In Desperation

DAY 5
62

Phoenix, Arizona

A t 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 girl 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…”