Rick Mofina - In Desperation

“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…”

Phoenix, Arizona

Lyle Galviera’s head throbbed.

He tried to move but couldn’t. He was tied to a chair.

He tried to see but he was blindfolded.

He heard only the echoed drips and creaks of an infinite space, like an enormous warehouse, punctuated with bursts of sporadic chatter from emergency scanners, like police dispatches.

Push the fear aside. Concentrate .

Footsteps approached behind him and someone removed his blindfold.

Galviera’s eyes opened wide.

Taking in his surroundings, the airy vastness, the high ceiling, he recognized that he was in an abandoned hangar. Sitting a yard or two from him on a worktable, legs dangling playfully, was a young man wearing a shoulder holster, showing the grip of a handgun. He stared at Galviera while he ate potato chips from a bag and sipped from a can of soda.

“You know why you’re here, Mr. Galviera?” Angel asked in Spanish.

Is that the sicario? Think.

Galviera did not respond as his eyes swept over the array of his sports bags, lined up on the floor between them. All were open displaying bundles of cash.

“It seems,” the young man said between chips, “that we have a discrepancy on the amount of our stolen property. You’ve provided us with three million, when our calculation shows the amount owing to be five.”

I need the two million. I can’t give it up .

“That’s all there is.”

“Don’t lie. That’s not all there is.”

“Where’s Tilly?”

“Our agreement was a simple one. You return our stolen property, all five million, and we return the girl. We’ve shown you the girl. We’ve kept our side of the agreement.”

“Where is she? I need to see her.”

Ignoring the question to sip his soda, the young man said, “You have failed to keep your part of the agreement. You’ve misled us and that is a mistake.”

I’ve got nothing left to bargain with. No leverage .

“No. It’s all there.”

“Your first mistake, Mr. Galviera, was to conspire to steal from us.”

“No, I never did that. What have you done with Tilly?”

“I will give you the opportunity right now to tell us where the rest of our property is so we can retrieve it and conclude our dealings.”

Either way, I am dead. If I get out of this, I’ll have Tilly and two million .

“But that is all there is. I swear.”

“You swear?”

“Salazar and Johnson controlled everything,” Galviera said. “They used my company for distribution for a limited term. All fees collected were stored until each collection period, then everything went to them to process to you.”

“So, Salazar and Johnson are responsible for any discrepancies?”

“Yes. It was them.”

Someone other than the young man cleared his throat. Galviera saw two other men, older men, watching from the periphery.

“This complicates the situation,” Angel said. “Let’s simplify it. Salazar and Johnson were stealing from us. They’d planned to set up their own cartel, the Diablo Cartel, to compete with us. With your help, they stole five million dollars from our organization for that very purpose.”