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I wouldn’t be shocked if it opened the door for other individual lawsuits. Your kid could grow up in a very different Neptune than you did.”
    Weevil leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. He was starting to look excited. “You really think we’d have a shot?”
    Keith grinned. “I’ve already done most of the dirty work. We’ve got almost thirty witnesses who claim the Sheriff’s Department has planted evidence. Some of them might even get their records expunged if Lamb gets enough of a black eye on this.”
    “And the media is already hammering Lamb with questions about that disappearing Glock,” Cliff added. “We just have to make sure they don’t let it drop.”
    Eli looked down at his feet, motionless for a few long seconds. When he finally looked up, it was with a crooked grin.
    “All right,” he said. “I’m in.”

CHAPTER SIX
    Veronica, Keith, Weevil, Cliff, and Mac polished off the Scotch, discussing strategy for hours. It was agreed that Keith would take point on any further legwork, since, as he put it, “the resident big-shot has her
own
case to deal with.” Veronica noted the wink with which her father delivered this jab. She smiled wanly, but she was grateful.
    It was after ten when they finally dispersed. Keith and Cliff went off in search of greasy, gluten-rich food—they’d invited Veronica but she declined—and Mac was meeting with some old Sun Microsystems colleagues at a bar. Veronica was ready to go home. She’d spent the last week in knots of anxiety. Now, with Weevil exonerated, she just wanted to sleep.
    The silver RAV4 she’d purchased after the Hayley Dewalt case was parked on the street below the office. She’d opted for the little crossover to help with surveillance. Dearly as she missed streaking up the coastal highway in Logan Echolls’s BMW convertible, the SUV made it easier to see over and around traffic. She pulled away from the curb, still chewing over the details of the new case, and headed south.
    Most of Neptune’s sparkling shoreline belonged to the city’s elite. Movie stars and captains of industry had mansions looking out over the Pacific. Yacht clubs, private beaches, and five-star resorts took up the rest. But Dog Beach, a four-mile stretch of golden sand and crashing surf, had always belonged to the hoi polloi. It had long been home to the oddball assortment that gravitate to any public beach: surf bums, earth mothers, buskers, carnies, bikers, burnouts, and street artists, along with the rest of Neptune’s trust-fund-impaired. And now it was home to Veronica. Once the doctors had finally given Keith a clean bill of health, she’d moved out of his little bungalow and into an apartment just a quarter-mile walk from the shoreline, in a fading beauty of a building with a Spanish tile roof and deep casement windows.
    She parked her car and started up the open stairs. Moths batted stupidly at the porch lights as she passed. Behind one door she heard the low murmur of a TV. Faintly, she caught the sharp salt smell of the ocean from a few blocks away.
    The air in her third-floor apartment was close and heavy as she opened the door. The little window-unit AC just blew dust through the rooms, so she usually didn’t bother with it. When she was home she left the windows open wide for the Pacific coast breeze to move through. Now she turned on the ceiling fan and a lamp, stepping gratefully out of her heels and onto the hardwood floor.
    The unit was small but cozy, decorated with a combination of secondhand finds and one or two things she’d pilfered from her dad’s house. A gray-and-white striped sofa sat across from a low walnut bookcase, flanked by floor lamps with vintage-store shades. The walls were lined with reprints of WPA travel posters, advertising Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Crater Lake in bright blocky colors. Half-melted candles sat on an end table, between a phrenological head and a framed photo of her half brother,