Dead Politician Society (29 page)

Clare topped a mochaccino off with whipped cream and placed it on the counter. When she looked up she was surprised to see Jessica.

Jessica smiled at her as she took the coffee from the shelf. “God, this looks delicious. I've been up since five this morning and I haven't had a thing to eat. Are you going to be in class this morning?”

“Of course.” Clare looked at the clock on the wall. “I'm off in half an hour, if all goes well.”

“Do you work here every day?”

“Starting today. I, too, have been up since it was dark out. Though I'm not sure why I'm bothering. My student loans are so massive that the wages here will barely put a dent in them.” If that wasn't true already, it would be soon. Clare had somehow been approved for a bank loan the previous morning.

“I don't see why higher education isn't free,” Jessica said. “It seems so random to educate people right up to the point where they qualify for a minimum wage job, and then leave them on their own to sort the rest out.”

“Thanks for the theoretical support.” Clare laughed.

“Anytime. Well, I'm off to finish that ridiculous assignment about how to help a friend if he's a killer.”

Clare hadn't finished the assignment either. She hadn't known where to begin. She had more information than the rest of the class, and it all but incriminated Jonathan conclusively. She obviously couldn't bring the letters and the correspondence with Annabel Davis to light — she was hoping for a seamless transition into being a student, not a “Hello. Good to meet you. I've been an undercover cop, basically spying on you all, but I screwed up the investigation and I'd really like to stay on as your friend.” So she was forced to put herself into the hypothetical assumption of Jonathan's innocence.

Jessica came back to the counter after sprinkling cinnamon onto her coffee at the self-serve station. “Hey, by the way, did you hear the news this morning? I'm sure it's totally unrelated to those other deaths. I mean, Jonathan's in custody and she's not even a politician anymore — but Marisa Jordan died yesterday afternoon. She was speaking to a school group in the west end.”

And then Clare twigged. Jonathan wasn't the killer. He was guilty of something that Clare found a million times scarier.

She made up an excuse about menstrual cramps, and asked the shift supervisor if she could cut out early. When she'd been approved, Clare raced out of the campus café to phone Cloutier.

“You see it, right?” she said, once she had explained her new theory to her ex-handler.

“Hmmph.” Cloutier was typically gruff. “The problem with this theory is that we have a confession, evidence, and a closed case on Jonathan Whyte.”

“So how do you explain Marisa Jordan's death? Her obituary was found in Jon's computer.”

“Whyte was in custody when Jordan died. And she wasn't a politician anymore. It doesn't fit.”

“Doesn't fit?” Why was he stonewalling her? “What's her cause of death?”

Cloutier cracked a piece of gum. “Since we're not treating it as suspicious, her autopsy isn't being hastened in the morgue.”

“You can't be serious.” Clare stopped walking and sat down on a bench. “Even the press is tying it together. She vomited, she collapsed, she died. You know it's the same.”

“You're off the force. And because of that, I'm off the case. Why would I share information with you, even if I had it?”

“I thought you said things were good between us.”

“The main reason for that is we don't work together anymore.”

“My god. Watch the scorn.”

Cloutier was quiet for a moment. “All right, kid. So how can we get this confession?”

“Have Morton and those uniforms who arrested Jonathan come back. There's a class in twenty minutes.”

“And your guilty party will spill?”

“I don't know,” Clare said. “But I think there's a chance.”

Matthew set his mug of coffee onto the heavy oak desk. He surveyed the room, and its now-familiar faces. They'd hated this assignment on impact, but this was politics in real life. If he turned his back on Jonathan, Matthew would be no better than the rest of the poli sci faculty, hiding behind textbooks and hoping their theories stayed passably current as the world carried on. He'd be worse than the others, because Matthew would be masquerading as someone who cared.

He faced the class. “Who's first?”

Susannah, as usual, seemed interested in opening, but a knock on the door interrupted them.

Matthew opened the door to the two officers who had conducted the electronics search, accompanied once more by Detective Inspector Morton.

“Are they here as guest speakers?” Matthew heard Jessica ask.

“Maybe they're going to tell us more about Jonathan,” said Clare.

“Did you ride into school on the pumpkin truck today?” Susannah turned around to look at Clare. “Police don't gratuitously share information.”

Inspector Morton put an end to the suspense. “Can you tell me which one of your students is Jessica Dunne?”

Matthew was stunned. He looked at Jessica, willing her to stand so that he didn't have to point her out.

“Well . . .” Morton tapped a foot impatiently.

“Um. Jessica?” Matthew said.

She wasn't moving.

Susannah jumped up. “I'm Jessica.”

“No, you're not. You're Susannah Steinberg. I interviewed you with Laura Pritchard, if you've forgotten,” Detective Inspector Morton said calmly.

“Right.” Susannah sat down.

“I'm Jessica.” Diane stood up, feigning reluctance. “Should I pack up my things?”

“Yes, please.”

The two uniformed cops headed down the aisle toward Diane, nodded at her to give up her hands, and placed them in cuffs.

Clare stood up. “Leave her alone. I'm Jessica.”

Morton scowled. “Cuff her too, then.”

Matthew didn't understand what he was seeing.

“This isn't funny,” Morton said. “We've interviewed you all before. I'm sure I can find a physical description in my notes, and barring that, we can look at your
ID
.”

“What about me?” Jessica stood up. “I could be Jessica.”

Morton rolled his eyes. “I don't think we have enough handcuffs. Would you like to tell me what's going on?”

Susannah stood back up. “We want to be in the loop. The other day, you came along and snatched one of our classmates, telling us nothing. Now you come back and want to take another one? We'll give you Jessica, as soon as you tell us why you want her.”

“And why you wanted Jonathan, too,” Brian said.

“All right, kids. I'm sure your loyalty is admirable.” Morton looked at Matthew as if he expected him to impose some kind of order. “But this isn't how justice works. Anything I tell you now can mess up the prosecution, which I'm sure is not your real objective. Kindly identify your friend Jessica for me, or we'll lock down the room and inspect everyone's identification.”

“Can I tell them, then?” Jessica looked tired. “I get it. You know I'm the killer; I'm going to jail.”

“You?” Brian's eyes widened. “But — how come — when Jonathan was arrested . . . ?”

Jessica's gaze made it clear she thought the half-formed question was a stupid one.

“Is this the real Jessica?” Morton asked the class.

Most people shrugged. Clare nodded, and Matthew confirmed her identity verbally.

“Was it because you weren't finished?” Clare asked, still in handcuffs.

“What do you mean?” Jessica seemed more interested in this question.

“Killing politicians,” Clare said. “Did you not confess because you still had more to go?”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “Sorry. For a moment I thought you had an intelligent question.”

“Don't be rotten,” Susannah said. “Clare wants to know — we all do — what your motivation was.”

Matthew nodded. “We were prepared to come up with a plan to help Jonathan, beginning with understanding his motive. The same applies to you, if you'll allow us.”

“My god, you're all so naive. I'm a murderer. I've killed five people. My mandate was for six, but I'm going to call it a successful outing. What does it matter to any of you why I did it?”

“Of course it matters.” Clare's face was dark, and she was scowling. “These were specific victims that you sacrificed your future for. And you put us all under scrutiny while you were doing it. It's only fair that you tell us what was going on in your mind.”

“You feel betrayed, Clare? Because you thought I was your friend?” Dripping with sarcasm.

“Don't give me that shit,” Clare said. “You're more than this. You know you are. Just let us fucking help you.”

To Matthew's surprise, this seemed to pacify Jessica. When she spoke again, she was more the soft-spoken hippie he'd grown accustomed to.

“Okay,” she said. “If you guys really want to know, I'll tell you.”

Detective Inspector Morton cleared his throat. “First we read you your rights. Then I can give you five minutes to speak to your classmates.”

When Clare and Diane were taken out of handcuffs, and Jessica had been read her rights, she stood before the room and addressed her peers.

“Sorry for losing my cool a few minutes ago. It's been stressful, and I guess I needed some release.”

Matthew nodded. “I think we all understand that.”

“Thanks. I wouldn't be talking if it weren't for this week's assignment. I think it's really decent the way everyone's rallied around Jonathan. Brian, your idea for us all to confess was sweet. You can see now why I jumped on that.”

The nervous energy in the class started to bubble into laughter, which stopped as soon as Jessica spoke again.

“When I was eleven, I lost my father,” she said. “He didn't die right away. But I remember the day in slow motion, when we found him passed out in front of his favorite
TV
nature show. We rushed him to our local hospital, but the emergency room had been closed down. We showed them my dad — there were three of us carrying him, and my brother and I were so young I don't know how we could have supported much of the weight. But rather than help us or call an ambulance to transport him, the hospital gave us half-assed directions to the closest
ER
that was still in operation.

“After fighting through rush hour, we got him to the
ER
at Sunnybrook. The waiting room was overflowing. Between getting him triaged, being seen by one resident and another until they could settle on a diagnosis — a total of twelve hours after he lost consciousness — they operated on my father's ruptured aneurysm.

“I'm not going to go into boring medical details, but those twelve hours were the difference between my father possibly retaining his cerebral functioning and the reality, which was that he lived the remaining year of his life as an idiot, before my mother poisoned him with Spanish Fly.”

Jessica paused, looked around the silent room.

“So I guess the logical question is: What does this have to do with the dead politicians?” She explained to the class about the hospital cuts, and the think tank, and the careless way in which the new policy was implemented and communicated to the public.

“I got one wrong, though.” Jessica grinned sheepishly. “Libby Leighton wasn't on that think tank. It was her husband's wine I poisoned. But the bitch took his drink and made him come to the bar for another one.”

Even less nervous laughter than before.

“So why was Jonathan arrested?” Susannah asked.

“He was an idiot,” Jessica said without emotion. “I guess he saw what I was doing at one of the events, and couldn't bring himself to turn me in. So he started writing letters to the paper.”

“Are you in love with him?” This was from Clare.

Jessica shook her head. “Of course I'm not.”

“You said all but one,” Diane said. “Did you mean Sam Cray, Leighton's husband?”

“No, taking his wife was enough. Although some might argue that I did him a favor getting rid of her. I was talking about Simon McFarlane. He was the sixth person on the think tank that killed my father. He was supposed to have been victim number five, but Dr. Easton pulled us all off that party.”

“Snazzy McJazzy?” Brian used McFarlane's press nickname. “Why wasn't he first on your list?”

Jessica smiled wearily. “I went in order of availability.”

“So you're the one who sent the
SPU
cards to your victims?” Brian asked.

“I only sent the one. To Hayden Pritchard, incidentally — I guess the cops told us it was Libby Leighton to try to throw us. Then I realized it was dumb. I would have loved to have sat each politician down and told them why I planned to kill them. Shown them a picture of my father both before and after he got sick. But then I realized I should just kill them, maybe find a way to tell the story if I got caught.”

Matthew watched Jessica's face as she was talking. It seemed to be losing color, becoming paler by the minute. Her voice, too, was growing more and more dispassionate.

“Except Jonathan did it for you,” Brian said. “Told your story to the world.”

“Please. He told
his
story.”

“How did you . . .” Susannah, for once, was grasping for words. “What did you use, to . . . you know . . . kill them?”

“Spanish Fly, like my mom used to poison my dad.” Jessica said. “She told my brother and me what she was thinking of doing, and asked us if we had any objections. I know it's technically illegal, but my father had lost it — he couldn't function at all. His speech was impaired, he couldn't be left home alone in case he burned the house down, and he couldn't go out on his own in case he never found his way back.” Jessica smiled again, this time far away. “He was so nice, though. He would sit there and smile, for hours on end.”

“Wasn't it cruel of your mom to consult you?” Susannah asked.

“No.” Jessica shook her head. “She didn't want to take him away from us if we got something out of him being alive. But she was right. It was no life for him. And it was less of a life for her.”

“But to make the two of you accomplices . . .”

“We weren't accomplices. We were in Muskoka with our grandparents when she killed him.”

“Did she go to jail?” Clare asked.

“Only the prison she created for herself. My dad's death was put down to natural causes. Organ failure. But my mom never got over the whole thing, and she killed herself a year later.”

“Okay, I'll be the idiot,” Susannah said. “Isn't Spanish Fly an aphrodisiac?”

“Farmers use it to get their bulls erect for mating. And yes, a super tiny dose would have the same effect on the human penis, though the guy would be severely nauseous and probably not have too much fun. But any more than a microdose, and it's certain death. Your internal organs are literally corroded. You vomit, you collapse . . . well, we all know what happened to the victims.”

Brian raised his hand, and Jessica nodded at him to speak. “If your mom loved your dad so much, why would she have chosen such a painful death?”

“Because there's no antidote. Once swallowed, the effects are irreversible. My mom was terrified that she would chicken out after poisoning him, that she'd rush my dad to the hospital and try to save him, even if it meant confessing. By using Spanish Fly, she took away that option. Just like I did, for the politicians.”

“Do you regret killing the politicians?” This was from Clare. “Now that you know you're caught? Or would you do it again? Do you still consider it justice?”

“I'd do it again in a second.” Jessica's eyes were wide; Matthew thought she looked like a madwoman. “I've avenged my father's death. He's not a victim anymore.”

“Like Hamlet,” Susannah said.

“Precisely,” Jessica said. “And if Hamlet was all right with his gory fate, I think I can handle a cushy stint at Kingston Women's Prison. Are there any more questions?”

Matthew had one. “Will you accept the help and support of the class through your trial?”

“Yes.” Jessica's voice shrank, and for the first time, her perfect composure seemed like it might give way. “I plan to plead guilty, but I'd love it if you guys would visit.”