In Desperation

65

Phoenix, Arizona

A s TV helicopters circled overhead Cora stared blankly into the press and police chaos at the NewIron Rail yards.

“Tilly’s dead. That’s it, isn’t it?” she said, waiting in her car with Gannon while he left another cell phone message in his attempt to reach Hackett.

“I know this is hard, Cora.” Gannon tried to console her. “But until we know everything, we know nothing.”

“Henrietta Chong said that they’d found Lyle’s car, that witnesses saw a body. I can’t take it anymore, Jack, I just can’t.”

She covered her face with her hands.

“You’ve got to hang on to hope while we still have it.”

Someone tapped on Gannon’s window. He turned to the clean-cut face of a uniformed deputy, who’d approached from behind.

“Jack Gannon and Cora Martin?”

“Yes.”

“Deputy Wadden. Agent Hackett is in there at the scene.” Wadden nodded to the storage tank tower and the lines of railcars. “He got your message and requested we get word to you.” Wadden’s shoulder microphone bleated with a coded transmission. “One moment, please.” Wadden leaned into it, responding with a numeric code before resuming matters with Gannon and Cora.

“I’m parked behind you. Please follow me in your vehicle.”

“What’s going on?” Gannon asked.

“I’m going to lead you to a location a few blocks from here. Agent Hackett said he’d meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

The sign in the window of The Bluebird Diner said, Today’s Special $1.99 Fish N’ Chips. Two men in their fifties were hunched over the counter, wearing faded T-shirts and jeans. The talk wafting from under their worn ball caps concerned pensions and a major league pitcher.

Gannon and Cora waited alone in a booth for Hackett.

From his days on the police beat at the Buffalo Sentinel, Gannon knew that investigators often took people away from the scene and the cameras in order to tell them the worst news. He steadied himself by staring at the milk clouds swirling in his coffee while Cora took deep breaths, her fear tightening around her.

Sitting there with his sister in the ominous air pulled Gannon back to Buffalo.

He is eight; Cora is thirteen. They are terrified waiting at their kitchen table. They’d been in the yard, Cora lobbing a baseball to him when he popped one that went up, up, so far up that it landed with enough velocity on their father’s new Ford to leave a fracture that spider-webbed across the windshield. Mom’s aghast. “Holy cow, Jack, Dad’s new car. He’s going to be sick about this, just sick!” Cora telling her, “Don’t blame Jack. It was my fault, Mom. I should have caught it. It was an accident, I swear.” At that moment Cora is his hero. Dad says nothing, works overtime and fixes the problem. That’s the way he did things. Jack felt horrible but loved Cora for being the big sister protector.

Despite all the pain-soaked years between them, despite her mistakes, his misgivings and the wounds, she was still his sister.

And she needed him.

He clasped his hand over hers. “Hang in there, okay? It’s going to be all right. Just hang on.”

Cora took his hand, squeezing it, until they saw Hackett’s sedan arrive out front. He was alone and sober-faced when he entered, pulling a chair to the end of the table.

Cora steeled herself and hit him with her question.

“Is my daughter dead? If it’s true, I want you to tell me right now?”

The two men at the counter turned.

Hackett kept his voice low, choosing his words carefully.

“We found no evidence at this scene to confirm that.”

“Please stop talking that way,” Cora said. “I took a polygraph, like you wanted. I told you everything, like you wanted. I may not have lived a perfect life, but please, can’t you show me a scrap of respect. She’s my child and I think I deserve to know the truth.”

Hackett loosened his collar.

“Two homeless men who’d been drinking in a boxcar claim they witnessed a possible drug deal go sideways. They say they saw two figures deposit a body into the trunk of a car. Then the car drove off. The men were frightened and stopped a patrol car. They led the deputy to the location, where he found an abandoned Cherokee SUV matching the vehicle we’ve linked to Galviera,” Hackett said.

“Our people have been working the scene since 3:00 a.m., going full bore. Fingerprints in the SUV match Galviera’s and we found blood traces consistent with his type.”

“What do you think happened here?” Gannon asked.

“In his call to Cora,” Hackett said, “Galviera indicated he was going to fix things. He said that he was going to see Tilly. We suspect the cartel lured him here with the intention of torturing him into giving them their money.”

“Oh Jesus, what about Tilly?” Cora asked.

“They may have used her as the bait. The cartel may have lured him with the promise of seeing Tilly.” Cora moaned.

“We can’t rule it out,” Hackett said.

“They’re just theories, Cora.” Gannon tried to comfort her.

“He’s right,” Hackett said. “Just theories, but we can’t discount another concern-that Cora was present when Eduardo Zartosa, the youngest brother of Samson Zartosa, leader of the Norte Cartel, was murdered.”

“But I never knew who that boy in San Francisco was until now.”

“It doesn’t matter. We have to assume that Samson Zartosa knows now and take that into account. Think about it. Through circumstance, he is now holding the child of the woman involved in his little brother’s murder, the woman whose boyfriend has stolen from his operation. That’s about as bad as things can get. You wanted the truth. Well, that’s it.”

Cora tried to keep herself from coming apart, staring off at the helicopters in the distance, circling the rail yards like giant vultures.

Please, God, help me find her.

Hackett’s cell phone rang. He turned away slightly to take the call. It was short and he finished by saying, “I’ll head that way now and meet you there.”

Cora saw something troubling in his expression.

“What is it? What’s happening?”

“I can’t tell you right now, I have to go.”

“Please!”

“I’m sorry, I’ll keep in touch.”

When Hackett got to his car, Gannon stood, tossed some bills on the table. “Let’s go. I could hear part of the call, something about a homicide. We’ll follow him.”