Down the Darkest Road

59

“I want the chopper in the air before we lose any more daylight,” Mendez said. He stood with Tanner and Dixon in Lauren Lawton’s driveway.

The crime scene unit had arrived and parked its fancy new RV outside the gate on Old Mission Road. The evidence techs were like a swarm of ants in the house, and on the driveway, photographing, videotaping, collecting blood and tissue samples.

Mendez didn’t want to stop to imagine whose blood or whose tissue. Lauren’s Walther had been abandoned on the table in the great room. Two spent .380 shell casings were on the floor. He hoped she had fired the shots. He hoped she had hit something. He hoped at least some of that blood belonged to Houston or Ballencoa.

Even if she hit one or both of the men, the fact remained that Lauren and her daughter were gone.

“They could be long gone by now,” Dixon said.

“We can’t assume that,” Mendez said, knowing it was entirely possible. If Ballencoa had taken Lauren and her daughter, he had only to drive to the 101 freeway and be gone in either direction—north or south. They could have been well on their way toward Mexico or Canada or anywhere else.

He had alerted the CHP. Every highway patrol officer, every county cop for fifty miles around was looking for Ballencoa’s van and Lauren’s BMW. The CHP choppers were already in the sky cruising the big artery that ran California’s traffic from one end of the state to the other.

“Ballencoa’s too smart to take the freeway,” Tanner said.

Which left the mountain roads. Miles and miles of them. County roads and fire roads and pig trails that cut back into the wilderness. Rugged hills and deep canyons ran up and down the county on either side. It could take days to find a body. It could take years. It could take forever.

No one had ever found any trace of Leslie Lawton. Mendez hoped to God her mother and sister didn’t write the same ending to their story. The chances of him or anyone else riding to their rescue in time were slim to none.