The Plane and the Parade (Veronica Barry Book 3)

by Sophia Martin

  “How?” Veronica said, frowning. “Daniel, you had no way of knowing she was going to arrest me.”

  “No, but I could have cooperated a lot more with IA back in March when they were investigating her. I’ve seen her do some sketchy things. I knew I could trust your vision. But I didn’t out of some stupid sense of loyalty. Now look what she’s done.”

  Rubbing her forehead, Veronica tried not to let her voice show the fear she felt. “Do you think she can make the charges stick?”

  Setting the bottle down on the counter, Daniel reached across, catching her hand. “Ronnie, no way. Okay? No way. I don’t know if she’s got anything other than her so-called witness and that video, and it should show you leaving, right? We both know she might have tried to plant something. But whatever she thinks she’s got, I will find it, and I will bury her with it.”

  Veronica rolled her head back. “Daniel, please don’t talk like that. I don’t want you to get in trouble, too.”

  “I won’t.”

  Veronica squeezed his hand and met his eyes. “Let’s just see what Kyung can do, okay? He said he was going to start working on a motion to dismiss right away, right? Will he present it at the arraignment on Thursday?”

  Daniel breathed in, thinking. “I’m not sure. Motions to dismiss usually don’t happen at an arraignment, but I have heard of it once or twice. Maybe if Kyung thinks the motion is really strong. Otherwise, the judge will set a schedule for pretrial motions, and he’ll submit it then.”

  Veronica took a long drink of the wine, letting it warm her. Despite the balmy temperature of the summer night, she felt cold. “I wonder what else she’s got.”

  Daniel sucked in his lower lip and nodded. “Me, too.”

  “I never saw this one coming. Some psychic, huh?”

  “Ronnie, with the information you’ve given me, we’re going to stop a terrorist attack.”

  Something occurred to her.

  “Daniel, how much did you tell Felsen about my visions?”

  He squinted, thinking. “When I found Murphy’s connection to the LCCP, I told her I thought maybe he was going to do something on their behalf. I mentioned the parade. She got this look on her face—I figured she saw your hand in my theories. She looked pissed.”

  Veronica nodded. “I bet she wouldn’t have come after me if she hadn’t realized I was giving you information. I think she hates being outplayed by you. She’s competing with you.”

  Daniel went to the cabinet, got down a glass, filled it with wine, and took a sip. He took a moment to savor the flavor, then swallowed. “Maybe,” he said. “And now that we have the Leopold Victor connection… oh, I didn’t tell you, did I?”

  “No,” Veronica said, her eyes widening. “What did you find out?”

  “Well, first off, he’s on the Terrorism Screening Database, too. Amanda made some calls and I guess she did some hunting around online. Apparently he’s a Belgian scientist, and he lost his job at some big European pharmaceutical company because they suspected him of selling company secrets to competitors. Although they didn’t have enough proof to take him to court.”

  Daniel jogged into his living room and found his leather portfolio briefcase, which was lying on the couch where he’d tossed it when they got in. Veronica turned on her bar stool and watched as he pulled one of his notepads from it and flipped through, then stopped, his eyes scanning.

  “At one point, he was suspected of dealing with a known terrorist group from Peru. They’re called the Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso.” Daniel pronounced the words with relish, enjoying rolling the r and producing the vowels. “I googled them after she told me, they sound like shining examples of sociopaths to me. Anyway—I guess some of their members turned up in Brussels and got arrested for something or other. Amanda gave me the newspaper article—it’s translated through one of those online utilities. It’s hard to understand everything, I should have you look at it in the original French. Or not. It doesn’t really matter what they did, the point is one of them told the police they were doing business with this Leopold Victor guy, although they didn’t say what they were buying, and nothing ended up happening to Victor. Still, it got him on the list.”

  Veronica ran the tip of her finger along the edge of her wine glass. “A scientist,” she said. “He specializes in pharmaceuticals? Maybe my parade dream is warning us about some sort of drug in the water bottles? Maybe what I saw were hallucinations.”

  Daniel shook his head. He flipped another page on his notebook. “Here it is. Amanda gave me a couple of links to the websites she visited. She thinks—and from what I could understand, I agree—that his area of expertise is infectious disease.”

  “Lovely,” Veronica breathed. So a plague doctor was on his way to Sacramento. How festive.

  Or was he?

  “Daniel,” Veronica said, a sudden realization spreading through her like a cold chill.

  “What?” he asked, coming to her side. “Are you alright? You just got pale. Well, paler. You’re usually pale anyway, but your skin has this slight rosy tint that I love—and it’s gone.”

  Veronica considered swatting him, but she didn’t feel well. All at once the room felt hot and close. She stood up from the stool and brushed past him.

  “I need some air,” she said, glancing at the far wall of the living room, which was one big window. You couldn’t open it, though. She didn’t think you could open any of the windows in Daniel’s apartment. The whole building was climate controlled. Veronica paused and looked around, touching her mouth and then her throat.

  “Hey,” Daniel said gently. “It’s okay. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Tear welled in her eyes and she shook her head, her eyebrows knitting. A bitter smile broke on her face. “Oh Daniel, I know what he meant now.”

  “Who?”

  It felt like she couldn’t take a deep enough breath. Her head was light and she leaned on the corner of the back of the couch. “The ghost of the old man. The one from the ATM. The one who talks to me, sometimes. He told me I had to experience their suffering, for when I made my decision.”

  “Whose suffering?” Daniel asked. Distantly, Veronica noted that he didn’t sound impatient. She felt grateful for that, but she couldn’t hold on to the thought. The other thought, the realization, was too big, and it was crowding all other thoughts out.

  “Ronnie, whose suffering?”

  “The passengers on the plane,” she said.

  She turned her eyes to his face, to see if he understood. Frowning, Daniel gazed at her. She could tell his mind was working, putting the pieces together. Then the knowledge dawned, clearing his eyes. “Oh,” he said. “I get it.”

  Her eyes left his, flicking around the room, finding nowhere to focus on.

  “You think you have to choose whether to let the plane go down,” Daniel said.

  Still, she couldn’t find anything to look at. Dizziness hit her. Was this real? Could she really be considering this?

  Daniel’s hand took hers, and with his other hand he turned her face, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Ronnie. It’s okay.”

  Veronica winced and tried to look down, to the side, but he held her chin in a firm grip. “How can you say that?” she asked. “I have to choose between the people on that plane and the people in the parade.”

  Death in the clouds or death on the street.

  “That’s not true,” Daniel said. “We can stop them from hurting the people in the parade. Your ghosts have told you everything we need to know—we even know which water company they’re going to use.”

  “What if we miss something? What if I warn the airline, and manage to get someone to believe me, and then he comes here, and we miss something? And he succeeds?”

  “We have his name. Both his real name and his fake name. We’ll get the authorities in Belgium involved if we have to.”

  “On what grounds? ‘Hello, Belgian law enforcement, my girlfriend had a dream about one of your citizens traveling un
der an assumed name…’”

  “You don’t think they have anonymous tips over there?”

  Veronica shook her head, but as Daniel put his arm around her, she leaned against him. “It’s going to be hard enough to convince them to ground the plane without talking them into arresting one of their passengers.”

  “You can’t fly under an assumed name, Ronnie. It’s illegal. All they’d have to do is check his information. You told me the fake passport probably wouldn’t hold up under close scrutiny.”

  “It’s just a guess.”

  “Leopold Victor is on the No Fly list,” Daniel said. “That’s why he had to go to the trouble of booking his flight under a fake name.”

  “Okay,” Veronica said, breathing in and finding that her lungs felt more normal again. “Okay, we’ll try to get them to arrest him. We’ll try to get them to ground the plane.”

  Daniel smiled at her and gave her a quick kiss on the mouth. “That’s my girl. No need to panic.” He led her around the couch, and they sat together. “I put in a request for a warrant for Robert Murphy’s emails—he has a sister who’s claiming all his stuff belongs to her and she won’t turn over his computer, of course. Anyway, I’m hoping once we get his emails, we can establish a connection with Tim Roeder, other than that they both worked at the LCCP. We’ve got Pastor Haines admitting that Roeder was into all of their craziness. I’m going to request a warrant for the minutes of their last four or five monthly meetings, first thing tomorrow. Maybe Roeder said something about hitting the parade. Even if the other members of the LCCP shot him down, it might be enough for me to convince the Homeland Security team to get involved. Maybe get the FBI on board.”

  Veronica laced her fingers through his.

  Daniel continued, “If they take the threat seriously, we can just confiscate all the Nestle brand bottled water…”

  “How will you explain that you know which water to confiscate?” Veronica asked. “Another anonymous tip?”

  Daniel exhaled. “Well, maybe we’ll find something in the emails, or the minutes.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Even if I can’t use that information officially, I can do it on the day of. Be all, ‘Hey, guys, I don’t like the look of that guy trying to hand out bottled water.’”

  Veronica nodded, but she sucked in her lower lip, biting it. She didn’t like all the uncertainties.

  “We’ll arrest Tim Roeder days before the parade,” Daniel persisted, evidently aware of Veronica’s doubts. “He won’t get a chance to pass out his poison. Maybe by then we can crack him—he might give us Victor. He might confess his whole plan.”

  Her eyes met his, and she shrugged, then squeezed his hand. “Or I can let the plane go down.”

  “Ronnie, we don’t even know what this Victor guy is bringing to the table. Letting him die in the plane might not be enough to stop Roeder from doing the damage he intends to do.”

  “Except it fits, Daniel. It all fits. Victor is bringing something. It’s probably in a liquid, so not in his carry on, but he checked a bag. He could have a vial of something nasty in that checked bag—they scan them, right? But they’re looking for bombs. They wouldn’t notice if he packed something in a bottle.”

  She brought his hand up and pressed her cheek to it.

  “Why would they have sent me the dreams they did, unless they thought I should let the plane go down?”

  Daniel shook his head forcefully. “They want you to know it’s an option, but maybe they’re just testing you. Trying to see if you’ll make the wrong choice, if you can’t handle having this kind of inside information. They gave you lots more to work with. We have a lot we can use. You don’t have to let those people die—I know you wouldn’t be able to live with that. We just have to do our best with what we know, and we’ll stop this thing from happening.”

  ~~~

  Despite Daniel’s convictions, Veronica spent most of the night awake as she lay beside him, considering what they knew, what she’d seen, and what she should choose to do.

  First off, there was the not insignificant problem of finding a way to convince United Airlines, or possibly Brussels Airport, to ground flight 5322 on July 2nd. Maybe with the weight of the Sacramento Police Department in the form of Daniel backing her up, they would listen. Then once they realized the warning was valid, wouldn’t they then turn around and question her at length about how she could possibly have known about the potential for fire breaking out on the plane?

  Was there a way to implicate Leopold Victor in reporting the plane’s probable crash? It seemed unlikely. She didn’t even know what the source of the problem was. Unless there was some way to convince the authorities that Victor was willing to kill himself in the process of bringing down the plane, trying to make it sound like he was responsible wouldn’t work anyway. Victor didn’t sound like a fanatic so much as a businessman. He sold company secrets, but was too slippery for the company to punish him other than fire him. He probably sold something nasty to the Shining Path, although maybe he hadn’t managed to complete that transaction before the members were arrested. How had Tim Roeder come in contact with him?

  Assuming she succeeded in stopping the crash, and that she escaped suspicion in doing so, there remained the task of stopping Roeder from doing damage at the parade. Despite Daniel’s assurances, Veronica didn’t feel especially sanguine about their chances. Maybe it would be easy—just a matter of confiscating Nestle Water bottles. But Nestle was based in Sacramento, according to Eric. They probably had deals with the city about supplying water bottles for the parade. There was a 5K run on the fourth, too—there were always stacks and stacks of bottles around the path of any run. Could the police take them all?

  Unless arresting Roeder put a stop to all of it. It was possible. If Daniel could make him confess, they would know if anyone else was involved, or if it was just him and Victor. Of course, arresting him would no doubt alert any co-conspirators. Maybe Daniel was better off using surveillance on Roeder. She hadn’t asked if he’d had a chance to gather more information on the young man. Did they have an address for him, at least?

  It was Tuesday night. The Fourth of July was one week away—less, for soon enough it would be past midnight. They had less than one week. When it came to deciding what to do about the plane—July 2nd was Sunday, so they had five days.

  Veronica wondered when the best time to call would be to warn United Airlines of the problem with the plane. Should she do it as early as possible? Or wait until Sunday, an hour or two before take-off? Probably the latter. She wasn’t sure how it all worked with airlines. How did they assign flight numbers? Did they repeat the same numbers for the same itineraries? There were too many areas of potential confusion, if she tried to call early, anyway. She would have to wait until Sunday, even if she decided right now to stop the plane from crashing.

  With at least that much settled, she found she was finally able to let sleep come to her.

  ~~~

  She was sitting at a desk, a computer screen illuminated before her. Beyond it, Pastor Haines held the handset of the phone that sat on her desk.

  “You’ve brought a shit storm down on this church!” Haines bellowed into the phone. Veronica’s host startled at the word “shit.” Not used to hearing the good reverend swear, Veronica mused. “I don’t want to hear it. I told you in no uncertain terms that your idea was not acceptable, if you recall! Now I have police detectives asking me questions. Call the whole thing off, or by God I will turn you over so fast your head will spin.”

  Veronica’s host busied herself with straightening some papers on her cluttered desk, but she raised her eyes so often to track the pastor that she shuffled two stacks together. When she noticed this, she sighed, and began sorting them back into separate stacks again. One stack appeared to be bills the church owed; the other stack had charts and text that Veronica couldn’t identify.

  “Tim, I will not tell you again. You call it off.”

  Haines turned his
back to Veronica.

  “I don’t care what he says, or what he wants.”

  He stepped away from her desk, dragging the phone to the edge of it. Veronica’s host snaked a hand out just in time to keep it from flying off behind him.

  “Too bad. The police know you have something planned, Tim. You’re not going to pull it off. Just cut your losses and let it alone.”

  Haines appeared to listen for a moment, then his shoulders jerked and he pulled the phone away from his ear, shooting it a glare.

  “That twisted little nitwit just hung up on me,” Haines informed Veronica as he turned back around and hung up the handset. He’d wrapped himself in the phone’s cord, however, and he grunted in frustration as he disentangled himself. “Did you get rid of the emails?” he asked her.

  “Yes, sir. All the minutes from the last six monthly meetings,” she answered.

  “No, get rid of everything. Hard copies of the minutes, and all the emails from the last six months. We’ll say we had some kind of computer glitch.”

  “Everything, sir? We have all of those attachments for the grant applications—”

  “Meredith, I just told you, all of them. Don’t argue with me today,” Haines snapped. “I’ve got a would-be Timothy McVeigh trying to destroy everything this church has built because he can’t grasp the concept of walking the edge of what the law allows, Meredith. He just leaps right over into murder—thinks he’ll make some sort of statement! You and I both know the government is lying in wait.” Haines began to pace. “They’re waiting, Meredith! They would love for that ninny to carry out his proposal. They would love to shut us down.”

  “I never thought that boy was right in the head,” Meredith said primly.

  “He was an enthusiastic convert,” Haines said, peering out into space wistfully. “We have so few true believers, Meredith. I wanted to believe he would be a leader in the church one day. It’s a shame, really.”

  ~~~

  When Veronica woke, she rolled over and tapped Daniel on his bare shoulder until he cracked an eyelid.