Veronica Mars

by Rob Thomas

  She passed a bathroom where a girl was crying in huge, racking sobs. In the billiard room three hulking guys were wrestling on the floor—she couldn’t quite tell if it was in fun or not. There was no sign of Wallace. Her phone stayed maddeningly blank. She climbed the stairs to the second floor, where the hallway was slightly less crowded. Through an open bedroom door she saw a mass of writhing limbs on a king-size bed. In another, three kids sat around a lava lamp, jaws slack, while a fourth rocked herself on the bed.

  Suddenly she felt a hand close around her wrist. She gave a little shriek and turned on her heel, her heart in her throat.

  Wallace had come up right behind her. He jumped back just as she did, eyes wide.

  “Breathe, woman!” He laughed, but he looked shaky. “It’s just me.”

  People up and down the hall were looking at them. Most of them were partiers, but she caught sight of a tall, slender man in a Hawaiian shirt with a distinct lump beneath the armpit. Another, burlier and similarly armed, sat under a bay window, pretending to text on his phone. She caught his mouth tighten almost imperceptibly as he glanced at them.

  “So much for a low profile,” she muttered. She grabbed Wallace’s arm. “Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

  They wove their way through the crowd and to the door. It was just after midnight, and the party had reached critical mass. The acrid smell of spilled beer and sweat mingled throughout the house.

  She gulped the cool night air as they stepped out onto the lawn. As soon as they were a few feet from the house, Wallace spoke in a low voice. “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you in the car.” She glanced into the bushes around the walk. “I’ll drop you off before I head to Mac’s. I think I’m working late tonight.”

  “I’ll go with you.” He looked over his shoulder. The house thrummed with light and noise behind them. “Veronica, those guards were armed. I saw one adjusting his piece. Whatever’s going on in that house, it’s serious … isn’t it?”

  She didn’t answer, and he didn’t seem to expect her to. They hurried the rest of the way across the lawn in silence.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “So, the guy was right there when you got my text?” Mac stared at Veronica in horror over the edge of her laptop.

  It was an hour after they’d left the party, and Veronica and Wallace sat on the sofa in Mac’s loft, describing what they’d seen.

  Veronica nodded. “Yeah. I don’t think he saw anything, but still.” She sighed, taking a sip from her beer bottle and resting her head back against the couch.

  Mac’s apartment—rented in the salad days when she’d worked for Kane Software—was located in a sleek building just a few blocks away from Neptune’s single art-house movie theater. It was sparely decorated: a dark red couch, covered in jacquard pillows, took up one wall, and a plasma-screen TV was mounted on the exposed brick opposite. Where most people would have put a dinner table, Mac had a high-tech ergonomic desk covered with monitors and computer equipment that changed height at the touch of a button. A half-dissected motherboard sat on the kitchen counter, surrounded by tools and chips.

  Wallace frowned. “So these guys are, what, dealers?”

  Veronica shook her head. “I don’t think so. They’re not soldiers—they’re higher up.”

  “Way higher up.” Mac sat in an overstuffed armchair, still wearing the flannel pajama bottoms and gray T-shirt in which she’d answered the door. Her face was pale and clean scrubbed but lit by an almost feverish glow. Mac was nothing if not an information junkie, and she’d spent her whole night digging further and further into the Gutiérrez family dynasty. This was what she’d been hired to do—not to man the phones or even to do the business’s IT, but to dig. And no one was as good at it as she was.

  “So here’s what I’ve found so far. Both Eduardo and Federico were born in TJ. Eduardo’s parents own an import/export firm. Federico’s dad—he’s a widower—owns some dude ranch in Rosarito, down on Baja.” Mac frowned at her screen. “Looks like both cousins went to boarding school in Switzerland. Now they’re at Hearst. They have clean records, in the States and abroad. They’re listed as the owners of Sun and Surf, Inc.—they have a whole string of luxury vacation rentals along the coast. Their houses go for as much as ten thousand a night.”

  Wallace whistled. Veronica took another swig from her beer, the cold, bitter taste waking her up. “So other than blood ties, there’s no obvious cartel connection.”

  “Well, I’m not an accountant, but there’s a ton of money moving through the coffers. I don’t know, maybe that’s normal for this kind of business. But it seems a bit over the top.”

  “So it’s a front?” Wallace asked.

  “If it’s a front, it’s a good one,” Mac said. “They have Yelp reviews and everything. And last year there was a blurb in Condé Nast Traveler calling the houses ‘exquisite.’ ”

  “There was a horse ranch in Oklahoma that got busted last year for the same kind of thing,” said Veronica. “It looked totally legit. They trained racehorses, had a breeding program, and paid their taxes. They also happened to be funneling money through for the Zetas.”

  Wallace shuddered. “Man, I saw something about those guys on the news a couple months ago. Scared the hell out of me.”

  “Well, brace yourself,” Mac said. “Eduardo and Federico’s paternal uncle is Jorge Gutiérrez Trejo, aka El Oso, aka La Muerte Negro. Currently one of the DEA’s most wanted. He’s been in charge of the Milenio Cartel in Baja for almost twenty years. Again, I’m not an expert on these things, but twenty years is a long time. Most of the major cartels have gone through some kind of takeover or have splintered off into rival factions. Not the Milenios.” She looked a little queasy. “And he hasn’t stayed in charge by being a nice guy.”

  Veronica stood up and went behind Mac’s chair, looking over her shoulder at the screen. What she saw sent her blood cold. Mac had pulled up a rap sheet detailing a list of El Oso’s alleged crimes. In the last decade, as the cartel wars steadily escalated in scope and violence, his people had been connected with a spate of butchery across western Mexico—bodies of rivals had been hung from streetlights or bridges with warnings tacked to their chests. Known hangouts of other cartels had been shot up, bombed, even gassed. In September of last year, someone had left thirteen severed heads prominently in a bin of soccer balls in the Estadio Caliente, Tijuana’s biggest soccer stadium. No one had been charged with the crime, but all of the victims were from the Sonora Cartel, which had been jockeying for position on the Milenios’ turf.

  And while the Milenios used the worst of their torture and bloodshed to send a message to their rivals, they weren’t above using it to get what they wanted out of civilians who had nothing to do with the drug trade. Gutiérrez’s men took anyone from poor farmers to wealthy college students for ransom, killing anyone who didn’t pay up. There were stories too of women who’d been kidnapped from their homes and sold into slavery or prostitution.

  “Well now,” murmured Veronica. “I wonder if they expanded their trafficking operations to Neptune.”

  Mac looked up at her.

  “You think they’d take an American citizen?” Wallace asked.

  “Not likely. These guys aren’t stupid. They wouldn’t want to risk bringing the FBI down on their operations,” Mac said.

  Veronica started to pace. “You’re right.” She ran her hands through her hair. The curls had almost entirely fallen out by now, the flower bent and oozing a sickly sweet perfume. “Okay. What about this? What if Hayley saw something she wasn’t supposed to at the party that night? What if she, I don’t know, overheard a conversation about illegal activities? Or saw something that could be used against them in court? They might have thought they had to get rid of her.”

  “Get rid of her?” Wallace’s forehead creased. “You think …”

  “I don’t know,” she said grimly. “But if Hayley somehow made herself a liability, they might have decided killin
g her was worth the risk.”

  Silence descended on the room. Veronica went and stood by the window, looking out over the street. The traffic signal flashed red. A skinny cat wove its way between garbage cans. Otherwise, nothing moved. According to her watch it was almost two.

  “We should go to Lamb with this.” Mac’s voice was slow and measured, but Veronica heard the strain in it. “We should tell him these guys are cartel connected, that Hayley was getting cozy with Federico.”

  Veronica thought back to her conversation with Lamb. He’d done his telltale hair flick and avoided her eyes when she’d asked about the house. “I’m pretty sure Lamb already knows they’re cartel.” Mac bit the corner of her lip; Wallace furrowed his brow. “I mean, he hasn’t shut the party down yet—why is that? He has plenty of cause. The place is crawling with underage drinking, just for starters. But Lamb likes to be the biggest bully in the schoolyard. He wouldn’t want to take on someone like the Milenios.” She smirked. “He might even be in their pocket, for all we know.”

  “Then what are we going to do?” Mac asked, her voice tense. “Cartel stuff is kind of outside our skill set, Veronica. These guys are really dangerous.”

  She closed her eyes and saw Hayley there behind her lids—not as she’d been in the prim school photos on the billboards, and not as she’d been the night of her disappearance, sultry, sexy. Instead she saw her as she’d looked in the candid snapshots she’d seen in the Dewalts’ hotel room: mild, friendly, perhaps a little ingenuous. A girl who could find herself deep in trouble without quite knowing how she’d gotten there.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “There’s got to be something I can do to draw them out. But I don’t know what it is yet.”

  Mac laughed. The sound was shrill in the stillness.

  “You’ll figure it out, though,” she said, and she sounded more scared than admiring. “It’s what you do.”

  “Promise us you’re not going to do anything crazy,” Wallace said, looking nervous.

  Veronica didn’t answer, not wanting to make a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep. There were answers in that house, and she might have to go back in to get them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Good morning, sunshine.”

  Keith Mars stood at the stove, moving eggs across a skillet with the edge of a spatula. He was dressed in a gray button-down shirt and slacks, a black apron tied around his waist. He smiled at Veronica as she padded into the kitchen, barefoot.

  Veronica, head still fuzzy with exhaustion, poured herself a cup of coffee from the Krups. At the end of the counter, a small TV was on, set to mute and tuned to the news. Trish Turley’s mouth moved silently, but the curl to her lips made clear she was upbraiding someone.

  “You’re cooking?”

  “I woke up and felt like I could manage it. Got time for breakfast?” Keith held up a platter of bacon and wafted the smell toward her enticingly.

  “Not really, but I’m going to have some anyway.” She pulled out the bar stool at the island and sat. The wall clock read 10:45—she’d had five hours of restless sleep, disrupted by images of bodies hanging from bridges and the nagging of her own brain, fumbling at the details of the case even while she rested.

  “So what’d you do last night?” Keith portioned the eggs onto two plates that already held toast, cantaloupe, and bacon. He carried them to the kitchen island and set one in front of her.

  She spread jam across her toast. “Well, we started out at Carlos and Charlie’s for hurricanes, but after I lost the wet T-shirt contest we were like, Forget this, so we popped some mollies and headed to the ’09er’s foam party. I don’t remember much, but I did get the digits for a really cute Delta Sig. His dad owns a Jaguar dealership!”

  “I thought you already had a boyfriend with a fancy car,” Keith said, taking a bite of bacon.

  “You can never have too many fancy cars.”

  “Fair enough.” He nodded. “So … how’s the case going?”

  “Oh, are we talking about that now?” She kept her voice airy, but her eyes darted to his face. He looked at her with mild brown eyes, his expression disarmingly bemused. It was a look she’d seen before—a look that had lured liars and cheaters into a false sense of security with a man they underestimated. Her eyes narrowed. It was then that she noticed the wooden box on the island, nestled between the salt and pepper shakers and the pitcher of orange juice.

  “What’s that?” she asked cautiously.

  “I got you something,” he said. There was a faint tension around his eyes that she couldn’t read. She picked up the gift carefully with both hands, testing it. It was lighter than she expected. She unlatched the lid and opened it.

  Nestled inside was a revolver so black it looked like a shadow against the red foam holding it in place. It was small, discreet, an investigator’s gun. A gun that concealed easily. Carefully, deliberately, she shut the lid and latched it again and pushed it away, her heart racing in her chest.

  “I asked for a pony. And year after year I’m disappointed.”

  He didn’t flinch. “Veronica, listen to me—”

  “Why would you think I’d want this?” She stood up. “Is this some kind of fucked-up scare tactic? ‘Welcome to the business, Veronica. By the way, here’s your piece. Try not to kill anyone.’ ”

  “Veronica.” His voice was louder now, but not angry. She shook her head, mute. But then she met his eyes and suddenly realized what that expression was. It was sadness.

  She sat back down at the counter, as far from the box as possible.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other night.” He took a deep breath. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you can’t fight against this. God help me, maybe it’s just who you are.” For the first time in what seemed like forever, he looked away. His gaze rested on the wooden box. “It’s my own fault. How were you supposed to see any other options, with me putting our family on the line time and time again over some case or other? With me letting you help?” His gaze snapped up to meet hers. “I accept that you’re here. I accept that this is what you choose. But, Veronica, if this really is what you want, you have to take responsibility for your safety.”

  “That doesn’t mean I have to carry a gun,” she said. She realized she was humiliatingly close to tears and bit hard on the inside of her cheek. “Dad, this is ridiculous. Ninety percent of what we do is at a desk. I don’t need this.”

  “This is what it costs.” He shook his head. His fists were clenched, twisting a paper napkin to shreds between them. “Veronica, if you want to run with the grown-up PIs, this is what you have to do. You’re going to get your permit, you’re going to learn to use your weapon, you’re going to practice with it, and you’re going to use it if you have to.”

  They sat in tense silence for a moment. Veronica’s hands clenched at her sides. She didn’t even want to touch the box again. But a part of her, a part she didn’t want to think about, kept whispering that he was right. She thought of the night two months earlier when Stu Cobbler had hunted her in her old classmate Gia Goodwin’s loft. I could have used it then. But the thought sent a shiver up her spine. Did she imagine she would have shot him? Killed him?

  Then she saw something that sent all thoughts of the gun out of her mind entirely.

  She lunged across the island for the remote and unmuted the TV. A caption ran across the bottom of the screen: SECOND GIRL GOES MISSING IN NEPTUNE, CALIFORNIA. “… are saying the girl was last seen at a party Wednesday night between midnight and one a.m. Aurora Scott, age sixteen, was visiting a friend at Hearst College for spring break.” Turley’s lips were twisted into what looked like a furious sneer, but it was impossible to mistake the smug triumph in her voice. “No word out of the Balboa County Sheriff’s Department yet; I’m guessing they’re working out how to spin this after ignoring Hayley Dewalt’s disappearance for more than a week.”

  A photo of a teenage girl appeared on screen. She had auburn hair with long side-swep
t bangs and catlike green eyes. Three or four silver hoops lined each earlobe, and the only makeup she wore was heavy black eyeliner. In spite of her hard-edged look, she smiled sweetly at the camera, a dimple in her left cheek.

  “Oh my god,” Veronica breathed, so soft she barely heard herself. She shook her head. “I’ve seen her.”

  “What? Where?” Her father turned to her, a hound-dog glint in his eye. He’d seen the loose thread of a clue and couldn’t help but grab at it.

  “Last night, at the party.” Veronica turned up the volume. Less than twelve hours earlier she’d seen Aurora Scott in a leopard-print bikini, looking older than her sixteen years by far. She’d been showing off her tan lines on a dais while the nephew of a drug lord leered at her—the same boy with whom Hayley Dewalt had last been seen.

  “Sheriff Lamb!” Trish Turley stared directly into the camera with wide blue eyes. “It’s time to wake up. You have a predator on the loose in Neptune, California. And until he’s caught, every single girl who goes to Neptune for spring break will be at risk.”

  “It’s getting harder to disagree with her,” murmured Keith.

  “We now go live to a press conference with the Scott family,” Turley said. The camera cut to a podium where a middle-aged couple stood side by side. The man was thin and wiry with dun-brown hair tinged with gray. He had a kind of ravaged handsomeness, his face tan and craggy. But it was the tall, willowy blonde next to him who caught Veronica’s attention.

  Her hair was shorter than it used to be, bobbed around her ears. She’d gained a little weight too, and it suited her. Her large brown eyes pleaded with the camera. For a moment Veronica could not breathe. Her lungs knotted up inside her chest, clenched and useless.

  Veronica dropped the remote.