Down the Darkest Road

47

Mendez turned his car around at the end of Old Mission Road and parked. Lauren Lawton’s phone had gone unanswered. Her BMW wasn’t in the driveway. An uneasy feeling churned through him.

He kept seeing the words she had written on the note Ballencoa had brought in: I’d rather see you in hell than see you at all.

A threat, Ballencoa said. Mendez had the terrible feeling it was more a promise.

His own words to Vince Leone kept echoing in his head: This story isn’t going to have a happy ending.

Everyone had failed Lauren. Law enforcement had failed her. Her husband had failed her. God had failed her. In her mind there had to be only one person she could rely on: herself.

She had come to Oak Knoll because she had known Ballencoa had set up shop here.

She drank too much.

She had a gun.

“You can’t help me,” she’d said. The look in her eyes haunted him. The word desperation came to mind, but that wasn’t even it. There was something beyond that. Resignation. She had accepted the fact that she was alone in her fight.

He got out of the car and found a way over the fence. Easily done. So much for her sense of security behind the gate.

Maybe her car was in the garage. Maybe she was in the house—in which case he needed to make himself known before she shot him.

“Lauren?” he called. “Mrs. Lawton? It’s Tony Mendez. Are you home?”

He went to the door and rang the bell, hearing it sound inside the house.

Damnit. Where was she? Was she stalking Roland Ballencoa while he stood here like a moron ringing her doorbell?

He got back in his car and headed toward Ballencoa’s neighborhood.

Lauren drove around the block and parked at the far end of Ballencoa’s street. She wanted to know what he was doing. How was he reacting to her having violated his space? Not well, she suspected. She remembered the rage that had spewed out of him the night before at the tennis courts when she’d broken his camera.

He liked to be in control. He wanted to be the one trespassing on boundaries. That a woman had turned the tables on him had infuriated him.

The rush she got from knowing that was exhilarating.

She watched his front door. Was he inside calling the sheriff’s office? What would he tell them? The same thing she had had to tell the police after he had broken into her home: that someone had broken in but had taken nothing. He couldn’t tell them she had stolen his stalking journals.

She imagined with pleasure his frustration as the detectives gave him their blank cop looks. Someone had broken into his house and messed up his neatly made bed. Some crazed person had come into his home and torn his clothes from the hangers.

She hoped Mendez answered the call. He would see the significance. He would probably know it had been her doing.

The front door of the bungalow opened then and Ballencoa came out. She was too far away to see if he was red in the face. She hoped he was. She hoped he was choking on his rage.

He went to the garage and backed out in his van. Lauren’s pulse picked up as she waited for him to turn in her direction, but he turned the other way.

She started her car and followed.

Mendez pulled up in front of Ballencoa’s house and got out, knowing he would be risking Cal Dixon’s wrath by coming here. Ballencoa was already feeling paranoid. He would be ringing his attorney’s phone off the hook with lawsuits to file.

But he didn’t care about Ballencoa or his threats. He cared about Lauren Lawton. The irony wasn’t lost on him. He would try to protect Lauren by warning Ballencoa she might be a danger to him.

Ballencoa, however, didn’t answer the door. His van was gone.

Mendez took a walk around the house, trying to look in the windows. This house looked as empty as the one in San Luis Obispo—until he got to the bedroom, where it looked as if a bomb had gone off. The bed had been stripped and ripped and torn. Feather pillows had been gutted. Clothes were strewn everywhere. The front panel of an old wall heater had been removed. Someone had tossed the place. He had a sinking feeling he knew who.

Oh, Lauren . . .

He walked around the back of the house and went to the back door. A glass pane had been broken out near the doorknob.

He wanted to go inside. He had observed evidence a crime may have been committed. He could have cited a concern for the occupant. Exigent circumstances could override the need for a warrant . . .

And a clever defense attorney could turn his probable cause into a pile of Fourth Amendment rights violations.

He went back to his car and drove back to the sheriff’s office.

Tanner and Hicks were still in the war room, going over old B&E reports with a fine-toothed comb.

“Did you give her hell?” Tanner asked, looking up.

“I couldn’t find her.”

She frowned, reading his unease. “Maybe she’s with her daughter somewhere.”

“Maybe,” he said, walking up to the whiteboard to stare, as if some clue might write itself like something from an Ouija board.

“Are you okay?” Tanner asked.

He was sweating. He felt a little sick. Adrenaline.

“Someone broke into Ballencoa’s house,” he said.

“Uh-oh.”

“I can’t get hold of Lauren. She’s not home. I came past Ballencoa’s. He’s not there, but there was a broken window in the back door and an open bedroom window, and the bedroom was tossed. I looked in.”

“Shit,” Hicks muttered.

“I guess she wasn’t going to wait for the warrant this time,” Tanner said.

Hicks got up. “I’ll go tell the watch commander to put out a BOLO on her car.”

Mendez looked at the time line for the past week, beginning with the day Lauren Lawton had tried to mow him down with her grocery cart at Pavilions. He had noted the night she called him when she had found the photograph on the windshield of her car. The photograph taken of her leaving the shooting range.

He and Hicks had spoken to Ballencoa the following day. Ballencoa had claimed not to know Lauren was in Oak Knoll. They hadn’t believed him because Lauren had given the impression Ballencoa had followed her to Oak Knoll, not the other way around. It had to have been the day after that when Lauren found the note in her mailbox: Did you miss me?

Tanner watched him closely. She got up and came around the table to stand beside him. She looked over the time line as he had done, but she didn’t see it.

She looked up at him. “What?”

“If Lauren followed Ballencoa here, and not the other way around, how did he know where to find her to leave the photograph ?”