In Desperation (17 page)

Mesa Mirage, Phoenix, Arizona

H
ope flickered.

They did not find Tilly at the Sweet Times Motel but they did find her pajama top. The top, the take-out food wrappers and the status of the room indicated that she had been there recently and was likely still alive.

Cora, overcome at the scene, was now resting in her bedroom.

Gannon would have to wait to pursue asking her about Donnie Cargo and San Francisco.

While paramedics watched over her, Gannon worked on his laptop in the living room, words blurring on his screen as he scrolled through the material he'd requested from the WPA news library. Like a prospector panning for gold, he reviewed stories on cold cases in San Francisco, and old stuff on Salazar and Johnson.

Nothing.

Who was Donnie Cargo? Why wouldn't Cora talk about him? Was Lomax feeding him BS? Was the incident in her past linked to Tilly's kidnapping? The creeps from her former life had taunted him about a connection. Could those sleazebags be trusted?

Gannon was at a loss.

Should he pursue Cora's secret, or Salazar and Johnson's connection to Lyle Galviera?

He looked across the room at Hackett and his task
force, remembering Isabel Luna's warning that someone among them could be on the cartel's payroll.

Did one of them tip the kidnappers at the motel?

They seemed to have gotten away with no time to spare.

Gannon's cell phone rang. The caller's ID was blocked.

“Gannon.”

“Is this Jack Gannon, the reporter whose niece was kidnapped?”

It was a male voice, early thirties. Sounded sharp.

“Yes. Who's calling, please?”

“Do you protect sources, Gannon?”

“Yes, if it is crucial.”

“This is crucial. I have information related to the case for you, but I have to remain anonymous and protected.”

“What is it?”

“Not over the phone.”

“I don't have time to waste.

“Meet me alone within an hour.”

“Tell me what you have, please.”

“Something on the people who took your niece.”

 

Within fifteen minutes Gannon was driving across Phoenix.

He'd had the foresight to park Cora's Pontiac Vibe in a neighbor's back alley a few doors down and cut through backyards unnoticed. He pulled out of Mesa Mirage without being followed by any of the reporters at her house.

He worked his way to the 1-10 north, then took the Black Canyon Freeway west. His caller had provided no details, only instructions to meet him on the hour at a specific bench in the southwest area of Harmon Park. Upon arriving, Gannon parked on Pima and walked the rest of the way to the bench, carrying a copy of the
Arizona Republic,
as the caller had specified.

The guy had refused to give up any data over the phone. He sounded halfway articulate and credible, but it was a crapshoot gauging people in these situations. Odds were this was all bull. Gannon knew how some people, sickos, liked to get involved in high-profile cases.

They were a waste of time.

But a good reporter never dismissed a tip without checking it out, and with Tilly's life on the line Gannon had to follow through. Waiting at the bench, he inventoried the area: a mom with a baby in a stroller, two girls sitting on the grass in the distance playing guitars.

Gannon glanced through the newspaper and reread the
Republic
's last story on the case. Was there anything they had that he could use?

“Jack Gannon?”

A man in his early thirties sat next to him. He wore a navy suit jacket, matching pants, blue open shirt and dark glasses. He'd recognized the voice of his caller.

“That's right. And your name?”

“Forget that.”

“Come on. I didn't come here to play games, pal.”

“Neither did I. This is serious shit, Gannon, very serious.”

He talked rapidly, as if he'd downed five energy drinks.

“I've been watching the news. I saw you on TV with your sister. I read your news stories, even the old ones. You've been places. You're pretty good, almost won a Pulitzer.”

“What is this about?”

“Jack, did they figure out how the kidnappers found your sister's house?”

“No. Well, if they did, they didn't tell us.”

“They hired my firm, the firm I work for. I'm a private investigator.”

“What?”

“Don't blame me. We didn't know anything at the time.”

“Hold on. Back it up. Who the hell are you? What is this?”

“The only thing I'm giving you is information, so unless you want to end this now, I suggest you listen.”

“Go ahead.”

“A few days before the kidnapping, a woman with a Hispanic accent comes into our office, wants to hire us for a ‘very urgent job.' She said she was with an export company in Mexico City that was about to enter into a deal with Lyle Galviera's company.”

“Quick Draw Courier?”

“Yes. She said her people were having last-minute doubts about Quick Draw and wanted a full background on Galviera and his executive office. She said her clients had to know now before they would sign the deal in a few days. To confirm her connection to the export company, she presented me with a letter on letterhead from Mexico. I even called the number. It all checked out. Now, we're licensed to lawfully look into the conduct, whereabouts, affiliations, transactions, or reputation of any person or group.”

“A background check?”

“Exactly. So in the time we have, we provide as much detail as we can on home addresses, financial, social standing, everything on everyone in the exec office—twelve people in all—and give her the report. We tell her Galviera is divorced, no kids. But his credit card records show jewelry purchases and flower deliveries, and through our calls to the florist, we learn he is dating your sister, who has an eleven-year-old daughter, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Jesus.”

“The woman thanks us, pays us in cash, and a short time later, your niece is kidnapped. I just about upchucked
my lunch. I called the number on the letterhead in Mexico City again, and guess what?”

“No longer in service?”

“That's right.”

“Jesus. You have to go to the FBI with this.”

“That's exactly what I told the owners of the firm.”

“And?”

“They said, look, we provided a service. What the client does with the information is on the client, not the firm.”

“That's not right. Don't you have some duty to report this?”

“Exactly, I told them. I thought we were close to committing some kind of felony, aiding and abetting or something, and we should report this and cooperate.”

“So what happened?”

“I was ordered to shut up and advised to forget about it.”

“Why?”

“Let me tell you about the people I work for. They do some pretty sketchy work with drug dealers and coyotes, the guys who smuggle illegals into the U.S. Very, very dark stuff. I only joined them three months ago. Now, I don't want to lose my license, or go to jail, or worse. So I'm quitting today, taking a job with a friend in corporate security in Tucson.”

“Wait. Why don't you go to the FBI?”

“I've got too many other issues with law enforcement.”

“Where does this leave me? Who was the woman who came to you?”

“I poked around in the files and was able to get a number. I needed to clear my conscience. Here you go. You're on your own with this.”

The guy passed Gannon a slip of paper, then left.

It was a telephone number in Juarez, Mexico.

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

A
rriving for her shift at the Forest Valley Hospice, Olivia Colbert went to the small office and reviewed the patient notes.

She had volunteered here a year ago, determined to offer the same compassion the staff had provided her mother before her death. They took exceeding care in preparing people dying of cancer for their final days.

And they helped their families, too.

It was not easy. Facing people in pain took an emotional toll but Olivia was strong, like her mother, who'd been a nurse. Olivia was completing a nursing degree at the University of Ottawa and dedicated her work to her mother's memory.

Here we go.

Olivia came to today's notes for Mr. Montradori. She was especially concerned about him because he was alone. Since he'd arrived a month ago, Olivia had tried her best to help him. While all of her other patients had relatives, or a friend, Mr. Montradori had no one.

He was not married. He had no children. No friends.

“Been a loner all my life,” he'd told her the first week. “Just me and my sins to keep me company.”

He was fifty but so ravaged by his cancer he looked like an eighty-year-old man. He'd been a small-engine
mechanic, fixing lawn mowers and snowblowers in his small shop in Alta Vista.

“Was wild in my younger days before I toned things down,” he said. “When the doctor gave me the news, he gave me a brochure for Forest Valley. I liked the pictures. Seemed like a nice place to die.”

Olivia smiled to herself, logged off, slid the keyboard tray under the desktop, collected her notes and started her duties.

The hospice was a stone building located in the eastern suburb of Orleans atop a hill, nestled among a pine forest. It overlooked the Ottawa River, Quebec and the Gatineau Hills, which turned into a patchwork quilt of color in autumn.

The building had twelve patient rooms. Seven were occupied. Olivia took her time checking on each one. She helped those facing death contend with their fears and the concept of the end. Many reconciled unsettled matters, unresolved relationships; made their peace and planned their memorials. While making her rounds, Olivia was pleased that each patient had a friend or relative with them. No patient was alone, except for Mr. Montradori.

He'd preferred it that way.

“Hello, Mr. Montradori.”

Olivia smiled when she entered his room. He was in bed, watching TV news. His eyes brightened slightly above his breathing tube, his way of acknowledging that he was happy to see her, but they remained fixed to the newscast.

He never asked much of her, never talked much. He was just glad that she was near, so that he was not really ever alone. He liked news channels and old Western movies like
The Searchers
and
True Grit
. Olivia took care of that and gave him a headset so he could watch them without disturbing the others.

Olivia read over his chart and refilled his ice water, glancing at the TV. There was another report on the case
in the United States, the kidnapped girl in California, or was it Arizona? She wasn't sure. Something about the desert in Mexico. They were repeating that clip of the mother at the microphones pleading for her daughter's return. Such a terrible story, it broke Olivia's heart.

Just like Mr. Montradori broke her heart.

Yesterday, Olivia had helped him decide on his final arrangements. He wanted to be cremated. That was it. Olivia had arranged for a lawyer to bring the papers later today for all the final adjustments.

“Can I get you anything, Mr. Montradori?”

He blinked.

His breathing was labored. Olivia sat next to him and took his hand. His voice rasped but he was clear.

“I need to get something off my chest, something I've been carrying for a long time, Olivia.”

“Would you like me to call the priest, or the counselor?”

A long moment passed and he gave his head a very slight negative shake.

“Call the police.”

Olivia thought his medication was confusing him.

“You want me to call the police?”

A single finger trembled as it rose from his free hand resting atop his blanket to indicate the TV news report on the kidnapped girl in the U.S.

“I have information on a case,” he said. “That case.”

Clarksburg, West Virginia

“W
hat the hell's the holdup?”

Phone pressed to his ear, Steve Pollard, a latent fingerprint specialist at the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, shifted uncomfortably at his workstation.

Earl Hackett had ignored procedure and called him directly.

Again.

“I'm sorry things were miscommunicated,” Pollard said. “We advised ERT in Phoenix that their first submission was rejected. The prints were not legible.”

“What about the others?” Hackett said. “There has to be something there to identify these guys. I can't believe that it's taking us this long to get a hit. What about the stuff from the motel? ERT found prints on all the items in the trash.”

Pollard eyed his computer monitor, the split screen showing enlargements of two fingerprints.

“Yes, these newer samples are clear. We're processing them now.”

“How much longer?”

Both men knew that electronic submissions typically received responses very quickly, within two hours at most.
Typically
.

“We're moving as fast as we can. We had a system crash.”

“Do you grasp what's at stake here?”

Pollard glanced at the framed picture of himself with his wife and their ten-year-old son at the West Virginia Blackberry Festival. Since the Phoenix case broke, Pollard and his team had been putting in fourteen-hour shifts supporting the Phoenix investigation, going flat out to process every impression they submitted in order to get a lead on the suspects who kidnapped Tilly Martin.

He'd taped her photo next to his son's.

“I'm aware of the stakes, Agent Hackett. I'm aware everyone's on edge. We're working as hard as we can.”

“Just be damned sure you alert us the instant you've got something.”

After hanging up, Pollard looked out his window at the hills of West Virginia. He massaged his temples, repositioned his glasses and resumed working. Pollard's section, known as the IAFIS, was part of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services and was housed in a sprawling three-story modular complex, some 250 miles west of Washington, D.C.

The IAFIS used state-of-the-art hyperfast databases designed to match latent fingerprints. Pollard's job as a specialist was to analyze impressions, study comparisons and help with identification for the requesting agency.

The information Pollard obtained was processed through regional, state and national crime databases, such as the National Crime Information Center and the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which was a repository for details on unsolved homicides. And he could make requests through international agreements to search databases of other countries.

At the outset of Tilly Martin's kidnapping, crime scene techs had tried to get clear impressions off the duct tape the kidnappers had used to bind Cora. The techs had also tried lifting prints from the kitchen table, chairs,
counters; off the furniture in Tilly's room; everywhere in the house.

But nothing was usable.

All Pollard had was the set of elimination prints, those from people whose prints would be expected in the house. Cora and Jack Gannon had volunteered theirs. Tilly's were lifted from her dresser mirror. Lyle Galviera's were taken from the fridge door in his condo.

Pollard would later compare those prints with any new ones that emerged, then run the new ones through the gamut of databases.

The development concerning the Sweet Times Motel had yielded a break. The FBI's Evidence Response Team had lifted a series of good, clear impressions from the right hand off soda cans discarded in the trash.

Pollard made a visual point-by-point comparison between the impressions on his monitor, studying the arches, whorls and loops, and compared them with the elimination prints.

He determined that some of the smaller latents matched Tilly's, confirming she had been in the motel room. Two other sets of latents were unidentified.

Now we're talking.

With the first, he started with the right thumb, which in a standard ten-card is number one. He coded its characteristics, then those of the other fingers. Then he scanned the prints and entered all the information into his computer.

Then he submitted it to the automated fingerprint-identification system for a rapid search through massive local, state and nationwide databanks for a match. Then he did the same with the second set and his computer hummed as it processed his data for a list of possible matches to study.

It would take some time. The IAFIS stored several hundred million impressions from law enforcement agencies across the country.

Pollard went to the coffee room to start a fresh pot of coffee, then returned to his workstation. The search was done. In the first set, he was given a list of three possibilities that closely matched his first unidentified submission.

He started working on it right away.

Again, Pollard made a visual point-by-point comparison with the first set of soda can mystery prints and the three offered by the database as potential matches. This was the part of the job Pollard loved, concentrating with enormous intensity on the critical minutiae points, like the trail of ridges near the tip of the number two finger. No similarities, there. That eliminated the first two candidates right off. For the last one, he enlarged the samples to count the number of ridges on the number three finger.

Pollard's eyes narrowed. All the minutiae points matched. The branching of the ridges matched. He began tallying the clear points of comparison where the two samples matched. Some courts required ten to fifteen clear point matches. Pollard stopped at twenty, knowing that one divergent point instantly eliminated a print.

All right.

He had a match on the first print.

For the second mystery print, the databases offered two possible matches.

For the next ten minutes, Pollard when through the same exacting process until he was satisfied he had a match.

Pollard then confirmed the identification numbers of the matching prints and submitted a query for each of them into a number of databanks.

It shouldn't take long. He reached for his coffee.

In about a minute, the first result came back and the hardened face of a man in his thirties stared back at Pollard from his monitor. He went to the subject's file summary. It came through a DEA database by way of Interpol
and Mexico's
Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional.

The man was Ruiz Limon-Rocha, a Mexican National. The second result brought a younger face, which glowered at Pollard. He was Alfredo Hector Tecaza, a Mexican National. Pollard had their photos and abstracts of their files.

This was the break that Hackett needed. These two should be run through the Intelligence Center in El Paso.

Pollard reached for his phone.