Down the Darkest Road

46

Lauren had no idea what kind of schedule he kept. She wanted to imagine that he lived like a vampire—asleep in the day, prowling by night. But the first time she had come to this house had been in the gray of predawn, and Ballencoa had come out of the house and driven away like a normal human being going off to a normal job.

To suit her purposes, she had to hope he was out of the house now, off stalking some poor, unsuspecting young woman. And yet there was a place in her mind where she imagined him home, imagined him vulnerable, imagined herself holding the gun to his head as she demanded answers. She imagined the sweat beading on his brow and running in rivulets down the sides of his thin, bony face as the steel of the barrel kissed his temple again and again in a gentle reminder. I will kill you.

The idea of having that kind of control over him was almost as intoxicating as the vodka she had consumed for the courage to do this.

The day was hot and sunny. Daylight at its broadest and brightest. The odds of being seen by someone seemed dead-on. If she hadn’t been arrested for assault, she would probably be arrested for breaking and entering.

She put the thought out of her head. Failure was not an option. If Roland Ballencoa could come and go at will from the homes of his victims, his intentions dark and disgusting, then she should be able do the same with a goal that was just.

She parked on the back side of his block and approached his property via the side street, head down, baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. A canvas bag was slung over her shoulder and across her body, bouncing gently against her hip like something she might take to the farmer’s market to carry home fresh vegetables. In it she had stowed several tools—a hammer, a screwdriver, a box cutter. Things she imagined might be useful to a burglar.

In her jeans and sneakers, T-shirt and ball cap, sunglasses hiding her eyes and the bruise on her cheek, she might have been mistaken for a student walking home from a summer class at McAster. She didn’t look out of place. She kept her hands in her pockets, her head down, shoulders slouched. As fast as her heart was tripping, she kept her walk slow and casual.

The neighborhood seemed quiet. Most of the people here probably had day jobs. She had seen no sign of young children on this block—no toys in the yards, no dirt bikes racing up and down the street. There would probably be no young mothers home to look out their kitchen windows and see her creeping down the alley. This was a place where people cut their own grass in the evening or on the weekend. There were no armies of gardeners sweeping across the lawns.

Lauren turned at the alley, resisting the urge to keep looking over her shoulder. She walked just past the tar paper shed at the back boundary of Ballencoa’s property, then turned and ducked around the end of it. Keeping close to the ficus hedge, she made a beeline for the single-car detached garage, hoping if Ballencoa was home he wasn’t looking out a window at the back of the house.

The hedge grew nearly up to the far side of the building. She had to press herself flat up against the siding to edge toward the small window in the middle of the wall. Even then branches snagged at her clothes and scratched at the side of her face like a thousand cats’ claws.

Her reward was a look inside an empty garage. If Ballencoa was home, he had parked in the street. But she had seen no van as she circled the block. Which meant she had time. How much time was the question no one could answer.

Emerging from the hedgerow, she quickly crossed the yard to the back door of the house. It was an old wooden door with nine small rectangular panes of glass in the top half. Attractive, but not secure.

Her hands were trembling as she dug inside the canvas bag. She had worn a pair of Leah’s riding gloves, supple leather as thin and tight as a second skin. She pulled out a roll of masking tape and began tearing off long strips and smoothing them over the small pane of glass nearest the dead bolt lock.

Ballencoa’s backyard was fairly private, with the big hedges on either side and the shed at the back property line. Across the alley a wooden privacy fence overgrown with morning glories closed off the neighbor’s view. Unless someone came down the alley, she was relatively safe.

She pulled the small hammer from the bag and hit it against the taped glass. Too lightly at first, then a little harder, then a little harder. On the third tap she felt the glass give way at the inner corner of the window. She worked her way around the pane, tapping the glass just hard enough to break it. The tape kept the pieces from falling.

With one side of the little window completely broken free of the frame, she carefully folded the taped shards back behind the unbroken portion of glass, then kept working with the hammer until the entire windowpane was in her hand—a flexible sheet of masking tape filled with glass.

Carefully, she wrapped the broken glass in a plastic bag and dropped it inside her canvas tote. With the glass out, she was able to reach inside the door and unlock the dead bolt.

She stopped breathing as she let herself inside Roland Ballencoa’s house.

The refrigerator humming was the only sound, save the pounding of Lauren’s pulse in her ears. She stepped into the tiny kitchen, taking in every detail—the original 1930s tile, the plain painted cabinets, the emptiness of the counters, the lack of ornamentation of any kind. There was not so much as a grocery list on the counter or a magnet on the fridge.

Inside the refrigerator was a bottle of Evian, a bottle of apple cider vinegar, a head of lettuce, a carton of cottage cheese. In the cupboard, wheat germ, bran, vitamins.

It struck her as odd that he was a health nut. It was hard to imagine him as being human with human needs like food and water. To her he was something . . . other. He fed on fear and drank in the despair of his victims. What did he need with vitamin B and a regular bowel? It seemed more likely that he slept hanging upside down inside a dark closet like a rabid bat.

She didn’t know what she was looking for as she moved through the bungalow, but she didn’t find it. She didn’t find anything in the dining room or living room. The furniture was sparse and spartan. There wasn’t a plant. There wasn’t a magazine. There were no shoes by the front door. There was no mail on the table, not a bill or a flyer or a letter from Ed McMahon promising Roland Ballencoa he might already be a winner.

There is no life here, she thought, pulling the cushions from the chairs and throwing them on the floor. There wasn’t even spare change or food crumbs in the creases of the sofa.

What did he do when he wasn’t being a predator? Did he read? Did he listen to music? Did he watch television? There was no sign of any of that. She imagined he had an array of violent pornography stashed somewhere. He undoubtedly had photographs of the girls he had stalked. He probably had videotape.

Her stomach turned at the prospect of finding photographs of Leslie, or movies of what he had done to her. As much as she wanted to find something here that could tie Roland Ballencoa to her daughter, she dreaded that prospect just as much.

She moved down the narrow hallway, only pausing at the door to the bathroom, loath to go inside, though she imagined it would be as spotless and lifeless as every other room here. The imagined sense of intimacy in that room was too much. While he had certainly breached every boundary of Lauren’s own house when he had broken in, she didn’t want the same experience. She would not be fondling Roland Ballencoa’s dirty underwear or crawling naked between his sheets.

His bedroom looked almost as uninhabited as the rest of the house. The bed was made with military precision. The first thing Lauren made herself do was get down on her hands and knees to look beneath it.

She half expected to see a body, to come face-to-face with the lifeless stare of someone else’s daughter. Or, if not a body, a box containing a victim—alive or dead.

There was no box. There was nothing beneath the bed. Not even dust.

Clothes were hung neatly in the closet in order: shirts, pants, jackets, light colors to dark. Shoes were lined up neatly beneath. Three pair. Socks and underwear were organized in a dresser drawer. T-shirts were folded exactly alike and stacked like a display at the Gap.

So orderly, Roland’s world. It irked Lauren that he could be this way when what he had done to her had thrown her inner life into chaos. He should have an idea of how that felt, she thought, and she began dismantling his orderly habitat, starting with the bed.

She tore the coverlet off first and flung it to the side. Pillows sailed to the floor. She yanked the sheets free of the tightly tucked corners, dragged them off and threw them to the side, stomping on them, grinding the dirty soles of her sneakers against the fabric.

It was juvenile, she knew. She was wasting time. But there was a certain rush and satisfaction in doing it. As she pulled his clothes from the hangers and out of the drawers, she briefly considered peeing on all of it, like a dog marking territory. But then it occurred to her that as perverted as Ballencoa was, he might find that exciting.

He had been more subtle in his invasion of her home. And yet she had thrown out the load of laundry he had handled. She had smashed the wine glass he had drunk from. She had stripped every bed in the house and refused to sleep on her mattress or let Leah sleep on hers. The sense of violation, of defilement, had been terrible, as bad as if Ballencoa had put his hands directly on her naked body.

Lauren stood back and looked at the mess she’d made, imagining how he would feel when he saw it.

How do you like that, Roland? I invaded your world. I touched your things. You couldn’t stop me.

She felt a small rush of power at the thought, and imagined that was what he had felt as he had moved through her house, touching her things. Feeding off that power, she pulled the drawers out of the dresser and turned them over, looking for something to be taped to the bottoms. There was nothing. She stuck her head inside the empty shell of the dresser and looked at the underside of the top. Nothing. She pulled the thing away from the wall and looked behind it. Nothing. She tipped it over and looked at the bottom. Nothing.

She went through the same process with the nightstands. Nothing. Sweating and cursing, she wrestled the mattress off the box spring, flipping it over. Nothing.

Angry and frustrated, she took the box cutter from her bag and sliced the mattress open down the middle like she was gutting a fish. Nothing. She did the same with the pillows, sending feathers everywhere. Nothing.

The disappointment drained the adrenaline out of her. She looked down at the mess she had made of the room, the upended dresser, the overturned mattress spilling its guts. She had dismantled the bed to its frame, looked under it, looked behind it. Nothing.

Where would a man like Ballencoa hide something? It would have helped to know what that something was. She assumed because of the sexual bent to his activities he would keep souvenirs of his victims or photographs of his victims in his bedroom—the most private and comfortable space for him to amuse himself. He would want his mementos out of sight, but readily accessible—easy to get at and easy to put back in a hurry if necessary.

She had looked at eye level and below—her eye level. Roland Ballencoa was six feet three inches tall. His reach would allow him to easily access probably—what?—another twelve to eighteen inches.

She looked up and around the room, spotting the air vent, and her hopes lifted. She climbed on a chair, used her screwdriver to pry the cover off. Nothing.

She turned around, ready to give up, but found herself staring at the old, outdated electric heater built into the wall. The unit was tall and narrow, ugly dented metal painted the same color as the wall, rust crusting over the dents like old scabs. The thermostat knob was missing. It looked like it probably hadn’t worked in years.

Lauren found herself fixed on the screws. Old screws that had been painted over half a dozen times. She could tell because the paint had been chipped. Scraped by a screwdriver. Recently. He had been careless here. Finally. The screws were loose. They came free easily, and the front panel lifted away.

Lauren’s heart began to pound. Wedged in behind the old heating coils was a collection of journals, four bound books with fine leather covers, each with a date carefully hand-lettered on the front.

A feeling of dread washed over Lauren as she reached for one dated October 1985–October 1986.

Her hands were shaking as she opened it. The page was dated October 1, 1985. At a glance it looked like an address book of sorts, the entries made in strangely precise, small square printing.

Angela Robeson: 11711 Mooreland Drive, 17, junior @ Santa Barbara High School. Cross country. Blonde, thin, narrow hips. 5’7”. Too like a boy. Body: 6 Risk: 7

Stacey Connors: 18, senior @ San Marcos. Volleyball, beach volleyball. Green eyes. Dimples. Flirtatious. Promiscuous? Small bikini exposes breasts. Lives with single mother: 759 West Mesa. Phone: 805-555-7656 Body: 9 Risk: 3

Della Rosario: Waitress @ Taco Lando. 5’3”. Big tits. Shows cleavage. Short skirt. Too short. Too ethnic. Body: 7 Risk: 2

The entries went on, page after page, interspersed with carefully drawn maps and diagrams of houses.

Lauren’s skin crawled. She wanted to fling the book away from her as she realized what it was: a catalog. A catalog of every girl Ballencoa had encountered, his impressions of them, the details he had learned about their lives. These were women and girls he had watched and studied and followed. He knew where they lived, with whom, the schedules of their families.

She turned the pages to entries made in April of 1986 and her blood ran cold and her breath caught in her throat.

Leslie Lawton: 15, 5’7”, long dark hair, long legs, elegant. 12707 Via De La Valle. Softball, tennis. Hot. Flirtatious. Bold. Sexy mouth . . .

The writing blurred as Lauren’s head swam. She wanted to be sick. Here was a predator’s view of her child. What he liked, what he didn’t. There was a note about Leah, a mention of Lance on the sidelines after a softball game. He listed her risk factor at 7 and noted that she seemed to have a lot of independence coming and going from the home.

Leslie was a young woman, sixteen. Lauren and Lance had given her a certain amount of freedom and with that freedom, responsibility. Leslie had always been good about letting them know where she was, who she was with. It had only been just before her abduction that she had begun to push against their boundaries. Normal teenage rebellion. She had never experimented with alcohol or drugs. She had yet to go on anything other than a group date with a boy. One time she had snuck out when she had been forbidden to.

And Roland Ballencoa had been waiting.

Fighting tears, Lauren closed the book and just stood there in the middle of Roland Ballencoa’s bedroom wondering what to do. If she took the book to Mendez, what would he do with it? He would want to know how she had come to have it.

What did it matter how she had come by it? The real question was: What did it prove? That Ballencoa had had an interest in Leslie? He had had an interest in many girls. Only one of them had gone missing.

But at the same time as she told herself the book proved nothing, she knew Ballencoa would be upset to lose it. He had taken pains to hide it. If she took it, he would want it back. What would he do to get it?

Lauren tore a page from the journal and wrote on it with a pen she had found in the drawer of the nightstand. She placed the note on the center of the naked box spring as a car door slammed outside.

The sound went through her like a gunshot.

If Ballencoa was coming, she couldn’t go back through the living room to get to the kitchen, to get to the back door.

She grabbed all four journals and tucked them into her tote. Her heart was beating so wildly that her head was spinning. There was nowhere in the room to hide.

She went to the window that looked out on the backyard. Her hands felt weak as she fumbled with the latch.

Maybe the car door was someone parked at the curb. Maybe it was a neighbor. Maybe it was a salesman or a missionary coming to spread the good news.

A key rattled in the front door lock.

The old window stuck and struggled against her as she struggled to lift it.

Then it was up and she was out.

She hit the ground hard, bouncing off a shoulder, rolling, grunting, scrambling to get her feet under her. Out of balance, she ran stumbling for the shed at the back of the property and ducked behind it.

The air was like fire billowing in and out of her lungs. Her heart beat wildly. Her legs felt like columns of water beneath her. She pressed a hand to her belly, feeling the gun still strapped to her middle. She still had her tote bag.

She wanted to know where Ballencoa was. Had he gone into his bedroom? Had he seen the mess? Had he seen the note? Had he seen her running from the scene?

She couldn’t know, nor could she stay to find out. For all she knew, he was coming across the backyard as she stood there sucking wind.

If she ran to the left and took the shortest route to her car, she exposed herself to Ballencoa’s backyard. If she ran to the right and kept to the alley, she had the better part of the block to go. He could easily run her down.

Thinking fast, she dashed another thirty feet down the alley, cut left and lost herself between two hedges that snatched at her as she ran. She fought her way down the narrow trail and popped out onto the sidewalk maybe fifteen feet from her car.

She didn’t know if anyone saw her. She hoped to God no one had called the sheriff’s office to report a suspicious person running through the neighborhood.

She felt safer inside the car, though her hands were shaking violently as she fumbled to get the key in the ignition. The engine caught and purred. Lauren put the car in gear and let it slide away from the curb, resisting the urge to hit the gas and call more attention to herself.

She was safe now. For the moment that was all that mattered, though she knew it wouldn’t last.

In her mind’s eye she could see the note she left on Roland Ballencoa’s bed: Now I have something you want.