Rick Mofina - Full Tilt

Zurrn put his hands together, steepled his fingers, touched them to his lips, his nostrils flaring. Then he shut off his computers, took them with him, got into his van and headed into the night. He drove along a stretch of strip malls, car washes and warehouses, coming to a Burger King with a twenty-four-hour drive-through.

After collecting his order, the aroma of onions and French fries filled the interior. As he threaded his way through a light industrial no-man’s land, he took stock of his situation.

Where’d he screw up? He’d been careful. Yes, he’d made mistakes long ago when he was young, but time had buried them. He’d perfected his technique.

Calm down! So my perfect crime in Rampart was not so perfect. It doesn’t matter what police think they know. I’ll adjust. They can’t touch me because I’ll always have the upper hand. I’ll always be in control.

He stopped at the gate of JBD 24-7 Mini-Storage. He inserted his card with the chip, then touched his code on the security keypad. The gate opened. He drove slowly through the facility’s neat rows of garage-sized units. It was late, the grounds were deserted. When he found Number 84, he carefully backed the rear of his vehicle to the door, blocking the security cameras from clearly seeing inside.

He pressed the unit’s password on the keypad, then inserted the key into the lock. Metal grumbled as he lifted the unit’s steel door and switched on the light. It was clean and dry inside.

He closed the door.

In the unit’s center, there was a large rectangle shape covered by a sound-absorbing tarpaulin. He pulled it back, revealing two oblong matching wooden crates, each large enough to hold a coffin. Each crate had a small, hinged inspection door, about the size of a hardcover book. His keys jingled as he unlocked the steel lock and opened the first one.

He dropped fast food into it, then locked the door.

Then he unlocked the second one, opened it and hesitated.

“Please! I’ll be good, please! Please!” A soft voice rose from the darkness.

Ignoring it, he dropped the food and locked the door.

Then he sat in the corner and as he listened to the small movements of life coming from the boxes, he stared at them, thinking.

Thinking hard about what he was going to do.

Utica, New York

Lori Koller, an assistant at Essential Office Supply, set her fresh cup of orange tea on her desk and looked at her calendar.

Day by day. She sighed.

Ever since her husband, Luke, had died ten months ago, she’d struggled to carry on with their two little girls, the way he would’ve wanted. He was devoted to his family.

She glanced out the window of her building on Genesee Street.

Luke had been a construction worker. He was killed after falling ten stories at the site of a new apartment complex. But Lori hadn’t received much in the way of compensation, because the investigation found that Luke routinely unhitched his safety harness. It complicated everything. Luke’s life insurance policy was small. They had been planning to increase their coverage before he died.

After the funeral costs and the loss of Luke’s income, debts started piling up. Friends helped by holding a small memorial banquet but in grappling with her grief, caring for the girls, who cried for their daddy, Lori had had a rough time. She got counseling for her and her daughters, sold their SUV, their van, Luke’s tools, his boat and trailer, got a smaller car and paid down some bills.

Things were not easy and the hurting never went away, but day by day they were getting better, Lori thought, sipping her tea. She had gotten busy updating the monthly reports when her phone rang.

“Hey, it’s me. Did you see today’s OD ?”

Her younger brother, Dylan, was a city bus driver, and, judging from the background noise, he was calling from the yard. Why would he ask if she’d read today’s Observer-Dispatch ?

“No. Why?”

“Go online now and look for the story about Rampart.”

“I’m kinda busy.”

“You have to do it, right now.”

“Dylan.”

“Right now, it’ll only take a moment. I’ll stay on the line to be sure you find it.”

“All right.” Her keyboard clicked. “You are such a pain.” She went online to the newspaper’s website, found the story and started reading.

“Did you find it?” Her brother was anxious.

“Shh!”

Lori read fast, and her attention shifted from the text to the images, particularly the photo of Carl Nelson.

“See the picture of the guy they’re looking for?”

“Oh, my God!”

“It’s him! That’s the guy who bought your van.”

“But he said he was from Cleveland and I don’t think that’s his name. I’d have to check the sales papers.”

“Lori. I was there with you. That’s him! You have to call the police line and tell them.”

“I don’t know, Dylan, this is all scary. It’s all too much.”

“You have to, Lori. Do it right now!”

After Dylan hung up, she looked at the article. At the bottom was the toll-free number of the police tip line. Lori took a few breaths then reread the story. What happened in Rampart was such a horrible thing. Then it occurred to her that she wouldn’t want police to think she was somehow involved. Okay, okay, she’d do what any good citizen should do. Before she realized it, she’d dialed the number.

As the line rang in her ear she stared at the article and the photos, the search for human remains, then into the eyes of the man who had bought her family van.

New York City

Kate scrolled through news stories on her phone while sitting in the upholstered chair in the reception room of her daughter’s dentist.

Still no confirmation out of Rampart on the ID of the remains.

Kate bit her lip to push away the fear.

It had been a day since she’d returned and in that time, between pursuing leads, she’d reconnected with her home life. While she’d only been away a couple of nights, it felt longer. Getting Grace to today’s appointment gave her a sense of being a mom again.

Holding Grace’s jacket in her lap, she traced the little hearts that were on the cuffs, thinking how lucky she was to have her. Grace was her rock, her anchor. She’d kept Kate sane through the years, just by being a kid.

Grace was practically the same age that Vanessa was when the accident happened. She even looked a little like her. Kate smiled and lifted her face to the opposite wall, which was plastered with snapshots of children showing mostly gap-toothed grins.

The display was called “Smiling Angels,” and it propelled Kate back to: her mother setting down a tray of fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies, the kitchen smelling so yummy. “You can each have one, girls. I don’t want you getting cavities.” She and Vanessa each took one but split a second cookie when Mom wasn’t looking…Vanessa laughing so hard.

Kate suddenly thought of dental records and human remains.

“Hi, Mom!” Grace appeared, clutching her new free toothbrush, floss and toothpaste. “No cavities!”

“That’s great, sweetie!”

“Mom, were you crying?” Grace tugged on her jacket as Kate helped.

“No, just a little tired from the plane.” She blinked. “Let’s get you back to school.”

After taking Grace to school and signing her in, Kate got on the subway to Penn Station, then walked to Newslead. At her desk she again scanned the latest stories out of Rampart, checking to see if her competition had broken anything on Carl Nelson.

Nothing had surfaced.

The first message she checked was from Chuck.