Full Tilt

by Rick Mofina

  The white picket fence protecting the islands of dirt and tufts of browned grass of the Plesivskys’ front yard was missing a few pickets. The next thing Kate noticed was that the front of the wood frame bungalow had a wheelchair ramp. She glimpsed sheets and shirts flapping on a clothesline in the backyard as she went to the front door and knocked.

  Kate heard movement, then voices. A moment later the door cracked open, releasing the smell of cigarettes as a woman, her face creased with a taut frown, greeted her.

  “We’re not buying anything, thank you.” She started closing the door.

  “Wait, please! I’m a reporter from New York. I need your help.”

  The door stopped.

  Kate held up her ID. “Kate Page with Newslead.”

  “She says she’s a reporter!” The woman shouted to someone else in the house, which prompted a muffled response before the woman turned back to Kate: “What do you want?”

  “I’m researching some neighborhood history that involves Tonya Plesivsky. Would you be a relative?”

  A cloud of pain passed over the woman.

  “Tonya was our daughter.”

  Kate let a moment of respect pass.

  “May I talk to you a little bit?”

  “Wait.”

  The woman left Kate at the door. She heard subdued voices before she returned and invited Kate inside. Now the cigarette smell mingled with onions and something evocative of a hospital as they went to a small living room where a man in a wheelchair muted Wheel of Fortune on a large-screen TV.

  He had thin white hair, glasses and white stubble. He wore a flannel shirt and work pants that looked like shorts. His legs were missing below his knees. He gestured to the sofa and Kate sat.

  “Why’re you writing an article about our daughter?”

  Kate took out her notebook.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll explain,” she said. “First, I should get your name, you’re Ivan Plesivsky?”

  “Yes, and my wife, Elena. Do you have a card or something?”

  Kate gave him a card.

  “Would you like a coffee or soda?” Elena asked.

  “I don’t want to trouble you.”

  “No trouble.”

  “Black coffee would be fine.”

  “So?” Ivan leaned forward in his chair. “Answer my question.”

  “I’m researching the background of Sorin Zurrn for a story. He may have some connection to some crimes. Or he may not.”

  “What kind of crimes?”

  “Computer crimes, cyber theft, maybe harming people physically, but we’re not sure.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me.” Ivan grunted. “He was odd.”

  “I understand Tonya and Sorin went to Thornwood High and knew each other. And since you were neighbors, I was hoping you’d tell me what you remember of the Zurrn family.”

  The man looked long and hard at Kate before turning to the mantel holding framed photographs of Tonya with Pepper. Then he removed his glasses and ran his hand over his face.

  “You’re aware of what happened to our daughter?” Elena asked from the doorway.

  “Yes, and I’m terribly sorry.”

  “It’s very painful for us to think about that time,” Elena added as a kettle in the kitchen came to a boil.

  Ivan replaced his glasses, sat straighter as if steeling himself.

  “We didn’t know the Zurrns,” he said. “We weren’t friends. We knew his mother was a slut and her boy was odd. Some kind of computer whiz who chased butterflies all day, or something. We didn’t bother with them.”

  Elena set a mug of coffee with a Cubs logo on the table before Kate.

  “Didn’t Tonya and Sorin have difficulties with each other?”

  Elena and Ivan exchanged glances, telegraphing to Kate that she’d shifted matters to an uncomfortable level.

  “That was so long ago,” Elena said. “Why bring this up?”

  “I need to know as much about Sorin as possible for the story.”

  “We were aware of the rumors,” Ivan said.

  “What rumors?”

  “That Tonya and her friends sometimes teased the Zurrn boy. And maybe his mother a little bit.”

  “His mother?”

  “Look,” Ivan said. “They were kids in high school. Hell, who doesn’t get teased at school?”

  “Tonya was very popular at school,” Elena said.

  “That’s right,” Ivan agreed. “She had a bit of a following. Was it right for her to tease Sorin? No, but that’s what goes on in high school. Besides—” His chin suddenly crumpled and he froze a heaving sob as he turned to the photo shrine of his daughter.

  Elena stood, put her hands on his shoulders and, as if sensing what was coming, turned to Kate.

  “Maybe you should go.”

  Surprised, Kate was at a loss. In the moment she’d hesitated, Ivan found his composure.

  “No, stay. I want her to hear this. All of it.”

  “Ivan,” his wife cautioned him.

  “Listen.” Ivan stared at Kate, his jaw muscles pulsating. “Whatever sins our little girl may have committed as a child, she paid for them. I paid for them.” He glanced to his wife. “We paid for them.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “What happened with Tonya is why I’m in this chair.”

  Kate glanced at Elena, then back at Ivan.

  “Pepper was Tonya’s dog,” Ivan started. “When he was lost, Tonya was beside herself, putting up posters, looking everywhere. When she fell in the park our world stopped turning. You can’t imagine our pain at losing our angel, our only child. It hurt so much. But we had to go on. For Tonya. So I went back to work thinking I was coping with it, thinking I was strong, but I wasn’t. I was a shell.”

  “What work did you do?” Kate asked.

  “I was a utility lineman. After Tonya was gone, the silence of her room, seeing her things and knowing she was never coming back…God. I started drinking. One day I was doing maintenance work on a substation. Something went wrong and I got electrocuted. I lived, but I lost my legs below the knee. I tried to sue, but the court said because of the level of alcohol in my blood at the time, I was at fault. Go figure. I’m mourning my daughter and I’m at fault. Anyway, I got a tiny compensation and pension. We barely survive.”

  “I’m so sorry it’s been so hard for you.”

  Ivan looked off at the photographs.

  “Every day, it feels like it happened yesterday. I miss her so much. She was so pretty, wasn’t she, Elena?”

  “She was.”

  “I think of what she’d look like now, that she’d have children, our grandchildren, and how you would spoil them and how happy we’d be.”

  Elena patted Ivan’s shoulders and Kate said nothing.

  Ivan inhaled a loud, deep breath.

  “And then it happened,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” Kate was confused.

  “Then, one by one, the years passed and we started to cope with losing Tonya. We were holding strong, then that Zurrn woman, that psychotic—”

  “What happened?”

  “She came to our house one night, banging on the door. She was a mess, drunk, crying. She’d been living alone for years. We knew she was the neighborhood whore, with men coming and going, that she took drugs.”

  “What did she want?”

  “It was about two in the morning. She was drunk or high. She was nearly incoherent, but she starts telling us that she’s been haunted by her fear that her son, Sorin, pushed Tonya down the stairs that day at the park.”

  “What?”

  “We didn’t know what to do with her. There she was on our kitchen floor in a heap of self-pity going on about missing
her boy, who had grown and was long gone. She was going on about her wasted life and that she needed to go back to her homeland, wherever that was.”

  “What did you think about her fear that Sorin killed Tonya?”

  “We didn’t put any stock in her drunken mutterings. Later I talked to a cop about it. He said without evidence, witnesses or a verifiable admission of guilt, there was nothing we could do. It wouldn’t bring Tonya back. Then a few weeks later the Zurrn woman killed herself.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Chicago

  Kate drove away from the Plesivsky home excited and depleted.

  The new information she’d picked up on Sorin Zurrn had alarmed her.

  But can I put any credence in the ramblings of a drunken, suicidal drug addict who accuses her fifteen-year-old son of murder?

  These thoughts, along with those of Sorin’s upbringing, his intelligence, his strangeness, the bullying, along with the invoice dealing with Krasimira Zurrn’s burial site, spun in Kate’s head as she stopped at a red light.

  It had been a long, exhausting day. She’d forgotten about the time difference, had missed lunch and was getting hungry. She had to get a room, recharge, assess things and plan her next steps. The closest hotels looked sketchy to her. She kept driving until she came to a Days Inn suggested by her GPS.

  After checking in, she took a hot shower then called home, talked to Grace and heard about her day.

  “That new boy, Devon, asked me if he could kiss me.”

  “Oh, my. What did you tell him?”

  “I said no way! That’s gross! I could get his germs on me!”

  Kate laughed. The sound of her daughter’s voice was comforting. After the call Kate walked to the Burger King across the street to get supper. Fast food, cheap hotels, pressure, deadlines and only the fear of failure to keep you company. Such is the life of a national reporter.

  After eating in her room, Kate set up her tablet and worked, first checking for any new stories out of Rampart. Her stomach began to tighten a little in anticipation of what she might find. There were a few news features, but nothing new had surfaced.

  No new identifications.

  Kate took a hit of her bottled water and continued. She saw Davidson’s message saying that he’d reached out to Viper through his sources with a request that he contact Kate.

  Nothing, so far.

  While Kate had gained some momentum from what she’d uncovered about Sorin Zurrn, admittedly, it was a tenuous thread linking the Zurrns to the document found in Jerome Fell’s Denver garbage to the Alberta abduction, Vanessa and Carl Nelson.

  Kate sent a message to Chuck and Reeka.

  “I’ve found new, disturbing information on Sorin Zurrn. I believe we’re on the right track, but I need to keep digging, to tie it all together.”

  After sending the message she made notes on what she still needed to do: ask Chicago police for the reports on the deaths of Tonya Plesivsky and Krasimira Zurrn; check for coroner’s reports; check the Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court in case Krasimira Zurrn had a will. Above all, she needed to follow the burial site document, so she’d check to see if another company assumed the business of the original funeral home. She’d also go to the cemetery administration office and keep trying the Glorious Martyrs and Saints Church, pressing on all fronts for more help.

  Kate was tired and decided to rest her eyes.

  Sooner or later I’ll shake something loose, she thought while growing drowsy. Doubt crept up on her again as she considered what she was trying to do, connect Carl Nelson to Alberta, Denver and Chicago. It was like the rhyme about the lady who swallowed the fly, then the spider to catch the fly, then the bird to catch the spider, then the cat…how did it end?

  She dies in the end.

  Kate jolted awake when her cell phone rang.

  In her torpor she saw the hotel room, rain streaking across the window in the night before remembering where she was and fumbling for her phone.

  “Is this Kate Page, the reporter with Newslead?”

  “Yes.” She sat up rubbing her temple.

  “This is Ritchie Lipinski. You left your card in the door of my house on Craddick Street requesting I call you. What’s this about?”

  “I’m doing some biographical research for a story on a person who lived there long ago.”

  “What kind of story?”

  “A news story. We’re trying to locate a former resident, actually.”

  “The name?”

  “Zurrn, Sorin Zurrn.”

  A moment passed. Kate knew landlords, knew that Lipinski was weighing the pros and cons of talking to her.

  “The story would have no reflection on the property,” Kate assured him.

  “Would you mention that it’s a nice place and that my father and I are trying to rent it?”

  “That’s possible. By the way, is your father Tabor?”

  “Yes, he retired, I’m his son and I manage our properties.”

  “Do you recall the Zurrns?”

  “Most definitely.”

  “Would you talk to me about them?”

  “I’m at the house now. If you could be here in the next half hour, I’ll talk to you.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Chicago

  The hotel parking lot was not well lit as Kate, bent against the rain, hurried to her car.

  How long did I sleep?

  Wiping water from her face, she keyed 6168 Craddick Street into her GPS. As she wheeled out, the thought crossed her mind to contact Newslead’s Chicago bureau to request a photographer meet her there.

  No, there’s no time.

  Kate put her wipers on high speed. Lightning flashed and thunder grumbled as she navigated across New Jenny Park to the address. This could be the house of a killer, the place where his mother committed suicide, she thought.

  And I’m going there alone to meet a stranger on a night like this.

  Kate repositioned her grip on the wheel.

  Maybe it’s a risk—but I can’t lose this chance to get inside the house.

  She could handle herself. She’d taken firearms courses, although she detested guns and never carried one. She’d taken self-defense courses. She had a can of pepper spray and a personal alarm in her bag.

  She always took precautions.

  She arrived at the house to see a late-model Cadillac parked in the driveway.

  Kate eased up behind it, then took a photo of the car with her phone, then another, zooming in on the license plate. Then she sent them to Chuck and Reeka along with a message.

  Going to meet Ritchie Lipinski, owner of the Zurrns’ house on 6168 Craddick Street. This is his car and plate. FYI, going alone. If I don’t send you an OK within one hour call Chicago PD.

  She pulled up the hood of her jacket, hurried to the door and knocked. Lights were on inside. Thunder rolled then there was movement inside and the door opened.

  “You must be Kate. I’m Ritchie.”

  The man extended his hand. As Kate shook it, hers disappeared in his. He held it firmly for half a second longer than she liked. He was in his fifties, about six-two, with an expensive suit, tie loosened. His long blondish hair was slicked back accentuating his clean-shaven pockmarked face. A scar meandered from the right side of his lower lip, disappearing under his chin, which moved with his rapid gum-chewing as his intense eyes took a walk all over Kate.

  “Let me take your wet coat,” he said.

  “That’s fine.”

  Ritchie’s eyebrows went up a notch at her refusal.

  “Suit yourself there, Kate.” He turned and cast a hand over the empty house. Naked walls, naked hardwood floors. It smelled musty and looked as if it could use a good cleaning, maybe some paint. “I’d offer y
ou a drink or something, but I’ve got nothing. I just came by to give the place a quick look, check the wiring and plumbing, see what kind of shape it’s in before we rent again, or sell it, or tear it down. I don’t know. This way.”

  The floorboards moaned and his strong cologne trailed as he led her to the kitchen, where there was a table and four chairs.

  “At least we can sit and talk here.”

  He pulled out a chair for her but remained standing, leaning against the sink with his arms folded. Before Kate got out her notebook, she positioned her pepper spray can in her bag so it was on the top, easy to reach without Ritchie seeing.

  “What can you tell me about the Zurrns?”

  He looked at the ceiling, chewing.

  “That takes me back a few years. The woman was nuts, so was her kid. But they never gave us any trouble and she was always on time with the rent, until the day she hung herself in her bedroom closet.”

  “She hung herself.”

  Ritchie nodded, still chewing.

  “I found her. Dad sent me to check on her when she was late with the rent. It was awful…and the smell. I tell you, I had nightmares.”

  “Did she leave a note?”

  Ritchie shook his head.

  “Nope, nothing. She was living alone. Her kid was grown, long gone. She used scarves, tied her scarves together. Sad.”

  “Any indication why she did it?”

  “Drugs, booze, who knows? We all knew she was hooking, but there was never any trouble. She told Dad that they were her boyfriends. Look, I never knew the woman and my dad didn’t know her. And neither of us were her johns, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that.”

  His gum snapped.

  “So what can you tell me about her son, Sorin?”