Veronica Mars

by Rob Thomas

  They stared at each other across the Formica, the space between them electric with mutual loathing. She kept her gaze level, her chin slightly raised.

  On the adjacent side of the table, Margie Dewalt looked up from her handkerchief. “Can we use the money from the reward funds to pay the ransom? Is that … is that something we’re allowed to do, Ms. Landros? I know it was supposed to pay for the reward, but so far it hasn’t helped us find her. Maybe it can help us bring her home.”

  Crane suddenly spoke, his voice loud and sneering. “Look, this guy they arrested had her necklace. He obviously killed her.” He jerked his head toward Veronica. “Like she said, Willie was already in jail when the e-mails were sent. Whoever sent these notes, they’re just trying to get your money.”

  Mike Dewalt shot to his feet. His face was terrifying, his thick bushy brows low over his eyes. Wordlessly, he grabbed his son’s shirtfront, pulling Crane roughly toward him. Margie shrieked, shoving her chair away from them both. Veronica caught sight of Ella’s face, a sudden, protective blank.

  Before anyone else could move, Keith stood from his chair. He held both hands up nonthreateningly, but he took a few careful steps toward the two men. “Mr. Dewalt. Please—you’re in a courthouse. I don’t want to see you in the lockup. Not when we should be focused on how to bring Hayley home.”

  His voice was quiet but firm, a tone that was more compassionate than chastising. The room was otherwise silent. Veronica realized she was holding her breath, her muscles tense. Mike froze, staring down into his son’s face for another beat. Then he let go. Crane leaned against the wall, shaking—whether from anger or fear, Veronica didn’t know.

  Petra waited until Mike had sat back down before speaking again. “As to your question, Mrs. Dewalt, I will talk to the lawyers this afternoon to make certain, but I see no reason not to use the donations any way we must.”

  It was Tanner who broke the silence.

  “What about a ransom specialist?”

  The gravity in the room shifted, all eyes moving down the table to his exhausted face. He looked around at them all.

  “A what?” Petra stared at him blankly. He looked apologetic, like bringing it up was somehow awkward.

  “You know—the people who handle the ransom so it all goes off according to plan? They had a thing about it on Dateline a couple years back. Lots of security firms are doing that kind of thing these days.” He licked his dry lips, looking around the table. Margie glanced at her husband, obviously interested in the idea. Lamb scowled but remained silent.

  “Well, of course, if you feel it’s the best way to handle the situation—” Petra began. Lianne stood up abruptly, holding Hunter against her chest.

  “I think we do.” She gave Lamb a withering look. “I’d feel a little safer with a professional on my side.”

  Veronica knew the barb was directed at Lamb, but she still flinched internally. As if she weren’t a professional; as if she hadn’t done her best to bring the girls home. But Lianne was already halfway out the door, Hunter in her arms. Tanner gave the table an awkward smile and hurried after her.

  With that, the meeting seemed to be adjourned. Crane stormed out ahead of his family, shoving violently through the door. Everyone else rose slowly, gathering their belongings with tentative movements. Veronica took one last look at Lamb then left, Keith close behind her.

  “You okay?” Keith asked Veronica when they were on the steps outside. She smiled faintly.

  “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  But her heart felt heavy as they walked back to the car together. For once, she had a feeling that Lamb might be right—not about Willie Murphy, but about those e-mails being a hoax. And somewhere in the pit of her stomach she had the uneasy feeling that the girls weren’t going to make it home. If the families paid out, someone was going to get away with fraud at best—and at worst, murder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Veronica’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She held the revolver straight out from her body and breathed slowly, deeply, the hot-metal smell stinging her nostrils. She tried to relax her shoulders. Then she pulled the trigger.

  It was early afternoon on Saturday. She’d come to the range by herself, slipping out the door once she’d heard her dad start his lawnmower in the backyard. She didn’t want him to see her sneak into the kitchen like a thief and take the gun from where they’d both left it on the kitchen island.

  She knew she was being stupid. Keith was a good shot—he should be teaching her. But for some reason she wanted to do it alone. Perhaps it was that she wasn’t ready to eat crow after their argument, even though he wouldn’t try to rub it in. More likely, it was that she didn’t want him to see how scared she was, holding a thing that was intended to hurt someone. To kill someone. She didn’t want him to know that the idea of using it made her feel sick to her stomach. Because she knew he’d see it as a weakness, a sign that she really wasn’t ready for this kind of work. So instead she’d spent the morning googling how to load and shoot a revolver. She found a video blog giving step-by-step instructions, starring a plump, cheerful ex-cop from Florida who managed to put a hole through the target’s head every single time.

  Veronica took aim again downrange, trying to focus on the target, and fired.

  The only other people at the range were a heavyset man with two teenage sons, all of them in camo. The man had a slabby jaw and short, bristling hair. His sons wore matching baseball caps in neon orange. They had a dozen guns between them and were taking turns in a variety of Rambo poses, jeering at one another for every missed shot. Veronica couldn’t hear them through the enormous plastic earmuffs, but she got the gist. A few times their eyes twitched slyly toward her, and she caught an ain’t-she-cute smile on the dad’s face once when he thought she wasn’t looking.

  She fired again, thinking about the party and the knife Eduardo had pressed against her throat. She tried to get angry enough to enjoy this—to hate Eduardo enough to imagine his face on the target. And she did hate Eduardo. But the idea of killing him held no joy for her. She wanted to hurt him, it was true. She wanted revenge. But not like this.

  The gun was a snub-nosed .38 Special, pocket-size. It didn’t look like a lot of gun. But the recoil slammed through her body with every shot. She reloaded, stood wide legged, squared to the target, and shot all five rounds, slow and deliberate. Then she pushed the button that pulled the target back to her. It ran slowly back up the range, fluttering as it went.

  She’d hit it twice, once on the bare edge of the page, and another time in what would be the victim’s shoulder. Victim—is that how you’re supposed to think of it? Or is it a perp? She gritted her teeth and hit the button to send the target back out. There was no sense in putting up a new one—she’d barely dented her first.

  She was turning to reload her gun when a hand touched her shoulder. She gave a start and whirled around.

  Weevil Navarro stood a few feet behind her, in a glossy black motorcycle jacket and jeans. His trim goatee framed lips that were pursed in a look that was part pensive, part tough guy. Outsize diamond studs punctuated both earlobes, and she could just make out the edges of the tattoos that climbed up his neck and down his arms.

  She carefully set the revolver down in its case, then took one muff off her ear. “I don’t think you’re supposed to sneak up on someone holding a gun.”

  “You wanna keep your knees soft. Bent a little, to absorb the shock.” He lifted his head up, then down, a short appraising nod.

  Veronica gave him a skeptical smirk. “Huh. I’m not actually sure if it’s a good or bad idea to take advice from someone with a stolen weapons rap.”

  “Hey, you know as well as I do that Glock was planted.” He straightened up and moved into a shooting stance to show her, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “You can lean forward a little from the waist too. It’ll help with balance.”

  She watched him for a moment but didn’t move to pick up the gun.

  She a
nd Weevil went way back, and while she was pretty sure she could call him a friend, the relationship had sometimes been … complicated. In high school he’d headed the PCH Bike Club, and there’d been a whole mutual back-scratching agreement between them. Veronica knew she could call him in for muscle if she needed it, and sometimes he was good for information on Neptune’s underworld. Veronica, for her part, had helped him out of a few tight spots, including juvie. But she’d seen just how far he would go to stay on top—and just how much destruction he could cause.

  When she’d returned to Neptune a few short months ago, he’d been on the straight and narrow. She’d seen with her own eyes how he looked at his wife, and it had made her feel—what? Happy for him? Jealous, that even Eli “Weevil” Navarro could settle down and find some kind of peace, when she thought she’d go out of her skin if she had one more long, quiet, calm afternoon?

  But when Celeste Kane shot him, claiming self-defense, a stolen gun had ended up in his unconscious hands. Since then something had changed. He was back on the bike, roaring through the streets of Neptune with his old gang, believing that if the system was rigged, this was the only way to give himself a fighting chance.

  And suddenly the thought made her deeply, achingly sad. Because they were both back in it. Because it looked like neither one of them would ever be able to walk away from the past, no matter how hard they tried.

  “So what are you doing here, anyway?” Veronica asked.

  “I saw that fancy car you’ve been driving in the parking lot, and thought to myself, I gotta see this. Veronica Mars with a gun. Like you weren’t scary enough already.”

  She looked down at the revolver, nestled against the bright foam packing. “Dad wants me to learn.”

  “Smart man.” Weevil picked up the gun and weighed it in his hands. “This is a shit town. You gotta look out for yourself.” He aimed out downrange, cowboy style, gun in one hand. “I heard you got into it up at the Gutiérrez party.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Oh, you know. I follow you on Twitter, @​too_​nosy_​for_​her_​own_​damn_​good.”

  Veronica faked a smirk, then became serious. “So you know the Gutiérrez cousins?”

  He turned to look at her, pointing the gun carefully downward. “I know of them. Trust me, V. There are some things in this town even I stay clear of. I’d say you should take my example, but you’ve never been smart enough to listen to good advice.”

  She shook her head. “Weevil, there are two missing girls. I have to try to find them.”

  “Yeah? I heard they got the guy who killed them.”

  She grimaced. “Willie Murphy? I have my doubts. Yesterday the families got ransom messages from someone who claims the girls are still alive. If you know anything about these guys that can help me find those girls …”

  Weevil sighed and set the gun down. He rubbed the corner of his jaw with his thumb. “Look, like I said, I steer clear of that whole scene. I don’t know much. But I can tell you this—the Milenios don’t do any kind of business in this town.”

  She frowned. “But Eduardo and Rico—”

  “—are two squeaky-clean schoolboys with no records. And you bet your ass they want to keep it that way. They got a good thing going here—they’re out of the line of fire, they’re getting educated, and they have a chance to wash all that dirty money clean by dumping it straight into a legitimate business.”

  “But the Milenios are known for taking hostages, holding people ransom. There are hundreds of documented cases where they take some university student right off the streets,” Veronica argued.

  “In Mexico,” he said. He shook his head. “Use your brain, V. What kingpin in his right mind is gonna order the kidnapping of two white American girls? He’d risk bringing the FBI or the DEA right down on his head, when he’s got such a nice arrangement here.”

  “One point two million in ransom is a lot of money.”

  “That’s chump change to these guys.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know. It’s possible los primos Gutiérrez have gone rogue. Maybe they’re trying to get a bigger piece.”

  “Maybe they just like hurting people, and no one has ever told them no.” Veronica’s voice was low and tense.

  Weevil shrugged. “Maybe. But all I’m saying is, these guys don’t shit where they eat. There’s no way El Oso sanctioned any of this. Not a kidnapping, not a murder. And if he found out those kids went off book, I’m guessing there’d be hell to pay.” Then he shrugged again. “But like I said. I don’t ask too many questions about those guys. So maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  Veronica nodded slowly. She picked up the gun and ejected the cylinder. Her fingers weren’t shaking anymore. She loaded five more rounds.

  “Did they hurt you?” Weevil’s voice was quiet behind her. A few bays away the teen boys and their father were packing up their guns. One of the kids was watching her and Weevil with watery, pale eyes. She curled her lip at him, and he turned away, blushing.

  “I’m okay.” Then she shut the cylinder with a click. “You should put some earmuffs on.”

  Then she shot five more times in quick succession. The sound echoed distantly around her skull, the powder sharp and oddly sweet in her nose.

  When she hit the button to call the target back, she’d gotten two more shots into the perp’s silhouette. One was low, in the gut. And the other went right through his head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Sheriff’s Department was thrumming with energy when she arrived on Sunday morning. In the parking lot out front, reporters stood vigil, waiting for new information. Veronica caught sight of Martina Vasquez, taking a few quick drags on her cigarette before picking up her microphone and smiling into the camera.

  She wanted to talk to Willie Murphy. She knew it’d be a long shot. Now that Lamb had him in custody, a perfect patsy, he wouldn’t want anyone digging too much deeper. But she had to try, because otherwise, she was out of sources on the Gutiérrez cousins.

  “Care to tell our viewers what you think of the sheriff’s handling of the Dewalt-Scott kidnapping case, miss?” A man with Ken-doll hair thrust a microphone under her chin. She scuttled backward, away from him.

  “No, thank you,” she said. She turned where the door to the building should be and walked right into someone.

  It was Crane Dewalt, pale and slouching. Behind him stood the rest of his family, and a fifth person, a short, stocky man.

  “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Dewalt. Crane. Ella. How are you guys holding up?”

  Hayley’s mother stepped forward and took Veronica’s hand. “As well as can be expected, I suppose.”

  “Have there been any new messages about Hayley?”

  “Don’t answer that,” said the man. Veronica turned to frown at him. “No offense,” he added. “We just want to keep the information very controlled right now.”

  He was dressed in a rumpled button-down shirt and ill-fitting chinos—no tie, no jacket—and had a jowly, sagging face. The hair on the top of his head was thin and receding, but behind that it was curly and overgrown. A pair of thick-lensed glasses magnified his eyes and gave him an expression of mild surprise. More than anything, he looked like a particularly disgruntled civics teacher.

  Mrs. Dewalt gestured toward him. “Veronica Mars, this is Miles Oxman.”

  “I’m a private security consultant,” he said. A card manifested from somewhere in his jacket, the corners creased. GULL AND ASSOCIATES was printed at the top, above his name. She slid it into her purse.

  “Mr. Oxman is helping us with the details of the ransom,” Mrs. Dewalt said, wringing her hands in front of her. “We don’t want to make any mistakes.”

  Veronica shrugged the straps of her purse more securely into place. “So were you here questioning Murphy?”

  Oxman’s wide mouth stretched a little wider, his jowls tucking back into a smile. “At this point, Ms. Mars, I’m not interested in who took Hayley. I’m h
ere to make sure the ransom exchange goes smoothly and that we get Hayley back in one piece.”

  “We can’t sit around hoping that someone will catch the criminals who took her. All we can do is follow their orders and get our daughter back.” Mrs. Dewalt’s gentle blue eyes were moist and tired. “Not that we don’t appreciate all your help. You did your best for us.”

  “Unlike some,” spat her husband, speaking for the first time. “No offense, ma’am, but is everyone in this town a moron? How’d that idiot ever get elected sheriff?”

  “Mike,” whispered Mrs. Dewalt, but without real conviction.

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Dewalt. It’s not the first time someone has said exactly what I’m thinking.” Veronica looked at Oxman. “What about the Scotts, are you working with them too?”

  Mrs. Dewalt’s lips went thin. “We talked to them about it. We thought it’d be easier, safer even, to have one expert managing both cases. But they weren’t interested. They said they had their own guy.”

  “They say who they’re working with?” Oxman asked, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet.

  “Um, the Meridian Group, I think? Someone named Lee Jackson?”

  “Oh, yeah, they’re good. Lee’s got a great reputation.” Oxman seemed unconcerned with the competition. “Very good.”

  A cry suddenly went up a few feet away. Mrs. Dewalt jumped, clutching at her throat. The rest of them whirled around to see what was happening.

  Ella stood hugging herself, backed against a lamppost by the same plastic-haired reporter who had tried to chase Veronica. He waved the microphone almost threateningly at her. “Do you have anything to say to your sister? What about to her captors? How’s it all been for you, Ella? Are you scared?”