“That was never true, Cora. They did everything they could to find you, to bring you home. Mom told me how Dad regretted saying what he said to you every day of his life after you left. They loved you.”
“I know. I don’t blame them. I was horrible to live with. I was stupid, so messed up. And after I left, I made one mistake after another for over a decade. I was a failure and nearly destroyed myself. But it all changed when I had Tilly. She was my salvation. When I had her, I turned my life around. Then this happens. I don’t have anything to do with cartels, or any of this.”
“Is that the whole truth? Are you telling me everything?”
“You want the whole truth? Okay. Deep down, I am out of my mind with fear that maybe somehow, in some way, this could be connected to my past. But it’s not about me. My past is behind me. I’m a single mom, a secretary at a courier company. I never knew what Lyle was up to. I loved him, trusted him with my heart and he betrayed us. That’s the absolute truth, Jack.”
He rubbed his haggard face, then his eyes.
“Not all of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Who is Donnie Cargo?”
The name tore her wide open. Jack was getting too close to her last secret. Lomax must’ve told him about Donnie. Cora looked at him. Or rather, she looked right through him, as though he wasn’t there, trepidation clouding her gaze. The name pierced her the way lightning pierces the darkness, hurling her back to that night in San Francisco and…
“Cora, did you hear me?” Jack squeezed her shoulders hard. “I said, something’s going on.”
“What is it?”
He opened her bedroom door to a surge of activity among the investigators in her living room. The air sparked with tension, as an agent, cell phone pressed to his head, passed on information to Hackett,
“Phoenix P.D. emergency dispatcher’s got a caller now in real time who says he’s got a location on our suspects!”
“Can she patch us in to listen to the call?”
The agent spoke into the phone, then gave a big nod.
30
“Sir, can you confirm if the people are still in the unit?”
The Phoenix police emergency operator listened for the caller’s response through her headset. Pumped with caffeine for her night shift, she concentrated amid a multibutton telephone console, radios and monitors with colored geocode maps, her fingers poised over a keyboard.
“Sir?”
“Yes, they’re there.”
The operator resumed typing.
Her rapid-fire staccato updates shot across computer screens in patrol cars, alerting them to a report of a possible kidnapping/hostage-taking in Unit 28 of the Sweet Times Motel.
Immediately procedures were set in motion for a rescue operation. Radio silence was maintained in case the subjects were monitoring emergency traffic on scanners. All communication was made through secure cell phones or by text, as police cars took up positions just out of sight of the motel. More units were dispatched to the area with orders not to use emergency lights or sirens.
“Sir, can you see the room from where you are now?”
“No, not from the office here.”
“But you saw them?”
“Yes, half an hour ago, maybe. I was at their room talking to one of them about their outstanding bill. Then I turned on the news and seen another report on that kidnapped girl, then I realized what I seen in the mirror. At first I thought it was a woman-it was dark-but there was a guy holding his hand over her face. I seen a bitty piece of them in the mirror. I heard a chain, like a dog’s chain, and the guy at the door looked like the police sketch on the news. And later it hit me after I watched the news report-oh boy, that’s them all right.”
The operator’s supervisor stood over her workstation. He was also wearing a headset and listening. He had another line going directly to the FBI. The supervisor pressed a button that let the FBI and Hackett’s team in Mesa Mirage listen in on the motel caller to the 911 operator.
“Sir?” the operator continued. “Sir, I need you to listen to me carefully. Did you see any weapons?”
“I think I saw a knife.”
“Can you describe the vehicle belonging to the subjects?”
“No, they parked around the side. Want me to look?”
“I need you to stay on the line. Can you do that, sir?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, good. We’ve got people rolling.”
“Hey, there’s a reward for this, right?”
Forty-five minutes after the 911 call, the heavy-duty van used by the Phoenix Police Department’s Special Assignments Unit creaked to a halt in the Golden Cut Processing Plant’s larger shipping lot behind the plant. The lot was near the Sweet Times Motel but not visible from any unit.
A dozen SAU squad members stepped out, equipped with rifles and handguns, each wearing helmets, armor and headset walkie-talkies. They huddled around the hood of an unmarked patrol car. Tate Halder, the squad sergeant, switched on his headlamp, unfolded a large sheet of paper and sketched a map of the motel property based on an attachment emailed to him by the records department.
“Listen up, people. Unit 28 is here, north of the pool-”
As the squad crafted its strategy, police cars choked off traffic at all points around the motel area. Officers with photos of Tilly Martin fixed to clipboards recorded plates and checked vehicles leaving or attempting to enter the zone.
SAU Lieutenant Chett Gibb and negotiator Rawley Thorpe had entered the motel office. After interviewing the 911 caller, motel manager Percy Smoot, Gibb took no chances, despite Smoot’s booziness. Gibb sent plainclothes officers to escort all guests, with the exception of Unit 28, from their rooms and quietly lead them out of the line of fire.
When FBI Agents Earl Hackett and Bonnie Larson pulled into the Golden Cut parking lot, they were directed to the motel office. They shook hands with Gibb and Thorpe, who acknowledged Smoot’s condition.
