Veronica touched the scar that ran from the corner of her mouth, across her cheek and up towards her ear. Once fresh and pink, it had faded over time into a thin white line, barely visible unless you were looking for it, or if you happened to notice that one side of her mouth was a little lopsided when she smiled. Veronica didn't smile that often.
She had some other visible scars. The gunshot wound to the shoulder that left a blossom-like scar, white and lumpy. The lead and metal of the bullet was still sitting in her body, making it ache on cold days. There weren't that many cold days in L.A. Then there were the surgical scars left from when she'd rounded a corner while chasing a perp and his buddy had t-boned her with his car, leaving her with a fractured pelvis and a broken femur. Recovery had been a bitch.
Most of Veronica's scars were the invisible type. The kind that left imprints on her memory and rose up in the middle of the night stealing her sleep and she would sit at the kitchen counter of her cramped apartment feeling the burn of tequila slip down her throat.
It had been a strange spring in LA. Rain had actually come; flooding the streets, washing the grime off the buildings and covering the city in a shiny patina, making it seem new again. Veronica sat in her office staring blankly out the window as the rain dripped off the eves and spattered against the window. The room was dim in the afternoon light, the desk lit by a solitary lamp. Next to the lamp was a nameplate. Marble with gold embossed letters. It had been a gift from her dad when she'd finally started making enough money to afford an actual office.
"Veronica Mars. P.I. to the Stars."
It was a nondescript office in a nondescript building, dark carpet made to hide coffee stains, beige furniture, a small waiting area with two cheap couches and a plastic plant. Not even a very real looking plastic plant. Veronica had picked it up at garage sale because she knew if she bought a real one she'd only kill it.
Her office was sparse: a couple bookshelves, two mildly comfortable chairs and a love seat that doubled as a bed when long nights became early mornings. Her certificate from the Los Angeles Police Academy and a picture of her on the day she was sworn in as an officer of the law were nailed to the wall. They were part of her past but they made her clients feel they were in good hands. In the center of the room was what Veronica had decided was what all hot shot executives had to compensate for their small dicks: a mammoth mahogany desk and a leather high back chair.
She'd been happy with the steel case desk she'd picked up at a second hand office supply store in Culver City. But her dad had insisted. If she was going to be Veronica Mars, P.I. to the Stars, she needed a kick ass desk to keep their egos in check. She hadn't been too surprised when she walked into her office one Monday and found the old steel case replaced by The Monster. And it had come in handy as high powered executives had sat across from her, insisting their second wife, twenty years their junior, had to be cheating with the trainer he'd hired to keep her in shape while he traveled eighty hours per week. Veronica would nod; try to look understanding and jot down notes on one of the multitudes of yellow steno pads she kept, one for each case she was working on.
So she had her power desk, her fake plant, uncomfortable lobby couches and a handful of powerful clients. That had been five years ago. Business had been good to her with word spreading quickly after she'd helped reduce a couple alimony settlements by a couple mil. Soon she was able to hire someone to answer the phones and write down her appointments. Then she decided she needed a computer specialist, and she knew exactly who she wanted.
Veronica had kept in touch with only two people from Neptune. Wallace was a given since Keith and Alicia had decided to make it official and tied the knot on a warm summer day in the backyard of their new house. She'd inherited two new brothers that day, and a sister a year later when Alicia gave birth after a hard twenty-hour labor. Veronica remembered how Keith had beamed as he emerged from Alicia's room, a new dad all over again. Sophia would be eight years in the fall.
The other was Mac. She'd moved to L. A. around the same time Veronica had been finishing at the academy. When Veronica needed someone to trace illicit e-mails between lovers and track down extortionists, she'd gone straight to Mac who was working in the computer department of some faceless corporation in the valley. She seduced her over lattes with geek talk and the promise that Mac could bring back her blue streak, wear jeans to work every day, and she'd have the biggest baddest Macintosh on the face of the planet if she came to work for her. At least it would be more interesting than trouble-shooting network errors all day long. Two weeks later Veronica was showing her new computer specialist into her small but clean office and welcoming her to the company.
Mac had gone home for the day, flipping her blue streaked hair as she bounced out the door, telling Veronica that she was welcome to join her for dinner. She offered every night and every night Veronica said no. It wasn't that she didn't like Mac. She loved Mac, and adored her girlfriend, but they were just to fucking happy and it would disturb the melancholy that had shrouded Veronica lately.
Only her receptionist was still in the office, watching the clock tick steadily toward 5:00. Veronica had one more appointment before she went home for the day, back to her tiny one bedroom apartment. Her only plans for the evening were to pick up Chinese and work on some case notes.
"You're five o'clock is here."
Veronica swiveled her chair around and pulled out a fresh steno pad. Probably another rich man convinced his wife was having an affair with her trainer, or personal chef, or acting coach, or Spanish teacher…take your pick. With summer approaching the latest paranoia to run rampant through the world of the too rich was that the pool boy was a secret bastion of seduction and she'd been busy doing background checks on young men named Juan and Jose who were usually supporting an ailing mother or sending money back to their family in Mexico. There were few cases of true nefarious motivations on behalf of L.A.'s pool boy population. Veronica longed for a good embezzlement case, but she still had to pay the bills.
"Send him in." Veronica yelled back, vowing once again to teach her receptionist how to use the intercom.
She leaned back, pencil in hand, trying to push away the heaviness that had come with the rain. The memories that had become too hard to hold back lately, no matter how much midnight tequila she downed and she hadn't stopped to wonder why. She knew because it happened every year as the anniversary approached. Even if she thought she'd forgotten, a dark sadness would set in and one day she'd remember the anniversary was approaching and realize why she'd been in such a terrible mood. She'd have a drink, sit in the dark and cry for an hour and then move on. It was her annual memorial to Lilly.
It was useless to play the what-if game. To think what things might have been different if the whole chain of events hadn't been started? It didn't matter if she'd probably be lying on the deck of the Kane yacht somewhere off the coast of Italy planning her shopping for the day. She would have been an be an entirely different person if Aaron Echolls hadn't smashed Lilly's head into shards of bone, flesh and hair with an ashtray. But that's not how things ended up and Veronica had learned through the years that things happened for a reason, even if it was hard to understand at the time.
She tapped her pencil on the desk as she sat waiting for her new client to come in. A half-hour, maybe an hour, then she could jump into her beat-up 1978 Volvo and make her way through the rain-slick streets. Her dad wondered why she eschewed anything new. After all, being P.I. to the Stars had been lucrative and Veronica had plenty of money and certainly could afford any one of the huge SUVs that would allow her to keep up with the Jones'. But she loved the ghosts that old things brought with them, the memories they dragged along behind her as she went through life. They had meaning. New things didn't have meaning.
"Go on in, sir." She heard her receptionists say, her voice slightly irritated. Perhaps her new client was hesitant, maybe he'd never hired a PI before. Veronica remembered that she always liked to record her first meeting so she could listen to it later, go back and evaluate the tone of voice, the inflection, the silences. She learned so much from the silences. She leaned down and opened the bottom drawer of her mammoth desk where she kept her recorder. She heard the door squeak a little as her new client entered the room.
"I'm sorry." She said as felt around for the small rectangular recorder she'd had since she started the business. "I'll be with you in just a moment."
Finally she felt the cold plastic against her hand. She grabbed it and shut the drawer then sat up in her chair to feel the shock of surprise pass through her and her routine shtick she greeted new clients with fell away.
Veronica closed her mouth that had fallen open when she realized who was standing in her doorway and she grasped for whatever tiny bit of composure she could find. She'd only seen his face in the papers over the last ten years, and that one time when she'd sat in a cold, sterile room and watched them search for a vein on the man who'd killed her best friend, watched as his eyes fluttered shut and his heart slowly stopped. He'd been there too, but she hadn't talked to him, could barely even look at him.
The professional took over. Veronica cleared her throat and picked up the pencil that she'd left lying next to the steno pad.
"Hello Logan. Have a seat."