In Desperation (7 page)

Tempe, Arizona

T
hick dried mud covered all but the first two numbers of the license plate on the back of the truck.

Vanita Solaniz could not read the rest of it but was convinced the pickup that had wheeled into the Burger King parking lot was the one the FBI was looking for: a metallic red, 2009 Ford F-150 with a regular cab.

As an assistant manager at Clear Canyon Auto Parts, Vanita knew cars, trucks and vans. A few hours ago, she and her customers at the shop halted their business to watch the TV above the counter when the news broke about the little girl who was kidnapped by a drug cartel from her home in Mesa Mirage.

“My lord, that just breaks your heart, doesn't it?” she said.

One old-timer shifted the toothpick in the corner of his mouth, then said, “A damn shame. I got a granddaughter that age.”

For the rest of the afternoon, with every commercial break, the TV news repeated details on the case and the F-150. Vanita watched when she could, hoping for a good ending to the story. Nothing new had happened when her shift ended and she headed for her apartment near Escalente Park.

Vanita's welder boyfriend was out of town. They had
no food in the house, so for supper she'd decided to treat herself to her favorite: onion rings and a shake at Burger King. After getting her order at the drive-through, she parked her car in a shady corner of the lot, dropped the windows and caught a sweet breeze.

That's when the Ford pickup rolled into the spot in front of her.

Hey, it's a metallic red 150, like the one on the news,
Vanita thought, munching on her rings. From the tailgate's style she knew it was a 2009. The driver got out, a man wearing a ball cap and sunglasses. His passenger was a girl who looked about ten or eleven. She wore a sun hat and sunglasses. The man took her hand and they entered the restaurant.

An icy feeling shot through Vanita.

She looked at the Arizona plate, making out the first two numbers.

Five, then seven.

Vanita stopped eating.

She clawed through her bag for the blank order form where she'd jotted the pickup's plate from the news.

Oh my God.

Vanita grabbed her cell phone, called 911 and reported the details to the Tempe police, repeating her location. “It's them! Send somebody! It's on East University.”

The Tempe police dispatcher kept her on the line while she alerted the FBI. A moment later the dispatcher told Vanita, “Police are on the way. Keep your eyes on the vehicle, your line open and
do not move
.”

 

Hackett drove and Bonnie Larson relayed information over the phone to a Tempe police detective who'd turned up his radio.

“Tempe's on the line with the caller now,” Larson said. “The vehicle description fits Lyle Galviera's pickup.”

“And the man and the girl?”

“They match the general description of Tilly and Galviera.”

As they wove through traffic, Hackett shook his head, uncertain what to make of this break.
If it was Galviera, what was he doing with Tilly? Had the kidnappers released her?

“Advise Tempe not to send any marked units into the area,” he said.

“They're only sending unmarked cars, no lights, no sirens.”

“We don't want to lose them.”

“Tempe's dispatching marked units to set up a one-block perimeter to stop the suspect vehicle if he flees.”

 

In Mesa Mirage, Cora waited in agony.

The investigators who'd stayed behind with her had few updates.

It was torture, as it had been watching Hackett and Larson scrambling from her home a few minutes ago when she'd begged them to tell her what was happening before they'd left.

“We have a lead on a truck that looks like Lyle's,” Hackett had said.

“Take me with you!”

“No, we don't know what to expect. We urge you to stay here.” Cora turned to Gannon as Hackett added, “I can't prevent you or your brother from leaving your home. You're not under arrest, but you could jeopardize things. That's why I'm not giving you details on the location. It's for your own safety.”

“All right.” Gannon nodded and the FBI agents left.

“But, Jack,” Cora pleaded, “one of us should be there.”

“Hang on. I'll try to find out where it is.”

Gannon started to call Henrietta Chong when his cell phone rang.

“Jack, this is Henrietta, there seems to be a lot of
activity coming out of the house and the TV guys listening to police scanners say that something's going on in Tempe but police are being cryptic on the air.”

Gannon turned away and kept his voice low.

“Can you get an address from them for me, Henrietta? I'll fill you in.”

When she called back with the address, Gannon asked Cora for the keys to her car.

Now, as Gannon drove alone in Cora's Pontiac Vibe, the GPS system indicated he was about two blocks from the Burger King. His phone rang. It was Chong, about six blocks behind him with a WPA photographer.

“Jack, the whole pack is headed to this place. What's going on?”

“They may have found Lyle Galviera's truck.”

 

The knot in Vanita's stomach was tightening.

It was twenty-five, maybe thirty minutes since she'd called police. Every minute or so, the 911 dispatcher asked for an update.

“The truck still hasn't moved,” Vanita said.

“Thank you.”

But Vanita worried. Were police here? If they were, they did a good job of keeping invisible. What if the man and girl had slipped out of the restaurant? What if they got away?

Vanita couldn't stand it any longer.

With her cell phone pressed to her ear, she left her car and entered the busy outlet. She threaded through the dining room, unable to find them, concern mounting until she spotted them in a corner booth.

“I see them,” Vanita told the dispatcher. “They're done eating and getting ready to leave by the door near their truck. You have to do something fast!”

 

The dispatcher relayed Vanita's alert to Phil Zern, the Tempe police sergeant in charge. Plainclothes detectives
were positioned in the lot, some in cars, some on foot. There was no time for SWAT to set up and too many people around.

This would be a rapid takedown.

“Everyone on position, stand by,” Zern said, “on my order.”

A few seconds later, as the man and girl neared their truck, a siren yelped and an unmarked police car, dash light and wigwag grill lights flashing, roared from nowhere to within inches of the truck, boxing it in.

At the same time, detectives, guns drawn and badges displayed, approached the man while a voice over a loudspeaker shouted orders.

“Police! Get down on the ground—now!”

“Why?” The startled man put his hands up and looked to the girl. Two female detectives had grabbed her and were pulling her away.

“Daddyyy!”

The man was handcuffed.

“What the hell are you doing? What's going on?”

Hackett and Larson, watching from the far end of the lot, trotted to the scene. Beyond them, news crews scrambled to record it. Some people in the restaurant began taking pictures with their camera phones. A few hurried to the parking lot, where a crowd gathered. Vanita introduced herself to a detective who told her to wait near his car.

Gannon arrived and approached the scene.

Afraid and confused, the little girl was placed in the front seat of a police car. Hackett and Larson showed their ID, then compared her to the photo of Tilly Martin.
Not even close,
Hackett thought.

“What's your name, sweetheart?” Larson asked.

“Melissa Hanley,” she said through tears. “Are we in trouble?”

A few yards away, Melissa's father, Doug Hanley, de
manded to know why he was arrested. A detective wiped the mud from his plate.

This was not Lyle Galviera's pickup truck.

 

It took Tempe Police and the FBI over half an hour to sort out and confirm that Doug Hanley was Melissa Hanley's father and that they lived in Kingman, where Hanley was a carpenter and Melissa's mother, Rachel, was a bank teller. Doug and Melissa had driven down to Tempe to get Rachel, who was visiting her mother, Melissa's grandma.

Police apologized to Hanley for the alarm and inconvenience caused by the arrest but stressed that under the circumstances it was the right call. Zern asked Hanley to consider what he would want police to do if Melissa were taken under the same circumstances as Tilly Martin.

Gannon called Cora and told her what had happened.

 

Night was falling when he returned to his sister's house.

In the wake of the takedown in Tempe, the FBI hotline continued receiving tips, most of them vague. A funereal air enveloped Cora's home as the darkness outside deepened.

She'd refused food, sedatives, even rest.

Sitting alone, she stared at photos of Tilly. Between news reports and talking with the WPA, Gannon watched Cora, studying her anguish as time swept by. Seeing her suffering had inexplicably resurrected the pain he'd shouldered when their parents were killed.

He'd gone to the crash site.

He'd arranged the funeral.

He'd shaken with rage against Cora because their parents had died looking for her. They'd died not knowing anything about her life since the night she'd run off and destroyed their family. And there she was, flipping
through memories of the life she'd created away from the family she'd devastated.

There she was, subjecting him to it.

He went to her.

“I have to know,” he said.

“Know what?”

“Why didn't you come home? Mom and Dad died searching for you. They never knew they had a granddaughter. Why didn't you come home?”

She met his stare with a vulnerability that bordered on near defeat.

“Please, Jack, don't push me on this now.”

“I deserve to know.”

“I can't tell you. I can't. Stop asking me. This is not about me, Jack. You have to help me find Tilly.”

Gannon said nothing as one of the TV news reports pierced the tension. A commentator on Tilly's case observed how most kidnappings involving cartels are revenge actions.

“I'm afraid to say but they almost always end horribly.”

Later that night about an hour after Cora fell asleep, she woke.

It was precisely the same time the kidnappers had entered her home. Realizing it had now been nearly twenty hours since Tilly was taken, Cora was overwhelmed with fear and released a long, anguished scream.

“Tillyyy!”

Startled from sleep in the sofa chair where he sprawled, Gannon was haunted by how his sister's wail was identical to the one he'd heard in the morgue in Juarez.

Somewhere in Greater Phoenix, Arizona

T
he whine of the meat saw's electric blade filled the night air.

Rising from the Golden Cut Processing Plant, it echoed over the forgotten piece of industrial wasteland occupied by the plant, the Coin-O-Clean Car Wash, Odin Tool & Die and the Sweet Times Motel.

Several years back, the Sweet Times had been a favorite of truckers. Sitting across from the Golden Cut, the motel had been lovingly cared for by the original owners, a retired Navy cook and his wife.

It had offered guests a small restaurant, and flower gardens everywhere.

But the restaurant was gone and the little gardens died long ago, leaving dirt patches that encircled the property like a disease. Chipped paint ravaged the motel's exterior walls. Nearly half of the doors were fractured from being kicked in and the neon sign only lit the word
Time,
as if it had run out on a dream. The motel, now a refuge for down-and-out hookers, crackheads and outcasts, was managed by an embittered alcoholic with green teeth, who told every guest, “I don't give a rat's A what you do in there—it's sixty bucks cash for every twenty-four hours up front.”

Several beer cans bobbed in the pool's brown water,
near the shallow end and Unit 28. This was a deluxe suite of adjoining rooms. Inside, the lights had been dimmed. The two male guests were surfing TV channels, monitoring news reports on the kidnapping of Tilly Martin. The screen's glow flickered on their faces and the room.

An assortment of empty take-out food containers and a bag of fruit covered the small table. The desk near it had an array of prepaid cell phones. The phones would be used for one call then destroyed.

Two police uniforms hung in the room's closet, ready for use. Under one bed, there were two AK-47 assault rifles and four Glock-20 semiautomatic pistols. At the edge of one of the two beds, there were three portable digital police scanners. Their volumes were low but the men were listening. They understood the codes.

Now, as they watched the TV news reports, their concern continued to grow. It seemed all of Phoenix was looking for Tilly.

“You did not answer me, Ruiz. What do we do now?” Alfredo, the younger man, asked in Spanish. “The bitch disobeyed the order and went to police. Now she's got the damn FBI involved!”

As with Alfredo's other questions, Ruiz's response was silence.

Until now, Ruiz had hidden his anger over the situation. This time, he reached for his knife. The glint of its blade reflected in the TV light as he cut into a large apple. He placed the first slice carefully into his mouth and chewed slowly.

Chewing helped Ruiz think.

He knew Alfredo was less experienced in these matters and therefore worried. Let him ramble with his questions.

“So what are we going to do, Ruiz?” Alfredo opened a soda. “In Mexico, a case like this is business. People don't trust police. They don't go to police.”

“Alfredo—” Ruiz pointed the knife at him “—you
knew this one would be different, or did you forget that after you took your extra advance payment.”

“Yes, but she went to police.”

“It was to be expected.”

“So what do we do? This creates a problem for us, for the operation. It is our job to set up the arrival of the
sicario,
to make sure everything goes smoothly for him. And now—” Alfredo thrust his finger at the screen as the clip of Cora's press conference plea and photographs replayed. Again, the entire screen filled with the artist's sketch of one of the suspects—the one resembling Ruiz. “And now your face is shown over and over for all of America and the world to see, Ruiz!”

Ruiz stared at the sketch. Once more he listened to the details about his description and his scar. He scratched his growth under his chin. He had not shaved.

“Ruiz, you and I know they will check your scar with the databanks and sooner or later they will know who we are. We have to do something.”

Ruiz cut another piece of the apple and chewed.

“I think we should pull out of the operation,” Alfredo said.

“No,” Ruiz said. “We've not been ordered to abort. We've heard nothing, which means we continue.”

“Continue? And do what? Where is Galviera? We have nothing set up for the
sicario.
We're not even close. They told me you were the best. I don't think so. Tell me, what is your next move?”

Ruiz turned to Alfredo. He'd insulted Ruiz's pride.

Ruiz was seething. His anger was directed at Cora, but Alfredo's fretting fueled it. Now, watching Cora, over and over, pleading to the camera while standing next to a sketch of his face, a good sketch, Ruiz grew furious.

All they'd asked was that she find Galviera so they could retrieve the money. That was all. The kidnapping was their leverage, their insurance that Cora would act quickly.

But does she find him?

No, she goes to the FBI. This woman did not know her place. She did not know the price she was going to pay for her disrespect.

“Ruiz, what are we going to do?”

The muscles along Ruiz's jawline pulsed as he turned to the open door and Tilly Martin, bound and gagged on the bed in the next room.