CHAPTER TWO
“How can you do that right now?”
Two hours and change after the jury withdrew, Keith Mars sat with his daughter in a booth at Miki’s, a surf-themed greasy spoon across the street from the courthouse. Keith had frequented the place since his days as sheriff, and the diner had barely changed since then. Sure, there were a few more duct-taped tears in the vinyl seats, a few new dings in the fiberglass surfboards lining the walls, but the bacon was still crisp and pancakes were available twenty-four hours a day, the way the good Lord intended.
He looked up from the crossword puzzle he was filling in to see Veronica, her French toast untouched in a congealed pool of syrup, her fingertips anxiously tapping her coffee mug.
“I don’t know if you realize this, but your old man is pret-ty sharp.” He held up the newspaper to reveal a smear of blue ink, almost illegible in the puzzle’s neat black grid. “How many people do you know have the guts to work in pen?”
“Got it, Steve McQueen; you laugh at danger and break all the rules.”
“Honey, I’m that cold-blooded dude in Tiananmen Square. And this puzzle’s the tank—frantically zigging and zagging to escape humiliation!” Keith smirked, nodded with exaggerated slowness, and filled in another long word.
Veronica rolled her eyes. “Bit more work on that Yeezy chin thrust and you could have a nice gig entertaining his ‘second string bitches.’?” She sighed, drumming her fingers more urgently against the mug. “How much longer do you think they’ll take?”
She reached for the mug’s handle, but Keith intercepted the saucer, pulling it a few inches away. “Maybe it’s time to lay off the coffee. You’ve had four cups since we got here.”
“Okay, you’re right. Good thing we decided not to wait in the bar. By now I’d be standing on my chair, trying to start a ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ sing-along.” She rested her chin on her hand and sighed. “I just can’t stop obsessing over Cliff’s case. Trying to figure out which way the jury will go so I’ll be braced for it. I mean, his argument was really solid. Discrediting all the evidence, making the prosecution’s story sound ridiculous…”
“Look at you,” he said. “It’s almost like you went to law school.” Veronica had turned down a job at a top law firm in New York to come back to Neptune, a choice Keith was still struggling to get on board with even nine months later. Following in his footsteps as a PI had never been what he wanted for his daughter.
“Would that I really had ‘almost gone.’?” Veronica rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I feel like it could go either way. If they’d let us use the planted-evidence testimonies…”
“I know, but they didn’t. We can’t keep dwelling on it.” Keith reached across the table and patted her hand. “Look, Cliff was inspired. He did a fantastic job considering what he had to work with. All we can do is wait and hope the jury agrees. We’ve got to accept that some things are just out of our control.”
Veronica paused, weighing her words. “Permission to speak freely?”
“Of course.”
“Dad, what you just said—it’s one of those serenity prayers that old folks share on Facebook, not a Keith Mars response to getting hosed. You did all that legwork on the planted evidence, and now we can’t even use it. Plus, Lamb’s about to get away with it again, even if Weevil gets off.” She gave him a sidelong look. “Not to mention the car crash. You should be way more bitter about this.”
Keith pretended to mull over his crossword puzzle again. Veronica had been fishing for information about the accident for months now and he wasn’t about to rise to her bait this late in the game. He knew she suspected the truth—that he’d been meeting with Deputy Jerry Sacks about the planted evidence. That Sacks had been about to turn whistle-blower on the department when someone in a delivery truck T-boned their car, then circled back and rammed it again. Sacks had died and Keith had come close.
Keith had been investigating the crash for six months with little to show for the effort. The official story was that Sacks had been on the take and his relationship with one of his underworld contacts had gone south. But Keith hadn’t found any evidence that Jerry Sacks was dirty. And while he couldn’t prove that the truck driver had been operating on Sheriff Dan Lamb’s orders, he believed it with bone-deep certainty.
Which was why Veronica wasn’t going to be involved. Lamb and Company had already proved they were willing to kill to keep their secrets. He wasn’t about to put her at risk too—no matter how badly he wanted to expose the department’s corruption.
“Why do I need to be bitter? You’re bitter enough for both of us.” Keith smiled faintly and jotted down “RAMIS” in twelve across: Bespectacled ghost exterminator. “At this point I’m just hoping Eli doesn’t get prison time. If we can clear him, I’ll consider that a success.”
Veronica sighed and looked down, but she didn’t argue. She had to know he was right. Neptune had always been dirty, and it would be for a long time to come, with or without Lamb. If Eli went free, they’d have at least prevented him from becoming the town’s latest victim.
But Veronica never had been good at picking her battles, a clearly hereditary trait. After all, Keith had been filling his laptop with information on Lamb for months, interviewing dozens of people who claimed the Sheriff’s Department had planted evidence to gain a conviction, or used excessive force, or taken property under some yanked-from-their-asses interpretation of search and seizure law.
Aside from the victims in the planted-evidence cases, Keith had finally pieced together a clear picture of the corruption within the department. Lamb had a racket functionally identical to that of an organized crime ring. Local businesses that paid up got protection; the ones that didn’t ran the risk of theft, arson, even assault on their premises. The money trails were labyrinthine and nearly impossible to follow. But Keith knew Lamb shouldn’t have been able to afford the beach house he’d just purchased, never mind the annual Tahoe ski trip, the brand-new Escalade, or the floor-side seats he got, five or six times a season, to see the Lakers.
Time was, Veronica would’ve followed all these developments in real time after snooping around his desk and figuring out his safe code. She’d done it before. Maybe Keith should have stopped her, that night eleven years ago when he’d realized that she was looking through the Lilly Kane files. But for some reason he still didn’t fully understand, he couldn’t bring himself to shut her out. She’d gone after Lilly’s murderer with a single-minded fury, and Aaron Echolls had almost killed her—and then Keith—for her trouble. The memory of flames licking at his legs, of knowing that Veronica was trapped behind them, still made him flinch involuntarily.
But that had been a long time ago. They were partners now. She was almost twenty-nine; she had her own caseload, her own life. As far as he knew, she’d respected his decision to keep her at arm’s length on the planted-evidence investigation.
The waitress stopped by their table to freshen their coffee. Veronica tugged her mug back across the table, and started her compulsive drink-doctoring ritual. Keith watched in silent amusement as she shook the sugar packet—four times, as always—ripped off the end, and dumped the contents into her coffee, followed by a generous slosh of cream. She dinged the spoon three times against the mug and placed it on a neatly folded napkin.
“What’ll it mean for Lamb if Weevil gets off?”
The question tumbled out of her abruptly. Keith put the crossword puzzle down next to his empty plate.
“Well, there might be an inquiry into the stolen Glock. Knowing Lamb, he’ll find a way to shake it off. You know, pin it on a couple of low-ranking deputies, fire them, and proclaim the whole department squeaky clean.”
She grimaced. “At least it’ll generate some bad press. That could hurt him in the election.”
“Well, he’s running uncontested, so it’s hard to see Weevil’s case driving the outcome. For that you’d need a scandal outrageous enough to totally invalidate him as a candidate.” Keith gestured to the front page of the paper, which showed a grinning Lamb shaking hands with the mayor at some awards ceremony.
“I’m beginning to view democracy as the Siri of political systems. So much better in theory.” Veronica put her elbow on the table and rested her cheek in her hand. “But I keep hoping for Lamb to deliver an eleventh-hour Hail Mary. Public livestock-shagging, instituting Sharia law, Tasering a cappuccino-skinned movie star he didn’t recognize. Something so appalling people just can’t ignore it anymore.”
“There’s my girl, always praying for someone’s downfall!” Keith glanced back at his puzzle. “Now help me out with this. I need a nine-letter word for ‘anatomical name for Achilles.’ Starts with ‘C’—unless ‘CAROL CHANNING’ is wrong for thirteen down, but I don’t think…”
He was interrupted when both their phones chimed at the same time. He glanced down at the screen.
It was from Cliff.
Their eyes met over the table. In spite of all his feigned calm, Keith’s heart gave an uneven lurch in his chest.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m ready.” She grabbed her bag and slid her jacket back on over her shoulders. “By the way, it’s ‘calcaneal.’ You know…the tendon behind your shin. Achilles’ downfall.”
“Okay, smarty.” Keith punched her lightly in the arm. “Let’s go find out if we’ve got anything to celebrate.”