CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Rage blew across Bellamy’s features like a storm cloud moving in. When he stepped toward Veronica it was fast—faster than she’d have thought a man his size could move. She’d just gotten her fingers around the Taser in her bag, when another voice came from down the hall.

“Hey, Mitch, I was thinking we should look at the Oregon State tapes too…” Coach Zabka appeared in the doorway behind Bellamy. He came up short as he saw them. “What the hell is going on here?”

Bellamy didn’t seem able to speak, the veins in his neck swollen in sharp relief. He didn’t look away from Veronica, and it was clear he was fighting for control, breathing fast, clenching his fists at his sides. Zabka looked from him to Veronica once or twice.

It was hard for Veronica to tear her eyes away from Bellamy, but instinct told her Zabka’s presence was keeping her safe. She forced herself to look at the head coach and held up the toothbrush.

“Coach Zabka, I have to apologize—I haven’t been entirely honest with you. My name is Veronica Mars. I’m a private investigator. I have reason to believe that Coach Bellamy was involved in a sexual assault in Neptune on the night of March sixth. I broke in here trying to find some DNA to prove it.”

Bellamy made a sputtering sound. Veronica glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He was fighting to master his anger and look of outrage. “This is crazy. Tommy, you can’t—”

“A nineteen-year-old girl was attacked in the Neptune Grand.” Veronica spoke over him. It was a desperate move, blurting out the truth, but she didn’t have many options. Zabka could call security any second and have her hauled off campus, maybe even report her to the police. She had to give him a reason not to. “She was raped, beaten, and left in the rain to die. Luckily, she didn’t.”

Zabka looked at Bellamy, then back to Veronica. “And she’s accused Mitch?”

“If she had, you’d be talking to the cops instead of me.”

Zabka stiffened. Veronica registered the fact with satisfaction; he obviously didn’t want the police anywhere near his department. In this situation, she was the preferred option.

She continued. “She doesn’t remember who attacked her. There was some brain trauma, and her memories are compromised. But I was hoping to get some DNA evidence and quietly find out if Coach Bellamy is a match.” Her inflection on the word quiet was featherlight but obvious. Quiet, without press, without scandal. Without Zabka’s name becoming synonymous with Paterno. “If he’s not, that’s great. I get to cross a name off my list, no fuss.”

“I’m calling security.” Bellamy moved toward the phone, but Zabka grabbed him by the arm.

“Hold on just a minute, Mitch. I want to get to the bottom of this myself.” He peered at Veronica through his wire-frame glasses. “Are you testing everyone who was at the hotel that night, or just Mitch?”

She hesitated. “Only a few for the time being. We know Coach Bellamy wasn’t on the bus with everyone else. He was in a car, by himself. Which gave him an opportunity to dump the girl on the edge of town.”

Bellamy’s face was deep purple. “I was scouting, you fucking…” He checked himself, taking a deep breath and turning to Zabka. “That was the day I went to Neptune High to check out Jensen and Rodriguez. I was in a separate car. Damn it, Tommy, this is absurd. This…woman broke into my office and went through my things. She needs to be arrested—tonight.”

Zabka looked at Bellamy for a long moment, his face unreadable. Veronica waited. Her lungs felt tight.

“Do you have a swab?” Zabka said, turning to look at her. His mouth was a tight line, but he seemed more focused on developing his own plan of action than yielding to Bellamy’s angry demands.

Veronica nodded. Zabka turned to Bellamy. “Give her a sample.”

Bellamy looked as if he’d been socked in the stomach. “What?”

“Come on, Mitch, give her a sample. She’ll see it wasn’t you and we can all move on from this.” He looked evenly over at Veronica. “I just want to make clear, I have perfect faith in my colleague. I’m letting you do this so we can clear his name. Once that’s happens, I’ll expect an apology. Then we’ll put all of this behind us.”

“Can’t get any fairer than that,” Veronica said. She pulled a sterile-wrapped swab from her purse and ripped off the end of the wrapping. “Please open wide, Coach Bellamy.”

At first she thought he’d refuse. His lips were closed tight together. But after a moment, he grabbed the swab from her and ran it inside his cheek. She held out the little plastic tube. He didn’t break eye contact as he dropped it in.

“You’ll let us know when you get the results?” asked Zabka.

“Provided it’s negative?” She turned back to him, dropping the tube into a plastic bag and placing it in her purse. “You’ll be the first person I call.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“So then we were out past the floats and the lifeguard made us get out for the rest of the day. It wasn’t fair because the big kids can go all the way out to the other side of the cove and I can swim better than most of them.” The little boy on Veronica’s computer screen gave an indignant frown. “Some of them can only doggy paddle. I can do the crawl!”

Veronica sat on the sofa in her apartment, laptop propped on the coffee table. She’d taken the afternoon off to Skype with Hunter, her half brother.

“But other than that, camp was fun?” she asked.

“I guess so.” Even at seven, Hunter had a somber, studied nonchalance. Veronica guessed it was a side effect of growing up in a house with so many secrets. She knew from experience that a quiet kid who could eavesdrop and stay mum about what he’d overheard could find out way more than a noisy one. “I didn’t like canoeing. But I was the best scout for Capture the Flag. And I learned how to play the guitar.”

“Oh yeah? Are you going to play me something?”

“I don’t have a guitar yet. Mom said maybe for Christmas. They’re expensive.”

Lianne and Hunter had gone back to Tucson that April, after the legal fallout from Tanner and Aurora’s con had dissipated. Tanner was currently serving out a two-year stint in Ironwood State Prison for extortion and obstructing justice. Aurora, meanwhile, had gotten parole with mandatory therapy. Lianne had won custody, though Veronica wasn’t sure why she’d want it. At the tender age of sixteen, Aurora had not only agreed to fake her own kidnapping for a cut of the ransom money but had double-crossed her dad in order to make off with the cash and stick him with the blame. Lianne had put her in a residential treatment facility for teens with “antisocial behavior,” which sounded about right to Veronica; the kid had shocked Veronica with her own Taser before debating the merits of killing her and dumping her body in the desert.

Since they’d left, Veronica had only been able to visit Tucson once, but she tried to Skype with Hunter at least once every couple of weeks. Then in July he’d gone to sleepaway camp for a fortnight, an experience she’d quietly helped pay for. Lianne was barely making ends meet. And between the debt caused by Tanner and Aurora’s legal fees and the cost of Aurora’s treatment, there wasn’t a lot left over for Hunter.

Veronica made a mental note to discuss guitars with her mother. She might be able to find a used one and send it to them, maybe prepay a teacher for lessons. Even after all this time, Veronica wasn’t about to cut a check to Lianne.

“Well, you want to know what I’ve been doing the last few weeks?” she asked.

“What?”

She scooped up Pony from where she was snoozing in her dog bed and held her up to the camera. The puppy blinked sleepily. “Trying to convince my new roommate to stop pooping on the rug!”

Hunter’s eyes got very round. “You got a dog?”

“We got a dog,” Veronica confirmed.

He turned to look off camera. “Mom! Mom, come here, they got a dog!”

Even now, Veronica instinctively tensed up when Lianne appeared on the screen. Old habits die hard. But the Lianne who’d haunted her adolescence was gone. The woman who’d drained Veronica’s college fund eleven years ago was different now. She smiled almost shyly at Veronica.

“Hi, hon—Veronica.” Lianne interrupted herself. “Oh my goodness, who’s this?”

“This,” Veronica said, “is my Pony. And I was thinking…maybe when this case I’m working is over I’ll take a few days, drive out for a visit. I can bring the puppy. Maybe Logan can get leave and come too. I’d like you to meet him, Hunter. I think you’d like him.”

Hunter looked up at his mother. “Can they, Mom?”

“Of course, honey. Any time,” Lianne said softly.

It was strange to see Lianne and Hunter, side by side. They favored each other, in the same way Veronica favored her mother. They all had the same light hair, the same delicate features. She’d always been closer to her father, even as a little girl, but Hunter’s existence somehow brought home that she was Lianne’s daughter as much as Keith’s, no matter how strained things were between them.

Her phone suddenly trilled from where it sat on the sofa next to her. She leaned over to see who it was.

NEPTUNE LAB CENTER.

She lowered Pony back to the floor. “Mom, Hunter, I’m sorry to cut this short, but I’ve got to get this call. It’s work.”

“That’s no problem,” Lianne said. “Maybe we can talk next weekend.”

“Bring the dog to see me!” Hunter yelled, waving.

“Bye!” She smiled into the camera until she was sure the call was disconnected. Then she grabbed her phone.

“Hi, Ms. Mars. This is Phil Curtis with Neptune Labs. We just got the results for the swabs you sent us this week.”

“And?”

There was the briefest of pauses. Then:

“It’s a match.”

—

Veronica blasted down I-5 to San Diego, her windows down and the radio turned off so she could think. Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. They had him. None of the intangible, circumstantial evidence—the bag, the bus, the car—mattered. DNA evidence didn’t lie.

It was almost three when she arrived at the San Diego Police Department headquarters. Detective Leo D’Amato stood waiting for her just outside the main entrance. He was holding two cups of coffee.

She took the outstretched cup. “You brought him in?”

“Yeah, he’s in interrogation room three. He’s talking to his lawyer right now.”

She’d known Leo since she was in high school. Back then, he’d been the cute new deputy in the Balboa County Sheriff’s Department, with a smile that was part impish, part bashful, and one-hundred percent charming. They’d flirted shamelessly and even dated briefly. But Veronica’s life had been too complicated for a nice guy like Leo. Not least of her problems had been a sudden and growing attraction to her dead best friend’s boyfriend—one Logan Echolls.

Still, they’d stayed friendly. She’d called him as soon as she’d gotten the lab results. Even though Bellamy’s crimes were in Neptune’s jurisdiction, she didn’t trust Lamb’s department to follow through.

Leo held the door open for her and led her through a bustling lobby to a bank of elevators. “I had a chance to look over the file. Is there anything else I should know before we go in to talk to him?”

Veronica briefed him as the elevator crept up, telling him her suspicions about the bag. “But the victim had severe head trauma that left her with short-term memory loss. She’s probably not going to be able to give a positive ID.”

“Yeah, not surprising.” He grimaced. “I saw the pictures.”

The elevator opened onto a bustling open room, subdivided into cubicles. Plainclothes detectives worked at computers and talked on phones. Corkboards and whiteboards lined the walls, scrawled with web charts and lists of names. A short, stocky woman spotted Leo and approached them.

“They’re ready for you in there, D’Amato.” She handed him a manila file folder. He opened it and glanced inside. Then he snapped it shut.

“All right, Mars. Let’s do this,” he said, opening the door.

It looked as though they’d picked Bellamy up straight from practice. He wore a Nike T-shirt and his whistle still hung around his neck. His face was flushed dark red, but otherwise he looked surprisingly composed. Next to him sat his attorney, Marty Campbell—an effete-looking little man in a fashionable, obviously bespoke suit. Every part of him that was capable of being manicured had been, from his sculpted beard to his scrubbed and trimmed fingernails. Both men looked up when Leo and Veronica entered the interrogation room.

“Coach Bellamy…Mr. Campbell.” Leo shut the door. “I’m Detective Leo D’Amato. This is Veronica Mars, who’s been consulting with us on this case.”

Bellamy’s eyes met hers, his jaw tightening almost imperceptibly. She didn’t look away as she sat across from him at the rectangular table.

“We’ve met,” she said, folding her hands on the table in front of her.

Campbell’s lips curled tightly into a disparaging smile. “Detective D’Amato, this is ridiculous. You’ve hauled my client in on the flimsiest possible evidence. Let’s end this before it becomes a major embarrassment for your department.”

Leo’s heavy eyebrows arched up. He opened the manila folder and removed a photo of Grace Manning’s body, sliding it across on the table. Her face had been blurred out—even with the DNA evidence, they liked to be cautious with survivors’ identities—but the severity of her injuries was unmistakable and shocking. Veronica watched Bellamy’s face closely. His expression didn’t change, but his pupils dilated.

“A nineteen-year-old woman was assaulted in Neptune the morning of March seventh,” Leo said. “We have DNA evidence—which your client willingly provided—linking him to the attack. Lawyers usually don’t find that kind of evidence flimsy.”

“First of all, I’d hardly call the means by which your…uh…associate obtained the DNA swabs to be evidence of ‘willingness,’ ” Campbell said smoothly. “She broke into his office and, when caught, accused him of sexual assault in front of his supervisor. He was pressured to provide that sample. Second, there’s a rational explanation for the presence of his DNA at that crime scene.”

“I’m all ears,” Leo said.

It was Bellamy who spoke next. His eyes were still glued to that picture, his face and neck flushed. But his voice was quiet and deliberate, his words almost over-enunciated.

“I did have sex with that girl,” he said. “But I didn’t rape her.”

Veronica couldn’t contain her derision. “So breaking half a girl’s ribs and choking her until she passes out is foreplay? Come on, Coach, even if rough sex is your thing no one’s going to believe an innocent man dumps a girl’s body ten miles from where they were last seen together.”

“But I didn’t.” His pale blue eyes finally flitted up from the picture. “When she left my room she was fine. I don’t know who did this to her, but it happened after we went our separate ways.”

“Why didn’t you mention this allegedly consensual sex when I swabbed you?” Veronica asked. “You knew what I was looking for. Why didn’t you clear it all up when you had a chance, a week ago?”

Patches of purple sprang up across his face, a color that perversely resembled the mottled bruises in the picture in front of him. “Well, Ms. Mars, the fact is, I was embarrassed.”

Veronica leaned forward. “Of what? Having sex?”

Bellamy crossed his arms. “No. Of having sex with a prostitute.”

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 537