Full Tilt (19 page)

43

Chicago

K
ate climbed the front steps of Thornwood High School, a classic three-story redbrick-and-yellow-stone building.

She went to the central office lobby and reported to the security desk, as the admin staffer had advised when she’d called ahead with her request for help to contact a former student.

It had been nearly fifteen minutes since Kate arrived at the counter where she now stood watching Officer Fred Jenkins, according to his nameplate. He’d already called the school official she was to meet, searched her bag and run a metal-detecting wand over her. He was now meticulously entering her driver’s license number into his computer.

As Jenkins slowly double-checked the number, Kate’s attention went to the security rules posted on a board under the flags and portrait photos of the president, governor, mayor and principal, spelled out in plain language for all to see. No guns, no knives, no weapons of any sort, no gang colors, no gang clothing, no fighting, no bullying and so on and so on.

“Here you go, ma’am.” Jenkins passed her a visitor’s pass. “I’ll keep your license, then exchange it for the pass on your way out.”

As she clipped the pass to her blazer pocket the door squeaked open.

“Kate Page?”

A woman in her late forties had entered.

“Yes.”

“I’m Donna Lee with the Alumni Association. Welcome to Thornwood, please come this way.”

They went down a hallway lined with lockers. The air smelled of floor polish, perfume and cologne, with traces of the gymnasium and body odor. They passed glass trophy cases and banners heralding the championships and glory captured over the years by the Thornwood Thunderbolts: basketball, wrestling, swim, track, football and other teams.

“I understand you’re looking for information on a former grad?” Donna asked as they walked.

“Yes, I was hoping the Alumni Association could help me.”

“And you’re a reporter?”

“Yes.” Kate gave her a business card. “I’m doing some biographical research for a story.”

“I see. This way, to the right.”

They proceeded down another hallway.

“We’re fortunate. Not every high school has an Alumni Association on-site. We’re very well supported here,” Donna said. “Thornwood’s enrollment is about seventeen hundred students. Our alumni include two vice presidents, a governor, a Supreme Court justice, a number of actors, writers, professional athletes and successful business people.”

And how many murderers,
Kate wondered as Donna continued.

“The school opened in 1927, so we’re talking about the histories of a hundred-and-thirty-thousand dead and living students.”

“You have files on all of them?”

“A while back we digitalized everybody, so we have a pretty comprehensive database. Our listings vary from student to student, and we adhere to a strict privacy policy. Here we are.”

The alumni office had a table with two large desks at the far end of the room. A bank of file cabinets stood against one wall next to shelves with yearbooks going back to the 1920s. A section of one wall was plastered with reunion photos, people with babies and people in landmark locations around the world, as well as cards and notes thanking the association.

A woman at one desk with a sweater draped over her shoulders removed her glasses and stood.

“This is Yolanda White, our director. This is Kate Page from Newslead in New York.”

“Welcome, Kate.” Yolanda extended her hand. “The admin office said that you’re looking for a particular former student?”

“Yes.”

Kate put her bag on the table, took out the death notice for Krasimira Zurrn and tapped the name Sorin.

“I’m trying to locate her son, Sorin. They lived on Craddick Street.”

Yolanda replaced her glasses, studied the notice then sat at the keyboard of her computer.

“And do you have his age?”

Kate used the age police had given for Carl Nelson.

“About forty-five.”

“So, Class of Eighty-Eight.” Yolanda began typing and within a few seconds her computer chimed. “Yes, Sorin Zurrn, graduated in eighty-eight.”

Donna selected a yearbook, flipped through it and showed Kate Sorin Zurrn’s high school photo. Kate’s pulse quickened as she stared at it. For her gut told her this was Carl Nelson, then she thought, no. It was Jerome Fell from Denver. Then she accepted that it could be anybody.

“Is this the man you’re looking for?” Donna pointed to a listing.

“It is. Would you have a contact address for him?”

“I’m afraid that’s private,” Yolanda said.

“Wait,” Donna said. “We have to see if he’s registered first.”

“Registered?”

“If he’s registered to the Alumni Association, we’ll have his current information and we can send him a message to see if he’s okay to release it to you.”

“No,” Kate said. “I need to contact him directly. It’s complicated.”

Yolanda’s keyboard clicked.

“It doesn’t matter, he’s not listed.”

“Do you have any other information on him?” Kate asked.

“That would be it,” Donna said. “I’m sorry.”

“Hold on. We could go to our coordinators,” Yolanda suggested.

“Coordinators?”

“Alumni executives who are knowledgeable for a graduating year.” Yolanda’s keyboard clicked. Then a speakerphone clicked on and a line started ringing. “They usually graduated that year and worked on the yearbook.” The line was answered on the third ring.

“Hello,” a woman answered.

“Hey, Cindy, it’s Yolanda at the association. We got you on speaker.”

“What’s up?”

“Got a reporter here, Kate Page from Newslead in New York. She’s doing research asking about Sorin Zurrn.”

“Sorin Zurrn, Sorin Zurrn. Kind of a nerd, geek kid with a limp?”

“Yes,” Kate said. “Hi, Cindy, Kate Page here. What can you tell me about him?”

“Gosh, he really kept to himself. Quiet, weird guy as I recall. He was in my history class. We had Mr. Deacon. Sorin got picked on a lot. I think his mother had psychological problems.”

“Do you happen to know how we can get a message to him? I mean, do you know in general where he’s living right now?”

“No, sorry. I think he left town. I think his mother died some years ago.”

“Did he have any friends, Cindy?” Kate asked.

“No. He was a pretty sad case. Hold on, I think there was one person, Gwen Garcia, she was an eighty-eight, too. She used to hang with Tonya Plesivsky. They tormented Sorin quite a bit. I think Gwen had a change of heart and tried to be friends with him after the incident. I know Gwen—she’s Gwen Vollick, now lives in Koz Park. Let me give her a call, see if she’ll talk to you.”

Cindy hung up before Kate had a chance to ask her to elaborate on “the incident.” She asked Donna and Yolanda but neither recalled. They had graduated from Thornwood in the early eighties. Yolanda flipped through the yearbook to Tonya Plesivsky’s picture for Kate.

Tonya was pretty and, judging from the long list of clubs and societies she’d belonged to, she must’ve been popular, too. While they waited Kate asked Yolanda to submit the names Carl Nelson, Jerome Fell, Tara Mae—or Tara Dawn Mae—and Vanessa Page into the school data banks. There were quite a few Vanessas, Jeromes, Carls, Taras, Nelsons and Pages but nothing that fit. Then the office phone rang. It was Cindy calling back. Yolanda put her on speaker.

“Hi there. I reached Gwen and she said she really didn’t want to talk about Sorin or Tonya. She said she’d always felt bad about teasing Sorin, but they were just stupid kids. Gwen figured you were writing a story about bullying and didn’t want her name used. She said the whole thing is still sad for her.”

“I understand, Cindy,” Kate said.

“Sorry, wish I could help you.”

“There’s one thing. Can you tell me about the incident and how it led Gwen to change?”

A silence filled the air.

“Tonya was one of Gwen’s best friends and she died.”

“I’m so sorry. What happened?”

“She died when she was fifteen. She was looking for her dog.”

44

Chicago

A
fter leaving Thornwood High School, Kate sat at the wheel of her rental car making notes while struggling to put together the pieces of information she’d gleaned about Sorin Zurrn.

Am I any closer to finding him?

The women of the Alumni Association had been friendly and helpful, but they wouldn’t give her addresses, emails or phone numbers. She’d sensed an undercurrent of unease at having a reporter asking questions about former students.

After looking over her notes, Kate tried, yet again, to find any address information for Sorin Zurrn in Chicago. Again she struck out. She then searched for Tonya Plesivsky’s family and caught her breath.

An Ivan Plesivsky came up on Craddick Street.

Two blocks from the Zurrn home.

He has to be a relative.

Newslead subscribed to an array of online information databases that allowed reporters to conduct extensive searches through any device they used. Kate ran the Plesivsky name through the databases for the Chicago papers, an obit or news item, anything on Tonya’s death.

A story in the
Sun-Times
came up. It was short with no byline.

Girl Dies after Fall in Park

A fifteen-year-old girl from the Northwest Side died Saturday night after she fell in Ben Bailey Park while looking for her lost dog, officials said.

Medical crews responded to a 911 call at around 3:35 p.m. Saturday that reported a girl with a traumatic head injury was found by joggers at the base of a stone stairway. The joggers administered CPR until paramedics arrived and transported the girl, identified as Tonya Plesivsky of Craddick Street, to Verger Green Memorial, where she was pronounced dead.

“This is not real. I can’t believe it,” Ivan Plesivsky, the girl’s father, told the
Sun-Times
.

It appears that the girl tripped and fell, striking her head on the stone steps, according to parks officials and Chicago police.

A small photo of Tonya holding her dog, Pepper, accompanied the article.

That’s so sad. She was such a young girl.
But this was the girl who would “torment” Sorin. Why did her friend Gwen stop bullying him? I suppose it could be expected in the wake of Tonya’s death. But how bad was it if, after all these years, Gwen refused to talk about it? And would any of this have any connection to Jerome Fell in Denver, or Carl Nelson, or Vanessa, or anything?
Kate shook her head.
Sure it’s a long shot, but that’s what I’m here to do, take a long shot.

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.”