Full Tilt

25

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?

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.