The River and the Roses (Veronica Barry Book 1)

by Sophia Martin

  Chapter 16

  “So you decided to put me to the test?” Detective Seong asked as they drove in his sedan from her house to McKinley Park. It was close enough to walk, but she felt weird about taking a long walk to the park with him. What would they talk about?

  “It’s more like I’m putting myself to the test,” she said. “Or the second sight itself. I just wanted somebody around in case it doesn’t go well. Or in case it goes too well, is probably more accurate.”

  “I think that’s wise,” Seong said.

  “You do?”

  “I’m not saying I’m completely bought in,” he said. “My partner sure isn’t. But I’m open to the possibility, let’s say. And I do know that you were a mess when we found you at the crime scene. So whatever you experienced, it was traumatic. I don’t think it would be a good idea to bring on another episode like that alone.”

  Veronica gazed out of the window. “It did suck.”

  “Why did you call me?”

  She looked back at him. “You mean why not a friend?”

  Seong inclined his head in agreement.

  Veronica sighed. “It may surprise you to know this, Detective, but I haven’t shared my ‘special gift’ with very many people. There’s you and there’s my friend Melanie, that’s it. Unless you count your partner and the people at the police station the other day, but I wasn’t trying to tell them about it. Melanie’s got her hands full right now.” She ran a hand through her hair. “It’s not something I know how to talk about with people.”

  “You didn’t seem to have any trouble talking to me about it.”

  “Because I had to tell you what I knew,” she said. “I’ve only recently come to terms with it myself. I’ve spent a lot of energy trying to ignore it. I don’t want people to think I’m crazy, or even just weird. I’m not really there yet, I guess. I don’t know how to be a psychic. I mean, socially speaking. I don’t know how to have that be my identity.”

  Seong nodded. “I would have a hard time with it, myself.”

  “Yeah, because you’re a serious person. You have a career. You deal with serious things. You’re not about to hold a séance at a birthday party or something.”

  “I imagine that’s not a requirement for you either,” he said with a smile.

  “Yeah, but those guys you see on TV, and the ones who write books—there’s always a lot of pastel colors and dreamy music. And then there’s the ads for the phone-a-psychics… people in turbans!”

  “You know, in some cultures turbans are totally acceptable headgear.”

  Veronica rolled her eyes. “Okay, but not in this culture.”

  “It depends on who you ask.”

  “Now you’re teasing me.”

  “No, it’s true, you meet a lot of subcultures in my line of work…”

  Veronica gave him a look. “Okay. But I don’t want to be part of those subcultures.”

  They parked at the curb, a block from the rose garden. Seong gazed at her, his eyebrows drawing together. “Miss Barry, my point is there are a lot of ways to be normal in this country. And I don’t think being psychic means you have to embrace New Age stores and crystals, unless you want to. And if you did, that wouldn’t make you crazy. A lot of people who are not crazy are into that stuff.”

  “Are you into that stuff?”

  “I have a few Native American flute CDs.”

  Veronica smiled. “I like that music, too.”

  “See? And no one’s going to look at you cross-eyed for it, Miss Barry.”

  Her smile broadened. She liked Seong. He had a good sense of humor. “Hey, you think we could maybe try being on a first-name basis? My students call me Miss Barry.”

  He returned her smile and gave her a nod. “I’m Daniel. Or Dan. Whichever you prefer.”

  “I’m Veronica,” she said. “I mean, you knew that. But please call me Veronica.”

  “No one ever calls you Ronnie?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t like that? You know, like Ronnie Spector? ‘Be my baby’?”

  Veronica shook her head. “Just Veronica.”

  “Hm,” Daniel said. He arched his eyebrows. Then as he looked out at the park, his forehead smoothed and his smile faded. “You ready to do this?”

  Veronica gripped the brown paper grocery sack she’d put the plastic bag with the nightgown into. She’d moved it using a stick. She didn’t want to get any impressions off of it until she was ready.

  “I think so,” she said, but her knees felt weak. “It’s kind of like going to the doctor for a shot. You know it’s going to hurt but you also know you have to do it.”

  Daniel didn’t say anything. Veronica took a deep breath and opened her door. After another deep breath she got out, shutting the door behind her. The cold bit her hands, face and sides. She pulled her coat shut and buttoned it. Daniel got out and she joined him on the sidewalk. They walked down to the rose garden without speaking.

  She hadn’t been back to McKinley Park since the night of Sylvia’s murder. “I was expecting yellow tape,” she said as they reached the edge of the rose garden.

  “We had it up for about a week, actually,” he said. “But as far as the department is concerned, the case is closed now.”

  That was encouragement enough. Veronica stepped among the flowers and picked her way, looking at the blooms. Night had fallen and the street lamps colored everything as they had when she saw them in her dream. She was coming in from the wrong end. She left the roses and walked around the edge of the garden to enter from the other side. Daniel stood and watched her, his hands in his pockets. He made no comment.

  This was it, the side Sylvia came in from. She’d run through here, but then fallen. Veronica crouched and looked around. Glad it was dark and no one was around to think her strange, she moved forward a bit. There. This was where Sylvia died. Veronica looked over at Daniel. He nodded.

  Veronica opened the grocery sack and took out the plastic bag. Nothing. She pulled the handles apart. Inside lay the rumpled nightgown, still caked in blood. She thought she’d done a better job of washing it out at the station, but she’d missed a lot of it. Which was good, she told herself. She wanted this to work. Didn’t she?

  Her heart was thudding against her breastbone. She heard a humming in her ears from her blood rushing, and she felt queasy. Do it, she told herself. Just do it.

  She plunged her hand into the bag and buried it in the bloodstained fabric. She looked around. At first nothing happened. Then it washed over her.

  ~~~

  She was sitting at a table in a restaurant with Albert Gomez, Sylvia’s husband. They were arguing.

  “He’s my son, Al. What do you want me to say?” Sylvia demanded. It was strange, feeling like someone spoke through Veronica’s mouth, but she knew she was the passenger in this body. Veronica felt tears come to her eyes and tried to swallow the lump in her throat. Sylvia had to make him listen, and crying wasn’t going to help.

  “Things have to change. Even you see that, don’t you? It can’t go on like this.” He kept his voice low but his face was very red. A vein pulsed in his forehead. He looked furious. This was terrible. All of it was terrible. She hated doing this, making him upset this way.

  “What am I supposed to do? Don’t you know how awful I feel about all of it? I can’t change the past and I can only pray that things get better—”

  “You saw it too, Sylvia. You can pretend you didn’t, but you did. We have to take steps, now—prayer is not going to be enough—”

  Sylvia burst into sobs and covered her face. She was going to have to do it. She knew it, knew it in her bones, but how would she ever find the strength? How could she ever go through with it? She pushed away from the table, knocking over her chair. She looked around for a second at the other diners, who stared at her. Then she headed for the door.

  “Sylvia!” Albert called.

  But she couldn’t stop and go back there. She didn’t know what to say to him, how to
make it better. There was no way to make it better. He was going to make her do this horrible, horrible thing, and she would never be able to forgive herself. How could she live with something like that? Knowing what she’d done?

  “Hey,” came a voice, startling her. She wiped her face. Maybe it was tears, but everything had become blurry. Veronica couldn’t see.

  “What are you doing here?” Sylvia hissed. “You have to leave. If Al sees you he’s going to lose it.”

  “I don’t care what he thinks!”

  “I do,” Sylvia answered. “Don’t you see? You can’t keep doing these things. He’s so upset.”

  “What? It has nothing to do with him!”

  “She is his niece!”

  “They’re not even related! Why are you taking his side?”

  “Look, honey, it’s not about sides—”

  “Don’t call me that!” the blurry image jerked toward her, and the voice sounded enraged. Then Sylvia must have flinched. It was so hard to see. “You don’t love me! You never have!”

  “That’s not true! Baby, of course I love you!”

  “You’re afraid of me,” the man said. He sounded menacing. And… gleeful? Like he liked that she was afraid. “You are. Maybe I should tell you about what happened back home. You want to know what really happened?”

  “Look, you’re upset. Everyone is upset. We can talk about this.”

  “Yeah, let’s talk! Talk about how you’re planning to dump me again! You think I didn’t know!” She felt him grab Sylvia’s wrist. “I won’t let you! I won’t go!”

  He knew? How could he know? She wasn’t ready for this. She couldn’t do it. Sylvia sobbed. But she had to. It had to be this way; he had to go. He thought he could stop her? “What are you going to do, huh? You don’t have a choice,” she cried.

  He struck her, hard, in the face. Sylvia crashed to her knees.

  “Don’t!” she said, but then he kicked her. And then he laughed.

  The sound of it filled her with fear. She’d heard him laugh like that once before, at the club. He’s going to do it to me, Sylvia thought, and then she got to her feet, and started to run. It’s what I deserve. For everything.

  She was running down the street in the heels. Ahead of her, the trees loomed black in the bad street lighting. She was short of breath and her calves hurt, but she heard him behind her.

  “Hey!”

  “Leave me alone!” she shouted, but she knew he never would.

  So she ran faster. By the time she reached the edge of the park she was heaving for air. She whirled around and there he was, just a few feet behind her. She couldn’t see his face. Everything was still blurry—blurrier than in the last vision—and this time the headlights of the car that came down the road washed over everything. She felt, rather than saw, when he lunged for her. She jerked away and ran, until she reached the rose garden. The roses were everywhere—strange colors from the lamps. She thought, desperate, that maybe if she cut through the park, she could lose him in the dark. So she ran into the rose garden. But she didn’t get far before she fell.

  She saw movement, between the roses. Legs in jeans, running. He was right behind her. She felt jerked upwards. Veronica heard Sylvia’s crying change to moans and a desperate, “No, no.” She was jerked down. The smell of the roses was overpowering, suffocating. He slammed his hand into her throat. She couldn’t breathe.

  Chapter 17

  “Veronica,” Daniel’s voice came through to her. “Veronica, it’s okay, just breathe. Your throat is fine, you can breathe. Take in a breath.”

  She was clutching her throat, and he was trying to pry her hands away from it. She coughed and gagged. Then air came into her lungs, burning, but wonderful. She coughed some more and he gripped her hand. “Oh, god,” she managed after a moment. Then she released his hand and dug her fingers into her hair. She groaned.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s so frustrating,” she muttered.

  “What? Did you see something?”

  “Yes, in a way. And in another way, no. I don’t understand it. In some parts I saw less than before. Why? Why Sylvia? Why won’t you just show me his face?”

  “Okay, but that sounds like you saw more in some other parts. Did you?”

  Veronica swallowed. Her throat and chest hurt—she touched the spot under her collarbone. Was that where Sylvia was stabbed? She rubbed it.

  “Yes,” she said to Daniel. “You were right. It wasn’t her husband.”

  “Who was it?” Daniel asked.

  “That’s just it, that’s what she wouldn’t show me!” Veronica said. Someone she loved. Someone she felt terribly guilty about—her son? Could that be it? But he was too strong. It had to be a grown man. Max? What was his relationship to her?

  Daniel sighed. “Okay, how about we go somewhere. You want to go home?”

  Veronica stood up slowly, brushing the crushed grass off of her. “No,” she said. “I don’t want to go anywhere. She showed me everything but her attacker’s face. I want to stay right here until she shows me his face!”

  “I don’t think that’s going to work,” Daniel said. “You did everything you could. Let’s go somewhere and talk it through. Maybe she showed you enough for us to figure it out. Okay?”

  Veronica groaned. She covered her face with her hands. “Okay.”

  ~~~

  Daniel took her to a bar with very dim lighting. As they approached a booth in back, Veronica looked around at the neon beer logos and the naugahyde seats. She wondered if he took dates here.

  “You must bring all the girls here,” she said.

  He grinned. Even in the dark she could see how white his teeth were. “Yeah, it’s a big make out spot for us detectives.”

  “It’s super dark,” she said as she peered at the seat, trying to tell if it was clean.

  “I actually meet a couple of my sources here from time to time.”

  “No kidding?” He had sources. “Do you call them snitches?”

  “Only if you’re emulating Dirty Harry or something,” he said as he slipped into the booth.

  Veronica resigned herself to the possibility of sitting on something sticky and sat opposite him. “Hey, don’t knock Dirty Harry. He’s a badass.”

  “Clint Eastwood fan, huh?”

  “Old movies in general,” Veronica admitted. She studied Daniel’s face. She liked his eyes, which were crinkled at the corners with his grin.

  “Don’t ever let my dad—or my uncle—hear you refer to Dirty Harry movies as ‘old.’”

  “They like him too?”

  “Dirty Harry, The Godfather, The Exorcist, The French Connection…”

  “Early seventies, huh?” she grinned back at him. “How about High Plains Drifter?”

  Daniel nodded. “Oh yes. All those old westerns.”

  “Well, I hate to break it to your father and your uncle, but those movies came out over thirty years ago.”

  “Shh! Speak no sacrilege!”

  Veronica laughed. It felt wonderful to laugh, like lightening a load. “Thanks,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “Oh, for helping me feel like a human again.”

  “Anytime,” Daniel said. “You want something to drink?”

  “I guess a Corona wouldn’t hurt.”

  He stood up and ordered at the bar, returning a moment later with her Corona and a Beck’s for himself. “Okay,” he said. “Have a sip of your beer. Then tell me what you saw.”

  “Can I ask, first—what you saw? I mean, on your side of things? Did I have, like, a seizure?” she asked, and took a gulp of beer. It was cold, but made a little spot of warmth in her belly.

  “No,” he said. “No seizure. You put your hand in the bag, and then you closed your eyes. And then you just sat there for a while. And then you sort of—fell over. Or threw yourself over—it was pretty violent. Then you stood up, and that’s when I took your hand. I was worried you might walk out into the street or s
omething. Then you stood still for a few minutes. And then you fell again, and that’s when you started gasping for air, and clutching your throat. So I tried to shake you and make you come out of it. And then you did.”

  Veronica’s cheeks burned and she was thankful for the dim lighting. “Sounds like quite a show.”

  “Actually, most of the time you weren’t doing anything. You don’t remember any of it?”

  “None of what you saw,” she said. “I think the times I fell probably coincide with when I felt Sylvia get hit.”

  “So she was hit more than once? I mean, there was a period of several minutes between the first time you fell and the next.”

  “Yeah,” Veronica said. She took another drink.

  “Why don’t you tell it from the beginning.”

  “Okay,” She said, and took a deep breath. “First, I was in the restaurant. I saw the whole thing from Sylvia’s perspective, you understand. That’s how it’s been every time. She’s showing me her memories.”

  “But sometimes she talks to you directly?”

  “Yes,” Veronica nodded. “I went to her viewing, and I saw her—her ghost. And she spoke to me. And she also spoke to me later, at the police station, when I was talking to you.”

  “She did?” Daniel’s eyebrows were raised.

  “Yes,” Veronica said. “She told me to ask you about the fibers.”

  “Ooh, yeah, that was a stinger,” he said. “We didn’t find any clothes that matched the fibers under her nails, but then it made sense that Collins would get rid of anything he was wearing because there would have been blood on it.”

  “Anyway,” she continued, “it was her memory, of the restaurant. She was there with her husband. They were arguing. She got up and left.”

  “Wait, what were they arguing about?” he asked. He produced a notebook from the inside pocket of his coat.

  “You’re going to take notes?”

  “It seems like a wise idea.”

  “I feel like I’m being interviewed.”

  “Why miss important details? This is how I do my job. And generally speaking, I’m good at my job, Veronica. I’m still not really sure about what you’ve been going through. I believe that you’re sincere, but I just don’t know that I believe in psychic phenomena. But I figure, what can it hurt? I don’t have anything better to do with my Wednesday night than this. So just let me have my process, and I’ll let you have yours.”