Down the Darkest Road ok-3

by Tami Hoag

  “Ho-ly shit,” Tanner murmured excitedly. “He’s following her. That nurse.”

  Mendez felt a little rush of adrenaline. The Toyota had parked in front of a little cracker box house. There was no sign of the nurse. Ballencoa cruised slowly past, then made a right. Mendez went straight onto the next block, did a three-point turn, and doubled back, parking at the corner with a sight line to the red Toyota.

  Ballencoa’s van came back onto the block from the opposite direction and pulled over and parked maybe twenty yards from the Toyota.

  Neither Mendez nor Tanner said anything. They waited. They held their breath. They waited for Ballencoa to get out of the van, to approach the little square house the Toyota had parked in front of.

  “Do you think he made us?” Tanner asked softly, as if there was some chance of Ballencoa hearing her a block away.

  “I don’t think he would have stopped if he’d made us,” Mendez said.

  “Or he would—just to yank our chains.”

  “Maybe.”

  “This is like watching one of those nature shows,” Tanner murmured. “Watching the tiger stalk some poor unsuspecting whatever the hell tigers stalk.”

  They sat there for nearly ten minutes before Ballencoa pulled away from the curb and came toward them. Shit, Mendez thought. He was going to come right past them. No way he wouldn’t see them. Tanner slid down in her seat and ducked her head. Mendez twisted around and pretended to look for something in the backseat.

  But Ballencoa turned left at the corner just in front of them, never looking their way.

  Tanner and Mendez exhaled together. They waited another ten minutes to make sure he didn’t come back, then went to knock on the door of the nurse with the red Toyota.

  42

  Mendez ran the tag on the Toyota before they went to the door. It came back to Denise Marie Garland, twenty, no wants or warrants.

  He checked his watch as they went up the sidewalk. He was due in Dixon’s office in seventeen minutes. He rapped his knuckles hard on the door and said, “Miss Garland? Sheriff’s office.”

  Denise Garland came to the door clutching her bathrobe closed at the throat, her mousy brown hair hanging in wet strings around her head, her brown eyes wide.

  Mendez showed her his badge. “Miss Garland, I’m Detective Mendez, this is Detective Tanner. We need to ask you a few questions. May we come in?”

  She stepped back from the door. “Did I do something? I know I’m not supposed to park in the doctors’ lot, but I was so late—”

  “You haven’t done anything, ma’am,” Mendez said. “We’re investigating a string of break-ins in your neighborhood. We’d like to ask you some questions, that’s all.”

  “Break-ins?”

  “Have you noticed anyone strange hanging around the neighborhood lately?” Tanner asked, drawing the girl’s attention to her, allowing Mendez to move a little farther into the room.

  The kitchen was to his left, the living room to the right. The place was the size of a postage stamp. It was clean with a normal amount of clutter. A pile of mail here. A stack of magazines there. Some dishes in the sink.

  “No,” she said. “But I work nights. I just got home.”

  “You’re a nurse?” Tanner said.

  “Yes. I work in the ER.”

  Half of her furniture was white plastic. The kind that was always on display on the sidewalk outside of Ralphs market and Thrifty drugstores. He could see a small table and four chairs of the same white plastic out on a little patio area on the other side of a flimsy-looking sliding glass door.

  “Have you noticed anything out of place?” Tanner asked. “Anything missing?”

  Denise Garland frowned as she thought. “No.”

  “Do you keep your doors locked, Ms. Garland?” Mendez asked, walking over to the patio door.

  Even as she said yes he pushed the door open with a finger.

  “Well,” she said, flustered. “Sometimes I forget that one. I have to be more careful, I know. My mom is always harping at me about locking my doors. I accidentally left it open the other night. Stupid.”

  “Did you?” Mendez asked, looking at Tanner. “Are you sure you forgot to close it?”

  The girl looked puzzled by the question. “I thought I closed it. It was open when I got home. You don’t think . . . ?”

  “Did anything seem disturbed?” Tanner asked. “Is anything missing?”

  “No . . . I don’t think so . . .” Now she seemed unsure of everything as she tried to recall. “My friend Candace came over in the afternoon. We cooked out. I was late leaving for work. I was in a hurry. I figured I just didn’t remember to close the door.”

  “Do you have a washing machine?” Tanner asked.

  Now every question sounded strange and sinister to her. “No. Why?”

  “Have you noticed any articles of your clothing missing?”

  “No. What kind of question is that?” she asked, getting more agitated by the second.

  A drawing on the counter between the kitchen and living area caught the eye of Mendez as he came back toward the front door. A pencil drawing. A cartoon. A caricature of a group of nurses, Denise Garland with her heart-shaped face among them. The artist had signed it in the lower right-hand corner: ROB.

  A memory scratched at him. From the afternoon Ballencoa had come to the SO to file his complaint. Him asking Hicks what had been in Ballencoa’s messenger bag. A sketch pad, a notebook, a couple of rolls of film . . .

  “Ms. Garland,” he said, “do you know a man named Roland Ballencoa?”

  “No.”

  He picked up the drawing and held it so Tanner could see it. “Where did you get this?”

  “Oh, that’s from Rob,” the girl said, relaxing. This was something that wasn’t scary to her. A pleasant memory.

  “Who’s Rob?”

  “The guy at the diner,” she explained, finding a little smile. “He’s always there for breakfast. He does those and gives them to people. Just for fun. He’s nice.”

  “Nice,” Tanner said.

  “Nice,” Mendez repeated.

  Denise Garland didn’t know whether she was supposed to be happy or cry.

  Mendez took a business card out of his wallet and handed it to her.

  “Miss Garland,” Tanner said. “I have to be careful how I word this, but I want you to know that man has been a person of interest in a felony investigation in Santa Barbara.”

  The girl’s eyes went impossibly wide. “Oh my God. What did he do? Do you think he broke into my house?”

  “Double-check your locks,” Mendez suggested.

  “And check your underwear drawer,” Tanner suggested. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Garland.”

  “You’re late,” Cal Dixon said sharply as Mendez walked into his office.

  “Roland Ballencoa is stalking a nurse from Mercy General Hospital,” Mendez returned.

  Dixon sat back. “What?”

  Mendez told him what had happened, weathering the scowl that came when he told the sheriff about tailing Ballencoa away from the diner. In this case, he felt the end more than justified the means.

  “You’re sure he didn’t see you?” Dixon asked.

  “Ninety-nine point nine percent. I think he would have already called you and raised a stink if he’d made me for a tail.”

  Dixon cursed under his breath. That spot between the rock and the hard place was never comfortable. They had no legitimate call to tail Roland Ballencoa. They had nothing on him to link him to any of the B&Es. He had in fact been a victim of a crime with Lauren Lawton attacking him at the tennis courts. While they may have had their suspicions, he was not officially a suspect in anything.

  Mendez had followed him to Denise Garland’s street, but they had nothing to link him to any crime committed against the nurse. As far as Denise Garland knew, there had been no crime committed. She couldn’t say anyone had been in her home without her consent. She couldn’t even swear that she hadn’t left
her patio door open herself. And yet Mendez would have bet a week’s pay Ballencoa had been the one to leave that door open.

  They couldn’t even follow Ballencoa on the excuse that he was a known predator because nothing had ever been proven against him in the Leslie Lawton case. They had no legitimate call to follow him, and yet in following him they now had every reason to find his behavior suspicious.

  Hicks had pegged it right the day they had gone up to San Luis Obispo to begin their investigation into Roland Ballencoa: This isn’t even a whodunit. This is a what-the-hell?

  Dixon huffed a sigh, got up from his chair, and paced behind his desk. He was a politician more by necessity than nature. By nature he was a cop first, a detective with a storied record in LA County. Yet he had to balance the two aspects of his job, Mendez knew. He didn’t envy his boss.

  “We’ve got to run our investigation like we know he’s already done something,” Mendez said.

  “But we can’t make a move against him without probable cause to believe he’s committed a crime,” Dixon countered. “I’ve already been on the phone with his attorney this morning. He wants to know what charges are going to be brought against Lauren Lawton.”

  “He’s got balls,” Mendez grumbled. “He comes here to stalk the woman and make her life a misery, and he wants her in jail on top of it.”

  “Vince is right,” Dixon said. “It’s a game to him.”

  “The DA won’t charge her, will she?”

  “I brought Kathryn Worth up to speed already,” Dixon said. “She’s not inclined to do anything, but she’s got a plan if Ballencoa presses the issue. The most Mrs. Lawton would be charged with is a petty misdemeanor. She’d plead out and get probation. A day or two of community service.”

  Mendez bobbed his eyebrows but held his tongue. No part of that would sit well with Lauren. He had to hope, for everyone’s sake, Ballencoa let the issue die on the vine.

  Dixon gave Mendez a sharp look. “What’s your plan, detective ?”

  “We’ve got to link him to the B and Es.”

  “Yes,” Dixon said drily. “Those non-crimes you didn’t want to bother with.”

  “Lesson learned,” he conceded. “I’ve got Tanner here for the day from SB. She and Bill and I are going over everything. We’ll lay it all out and hope he’s left a loose thread dangling somewhere.”

  “Yes,” Dixon said. “And we’ll hope it’s long enough Roland Ballencoa can hang himself with it.”

  43

  They moved around each other like two ghosts, each floating on their own plane, never touching, never speaking.

  Leah ate a hard-boiled egg and half a grapefruit, went and brushed her teeth, came back to the kitchen, and sat down in silence.

  Lauren drank a cup of coffee, picked at a blueberry muffin, took a couple of Tylenol, and sat at the table, silent.

  She thought she should have been trying to draw her daughter out of her shell, into conversation, but every scenario she ran through in her head ended badly so she didn’t even try. The effort would have come across as desperate and phony. She didn’t want to put either of them through the awkwardness.

  Leah had every right to be upset. Lauren had no words of wisdom. She had put the two of them in this place. She had no excuses. She had no solutions. She had made all of her promises and had promptly broken most of them. What was there to say?

  She desperately wished she could think of something. She found herself absurdly thinking of the black-and-white wisdom of the television moms she had grown up on—Donna Reed and June Cleaver—who always managed to come up with some pearl of wisdom by the end of the half hour to reassure their children that all was right with the world.

  All wasn’t right with the world. And it seemed like half of what was wrong was either directly or indirectly her own fault. Donna Reed had never been arrested for assault. June Cleaver had never contemplated hiring a hit man.

  She was still stunned Greg Hewitt had made the offer. Twenty-five thousand dollars to end the life of Roland Ballencoa. She was even more stunned that she hadn’t rejected the idea on the spot. She knew the only reasons she hadn’t said yes were that her first priority was to find Leslie, to know what had happened to her, and second, that she wanted the satisfaction of killing Roland Ballencoa herself.

  Their world had gone mad. How was she supposed to explain that to her fifteen-year-old daughter? She couldn’t, and so they left the house as they did every morning, going through the motions of what passed for normal. The usual twenty-minute drive to the Gracida ranch stretched out before them like the Bataan Death March, the silence between them as heavy as an anvil.

  Lauren stood beside the door of the car, looking at her daughter across the black expanse of the roof. Leah looked back at her, wary, waiting. Unable to stand it any longer, Lauren finally blurted out: “I’m going to make an appointment with Anne Leone. For you.”

  Leah gasped. “I’m not the crazy one attacking people!”

  “I didn’t say you were crazy,” Lauren said. “But you have to deal with me, so we should just head that off at the pass. You can go to Anne and complain about me all you like. Tell her what a bad mother I am, and how I am single-handedly trying to ruin your life and mine.”

  “It’s not funny,” Leah snapped.

  “I’m not being sarcastic,” Lauren protested. “I know you’re miserable. You’re miserable. I’m miserable. We’re the Lawtons Les Misérable.

  “I don’t know what to do about it, Leah,” she confessed. “The scary thing is I’m doing the best I can, which is truly pathetic. You should be able to go to someone and complain at the very least.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Leah argued. “I just want it to stop. I just want you to make it stop!”

  “How?” Lauren asked, frustrated. “How am I supposed to make it stop when it’s never over? Are we just supposed to pretend none of it ever happened? Am I supposed to forget you had a sister, a father? Are we supposed to pretend it’s okay that Roland Ballencoa is walking around a free man, free to stalk us? That’s not okay, Leah. Am I supposed to pretend he couldn’t take you away from me if he had the chance? What am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know!” Leah cried, pounding her fists on the roof of the BMW. “I hate it! I hate that we have to live this way! It’s all Leslie’s fault! None of this would have happened if she wasn’t such a brat! I wish she was dead! I wish we knew she was dead so we could just get on with our lives!”

  Lauren gasped as if her daughter had slapped her. If not for the car between them, she probably would have slapped her back.

  “It’s not fair!” Leah went on. “She’s gone and we have to suffer and suffer and suffer!”

  “It’s not Leslie’s fault she was taken!” Lauren countered.

  “Yes, it is!” Leah shouted. “She wasn’t supposed to leave the house and she did it anyway. And she wasn’t supposed to talk to strange men, and she did that too. And she probably just got in his car because she wanted a ride. And it’s all her own stupid fault because she thought she was smarter than everybody!”

  “Leah!”

  “It’s true! And I hate her!” she cried, tears streaming down her face. “She ruined all our lives, but we’re supposed to go around saying ‘poor Leslie, poor Leslie.’ I’m sick of it!”

  Lauren staggered back as if from a blow. She turned her back on her daughter because she didn’t know what else to do. Leah was her sweet one. Leslie had been headstrong. Leslie had been vocal. Leslie would have fought with her, not Leah.

  Yet she could hear her youngest’s cries from just a day ago—What about me?

  What about Leah? The daughter she had brought with her on this mad quest, putting her in harm’s way, depriving her of what childhood she should have had left. What about Leah . . .

  A car door slammed behind her and Lauren jumped as if a gun had gone off. Leah was sitting in the BMW, angrily swiping the tears from her cheeks.

  Lauren got in the c
ar because she didn’t know what else to do. This is what we do, she thought. We pretend to be normal. Their world had come so far off its axis she didn’t know what normal was anymore.

  Normal had become carrying a gun.

  Normal had become pills to sleep and alcohol to numb the pain of being awake.

  Normal had become the obsession with a daughter she didn’t have, and the neglect of the daughter she did have.

  Normal had become raw, dirty sex with a man she didn’t like, and an offer to murder a man she hated.

  I just want it to stop, Leah had said.

  Me too, Lauren thought.

  The silence fell between them again like an iron curtain as Lauren started the car and drove out the gate.

  They were halfway to the ranch before she spoke again.

  “I love you, Leah,” she said. “Don’t ever think that I don’t love you just as much as I love Leslie. If you were taken from me, I would fight just as hard for you.”

  Leah stared down at her hands in her lap. “I’m afraid, Mommy. I’m afraid something bad is going to happen to you,” she said in a small voice.

  Lauren didn’t answer her right away. She weighed what she was about to say, deciding it was necessary to say it.

  “You know you would never be left alone,” she said. “If something ever did happen—and I’m not saying that anything will—but you need to know you will always be taken care of, sweetheart. Your aunt Meg would take care of you—”

  “Don’t say that!” Leah snapped. “You’re scaring me!”

  “I’m not trying to scare you. You said you were already afraid. I don’t want you to be afraid.”

  “Stop it! I don’t want to talk about it!”

  Once at the ranch, Leah got out of the car, slammed the door, and ran for the stables. Lauren watched her go, her daughter’s earlier words echoing in her head: I just want you to make it stop.

  She needed to make it stop. For both their sakes. Roland Ballencoa had destroyed half her family in a single act. She couldn’t let him destroy what was left of it by allowing this madness to go on. That was why she had come here after all. To end it.