the rearview mirror.

“Where are we going?”

“Head for Phoenix.”

“What are the next steps for the operation?” Limon-Rocha asked.

Angel looked away, preferring not to talk about a job. Instead he reflected on the landscape and how he'd escaped capture; how he'd traveled by using his youth to persuade strangers to give him a ride.

“I beg you. My mother is dying. I have no money.”

The incident on the bus had been a close one but Angel was confident in his training, proud of his survival skills. He didn't know about these two ex-soldiers, who'd had their own narrow escape from FBI, as he'd seen on a news report he'd watched on a TV in a diner at a small-town gas station.

Assassinations in the U.S. were always a problem.

Unlike jobs in Mexico, they had no guarantee of support from dirty cops on the payroll, and now, because this one was high-profile, they were more exposed. Everyone's picture was shown in the press. Angel shrugged.

They still held the most vital piece: the girl.

He considered her again.

She did not come from the drug world like most of his targets. Yet in the moments he'd studied her, he'd found something about her he resented. As a top
sicario
for the cartel he had enjoyed the world in luxury, but looking upon the girl, this innocent from a wealthier class, took him back to what he had come from.

Angel could smell the dump, taste the despair of the tumbledown shack his family had lived in, feel the shame of other kids laughing at his drunken father picking through the trash.

No, Angel would have no trouble completing this job. It was just a matter of choosing a method, a thought that gave rise to a familiar worry.

Will she haunt me like the others haunt me?

Angel's cell phone rang and he fished it out of his backpack. The phone was a special design costing about $35,000 and stolen from the U.S. military. The cartel had obtained ten through a black market source. The phone's
signals were scrambled, encrypted, then scrambled and encrypted repeatedly. For now, the calls were untraceable.

The instant Angel answered, Thirty said, “Did you find them?”

“Yes.”

“And did you inspect the asset?”

“Yes. It looks good.”

“There's been a twist.”

“What is it?”

“The man with our property has finally contacted us. He wants to make your job easier for you.”

“How?”

“He wants to meet, to exchange our property for the seized asset. As we'd planned, he feels pressured to come to us. We will arrange it. One of the soldiers will know the locations. Are they present?”

Angel glanced at them in the front of the car.

“Yes.”

“Put the older one on.”

“Ruiz, for you.”

Angel passed up his phone and watched several moments of nods punctuated with, “
Si, si.
I know it. We will.” When Ruiz returned the phone, Angel asked a question of Thirty.

“How do we know our contact won't bring problems wearing badges with him. They are getting closer.”

“We possess the asset—that's our strength. His weakness is his greed. We know that he needs the asset and our property. If he involves other parties, he will not achieve his goal.”

“It's dangerous for us.”

“There is no other way. We have arranged shipment of the special material for you to ensure that he will surrender all of our property. It is all in place, waiting for you.”

“All right.”

“We are not happy about the close calls we've had. This attention creates difficulties. But we must use it to our advantage. We must not back down. This is a time of intense interest. It is precisely the time to tell the world that if you fuck with us, you die. The arrogance of the dirty American cops and the sniveling messenger, to steal from the Norte Cartel, the cartel Zartosa built upon the graves of his family, is an insult. We are at war. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Zartosa's orders are to kill them all.”

Metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona

L
yle Galviera was still on his call to Cora when the FBI took action to arrest him.

Task Force members who were monitoring Cora's home line knew he was calling from the pay phone at the FirstRate Gas Station on Old Gatehouse Road, at the city's southern edge.

Before patching it to Cora at the FBI's divisional office, they'd alerted the Maricopa County 911 Center to send police units to the gas station, stressing that they not use lights or sirens. After dispatching cars, the emergency coordinator phoned the gas station directly to request staff make a visual of the person using the pay phone.

The coordinator's call was answered on the first ring. A male voice said: “I told you we are through, Darlene!”

The line clicked dead.

The dispatcher tried again but the line rang unanswered because Sheldon Cardick, the twenty-six-year-old clerk, was breaking up with his girlfriend. Actually, she'd dumped him and was now sorry. W
ell, tough titty.

Let the phone ring.

To calm down, Sheldon went outside to sweep the front walk, waving to his last customer as he drove off in a beat-up Cherokee after using the pay phone. Not many people used that phone these days, since everyone had
a cell phone. After cleaning up, Sheldon returned to the counter and his manager-trainee binders, still pissed at Darlene.

She was the loser. Despite what her mother said, Sheldon Cardick was not going be “just a clerk all of his sad little life.” He was studying to be an executive with FirstRate. A lofty goal, Sheldon thought, just as a commotion outside pulled him from his binder.

What the—?

Four sheriff's cars had materialized.

Two large deputies entered, their shoulder radios squawking. They were pumped.

“Can you tell us if you saw anyone using the pay phone out front in the last few minutes?”

Sheldon craned his neck, seeing the other deputies unrolling police tape around the area by the phone. What's up with that? A knuckle knock on his counter got his attention.

“Hey, skip, eyes front! Did you see anybody on the phone?”

“Yeah, some guy, bought gas, driving a shit box Cherokee.”

“What color and year?”

“White, 1990s I would guess.”

“You'd guess?”

“What's going on?”

The second deputy was taking notes and talking in his radio as the first continued questioning Sheldon.

“Did the phone guy use a credit card?”

“Cash.”

“Any chance you got a license plate?”

“No. Why? What's this about?”

The deputy pointed at the security cameras. “Those work?”

“Yes.”

“You going to volunteer your tapes, or do we need to get a warrant?”

“I, uh…well, I have to call my manager.”

“Do it now.”

 

Across the city in the FBI's Phoenix offices, Jack Gannon and Cora demanded to know what Hackett and the task force had learned in the wake of Galviera's call.

It was a major break.

They'd put the call through to this meeting room where Cora had taken her polygraph exam. Gannon checked his watch. Some twenty-five minutes had passed since Cora had spoken to Galviera.

It seemed like a lifetime.

They'd been here, waiting alone behind the room's glass walls while in the outer office agents worked with quiet intensity on the break. Hackett returned head down, concentrating on his BlackBerry.

“What do you have?” Gannon asked.

“We know he called from a pay phone at a gas station.”

“You must know where.”

“We do but we're not disclosing that now. We've got people on-site investigating.”

“Are you going to tell us?”

“You're media, Jack.”

“Come on. This is the closest we've ever been.”

“No. We want it off the airwaves because we think these guys monitor police chatter on radio scanners. Everything's still hot right now.” Hackett's phone rang. “Excuse me.”

When they were alone again, Cora, overwhelmed by the polygraph and Galviera's call, contended with her emotions. Gannon put his arm around her. For twenty
years she'd lived with the burden of believing she'd murdered a man and destroyed so many lives.

“I'm so sorry for everything, Jack.”

“Now you know the truth—you never killed anyone. You did the opposite, Cora. You gave comfort to a dying man. The San Francisco guys didn't charge you, or arrest you. That's a good sign. You can't rewrite all the mistakes you made in your life—no one can.”

She nodded.

“All this time, I believed I was being punished for my sins, and maybe I was. But it's strange how once I told everyone what I'd done, Lyle's call came, like a karmic connection. Maybe now I'm closer to getting Tilly back than we've ever been.”

“Let's hope so.”

“I feel it, Jack. It's what Lyle said to me on the phone. His exact words were, ‘I'm going to see Tilly soon.' I think it means he knows where she is.”

“Maybe not.” Hackett had returned and had been listening.

“Why not?” Cora asked.

“It could mean the cartel is luring Galviera with the promise of seeing Tilly. And there's another key consideration.”

“What's that?” Gannon asked.

“The cartel may also know that you were present when Eduardo Zartosa was murdered in San Francisco. If so, they may be planning to exact revenge. It's what they do.”

Cora swallowed hard.

 

The security cameras at the FirstRate Gas Station had recorded Lyle Galviera in a ball cap and dark glasses, buying gas. They'd also captured clear pictures of the Arizona license plate on his Cherokee.

Within an hour those pictures were circulated in
citywide and statewide alerts to all police and media. Within two hours, the FBI held another news briefing. They asked the public to help locate Galviera, or his vehicle, or the other suspects, to aid in the investigation of Tilly Martin's kidnapping.

The appeal yielded few solid tips.

As the day gave in to the evening, Cora and Gannon returned to her home in Mesa Mirage, where she made a short statement to the news crews waiting in her driveway.

“I'm praying we'll bring Tilly home and I beg anyone with any information to call police. Please.”

Exhausted, Cora went to Tilly's room. She held a stuffed polar bear in her arms, looked out the window to the stars and asked God for mercy.

Tilly, I love you. Wherever you are, Mommy loves you
.

Somewhere in Metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona

P
it-a-pat pit-a-pat pit-a-pat.

Stones tapped and popped against the car's undercarriage.

Where are they taking me? We've been driving for hours.

Tilly had a bad feeling with the new kidnapper, the younger guy. The way he stared at her had creeped her out. All the more reason for her to keep trying everything she could to get away from her monsters.

With a few deep breaths, she'd gathered the strength to resume working on her bindings. Her captors had paid no attention to them. The tape was still secure but she had been loosening it.

Again Tilly twisted her aching wrists against the tape until they were numb.

The car slowed, then stopped.

Weight shifted and doors opened, followed by low talking. Then she heard the rattle, clank and shuffle as they began unloading the car and carrying items away. Tilly was overwhelmed with a sense of finality.

What's going to happen? What're they going to do to me?

Footsteps approached. A key was inserted in the trunk and it opened to the night and something moved swiftly
toward her, leaving her no time to react as her head was swallowed by a sack.

Hands lifted her from the trunk, her feet found the ground. Dirt, sand and small stones bumped under her sneakers. She sensed the still air of a vast, remote place before she was escorted like a blind person to another location.

They had not gone far when they stopped.

“Step up,” one of the creeps said.

Tilly raised her foot, feeling a step, then she found a smooth floor as they entered a structure. She was overwhelmed by the smell. It took her back to a school trip to ghost towns near Casa Grande. The decaying buildings were filled with birds' nests. The walls were layered with “sun-cooked bird shit,” as Dylan Fuller had called it.

Now as they moved along, Tilly listened for anyone else who might be inside, anyone who could help her.

She heard nothing but creaking, dripping and the echoes of her own shuffling as they entered another area. Here Tilly sensed a dim light through the bottom of her hood as it was pulled from her head.

Standing there, she took stock of the room. It was as large as her classroom but illuminated by a naked bulb hanging like a noose from a pipe and wired to a car battery. The light created ominous shadows, for the room was abandoned, neglected. Paint peeled in sheets as if the walls were diseased. Tiles had fallen from the ceiling. At one end she saw a series of huge pipes horseshoed from the floor for about three feet before bending back into the floor like upside-down U's as high as Tilly's waist.

A mattress was pushed near one of the big upside-down U's.

Tilly saw a chain.

Handcuffs.

The creep Alfredo nudged her closer. He wrapped the chain around one of the pipes, looped one handcuff
around the chain, clamped the other on Tilly's wrist, then snapped it shut on her.

The steel click destroyed the speck of hope she'd nurtured by loosening the tape.

Alfredo said nothing and removed her gag.

Before he left, he nudged the toe of his boot against a plastic bag. Tilly saw bottled water, potato chips, pastries, an apple and what looked like a sandwich.

Standing there, awaiting her fate, she felt the onset of tears but forced herself not to cry.

She could hear her captors in the next area, their low voices echoing as they talked quickly in Spanish with each other. She heard the digital chirp of a keypad and guessed one was making a call on a cell phone.

This was it.

Tilly sensed that whatever they were going to do to her, they would do it here.

She was so scared.

As she prayed, she looked to her left through the room's only window well. It had no glass or frame. It was a low-set, large square opening to the vast night. On the horizon, Tilly saw a few small lights, twinkling like a distant shore, and wondered what they were connected to.

A house? With people living a normal life and children happy and safe in their beds, while she was imprisoned here waiting for whatever was to come.

Did anyone know she was here?

Was anyone rushing to save her?

Why was this happening? Why?

Furious, she yanked against her handcuff, rattling her chain against the pipe, causing a loud clanking of metal rings against metal.

Tilly looked at the pipe, at its upside-down U shape. It was about as big in circumference as a soda can, with a bigger circular collar at each end. In the middle it had
several rings, each about three inches wide, that slid along the main pipe like bracelets.

Tilly focused on them.

One bracelet was out of alignment
.

It seemed slanted.

Did she do that by jerking the chain?

Tilly slid the bracelets away from the slanted one. Then she slid the slanted one to reveal a clear two-inch gap in the pipe. A section had been removed, but the bracelet ring had covered the gap.

Alfredo never checked! The stupid creeps missed this!

Tilly's heart raced.

Would the chain fit? She looked around—no one was near. Quietly and carefully she slid the chain through the gap.

Yes! Oh my God! Oh my God!

Then with the utmost care she threaded the chain from her handcuff. She let out her breath slowly. All that was fastened to her now was the one handcuff on her wrist. Its open mate dangled from it and she held it to keep it from clinking.

She walked softly to the edge of the room, peered around the entrance carefully and saw a large warehouse area where her captors were at a table eating, surrounded by their luggage and equipment.

In the opposite direction, she saw a darkened hallway.

She moved slowly down the hallway until she came to another open doorway and night air.

And just like that she was outside under the stars.

Free.

In an instant she searched for her bearings, for any sign of civilization or help in the vast darkness surrounding her. She scanned every direction until she found the small lights blinking in the distance.

There!

Tilly ran toward them as fast as she could.

Blood pounding in her ears, her heart nearly bursting, she wanted to cry and scream at the same time as she ran for her life.