Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin (12 page)

another half hour looking at the pictures on the walls and
 going through the rest of the contents of the mini-fridge
 to see if anything is still edible. I find a couple of dried-out
 hard-boiled eggs, coffee creamer, and a brown paper bag
 with grease spots. I look inside.  
“Where would you get Chinese food around here?” I
 ask aloud. I pull the takeout receipt off the side of the bag.
“Johnnie Q’s Szechuan.”
Pierce looks up from his computer.
“You think Johnnie Q’s delivers here?” I ask.
“Not unless their corporate jet has a little basket on the
 front of it. That restaurant’s in L.A.”
“The receipt says this stuff was ordered in August.” I
 bring it to the desk and open the top of one of the contain-
 ers. I sniff and groan at the rank odor.
Pierce coughs. “Kung Pao E. coli. My favorite.” He
 pushes back in the wheeled chair and stands up. Something
 on the wall catches his eye. “Hey, look at this.”
I close up the cartons and go to see what he’s look-
 ing at. It’s a framed magazine cover featuring a youngish
Asian man standing in front of a strange building that
 looks like an upside-down bowler hat. The caption says,
William C. Chin in front of his newest creation, the Opera
House, Dubai.
He points to Chin’s name on the edge of one of the blue-
 print drawings lying on the desk.  “This guy’s a rock star of
 architecture. They must be sinking a lot of money into this
 place if they’re using Chin to design it.” He continues to
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read the bottom of the blueprint and then says, “Ah! And
 now I see why.”
“What?”
“Claymore Industries.”
He looks at me and smiles weakly. “We’ll just skip over
 the part where you tell me that you don’t know who that
 is.”
“No. I do. Sort of. I mean, that name does sound famil-
 iar.”
“It should. Claymore Airlines, Claymore Studios, Clay-
 more This, Claymore That. Erskine Claymore puts his
 name on everything.”
I see a building in my mind. A tall, thin skyscraper that
 looks like a perfectly formed icicle . . . or a sword. “Cen-
 tral Park South. Claymore Tower.”
“Good girl! I’d throw you a biscuit if I had one.”
I shoot him a dark look, but can’t help feeling proud of
 myself for remembering.
“Claymore Industries also happens to be a big military
 contractor. Interesting, don’t you think?”
“I guess.”
“And perhaps you’d  be interested to know that the
 building project, the one that you managed to derail by
 carrying on like a cross between Spider-Man and Robin
Hood, was linked to none other than . . . ”
“Erskine Claymore,” I say.  
“Direct hit on correct.”
But the name means something more to me. I’m not
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sure why, but suddenly I have a terrible feeling of . . . loss.
Fury. Confusion. Curiosity. There’s something about that
 name that reaches all the way down into me, like a mem-
 ory stored in the marrow of my bones. If I were to yank it
 out, I’d end up pulling myself apart.
“He’s a very powerful guy,” Pierce says. “Not that hav-
 ing all the money in the world has done him much good in
 his personal life.”
“Why?”
“All his kids have died. Well, except the youngest one,
 but he’s got some problem. I forget what. He’s really sick
 or a quadriplegic or something. And Claymore’s wife had
 a breakdown a couple years ago, and hasn’t been seen in
 public since. Thanksgiving in that family has got to be a
 real bummer. It’s probably just Claymore and his butler
 watching football and eating turkey sandwiches together.”
Across the room, we hear a moan. Or more of a growl,
 really. We look at each other and then slowly walk toward
 the tattooed kid. I reach down and touch him on the fore-
 head. As soon as his eyes open, he tries to sit up. He rolls
 onto his stomach and pushes himself up, kicking off the
 warming blanket like it was trying to smother him. He
 stumbles toward the desk, grabs it, and upends it with a
 crash.
Pierce and I both step back.
Seems we succeeded in bringing this kid back to life.
Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.  
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CHAPTER 15
 he kid immediately starts speaking Spanish. Pierce says
Tout of the corner of his mouth, “Do you know what
 he’s saying?”
“I think he’s asking, ‘Where is she?’”
Then it occurs to me that we found his footprints near
Jori’s body. It’s possible that they’d tried to escape together.
The kid falls over, gets up, falls over again. He hits the
floor like an anvil. He’s not as tall as Pierce but twice as
 thick.
“Thirsty,” he says.
I walk to the watercooler. The water is still mostly fro-
 zen, but the space heater has thawed it enough that I can
 get a few ounces of liquid out. I bring him a Styrofoam
 coffee cup of water. He drinks, crushes the cup in his fist,
 and flicks it away from him.    
“Where’s the girl?” he asks.
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“Which girl?” Pierce says.
“I don’t know.”
The kid looks down at himself and says, “Sandhog.”
Pierce looks at me. I have no idea what he means, either.
“My uncle’s a sandhog.”
“Ah, got it.” Pierce whispers, “I think he means he’s
 dressed like a construction worker. Sandhogs are subway
 tunnel workers.”
“Oh.”
“What’s your name?” Pierce asks him.
“Oscar,” he says. “Oscar . . . ” He’s trying to think of
 his last name. He shakes his head, and then starts smiling
 and putting his hands in the air like he’s thinking, How can
I not know this?
I start to introduce myself—“I’m . . . ”—but then I
 realize I don’t know what to say. I’m caught somewhere
 between Sarah and Angel. I’m not one, not the other. I
 guess I’m nothing.
Then I hear Pierce say, “Angel. This is Angel . . . and
I’m Thomas.”
Thomas?
I jerk my head to look at him, trying to ask with my
 eyes if that’s his real name or one he’s trying to pass off like
 counterfeit money. His eyes lock with mine, apologetic.
Yes, I think he’s told the truth this time.
“You swore you wouldn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t tell you. I told him.”
I suck my teeth in irritation.
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“It’s only my first name. So I only half-broke our deal.
There are a million Thomases in the world, right? I could
 be anybody.”
Oscar looks back and forth between us like he’s trying
 to figure why any of us is here.
“Who are you?” Oscar asks, his eyes narrowed.
I pull my cap off to show him my bare head. As soon
 as I do, he reaches out and touches it. “Mija, we got to stay
 together, eh?”
He starts laughing hysterically but then stops abruptly
 a few seconds later. His gaze shifts to Pierce, I mean
Thomas—it’s going to take a minute to get used to that.
Oscar seems to realize that Thomas is not his kind, but I
 am. And not just because of the baldness thing. I guess I
 noticed the same thing about Thomas: He’s unmistakably
 a rich kid.
Oscar puts his fist to his chin and pushes hard, cracking
 his neck and his knuckles at the same time. He points to
 the carton of Chinese food on the desk. “You want?”
“All yours, dude,” Thomas says.
Oscar empties the container of greasy food into his
 mouth, tapping the bottom of it to get the last bits out.
Thomas and I look at each other. Aside from being certain
 that he’s going to be puking inside an hour, something
 about Oscar is making us both jumpy.
Oscar looks into the paper bag and then quickly fin-
 ishes off a second carton of food. A few stray bits of rice
 and sauce stick to his chin. He walks up to Thomas and
 pulls Thomas’s hat off. In this light I notice that Thomas
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colors his hair. It’s a deep, flat black, a different color at
 the roots.
Oscar unzips Thomas’s jacket a few inches and then
 runs his fingers along the edge of the material. He stares
 into Thomas’s face, his lip curling slightly as he says, “Nice
 jacket, bro.”
“He’s okay,” I say to Oscar. “He’s helping me. He helped
 you, too. You were almost frozen to death when we found
 you.”
Oscar ignores this and walks toward the other end of the
 trailer, looking around, tossing whatever doesn’t interest
 him onto the floor, including a coffeepot, which shatters.
He flicks piles of paper off tabletops, shakes out the con-
 tents of folders. Then he pushes a line of notebooks off a
 shelf and onto the floor.
“There’s something really wrong with that guy,”
Thomas says.
“You think? And you color your hair, Thomas,” I
 respond.
“A lot of people color their hair.”
“True, but why do you do it?”
“8-Bit insists we disguise ourselves. Change our appear-
 ance from time to time. Just to be safe.”
“From who?”
“A very long list of agencies, bureaus, and corporations.
Plus several dozen irate Russian individuals with direct
 knowledge of our involvement in organized crime.”
Oscar is now rampaging around the opposite end of the
 trailer, pulling drawers out of the kitchenette and emptying
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them onto the floor. The warmth of the trailer seems to be
 strengthening him, and I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.
He stops suddenly, looks down at his feet, and says, “I need
 some shoes.” He walks up to Thomas and looks down at
 his snow boots, sneering. “Wrong size, amigo. Lucky for
 you, eh?” Then he turns, opens the trailer door, and goes
 out into the storm.
I jump up and run to the door. Oscar lurches out of
 view, around the end of the trailer. “Should we go after
 him?”
Thomas shakes his head and then sighs. “The only rea-
 son I’d go after that freak is to get my socks back, but even
 that’s not worth it.”
He sits down at his computer.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Seeing if I can find out something about him.”
I walk behind Thomas and look at the screen as he
 searches through case files.
“What floor did you say you were on?”
“Fourth.”
“Looks like we can sort by room number. There were
 only three of you on the fourth floor. Six on the third floor.
Two on the second floor. Oh, wait. The two on the second
floor were discharged. Man, that’s a big hospital for a hand-
 ful of patients.”
“Is there a file for me?”
I can barely stand it. I want to know, but I’m suddenly
 afraid of what I might find out.  
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“Let’s see if we can find out more about Mr. Personality
first,” Thomas says. He opens a file and a picture appears.
“Obviously not him.”
“I saw that kid inside. He was crushed by a falling
 beam.”
“Ouch.”
“He was in a coma. I’m sure he didn’t feel a thing.”
Thomas opens the next file. Jori’s picture comes up,
 and I’m startled by it. She has a full head of white-blond
 hair and a dull, lifeless expression. Her picture is a cross
 between a bad yearbook photo and a mug shot.
We both read the file simultaneously.
Jori Elyse Harris. Age 16. Patient was referred by mental
 health providers in Kansas City. Excellent candidate. Otherwise
 healthy female. No history of violence prior to initiating incident
 that led to her incarceration. . . .  
“Her initiating incident? I wonder what it was,” Thomas
 says.  
We both keep reading.
“Whoa,” Thomas says. “She killed her parents.”
“Yeah,” I say, “after her father molested her and her kid
 sister and Jori ended up pregnant. The mother was an alco-
 holic. Put her out on the street when she was twelve. Close
 it up. I don’t need to see any more.”
We search the coma kid’s record. William Eggers, age 15.
He was the lone survivor of a house fire that killed the rest
 of his family. He was the one who started the fire.
We find files on three other kids, all of whom have been
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discharged. One is listed as being a “partial success,” and
 the two others are described as “unsuccessful.”
Then we find him.
Oscar Ruiz Noriega. Street name: O-No.
“Cute,” Thomas says. “I think it really suits him.”  
We read the file together. Oscar was a complete thug.
Six counts of assault and battery. He broke a kid’s skull
 with a two-by-four.  
“Whoa. He killed his roommate in juvie with his bare
 hands. Tried as an adult and sentenced to thirty years,”
Thomas says. “His file says ‘Experimental.’ Seems like the
 kid’s a starting player on the varsity psychopath team. You
 had some nice company there on the fourth floor.”
I take a deep breath and feel a tremor passing through
 me, but this time it has nothing to do with the cold. I sit
 down on the sofa, take my cap off, and start twisting it in
 my hands.
“Stop,” I say.
“Why?”
“Don’t you see a trend here?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said there was a rumor I tried to kill someone.
Maybe it’s true. Maybe I’m here because I’m a murderer.”
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CHAPTER 16
 homas kneels in front of me and takes the cap I’m
Tstrangling out of my hands.
“I’m going to tell you something, and you’re going to
 have to trust that I know what I’m talking about. You are
 not guilty of anything.”
“How can you possibly know that? Look at these files.
Everyone they put on the fourth floor was a killer! I could
 be one, too!”
He puts his hand over my mouth. “Hush. This is the
‘trust me’ part. Now look at me.”
I look up, but my eyes dart away almost instantly as fear
 and shame boil up inside me.  
“I know what a guilty person looks like. And you are
 not it.” I start to reply, but he covers my mouth again. “Am
I a very smart guy?”
I nod.
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“Yes, I am.” He takes his hand away from my mouth.
“Did you already read my file? Do you know for sure?”
He clamps his hand over my mouth yet again. “There
 is no file for you.”
I grab his hand and pull it back. “How—”
“I looked while you were asleep.”
“Because you were worried about me.”
He smiles. “Maybe a little.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“All I know is that there was only one patient named
Sarah in this whole place, and her file was removed by
LLLadner58.”
“Larry?”
“Could be. Whoever it was went so far as to delete it
 from long-term and backup storage.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“True. I could be wrong and you could turn out to be
 the worst mass murderer in the history of mass murder-
 dom, but I don’t think so. And if it was Larry who helped
 you, he obviously didn’t think so, either, or you wouldn’t
 be here right now. Feel better?”
I nod. He puts my cap back on my head. We both jump
 up as the trailer door pops open.
I walk over to the door and look out. The snow whirls
 inside and melts at my feet. No one is there. The wind
 changes direction, and then we both hear the sound of
 gears grinding in the distance.
“Thomas! The light!”
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