Zach was helping with the removal of zed corpses when Priss found him.
“Dad wants you and Fred to interrogate Ruby,” she said.
Zach stared. The implication was clear. Get the truth out of her by any means necessary. He found Fred in the barn working on a horse’s hoof that had developed an abscess. Sammy and Nikki were watching.
“We’re being asked to interrogate Ruby,” he said.
Fred nodded and handed a farrier knife to Nikki. “Check my work, spray it and wrap it.”
“And put on a block,” Nikki added. Fred gave her a nod and walked out with Zach.
They retrieved Ruby and took her to the small conference room that was generally used when there were only a couple of people present. Zach patted one of the guards on the shoulder as he walked by.
“You two can take a break,” he said. “We’ll call if we need you.”
Ruby’s face was white as a ghost when Fred walked in and sat in the chair opposite her. Zach closed and locked the door before taking a seat beside Fred. He stared impassively for a full minute before speaking.
“I’ll make it simple for you, Ruby,” Zach said. “We want to hear all about it, we want to hear everything, and we want the truth. You can choose to be forthright or you can lie to us. That’s up to you, but we’re going to get the truth, one way or another.”
Ruby had no doubts of what could happen. She moved some of her red hair out of her face with a shaking hand and nodded. “Where do you want me to start?”
“How about when Gil first started going off the deep end?” Zach replied.
Ruby gave a nervous nod. “Well, I guess you could say it started with you, Zach. Back before Rochelle was even elected, she’d tell Gil all kinds of stories about you and how you told her you were out to get her.”
“And he believed this?” Zach asked.
“Yeah. He seemed to believe everything she said. So, she gets elected and then she gets murdered. He believed from the bottom of his heart you did it. He thought everyone would rally behind Rochelle’s death and hunt you down and kill you. When that didn’t happen, he came up with the idea to put you on trial.”
“Who suggested he do that?” Zach asked.
“He thought it up on his own. I think he saw it in a movie once. One of them senators told him there was a Supreme Court case that made it illegal, but he didn’t believe him.”
“Crosby versus United States,” Zach said absently.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Keep going,” he directed.
“Well, he was always doing odd little things, but when the trial didn’t go like he thought it would, he kind of went a little crazy, I guess.”
“Before you continue, whose idea was it for Tory to testify as an eyewitness?” Zach asked.
Ruby had been staring at her shoes while she talked. They were Danner half-boots, and somebody had done an awful job of resoling them. Now she looked up at Zach, intentionally avoiding eye contact with Fred.
“We knew he made it all up,” she said. “He came to me and D-Day one evening in the party barn and said if the price was right, he’d tell a story so convincing there’d be no problem getting a conviction.”
“What kind of price?” Fred asked.
“He um, he wanted a couple of women to take back to his place. One for him, one for his brother. Anyway, we set him up a secret meeting with Gil.” She leaned forward in her seat and stared directly at Zach.
“I knew he was lying. I tried to tell Gil, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Zach was unsympathetic. “I understand you were on the jury.” He waited for Ruby to nod before continuing. “You should have disqualified yourself, yet you didn’t.”
“I know, and I really feel bad about that,” she said.
Zach stared icily. There were people here who had done him wrong. Ruby was one, and Tory was another. He decided he’d deal with both when the time was right.
“Alright, keep going,” he directed.
“Well, after they threw out the murder case, he got a little stressed, and when he was kicked out of office…” Ruby sighed and then, to the men’s surprise, she wiped away a tear. “I tried to talk him out of it, but he said nobody here deserves to live.”
“How did he know about the zeds?” Zach asked.
Ruby shook her head. “He didn’t know anything about them. Not that I know of anyway. His plan was simple. Lock everyone in the bunker and they’d eventually starve to death.”
“What about the dozen or so people who were topside? What was he going to do with them?” Zach asked.
“Him and D-Day were going to kill all of them. Gil was going to keep Trucker Joe occupied while D-Day went around to each guard post and killed them. He had a silencer on his gun, and he seemed to think he could ride up to each post under the pretense of checking up on them and then shoot them in the back of the head.”
“What was your role in the whole thing?” Zach asked.
“I cut the phone wires,” she admitted. “And I stood guard while he flipped the circuit breakers, and then he messed up the lock.” She took a deep breath and grabbed her knees. The two men noticed her hands were shaking.
“We were walking to the TOC and I saw them on the outside of the fence. I pointed them out and started to yell, but Gil stopped me.” She drew a deep breath before continuing.
“I gotta admit I was
