I realized I was in trouble when he started talking about the blue house on Melrose Street.
Not that he did say it in quite those words, not at first. We'd been going for around forty minutes, recorder between us on that sad metal table, and Thomas Caine was spinning me the usual. Difficult childhood, nobody did get him, the system failed him, blah blah. I'd heard it all a dozen times before from a dozen other guys waiting for their final meal. But then he began to become specific.
"There was this corner store," he said, reclining in the chair. Chains jingled on his wrists. "Vietnamese lady owned it. She'd sell kids one cigarette for a quarter even when you weren't allowed to. Store reeked of fish sauce and old newspapers."
My pen stopped.
Mrs. Nguyen's store. Three blocks from where I had lived.
"Know it?" He was glancing at me. His eyes were not quite as dark as they looked in the photographs, almost gray in the fluorescent lighting.
"Used to be lots of those corner stores," I stated. Reporter tone. Professional tone. "All over the city."
"Ahh." He smiled slightly. Not a nice smile. "This one had a payphone out in front. Dark blue, receiver was always sticky. Guys used to get blood on it after fights sometimes."
The room felt small. I compelled myself to scribble something in my notebook despite my shaking hand. Just nonsense scribbles.
"But anyway, I lived nearby," he continued. "Terrible neighborhood. The kind you know, every third house has bars on the windows, folks who are sitting on porches at two in the afternoon because nobody's employed. A lot of screaming. A lot of... other things."
"Describe your family," I said. On script again. I had to be on script.
"Mom left when I was six. Dad was—" He shrugged, ducked his head. "How do I say this? Dad was the kind of man who thought that belts had uses aside from holding up pants. You know what I'm saying?"
I did.
"He used to have this thing he'd do," Thomas said. His voice was casual, like he was describing a TV show. "When he got home inebriated, which was five nights a week, he'd line us up. Me and my sister. Have us stand in the living room while he decided who messed up that day. Who didn't wash dishes from dinner, who mouthed off, who breathed incorrectly. Then he'd pick one of us."
My father did the same. Called it "inspection."
"Our house was strangely designed," he went on. "Kitchen off the front door, living room in back. One bathroom, upstairs. The stairs creaked on the fourth step, you learned to skip over it if you were sneaking around at midnight."
And that's when I felt it. That chill in the bottom of your gut when something's terribly amiss.
"What color was the house?" I asked. I don't know why I asked. I should have just dropped it.
"Outside? Light blue. Looked okay enough from the street, I reckon. Had a small porch, white railing. Most of the paint had peeled off by the time we headed out." He scratched his cheek with one of his handcuffed hands. "Inside was all dark wood paneling. Made everything cave-like. And there was this water stain on the ceiling in the living room, shaped kinda like… I don't know, a hand or whatever. Used to stare at it when I was getting hit. Counted the fingers."
Five fingers. I'd counted them too.
My mouth was dry. "When did you move out?"
"Fifteen. Got kicked out of juvie for stealing a car, okay, that was the accusation. Really I beat the shit out of my English teacher and they wanted me to go. Juvie was preferable to home though, if you can imagine.". "What about your sister?" I managed.
"Maya." He said her name gently, the initial gentle thing I'd ever heard from him. "She was smarter than me. Worked hard, stayed her head down, received good grades. Last time I saw she attended community college for something. journalism maybe? Or social work? One of those jobs where you're gonna save people." He laughed. Not cruel necessarily, but. tired. "Pro'ly changed her name. I would've."
My birth name is Maya.
I changed it to Olivia at nineteen. Legally, of course.
The room was smaller. More intimate. The guard at the door seemed a million miles away.
"You okay?" Thomas asked. "You look pale."
"I'm fine. Just… just keep walking."
He stared at me for a long time. Then something shifted in his face. Recognition maybe. Or something worse.
"The high school we went to," he answered deliberately, "had this weird mascot. A lion, but one of the students spray-painted it years ago so it looked more like a dog. Everyone called it the Devil Dog. Teachers hated that."
West Side Regional. Class of '07 for me. The mascot thing was true.
"There was this one teacher though," he continued. "Mr. Patterson. Big guy, played football. He was okay to me. Saw I had bruises once, sat me down after school. Wanted to know if everything was okay at home." Thomas's expression went far away. "I said everything was fine. You always say that it's fine, don't you? Because what else is there? Foster care? That's terrible. You just cope."
I'd said the same thing to Mr. Patterson. Told him the same thing.
"So yeah, crappy childhood," Thomas said. He shrugged, but his shoulders didn't relax. "Dad drank, beat us, spent every last cent on booze and gambling. Had cereal for dinner most nights. Some nights, not even that. You learn to steal when you're hungry enough, bread from grocery stores, quarters from pockets at school. You do what you have to do."
Every word was my life. My literal goddamn life.
"And the neighborhood," he went on, getting warmed up now. "Melrose Street had this abandoned lot at the back where the factory burned down in the nineties. Kids hung out there despite it being dangerous—olds metal scraps strewn about everywhere, shards of broken glass. I spent a lot of time there. Good spot to slip away when things were rough at home."
I'd done the same thing. Packed a backpack and some crackers and a blanket and just. disappeared for hours.
"Anyway." He shifted in his seat. "Eventually, I did manage to escape. Juvie first, then I ran around a bit. I tried going straight for a time but it never worked. You grow up like that, violence is just sense, you know? It's the language you speak. Somebody shows you disrespect, you hit him. Somebody tries to take something that belongs to you, you hit him harder. It's fundamental."
"But you did worse than harm people," I said quietly.
"Yup." No hesitation. "I killed them. Three people, though they only convicted me for two, the third one they couldn't prove. But yeah, I killed them."
The crimes were common knowledge. A shortchange from a drug dealer. A guy who stared him down in a tavern. A woman, his then-girlfriend who was threatening to leave him. All beaten to death. Cruel, long, sadistic.
"Do you feel bad about it?" I asked. Stock question.
"Sometimes," he replied. "Not really, though. I feel guilty I got caught. That's truthful, right? You need truthful. But do I lose any sleep over those people?" He shook his head. "Can't say I do. They were just in the way."
We sat there for a moment. The recorder kept rolling. I should have been asking follow-ups, digging deeper, but I couldn't think. My brain was static.
"May I ask you something?" Thomas finally said.
I nodded.
He pushed forward, so far as the chains would permit. His eyes locked on mine and they shone so brightly, so intently.
"What's your real name?"
My throat tightened. "Olivia Marshall."
"No." He smiled again. Not a very pleasant one. "What was it previously?"
I was finding it difficult to breathe. "Why do you want to know?"
"Because I think we grew up in the same house," he blurted. "I think you're my sister. And I think you know it."
"I'm not.."
"Of course you are. You stopped when I mentioned the blue house. And the water stain I caught you glancing up, as if you were staring at it. And you're the right age, and you're a reporter, and you had your name changed." He settled back in his chair, satisfied. "It's you."
He was right. God forgive me, he was right.
"I don't… I can't…" My professional voice was gone. Just Maya now, thirteen years old all over again, scared in that black house.
"Hi, it's okay," he said. And his tone was gentle now, almost kind. Like the brother I barely remembered before everything fell apart. "I'm not mad or anything. In fact it's kind of nice. You got away. See how you look, good job, nice clothes. I'll bet you have an apartment with heat that doesn't get turned off and so forth."
"Thomas…"
"We started out the same," he interrupted. "Just the same. Same father, same house, same poverty, same fear. Everything. But you became this" he gestured at me with his cuffed hands "--and I became this. Isn't that something?"
It was something. I didn't know what.
"There's variables," I said weakly. "Different lives, different choices, different…"
"Sure. Yeah. I'm not claiming there's no differences. You were always smarter than me, more cautious. And maybe you didn't have whatever's malfunctioning in my head." He rapped his temple. "But if you really think it through? We're not so far apart. You interview murderers, I am one. We're both fixated on violence, just in different ways. You just found a socially accepted outlet."
That stung like a blow.
"So that's my question," he told her. He leaned in close again. "Why do you think you're better than me?"
I tried to open my mouth. Nothing happened.
"Because I've been sitting here thinking about it," he went on. "And for real? I don't understand. Perhaps you did have one good teacher who paid a little more attention. Perhaps you did read the absolutely right book at the absolutely right time. Perhaps you're just lucky, you zigged when I zagged. But on some level?" He shrugged slowly. "I think we're even. I think you know it too. I think that's why you agreed to this interview in the first place."
The guard knocked at the door. Five minute warning.
"I should go," I said. My voice was far away.
"Yeah." Thomas rocked back in his chair. He looked tired all of a sudden. Older than his thirty-six years. "Thanks for coming. Weird as it was. nice to see you, Maya. Or Olivia. Whoever you are these days."
I stood on shaking legs. Retrieved my notebook, my recorder. Headed to the door like a robot.
"Hey," he bellowed.
I turned.
"For what it's worth? I'm glad one of us made it."
The guard let me out. I descended the long corridor, through security, out to my car in the parking lot. Sat behind the wheel for twenty minutes with nothing to see.
He was mistaken. We weren't the same. We couldn't be.
But his question hung behind me that night, and the next, and the next.
Why do you think you're any different from me?
I still don't know the answer.