This is the second update within 24 hours. Please be sure to read Part 10 above first.
Part 11
Veronica noticed the people in the station look up when the sheriff arrived. She smiled and nodded at a few who seemed to assess her carefully. She turned to Leo and asked quietly, "Do I know them?"
Leo glanced around, then said, "Nah. None of the people who worked here a few years ago are here. It's a weekend."
"So only the new staff is here. Of course, the new employees can't choose their schedules," Veronica said in realization.
At those words, Leo smiled and shook his head. "I'm beginning to think you didn't forget anything."
He led her inside the station, and Veronica wavered at the barrage of familiar scents and sounds. She had been here, many many times. She did not know where the defense mechanism came, but assailed with what could possibly be the beginning of memories, Veronica tried to lighten her response. "Well maybe all this time all I needed was a talk with you."
The sheriff blushed and looked down. "Oh Veronica Mars."
Veronica smiled and walked forward. He lifted the partition and allowed her to get in. Veronica went directly to the second desk and smoothed her hand over some scuff marks. "Tell your deputies not to put their feet up too much. Their shoes are wearing the wood," she suggested.
Leo stopped beside her. "That used to be my desk," he informed her.
Veronica looked up at him, surprised. Her gaze fell on a closed door that had Leo's name on it. "May I?"
He shrugged and gestured with his hand towards the office. "Your dad used to work there."
Veronica headed towards the office and then pulled a chair to the corner. She then settled into the chair and looked around.
iVeronica bit the pencil eraser as she tried to figure out the bearing of the boat and the lighthouse. Really, she was never going to be a lighthouse keeper or a sailor. Still she calculated using sine and cosine and used degrees and minutes and seconds.
Her mother was sick at home. When her father had seen that, he had offered his office so that she could work on her homework in peace. Veronica still wondered why her father didn't make her stay at home instead. It was going to be easier.
"You have your fourteen year old daughter in your office?"
Keith looked up and motioned for the lawyer to take a seat. "Veronica just has some math problems to work on."
The lawyer sat down and laid his documents down. "And you're okay with Veronica hearing about the case?"
Her father leaned towards the lawyer and said, "Just keep your voice down so you don't disturb her."
Veronica made a moue of distaste. Lilly was going to the mall, and she had invited her. Lilly had even made it a sweeter invitation by telling her that she was going to meet up with her brother to get her allowance before she went shopping. Veronica slipped her notebook into her bag, then tossed her pencil inside. Lilly had always known that Veronica thought Duncan was dreamy. She would have more fun with Lilly because Duncan was going to smile at her for about fifteen full seconds. That would be so much better than listening to the lawyer drone on and on about the case her father had investigated.
"Dad, I'm going to the mall."
Keith held up his hand at the lawyer. He stood up and walked over to his daughter. "Are you done with your homework?"
"Yeah," Veronica told him. She took the notebook from her bag. "I can show you."
He waved it away. "No need to be on the defense, Veronica." He took some money out of his wallet and offered it to her. "Here. You can buy a sweater. Lilly's going on a shopping spree. You should at least get one thing."
Veronica took the money and leaned up to kiss her father's cheeks. "Thanks dad. I'll see you at home."/i
"I hung around here a lot," she told him. Veronica stood up and looked closely around the office. She sighed. Veronica would rather be alone when she drowned herself in memories that seemed to be forthcoming. Leo was trustworthy.
He was not the man she wanted to be with when she reminisced.
"You were going to show me something?" Veronica prompted.
"Yeah," Leo told her. He walked over behind the desk and lifted a box off the floor and onto the tabletop. "Here we go."
"What is that?" Veronica said curiously.
"Our file on you."
"And you had this ready in case you run into me?"
Leo shook his head. "I wasn't that hung up on you," the sheriff pointed out. "I called in the request to take that from the archives while we were in the cemetery."
Veronica lifted the cover and picked out a manila folder. Her very first incident was being in the passenger seat of Lilly Kane's car when she swerved and ran a red light. At the very end of the folder, Veronica read the missing person's report filed after she had vanished.
She peered into the box and looked through some of the various knick knacks inside. "Fake IDs? Audio tapes? Pictures?" Veronica shook her head. "I want to go to the school."
Characteristically, Leo had offered to drive her to the school while she browsed through what Leo had given her. On the way, Veronica looked through some of the pictures from the box.
"Why do you have surveillance pictures of me?"
Leo glanced at the photos that Veronica was holding. "Those aren't surveillance photos of you."
"Could've fooled me," Veronica muttered.
"Those are surveillance photos of Logan Echolls. He was on our watchlist. He was a ticking bomb after your breakup."
Veronica studied the photograph. Although she was in focus as she sipped her morning coffee in the diner, Logan was right there in the background, watching her intently.
iVeronica counted a few coins and dropped them on the table. Money. It was all going to be about money. The operation, the upkeep, the maintenance medicines. Her father was in pain, suffering through the worst fate imaginable. They called it a slow death, when your insides ate you alive but you just can't seem to die. With Celeste's money, the last few months of her father's life could be relatively painless. Keith Mars was a good man. He deserved more care than what his daughter had yet been able to provide.
She turned on her phone and dialed the number she thought she would not have to use. "I've thought about it," she said. "I'll take it. I'll drop by your house. Is Duncan there?" Veronica shook her head, knowing Celeste could not see. "I'll wait in the Camelot."
She rose to leave when a hand gripped her elbow. She looked back and saw Logan. "What are you doing?" she hissed.
"A cup of coffee in the morning. You're skin and bones." Veronica flinched when he reached to tenderly touch the rings around her eyes. "You haven't been sleeping," he concluded.
"I have a sick dad in the hospital that I have to watch over," she replied stiffly.
"Who's watching over you, Veronica?" he whispered.
Veronica shut her eyes tightly. "I thought you were off gallivanting around Europe." She was exhausted. "Logan, I have so much to do. Go back to Italy, or to Norway—wherever. I have problems of my own. I don't need to deal with yours." She walked away.
"I'm going to talk to Duncan," he told her.
She had a plan, and Duncan was going to be left at the wake. "Stay out of it!" she snapped. Veronica turned around and regarded Logan Echolls, the spoiled pretty boy she had briefly dated before she went back into the caring arms of Duncan Kane. Logan had left without leaving her the chance to explain. Now she was going to do the same to Duncan. Veronica did not need Logan to rub salt into Duncan's wound. /i
"We're here," Leo said as the car rolled to a stop in front of the school. "Do you want me to go with you?"
Veronica shook her head. She had left Logan to do this alone. Although Leo never once affected what she interpreted of her memories, and really she never told Leo about anything she remembered, Veronica needed to walk into that school with her own two feet.
"What do you want to find out, Veronica?" Leo drawled with a big smile. "I can tell you a lot."
"I just need to be here right now," she answered.
"All you'll find there, if you do look through yearbooks and annuals and newspapers, are frozen moments that point you to Duncan Kane," he followed up as she opened the car door and stepped outside.
Veronica looked at Leo sideways. "I'm insulted, sheriff. Didn't you know Veronica Mars is so much more than a man?" With a half-smile, she turned around and walked into Neptune High.
For the past few weeks since he had watched Veronica's plane vanish into the horizon, Logan had exerted all his effort into being a good and contented person. She had decided to face Duncan alone, and that was what he had allowed her to do. After all, Logan thought then, she was the one he had deceived, the one he had lied to, the one he had stolen from. With this in mind, Logan had rented a room in an elite hotel in Causeway Bay, and returned to the lifestyle he had shunned for so long.
When Veronica returned, he would show her that he was as willing as Duncan to provide for her. Money would never be an issue again.
Despite the silken sheets imported from Egypt, with a thread count that Logan could not even remember, and goosedown pillows under his head, sleep eluded Logan. When he tried to drift into sleep, hundreds of images attacked him. He fought them, but one or two held him captive and submerged him in their beautiful and terrible disaster that Logan was afraid he might not wake up again.
The night after Veronica left, Logan was dreamless only because he had been sleepless. He had itched to take the phone and call home to Neptune. He had no living relative there. No caretaker remained in the Echolls estate. Logan needed to speak with her, and knew if he called the sheriff's office, or the mayor, or the principal, or anyone else, one could pass a message on to Veronica. She would call him, definitely. He had seen in her eyes something almost like recognition and for the most part, almost like love.
He would have done it had he not respected her so much.
Veronica's journey had to remain her own.
And so the next night, Logan had taken a pill to help him sleep. It was more to prevent himself from dashing off to the airport to take the next flight out and take her back into his arms. As the drug worked its way into his brain, the first insidious dream overtook him.
iLogan adjusted the lenses on his camera. The sun was bright above him, so he tested the lighting as he focused, then decided to turn off the flash and switch his mode. He then set aside his bag and searched for his target. When he chanced upon the boy running after his dog, Logan jogged towards him.
From that distance he heard the giggle of the young boy. Logan knelt on the ground and focused on the boy and his pet. He peered at the view through the lenses of his camera and waited for the perfect time to capture a scene. He was fascinated by the way the boy's brown hair flopped on his forehead with every step he took. The boy then jumped on the dog, an animal obviously larger than the child. The two rolled on the wet tiles of the dock.
"Now if I were you, I would've taken about forty shots by now."
Logan looked up to see Veronica shaking her head at him, her own camera hanging around her neck. She knelt down beside him and showed him the snapshots she had taken of the same subject. Logan defended his lapse with, "I can't help it if I am utterly fascinated with the sight of my son."
"And I'm not?" she challenged. "The difference between us, Logan, is that I will not let the moment pass. You've got to keep taking the pictures."
"I was waiting for the perfect moment."
She switched to her tutor mode, the one he had adored since she had first showed him how to use the camera she had given him as a gift, on their bed, naked, that one night after they had won the photo contest. "One of the shots I took is bound to be the perfect shot you were waiting for," she assured him. "But you've got to keep taking the pictures, Logan. I do it so I know I'll always have memories of everything I've experienced, locked in a hard drive somewhere."
Logan took the camera from her hands and displayed the photos. She was talented. She captured the angles and the shadows that he could only wish he could. He stopped on the eighth photograph she had taken and told her, "I'll have this one framed. I have almost the exact type of shot when I was a kid. And Jay looks a lot like me in this one."
Veronica glanced at the specific shot he specified, then nodded. She then stood up and yelled, "Jay! Come on. It's time for lunch."
He looked up and saw his son speaking with Duncan. Duncan held Jay's dog by the leash. Logan's heart thundered in his ears for no reason. He should have been happy. He would have chosen Duncan to be Jay's godfather after all the help he had given them during Veronica's difficult pregnancy. Still, when Duncan extended a hand to Jay and Jay placed his much smaller hand in it, Logan pushed Veronica aside and burst into a run.
"Jay, don't go with him!" he screamed. Logan ran towards them, but it seemed that the small dock plaza had sudde3nly become endless. He watched in frozen horror as Duncan looked up at him, with his son's hand and the dog's leash in his hands. Duncan backed towards the railing that he had once seen Veronica climb for the perfect shot. "Jay, let go. Come here, son," Logan mouthed, but no sound came out. He screamed, but only silence left his lips.
In front of his eyes, Logan saw the railing behind Duncan drop into the water. Then, Duncan stepped off the plaza, with Logan's son and the dog, and went over the edge.
And when he blinked, Logan was on the same edge, looking down at the ripples in the water until the water calmed./i
He had woken up drenched in sweat. It was the same dream every night for the remainder of the week. Each time he went to bed, Logan decided to do so many things different. He decided to take shots until the camera battery ran out. He thought he could choose a different snapshot. Or he wanted to make his way to Duncan before Duncan could see his son. Every night, despite his decision, Logan ended up doing it all the exact same way it happened in his dream.
Every night, he woke up and ran to the bathroom, doubling over the toilet bowl and heaving the contents of his stomach. He wondered if he should start drinking again.
Logan asked the hotel staff to clean out the alcohol from his minibar. She was not going back to a man half drunk, who had chosen to forget his pain while she fought to remember.
On the second week after Veronica had left, Logan dreamed of Veronica. It was oddly comforting, that dream.
iHer stomach was tight like a drum. She laid in bed because she had no choice. Beside her, Logan placed hot sweet potatoes that he had clutched to his chest as he ran all the way home. "They burned, but I hugged them to me because I knew you'd love to eat them warm," he told her as she presented his offering.
Veronica was teary-eyed as she peeled the first one and bit into it. While she ate, Logan pulled up her blouse to reveal the skin pulled tight over the rounded stomach. He laid his ear against the bump and listened. He then jerked up, and stared at her wide-eyed.
Veronica giggled. "That's for coming home late!"
"Did you tell the kid to kick me?" he demanded.
She snorted and continued eating the sweet potato. Logan laid his cheek on her stomach once more, then jerked up again. Veronica blushed. "That was the sweet potato," she protested.
"You farted," he murmured in disbelief.
Veronica squealed, dropped the sweet potato in the brown bag, then grabbed a pillow to hit him with it. "Shut up!"
"You farted, Ronnie," he repeated.
"I hate you," she mumbled, then dropped the pillow and curved into a ball on her side.
Logan picked up the paper bag and placed it on the bedside table, then spooned her from behind.
"It's normal you know," she whispered, sniffling. "I'm pregnant and bloated."
"I know," he said tenderly, kissing her temple. "I'm sorry for teasing." Logan sidled up closer to her. "Very very sorry. If you want I'll stay right here plastered to your back and you can fart as much as you want."
He felt her body tremble against him. Logan raised himself up on one elbow and grinned when he saw her chuckling./i
Yet upon waking up, Logan felt more devastated than he had felt after the nightmare of the week before. He knew he would dream of that exact moment with Veronica for the rest of the week. And it was bound to hurt more, because it was all reality.
At the end of that week, Logan decided he would have his own closure. Veronica was not the only one who needed to face Duncan Kane.
He was as much shattered by the events as Veronica had been.
From Veronica, Duncan had stolen her chance to recover her memories.
From Logan, Duncan had stolen his life.
In the morning, on the third week that Veronica had left for the States, Logan hailed a cab and asked to be driven to Kane Software.
Arriving was easy. Access was not. He made his way to the elevator that led to the top floor when the guards stopped him. Of course, Duncan Kane, especially an injured Duncan Kane, would have an army to guard him.
The elevator doors opened, and Li Shia stepped out. Logan did not need to say a word. She took in his appearance, with his unshaven beard, bloodshot eyes and rumpled clothes, then directed her words to the guards holding him. The words were in Mandarin, but by the way the guards released him, Logan knew what they meant. He entered the elevator with Li Shia.
"I respect your right to demand answers from him," she stated, not facing Logan, but instead watching the numbers change swiftly as they ascended in the building. "All I ask is that you don't hurt him."
Logan scowled. Duncan had gotten off too easy until now. He was going to make Duncan taste at least a quarter of the pain he had inflicted upon Logan all these years. "In exchange for what?" Logan spat.
Then Li Shia turned to him. Her brown black eyes intent as she met his. She licked her lips. Logan wondered how someone so beautiful could devote her entire life blindly to a man who did not appreciate her. "I can tell you where your son is buried."
tbc