The River and the Roses (Veronica Barry Book 1)

by Sophia Martin

  His hand was warm. It made her uneasy that her annoyance was seeping away as her mind became focused on his touch. Yes, he was handsome. Yes, he had a good sense of humor. But she didn’t need to develop a crush on him. He couldn’t accept the ability she’d taken so long to embrace.

  “I recognized you, you know,” she heard herself say before the words even formed in her mind.

  “What?”

  “At the supermarket. I ran into you. You don’t remember, do you? It was that same day. The same day that Sylvia was killed.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You were at the Safeway on 30th,” she said. “I was shopping for Melanie’s party. I ran into your cart. You thought I was a weirdo because I kept staring at you, but it was because I recognized you.”

  “From where?”

  “I didn’t know. It made no sense at the time. It was like I knew you really well, but I didn’t know your name or anything about you. I was so confused. And then that night there you were,” Veronica said. “I came out of that awful vision. I was sitting on the curb at McKinley, and there you were.”

  “You recognized me because you were going to meet me later?” he said, frowning.

  “I guess.”

  “You know, some white people think all Asians look the same—”

  “Oh, come on,” Veronica said, pulling away from his hand. “Were you at the Safeway or not?”

  “This is starting to sound like when I’m interviewing a suspect.”

  “Were you or weren’t you?”

  He sighed and raised his eyes to the ceiling, thinking. Then his brow creased. “Yeah, I was. I went on duty later that day—it was at six. So I did some grocery shopping.”

  “Okay,” she said. “So maybe I’m lying about recognizing you, or maybe I’m crazy.” She put her hand on the doorknob. “But just think about how it is I would know something like that—that you went grocery shopping before your shift. Okay? Add it all up. The stuff I shouldn’t know about Sylvia. The stuff with the fish. The grocery store. Hell, call Melanie and ask her about her daughter and the American River while you’re at it. Just don’t come around tomorrow and have it all worked out so you think I’m a nutjob or a liar again, okay?”

  “Does this mean you’ll see me tomorrow, then?” he asked, his face lighting up.

  She sighed. “Yes. Fine. Can I go home now?”

  “Sure.”

  Chapter 19

  Veronica was five years old. She knew this, because when she looked down at the corner of the picture she was drawing, she saw her name, in careful, awkward lettering, and a big red five. That was always how she signed her drawings when she was little. Her name and her age.

  She started to look at the drawing, but someone yanked the picture away. She looked up. It was Daddy.

  “What is this, Very Bear?” he asked, frowning at the picture. Very Bear. He used to call her that.

  “It’s Mommy,” Veronica said.

  He looked from the picture to her. “What? Veronica, this is—what kind of—”

  He balled the picture up in his hands.

  “You can’t draw things like this!” he exclaimed. “It isn’t right!”

  She felt so awful. Daddy’s face was pale. What had she drawn? She couldn’t remember. She reached for the balled up paper and he knocked her hand away. It stung. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes. He jerked down and grabbed her crayons, stuffing them in his pockets.

  “It’s wrong, Veronica! You’re wrong!”

  ~~~

  Veronica woke up. She touched her face, finding tears on her cheeks. For a moment, all she could do was lie still, feeling the soft covers against her and listening to her own breathing. Was the dream a memory? Had that really happened? It seemed like a memory. But she never had any image of her father when she tried to bring his face to mind. Even now, the dream faded, and she couldn’t picture his face. If it was a memory, it was just a threadbare scrap of one. Why couldn’t she remember anything else about it? What had been on the drawing?

  The awful feeling the dream left her with lingered long after she rose and got ready for work. She was distracted in her classes and the kids took advantage of that to get off-task and chatty. Without the mental focus to bring them back, she told them to pick one of the previous chapters they had studied and draw series of five illustrations with the vocabulary from the chapter labeling them. That gave them license to talk amongst themselves and meant she didn’t have to try to keep their attention. She watched them drawing, and wondered about the dream.

  After lunch the principal’s administrative aide asked her to cover an English class for a teacher who’d left early, so she finished work at 2pm. The drive home seemed especially long. She felt so tired and spent. It seemed like all she could do lately was run into dead ends with this psychic crap. She was starting to wonder if she might not be better off pretending it didn’t exist.

  As she ruminated, she was so caught up in her thoughts that she almost didn’t notice the bleeding man standing in the crosswalk. She saw him, but it didn’t register for a moment that this was the same man as the one she saw on the morning before Sylvia’s murder. Only when she caught a flash of red as she rolled by did she turn her head to look at him.

  He hadn’t changed. He stood in the middle of the street, gripping his jacket, red stains over the front of his light green flannel shirt. Veronica pulled over to the curb and parked. As she took her keys out of the ignition they jingled and she stuffed them and her hand into her pocket to keep it from shaking anymore.

  Walking to the edge of the sidewalk, she paused a moment to look at the man, who stared back at her, motionless.

  It must have been a long time since he had shoes, the skin of his feet was so dark from dirt and pollution. The hem of his jeans had frayed and the color of the denim had faded and taken on grass stains and other pigments, no doubt from living on the street. Now that she could look at him calmly, she saw that his face had the hollow-eyed quality of so many homeless people. His skinny body had the scrawny look of a hungry dog. He was clean-shaven, though, except for some stubble, and his hair, although it was messy, wasn’t especially long.

  “Hey,” she said to him. “I’m Veronica. Who are you?”

  The air around her picked up a bit, a breeze drifting through her hair. It didn’t touch him, however. Still unmoving, he kept his eyes locked on her.

  “Why are you here?” she asked. “Did you get hit by a car?”

  Almost imperceptibly at first, the man shook his head. He eased his face to one side, leading with his chin, then picked up speed and began turning back and forth.

  “Okay,” Veronica said. She glanced around. A car drove down the street that crossed the one the man stood in, but she was the only person on the sidewalk. Stepping off the curb, she took one step closer to him. “Okay, so you didn’t get hit. How did you get hurt?”

  The wind blew harder then, and her hair whipped into her face. Veronica brushed the dark strand away. The man’s hands raised to his chest, fingers touching the red stain.

  “I see it,” Veronica said. “You got hurt in the chest. How? What hurt you? Or who?”

  At the last word his eyes widened and he moved a foot in her direction. He didn’t walk. His legs didn’t move. His whole body jerked closer at once.

  Unnerved, Veronica stepped back up onto the sidewalk.

  “Uh, okay,” she said. “Someone hurt you. I understand. I’m really sorry.”

  Maybe it would be better to leave now, she thought. I can’t help this guy.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “But maybe you should, um, put the past behind you, okay? You aren’t going to get anywhere standing in the middle of the street.”

  The ghost rushed her, closing the space in a blink. His gaunt face stretched obscenely long, his lower lids gaping as his eyes rolled in their sockets within inches of her own. Veronica cried out and stumbled as she stepped back, landing hard on her hip and palm.
The ghost’s body lost its resolution—he was a cloud of darkness billowing over her. She scrambled along the sidewalk toward her car, finally getting to her feet.

  Her hand grasped the hood of her Civic and she yanked herself around to the driver’s door. The keys fell from her fingers to the ground as the ghost rose over the car and hovered above her, blotting out the afternoon light. With a whimper she reached down, her fingers tangling in the small mound of keys. She sorted through them to the car key, feeling the air whirl around her. She shoved it into the lock and turned, feeling the metal of the key bend. She yanked it free, swinging the door open and thrusting her body inside the car. As she pulled the door handle, the air swished inside, and she heard his voice.

  Isaac. Collins.

  ~~~

  By the time she got home, her breathing had returned to normal and her knees didn’t feel quite so weak. Harry bounced up and down and gave her his best doe eyes. Her hands still shook and she really wanted to hide under her covers. Gazing at Harry, she decided she wouldn’t do that. She would go back outside, and take him on a walk. She would not allow a ghost to frighten her into hiding inside her home. She wouldn’t let a ghost ruin Harry’s afternoon. Snapping his harness on him she started down the sidewalk. A walk would do her good.

  Obviously, she mused, what she was really lacking in all of this was balance. The bleeding man had frightened her, but he hadn’t harmed her, and his last words echoed in her mind. Isaac Collins. Perhaps the man accused of killing Sylvia was a friend of the ghost? Perhaps he’d come to her out of concern for his friend? She couldn’t be sure, but it seemed likely.

  Harry turned to look up at her, his tongue hanging out, as they crossed the street to the sidewalk opposite her duplex.

  After contemplating the encounter with the bleeding man for a few moments, she had to admit she couldn’t puzzle out anything else. Another ghost who seemed unable or unwilling to share much useful information, unfortunately.

  And then there was the dream of her five year old self. It had been too brief and upsetting to be any good to her. So it was better to just treat it as a weird dream that didn’t mean anything. Just because she had more information than Daniel did about Sylvia Gomez, or Melanie did about Grant Slecterson, it didn’t mean she had all the answers, and it didn’t guarantee she could get all the answers. They had to do their own searching, and all she could do was help them with what she had.

  She pulled her cell phone out of her purse. Should she call Daniel and tell him about the bleeding man? And say what? That a scary ghost was haunting the cross walk a few blocks from her house?

  She speed-dialed Melanie.

  “Hey!” Melanie said after a couple of rings. “Sorry I never called last night.”

  “No big. How’s Angie?”

  “Fine. At basketball until five thirty.”

  Veronica considered telling Melanie about the ghost, but decided against it. Without better understanding him, she couldn’t think what to say about the encounter.

  “How did it go last night?” she asked instead. Harry found something fascinating to sniff under a bush so they stopped walking as he inhaled a thorough whiff of it.

  “Not great,” Melanie said. “She really knows how to push my buttons. I tried to get her to talk about what’s been going on with those girls, and the only somewhat useful thing I got out of her was ‘it’s not like they pick on people for no reason, Mom.’”

  “She thinks she did something to provoke them?”

  “That’s my interpretation, yes,” Melanie said. “But she managed to get me sidetracked pretty good. She started in on how I couldn’t expect her not to have a life when I’m dating Chris, and then we got into a whole discussion about that.”

  “Bad?”

  “Sort of. In hindsight I really think she did it to get me off the subject of these kids, Veronica. Am I being paranoid? She’s only fifteen. Could she be that sly?”

  “This is the girl who got Chris to come all the way up from San Diego and take you out on Valentine’s Day so she could sneak out.”

  “You’re right. My daughter is an evil genius.”

  Harry was off and trotting again. Veronica walked as he looked happily around the street, panting. “So it doesn’t sound like too great of a breakthrough, though.”

  “I’d like to understand why she feels like those little bastards had a reason to attack her,” Melanie said.

  Harry whined as a Jack Russell threw itself against the fence of its yard, barking its head off.

  “Ugh,” Veronica groaned. “Being a teenager is so complicated. Do you remember what it was like?”

  “Barely. I think I blocked it out. Too much trauma.”

  “Maybe if you called the school and talked to her teachers, or the principal, they could tell you something that would help.”

  “It might be worth a try,” Melanie agreed. “In fact, I will definitely try that. Right now. I’ll call you back.”

  “Okay.” She hung up. It was time to head back to the duplex. Daniel was supposed to come over around 3:30. Maybe she’d tell him about the ghost then. She wanted to pick the place up a bit and clean the counters and the bathroom. Harry exhibited far more reluctance heading in this direction than away from the house. Poor baby.

  “We’ll go for a walk around Folsom soon, bud,” she promised him.

  When they got back inside, Harry went for his water bowl with gusto while she took off her coat and threw it onto her bed. She made a tour of the living room and kitchen, picking up mugs and spoons. Most of the dishes she’d picked up the day before, but one or two stragglers remained. She wasn’t a very neat person, but she’d really let the cleaning go these last couple of weeks. She did the dishes and then used a damp rag to wipe down the counters. She cleaned the cat box. Then, time to Lysol the heck out of every surface in the bathroom. She hated cleaning, but she had to admit she felt very satisfied to see clean porcelain and think that she had nothing to be embarrassed about when Daniel came over later.

  She had a glass of water and then sat on the couch, unpacking her school bag onto the coffee table. Enough worrying about ghosts and dreams. Time to change her focus. Daniel would be here soon enough, and she’d have to come back to it all then. For now, she was going to do something useful. She’d make her way through as many of Friday’s tests as she could grade until Daniel got there. This psychic thing wasn’t going to pay the bills and it wasn’t going to fly as an excuse if some kid’s parents wanted to know why she hadn’t updated grades for the last month. “Oh, sorry, Mrs. So-And-So, I’ve been way too busy trying to have visions about a murder that happened a few blocks from my house. I’m sure you understand how that is.”

  She dove into the first stack as Blossom came over and curled up on the second. As was usually the case, by the time Veronica reached the sixth test, she was seriously questioning her ability to teach as well as the respect her students had for her intelligence. But this was a familiar situation so she didn’t let it get to her.

  Chapter 20

  When a knock came on the door as she read the tenth test, Veronica felt relieved. This was the fifth test to list “late” as the translation for “lait,” which was actually “milk” in French.

  Blossom panicked at the knock and sped off, sending tests flying in her wake. Veronica sighed as she opened the door. Daniel was standing there with his hands in his pockets.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Come in,” she said, and turned to gather the tests into piles again. “I was just trying to get caught up a little.”

  “I know how that is. They never show all the paperwork you have to do on those cop shows on TV.”

  “You want something to drink?” she asked as he took off his jacket sat down on the couch.

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  She put the piles on the breakfast table and sat down in the wicker armchair, which creaked a warning that the cats’ handiwork might be close to destroying its structural integrity soon.
She sighed again. She had two scratching posts, but did that satisfy them? No.

  “You look tired,” Daniel observed.

  “Thanks.”

  He raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Still a little pissed about last night, I take it?”

  She shrugged. “I guess I just don’t know what to expect.”

  “From me?”

  She gave him a nod.

  “Fair enough,” he said, laying his jacket over the arm of the couch. “But I’m on board. As much as I can be. I think it’s just going to be a process for me. It’s got to sink in. But I don’t think you’re hallucinating or irrational or anything like that, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said. That was the best she was going to get from him. Melanie had spoiled her, she realized suddenly. Melanie with her complete belief in Veronica’s second sight, unquestioning, encouraging, even… Veronica wouldn’t run into that very often. At least not among people she knew. Well, she wasn’t planning on telling anyone about her ability unless she absolutely had to. Maybe from now on it would just do the things she’d always sort of known it could do, like ruin Christmas presents and the endings of movies. That sounded manageable. She wasn’t going to make a career of solving crime. She smiled at the thought.

  Daniel’s face relaxed when he saw her smile. “Okay,” he echoed her. “So how about we start from where we left off?” He pulled the notepad and Bic from the inner pocket of his jacket.

  “There’s one thing first.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “I saw something—someone today. I’ve seen him before. He’s a ghost.”

  “Okay.”

  “He appears in the middle of the crosswalk at B and 30th. He was a homeless guy, I think, And I think he knew Collins, the man you arrested.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “He’s only ever said one thing to me: Isaac Collins.”

  Daniel frowned. He flipped through his notebook quickly and then tapped a page with his pen. “That’s what I thought,” he muttered.