Tabula Rasa (26 page)

There was a little moment between us that I can’t quite describe—as
if he were trying to determine if he should acknowledge that I’d
said I liked something about him.

Apparently deciding against it, he instead said, “I hope you know,
she’s going to Google you the moment she gets home. Let’s hope if
there’s an Elodie Evans, she proves interesting. But not too much.”

Chapter Ten

A few days later, Shannon had worked out all the logistics of killing
Professor Stevens and had agreed to let me join him. He left a large
amount of food and water out for the white cat and left all the
toilet seats in the house up in case she knocked her water over. For
someone with no soul to speak of, he had grown skilled at caring for
small animals.

We pulled out of his driveway all packed, at eight that morning. He
made it a point to drive through the middle of town to wave at Mrs.
Privet. She waved back from behind her shop window, a dreamy smile on
her face.

It occurred to me that June Privet was now part of Shannon’s alibi
should something go wrong. I wondered how else he’d secured his
Thailand alibi. I was sure he must know someone overseas who would
claim he was there, helping bring clean water to some poor village.
What a saint. He probably had a whole back story. Without a lot of
tedious emotional baggage and drama to deal with, Shannon had lots of
mental space to concoct all sorts of alibis and backup plans for
every possible contingency.

Though I reminded myself it was just a contingency. Shannon planned
things too well to have need of any of them. We couldn’t fly with
the weapons, airport security being what it was. He told me that when
he did big jobs overseas, he was sent by private plane. There was
nobody bankrolling this job but Shannon, so we wouldn’t be flying
private, though a part of me thought we probably could if he really
wanted to.

I was sure he had a stockpile of money hoarded away somewhere. He
lived nice, but modestly and didn’t appear to own anything too
extravagant. But I knew being a contract killer wasn’t like being
an accountant. There was some big money sitting around somewhere. It
was possible that Shannon only did enough work to keep him in a
modest comfortable lifestyle, but I had begun to be able to see the
itch creep over him. It seemed increasingly likely to me that he took
nearly any job that came his way just so he could feel like a normal
person for short stretches of time and convince the rest of the world
of the same.

It took nearly a week—with stops at night to sleep—for us to
reach our destination on the other end of the country. I hoped my
plants would be okay. Most of them could go a while between waterings
without freaking out, but I was still concerned. I couldn’t help
it. I’d say it was an occupational hazard if I’d ever gotten the
chance to use my schooling in an actual occupation.

Every night during our journey, Shannon stopped at a run-down motel
in some out of the way place, just before the front desk closed for
the night. He always went in. I stayed outside. He always paid cash,
and I was sure he was using a fake ID. Just like that first night, he
always got a room around the back, away from any possible passing
traffic, and backed the car into the parking space so the license
wasn’t visible to anyone else who drove around for a secluded room
in the back.

The primary difference in these nightly stops was that he didn’t
seem paranoid if I took a longish shower. He no longer assumed I was
fashioning weapons out of bathroom pipes, and he didn’t tie me up
for the night. Well, he did one night, but that was sex games, and it
wasn’t as if he made me sleep like that.

On Professor Stevens’ Day of Reckoning, we arrived at our
destination a little after midnight. The Professor lived a few blocks
from the university campus in a heavily wooded neighborhood. It was a
full moon, but the moon was obscured by thick cloud cover, making the
street even darker than it would normally be. There were no street
lights on Professor Stevens’ street, which was just fine for our
purposes.

Shannon backed the car into an unlocked empty garage at a house two
doors down with a
for sale
sign in the front. He’d done
meticulous research. Even if the garage had been shut and locked, we
could have still parked close enough to the abandoned house—given
that there was a high row of hedges beside the house that allowed
cover. But happily, the garage was open.

I thought it was dangerous doing this so close to the campus, but
Shannon reasoned that if Stevens was able to commit sexual assault
here and get away with it, that it was as good a place as any to kill
him. And Stevens did have that horrible basement he’d taken me to.
Of course Shannon was right, but I still looked over our shoulders
from the front porch, paranoid someone would come up the path. But it
was late on a weekday. Surely everyone was asleep already.

Shannon rang the bell, dragging Professor Stevens out of what must
have been a sound sleep from the bleary-eyed grumpiness that answered
the door. Shannon had instructed me to wait behind the bush until he
was inside. So when the door opened, a strange man dressed in black
was all the professor saw on the darkened porch.

“This better be good,” he snarled at Shannon.

“Trust me, it is.” Shannon lunged forward and knocked the
professor out with a chloroform soaked rag, then with speedy smooth
practice, he handed it out to me all while he kept the Professor from
hitting the ground. I disposed of the bag in Stevens’ trash at the
end of the drive. Both Shannon and I wore gloves, appearing as
shadows everywhere except for our faces.

We’d talked about this in the car on the way over. It wasn’t all
chloroform, but I wasn’t sure about the other ingredient. He’d
assured me the concentration and mixture he’d made would keep
someone unconscious for about fifteen minutes—just enough time to
move things to the next phase.

I went inside the house, trying not to flashback to the last time I
was brought in here. It looked much the same—exactly like one would
imagine a stuffy botany professor’s house might look. Lots of old
books. Lots of plants—many exotic and rare. There were several
plant lights for the exotics that needed a high amount of light but
weren’t close enough to a window to get it. These were turned off
for the night.

I felt as though the plants watched me. As if they’d been awakened
from their sleep by our intrusion. The average person might think
this completely crazy, but when you study plants, you realize they
are even more alive than you imagine. They simply exist on a
different time scale than us. On time lapse photography, they seem to
live with purpose. A few might even be said to have goals. During my
time at the University, I’d anthropomorphized plants to a degree I
couldn’t back away from, even though as a scientist I was meant to
look at things coldly and clinically. I wasn’t sure how I could
have ever done science that required animal experiments since I now
saw plants as nearly sentient.

This sensation wasn’t minimized knowing what I was about to do. The
creepy feeling that Professor Stevens’ plants watched me accusingly
only escalated as I made my way through the main level of the house.
I briefly panicked about what would happen to the plants when Stevens
was gone. Would they all die? Would a relative or some students at
the university take them under their wing and care for them? Could I
orphan all these plants? Now I
was
being crazy. Because surely
I still prioritized people over greenery.

But I knew even if I got cold feet, Shannon was determined. After
all, he hadn’t decided to kill Professor Stevens as a favor to me
but because he was angry and wouldn’t be satisfied until the man
was dead. Maybe I should have stayed home. During the trip I’d
shoved any doubts or dread into the back corners of my mind as if
shoving it back there often enough would somehow make the issue
vanish altogether.

It’s one thing to think about killing someone. It’s another to
actually do it. Most of us have the good sense to know that the
reality won’t be anything like the fantasy. I had that good sense,
but I’d acquired it far too late in the game for it to do me any
good.

I quietly crept down to the basement where Shannon had made use of
Professor Stevens’ bondage equipment to tie him up.

My heart thundered in my chest as though race horses galloped through
my veins.

Shannon took out a small 22 caliber handgun. He attached a silencer
to the barrel and inserted a magazine, slamming it a little harder
than was necessary.

“It’s quiet anyway, but with the houses so close together here,
it’s best to be careful,” he said, almost as if he were talking
to himself. “They call this an assassin’s special. The mob used
to use these for hits because they’re so quiet and discreet. You
can come right up behind someone, and shoot the back of the head. The
bullet’s so small it just ricochets around in there. They never see
it coming, and there’s no exit wound. Neat. Clean. If I’m not
using a sniper rifle, I prefer this. Keeps it simple. And I like the
challenge of having to get so close into their space to pull it off.”

“Shannon?”

“Yeah?”

“Could we not... with the commentary?” I was sure I was going a
little green. We shouldn’t have eaten so close to this event. But
of course Shannon wouldn’t be bothered by things like that.

“Too much for you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You wanted to come.”

Because it was my revenge. Not his.

“So... you don’t want him dead now? Is that it? You want him to
just waltz along through life thinking he’s gotten away with it?
You want him to victimize other women?”

“What do you care what he does to other women?” I asked.

Shannon rolled his eyes. “Just because I don’t feel all the range
of emotions you feel doesn’t mean I don’t know intellectually if
something is right or wrong. You might not think I have a working
moral compass, but I was trained to take out the bad guy. And this
guy is as bad as they come. I can smell it on him. It wasn’t just
you he’s done this to. And he’ll keep doing it. He can’t help
it. Someone like me needs to remove him from civilized society.”

I sank into a red velvet chair in the corner and didn’t say
anything else while Shannon pulled a bundle from his bag and unrolled
it with a flourish on a small table he’d dragged near the
professor. From my position, I could see several gleaming knives and
other fun little toys I didn’t want to think about.

“Shannon?” Was this normal for him? In my head I’d managed to
convince myself his job was some sort of necessary evil and that all
his kills were quick and clean like hunting a deer for dinner. Did he
need them to suffer first?

He looked up. “I’m taking my time with this one. This one is
personal. You can go wait upstairs if you need to.”

I wished again that we hadn’t had dinner so recently because now it
was starting to get real. It wasn’t some abstract notion. There was
a living person sitting a few feet away who was going to be carved up
like Christmas ham, and I was going to watch it happen.

“I’ll shoot him when I get bored. Or you can do the honors when
it’s time if you like.”

I shook my head vehemently. When he’d been gone on his last job...
when I fantasized about taking Professor Stevens’ out, in the
fantasy, I’d actively participated. Shannon and I had been like
Bonnie and Clyde—two disaffected sociopaths who didn’t give a
shit about playing by the rules. Now I didn’t want anything to do
with it. I wasn’t sure I could even stomach being down here.

“What if he screams and wakes up a neighbor? You can’t afford
that,” I said, hoping Shannon would change his mind and just make
this quick.

“I’ll use one of his ball gags. Besides, look at the walls. This
place has been soundproofed, and it’s underground. How else do you
think he got away with what he did to you?”

I shuddered at that, and for the smallest moment, my reservations
melted away. But then Professor Stevens regained consciousness. His
eyes widened when he saw me sitting across the room.

“W-what’s happening? Elodie? I-I thought you were dead.”

“Why would you think that?” I asked. I at least had the courage
to have a conversation, even if I couldn’t bring myself to rip and
tear skin.

“You were missing. I saw you on the news. That hospital.... that
doctor...”

I could see from the look in his eyes that he’d been thrilled when
he thought I was dead.

“How many others besides me did you do this to?” I asked, my
voice getting a little stronger. I wasn’t sure if I was just trying
to get some sort of closure or if I was stalling Shannon.

A smug, satisfied expression, spread over Stevens’ face. “My
relationships with other students are none of your business. Jealous,
you little slut?”

I leaped out of the chair and across the room so fast that, for a
moment, I didn’t realize I’d even moved. But all at once, I stood
in front of him inches from his smarmy little face. Did this asshole
not realize what was about to happen? But no, his eyes had found mine
immediately. He hadn’t yet noticed Shannon, who’d somehow seemed
to dissolve into the shadows behind him. He hadn’t noticed the
table with the instruments of pain. He hadn’t noticed the gun. He
was too fucking stupid to know this was his last night on earth.

I hauled back and slapped him so hard my hand stung. “You fucking
piece of shit,” I spat.

He just smiled. “Oh, so you want to try role reversal? I like a
good round with a dominatrix as much as the next fellow. It must be
why you have me tied to the chair.” His eyes widened suddenly as if
only now realizing he was tied up in his own basement. “T-there was
a man... before...”