Rick Mofina - In Desperation

The last word came thirty minutes ago from Arizona DPS. They had the bus stopped at the Willcox terminal.

Why was it taking so long?

The border people and EPIC had confirmed the passport for a Carlos Manolo Sanchez, likely an alias. But they had a photo. At El Paso’s bus terminal, the ticket agent, aided by the photo and security cameras, assured two El Paso detectives that Sanchez had boarded the express bus for Phoenix with thirty-six other passengers.

Arizona DPS had made cell phone contact with the bus driver a few miles east of Willcox. The driver had confirmed that there were thirty-seven passengers aboard, including a passenger fitting the suspect’s general description. The driver had agreed to use the ruse of a mechanical problem to make an unscheduled stop in Willcox.

DPS was supposed to grab him.

EPIC’s intel indicated this was the hit man for the Norte Cartel, who was suspected of killing Salazar and Johnson in the desert.

We need this arrest. Come on. Come on.

Hackett’s land line rang.

“Hackett.”

“Agent Hackett, this is Sergeant Tim Walker, DPS Highway Patrol in Willcox. Our subject was not on the bus.”

“What?”

“He was not there.”

“What do you mean, he was not there?”

“Only thirty-six people were on the bus when we stopped it. Our people conducted a thorough search, confirmed IDs, tickets of every passenger. No Carlos Manolo Sanchez. Nobody came close to the photo. We found an open ceiling ventilation door above the bathroom.”

“That’s just great!” Hackett slammed the handset into the cradle.

“What happened?” Larson approached his desk.

“He slipped through our fingers. How in hell did he know to run?”

Larson cursed under her breath.

Hackett surveyed other agents working in the Bureau, considered the task force members at Cora’s house and shook his head.

You never know who is on your side, he thought bitterly.

Hackett looked down at his files, including the one holding that Bureau-wide memo on cartel infiltration of U.S. police ranks. Was his task force compromised? Or was his paranoia entwined with his guilt over Colombia? He glanced at Tilly’s enlarged photo on the board across the room. He could not bear to have another case end with an innocent victim’s funeral.

“Did you hear me, Earl?” Larson had her hand cupped over the phone. “Bruller’s calling from his car. He just heard what happened and needs to talk to you. Says it’s important.”

“He just wants to get in my face. Tell him I’m on another line, I’ll call him back.”

After Larson dealt with the ASAC, she got Hackett to focus.

“We’ve got work to do, Earl.” She opened a folder. “Look. We’ve got photos for Limon-Rocha, Tecaza and now Carlos Manolo Sanchez. We can run them with Tilly and Galviera’s picture, get it out in a release to the news media. Get everybody looking for these guys.”

“All right.”

“Good. I’ll get moving on that.”

Hackett then consulted the EPIC file and revisited his concerns about Gannon and Cora. If there was one thing Hackett had learned as an investigator, it was that no one ever told you the truth.

Not the whole truth .

Cora had hesitated to give up a fingerprint. Why?

Hackett was tired of being fed BS.

In his gut, he knew that something beneath the surface was at work with Cora and he vowed to find out what it was. His mood brightened when he spotted a slim, bespectacled man in a tan suit making his way to his desk; the man who would help him find the truth.

“Oren. Good to see you.” Hackett extended his hand to greet Oren Krendler. “I’ll make some calls and we’ll get things rolling as quickly as possible.”

Krendler nodded and adjusted his glasses.

He was the Phoenix Division’s polygraph examiner, a legend for having obtained more admissions than any other examiner in the Bureau.

Mesa Mirage, Phoenix, Arizona

“There’s been a troubling break in the case.”

That’s what Isabel Luna’s last text to Jack Gannon said. Luna gave him no other details, saying only that she would call later.

That was over an hour ago.

Gannon was hammering on his laptop and burning up cell phone minutes in Cora’s living room, going full tilt at everything and getting nowhere. He’d struck out on tracing the phone number tied to the woman who’d hired the private investigation agency to find Cora’s home.

He got nothing.

He called his best source, Adell Clark. She’d struck out. “I suspect it’s a cartel number, Jack. Could be a prepaid phone. Or a case of phone companies being paid to act as if these numbers do not exist.”

Confusion and anger welled in his chest as he reexamined the allegations by Peck, the man Cora said was Tilly’s father, and Lomax, Cora’s pimp. “Your sister got into trouble with a cartel a long time ago-the worst kind.” What happened? And who was Donnie Cargo? Why had Cora refused to talk about him?

Was this linked to Tilly?

Increasingly, the FBI was looking harder at Cora. The mistrust swirling about the case was deepening.

Gannon looked at the photo of Tilly, the niece he didn’t know, and tried to make sense of it all, tried to make sense of Cora. At one point, she had been the most important person in his life. Now she was alien to him.

How had their lives changed so much?

He had always figured the critical moment was that night at their home. He was eleven years old, Cora was sixteen. She was flitting between the bathroom and her room getting ready for her first official date, carefully applying makeup, spritzing perfume, putting on jewelry, dressing up.

Looking different .

That’s when he knew that Cora was no longer the older kid who knew how things worked in the family, how things worked in life. She was no longer his big sistermentor. She had been transformed into someone else. She had other priorities. In taking her first steps to becoming a young woman, she had started her journey away from him.

Leaving him behind.

Leaving him alone.

Then came the night of Cora’s Armageddon with Mom and Dad-the night she left and never came back.

That was that.

And now after all these years, Cora needed him. Needed him . The ghostly reminders of their mother and father were surreal-in her face, her voice, every little thing; the way she moved, even the way she’d arranged her kitchen. Canisters this way, pot holders here, the kettle there, all the same way Mom set up her kitchen .

It haunted him.

As for what was happening, he stared blankly. He had no control anymore, no control over who he was, over the situation, the story, over anything.

All he knew was that a clock was ticking down on Tilly’s life.

Cora woke and in that millisecond of torpor before the nerve cells in her brain connected, everything was right in her life.

Tilly is home. Safe. Happy .

But the instant everything registered, the terrible reality crashed on her.

Tilly is gone. It’s my fault because of the life I’ve lived .

The sedative had enabled Cora to rest, but it was useless against her anguish. How could she live, how could she go on with her daughter stolen from her life?

How?

She couldn’t make sense out of what went wrong with Lyle. She ached to talk to him.

If only she could wind back time, go all the way back to every mistake she’d made that had led to this horrible point. There would be no drugs, no leaving home, no leaving her parents, Jack, no addiction, no pain and no shame. Only Tilly and the good life they’d built together, just mother and daughter. They’d been doing fine.