Down the Darkest Road

40

No one spoke on the ride to the sports complex. The only sound in the car was the unintelligible cackling of the police radio and Leah’s occasional sniffling in the backseat as she tried not to cry.

Lauren’s BMW was the only car still in the parking lot. Mendez said nothing as he pulled up beside it. Lauren said nothing as she got out. The sound of car doors slamming seemed deafening. Leah got in the backseat rather than sit beside her mother. Lauren made no comment.

Mendez followed them out of the parking lot, then turned and went his own way. Lauren drove away from downtown into the night that seemed to grow darker with every block. The charming house at the end of Old Mission Road looked large and foreboding, its dark windows like gaping holes in a fright-house smile.

Lauren turned on every light she passed as they went inside. Leah went straight upstairs without a word. Lauren let her go, at a loss.

What was she supposed to do? What was she supposed to say? She couldn’t tell Leah their lives would be normal in a day or two or ten. She couldn’t tell her Roland Ballencoa wouldn’t be a threat to her or to her friends. She couldn’t make anything right. She only managed to make things worse and worse and worse by trying to do the right thing.

She poured herself a drink and stood looking out into the night. Headlights came down the street, then swung around at the gate. The security light illuminated the logos of the sheriff’s office on the side of the car as it turned around and cruised away.

Five minutes later a second set of headlights came slowly down the road. Lauren’s heart beat just a little harder. She held her breath in her lungs just a little longer.

Ballencoa had been screaming for her arrest when last she’d seen him. Would they have told him at the sheriff’s office that they had sent her home? She had broken his camera—his alleged livelihood, though Lauren knew he lived as much off the proceeds of his lawsuits as he did his abilities as a photographer.

She suspected the worst of what she had damaged had been his dignity, as if he deserved to have any.

The car slowed and swung around at the gate. A car, not a van. The lights cut out.

Lauren went to her handbag and got out the Walther. Feeling more numb than frightened, she went to the door and stepped out onto the front porch. She left the door open. She could quickly dart back inside and call 911 if she needed to. A warning shot would buy her a little extra time.

The driver’s door opened on the car, and Greg Hewitt stepped out under the security light.

Sticking the gun in the pocket of her torn linen slacks, Lauren walked down to the gate.

“Are you all right?” he asked as she stepped into the pool of light.

“They didn’t throw me in jail, as you can see,” she said, lifting her arms away from her body.

He sighed and frowned. “Jesus Christ, Lauren, what were you thinking?”

“I’m tired, Greg. I don’t want to have to explain myself to you. You of all people should know what I was doing. He was taking pictures of my daughter.”

He swept a hand back over his surfer-blond hair and rubbed at the tension in the back of his neck. “If I’d gotten there two minutes sooner . . .”

“Why were you there at all?”

“I followed him there. I figured he’d be up to his old tricks. Then I had to go to the john and I lost him. Next thing I heard the commotion.”

And then he’d been there, pulling her away from Ballencoa, putting himself between them, shoving Ballencoa back as he tried to advance on her.

“I didn’t ask for your help,” she said, thinking, My God, what an ungrateful bitch you are, Lauren.

“Yeah, well, too bad. No charge,” he said. “Or maybe I could have a drink for my trouble.”

She should have dismissed him out of hand. She had thrown him off the property just a few hours before. But she was exhausted and worn down, and tired of drinking alone. He had come to her rescue at the tennis courts as if he hadn’t cared that she had belted him in the mouth just that afternoon. That could pass for friendship, she supposed. It would for now.

“You’re not coming in my house,” she said, even as she stepped back from the gate and pressed the button to open it manually. “My daughter is asleep upstairs.”

He took a seat on the porch. Lauren went back inside and fixed two drinks without allowing herself to think about what she was doing. Her brain ached from thinking. Her soul ached from the constant self-flagellation. She wanted the numbness the alcohol would bring.

She didn’t ask Greg Hewitt if he liked vodka. She didn’t care. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, after all. She went back out onto the porch, handed him his glass, and took a seat.

She remembered when she and Sissy had bought the bent willow porch furniture at a flea market in Los Olivos. They had been tickled to death to find it—two settees, two high-backed chairs, an assortment of side tables and footstools. Lauren had had pillows and cushions made from faded old quilts and coverlets.

“Is he pressing charges?” Hewitt asked.

Lauren shrugged. “I doubt the district attorney will want the trouble. The court of public opinion holds more sway on political careers than the opinion of Roland Ballencoa.

“He’ll sue me for the camera and the lens, and loss of income, no doubt,” she said. “So I can have the pleasure of paying to put him back in business as a pervert.”

“That sucks, but it beats jail.”

“You said you followed him to the sports complex. What else has he been doing today?”

“Nothing much. I went by his house as he was leaving. He made a couple of stops—the gas station, the drugstore, one of those mailbox places—then went to the sports center.”

She wondered if he’d bothered to check his mail at his house. Maybe not if he used a rented mailbox. Now that she thought of it, it seemed odd no one at the sheriff’s office had mentioned the note she had put back in his mailbox that morning. Further evidence that she was stalking him, he would say. True enough, she thought.

How will you like the tables turned on you, asshole?

“Don’t you have a paying job?” she asked.

“I’m between divorce cases.”

“Nothing better to do. Might as well check on the crazy stalker woman.”

“Something like that,” he said, sipping his drink.

Lauren tipped her head back and sighed as the alcohol began to loosen the knots in her muscles.

Greg Hewitt reached over, cupped her chin in his hand, and turned her face to look at the abrasion on her cheek in the dim porch light. “You should probably do something about that.”

His concern struck her with bitter humor. “That’s the least of my problems.”

“You shouldn’t have come here, Lauren,” he said. “Nothing good will come from it.”

“I have to fight for Leslie,” she said. “Whatever comes of it, I have to fight for my daughter. That’s my job. I don’t get to stop being her mother just because it isn’t pleasant or just because she isn’t here. If I don’t fight for her, who will?”

“What is it you want, Lauren?” he asked. “You want her back? You know she’s probably dead.”

“Then I want justice,” she said. “Or revenge. I don’t much care which at this point. I want to know where my daughter is. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make that happen. And then I want him to pay for putting her there—whether that means putting him in a jail cell or putting him in the ground. I guess that goes for me too,” she added ominously.

“What about Leah? She needs her mother.”

“She needs a mother,” Lauren said, finally giving voice to a dark thought that had been sitting in the back of her mind for a while now. “I’m not so sure she wouldn’t be better off without me.”

He didn’t tell her not to think that way. He took a long pull on his drink and sighed. He’d been around her enough to know better than to try to tell her anything.

“What can I do to help?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

Beyond locating Ballencoa, he hadn’t been of much use to her to this point. He couldn’t help her now any more than Mendez could. Not really. Now more than ever Lauren felt this fight was between her and Ballencoa, one-on-one. Now more than ever she felt like the heroine of some epic story, like she had been charged with the quest to slay a dragon.

Or maybe that was the vodka filling her head.

“What about Leah?” he asked.

She looked at him sharply.

“Are you going to keep her under lock and key?” he asked. “Is the sheriff’s office going to watch her twenty-four/seven? I can watch her for you.”

“Like you did tonight?” she asked.

“You’re such a bitch,” he said, but without much anger.

“I’m tired, Greg,” she said with resignation. “What do you want from me?”

He didn’t answer her. He covered her mouth with his and kissed her. She let him. For the distraction, she told herself. She needed that.

She kept her brain detached, analytical, concentrating on the taste of him, the thrust of his tongue against hers, the way her body automatically responded even though she didn’t really want him, even though she had been disgusted with herself for having allowed him this before.

It didn’t make sense, and yet it did. He didn’t mean anything to her. There was no real connection in this. Emotionally exhausted, there was great appeal in pure physical feeling.

And so she didn’t stop him when he slipped his hand beneath her top and pushed the cup of her bra out of the way to fondle her breast. She concentrated on the reaction of her body to his touch—the way her breath quickened, the way her nipple hardened.

She didn’t stop him when he took her nipple in his mouth and licked and sucked and grazed it with his teeth. She thought about the sudden heaviness between her legs.

She didn’t stop him from touching her, from opening her with his fingers, from stroking her most tender flesh.

She didn’t stop her own hands from opening his pants, taking out his erection, guiding him into her.

She concentrated on the physical sensations, on her body’s need for release. There were no emotions, and she was grateful for it. Later she might hate herself. Later she might feel like a whore. Later she might curse him. For now he was providing her a service, and it felt good. For a few minutes she could feel physical pleasure and escape the endless emotional pain.

For now she used Greg Hewitt. He didn’t complain.

When it was over, as predicted, she felt dirty and embarrassed. If he saw it, he didn’t say. He got up and straightened his clothes.

“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” he said.

Lauren sat up, pulling her sweater around her. “What?”

“I’ll kill him for you,” he said, as if he was offering to take out the trash. “For twenty-five thousand dollars. Think about it.”

She watched him walk to the gate and let himself out.