Tabula Rasa(17)

He didn’t seem remotely distressed by any of this, and I became increasingly convinced he planned to kill me next, but now that I was tied up there was nothing for me to do but cry and wish somehow I could have made a different choice. I kept reviewing everything in my head from the moment he’d shown up, trying to think how and when I could have truly escaped. Would he have let me go if he hadn’t started the process of getting rid of the body? If I didn’t know what he was?

He took the plastic back into the kitchen and was gone another maybe five minutes before he returned. The plastic was clean now. He’d obviously rinsed the blood off down the drain. He folded the plastic neatly and set it next to the fireplace. Why?

I tried to think of it all as a puzzle. I tried not to think about what I was really witnessing or the horrifying smells of burning flesh coming from the fireplace that contained pieces of Trevor.

Shannon went back into the kitchen again—I guess for further clean up—while I tried not to gag from the smell of burning flesh and equally tried not to think that it could be me in those flames next. My lip trembled as I worked to keep my crying quiet. I was sure he was just one minor annoyance away from deciding I wasn’t worth sparing.

Finally he came back with another pitcher of water, some soap, and some rags. I watched as he scrubbed up the blood on the floor from the initial shooting. He went back to the kitchen for a moment, then returned with wrung out rags that he tossed in the fire with the sheet he’d tossed in earlier. The fire smoldered a bit from the dampness still in the cloth, but quickly recovered.

I glanced over at the other fire that was still eating Trevor and I somehow found the courage to speak. Maybe if I got him to talk to me he wouldn’t see me as just more evidence to dispose of.

“Wasn’t there any bleach?” I asked.

“There might have been, but it leaves too strong a smell. If my friends come in the room, they’d wonder why one room in an abandoned theme park castle smells like bleach and is ridiculously clean. It’s why I left the vomit. It works in our favor. They aren’t going to clean it up. They’re going to stay away and out of this room because they’re pansies. By the time another random group of people comes exploring, nobody will know what it was or that anything of note ever happened in here.”

“But that smell... where you burnt him... that’s a lot worse than vomit. They’ll smell it.”

“I guarantee you they’ve never smelled anything like that. They’ll take one look, get one small smell, and flee without analyzing it too deeply. People notice what they want to and everything else gets filtered away and buried.”

“O-okay... but... the fire won’t burn him all the way... there will still be bones.” I said this like I’d somehow figured out something he didn’t know. But of course that was crazy, all things considered.

“I have a contact at a crematorium. He can incinerate the rest. I just wanted the body unrecognizable. I trust my contact, but you can never be too careful, and I would prefer he not recognize this guy. Too many questions with it being such a high profile case.”

I cringed when Shannon came over and sat next to me at one of the tables. He brushed a long strand of hair out of my eyes.

“Don’t be afraid of me, Elodie.”

“H-how can I not? After what you just did... and how calmly you did it.”

He sighed and stared at me for a good long time while I tried to perfect the art of invisibility. Finally he said, “Okay, I’ll play your game. Hypothetically I just leave you. What’s your next move?”

“I-I wait until day, and then I get out of the park.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. It can’t be that hard.”

He looked skeptical, but he let the logistics slide. “And then what?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“Do you have any money?”

“No. I mean... not on me. I don’t remember if I have any in general.” Was I the type of person who saved? Had I been in the position to save? If I was a botanist, did that mean I still had student debts, or did botany pay pretty well? How could I know how fast kudzu grows but not know how much botany pays? Maybe Trevor had lied about my job. Maybe I had just been fixated on kudzu in my former life, and somehow it slipped through the cracks of my amnesia.

I blinked a few times, realizing Shannon was still speaking to me.

“Where do you live? Where do you bank? How will you get into your bank accounts? What do you plan to do when that runs dry? If you don’t want to have to deal with the police or the media or anyone else, how do you plan to live under the radar and get money to survive long term?”

He just kept hitting me so fast with all these questions. Questions he knew I couldn’t answer. Finally, I shouted, “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m just trying to show you that the anonymity and safety from scrutiny that you asked for isn’t available going on your own. Even if I didn’t have to worry about the fact that you just watched me kill a guy and dispose of the body, it’s not feasible for you to do this alone. And you know it.”

“M-maybe I’ll just go to the police.”

Shannon laughed. “Not now, you’re not. Do you recall begging me not to make you do that? I’m not hanging out to dry because you can’t make up your mind. I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, and I know you’re terrified, but honey, you’re coming with me.”