Tabula Rasa by Kitty Thomas Page A

in front of me and pulled a small flashlight from
his pocket and shined it into my eyes. He felt the skin on my face
with the back of his hand. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for.
Signs of shock? Were my pupils relevant in that? I didn’t know. Ask
me something about plants.
    “Is there a big drain somewhere in the floor of the kitchen?” he asked. “Most
industrial kitchens have one somewhere.”
    “I-I don’t know. I think so. Why?”
    “Trust me, you don’t want to know.” He picked up Trevor’s body and carried him
back into the kitchen.
    I stayed still and quiet where I was for half an hour—maybe
longer—wondering if I was in shock. I must be, right? Everything
felt like it had gone into slow motion. Dimly, in the back of my mind
I felt I should be doing something... I should leave... get out of
here. But I couldn’t quite figure out why that was so. My brain
didn’t seem able to process what was going on. Everything felt
foggy and surreal. Finally, I got up and went into the kitchen to see
what Shannon was doing.
    He was right. I didn’t want to know.
    He’d found the drain in the floor and had bound Trevor’s body to
a long metal food prep table. He’d propped it up with some heavy
crates so the body was upside down at an angle. Shannon had slit his
throat, and the blood was flowing out of Trevor straight into the
giant drain.
    My hand went to my mouth. I thought I was going to be sick again. I
was sure of it.
    “Oh---Oh God.”
    “I told you you didn’t want to know,” Shannon said, not looking up from his work.
    “Oh God.”
    “If you’re going to vomit again, do it back out in the main room.”
    I just stared at him. For some reason, I don’t know what I thought
was going to happen when he said he was getting rid of the body. I
just... I expected maybe he would bury it in the woods or something.
I mean... it’s understandable. I thought this was just some new
awful unpleasantness he would deal with for both our sakes.
    But this... this wasn’t someone who’d never
killed a person before. This was someone who had a... a method for body disposal. How many people did you have to kill to develop a
method? They couldn’t all be self defense.
    On the counter, he’d lined up all the
pitchers of water from the fridge. For clean-up most likely. There
were also about twenty gallons of purified water on the counter that
Trevor must have had hidden somewhere. That must have been our well
water. It reminded me briefly that Trevor was the only person here who had hurt
me so far. But then off to the side I noticed big thick plastic sheeting and a wicked sharp saw...
Oh... God.
    Shannon finally glanced up. “I found that in the freezer. The
plastic makes sense, but I have no idea why Trevor had a saw in
there. I was sure I’d find something useful in the castle, it’s a
big place, but... the angels are smiling down tonight.”
    Or the demons were smiling up.
    “Do something useful and bring me that sheet with all the blood on it from the
other room,” he said.
    But I stood there, frozen. My hands started to shake again, and the
tremor seemed to move through my whole body.
    H-how do you know to do all this?” “
    “That’s classified.”
    I was sure he was some sort of ex-military. The way he moved. The way
he talked. The calculating precision of every movement that showed
signs of training well beyond that of a police officer but too
regimented for a garden variety psychopath.
    But that didn’t explain how he knew so much about getting rid of
bodies. That couldn’t be standard military procedure.
    “You think I’m a monster,” he said. He didn’t seem to be very bothered by the
possibility.
    I didn’t respond, but I was sure the truth was easily readable in
my eyes.
    “I’ve never killed an innocent. Are you innocent, Elodie?”
    “Y-yes.”
    “Then you have nothing to worry about. Now go get the sheets.”
    Unsure what else to do, I started toward the door. His voice