by Rob Thomas
“Not a fan of Chad?” Veronica raised an eyebrow. Melanie just rolled her eyes.
“We told her time and time again she should get rid of the guy. He’s a creep. Controlling, patronizing. He’d tell her what classes to take and didn’t want her to party without him. He didn’t like her hanging out with us. He thinks we’re trashy,” Melanie said.
“We are kind of trashy,” Bri cut in. Melanie flipped her off. A beat later, both girls laughed. It sounded too high pitched, right on the edge of hysteria, but when they’d settled down they both looked a little calmer.
“Anyway,” Melanie said, taking a deep breath. “We were all kind of rooting for this guy at the party. He was the anti-Chad.”
“But if he had something to do with her going missing …” Bri’s voice trembled. “I mean, if he was the one who … who took her, or whatever …”
“Did you see them leave together at any point?” Veronica asked. Both girls shook their heads.
“But like I told you,” Melanie said, “that night is pretty hazy.”
Veronica looked at the phone again. The photos had been uploaded to Hayley’s Facebook at 11:57 p.m. on the night of the party. If what Ella said was true and Hayley and Chad’s relationship had been mercurial at the best of times, it seemed likely that in the wake of their breakup Hayley was making damn sure Chad saw just how much fun she was having.
Veronica pulled up an e-mail Mac had sent her an hour ago with Hayley’s phone records. Throughout the day there were a bunch of texts to her friends and one to her sister. Then at 12:13 a.m., she’d received a phone call from a number registered to Chad Cohan that lasted exactly fifty-three seconds. There was no activity after that.
“Has anyone spoken to Chad since Hayley went missing? Did anyone call him to let him know?”
Melanie gave a humorless bark of laughter. “Oh, he called me. Told me it was my fault Hayley was missing because I was the one who lured her down to Neptune. I told him if he was so worried he should come down, help us look. You know what he said?” She adopted a lilting, smug voice. “ ‘She’s not my responsibility anymore, Melanie. She made that abundantly clear.’ ” For a moment, she looked angry; then all at once her face crumpled. Her eyes went shiny with tears, and her lower lip started to shudder. “But he’s kind of right. I mean, we were supposed to look out for each other. We talked about checking in twice a day on the way down. And we just … lost her.”
Bri hurried to the bed, sliding an arm around the other girl’s shoulders. Melanie twitched beneath shallow sobs.
A motorcycle growled on the street outside. From the room next door Veronica could just make out the murmur of a television. She leaned across the gap between the beds, resting her forearms on her knees.
“Melanie, if someone did hurt Hayley—they’re the only ones responsible.” Veronica’s voice was low and urgent. “And if that’s what happened, I’m going to find them. And I’m going to make them pay.”
Melanie looked up at her from under her baseball cap, eyes wet with tears.
Veronica stood up and handed the phone back to Bri. “Do me a favor and send me copies. None of the pictures on the flyers show what she looked like the night she disappeared. It might be useful to circulate them.” She shouldered her bag. “I’m going to ask around about our Mystery Man. In the meantime—if you two remember anything else about that night, call me right away.”
The girls nodded. Melanie hesitated, then carefully disentangled herself from Bri and got to her feet. She straightened her cap, then held out her hand to shake Veronica’s.
“We will. We promise.” She opened the door, wiping fiercely at her eyes with her free hand. “Thanks, Veronica.”
In the parking lot, Veronica dialed Mac.
“How hard do you think it’d be to hack into the databases of a major research university?”
Mac hesitated. “Since you’re asking me on a cell phone, in front of God and the NSA—impossible.”
“Okay, fair enough. Look, I need to go home and check on Dad, but do you think I could come by your place later? I’ve got some, uh, overtime work for you. It might be a long night.”
“OT, huh?” There was no mistaking the excitement in Mac’s voice. It’d been a while since she’d had an excuse to take her skill set out to play. “Sounds fun.”
“In the meantime, can you get me on a flight to San Jose tomorrow morning? And I’ll need a car. Something sensible.” She thought about it for a moment. “Not too sensible, though. I need to represent the Neptune Chamber of Commerce in style.”
“Give a girl a BMW for a few weeks and suddenly she’s got standards.”
“See you tonight.”
The moon crested the skyline as she pulled the car out of the parking lot. It’d been a week to the day since Hayley’s disappearance. Now hundreds of innocent kids like Hayley were pouring out into the streets for another night of drinking and debauchery, oblivious to just how cruel the world could be.
CHAPTER SEVEN
An hour later, Veronica sat in front of the computer in her bedroom, fingers flying over the keys. Logan’s face grinned crookedly from the corner of his most recent e-mail—it was the picture she’d set as his contact photo, taken right before he’d deployed.
I wish you could have seen Lamb’s face when she told him I had the case. He looked like he’d just swallowed a bug, she typed. It would have made your day.
Keith hadn’t been there when she arrived home at the little blue bungalow. He was most likely out for a walk. The muscles in his leg needed to be strengthened, so he’d taken to circling the block a few times a day, slowly, deliberately, his cane tapping lightly against the concrete. He was wearing away at his convalescence with the same patience, the same resolve that made him a good detective.
Veronica’s room—until recently known as “the guest room”—was decorated with a mélange of high school artifacts and the odds and ends her father had shoved in there before she’d moved back. One of his model ships sat on the dresser, between old photos of her as a little girl. All of her old books—Salinger, Plath, Toole, the literature of choice for the brooding outcast—were lined on the small wooden bookshelf. It was a little surreal to be back under her father’s roof after all this time—but maybe a little comforting too. With all the changes she’d made, all the things in her life that didn’t make sense, she kind of liked the sight of her old panda alarm clock perched on her desk.
She’d just hit Send on her e-mail when the familiar Skype chime came singing out her speakers. She gave a little start.
It was Logan.
She clicked Accept, and his image filled the screen. She could tell her picture wasn’t coming in clear for a moment—he stared blankly at the camera for a few beats. It was a strange thing, watching him without his knowing. His long, vulpine face had a stillness she didn’t usually see in it, pensive and expectant. His hair was short and spiky—he shaved it himself rather than letting the company barber mangle it month after month—and he wore a blue crewneck T-shirt, his off-duty garb. Just a few inches behind him was a steel wall. She could just make out the corner of some kind of inspirational poster containing eagle feathers and a flag.
Then, all at once, a grin broke across his face.
“Hey,” he said, his voice soft.
“Hey,” she said, smiling. “This is a nice surprise.” Usually they had to plan their Skype dates weeks in advance, and then there was still the chance he’d miss them.
“I saw that you were online. I figured I’d take my chance.” His eyes didn’t quite meet her eyes—his camera must be a little off center. She felt like he was staring at her ear.
“What time is it there?”
They always started like this—awkward, banal. And by the time they got over the strangeness, it was usually time for one or the other of them to leave.
“Almost eight.” He glanced to his left, speaking to someone off screen. “Ten minutes. Come on, please?”
“Someone’s got
a timer out, huh?”
“Yeah, it’s okay.” He turned back to her ear, smiling, and she wondered what part of her he was really staring at. Her eyes? Her lips? For some reason the whole thing—the way they could never quite sync up right—made her indescribably sad. “So Petra Landros. In your office. I’ve had that fantasy a few times, but it usually didn’t involve a missing person case.”
“She’s not nearly as sexy in real life. That beauty mark?” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “It’s really just a mole.”
“Don’t tell me that. Right now the 2004 Victoria’s Secret Christmas catalogue is all I’ve got keeping me warm at night.”
“Really? That thing must have seen some mileage by now.”
“The seaman’s life is one of privation,” he said soberly. She smirked.
“How’s the sinus infection? You still grounded?”
“For another few days. The flight doc says he’ll clear me by the end of the week.”
“I hate that news,” she said softly. “You sneezing is you not on missions.”
“This is the life I chose, Veronica.” He said it simply, without irritation or anger. And she knew he was right. He’d joined the navy because he wanted to fly, because he wanted to do something that might stand a chance of helping someone. She of all people had to understand that.
He looked to his left again and sighed. “Yeah, okay. Sorry, man.” Then he turned back to face Veronica. “I gotta go. Hughes’s wife just had a baby—he’s got to be online at oh-eight hundred to talk to them.”
“Okay. Tell him congratulations.”
“I will.” He looked at her for another long moment, his honey-brown eyes warm and sad. “You free this Thursday? Three thirty your time?”
“I can be for you.”
He smiled. “It’s a date.”
She watched him for another half second, and then his screen went black.
For a few more minutes, she swiveled back and forth in her office chair. She tried to imagine the aircraft carrier—tried to picture Logan walking down the narrow halls, beneath pallid fluorescent lights. Tried to imagine him in the gym or the mess, surrounded all the time by hundreds of people in those cramped quarters. It was almost impossible. She closed her eyes. She preferred to see him on the beach in the early morning, his hair thick with salt, his board tucked under his arm as he trudged up the sand to meet her.
She heard the front door swing shut. Dad. Quickly she shook off her reverie and went out front to meet him.
He knelt by the door unlacing his sneakers, wearing track pants and a T-shirt.
“You’re home! I’ve got news. But it can wait—I want to tell you over dinner. Say … steaks at O’Mally’s? My treat?” She nudged him gently.
He shook his head. “No can do, honey. Wallace is coming over with a pizza. March Madness is under way.” He walked toward the kitchen, cane thudding dully on the hardwood. She followed.
“Ah, yes, March Madness. The rumspringa of college hoops fans.” She smiled. “Just don’t strain anything yelling at the TV.”
“I make no promises. San Diego State’s playing Michigan. There’s gonna be some yelling.” He pulled a glass down from the cupboard, then paused to look at her. “So what happened today? It must have been crazy if you can suddenly afford a T-bone.”
For a moment she hesitated. He’d been resisting talking about work since she moved back in, as if even acknowledging that she’d taken up the family business was tantamount to encouraging her. But there was a difference between crummy infidelity cases and the opportunity to find a missing girl. This was something he could be proud of.
“You know the Hayley Dewalt case? Missing girl, totally ignored by Lamb, current obsession of Trish Turley? Well, guess who’s been hired to find her? Me! I’m heading to Stanford tomorrow to talk to Hayley’s ex-boyfriend.” She leaned back against the cabinets. “I met with her family today. They’re pretty intense—I mean, they’re obviously scared about Hayley, but there’s also just something off about them. Especially her brother. He strikes me as kind of creepy.”
Keith poured a glass of iced tea and replaced the pitcher in the fridge. “Oh yeah?”
She nodded, buoyed by his question. “Apparently she went missing from some party, but get this: no one seems to know whose party it was. The house is up on Manzanita. I mean, it’s not like those are low-profile houses up there, so we should be able to figure out who was hosting and ask them some questions, right? I think Lamb knows something he’s not telling me. He was doing that weird hair-slicking thing he does when he thinks he’s hiding something. Oh, and her friends have pictures of Hayley the night she went missing, hanging all over this guy. No name, no information about him, but they look pretty cozy, and that was just hours before she was last seen. I’m trying to decide if I should ask around about him, or if I should keep that information close to my chest. I mean, I don’t want to give him the chance to go underground if he gets spooked.” She paused. “So what do you think?”
For a few seconds he stared sullenly out the kitchen window, his glass half raised to his lips. A frantic, scrabbling feeling filled her chest as he set the glass down with a firm clink on the countertop.
“Honestly?” His voice came a moment later, low and tight. “I think you’re wasting your talent, your brains, and your entire life, Veronica. I think you should get on the next plane to New York and take the bar exam.”
The words hit her like shards of glass from a breaking window.
“How can you call it a waste? We help people.” She strode over to him, bracing herself against the island and staring him full in the face. “This is who we are. It’s in our blood.”
“You’re treating it like something you have no control over, like you just can’t help yourself.” Keith’s cheeks were flushed, his hand shaking. “But that’s just an excuse for giving up on a chance at something better. It’s childish, Veronica.”
“Why don’t you want me to be like you?” The desperate eagerness of a moment ago curdled in her stomach, pure and righteous anger replacing it. “Why is that such a shameful thing?”
“Because you could be safe!” he shouted. “Do you know what it does to me to think of you, out there, every day?”
She inhaled sharply. “Of course I do. How many times have I almost lost you? But for some strange reason, you keep going right back in. Like you just can’t help yourself.”
The doorbell rang. Both Veronica and Keith froze where they were, faces tight with anger. She could feel her pulse, heavy as a drumbeat in her temples.
“That’ll be Wallace,” Keith said. His jaw was still rigid, but his voice was soft, almost sad. Veronica turned away.
“I’ll let him in.”
She could see her old friend through the glass door as she approached, a lean-muscled man in jeans and a San Diego State hoodie, an extra-large pizza box in both hands. He grinned when he saw her, that same easy, comfortable smile that had buoyed her in even her most bitter moods. She took a few quick breaths as she opened the door, trying to calm herself, but Wallace was not fooled.
“You all right?” he asked, the grin fading.
“Are you kidding me? A fine-looking man just brought me a pizza and I didn’t even have to tip him. All’s right with the world.”
He tilted his head back to size her up, looking skeptical. Wallace Fennel had been her best friend since their junior year at Neptune High. He’d been the first person besides her dad she’d been able to trust after Lilly Kane’s death. And he’d been able to see right through her bullshit from day one. But before she could say anything else her dad came in from the kitchen. “Wallace!” He pretended to waft the scent of the pizza toward himself. “And pizza!”
“Half Canadian bacon and pineapple, half Carnivore’s Delight—pepperoni, hamburger, sausage, ham, and bacon.” Wallace cracked the box open just a little and inhaled. “Topped with Mr. Cho’s special recipe marinara and three kinds of artisan cheeses. And a side order of sala
d, because we’re watching our figures.”
“What do I owe you?”
“This time’s my turn. You got the wings last time, remember?”
Veronica stepped back to let him in. “You guys have this whole hunting and gathering thing down pat, don’t you?”
“Men gotta eat.” Wallace nudged her playfully. “You watching the game with us tonight?”
“Um … no, I have to get over to Mac’s. We’re working late tonight.”
His face lit up. “New case, huh? Anything good?”
She glanced furtively at Keith. He’d turned away and was already making his way back to the kitchen. “Um … yeah. The Chamber of Commerce hired me to find Hayley Dewalt.”
Wallace did a double take, eyes widening. “Damn, that is a step up. So what’s the problem then?”
She cleared her throat a little, glancing toward the door her father had just disappeared through. She heard plates clatter loudly in the kitchen. “We’re not exactly on the same page.”
Understanding dawned in his eyes. Wallace balanced the pizza box on one arm and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Yeah, well, he’ll come around.”
She didn’t answer, but she leaned against him for a moment, feeling the vise around her chest start to loosen a little.
“Would you mind stopping by tomorrow, just to check in on him?” she whispered. “I’ll be at Stanford until late. He should be fine, but …”
“Yeah, no problem.” He squeezed her shoulder and then let go. “Say hi to Mac for me. I hope she gets to hack something good. Or … you know, whatever it is nerds do for fun.”
“I think it involves pwnage.” She grabbed her bag. For a moment she thought about going into the kitchen to try to make some kind of peace with Keith before she left. But what would she say? How could she apologize for who she was?