In Desperation (8 page)

Somewhere in Greater Phoenix, Arizona

T
illy sat upright.

The one with the knife was approaching her room.

What was he going to do?

Tilly tried to keep calm but fear pulled her down, the way Lenny Griffin had held her underwater that day at swim class.

She had thought she would drown.

She'd struggled but couldn't breathe. Heart slamming against her chest, lungs bursting, alarm screaming in her ears, she kicked, scratched and gouged Lenny until she broke free.

All the jerk did was laugh.

But his smile had vanished after Tilly landed a swift punch on his face. She was glad that she'd retaliated, giving him a shiner and a guarantee that she would always fight back.

But Lenny Griffin was a stupid twelve-year-old boy.

The monster in her doorway now was a grown man with a knife, a creep who was obviously a fake cop. Because real police officers, like Deputy Sheriff Taylor, who had visited her school, didn't do the things this creep and his friend, Creep Number Two, were doing. Real police didn't take kids from their homes at night and stuff them in suitcases.

What were they going to do to her now?

Creep Number One, the one called Ruiz, just stood there, leaning on the door frame, cutting into that apple with his big knife, looking at her and chewing.

Tilly hated them.

Ruiz and Creep Number Two, the one called Alfredo, had been watching their TV and arguing for a long time. Then they stopped. Now Ruiz was just standing there, looking at her.

She was scared.

What were they going to do to her?

Her mouth was gagged, her teeth clamped on a twisted bandanna tied behind her head. Her hands were bound with duct tape. Her eyes filled with tears as she scanned the room.

That big black suitcase was in the closet.

Her coffin.

Please don't put me in there again.

It was so dark in there. When they'd taken her from her mom, they'd scrunched her in the suitcase. She could feel them lift her into the trunk of a car. Then they drove.

She was trapped in a nightmare.

Seeing her mom tied up in the kitchen was horrifying. Tilly felt so helpless. All she could do was say her mother's favorite prayer from church over and over.

Hail Mary, full of grace…pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death…

Tilly didn't know where they were driving or for how long. But when they stopped, they lifted the suitcase, with her in it, from the trunk, rolled it inside and let her out here, in this scuzzy place.

A hotel, she guessed.

The place smelled like cigarettes and BO. The toilet never stopped hissing. The air conditioner hardly worked. She didn't know where they were. The creeps had removed the telephone and phone book. They left the TV on a kids' channel with cartoons for babies and kept the
sound low. She tried to sleep but it took hours for the aching in her legs, shoulder and neck to go away.

They gave her teen magazines, pizza, chips, chocolate bars, cookies, soda and stuff. They didn't hurt her or touch her or yell at her or anything. They kept her tied up and sometimes they asked her about Lyle Galviera, her mom's boss, if she knew where he was.

As if she would know.

Tilly just shook her head, which made her chain jingle a bit.

For, in addition to gagging her and binding her hands, they'd put a metal clamp on her ankle. They secured it to a long dog chain and locked it to some steel pipes, so she could get up and go to the bathroom and stuff.

The chain clinked a little now as she trembled under Ruiz's gaze.

Just then, sound from the creeps' TV in the other room spilled into her room. Her heart swelled. Oh my God, that was her mother on TV!

“Sweetheart, if you can see me or hear my voice, I love you. We're doing everything to bring you home safely….”

It filled her with hope, like when Lenny's grasp on her had loosened.

I hear you and I love you, Mommy!

Ruiz kept his attention locked on Tilly and ordered Alfredo in Spanish to shut the TV off. Then he cut the last piece from his apple and took his time chewing it before tossing the core in the overflowing trash can in the corner.

Ruiz stood at the door, his tongue methodically probing his teeth for the apple remnants. Then he carefully wiped the serrated blade clean against his jeans and began tapping it against the palm of his hand.

“It appears your mother has disobeyed my order.”

His voice sounded friendly, but Tilly knew it was
phony, because he was breathing hard. Under that fake nice voice, he was pissed.

Tilly was not fooled.

The man was holding a knife.

He just stood there, tapping it in his hand, staring at her for the longest time as if watching some plan play out in his mind. Then he went to the curtains and using his knife, parted them slightly to look at the Golden Cut Processing Plant across the street, listening to the meat saw echoing in the night.

Then he turned to Tilly.

He touched the tip of the blade in his palm.

He'd reached a decision.

“Remember, it was your mother who forced us to take this next step. For the action we're about to take, I will beg your forgiveness.”

Tilly didn't understand. Then Ruiz said, “Alfredo, come in here. I am going to need your help.”

The chain chinked as Tilly tensed.

“Your mother does not appreciate who she is dealing with. We will give her a lesson she will never forget.”

Mesa Mirage, Phoenix, Arizona

T
he flowers were yellow.

There were almost two dozen daffodils, carnations and roses arranged in a yellow ceramic vase with a yellow ribbon and a card for Cora Martin.

The vase was belted to the front passenger seat of the cab that had pulled up this morning to the tangle of police and news vehicles outside Cora's house.

Since her televised appeal yesterday, people from across the city had brought her balloons, stuffed toys and notes of support. After passing their gifts to police at the line, most well-wishers spoke to the media, offering their teary consolation for Cora.

The cabdriver who'd delivered the yellow bouquet stopped to talk to insistent reporters after he'd handed the vase over the tape to a sheriff's deputy.
“Sir, just a few words please, sir!”
The deputy gave the vase a quick inspection before taking it around the back to investigators who were checking each item.

The female Phoenix police officer who'd accepted the flowers passed a wand over the vase then delicately probed the stems with latex-gloved fingers. A detection dog from the K-9 unit sniffed the bouquet before the
flowers were taken inside. The FBI agent who'd received them started to set them in the living room with the other items but reconsidered.

She saw Cora on the sofa, hands cupped around a mug of coffee. Her hair was pulled back and her sleep-deprived eyes brimmed with sadness as if she were gazing into an endless pit.

“These look pretty, don't you think, Cora?”

The agent glanced at Gannon, who was standing nearby, checking his cell phone messages, then she set the vase on the coffee table. The fragrance generated a weak smile from Cora.

“All yellow,” the agent said, “for hope.”

But Cora feared she was running out of hope. Aside from last night's false alarm at the Burger King in Tempe, the FBI had received no strong leads on Tilly.

Where was she? Why hadn't Lyle called? Where was he?

And she'd heard nothing from the kidnappers.

The alarm ringing at the back of Cora's mind grew louder, filling her with doubt. Had she been wrong to go to the police? The way she'd been wrong about so much in her life, running away from her family and making so many mistakes. But that was the past. She'd left it behind and had been rebuilding her life, piece by piece.

Why was this happening?

Was it somehow tied to the unforgivable act she'd committed all those years ago?
Stop
. It made no sense to think like that because it had nothing to do with Tilly's kidnapping.

But what if karmic forces were at work?

Guilt began to tighten its grip on her.

“Are you going to open it?”

The agent indicated the envelope that Cora still held in her hand. She opened it to a simple white card, with an embossed garden scene. She unfolded it, expecting,
as with the other cards, an expression of sympathy or something encouraging.

She stopped breathing when she read:

Cora couldn't move.

“Is something wrong?” Gannon had been watching her.

Cora's hands trembled as carefully she lifted the flowers from the water. She was afraid to look but forced herself to pick up the vase, tilt it and slowly peer into the water.

Shock hit her like a sledgehammer to the chest.

Her stomach lurched as she felt the earth move under her.

“What is it?” Gannon said.

“Are you all right?” the agent asked.

Cora dropped the vase. It shattered on the coffee table.

“Oh Christ!” said the agent, incredulous, staring at the two white orbs that had fallen from it to the floor. They looked like small boiled eggs. Each had swirls of pink fleshy strands and blue irises.

Eyes.

“My baby!!!”

Cora released a raw heart-stopping shriek and began flailing at the air.

“Jesus!” Gannon rushed to her.

After reading the note without touching it, Hackett seized a radio and called to officers outside in the front yard.

“Eight-sixty. Who made the last delivery? The yellow flowers in a yellow vase, who brought that?”

“Seven-O-one. Cabdriver with Flying Eagle. He's out front talking to the press.”

“Grab him!”

“Say again eight-sixty?”

Cora's screams had interfered with Hackett's transmission.

“Grab him now! Keep it low key and bring him around back!”

Cora screamed and screamed until she passed out.

 

Eventually, Gannon and the others got Cora to her bedroom.

Paramedics were called to tend to her while FBI crime scene experts cleared the living room and began investigating the note, pieces of the vase and its grisly contents.

Outside, at the back of the house, Hackett and Larson went at Velmar Kelp, the taxi driver who'd delivered the flowers.

“Like I told you, I just delivered them,” Kelp repeated. “I stopped for coffee at Zeke's Diner on the west side, at Central and Eighty-Second Avenue and this guy came up to me, all busted up about the missing girl and whatnot and gives me two hundred bucks to deliver them,” Kelp said. “What's going on?”

“It looks like you're involved in the kidnapping, Velmar.”

“What? You're crazy.”

“A shit storm is about to come down on you so you'd better give us the truth now.”

“I just delivered the flowers for some guy on the street, I swear!”

“Did this guy have the address?”

“No. I got it from my dispatcher, from First Eagle bringing fares to the house here, you know, news people. And the
Republic
story today gives the street and whatnot.”

The FBI refused to let up.

Did Kelp get the guy's name, a card, a phone number? What did he look like? Any scars? Tattoos? What about his clothing? The way he spoke? Show us the cash he gave you. Were there witnesses? Did he ask for a receipt? Was anyone else with him? Did he get into a vehicle
?

Their questioning grew into an unyielding interrogation until they convinced Kelp to ride with them to Zeke's Diner where he'd received the flowers. Supported by Phoenix detectives, FBI agents canvassed the area and searched for security cameras, all while pressing Kelp for more details.

They demanded he volunteer his fingerprints.

At Cora's house, the FBI evidence team processed the vase and note for latent prints. It was when they undertook the gruesome task of examining the eyes that their interest deepened. Something ran counter to the assumption. Something was different. They needed to conduct more tests but one of the forensic experts said: “These are characteristic of
Sus scrofa,
recently isolated.”

 

It took a sedative and several hours to calm Cora.

By the time she woke, Hackett had returned and was with Gannon and a few other people in her room. Taking stock of their faces, Cora braced for the worst.

Tilly was dead
.

“Cora,” Gannon started.

She stifled a guttural moan.

“It's not what you think,” he said.

“The eyes are not human,” Hackett said.

She blinked in confusion.

“They were removed from a dead pig. They're pigs' eyes.”

“Pigs' eyes?”

“They can't belong to Tilly, or anyone else,” Hackett said.

Overcome with relief and fear, Cora buried her face in her hands.

“They just wanted to pressure you, send a message,” Hackett said.

“To prove they're evil fucking bastards?”

“Cora,” Hackett said, “we still need to collect your fingerprints.”

She stared at him.

“My fingerprints? But you already have Tilly's. Why do you need mine? How will my fingerprints bring Tilly back?”

“We have to process the prints of everyone who touched the vase, the card and other things,” Hackett said. “We talked about why we needed your prints at the outset when ERT started their work.”

She remembered but said nothing.

Hackett then indicated the fingerprint analyst next to him with a laptop.

“We've got an electronic scanner. No ink, no mess. It won't take long.”

Cora hesitated and Gannon tried to help the situation.

“I gave mine. Cora, it's routine.”

“To create elimination prints,” Hackett said. “To help isolate prints that should not be present.”

Cora still hesitated.

Hackett and Gannon exchanged glances.

“Is there some reason you're reluctant?” Hackett asked. “We want you to volunteer your prints but we can get a warrant for them, if we have to.”

“No,” she said. “I'll give them.”

“Good,” Hackett said.

The technician set things up on her kitchen table, positioning Cora in a chair. But when she placed her fingers on the glass platen, raw, exposed, her mind thundered with a memory and her fingers trembled. “I'm going to need you to relax,” the analyst said.

“Sorry, I'm still a bit jittery from everything.”

“I understand.”

“Maybe if I took a hot shower, it might help me relax.”

The tech nodded and she took her hand away from the scanner.

 

Cora was coming apart.

In the shower, she tried in vain to hide from everything, contending with her guilty heart. Needles of hot water stung her, like the sting of mistrust she felt whenever Jack looked at her.

Steam clouds rose around her and carried her back to the point when her life first began to darken. Cora was sixteen and her friend Shawna had convinced her to go to a party downtown.

“There's going to be older college guys there.”

Cora had never done anything wild like that in her life.

“Time for you to bust out, girl,” Shawna told her.

At the party, the people were older. Way older. There was talk that some were ex-cons on parole. Cora was uneasy and begged Shawna to leave. But Shawna was having fun and kept passing Cora these fruit drinks the older guys kept making.

Cora started feeling woozy.

Someone took her into a bedroom, told her to lie down…don't worry you'll be fine…relax…the walls started spinning…the bed was flying and she felt someone undressing her…she couldn't resist…couldn't move…the first man stood over her, climbed on top of her…when he finished another man followed him then another as she faded into oblivion…

Cora didn't know how she got home that night.

Did someone look in her wallet for her address and drive her?

When Cora woke and realized what had happened to her, she climbed into the shower and scrubbed herself raw. She wanted to peel off her skin.

She wanted to kill herself.

How could she have been so stupid?

Shawna never knew. She'd left the party earlier, thinking Cora had left without her. Cora never told anyone what had happened. Not Shawna, not her mother, not anyone.

She was too ashamed.

She wanted to apologize to her parents, wanted to make herself invisible. She wanted to die.

In the time that followed, Cora thought she could handle it, but she couldn't. She'd turned to drugs. It was the only way she could survive. Her mother and father tried to get through to her, tried to help her.

“What's wrong with you, Cora?” Her mother sensed something had happened. “You've changed. Tell me, what's wrong?”

Cora was so ashamed she could never bring herself to talk about it and soon grew angry at her mother's concern, her prodding. It led to one argument after another, until the last one before she left home at seventeen. With Rake.

A nineteen-year-old heroin addict who'd convinced her that her destiny was to live with him and his friends in a drug-induced splendor by the sea in California. She was so stupid. After Rake vanished, there were other addicts. For years she drifted in a drug-addled haze.

Then came that night, that horrible rainy night in California.

She'd struggled to blot it out of her mind, to never think of it, or all the events that came later that had cast her into a pit so dark she thought she would not survive. It was while she was lost in the darkness that she'd become pregnant with Tilly.

At that time Cora never realized that Tilly was her tiny point of light. She was too terrified. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't go home. Ever. She was ashamed. She was scared. She went to a clinic.

But she couldn't go through with it.

She went to a church and prayed and soon it dawned on her that this was her miracle. This was her reason to start over. She'd been given a second chance with this baby.

This new life.

 

But it always came back to that awful night in San Francisco.

The incident was always there. Close to the surface, breaking into her thoughts like flashes of lightning.

Don't think about it.

The blood.

Stop.

So much blood.

Stop.

Blood on her hands
.

Now she was being punished for the sin she'd committed that night.

Cora was so afraid she couldn't breathe.

Forgive me.

Standing in the shower Cora stared at her hands.

Were they still red with blood?

Overcome, she fell against the shower wall and slid to the floor, lost in a whirlwind of confusion.

She could not let anyone find out about that night in San Francisco. She had to protect Tilly.

How did this happen?

Where was Lyle? How could he do this?

She could not survive without Tilly.