Plagued: a companion to Whodunnit

The Fourth Day

The pattern was understood. One murder per day. The deaths became less shocking and even the most sensitive became unfazed.
Around this time, people burnt the bridges of trust. Anyone could be responsible. The individual was isolated. Jamie stayed up in his room most of the day and Eleanor only came out to eat. Liena wanted to be around two people as safety in numbers. She also stopped eating, as a image obsessed actress always monitoring her weight, fasting was familiar. And it came in handy at a time like this.
Esther and Cameron were hanging around in the ballroom. They were having a conversation on who could be responsible. Cameron suggested it was a man and that made Esther think of the men left: Arnold was dead, which leaves Jamie, Vinyl and Cam. Obviously Cameron was referring to Vinyl and it made sense. Evidence pointed to him.
Valerie packed her things and put them in her suitcase. She laid out a warm outfit and a sweater. After her shower she rode the elevator down, walked to the back kitchen and found a knife.
Her hair was wrapped in a towel an she wore a white robe. She heard footsteps coming.
"Val?" Liena said. She peered through the doors to the kitchen. "What are you doing?"
Valerie had hid the knife in the towel from her head. She was holding the towel to look like dirty laundry.
"I was looking for match. I smoke, and my lighter is out," she lied.
Liena looked at her curiously, "Oh. Well you could use the fireplace. Go get your cigs, I'll smoke with you."
"Okay. I'll be right back." She grabbed the towel tightly. Her blonde hair was dark from being wet and her skin was cold. She didn't know what she was gonna do and thought of something while riding the elevator up.
Valerie walked to her room, placed the knife under her packed clothes, got dressed and rode the elevator down.

Penny was on her laptop trying to email her speech to candidate she was assisting. She thought back to 2003 when Preston was campaigning for the 04 election. She and him had a scheme going. He fired her and his opponent obviously wanted to hire her for political reasons. The man who she pseudo-worked for was named Hanson. The polls put him on top.
Hanson's biggest support was the religious demographic. If he could get the hispanic vote in New York, he would win. His speech was at a fair in a spanish suburb of New York.
Penny wrote his speech and told him to try and pronounce the spanish as well as he could. He said he didn't know if it was such a good idea but Penny convinced him.
In front of his largest rally, Hanson gave a speech which had some loose uses of christianity. Penny added in a few blasphemous lines and the ending was a prayer in spanish. El Oración del Padre. But Penny changed it to make Hanson look like a fool. The whole town voted for Preston as well as the majority of the hispanic vote. Hanson fired Penny and she released news of his affair to a journalist to seal the deal. Hanson dropped out and Preston rehired Penny, who had no guilty conscience. Politics was no charade, it was war. And Penny had played dirty.

Valerie met Liena in the lobby. She looked a little tired, and Valerie thought up a lie, "I just read on the label that smoking wasn't good if you're pregnant. Guess I'm gonna have to quit cold turkey."
"I was going to say," Liena interjected.
Val sat down and eyed the maintenance closet. She excused herself to the restroom and both girls looked over at the women's restroom where Odara was hacked to pieces. She passed and clicked for the elevator to go up.
Upstairs she grabbed her suitcase and wheeled it down. When she got back to lobby she checked to see if the coast was clear, ran to get Jackson's parka, and walked out the doors.
She looked away from Aubrey's purple body and left her luggage by the wall.
Taking her key out, she ran to her Lexus. She unlocked the doors and got in, cranked the ignition, and the car turned on. Joyously, she put it in reverse, but she saw in the mirror that her tires had been slashed.
"Dammit!"
She slammed her hands on the steering wheel and cried out. But in her car, she found something that she could use later.

That evening, everyone congregated in the ballroom for dinner. Vinyl wasn't talking to anyone anymore. He figured the more distant he was the safer he would be.
It was a huge room with a stage, and chairs on the second story of the Mezzanine like at Ford's Theatre. The staircase lead to the top and was squared in by the banister.
Dinner was self-served, and people ate little. Valerie carried the knife wherever she went. No one let anyone even look at their food. It was a fearful thing to eat now.
"What's wrong Penny?"
Penny just looked away. A tear strode down her face. She walked away and left.
As everyone was eating, they were interrupted by Penny who was standing up in the mezzanine. She stood on the banister and yelled down to them.
"Is this what you want? You want me to jump?"
She tossed a paper out from her hands and it gracefully fell down, swiftly, twisting in the air.
"So be it."
She fell forward and sank like lead. Next thing they knew, was Penny mangled on the floor. A loud crush could be heard and a crack of some bones. Penny's neck twisted and she was undoubtedly dead.
As they approached her, Eleanor grabbed the paper and read the sloppy note.
"Jump off the balcony tonight or you'll find a worse fate."
On the backside written neatly was 'Dropping like Flies.'
They all looked at her and were shocked. She killed herself. Whether her guilt or her fear propelled her, she took the step to her doom. She did it.
"Hey wait a minute. What does this look like to you," Eleanor asked Liena.
"Is that a '3'?"
"That's what I was thinking."
They picked up every card, and by each was a tinily printed number.
Odara's said one.
Aubrey's said six.
And Arnold's said nine.
The guests put a blanket over Penny's body and searched her room. A suicide note was found confessing her whole participation in destroying an innocent man.
They were slowly piecing things together.