Down the Darkest Road

39

“You don’t have to take me home,” Lauren said as they left the building by a side door. Mendez directed her toward his car in the parking lot. “My car is at the sports complex.”

Her car was at the sports complex, but she had no keys, she realized. She had nothing with her because she had handed her purse off to Leah. Her purse with the gun in the side pocket. She hoped to God Leah hadn’t looked inside.

Fear went through her like a cold wind. She had given her fifteen-year-old daughter a bag with a gun in it. In the blink of an eye she saw Leah as she had been that morning—crying, upset, angry, feeling lost and alone, worried that her mother was contemplating suicide. What about me? She thought about the concern Anne Leone had expressed, that Leah was holding too much inside, that kids like Leah were at risk for self-destructive behavior.

Lauren stopped in her tracks. “I don’t have my keys. I dropped my purse on the tennis court. My daughter has it.”

“Where is she?”

“I sent her with her friend Wendy Morgan and Wendy’s mother.”

“Sara Morgan?” he asked.

“I don’t know where they live,” she admitted. As if she didn’t already feel like a bad mother. Not only had she sent her daughter off with a gun, she had sent her daughter home with a woman she’d only just met, not even knowing where the Morgans lived.

“I do,” Mendez said.

They rode in silence. Lauren had no interest in small talk or breaking the uncomfortable feeling that hung in the air. She didn’t care what he thought about the way she had spoken to his boss—or to him, for that matter. She was long past caring what people in law enforcement thought about her.

She was more worried about Sara Morgan. What must the woman think of her? Hauled away for assault before they could even have dinner. Wendy was Leah’s only friend here. If her mother put an end to that friendship on Lauren’s account . . .

And why wouldn’t she? If Leah was a target of a predator, then Wendy could be in danger too. Almost certainly Ballencoa would have been photographing both girls at the tennis courts. And according to Anne Leone, Wendy had already been through more than any child should have been subjected to—involved in a murder investigation, attacked by a schoolmate . . .

In her mind Lauren kept going back to Ballencoa. It was his fault. He had chosen to photograph the girls. She had only put a stop to it. He had chosen to stalk the Lawton family. She couldn’t be held responsible for his choices . . . only her own.

She had chosen to come here. She had put them all in jeopardy.

“Just so you know,” Mendez said, breaking the silence, “we are working on Ballencoa. We’re not just sitting around with our thumbs up our asses.”

“Yeah. I could see that tonight while he was photographing my daughter,” she returned sarcastically. “You were all over it.”

“I want him off the streets for something we can prosecute him for,” he said, holding his temper. “If we can connect him to an actual crime and put him away, we get a warrant to search his property, and maybe we find something that links him to your daughter’s case. Maybe he’s locked up long enough that the DNA technology advances and the Santa Barbara PD can test the blood sample.”

“But in the meantime he’s free to do whatever he wants. Forgive me if I don’t seem enthusiastic for your plan.”

“That’s the system we have,” he said. “We can’t lock people up just because we don’t like them. There were plenty of people in Santa Barbara who thought your husband killed your daughter. Nobody locked him up either.”

“Yeah. Look how well that worked out for me.”

He pulled the car over suddenly and slammed it into park so hard the shoulder harness locked and caught her as she was thrown forward. The dashboard lights illuminated the hard angry lines of his face.

“You can’t have it all ways, Lauren,” he said. “You’re not the first person to lose a loved one to a crime. You won’t be the last. And you’re not the only one who cares.

“You think it doesn’t gall me that Roland Ballencoa can try to press charges against you?” he asked. “It makes me sick. You think I wouldn’t like to take that camera and shove it down his throat? I would love it, but the world doesn’t work that way. We have a system. It’s not always perfect, but it’s what we have, and I have to work within it.

“I’m one part of an entire profession dedicated to finding justice for people like you and your daughter. This is what we do. This is what we live for. We get that you’ve lost a child. We get that this asshole has ruined your life, and given the chance he’ll ruin someone else’s.”

“Then do something about it!” Lauren snapped back at him.

“We’re trying!” he shouted back in her face. “I just told you that. It kills me that I can’t throw Ballencoa in a hole and let him rot. I feel like a heel that I had to question you tonight for taking action against him when I couldn’t.

“I’m on your side, Lauren. And I don’t appreciate you sitting on your high horse like you’re the queen of the victims, looking down your nose at me like I’m some worthless lackey who doesn’t give a shit. I’m on suspension because I stood up for you, and I’d do it again because it was the right thing to do.”

Lauren looked away, torn between the need to argue with him and the need to apologize. It seemed like she’d been the only one fighting for Leslie for so long. Mendez was new to the battle, but she could see him tire of it like all the others had, and in the end she would be the only one again.

But she didn’t bother to explain that to him. In the end she sighed in resignation and murmured, “I’m sorry.”

She could feel his gaze on her for a long, silent moment, but if he wanted to say something, he held it back. Finally, he put the car back in gear and pulled away from the curb.

The Morgans lived in a newer two-story clapboard house in a style Lance had always called “California Country,” a West Coast interpretation of a Middle America country house with shutters and a porch. Though at five thousand square feet, set in a modern subdivision with a pool out back, there was very little “country” about it.

Mendez led the way up the walk to the front door and rang the bell as if he’d done so before. Lauren hadn’t asked him how he knew Sara Morgan, though she supposed now it had something to do with the murder investigation Wendy had been involved in.

Sara Morgan answered the front door, looking startled to see him.

“Tony.”

“I brought Mrs. Lawton by to pick up her daughter,” he said. He turned to Lauren and said curtly, “I’ll wait in the car.”

Lauren was too concerned with her own awkwardness to notice his. Her stomach clenched like a fist. “Can I come in?” she asked. “I know I have some explaining to do.”

Sara Morgan opened the door.

“The girls are upstairs,” she said. “I was just having a glass of wine. I’m guessing you might want one.”

“I would be grateful,” Lauren said, following her through the gracious home to the big country kitchen. “Frankly, I’m grateful you didn’t slam the door in my face.”

“Leah explained who that guy was,” Sara said, pouring from an open bottle of Merlot. “I can’t imagine what you must have felt when you saw him.”

Wendy was her mother’s spitting image. Sara Morgan had the same wild mane of multi-blond waves, the same cornflower blue eyes. She was tall and athletic, casually dressed in yoga clothes. She handed a glass to Lauren and took a seat on a stool at the breakfast bar.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Lauren said. “I’m sorry, first of all.”

“Did you know he was here in Oak Knoll?”

“I just found that out,” she lied. She took a sip of the wine, wishing she could drink half the glass at once. “The sheriff’s office is aware now, obviously. They know all about him.”

As if that was supposed to offer Sara Morgan comfort. The sheriff’s office was aware of a man no one had been able to pin an abduction on, a man who was free to go about his life doing whatever he pleased—even if what pleased him was taking photographs of young girls playing tennis.

“Leah said he stalked your family in Santa Barbara.”

Lauren nodded.

“That’s terrifying. I have to say, that’s terrifying to me too, Lauren. Wendy and Leah have become such close friends. But if Leah is in danger, then Wendy is too when they’re together. I can’t have that.”

Lauren closed her eyes against the wave of pain she felt for her daughter. “I understand,” she said. “Better than anyone.”

“I’m sorry,” Sara said. “I know the girls are totally in love with each other, but unless I can be right there with them, I really can’t let them see each other.”

“I understand,” Lauren said again.

“At least until the sheriff’s office can do something about him. They can do something, can’t they?”

“Unfortunately, I’m the only one who broke the law tonight.”

“That’s crazy!”

Lauren managed a bitter smile. “Welcome to my world.”

She checked her watch, as if it mattered. The time didn’t even register in her mind. It could have been eight o’clock or midnight. “I should take Leah home. Thank you for looking after her.”

Sara Morgan called the girls downstairs. They came as if they were marching to their doom, Leah looking particularly grim-faced. They promised to call each other the next day. Leah picked up Lauren’s purse from the front hall table and handed it to her without a word.

Lauren tried to put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder as they walked out to the car. Leah shrugged her off and hurried ahead of her.

It was going to be a long ride home.