by Rick Mofina
Virginia Dortman gripped her knife and cut potatoes into chunks. She was making a salad and desserts for the hospital fundraiser potluck tomorrow.
Judging from the aroma filling the kitchen of her small double-wide, the pies baking in her oven should almost be ready. Give them a few more minutes, she thought, gazing out her window at the flat land stretching toward the abandoned airfield.
Look at those lights bouncing and waving around out there. It must be teenagers again. All that tomfoolery can get dangerous. One time, they started a fire. Virginia had a good mind to call the sheriff’s office.
She’d let it go for now. She had too much to do.
For the past year, since her husband died of a heart attack at fifty-two years of age, Virginia busied herself baking, volunteering and working at the library. But most of the time she feared for her son, Clay.
He looked at her from his framed photo atop the TV he’d bought her. Handsome in his dress blues, eyes intense under his white cap. He was a proud Marine, like his dad.
Clay had been posted to South Korea three months ago.
He was twenty-four.
Virginia whispered a prayer for him each day.
What was that?
Her attention shifted to her window.
Something outside was moving, approaching her house. She searched the night beyond the floodlights illuminating her property.
A coyote? No. That’s a-
Virginia’s eyes widened.
“Please, help me!”
Tilly ran up the wooden stairs to Virginia Dortman’s front porch.
“Help me!”
Stunned at the site of a sobbing little girl at her door, Virginia’s immediate thought was that this was a joke, set up by teenagers.
She opened her door, her disbelief turning to shock at Tilly’s dirty T-shirt, torn jeans, frazzled hair and bloodied arms. When the kitchen light glinted off the steel handcuff dangling from Tilly’s wrist, Virginia gasped.
“Oh my Lord, sweetheart, what happened to you?”
Tilly fused herself to Virginia, inhaling the smells of her kitchen, her apron, shaking so badly, her words spilled through a torrent of tears. “P-p-please…h-h-help…”
Virginia’s next thought was calling 911, and she glanced toward her cordless phone on the sofa of her living room.
But before she moved to get it, her kitchen was awash in blood-red pulsating light.
A police car?
An unmarked patrol car halted at her doorstep, a red emergency light revolving on the interior dash. Two uniformed officers rushed toward Virginia. Confusion then recognition dawned, memory swirling with TV news images of a kidnapped child, drug gangs, fake police officers- Oh, dear Lord.
“Release the child, ma’am!”
Both officers put their hands on their holstered guns.
“No!” Tilly screamed. “They’re not police!”
“Ma’am, release the child! We have reports that a missing girl was sighted here. Now, release the child and step forward with your hands above your head palms out. Now!”
“No! Don’t listen to them!” Tilly screamed.
A third figure left the rear of the car, disappearing in the night.
Paralyzed with fear, Virginia glanced to her counter for her knife.
“Freeze! Release her, now!”
One of the officers drew his weapon and pointed it at Virginia while his partner charged at Tilly. She broke free, bolting to the living room for the phone just as Angel smashed through the rear door and seized it from Tilly.
The two men held her down, clamped the loose handcuff around her free wrist. One of the creeps, Alfredo, dragged her wailing to the car and locked her in the trunk.
Inside the house, Limon-Rocha held Virginia at gunpoint in a chair in her kitchen.
Angel entered, glanced at her, then picked up the knife she had been using a moment ago.
Angel took stock of Virginia’s double-wide trailer, the photograph of her Marine son. Running his finger along the serrated edges of the blade, he looked into her eyes. They glistened with terror.
“I am very sorry,” he said.
61
Phoenix, Arizona
Lyle Galviera kept the Cherokee a few miles under the speed limit, moving south along the freeway.
The AC had quit. His hands were sweating on the wheel. He opened the windows and concentrated.
This was it, his only shot.
The cartel had given him the location for the meeting. He knew the area but still had a long way to go. Amid the multilane streams of headlights and taillights, he checked his mirrors again, glad the guy in California who’d provided him with the Cherokee and new ID had put several different plates in the storage bin.
“Never know when you might need ’em.”
Galviera had switched to a Colorado plate a few hours ago. There was no margin for error here. As the road rushed under him, he looked out at the ocean of city lights and floated with memories of his father.
His old man had driven a bus all day, taking every overtime shift. At home, his mother kneaded the cords of stress from his neck. His old man worked extra hours because he wanted Lyle to be the first in the family line to go to college.
Make something of yourself. Make me proud.
It had happened; Lyle was accepted at Arizona State and, man, it brought tears to his father’s eyes. Then came the day Lyle was called to the faculty office. A phone was passed to him and he heard his mother’s voice: “Come to the hospital!”
After they buried his dad, Galviera dropped out and worked like a dog as a bicycle courier and delivering pizzas before finally carving his own business out of nothing.
Nothing.
He nearly lost it all when his first marriage ended but he triumphed, battered but wiser. Then he met Cora, admired how she’d survived her own problems. They were alike; they were good together. They had dreams but he’d put them on hold because his company was in trouble.
He refused to lose it.
He pounded the wheel with both fists and cursed.
Tilly kidnapped, Salazar and Johnson murdered, leaving me a wanted man, a marked man. Half of the money is mine. I earned it. I need it. Without it, I lose everything. I can’t lose.
He could fix this.
The solution lay behind him under the tarp in the sports bags filled with cash-cash from high school pot-heads hustling fast food to suburban soccer moms, university dope smokers, music types, movie types, bottom feeders, high flyers, pimps, hos, street trash, tripped-out execs and all-round losers; drug users from every scene of the American dream. Three million dollars in unmarked bills for Tilly’s life.
No one knew about the two million he was hiding for his own use.
This was it.
He came to an industrial wasteland at the city’s edge, a railcar repair depot that had closed down after an explosion some thirty years ago.
In the darkness, the Cherokee crawled by the crumbling brick buildings rising like headstones from the yard. Galviera’s instructions were to go to the tallest building, park at the base and wait in the car with his lights off.
He turned down a road that ran between two long tracks, both lined with weatherworn box and hopper cars. He followed the dark road to the metal tower that supported a deteriorated storage tank, the tallest structure in the site.
He parked near the base.
He waited, watching the strobe lights of jetliners sailing by overhead. After nearly an hour, his rearview mirror glowed with the headlights of an approaching vehicle.
It stopped behind him.
Two figures got out, carrying flashlights, and came to his passenger and driver doors, where one directed a blinding beam into his eyes. “Mr. Galviera?”
He glimpsed a shoulder patch-a uniform-and his heart sank.
“Yes.”
“Step out of the car, please, with your hands above your head, palms out.”
Galviera complied, grappling with the fact it was over as they
patted him for weapons. The men kept the light burning in his eyes before taking him to the rear of their vehicle, where another figure stood in the dark.
The trunk opened and Galviera’s heart lifted.
Light washed over Tilly-bound, haggard, scared, but alive.
“You brought our property, Mr. Galviera?”
“Yes, in the back, under the tarp. In the bags.”
One of the men opened the rear door of the Cherokee, dropped two laden sports bags on the ground in front of the car and unzipped them to display thick bundles of cash. He took one and fanned the edges.
“Did you bring all of it?”
“It’s all there in all the bags. Let me take Tilly and go. Our business is done.”
“No.”
“We each fulfilled our obligations. You can count it.”
“We’re not going to count it here.”
“Why not?”
“We’re not done, not yet.”
“I don’t under-”
Stars exploded across Galviera’s eyes.
DAY 5
62
Phoenix, Arizona
At dawn, climbing out of a short, troubled sleep on Cora’s sofa, Jack noticed the task force agents huddled around the laptops on the kitchen table.
One of them-was that Detective Coulter?-was whispering on a cell phone with a heightened degree of intensity.
Something’s going on. They’ve got something.
Hair tousled, Gannon wrapped a blanket around himself, smelling fresh coffee as he went to them.
“What do you have?”
All eyes turned to him before Coulter, who was with Phoenix PD’s Home Invasion and Kidnapping Enforcement Task Force, shook his head.
“Nothing, Jack.”
“Bullshit.”
“Nothing that’s confirmed,” Coulter said.
“Well, what is it you think you have?”
“Jack, we can’t tell you anything right now. Agent Hackett-”
Gannon looked around quickly.
“Where is he? He’s usually here before the sun rises.”
“He’s out in the field.”
“Out in the field, where? Doing what?”
No one responded. Tension mounted until Gannon’s cell phone rang.
“Jack, it’s Henrietta. Can you talk?”
He turned away from the investigators, pulling up his bitterness at her for ambushing him outside FBI offices before Cora’s polygraph exam.
“I’m not giving you an interview.”
“No, that’s not it. And I’m sorry about the FBI thing, but I had to do it. You’d do the same thing if the tables were turned.”
It took a second for him to agree. He’d only himself to blame, anyway, for calling her and asking about defense lawyers.
“My sister’s not a suspect.”
“Our story never said she was. We reported that she hired a lawyer and the FBI said she was cooperating on the case.”
“Is that what you called to tell me?”
“I got a call from one of our stringers who sleeps with his police scanners on. Seems there’s a lot of chatter about something in the south. We don’t know for sure, but one cop apparently blurted something on the air that ‘this is related to the kidnapped girl’ before a supervisor shut him up. We’re doing all we can to get a location. I’m rolling south now.”
“Call me when you get it.”
Gannon took a quick shower and woke Cora, telling her, “Get dressed quick. Something’s going on.” Then he ate a bagel and gulped some coffee, all within twenty minutes, and confronted Coulter again. “Are you guys going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Jack, we can’t.”
Gannon strode out the front door to the driveway. The few news crews who’d arrived already were gossiping over take-out coffee and high-fiber muffins. When they saw him, camera operators reflexively hoisted their cameras to their shoulders and someone shouted a question.
“Hey, why does your sister need an attorney?”
Reporters scrambled to ready microphones, incredulous that he was coming to them, until he held up his palms.
“No interviews. I need your help.”
“Come on, Gannon.”
“Have any of your desks heard any chatter about something going on at the south end related to the case?”
Most people shook their heads. Gannon studied the pack, looking for telltale signs. He saw one reporter on his cell phone and trying to take notes, ignoring Gannon. The only time you can afford to ignore a primary source on a major story is when you know something bigger. The reporter met Gannon’s stare. “Who are you?”
“Sonny Watson, AZ Instant News Agency.”
“What?”
“New online news service.” Watson glanced around.
“Sonny, has your desk heard anything going on this morning in the south end, related to the case?”
Again, Watson looked around, reluctant to answer. Gannon figured he was adhering to the code of keeping exclusive information from a competitor.
“Kid, we’re all going to find out,” Dave Davis, a seasoned TV reporter with the FOX affiliate, boomed. “Half of us likely know already anyway.”
“They think they have a major crime scene at the NewIron Rail yards. We’ve got somebody there already. That’s all I know.”
Reporters called their desks while hurrying to their cars.
Gannon returned to the house for Cora. They rushed to her Pontiac Vibe and used the GPS system to direct them to NewIron.
“Please, please don’t let this be Tilly!”
“Take it easy, Cora. We don’t have many facts yet.”
Gannon’s gut twisted as they threaded through traffic while Cora prayed out loud. He got her to call Henrietta Chong, who’d just arrived at the scene.
“They’re so tight-lipped. No one knows anything,” said Chong. “I think I see a good source. I’ll call you back.”
“I think it’s bad, Jack,” Cora said. “It has to be bad if they won’t tell us anything.”
It took another fifteen minutes before Gannon and Cora reached the location. The area was an immense industrial graveyard of old factories and warehouses. As they neared the NewIron Rail yards they came upon scores of emergency vehicles lined up and blocking the entrance. News trucks dotted the road. Reporters were gathering around a cluster of police-types near a gate cordoned with crime scene tape. A breeze jiggled the brilliant yellow in festive juxtaposition to the hopelessness of the drab depot.
Gannon searched in vain for Hackett, Larson-anyone who could tell him what they’d discovered.
Reporters had encircled someone who was with the County Sheriff’s Office.
“We have nothing to say,” he told them. “We’re supporting the FBI.”
“Jack!”
Henrietta Chong tugged on his arm, pulling him and Cora away behind a satellite truck out of sight of the pack.
“What’s going on?” Cora asked her.
“Listen, I just got this from a deputy I know. This is way off the record, but late last night two homeless guys who were sleeping in a boxcar flagged down a patrol car. Turns out they think they witnessed a murder in the yards, some kind of confrontation. They saw a body being hefted into the trunk of a car that drove off.”
Protective of Cora, Gannon challenged the information.
“That’s pretty vague. How do they link this to Tilly?”
“There’s an abandoned Cherokee in there that matches the one they linked to Galviera.”
“Oh God, no!” Cora whispered. “If they’ve killed Lyle…oh Jack, what about Tilly? Oh please, God, no!”
The sky above them split as a TV news helicopter hammered overhead, transmitting live footage that interrupted morning shows across Arizona. Soon the story would go national with Breaking News on a major development in the local story.
“…on what police sources say is a major crime scene linked to the case of Tilly Martin, an eleven-year-old Phoenix g
irl who was the victim of a brazen kidnapping from her home by a drug cartel to settle a debt with her mother’s boyfriend, missing Phoenix businessman Lyle Galviera…”
63
Phoenix, Arizona
Lyle Galviera’s head throbbed.
He tried to move but couldn’t. He was tied to a chair.
He tried to see but he was blindfolded.
He heard only the echoed drips and creaks of an infinite space, like an enormous warehouse, punctuated with bursts of sporadic chatter from emergency scanners, like police dispatches.
Push the fear aside. Concentrate.
Footsteps approached behind him and someone removed his blindfold.
Galviera’s eyes opened wide.
Taking in his surroundings, the airy vastness, the high ceiling, he recognized that he was in an abandoned hangar. Sitting a yard or two from him on a worktable, legs dangling playfully, was a young man wearing a shoulder holster, showing the grip of a handgun. He stared at Galviera while he ate potato chips from a bag and sipped from a can of soda.
“You know why you’re here, Mr. Galviera?” Angel asked in Spanish.
Is that the sicario? Think.
Galviera did not respond as his eyes swept over the array of his sports bags, lined up on the floor between them. All were open displaying bundles of cash.
“It seems,” the young man said between chips, “that we have a discrepancy on the amount of our stolen property. You’ve provided us with three million, when our calculation shows the amount owing to be five.”
I need the two million. I can’t give it up.
“That’s all there is.”
“Don’t lie. That’s not all there is.”
“Where’s Tilly?”
“Our agreement was a simple one. You return our stolen property, all five million, and we return the girl. We’ve shown you the girl. We’ve kept our side of the agreement.”
“Where is she? I need to see her.”
Ignoring the question to sip his soda, the young man said, “You have failed to keep your part of the agreement. You’ve misled us and that is a mistake.”
I’ve got nothing left to bargain with. No leverage.
