Rick Mofina - In Desperation

“Sir, Agent Larson is by the ambulance.” The deputy nodded to a far corner.

Larson was with two county investigators standing at the open rear doors of an ambulance, where a distraught woman in her sixties was being tended to by paramedics. Upon seeing Hackett, Larson stepped away, paged through her notebook and updated him.

“The deceased is Virginia Dortman, the apparent victim of a home invasion. She was discovered by her friend, Olive McKay, the woman in the ambulance.”

“And the link to our kidnapping?”

“When Olive found Virginia, she was alive and talking. Olive is trying to remember her friend’s last words. She insists it was about our case.”

Hackett and Larson joined the other investigators respectfully listening while Olive, contending with her shock, did all she could to decipher Virginia’s last words.

“I’m sorry,” Olive said, “but this is so hard.”

“We understand, ma’am,” Sheriff’s detective Hal Atcher said. “If you could just try for us again, it’s very important.”

“It was something like, the missing girl on TV, and bad please.”

“‘Bad please?’” Atcher repeated.

“That’s what it sounded like.”

“Could it be bad police? ” Hackett offered.

“It could be, but I’m not sure. This is awful, awful, awful!” Olive sobbed.

“Thank you, Olive. Thank you,” Atcher said. “We’ll give you a little break while you wait for your husband to get here.”

Atcher and his partner, Brad Gerard, introduced themselves after stepping aside to give Olive a respite with the paramedics.

“What do you make of this, Earl?” Atcher asked.

“I don’t know. I just got here. Did you find anything that places our people at this scene?”

“Nothing yet. It’s all fresh, like the thing you got going at the rail yards.”

“Right.” Hackett took stock of the area’s isolation and the cluster of buildings dotting the horizon. “What’s that way over there?”

“That is the old Spangler Airfield. Used to service crop dusters until it closed in the 1950s and was abandoned. I believe the family estate is hoping for a mall development but over the years parceled off some of the border property, like this lot that Virginia and her husband bought.”

“What’s the Dortman family situation?”

“No records. Lem is former military. He was a trucker until he died a year ago. Virginia was a librarian. Their son, Clay, is a U.S. Marine posted overseas. We’ve sent word to him. We’re going to start a canvass, but the neighbors are about an eighth of a mile apart on property surrounding the airfield.”

“Excuse me, Agent Hackett?” A deputy nodded to the police tape. “That gentleman there talked his way to the line. He says he needs to speak to you.”

Hackett winced, recognizing Gannon and Cora at the tape. They’d followed him. He signaled that he would speak to them later and returned to the detectives.

“Okay, what I would do-” Hackett nodded toward the abandoned airfield “-is send a few units over there right away because-”

“Hal, we got something!” The radio in Gerard’s hand blurted and they heard a bark. The group turned to a county crime scene tech approaching, gripping a large digital camera in her gloved hands. “Clarkson and Sheba found it. It’s a shoe, child-sized. I flagged it. It’s in the yard out back. Alone. No other items. Have a look.”

The investigators crowded around the screen and examined the photo of a small sneaker. Larson thumbed through her notebook to Tilly’s clothing description, then went back to the photo.

“Earl, that pretty much fits… Earl?”

Hackett waved to the deputy to admit Gannon and Cora to the scene and the group.

“We’ll get an identification from the mother.”

Gannon and Cora, questions written on their faces, hurried to the group and looked at the photo.

“Is that Tilly’s shoe?” Hackett asked.

Two seconds of intense concentration was all Cora needed before her eyes brimmed with tears and she nodded.

A dog yelped and the group’s attention turned to the expanse of shrub and grass stretching beyond them to the airstrip. Sheba, the police dog, was tugging Sheriff’s Deputy Clarkson toward it.

Phoenix, Arizona

Three Sheriffs’ SUVs cut a fast-moving line over the scrub, stretching toward the abandoned buildings of the airfield.

A hot wind lifted desert detritus with the dust clouds churning in their wake. Their wigwagging emergency lights underscored urgency. Deputy Pate was driving the lead car. FBI Agent Bonnie Larson was his passenger. As they arrived, Larson scanned the structures. No vehicles, people or indications of activity.

“Let’s start with the hangar. The doors are open,” Pate said into his shoulder microphone. “Chet and Marty, take the east entrance. We’ll take the west. Somers, Briscoe, take the back side.”

“Ten-four.”

Pate got his shotgun, Larson unholstered her Glock-27 and they positioned themselves on either side of the hangar’s west doors, which were open to a gap of some fifteen feet. Larson’s heart rate picked up and she started processing the situation.

One thing for sure: It was quiet.

Deathly quiet .

Before Hackett pulled away from Virginia Dortman’s property, he made a judgment call.

He had no grounds to detain Gannon and Cora, but he knew that after he’d invited them to identify Tilly’s shoe-evidence that she’d been present-they’d get to the airport, one way or another.

“I’ll lead you in. You follow me in your car. But you do as I say,” Hackett instructed Gannon before they set out across the expanse to catch up to Larson and the deputies.

Hackett knew it ran up against the rules, but it was a matter of control. They were closing in on Tilly’s kidnappers and he couldn’t risk Gannon rushing off on his own and jeopardizing the work of the task force.

Not at this stage.

Hackett would keep an eye on him.

As they neared the buildings, Hackett saw the SUVs and the deputies holding their positions. In his rearview mirror, he found Gannon and Cora’s small Pontiac. He lowered his window, stuck out his arm, signaling for them to stop and keep back, way back, behind him.

At that moment the radio on Hackett’s passenger seat crackled with a dispatch from Larson.

“We’re going in, Earl.”

Waiting for their eyes to adjust to the light, Larson and Pate inched around the big doors and assessed the hangar’s interior.

Soaking wet trash and rags were strewn everywhere.

Disgusting .

No sounds, until Pate’s command boomed. “Maricopa County Sheriff! Come out with your hands open and held up above your head!” No response.

After a full minute and a few soft dispatches on the radio, they moved in. Larson was suddenly reminded of her grandfather’s cabin in northern New York; the gas smell of his small outboard motor. Before she became an agent, Larson worked as a state trooper. In that time, she had seen people who’d been shot, drowned, burned, frozen, stabbed and buried alive but she’d never seen anything like… Oh Jesus … She was overcome as she and the deputies realized what the garbage was…

“Oh Jesus Christ…oh Christ!”

Staring at the drenched rags, Larson soon picked out arms, legs, a head, then another, all severed.

The floor was slick with blood.

Larson saw the blood-splattered chain saw. “Oh Jesus!”

Struggling to make sense of the scene, she stepped back and held the back of her hand to her mouth as some of the deputies shouted and pivoted with their weapons extended, wary of suspects at the scene.