“Hey.” Ronnie tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to face her, brushing a strand of hair from her eyes.
“Hey. How are you handling this?”
“Aside from the dream I had where you had a contract to take out an evil capybara, I’m okay.”
“Really?” It was amazing how much hung in the balance of that one word.
“Really.” She kissed me and climbed out of bed, starting to put her clothes on.
“Why are you putting your clothes on?” Why was she putting her clothes on? Maybe she didn’t accept this like I thought.
“Don’t be so paranoid!” Ronnie laughed as she threw my shirt at me. “Sartre and I are starving.”
We made our way down to the kitchen and in moments we had a buffet of unrelated food, from cheese to Jell-O. Sartre had blueberries.
“So, you are okay with this?” I asked again, in danger of becoming annoying.
She nodded. “If I look at it from a scientific viewpoint, yes. And it helps that you only killed really bad people and have retired from the business altogether.” She popped a grape into her mouth.
“I didn’t expect it, is all. I thought you’d go through the roof.”
Ronnie thumped me on the chest. “That’s because you pigeonholed me.”
“Yeah, I guess I did.” We continued eating.
“So, are you ever going to tell me who killed Kennedy?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, I can’t do that. I had to sign a confidentiality oath in my own blood when I was five.”
Her eyes went wide. “Really?”
I nodded.
“Wow. But there really was a conspiracy, right?”
I laughed. “Yes. While there isn’t always a conspiracy, there was in that case.”
Ronnie cocked her head to one side. “I bet you think I’m a real idiot over the whole Senator Anderson thing, don’t you?”
I stiffened. “No. I don’t.”
She waved me off. “I mean, when you gave me that file listing all the horrible things Anderson had done, I was really mad at you. But I did some more digging and found out you were right. I guess I didn’t look hard enough because I didn’t want to believe that he’d really had a heart attack.”
“Ronnie-”
“And the ridiculous lengths I went to in order to find his killer! And I was part of that weird group! We were so sure we were going to bring the senator’s killer to justice!” She laughed again. “I mean, how do you bring something like heart disease to justice?”
“Ronnie.” Something in my voice must have told her to stop, because she did. “You weren’t wrong. Senator Anderson was killed for selling a list of CIA agents to Iran.”
“What?” She slammed her hand down on the table, causing Sartre to jump. “Oh, my God! I was right!”
“You were right.”
She started pacing wildly around the kitchen. “Oh, my God! He really was murdered! I can’t believe it! Well, actually that is a relief, because I thought I might be nuts.” She continued her inane prattle as she prowled around the room.
“And I bet you know it because you are in the business! Talk about weird shop talk! Can you tell me who did it?”
I nodded.
“Really? ‘Cause you can’t tell me about Kennedy! Really? Wow! This is like The X-Files!” She paused for a second, and I wondered if I would need a geek intervention here. “So, who was it? Who killed Anderson?”
The woman I loved looked at me with eyes shining, as if she had discovered the tomb of Jesus Christ.
“Me.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
“An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.”
– VOLTAIRE
A number of years back, I scored a strange assignment: a young, idealistic senator from the Midwest. I have to admit, it took me by surprise. Anderson seemed like a good guy. That was, until I read the dossier.
Senator William Anderson was a sinner in saint’s clothing. How he managed to keep everything under wraps, I’ll never know. Actually, calling him a sinner is a bit of an understatement.
Do you remember that Stephen King book about the guy who could see the future? He saw that the guy running for president, a guy everyone loved and respected, was going to become a ruthless dictator responsible for the deaths of millions…in the future. In the end he decided he had to kill this man before he took office and tossed the nation into chaos and death.
It was kind of like that. Anderson wasn’t just into hookers, corruption and graft. It was much worse. The man had scams in third-world countries that would make you commit suicide. I won’t go into a litany of his crimes here. Suffice it to say that the man was a monster.
However, he was a beloved public figure. So his death had to be out of my normal scope. I managed (I can’t tell you how) to break into his house and discover he had a bum ticker. Missi drugged his toothpaste so that when he went to sleep that night, he went to sleep forever. It was clean and it was quick. And it looked like natural causes.
That was how I killed Senator William Anderson.
“Wow,” was all Ronnie said when I told her. “Wow.”
When she didn’t speak for an hour, I collected Sartre and let myself out, carefully locking the door behind me.
Back in my trailer, I lay on my bed and cried. It was the first time I could remember doing that. I didn’t just cry because I’d probably lost Ronnie and my chance at true love forever. I cried because I’d killed all those people since I was fifteen. I cried because my wanker brother was dead. I even cried because, in a couple of years, even Sartre would leave me. That’s right, I premourned her death.
The sobbing shook my whole body, and after a few hours every muscle, even the one that controlled my thumb, ached. After splashing cold water on my face and taking some ibuprofen, I went to bed and slept.
I don’t know how long I was asleep. I didn’t feel very rested, but someone was pounding on my door. I threw on some clothes (you can’t have a good long cry with clothes on) and opened the door to find my mother standing there.
“Squidgy!” She hurried into the trailer and shut the door. “You look like hell! Are you all right?”
“How did you find me?” I asked as I opened a Diet Coke and offered it to her. I poured myself one.
“Oh, we still have our ways,” she said. “What happened here? Is Sartre all right?”
I nodded. “Nothing, Mum. I just got dumped by a woman I thought I had a real thing with because she found out I killed her idol. How are you?”
Mum reached up and gingerly touched my swollen face. “You’ve been crying! I’ve never known you to do that over a girl!”
“Yeah, well, she was special.”
“Why did you tell her you killed whoever it was you killed?”
It was a fair question. “Because she had to know. Because I’m an idiot.”
I sat there while my mother made me breakfast. She sat and watched as I ate.
“Why did you ask me to bring in Veronica Gale, Mum?”
She looked as though she didn’t know what I was talking about.
“There’s more to this than the council let on. I didn’t bring up my suspicions to the cousins, if that’s what you are worried about.”
Her face softened. “You got the assignment because I thought you were ready for it.”
“What the hell does that mean? How was I ready for it? I kept Dekker alive to listen to my rants on Veronica! Clearly I wasn’t ready for another assignment.”
Mum nodded. “Which is why you were selected. We chose you to test because we knew you would fight us. We didn’t ask you to kill Veronica-just to bring her in for questioning.”
“What the hell?” My head ached as if I had a hangover. I tried to focus. Mum waited patiently.
“You wanted us to quit! You wanted out too!” I slapped the table.