The Plane and the Parade (Veronica Barry Book 3)

by Sophia Martin

  With a sigh, Veronica stood up and headed back the way she came, Harry trotting happily beside her.

  I’m not walking there, and I’m not calling him, she thought. I don’t have to know what’s going on. If he needs me, he can call me. But the thoughts did nothing to assuage the anxiety she felt about the parade dream, nor did they tell her whether Daniel was making any significant progress. Had he found out anything more about the male victim, Robert Murphy? Who was Antoine Jossey? How was Sarah Berkovich?

  Veronica stopped walking, bringing Harry up short. He cocked his head at her, ears perked.

  “I can visit Sarah Berkovich again,” she told him, by way of explanation.

  Harry panted at her and then busied himself sniffing a tuft of grass growing in a crack in the sidewalk.

  She could. She knew where Sarah was, unless the hospital had released her since last week. They wouldn’t do that unless Sarah had improved a lot—and Veronica hoped that was the case, although she’d be back at square one. It seemed unlikely, however. Even if Sarah had come out of her coma, she still needed time to recover from her attack.

  Veronica and Harry got home a few minutes later and Veronica made sure the dog had water before grabbing her purse and jogging to her car. It didn’t take long to drive to the hospital. Checking with the front desk, she found out that Sarah was still in the same room, and still in a coma.

  The door to Sarah’s room was open, and Veronica walked in quietly. She found a seat by the bed, reached out, and carefully took Sarah’s hand. No vision came to her.

  After fifteen minutes of silence other than the machines that helped Sarah stay alive, nothing came to Veronica. She’d hoped for something—any new detail—but Sarah either had nothing else to share, or somehow, she was more out of reach than she had been a week ago. How did it work, being in a coma? Did a person’s spirit linger in the body, or travel far away, only to return if the person woke up?

  Would Sarah wake up?

  Veronica leaned forward in the chair, squeezing Sarah’s hand.

  “I’m sorry this happened to you,” she said softly. “I’m going to try to help find the person that did this to you. I have to stop him from hurting anyone else.” Sarah’s placid face didn’t change. There was no sign that she heard anything Veronica said. “Do you have family that come and check on you?” Veronica asked. “I’m sure there are lots of people who are thinking of you, and who can’t wait for you to come home.”

  Someone cleared their throat behind her.

  Veronica turned. A young man stood in the doorway.

  “Uh, hi,” he said. He had dark brown hair, light blue eyes, and slight built. “Who are you?”

  Veronica gave him a polite smile. “I’m Veronica Barry. I’m not anyone really. Just a… a consultant for the police, sometimes. I’m trying to help in the investigation into what happened to Sarah.”

  He gave her a curt nod and walked into the room. “I’m her brother.”

  “Ah,” Veronica said. “And your name is…?”

  “Jake,” he said. “Berkovich.”

  “I’m really sorry this happened to Sarah,” Veronica said, turning back to look at the woman.

  “Yeah,” Jake said. He walked around to the other side of the bed and reached a hand out to touch his sister’s arm on that side. “She’s a great person, you know? She’s the kind of person—people say, you know, ‘she’d never hurt a fly.’ That was Sarah. She used to rescue spiders with a glass and a piece of paper and put them outside, when we were kids.” He cracked a half-smile. “It drove me crazy. ‘Just smash it,’ I’d say. Not Sarah.” He turned his bright eyes to Veronica. “I can’t understand why this happened. Why anyone would do something like this.”

  “I can tell you the police are doing everything they can to find out,” Veronica said.

  Jake nodded, but his face was grim. “In the end, it doesn’t really matter why. I want her back the way she was, and finding out why isn’t going to bring her back.”

  Veronica studied his face. Did he know more than he was letting on? She stood and stuck out a hand.

  Jake shook it. No visions came.

  “It was good to meet you, Jake,” Veronica said, careful to keep the disappointment from her tone. This trip hadn’t given her anything, other than to make her sad for Jake and Sarah.

  Leaving Jake behind in the room, she made her way down the hallway. As she turned the corner into a waiting area, a much busier part of the hospital, she noticed uniformed police officers standing at the end of a row of seats, next to a young man with his face in his hands. His wrists were cuffed. Veronica picked up her pace to walk by them, then noticed that one officer had a mustache, and the other a crew cut: Posey and Donohue.

  Posey noticed her at about the same moment. “Miss Barry,” he said with a nod at her.

  Slowing, Veronica nodded back. “Officer Posey. What brings you to the hospital?”

  Posey jerked a chin in the direction of the young man with the cuffs. “Just business.”

  “Ah,” Veronica said, and she started walking more quickly again. But as she passed Posey, he turned to the young man, and his elbow brushed hers.

  ~~~

  She was sitting in the passenger seat of a squad car, easing along the curb next to Winn Park, which was right near Eleanor Roosevelt High. Donohue drove, his eyes hidden behind reflective sunglasses.

  “Still got to talk to that Krasnova lady about Carter’s BFT,” Donohue said.

  Veronica glanced across at the other side of the street, and then at the park again. A teenage girl with pink hair was arguing with a male who looked a few years older. He had light brown hair and dark-rimmed glasses, and was wearing a tee-shirt with wide blue and white stripes. The girl was in a flimsy red top too many girls her age seemed partial to, and cut-off jean shorts. Veronica’s host felt a stirring of desire, and he pinched the meat of his left thumb sharply. Was this Posey? He liked young girls?

  The girl shoved the man with the glasses in the chest, then stalked away, lighting a cigarette.

  “Underage,” said Donohue.

  “Okay, let’s talk to her,” Veronica said with Posey’s voice. “Then we’ll find Krasnova.”

  Donohue parked the cruiser and they walked at an easy pace over to the girl.

  “Hey, Miss,” Posey said, and to his credit, his eyes remained on her face.

  “What? Now you people are going to sweat me?” the pink-haired girl said bitterly.

  “We’ll need to see your ID, Miss,” Donohue said.

  “What for? It’s a public park.”

  “Are you eighteen?” Posey asked.

  The girl sneered at him, crossing one arm over her chest and taking a drag of the cigarette in the other hand. “What if I’m not? My mom buys my cigarettes. You can smoke if your parents give permission.”

  “Oh you think so?” Donohue said with a snort.

  “How about we talk to your mom about this idea,” Posey said, crossing his own arms in a reflection of her stance.

  “Whatever,” the teenager sneered.

  “ID, please, Miss,” Donohue prompted.

  The girl let out a huff of frustration and dug into one front pocket of the cut-off shorts. She produced a small collection of cards with a rubber band holding them together. Posey could see a blue ATM card on top. She yanked one from the middle and stuck it out towards Donohue as if she might stab him with it.

  “Ivy Landis,” Donohue said. “What are you doing in the park today, Miss Landis?”

  Ivy glanced back in the direction the young man had left in. “Nothing.”

  “Just smoking illegally?” Posey said.

  “Look, I have a headache, okay? My mom says I don’t have to go to summer school if I have a bad headache. So I came here.”

  “Your mom seems to be pretty permissive,” Donohue said, arching an eyebrow.

  Ivy rolled her eyes and took another drag.

  “Put the cigarette out and go to class,” Posey said.
“Maybe we’ll let you off with a warning today.”

  ~~~

  Veronica came back to herself and took stock of her surroundings. Still in the hospital, standing a few feet away from Posey, Donohue, and their unhappy charge.

  The young man Ivy was speaking to. Veronica knew him. Knew those dark-rimmed glasses. The sunshine had revealed that he was younger that she would have guessed, but he was the one who killed Ivy Landis and Robert Murphy, and put Sarah Berkovich into a coma.

  Posey and Donohue had seen Ivy fighting with him, but they didn’t realize he was important. They had no idea he was the perpetrator of the two murders and the attempted murder Daniel was now investigating. Veronica debated talking to Posey, to try to get him to remember. But even as she considered it, a nurse called a name and Posey yanked the kid with the cuffs up by his elbow. Not the right time.

  It did mean she had more information than she’d started with that morning. And that she knew what she could do next.

  Ivy Landis had argued with the murderer just two days before her body was found in the alley. He’d killed her Friday night, or possibly before sunrise Saturday morning, and Veronica had spoken to Posey and Donohue about their encounter with Ivy on Thursday. If Ivy knew the murderer well enough to have an argument with him in the park, chances were, Ivy’s friends would know who he was.

  But who were Ivy’s friends? Veronica would have to ask her parents about them, and then go question them.

  The advantage of being a teacher at Ivy’s school was that she could ask Sandy to look up Ivy’s contact numbers. Veronica pulled her phone out of the yellow linen shorts she wore and she grimaced when she realized the battery had died. She hurried through the hospital corridors and out to her car, soon zipping over to ERHS. It was almost four, and Sandy would probably be leaving in a few minutes.

  As Veronica burst through the door to the office, Sandy stiffened in her revolving office chair in shock. Veronica held up a hand but had to take a moment to catch her breath. She pointed a finger upwards, giving Sandy an apologetic look as she forced her breathing to slow.

  “Sorry,” she managed at last. “I—didn’t mean to—startle you, Sandy.”

  “Well you sure did!” the sixty-year old woman exclaimed. “It’s a good thing I have a strong heart. Breathe, deary. Don’t say anything for a minute, just catch your breath.” Sandy patted her head of spray-stiff gray hair and smoothed the salmon-colored polyester fabric of her blouse as Veronica took another deep breath.

  “Okay,” Veronica said. “I’m breathing.”

  “I take it you needed something, dear?”

  “Yes,” Veronica agreed. “If you could look up a student for me.”

  “Alright. Last name?”

  “Landis.”

  “Oh, her!” Sandy said. “Poor little girl. Are you going to send a card?”

  Veronica hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. I wanted her family’s address. And phone, too, if you don’t mind.”

  “Did you see the poster on your way in?” Sandy asked as she typed.

  “…Poster?”

  “I gave her friends permission. You know, I checked with Lydia,” Sandy said, referring to Principal Krasnova. “I figured she wouldn’t mind. And of course she didn’t. It’s nicer to have something here, at the school, I think. I gather they have a little shrine to her in that alley where her body was found, too, but how awful for them to go there to pay their respects.”

  “Her friends put up a poster?”

  “Just on the outside wall.” Sandy hit a few more keys. “Okay, here’s the address and the number.” She wrote it in looping cursive on a large yellow sticky note and handed it to Veronica.

  “Thank you,” Veronica said.

  ~~~

  Clutching the sticky note, Veronica stood, looking at the hot-pink memorial poster duct-taped to the wall outside the office. She hadn’t even glanced at it in her hurry to catch Sandy. Pulling a pen from her purse, she scribbled the names she read onto the note. Two Michaels, Emily, Jessica, Sammie, Chris, Megan, and Kayla. They had drawn hearts and little people with curly hair and straight hair shaking what looked like sticks, but were probably cigarettes, Veronica determined—and the lines she’d taken for signs of shaking were probably cigarette smoke, actually. “Gone but never forgotten,” Sammie had written in dark blue above her signature, which included a heart over the “i” instead of a dot. “Ivy, we love you,” scrawled in black over Emily’s name. “I’ll always remember Redding, and the water park,” Megan had written, also in black. “You were the only apple,” Chris had added in dark red, somewhat cryptically.

  Studying the address on the note, Veronica charted a course in her head, and jogged back to her car. The names of the students would be helpful, and it was possible Ivy’s parents would know their last names, at least, if not their phone numbers. She considered going back in to ask Sandy, but she knew the secretary was about to get off work, and she’d already troubled her, scaring her and requesting Ivy’s address and number.

  Ordinarily she would call Daniel and give him all the names. He had the resources to find their contact info without troubling the grieving family, who had probably already had their fill of talking to investigators. But Veronica still didn’t want to call Daniel. Maybe once she had something from the friends about the young man with dark-rimmed glasses. Who knew, maybe one of the male names belonged to the young man. With information like that, she would have to contact Daniel. And she wouldn’t do it in an email this time. Maybe she’d just drive directly to the station and drop the information on him sitting at his desk. For a moment, she allowed herself to imagine it as she drove to the Landis family home.

  She would stride through the station doors, unhindered by anyone, because, of course, they would recognize her and know that she was going to see Daniel. She would march by uniformed officers and maybe even Felsen, who would stare after her in curiosity. Halting by Daniel’s desk, where he sat staring at his inadequate case file in mounting frustration, Veronica would gaze down at him imperiously. “Do you want to know the identity of the killer?” she would ask.

  Daniel would blink up at her, remorse softening the frown on his face.

  “Well, I can tell you,” Veronica would say. “But first, you owe me an apology. A big one.”

  With a sigh, Veronica let the daydream fade without finishing the scene. She couldn’t imagine Daniel, chastised, apologizing to her in that scenario. It just wasn’t him.

  In any case, she had arrived. The house were Ivy had lived was on Sierra Way, not all that far from Eleanor Roosevelt. It was small—probably a one bedroom—with peeling cream-colored paint. Around the small, weedy front yard ran a low chain-link fence that twisted and gaped in two spots. A grimy white pick-up sat parked in the short driveway.

  Taking a deep breath, Veronica left her car and walked up to the front door, and pushed the bell.

  Chapter 16

  Janet, Ivy Landis’s foster mother, answered Veronica’s questions without resistance.

  “The detectives never asked about Sammie or Emily,” Janet said. It turned out Ivy’s biological mother was serving a four year prison term. The father’s whereabouts were unknown. As a result, Ivy was in the system, and that meant the conversation was going better than Veronica had anticipated. Janet was clearly shaken and upset, but she wasn’t grieving like a mother would. “I mean, they wanted to know who her friends were, but after I gave them a couple of names, they weren’t interested anymore.”

  Veronica briefly considered asking which detective had questioned her—did she happen to have red hair, by chance?—but she set that aside in favor of going back over her list. “So Sammie is Samantha Willis, Emily’s last name is Porter, and there’s also Michael Farmington, Michael O’Connell, Chris Chavez, Jessica Aguila, Megan Sullivan, and Kayla DeMarco.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do any of the boys—Chris is a boy, right?”

  Janet nodded.

  “Do any of th
em wear glasses with dark rims?”

  Janet thought for a moment, her fingers worrying the corner of her pilled maroon cardigan. “I don’t think so. But I only ever saw Michael O’Connell once. I’m not sure I could pick him out of a line-up.” She laughed hollowly.

  “Okay,” Veronica said. “Thank you, Janet. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

  “Oh, wait. I just got the cell phone bill. The detectives asked if I had the most recent one, but I didn’t until today. You want it?”

  Veronica licked her lips. “Sure.”

  Janet left the room. Veronica let her eyes travel around her. She hadn’t touched anything, more out of general distaste than for fear of a vision. Nothing was clean. There was trash on the floor. It reminded her of the Carver house, the one that burnt down months ago—she’d had several visions of life in that house, and it was extremely depressing. Janet seemed nice enough, but she smelled like she hadn’t bathed in more than a week, at least. Which was hardly something to fault her for if it was because she was grieving, but Veronica suspected it was more a matter of habit. The lingering smell of alcohol and the blotched red of Janet’s skin suggested that she spent more of her time drinking, and that brought up unpleasant associations for Veronica, whose father was an alcoholic. How did social services place a kid in a home like this one? From what little Janet had said about her, Ivy sounded like a tough kid to place. Maybe this was a home of last resort.

  Janet returned. “Here,” she said, thrusting a folded white paper at Veronica.

  “Thanks,” she said, slipping it into her purse.

  “She only gets two hundred minutes,” Janet said, pushing stringy brown hair out of her worn face. “She’s supposed to use them to let me know what she’s up to. I mean, she was supposed to.” The woman sat down heavily on the couch, as if the realization of Ivy’s death had hit her anew. “I can’t believe it. I’ve had three of them, you know. And I always made them call. Always drove them crazy. I tried to be protective. But it was like, I just did it because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Not because anything would really happen. And now it really has.” She pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from a drawer in an end table. Her hands trembled as she lit it, sucking in the smoke. “I don’t guess they’ll let me have any more now.”