Down the Darkest Road

54

Tanner’s eyes narrowed as she stared hard at something on the page in front of her.

“What was the name of the guy we thought might be a private dick?” she asked.

“Gregory Hewitt,” Hicks said.

“Michael Craig Houston,” Tanner read. “Aka: Michael House, Craig Michaels, Gregory Hewitt.”

Mendez went to an empty section of whiteboard. His adrenaline was pumping. He wrote MICHAEL CRAIG HOUSTON/GREGORY HEWITT in the center of the board. From Houston’s name he drew a line to the left and printed out BALLENCOA, and to the right he put a question mark and LAUREN LAWTON.

“If Houston is Gregory Hewitt, why would he have been watching Ballencoa in San Luis?” Hicks asked. “They know each other. They were in contact while Houston was finishing his stint at the Men’s Colony. Why would he tell the neighbor lady he was a cop?”

“What’s he supposed to say?” Mendez asked. “I’m Roland’s friend from prison? He tells her he’s a cop, she goes away.”

Tanner came up to the board and stood beside him. “So if we follow Houston, Houston knows Ballencoa is moving to Oak Knoll. If we follow the Hewitt thread under our original suspicion that he might be a private investigator, that potentially links him to Lauren.”

She picked up a marker and made a broken line connecting Hewitt and Lawton with Mendez’s question mark in the center.

“Lauren knows Ballencoa is in Oak Knoll because she got the info from Hewitt,” she said. “Ballencoa knows where Lauren lives through his connection to Houston.”

“The con man is playing both sides,” Hicks said.

“But which side is he really on?” Mendez asked. “And how did Lauren connect with him? If she was going to hire a PI, how would she happen to end up with this guy?”

“He had to go to her,” Tanner said. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. He goes to her and says, ‘Hey, lady, I can help you out with this for a price. I know where Ballencoa is, I know where he’s going . . .’ It’s never been a secret that the Lawtons have money. Maybe he’s angling to somehow get his hands on the fifty grand.”

“Double-crossing his old buddy?” Mendez said.

“Or was it a setup from the get-go?” Hicks asked.

“They couldn’t count on her moving to Oak Knoll to pursue Ballencoa,” Mendez said.

“Maybe they didn’t,” Tanner ventured. “Maybe that was a bonus. If Ballencoa just wanted to screw with her head, and Houston just wanted to con her out of some cash . . .”

“She upped the ante by coming here,” Mendez said.

“And Roland raised by photographing the daughter.”

Mendez stared at the names on the board, nerves curling and uncurling in his belly like a fist. He thought of the broken window in Ballencoa’s back door, and the fact that he hadn’t been able to reach Lauren. He thought of the desperation he’d seen in her eyes and heard in her voice. She needed this to be over. If they were right, she had come here to put an end to it.

“It’s one thing to play a game when all the players know it’s a game,” he said. “It’s not a game to her. She’s dead serious.”