She would have left the body, that for sure. And the knife, too. And the dress…speaking of which, how do you explain all that?
“We have effect without a known cause,” Jillybean said, shutting the refrigerator and striding back to the offices.
A knife is a cause? Or is having it the cause?
“No. The knife is evidence. Very damning evidence, especially since it is one of Mr. Neil’s. Using it points directly to premeditation on my part.”
But you didn’t kill him. And we both know Neil didn’t do it. The man apologizes to the eggs before making an omelet, for goodness sakes.
“No, I didn’t kill Mr. Dunlap, but someone wanted very badly for people to think I did. I just don’t understand why. It makes no sense. Ahh. Here we go.” They were in the principal’s office now. Jillybean ran her gaze over the prescription bottles, searching for one in particular. “Flunitrazepam. It’s a Class C benzo that people used to call the date rape drug. One side effect is memory loss, well really it causes anterograde amnesia, the temporary inability to create memory, but in effect it’s the same thing.”
She counted the pills and found that four were missing.
“Add a little ketamine and you have one messed up little girl.”
So, who did it?
“Women are poisoners, and the glitch with the power wasn’t a glitch.” Jillybean took the bottle of Flunitrazepam, one of her ketamine bottles, the mushrooms, and a couple of other items she felt she would need. Now all she had to do was escape the school without getting caught by Perkins and her over-eager deputies.
Jillybean decided that since she couldn’t use the absence of light in her favor, she would use the addition of light as an ally. Ironically, that began with shutting down power to the office area. A simple task that involved running to the other end of the school and flipping a breaker. She ran back, clicked a couple of light switches into the on position and jogged back to the breaker room.
There was a fine sweat on her brow when she reset the breaker. Ten seconds later a door burst open and she could hear Sheriff Perkins caw, “I’m in. I’ll cover the front. Gina come up the east. Eddie you get the west. Eddie?”
Ginger-haired Eddie Sanders barged in from the back. Jillybean was shocked to see him carrying a pistol in one hand and a radio in the other. “I’m in. Did you guys see her? It’s dark down this end.”
“She’s near the center offices,” Perkins said through her radio. “Converge! Flush her to me.”
But Eddie was already well past Jillybean who waited until he turned the corner before slipping out the back. She jogged away, putting a half-mile between her and the school before stopping, and she only did so to tie her shoes, picking up Kevin’s watch in the process. It was evidence of a crime, after all.
Ten minutes later, the girl emerged from the shadows of the police station. Her destination, a squat grey building, sat next door. As expected, Jillybean saw a light through the window. Even still, it made her pause. She was playing a dangerous game. But she was playing it to win.
She slid her little .25 out of her pocket. Just like the last time she’d been in the building, the doors were unlocked and she ghosted inside. She found Angela Lenna at her desk, still wearing her trademark pantsuit. Her concentration was such that she didn’t see Jillybean in the doorway right away. When she did, she screamed in fright and her hand reached for her top desk drawer.
Jillybean showed her the .25 and Angela’s hand froze. The two stared, appraising each other for a very long minute.
“Do you think your gun scares me? I know you won’t use it. We’re right next door to the police station.”
“The empty police station,” Jillybean corrected. “Your whispers have the sheriff chasing shadows.”
Angela glanced at the window with a touch of alarm. “Whispers? I haven’t whispered anything. I have nothing to whisper about. You, on the other hand have a great deal to explain and not just about Kevin and Jonathan. You’ve been sabotaging the electrical system. Why? To make me look bad? Because you’re after my job? You can have it.”
Jillybean considered the question and decided to answer honestly. “To get on and off the island with no one knowing. But I also used the brown-outs to warn people of the coming danger. You can lie to them but we both know about the reduced voltage intake situation. The system won’t last.” Even as she said this, another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Angela had one of the easiest jobs on the island, but it wouldn’t be for much longer. Soon she’d have to start rationing electricity, which meant soon she’d be the most hated woman on the island.
“And so, you poisoned Mr. Jonathan for his job? That’s…” The eight-year-old had seen a great deal of evil in her short life, but this sort of petty, mundane evil that had occurred so frequently in the old world, made such little sense that she couldn’t wrap her mind around it. Why didn’t she just go look for a different job? If Kevin was mean, why didn’t she just leave him? If she didn’t like Jillybean, why didn’t she just go be friends with someone else?
Angela’s pinched look told Jillybean she wasn’t wrong about Jonathan. “What I know is that no one will listen to a murderer. If you’re still alive to be listened to at all. You know they might execute you for all this, but if you put the gun down, I will ask them for leniency. I’d even support banishment. As the widow they might listen to me.”
The gun did not budge. “I don’t want leniency. I want to know why you put me in the middle of all this?”
Angela rolled her eyes. “I didn’t put you in the middle of anything. Really, do you think you can fool me? You’re recording this. I can see the bulge in your pocket. You’re hoping I’ll make some incriminating remark, which you will then splice to make me look guilty. It’s you who’s guilty. Everyone knows it or they will soon enough.”
“I don’t think so.” Jillybean took out the watch and put it on the desk between them. Angela’s right eye twitched at the sight of it.
“That looks like Kevin’s watch,” she said, loudly. “Why would you have it?” Without saying a word, Jillybean took out the mushrooms. The woman sat back. “And now the Death Caps? All you’re doing is making yourself look more guilty.” Finally the pill bottles came out. She wasn’t expecting them and she froze.
Jillybean could see the wheels in her mind turning. She was trying to figure out how they could be used to incriminate her. There was only one way. “Sometimes I have trouble sleeping. I might have taken one or two. There’s no crime about that. So, if you think you can get me based on fingerprints, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“So you wore gloves when you touched the baggy and the watch. That’s very smart. You were very smart in everything. Smarter than I thought you could be.” Angela only raised an eyebrow, as if saying: You have no idea how smart I am. But Jillybean did. “It was a really, really smart move to poison a guy and then point the finger at a known poisoner. And your choice of poisons was smart, too. A slow mysterious death kept me completely off balanced, giving the sheriff enough time to figure things out.”
“Really, Jillybean, you can stop. Do you expect me to blurt out a confession? That’s never going to happen. Or do you think you can trick me?” She sneered at the idea.
A sigh escaped Jillybean. Just being in Angela’s presence was sapping the last of her energy. “I’m not recording us,” Jillybean said. She reached into her pocket and instead of fishing out a recorder, she pulled Baldy’s subcompact 9mm. Angela went white at the sight of it. The .25 looked like a toy, but this was a real gun, with only one real use.
“I don’t need a confession. I know what you did.”
“Then what do you want?”
Revenge, Eve’s ghostly voice whispered in her mind.
“No. I wanted to know why you did all of this to me. I never did nothing to you.”
“It wasn’t about you. It was Kevin. He was cruel and mean. Everyone saw this nice guy front he put on, but at home, he was nasty. And he wouldn’t l
et me leave. He said he’d kill me if I tried.” All this came out in a frantic rush, but then she paused and looked away. “Then I had this idea about the mushrooms but I knew you’d figure it out, so the idea just sort of built up. I kept thinking it was just a mind game I was playing. You know, like a fantasy.”
Jillybean’s fantasies always revolved around being a normal kid again and living back in the old world. She couldn’t understand fantasies involving killing.
“I was desperate,” Angela went on. “You have to believe me.” Her sneer was gone.
“Desperate people do desperate things,” Jillybean said.
Angela grabbed the idea with both hands. “They do. We’ve all been there. You know that. You’ve been where I am. That’s what the rumors say.”
“Yeah. I’ve been where you are now, and I did bad things. Really bad. Just like you will if I let you live.”
Angela sucked in her breath and glanced at the gun. Silence drew out between them as Angela struggled mentally. Finally, she said, “They’ll catch you and hang you for a serial killer. First Kevin, then Jonathan and now me. The sheriff won’t let you get away with it.”
“I won’t get away with nothing. Kevin will.” Angela looked confused. “You took precautions,” Jillybean explained. “What if someone caught you moving his body? How would you explain that? Kevin came home drunk. He was mad when he saw you give me a glass of goat’s milk at the meeting. He attacked you. He broke a lamp or he smashed up a mirror. There might have been blood on the floor or on the wall. You were bruised and scratched. You had no choice except to fight him off.”
“And I accidentally killed him,” she said in a whisper. “But all that’s cleaned up.”
“Yes,” Jillybean said softly, picturing it. “It’s in your trash can, representing past evidence of a stormy relationship. And I’m sure the bruises and the scratches you gave yourself are still there, too. And I know the rumors haven’t gone away. Kevin has a temper. Kevin is cruel. Kevin threatened to kill me. Perhaps you even kept a diary.” Her eyes went wide, confirming Jillybean’s guess. “And now he’s read it and his anger is ten times what it was. He’s been pushed over the edge. And he’s come here to kill you.”
“What are you going to do?” Angela asked, so softly that Jillybean could barely hear her. All the strength had drained from her.
“Something desperate.”
*********
“Then what happened?” I asked. Eve had me on the edge of my seat. We were now alone, not just at the bar, the whole room had emptied. The sun had set long before.
Eve’s dark blue eyes twinkled. “She did what she had to. What I would’ve done but without all the chit-chat. But no, Jilly always has to think she’s doing the right thing even when she guns down an unarmed woman in cold blood.”
I was still reeling from the picture Eve had painted and it took me a moment to ask, “You don’t think it was the right thing?”
“Of course it was. Angela deserved what she had coming, and, more importantly, she couldn’t be trusted. Perkins was new and stupid. She wanted to bust someone well-known, but not well-liked. That would’ve cemented her position. Jillybean fit the mold, perfectly, and here was poor Angela with her sob stories. She was a natural actress, I gotta give her that. She would’ve spun up a new tale in a heartbeat. We guessed she would claim that Jillybean was trying to frame her, and Perkins would’ve eaten it up.”
“So, the Queen shot her?”
“No. She didn’t just shoot her. She shot her five times in the face. She had to make it look like a crime of passion.” Eve grinned wickedly at this.
“Oh,” I said, feeling my stomach going queasy.
“And remember the watch?” Eve leaned into me, the grin going wider. I leaned back, not wanting to know about the watch. “She shoved it down Angela’s throat. That was my idea. I snuck it right in her head when she was busy crying. Crying over what? Justice? Who cries over justice?”
I swallowed, nervous at how close she was. Eve wasn’t just unpredictable, she had blazing reflexes honed from years of surviving in a world that had been trying to kill her since she’d been born. “A child might,” I suggested.
“A weak one,” she spat. “But I guess she was strong enough that night. We went to Angela’s, found the diary, tore out the pages and flung them around. Then we knocked over a few chairs and tore some dresses.”
Eve’s grin was back. “That was all that was needed to create a murderer out of a dead man. Even Perkins couldn’t mistake the clues. She formed a posse the size of a Marine brigade and tore up the island looking for a ghost and while she did, Jillybean went about healing that sniveling Dunnam. His poisoning was chalked up as an accident and that ended that.”
She slugged the last of what was left in her glass, smacked her lips and then reached over the bar for another bottle. Before I could protest, she filled my glass until it threatened to pour over the side.
“She made me promise never to tell that story until he was dead. So what if I jumped the gun by a few hours. It won’t matter in the end. Nothing ever does.”
I sat back, as always, amazed at the little girl who had gone through all that in one day. Halfway through my drink, I had to ask, “Why did she swear you to silence? Sure, she wasn’t exactly an angel in the story, but she was innocent, and all she was doing was protecting herself.”
“Because she was afraid I’d tell everyone how much she liked what she did to Angela. She’d gone months without killing anyone, but the rush of it came back hard. You know, all the power of it, all the joy of feeling your enemies die as you look into their eyes. It came right back and she was embarrassed. She was embarrassed by how much she missed it. I missed it, too and I wasn’t embarrassed at all.”
“But you kept her secret. Why?”
She laughed and touched my arm. “To torture her with it. To remind her that she would never live up to his impossible standards. How could she? One does not simply stop being a mass murderer. It gets in the blood and never leaves.” Her hand tightened on my arm, “Never.”
Ezekiel Cross
Bainbridge Island
May 21, 2061
Fictional works by Peter Meredith:
A Perfect America
Infinite Reality: Daggerland Online Novel 1
Infinite Assassins: Daggerland Online Novel 2
Generation Z
Generation Z: The Queen of the Dead
Generation Z: The Queen of War
Generation Z: The Queen Unthroned
Generation Z: The Queen Enslaved
Generation Z: The Queen Unchained
The Sacrificial Daughter
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day One
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day Two
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Three
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Four
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Five
The Horror of the Shade: Trilogy of the Void 1
An Illusion of Hell: Trilogy of the Void 2
Hell Blade: Trilogy of the Void 3
The Punished
Sprite
The Blood Lure The Hidden Land Novel 1
The King’s Trap The Hidden Land Novel 2
To Ensnare a Queen The Hidden Land Novel 3
Dead Eye Hunt
Dead Eye Hunt: Into the Rad Lands
The Apocalypse: The Undead World Novel 1
The Apocalypse Survivors: The Undead World Novel 2
The Apocalypse Outcasts: The Undead World Novel 3
The Apocalypse Fugitives: The Undead World Novel 4
The Apocalypse Renegades: The Undead World Novel 5
The Apocalypse Exile: The Undead World Novel 6
The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7
The Apocalypse Executioner: The Undead World Novel 8
The Apocalypse Revenge: The Undead World Novel 9
The Apocalypse Sacrifice: The Undea
d World 10
The Apocalypse Origin: The Undead World Novel 11
The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead Book One
The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead Book Two
Tales from the Butcher’s Block
The Undead World (Book 12): The Body [An Undead World Expansion] Page 13