Down the Darkest Road

23

“That plate came back to Avis,” Hicks said, coming into the break room.

Mendez was busy stirring sugar into his third cup of coffee. He was tired. After leaving Lauren Lawton he had gone back to bed but hadn’t slept, finally turning the television on to stare at infomercials for spray-on hair and Veg-O-Matics. At five thirty he gave up and went for a run followed by fifty chin-ups, a hundred crunches, and ten minutes hitting the speed bag. Now he was tired and sore, and still brooding about Lauren Lawton.

“What plate?” he asked.

“The car Mavis Whitaker saw parked in front of Ballencoa’s house in San Luis,” Hicks said. “The guy who said he was a cop.”

He selected a coffee mug and poured himself a cup, arching a brow at his partner as Mendez picked a chocolate-glazed doughnut from the opened pink bakery box on the counter. “You know you’re perpetuating a stereotype, right?”

“We have them for a reason.”

“Long night, hot date?”

“Long night,” Mendez muttered. “Avis? It was a rental?”

“Yeah. So for sure the guy wasn’t on the job. And I called the Avis office in San Luis. That car was never on their lot.”

“What the fuck? Who rents a car to go to another town to spy on some dirtbag?”

“It all goes right along with this business,” Hicks said. “Someone rents a car out of town to go spy on a dirtbag who rents a house in one town and lives someplace else.”

Mendez fished a couple of Tylenol out of his pants pocket and tossed them back. “This is starting to sound like one of those long math word problems that used to make me want to puke in school.”

He took a seat at the table and looked up at the TV monitor on the wall. Detective Trammell was in an interview room with a suspect on a domestic abuse complaint.

“How much do you wanna bet he asks the guy if he still beats his wife?” he asked his partner.

“Nothing. That’s a sucker bet.” Hicks turned the volume up on the monitor and sat down.

In the interview room Detective Trammell sat back in his chair and regarded his suspect. Trammell was a guy’s guy, with a simple, straightforward style in an interview. Mano a mano. Let’s have a beer and talk shit.

“So, Gary,” he said, “are you still beating your wife?”

“Ha!” Hicks laughed. “That never gets old.”

The suspect fell all over himself saying he didn’t, hadn’t, never had, never could, it was all a big misunderstanding.

“Yeah, right,” Hicks said with disgust. “She misunderstood him swinging his fist and walked right into it with her face.”

“Lying sack of shit,” Mendez growled. “I pulled that asshole in here six months ago for the same thing. The wife wouldn’t press charges.”

“She should just take a gun and shoot him next time,” Hicks suggested. “Save us all the time and money screwing around with him. The guy’s a waste of skin.”

“Right,” Mendez said. “The DA would piss all over us to make a case against her.”

“Sometimes there’s no justice.”

Mendez thought of Lauren Lawton and her Walther PPK. He wondered how good a shot she was, and how many times she had imagined plugging Roland Ballencoa in the head.

“So according to the DMV,” Hicks went back on topic, “Avis owns the car. According to the Avis office in San Luis, they’ve never had the car on their lot. All the Avis cars with California tags are registered to the corporate office in Sacramento. The car could have come from anywhere in the state.”

Mendez scratched the top of his head. “Avis can track down the rental history on the car, right?”

“Yeah, but it’ll take some time. They have offices in 122 cities in the state of California—and multiple offices in a lot of those cities. Cars get picked up at one location, dropped off at another, rented out again. The paper trail is slow to come together. It was a couple of months ago, so that’s on our side. Still, it takes time on their end, and it’s not like we’ve got a warrant or anything.”

“If they had it all coordinated somehow on computers, that would be the ticket,” Mendez said, ever frustrated that all the great technology he kept reading about seemed always just out of reach.

“That day will come,” Hicks agreed. “But not today. At any rate, if Cal isn’t that excited about us spending hours on Ballencoa, then he sure isn’t going to give a shit if someone was spying on the guy in San Luis. It might be an interesting puzzle, but what’s it got to do with us?”

“Maybe something,” Mendez said. “I got a call from Lauren Lawton at two thirty this morning. Someone came onto the property she’s renting and left a photograph on the windshield of her car—a photograph of her in a parking lot, taken yesterday.”

Hicks furrowed his brow. “Did she see anybody?”

“No, but she’s convinced it’s Ballencoa. She says he stalked her in Santa Barbara.”

“She says?”

Mendez shrugged. “The SBPD wasn’t so sure about it.”

“What do you think?”

“I think she was pretty upset last night. And she didn’t take that photo of herself,” he pointed out. “And get this: She told me Ballencoa broke into her house in Santa Barbara and hung out just to freak her out.”

“That’s crazy.”

“No. Listen. She said she knew someone had been in the house. Someone drank a glass of wine and then washed the glass and left it where she would find it. He had touched things, moved things. He did a load of laundry—”

“What?” Hicks said, incredulous. “Are you smoking crack? Is this woman smoking crack? She says he broke into her house and did his laundry?”

“No! He did her laundry,” Mendez said. “She left a basket of dirty laundry on the washing machine. Underwear.”

Hicks closed his mouth as the meaning sank in. “Oh, man. That’s disgusting.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Mendez agreed. “He goes in her house, helps himself to the wine, touches her stuff, jerks off in her underwear, and does the laundry so there’s no evidence. Does that sound familiar?”

“The B and Es,” Hicks said. “Somebody breaks in, messes with their stuff, but doesn’t take anything.”

“This could be our guy,” Mendez said. “And if it is, he’s not just some perv, he’s a predator casing his potential victims.”

“Holy crap.”

“We need to pull those case files and take another look at who’s living in those houses.”

“Right.” Hicks narrowed his eyes. “Hey. Why didn’t you call me?”

“Last night? Why? We should both get dragged out of bed on a prowler call?”

“She called you at home?”

“I gave her my card. What?” he asked at the roll of his partner’s eyes. “She’s new here. She doesn’t know anybody. She’s been to hell and back. She doesn’t think anybody gives a shit.”

“You’re a regular Welcome Wagon, Tony. Is this something new for Oak Knoll? Every newcomer gets their own personal sheriff’s detective?”

“It’s not like that,” he said, irritated. “She’s got special circumstances. I’m just trying to be a decent human being.”

“Whatever you say.”

“That’s what I say.”

Mendez got up and threw half of his doughnut in the trash and dumped the last of his coffee in the sink.

“What’s your plan?” Hicks asked.

“I handed the photograph off to Latent Prints. We’ll see what they come up with,” he said. “I’m going to start calling utility companies. Maybe Ballencoa can live without a phone, but I’m betting he’s got electricity. I’m going to track this bastard down, and we’re going to have a chat about how things are done in Oak Knoll.”