Veronica Mars by Rob Thomas Read Free Book Online Page A

suspended nearly every other week for fighting. By high school, he’d donned the trench coat and combat boots required for discontented youths—and had a weapons collection to make his scowl this side of terrifying.For a while, he’d been suspected of calling in bomb threats to the school, but Veronica had been able to prove his innocence. Beneath his trench coat and fuck-the-man attitude, Norris was just a regular misfit with a Japanese weapons obsession—and, as it turned out, a crush on Veronica.
    Now he was barely recognizable, muscular and clean-cut in his crisp khaki uniform. But something in his eyes was just the same—brittle, both wary and resigned. Like the world was just bullshit, all the way down. Veronica couldn’t imagine that working at the Neptune Sheriff’s Department would help that feeling.
    Norris set his paperwork down on the desk and rested his hands on top. “You still working for your dad?”
    “Kind of. More like tentatively with. Or perhaps in spite of?”
    Norris’s lips curled up into a smirk. “Yeah, well, my dad is just glad I have a job.”
    Veronica could only imagine. Norris’s dad was a law-abiding programmer at Kane Software. He’d once bribed his son with a trip to Japan if he’d stay out of trouble and keep his grades up. “I have to admit I never quite imagined you as an upholder of the peace.”
    Norris gave a quick snort of laughter. “Yeah, well, we all have to grow up sometime, right?” Then he shrugged, suddenly serious. “I was pissed off about everything for so long. I guess I found a place to put my fight. Anyway, what are you doing here? You out here working a case?”
    Veronica gathered herself. “Kind of. I have an appointment with Lamb.”
    “Lucky you.”
    They looked at each other for a moment, and then, at the same time, both broke into grins.
    “This way.” Norris opened the little gate next to the desk and jerked his head back toward Lamb’s office.
    In the hallway outside the sheriff’s office, her eyes darted unconsciously at the Fallen Heroes wall. That was where they hung the photos of all the cops who’d been killed in the line of duty. Down at the bottom was the most recent—Deputy Jerry Sacks, his mustache glossy and perfect in immortality. His picture was hung next to Don Lamb’s. She stared at both for a moment, complicated feelings fighting inside her. Lamb had made her life a living hell in high school, but she’d also come to suspect that he’d grown up in an abusive home. It was that same old vicious cycle: the Lamb boys were bullied; they became bullies. And while she’d never thought of Sacks as anything but Lamb’s gofer, his desire to help her dad investigate the Sheriff’s Department is what got him killed in the end. Now Lamb and Sacks were both gone, and something oddly like grief twisted in her gut.
    “What’s
she
doing here?”
    She turned to see Sheriff Dan Lamb staring at her through his half-open door. Petra Landros sat across from him, her long legs crossed, an impatient grimace on her face. Veronica exchanged glances with Norris, then stepped inside. Lamb’s office was dim and wood paneled, with a map of the states on one wall and an American flag in the corner.
    She smiled sweetly. “Nice press appearance last week. Your hair looked
great
.”
    They stared at each other across the desk. Logan had once told Veronica she didn’t have any flight—just way too much fight for her own good. Now she felt her hackles rising as she looked at Lamb. At his smug leer; at the way he leaned back in his chair like a toad on a choice lily pad, justwaiting for nice fat flies to fall in his mouth. He was in his early forties, tall and fit, with the mildly fussy air of a man vain about his looks. His face was boyish, with a wide, sullen mouth and round cheeks, and he wore his hair in a sleek mane around his ears. Most unsettling were his eyes—the same bright blue as his dead younger brother’s.
    Don Lamb had been lazy and