Down the Darkest Road

38

“She did what?” Mendez said, incredulous.

“She assaulted a man at the sports complex,” the deputy explained. “Then she demanded to see you.”

The page had come just as he had been finishing his dinner with Vince and Anne and their kids. Lauren Lawton had been brought in on assault charges. Intrigued, Vince had invited himself along on the ride to the SO. They stood now in the hall outside the interview rooms.

“Did you tell her she’s being charged with anything?” Mendez asked.

“No.”

“Did you read her her rights?”

“No. The whole scene was kind of crazy, and then she asked to speak to you—demanded to speak to you is more like it—and she was going on about how the guy is some kind of child predator,” the deputy said. “And that he had kidnapped her daughter.”

“Roland Ballencoa?” Mendez said. “She assaulted Roland Ballencoa ?”

The deputy nodded. “Yeah, that’s his name. And he was screaming that she attacked him and busted his camera and he wants to press charges and he demands to see the sheriff. I thought the best thing would be to bring them both in here and sort it out.”

“Good call,” Mendez said.

“He’s in one with Detective Trammell. She’s in two. They’re all yours,” the deputy said, raising his hands in surrender as he backed away down the hall. “Good luck.”

Vince tipped his head in the direction of the break room on the opposite side of the hall. “I’ll go watch the show.”

Mendez took a deep breath and let it out, then turned the doorknob and went into interview room two. Lauren was pacing at the back wall of the tiny white room, looking like she was physically trying to hold herself together, her arms banded tight around her chest, her shoulders hunched. She looked small and fragile, and like somebody had taken a couple of good swings at her. There was an angry red abrasion on her cheek, and the knuckles of one hand were scraped and bloody. Her linen pants were torn at the knee on one leg.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“No. No, I’m not fucking all right!” she snapped, lashing out at him like a wounded wild animal trapped in a cage. “And don’t tell me to sit down, because I don’t want to sit down! And don’t tell me to calm down, because I don’t want to calm down. I am not all right!”

“Okay,” Mendez said calmly. He sat down on the edge of the small table that was situated to one side of the room. “You look like somebody beat you up. Do I need to take you to the ER ?”

“No.”

“How did you get hurt?”

“I fell.”

“While you were assaulting Roland Ballencoa?”

She looked at him sharply and with suspicion. “Do I need an attorney?”

“I haven’t read you your rights,” he said. “You haven’t been charged with anything. This isn’t an official interview. It’s not being recorded. A good lawyer could make an argument down the road that nothing you tell me now would be admissible against you. On top of that, I’m on suspension, so I’m not even supposed to be here. It’s like this isn’t even happening.”

She laughed at that, although there was no humor in the sound. “I wish that were true.”

The tremor of desperation in her voice cut at his heart. He knew she had no one—that she believed she had no one—on her side. He was close enough to reach out and touch her, but he kept his hands to himself. Her fucking coward of a husband should have been there to put his arms around her and hold her. She needed someone to take the burden off her shoulders before she collapsed beneath the weight of it.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asked softly.

She was close to tears. He could hear it in the way her breath hitched as she inhaled. She hugged herself tighter.

“He was taking pictures of Leah,” she said. She paused to fight with the emotions that rose up inside her. “She was having a tennis lesson with her friend . . . He was watching them . . . He was taking pictures of them . . . When I saw him, he looked right at me and kept taking pictures.”

That was enough to make Mendez want to go to the interview room next door and assault Roland Ballencoa himself.

“Why didn’t you go to a security person?”

He asked because it was what he was supposed to ask even though it sounded completely stupid. Would he have gone to a security guard if he had been the parent and Roland Ballencoa had been taking pictures of his kid? What if Leah Lawton had been Haley Leone or one of his nieces? He would have taken Ballencoa’s camera away from him and beat the shit out of him with it.

“And tell them what?” she asked. “Is it against the law to take photographs in a public park? Would someone have put a stop to it?”

“You went after him,” he said.

“He took my daughter,” she returned. “He took my oldest child. He was taking pictures of my baby—like he could just reach out and touch her if he wanted to. And he did it right in front of me. What would you have done?”

“I’m not judging you, Lauren,” he said quietly. “I need to know what you’re up against here. He’s in the next room telling another detective he wants to press charges against you. On the face of it, you committed assault.”

“You’re going to put me in jail?” she said, stunned with disbelief. “That’s priceless! He can abduct my daughter, do whatever to her—rape her, kill her—and you want to put me in jail because I broke his fucking camera?”

“I don’t want to put you in jail,” he said. “I’ll do what I can to keep that from happening. But you’ll probably be charged with something. Simple assault—it’s a misdemeanor. You’d have to pay a fine.”

“A fine!”

“You went after him in front of witnesses in a public place—”

“He was going after my daughter in front of witnesses in a public place,” she argued. “But that’s okay. He was only using a camera—this time.”

“You can’t take matters into your own hands,” he said, miserable because that was exactly what he would have wanted to do himself.

“But you people won’t do anything to stop him!” she shouted. “Whose hands am I supposed to leave it in? He put a note in my mailbox yesterday. It said, ‘Did you miss me?’ It’s like a game to him. He gets to break the law, then hide behind it, then twist it around and use it against his victims. I can’t stop him, and you won’t stop him. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Why didn’t you call me about this note?” Mendez asked. “Where is it?”

“I threw it away,” she said, annoyed. “Why would I call you? What would you have done about it? Nothing. You probably would have told me it’s not your jurisdiction and maybe I should call a postal inspector.”

“If we can prove he’s harassing you—”

“He didn’t sign it, for Christ’s sake! He didn’t even address it. He just left it. And now he’s taking pictures of me and my daughter in a public place, in front of witnesses, but that’s not proof he’s stalking me? That’s ludicrous!”

“I know you’re frustrated, Lauren—”

“You know?” she challenged. “You know? You don’t know jack shit!”

“What I meant—”

“You don’t know what this monster has cost me,” she said angrily. “You don’t know what it is to carry a child inside you for nine months, give birth to it, nurture it, love it, then have someone take that child away from you for their own perverted pleasure.”

“No.”

“You don’t know what it’s like to watch that man walk around free while your child is gone, while your husband is dead.”

“No.”

“You don’t know what it’s like to have him claim his rights while I have none,” she said bitterly, tears now streaming down her face. “I have no recourse. I have nothing left except my only remaining child, and I’m supposed to just stand there and watch him take her picture for his catalog of victims?”

In that moment Mendez felt so ashamed of the system he was sworn to protect that he couldn’t even meet Lauren Lawton’s eyes. What was wrong with a world where a predator had more rights than the people he preyed upon?

He could feel the hot contempt in her stare.

“Don’t tell me you know my frustration, detective,” she said. “I am trapped in this fucking nightmare and you are part of the problem, not the solution!”

She turned away from him then, putting her hands and her forehead against the wall as if perhaps she might be able to push her way through to the other side. Or maybe it was that the world was reeling so beneath her feet, she needed the wall to remain upright.

“I can’t believe this is happening!” she cried with such raw despair it cut through Mendez like a knife.

He went to stand beside her and spread one hand between her shoulder blades in some stupid feeble attempt to offer her comfort.

“I want to help you, Lauren,” he said quietly. “I do.”

She gave him a cutting sideways look. “You can’t help me.”

She was trapped in a hell he could only imagine. What good was he with his platitudes and his empty promises? She was locked in an epic battle between good and evil, and he was little more than a spectator, ineffectual and impotent to help her.

She shrugged his hand off her back like she couldn’t stand the feel of it, went to the corner farthest from him, and sank down to sit on the floor with her face buried against her knees.

Mendez went out into the hall and paced up and down for a minute, trying to clear his head. He was upset in a way he didn’t know quite what to do with. He was a goal-oriented problem solver by nature, but he didn’t see a good way to solve Lauren Lawton’s problems. He felt hamstrung by the rules and regulations he was bound to follow. He felt as useless as a boy in the face of her fury and pain.

He went into the break room, where Vince sat watching the Ballencoa interview on the closed-circuit TV. Out of habit he went to the coffeemaker, but the idea of coffee seemed pointless to him. He wanted a stiff drink—but probably not half as much as Lauren did, he thought.

Vince flicked a glance at him.

“This guy’s a piece of work,” he said, nodding toward the screen.

Mendez flung himself into a chair with a sharp sigh and looked up at the television. Ballencoa sat at the table facing the door, wearing the sour expression of a petulant child. Trammell sat across from him, laid back, his body language calm and relaxed. Just having a chat with a citizen.

“He’s been telling Trammell how Lauren Lawton is stalking him and he wants to get a restraining order against her.”

“Fucking piece of shit,” Mendez growled. “He was taking pictures of the daughter at the tennis courts.”

“Which he says is his right and his livelihood.”

“His rights.” The words were bitter in his mouth. “Like he’s a victim. Lauren needs the protection order against him. He’s the fucking criminal. The fucking nerve of that guy—taking pictures of the daughter! If I’d been in her place, he’d be talking out the other side of his head right now.”

“And you’d be under arrest,” Vince pointed out.

“It’s not right.”

“If somebody looked funny at one of my kids . . . I don’t want to know what I’d do,” Vince admitted. “But there’s what’s right, and there’s the law. And unfortunately, the two don’t always go together.”

“Try explaining that to Lauren,” Mendez said. “I tried. I felt like something you’d scrape off the sole of your shoe. She lost her daughter to this dirtbag. She doesn’t even have the peace of knowing what he did to her.”

“How’s she doing in there?” Vince asked.

“She’s furious, she’s scared. She just handed me my ass,” Mendez said. “And it wasn’t any less than I deserved—or than our system deserves, I should say. When we threaten to arrest her for protecting her own child, where’s she supposed to turn?”

“What are you going to do with her?”

Unable to sit still, he got up again and started to pace. “I don’t know. It’s up to Cal. What can I do?”

Dixon arrived then from an interrupted evening and came into the break room, all business, with a dark scowl on his face. He was dressed for some fund-raising dinner in a smart gray suit with a blue tie that intensified the color of his eyes.

He looked at Mendez. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“It’s not by choice,” Mendez said.

“I don’t like that either,” Dixon snapped. “Mrs. Lawton asked for you specifically, and Ballencoa has already filed a complaint against you. Tell me Ballencoa hasn’t seen you.”

“No. Good for him. At this point I’d be happy to finish what she started.”

“Don’t even start with me, talking like that,” Dixon said. “You’re a sworn officer of the court. Act like it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Vince, what’s your role here?”

Leone got to his feet slowly, the deliberate quality of his movement immediately slowing down the hot energy in the room. “Observing,” he said. “Tony filled me in on the history. I wanted to see Ballencoa for myself.”

“And?”

“Based on what little I know and what little I’ve seen, I don’t like him,” he said. “He’s manipulative, narcissistic, vindictive—”

The sheriff looked impatient. “So far you’ve described my ex-mother-in-law.”

“Your ex-mother-in-law isn’t a sexual predator, is she?” Vince asked.

“No. That’s one thing she’s not.”

“Well, by most accounts, this guy is,” Vince said. “And he thinks he’s got you all by the balls, and that you can’t or won’t do anything about it.”

“So far, he’s right,” Mendez said. “If I’d been able to put someone on this creep—”

“What?” Dixon challenged. “We could have stopped him from taking photographs? There’s no law against taking photographs. There is, however, a law against physically assaulting someone and destroying their property.”

Agitated by his boss’s turn of conversation, Mendez held up a warning finger. “If you tell me we’re arresting Lauren Lawton and charging her for trying to protect her child, I fucking quit!”

“Don’t you threaten me, detective,” Dixon barked back. “We haven’t charged anyone with anything.”

“No,” Mendez said angrily, gesturing toward the TV monitor. “Until that piece of dirt threatens to sue again, and then we’ll all jump through our little hoops to keep him out of the county coffers. A fucking child predator. A convicted felon. And you’re more worried about him than the mother of a stolen child.”

Dixon gave him a hard look. “Rein it in, detective. I’m warning you.”

“Tony.” Vince put a hand on his shoulder. “Step back and cool down. Come on.”

“Fuck this,” Mendez growled, shrugging him off. He started for the door. “Like you said, boss, I’m not even supposed to be here.”

“Where do you think you’re going?” Dixon asked.

“I’m taking Lauren Lawton home,” he said. “She’s been through enough. If you decide Roland Ballencoa is running this outfit, you can come and arrest her yourself.”

“You’re not taking her anywhere until I’ve spoken with her,” Dixon said, following him out into the hall. “You can introduce me now.”

She was sitting exactly where Mendez had left her—on the floor in the corner with her head on her knees. She looked up at them, bored to see them. She got up slowly. Stiff from her fall, but trying to hide it.

“Mrs. Lawton,” Mendez said. “This is Sheriff Dixon.”

Dixon offered his hand. She stared at it like it might be dirty, with no intention of shaking it.

“Are you charging me with something?” she asked pointedly.

“Not at the moment,” Dixon said.

She tipped her head. “Then I’m free to go.”

“I’d like to talk to you about what happened, and about the situation with you and Mr. Ballencoa.”

“And I would like to collect my daughter and go home.”

Dixon jammed his hands at his waist and sighed. “I’m aware of the history—”

“Then you don’t need me to tell you about it, do you?”

“But you have to understand my office is in a difficult position here,” he continued. “We can’t have citizens taking the law into their own hands.”

“Are you going to tell me, then, that Roland Ballencoa is going to be arrested for stalking my daughter and me?”

Dixon frowned. “As far as I know—”

“The answer is no,” she said. “Your office hasn’t protected us, isn’t going to protect us, and I’m in more danger of being arrested than the man who kidnapped Leslie.”

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Lawton, Mr. Ballencoa has never been charged, let alone found guilty of that crime,” Dixon said. “I can’t apply the law based on what might have happened. He’s a free citizen.”

“I’m sure you’ll have his vote in the next election,” she said with contempt.

Dixon’s face reddened. He wasn’t used to having his integrity questioned, and he didn’t like it. Still, he held his temper.

“You’re new here,” he said. “You don’t know me—”

Lauren cut him off. “The fact that we’re even having this conversation tells me everything I need to know about you, Sheriff Dixon.

“If you’re going to arrest me, then do it. But if you’re so worried about your office and what people think, then I suggest you consider that your public isn’t going to be very pleased to hear that you would take the side of a child predator and probable murderer over the side of a woman who has lost most of her family to this man.

“And you might also consider that my daughter’s case is not so cold that the press has forgotten about her. So if you think you should get on some semantic high horse over who was in the wrong tonight, then you had better be prepared, because I will rain a media shitstorm down on you the likes of which you have never seen.”

Cal Dixon looked like he might choke. Mendez had never seen him at a loss for words. He watched him now grapple with his temper, his pride, his position. At the same time, Lauren Lawton stood her ground, battered and fragile yet strong as tempered steel, her eyes as bright as blue flame.

“I don’t appreciate being threatened, Mrs. Lawton,” Dixon said with carefully modulated calm. “But I understand your position, and I understand your need to protect your daughter.

“I’m going to have Detective Mendez see you home tonight,” he said. “I don’t think it would be in the interest of justice to press charges against you, though ultimately that decision is at the discretion of the district attorney.”

“Thank you,” Lauren said, though if she felt relief she didn’t show it.

Dixon turned to Mendez, his expression unreadable. “See Mrs. Lawton home.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I will see you in my office tomorrow morning at oh eight hundred hours on the dot.”

“Yes, sir,” Mendez said, not sure which of those orders he was dreading more.