In Desperation (20 page)

San Francisco, California

I
n the hours before Donald Montradori died of cancer, he gave Ottawa detectives details of an unsolved murder that happened near San Francisco's Golden Gate Park more than twenty years ago.

His deathbed revelations set a series of events in motion.

The Ottawa investigators had recorded his sworn statement, obtained his signature and, adhering to procedure, alerted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The RCMP administered the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System, known as ViCLAS, Canada's enhanced version of the FBI's ViCAP system.

The Mounties operated the program in the force's Technical and Protective Operational Facilities base. The facility sat some sixty miles north of New York State's border with Canada on Ottawa's east side, amid sprawling suburbs, a few fruit orchards and disappearing dairy land. A bison head, the seal of the RCMP, rose specter-like out of the building's soft gray stone over the entrance. Inside, RCMP Sergeant Andre Caron, a ViCLAS expert, assessed the new information, then immediately contacted Stan Delong, the FBI's ViCAP coordinator in Quantico, Virginia, who handled RCMP submissions.

Delong listened intently as Caron told him about the break in the old case.

“Shoot everything to me ASAP, Andre. I'll get that into our program right away and contact our people so it gets to the lead at SFPD. We see all kinds of stuff, but this is a hell of a thing. Thanks, Andre,” Delong said.

Delong called the San Francisco FBI's ViCAP coordinator, who called Arlene Stapleton, his counterpart at the San Francisco Police Department, who immediately put out a call to SFPD Homicide Inspector Paul Pruitt.

Delong reached Pruitt on his cell phone in Chinatown. He was off duty and shopping with his wife and their daughter.

“Inspector Pruitt, this is Arlene Stapleton, SFPD ViCAP coordinator. Sorry to intrude on your time but we've received significant new information on a cold case and you are identified as the lead.”

“Which case?” Pruitt raised his voice over the street noise.

“Eduardo Zartosa.”

“What's the information?”

“It looks like your shooter's been identified.”

“I'm coming in. I'll call my partner. Thank you, Arlene.” Pruitt hung up and turned to his wife, who already knew that she was losing her husband for the rest of the day. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I have to go.”

“It'll be quicker for you to take a cab. We'll take the car home.” She kissed his cheek. “Call me. Let me know how it goes.”

In the cab, Pruitt alerted his partner, Russ Moseley, and their lieutenant.

Headquarters for the San Francisco Police Department was located at the Hall of Justice, a grim Stalinesque building rising from Bryant Street amid the low-rent units, office towers and high-tech firms in San Francisco's Soma district.

Pruitt hustled up the steps of the Hall's grand entrance
to the polished stone lobby, flashed his badge at the security check and took the elevator to the fourth floor and Room 450—Homicide Detail.

Pruitt went to the file cabinets, pulled out everything on the old murder, settled into his desk and set to work reviewing the case. In a short time, Moseley and Jim Cavinder, their lieutenant, arrived and joined Pruitt in reacquainting themselves with the ancient case.

Eduardo Zartosa, a twenty-one-year-old Mexican national, was visiting the city on vacation with friends when he was shot to death. His body was found in an alley adjacent to a parking lot in The Haight on Waller. A Smith & Wesson .38 Special, stolen from a pawnshop a year earlier, was found in a trash bin on Belvedere. The autopsy and ballistics determined it was the murder weapon. A set of unidentified latents had been collected from the weapon and submitted to ViCAP, along with other details.

Zartosa's friends said he'd left a party at an apartment to buy something to eat. There were no incidents at the party. No witnesses to the crime. Relatives arranged for the body to be flown to Mexico. Early on, Zartosa's uncle would call for updates on the case, then the calls ceased. Contact information for the uncle and friends was no longer valid.

“When's the last time anybody's looked at this case?” Cavinder asked.

Pruitt struggled to remember.

“About two years back, an old-time gangbanger facing a charge tried to barter a lead on it, but it fizzled,” Moseley said.

The case was twenty years old. Over that time, it had been passed around to a lot of detectives.

The three of them gathered in Cavinder's office and reviewed the material sent by the Canadians. They watched Montradori's account of what happened the night Zartosa was murdered, with Pruitt taking notes, until it ended.

“All right, I want to move on this. I'll call the D.A. You guys better look into a flight out to Phoenix tomorrow. Hold up,” Cavinder said as his phone rang. He took the call, listening for a full minute. All he managed at the end was, “Uh-huh. What? Right. Thanks.” Cavinder put the phone down and started working at his keyboard.

“I don't believe this.”

“What's up?” Pruitt said.

“That was the Captain. We've just got a call from the FBI crime lab. They've identified prints on the gun used for Zartosa.”

“What the hell?” Moseley said.

“And the Captain says SFPD also got a call from the El Paso Intelligence Center with new intel tied to our case. I'm flipping the material to you now.”

“What's with that?” Moseley said.

“This case is erupting,” Pruitt said.

“Did we ever establish where Zartosa's family tree reaches?” Pruitt and Moseley exchanged glances.

“It's so old, I don't think anyone's checked, not in recent years. Why?”

“It goes deeper into that Phoenix kidnapping and it's not good. Look—” Cavinder glanced at his watch “—you guys need to get to Phoenix ASAP. Get home and pack. I'll get Shirley to check flights. I'll call ahead, tell the FBI you're coming. We need to work with them on this and we don't have time to lose.”

Phoenix, Arizona

H
ackett stood at his desk, twisting a rubber band, staring at the map of Arizona covering the wall.

This was taking too long
.

His phone should be ringing, confirming an arrest.

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

“T
here'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.

Until this.

Cora groaned and thrust her face in her hands.

She had to keep going.

You have to be strong for Tilly
. Tilly was a fighter.

Tilly
is
a fighter
.

Cora sobbed into her pillow for several minutes before she found the will to shower and get into some clean clothes. No one seemed to notice when she padded to the kitchen to make tea. While she had no appetite, she ate some saltine crackers.

All the detectives, including Jack, were watching a TV news report. Through the forest of bodies, Cora saw it was a “Live Breaking News” report on one of the all-news networks. She glimpsed Tilly's face on the screen and nudged her way to the set.

Seth Bruller was at a podium making a public appeal
for help locating Tilly. Then he said the FBI was also seeking the “public's help locating the following individuals, who are persons of interest in connection with Tilly Martin's kidnapping.”

Once more, they showed Lyle's picture. Then three more photos appeared—the faces of Ruiz Limon-Rocha, Alfredo Hector Tecaza and Carlos Manolo Sanchez.

Cora stared into the eyes of the two men who had invaded her home—
the bastards who stood in this very space
—bound her, stole Tilly.

She gasped and steadied herself against the back of a chair.

How did the FBI get their photos? Why did they identify them without telling her? Before Cora could react, the TV footage cut to a shaky live aerial angle from a news chopper.

“Now stay with us,” the news anchor said. “We have just learned…have we got it? There it is. Our affiliate in Tucson is reporting out of Willcox, Arizona, east of Tucson, that a bus traveling from El Paso, Texas to Phoenix was believed to have been carrying one of these men as a passenger and was stopped earlier. Sources tell us the FBI, or rather the DPS, did not locate him but is still processing the bus for evidence. That would indicate he was on the bus and somehow eluded police.”

Cora couldn't stand it.

“Did you find Tilly?”

One of the task force investigators shook his head.

“Ma'am, we just have more information on the people we're looking for.”

Cora went to her brother but his cell phone rang.

 

Gannon answered.

“Jack, its Henrietta.” Her voice was low. “I'm at the FBI news conference. New York is asking what you know about the bus and the other suspects.”

“Zero. I know what's being reported.”

“That's it?”

“No one's told us a damn thing.”

“Okay, I'll tell them, but they're getting impatient.”

“I don't care.”

Upon ending Henrietta's call, Gannon had another one.

“This is Isabel Luna in Juarez. Can you talk now?”

“Hang on.” Gannon raised a give-me-a-moment finger to Cora and excused himself to a quiet corner of the house. “Isabel, do you know about the bus in Willcox?”

“Yes. The suspect, Sanchez, is using an alias. The face is a true picture. It's The Tarantula.” Gannon listened as Luna continued. “He is the Norte Cartel's top
sicario,
the top assassin. Based on the crime scene and their sources, Esteban and his team believe he killed the two Americans in the desert south of Juarez, the men associated with Lyle Galviera.”

Gannon's breathing quickened; a picture began emerging as Luna continued. “The
sicario
entered the U.S. at El Paso and took a bus to Phoenix. American police were advised and they stopped the bus but he got away, as the networks are reporting. Jack, we believe he was dispatched to kill Lyle Galviera.”

“Jesus.”

“And Tilly.”

“Oh Christ.”

Gannon's eyes swept the room until he found Cora and swallowed.

Could he tell her? An assassin's coming to kill your daughter. Maybe this was the time to push Cora to answer Lomax's allegation.

Luna continued, “The FBI and Arizona authorities are obviously taking matters seriously, with a dragnet, while gathering all the information they can. But
sicarios
at this level are impossible to find. They blend in like chameleons.”

During his conversation Gannon noticed that Hackett, Larson and other people had entered the house through the back door, approached Cora and took her aside. They looked grave.

This could be it,
Gannon thought.

“Isabel, thank you. I have to go. Please contact me the moment you have any new information.”

“Of course.”

Gannon joined Cora and the others.

“Sorry,” Hackett said to Gannon, “we need to speak to Cora alone.”

She shook her head, trying to read the faces confronting her for what was to come.

“Whatever you have to say, I want Jack with me.”

“Very well,” Hackett said. He turned and introduced a slender man in a well-cut suit. “This is Oren Krendler, our division's polygraph examiner.”

“Polygraph examiner?” Gannon said.

“We're requesting Cora submit to a polygraph examination as soon as possible.”

“A lie detector? Now?” She half turned to the TV. “I don't understand. Shouldn't you be concentrating fully on finding Tilly? I mean—”

“We talked about this earlier with you, Cora. We have some uncertainties in the case that we need you to help us clarify, so we can concentrate fully in the proper areas. This is just a tool we use to be sure our investigation is thorough. Now, it is strictly voluntary. You can refuse, but it would be helpful in our investigation of your daughter's kidnapping. It could lead to her safe return. You want to do all you can to help us return Tilly, don't you, Cora?”

Cora glanced at Jack, immediately irritating Hackett.

“I don't understand,” Hackett said. “Why do you need to get direction from your brother on this, Cora?”

“Because we know what this means,” Gannon said.

“Oh? And what's that, Jack?”

“You consider her a suspect.”

“I didn't say that. What I said was that this is a tool. We need to clarify things so we can focus our investigation effectively.”

“Do it, Cora,” Jack said. “But get a lawyer first.”

“A lawyer?” Hackett repeated.

“Come on,” Gannon said. “You all know that if you're going to do this right, you should Mirandize her. So she should have a lawyer, and not feel pressured, since it's
strictly voluntary
.”

“Fine,” Hackett said, “but we need to get moving. So get your lawyer ASAP.” Hackett's phone started to ring and he turned to answer.

“Jack,” Cora seized his wrist hard and whispered, “I don't have a lawyer.”

“I'm going to help you, Cora.”

As Gannon started to make a call himself, he overheard Hackett say into his cell phone, “Say that again. Who's here from San Francisco?”