Dead Politician Society

Chapter 72: Annabel

Annabel pulled fluff from a hole in the vinyl booth of the dingy Tex-Mex restaurant. It was one of Katherine’s favorite lunch spots, because none of her legal colleagues ate here. The food was too fattening, but today Annabel didn’t care.

“You still have your job,” Katherine said.

Annabel groaned. “For now. What if the inspector tells Penny I was talking to Utopia Girl—Utopia Boy—the whole time? That’s how they got their arrest, so it’s kind of instrumental to the story they promised her.”

“Maybe Penny will think you’re more worthy for showing some initiative. Or maybe she’ll fire you and you’ll be forced to find a job you don’t dread. The important thing is that you’re alive and you helped land a killer in jail.”

“But what if I’d gone to the police sooner? I could have saved lives. I feel like a drunk driver the morning after a hit-and-run. Maybe I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but I sure am sober now.”

Katherine set down her Coke and grabbed Annabel’s hands. “The letters to the Star were encrypted. So were his early messages with you. If you’d gone to the police, they would have found nothing. He only got bold after Alton’s death, which is exactly when you turned him in.”

Annabel gulped. “But I didn’t know that.”

The food came. Katherine inhaled half her burrito in the time it took Annabel to scrape the cheese and sour cream off the top of her chicken taco salad. When she looked up and saw Annabel’s barely touched meal, she set her cutlery down and said, “Pick it up, Annabel. You’re alive. You’re healthy. You’re in your twenties, unlike some of us.”

“For one more year. Besides, you’re acing your thirties. You have a devoted husband, an adorable daughter, a job you love. What do I have to show for my years except a string of bad boyfriends, a job I’ll probably lose tomorrow, and a condo I can’t afford?”

“Oh my god, where’s the waiter with more caffeine?” Katherine twirled her straw in her glass of ice. “And my tiny violin; I’ll need that too. First: I don’t love my job. It takes me three drinks to unwind at the end of each day. Second: Life doesn’t come around and happen to you. You have to take control of it yourself.”

“That’s what got me into this mess.”

“No, you saw a too-good-to-be-true opportunity and seized that. I’m talking real control. What do you want? How can you get there? How can you make that happen without screwing the world over? Have you thought of visiting Jonathan Whyte in the holding cell?”

“Why would he talk to me? I got him arrested.”

“Maybe he still has something to say. He can’t terrorize you from behind a layer of tamper-proof glass.”