Plagued: a companion to Whodunnit

The Third Day

They all circled the car and tried to look away. Everyone began to focus on the letter.
"That video game," Jamie said as in a whisper. He repeated it louder.
"What game?"
"Frogger. It was some arcade game I used to play with my friend in middle school. Five frogs, sometimes three, have to cross the road and dodge trucks and cars. Then they have to ride logs to get to a home."
"Why would they choose to crush her with a car?"
"We can't know for sure Cameron."
Cameron and Jamie bot looked at Liena.
"What?" She said harshly.
"Well, a better question is why would they choose your?"
Liena was silent. Eleanor spoke up, "Think about it. This proves Liena is not the killer. Why would she crash her own car. My keys were in my unguarded purse all yesterday. It could have easily been my car. Maybe it's a way to get back at Liena too."
"Doubt it," Jamie muttered under his breath. They went inside quickly before they got too cold and tried the phones a few more times to no avail.
"I have an idea," Valerie said. She finally put in her word since she was shamed on the first night. It was her guilt that Odara died after she insulted her that worked as her muzzle.
She continued, "Well we barely know anything about anyone. We gotta outsmart the killer. It's like a novel. We gotta figure it out before the end of a book. If we stand around like sitting ducks doing nothing than we all should just hang ourselves."
This was an agreed on idea. But no one wanted to start. Since it was Valerie's idea she began: "currently I'm a temp that gets thrown around to different businesses. I've worked at Indigo, Louis', Papa Antonio's Corporation, as well as a few other reality companies. I moved to D.C. just four years ago. And...well," she was nervous, "Two years ago me and the Senator began to get intimate and I was his mistress. I found out a month ago that I'm pregnant and it's his baby. I forced him to tell his wife and the two of them are still together. She threatened a divorce after his six years were over with. She also said se would expose him if he decided to run again."
Everyone was shocked by the intensity this one girl had been apart of.
"I'll go. I'm Jamie and I work for the CDC. If you remember, in 2002 there was a second terroristic scare. This was another biological warfare tactic after the Anthrax attacks. We had founded three cases of death by Cholera in rural New York. This was an evolved strain and was more deadly. We worked with the FBI and found fourteen al-Queda men who had extracted the Cholera and contaminated at reservoir near Albany. We feared they would go for New York City. Personally though, I'm an only child and am estranged from my parents."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Esther said genuinely. Jamie gave an absent expression and decided not to say anymore.
"What about you? The Amish girl," Andrew said in a higher pitch than what he usually spoke in.
"I'm not exactly Amish. Well, not anymore. During Rumspringa I got to see English ways and got into some dark things. I was introduced to harsher sins and it scared me what i was becoming. I returned to my community but I'm not a member of the church. And we're a different sect that broke off during the puritan era."
"So what dark stuff did you do?" Penny asked sheepishly.
"Drugs were a huge new member in my life at sixteen. They made me feel alive and I had not known what they were."
Vinyl looked over at her an smirked. He shrugged his shoulders, "I got you. I was tripping on snow for twelve years."
"Snow?" Esther whispered.
"It's coke. That stuff is so dope. I mean, you gotta lay low and chill, man."
"So that's your history too? Drugs?" Cameron said judgmentally.
"Nah. Well, a little. But it's cool. I dealt for three years and I got into some expensive stuff and then I got into trouble with the Reys, these Mexican dealers who played hard. Next thing I know my buddy's dead and I'mma be next so I hightailed out of there and moved to New York. I go by Vinyl now. "
Eleanor smiled some and broke in, "I'm Eleanor. Eleanor Rigby like the song. My folks were hippies and I'm all loving for peace and no war. I protest and rally for a group in Pennsylvania against the war against Syria and also abortion and gay marriage."
"That's it?" Liena asked, "Nothing worse than a little lip to the government?"
"Well. In the 70's when I was a young girl, I had just joined an activist group that was antiwar. But the group was a little unconventional. They brainwashed us to do these...these horrendous acts!"
"What did you do?"
"The leader was a Southern Baptist minister. He...well he had an idea to kill innocent people as a huge protest against war. We had a sort of romance going and I thought I loved him. He convinced me and said we would be a legacy. I stole some chemicals from the Chemistry department at the high school I worked at."
Her face went bare white with guilt.
"He poisoned the communion and fourteen people were killed, including himself. I refused and left him. My biggest fear was he would blame me too, but ironically, he gave me no credit as a way to get back at me. I was just 'one of the victims at the church'."
"My goodness," Liena said. That was her way of apologizing.
"I never went back to the church. I never drank wine again either."
The people were silent and Valerie was realizing this probably wasn't a good idea. And besides that, they weren't getting anywhere.
Penny told her stories of writing a speech to make the governor look bad on purpose and how she has done immoral things to get ahead. Cameron spoke of his banking and it was soon discovered he stole money from a few trusts by forgining checks and transfering the money over to his personal account. Arnold committed tax evasion and scammed the government by collecting unemployment. He was a fat liar. And Liena couldn't really think of anything she had done wrong but brought up her parents died in a house-fire when she was an adolescent.
A theory finally broke out that someone here was a terrorist. Cameron constructed the hypothesis: all of them were connected to the government and all of them would send a message to the government if dead. It was a good point. Aubrey was hired to kill a government employ with their car and died a similar death. Odara wrote a heartless and seditious article and ended up in a bloody mess. It was all too symbolic.

Later that afternoon everyone had stayed in the ballroom for recreational festivities. Jamie was reading a novel, Esther her bible, Liena was talking over her parts for Kaileen in her upcoming movie, and Eleanor was reading an old newspaper that she found in her bathroom by some dated magazines to entertain during a bathroom break. PEOPLE FOUND DEAD O PROTECTION ISLAND, WASHINGTON was the title of the article. MURDERER AT LARGE. She frowned, making her think of the killings. She folded up the paper and put it away to not distress her any longer.
Arnold was asked by Liena about his unemployment. He was employed but evaded taxes on his income. He lied about what he made and became known as Fibber by his buddy.
"It's not lying, at least I don't like to call it that. The government is there to help. Think about it like Halloween; a cauldron of candy lays out and you're only supposed to take one? Might as well take and handful because you know someone else will if you don't."
"And if everyone jumped off a bridge, would y-"
"I would be the one jumping that everyone follows. Let that be made clear. I'm a leader Liena. I'm the first and the rest are just a shadow of something important."
She smiled at him and thought to herself how delirious he was.

They all sat and ate like a buffet. They were having breakfast food. Valerie asked if someone would pass the syrup. Arnold went to grab himself honey for his coffee; everyone noticed this as an oddity but it was his ritual wit dinner; to each their own. Esther ha made the pancakes and Liena cooked up the maple syrup with sugar, water, and maple extract. Vinyl filled everyone's glasses with milk or orange juice and Cameron sat to let everyone wait on him. He was just quiet today. Aubrey's death really shook him up.
Penny ate quickly as she was anxious of tonight. She was smart. One person died per day. She knew they couldn't leave tonight, and with less people to draw from, death was closing in.
There was a strange absence of speech during dinner. And it was quiet after as well. For a while. Until Arnold started coughing. He was given a dose of cyanide. After fits of convulsing and hemal vomiting, he quit breathing. And he was dead.
No one understood what ha happened until a letter was found under his plate. "Lice are hard to swallow-"