Rick Mofina - Full Tilt

“The Denver Broncos, the NFL football team?” Kate made a quick note.

“Yes.”

“Did Nelson ever say if he lived in Denver?”

“Heck no, that was the extent of our conversation,” Harvey said. “I don’t think that guy ever really talked with anyone.”

During the drive to the Syracuse airport, Kate updated her story. Along the way she called Grace, who was happy she’d be home later that night.

“Did you get me a present?”

“Sure did.”

“What is it?”

“A surprise.”

Kate then used the drive time to continue looking into the Denver Star-Times story. She needed to talk to Will Goodsill, the reporter. Maybe Goodsill could get in touch with his source, prompt him on what became of the “promising leads.”

Online she found scores of listings for Goodsill across the country, a few in Denver, none for a Will Goodsill. She started making calls and leaving messages, knowing it was a long shot. The story was fifteen years old. Memories fade, people move and people die.

After Raney dropped Kate off at the airport she checked her bag, went through security and on to pre-boarding. At her gate, TV screens suspended throughout the area, were dialed to news networks with pictures of Carl Nelson flashing across them.

The Rampart case had exploded into a national story.

Again, Kate met the cold eyes that glared from the face of a fully bearded man with wild hair, in his forties.

Carl Nelson.

Is this the last face my sister saw?

This was her enemy.

If you killed my sister, then I’ll find you. I swear to God, I’ll find you.

Before boarding, Kate downloaded every fresh news story she could find so she could go through them during the flight.

On the plane, Kate studied the news reports. The TV items carried pictures of Nelson, accompanied by the pool images of the razed barn and investigators in white coveralls sifting the earth for human remains in a remote corner of the isolated property.

Network graphic headlines called the case:

Horror in Upstate NY

NY Body Farm

Hunt for a Monster

All day long Kate had struggled to push one supreme fear out of her mind, but now it hit her full force, the old agony tearing at her with renewed ferocity. She turned from the laptop to her window. Somewhere down there were either the ashes of her sister’s prison or the remnants of her grave.

Oh, God, I don’t know if I can do this.

Kate turned back to her monitor to see it filled with Carl Nelson’s face glowering at her above the new headline:

Face of Evil: Who Is Carl Nelson?

Gary, Indiana

The toilet ran on, the mattress sagged and brownish stains webbed down the cracked walls of the motel room at the city’s fringe near the interstate.

The guest in Unit 14 didn’t care.

The Slumber Breeze Inn’s customers were chiefly addicts, hookers and deviants. But Unit 14 considered himself well above that stratum. What mattered was that the motel accepted cash while providing anonymity and indifference.

Working at two laptops on the room’s desk, was Sorin Zurrn. But nobody- nobody living -knew him by that name, a name that resurrected undying pain for him. At this moment, he was Donald W.R. Fulmert, age thirty-two, a professional driver from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In the darkness, his clean-shaven face and bald head glowed spectrally in the bluish light of his computer screens. He glimpsed himself in the room’s fractured mirror, satisfied that he bore no resemblance to Carl Nelson.

That man had never really existed.

Zurrn had grown comfortable living in Nelson’s skin, quietly tending to his collection over the years. But he’d never intended to reside there forever. He’d grown restless and proud of what he’d achieved.

But Rampart was such a small stage.

He deserved adoration for his accomplishments.

Although it was dangerous, he yearned for the world to be aware of his power; he ached for his life to be bigger, something grandiose and magnificent. He had to move on to the next stage of his evolution.

Over the past few years, he’d planned it all with such attention to detail, he thought, admiring the photographs of his new property. This would be his Asgard, his Valhalla; his Palace of Supreme Perfection. He could almost touch it, but it was still over a thousand miles and several states away, a vast expanse of isolated land.

The cost was unimportant.

Obtaining money was easy for him.

He knew the electronic security gaps with retailers and banks. Three months ago, he’d siphoned more than nine hundred thousand dollars in unmarked, nonsequential bills from cash advance kiosks at casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. He had access to an eternity of credit cards and identities, enabling him to be anyone he needed to be, with access to just about anything.

And he could do it all without leaving a trace.

As he continued looking at pictures of his sweeping new property, envisioning how glorious his new kingdom would be, one of his laptops trilled with a message from Ashley.

He’s so hot. Totally crushing on him! IDK! Help!

The pretty fourteen-year-old from Minnesota was breathless about a boy named Nick. Zurrn had been cultivating her online for the past six months, convincing her that he was Jenn, a sixteen-year-old girl from Milwaukee. He’d drilled deep into Ashley’s life. He knew everything about her and her family-their home address, all their bank and credit card information, their medications, Ashley’s grades, her habits and daily routine. He’d done a little work to get a feed off her phone and laptop so he could remotely watch her undetected.

He responded to her plea: Tell him, Ash! GTG! BFF!

BFF!

Best Friends Forever. Poor little Ashley might find out what forever really means, for Zurrn had her believing that Jenn’s parents were taking her to the Mall of America soon.

Now, Ashley was dying to meet her BFF.

Wait, what’s this?

In the corner of the room, a muted TV was tuned to an all-news channel. Images of the crime scene at a farm in Rampart, New York, appeared, prompting Zurrn to reach for the remote.

Carl Nelson’s face filled the TV over a graphic that read, “Wanted by the FBI.” As Zurrn listened, he went online, checking major news sites, devouring the breaking story.

What the hell’s this?

In the past few days, he’d monitored the initial coverage of the Rampart story. As expected, early reports portrayed it as a local murder-suicide. Coverage was contained to the region. That’s how it was designed and executed to play, with “Carl Nelson” and the woman dead, allowing Zurrn to disappear.

A perfect crime.

What happened?

Now, a woman named Kate Page was telling reporters of her search for her sister. A series of photos appeared from the cold case of a ten-year-old girl missing for fifteen years from Alberta, Canada.

“In my heart I feel my sister’s case is linked to the Alberta case and these events in Rampart. I want to find the man who did this. I want to know what happened. I’d give anything to see her again.”

Zurrn locked on to Kate Page, his face burning with contempt.

Long after the news ended, Zurrn sat motionless in the near dark, his neck muscles pulsating as he processed the news over the quiet hum of interstate traffic. Then loud music began throbbing from several rooms away, with the roll of drums hammering along the motel as if to signal war.

He went to one of the online news stories and examined the accompanying photo of Kate Page.

Who the hell’re you? Do you think you’re going to stop me? Me?