Down the Darkest Road (37 page)
Read Down the Darkest Road Online
Authors: Tami Hoag
He was angry. He was agitated. He was excited. He had decided to stick to his routine because it calmed him somewhat. He went to the diner and sat in his usual booth, and ordered his eggs and toast and coffee. He didn’t eat meat, but he ate eggs for the protein. His usual waitress, Ellen Norman, twenty-four, with the curly strawberry blond hair and receding chin, waited on him. The routine helped, but not entirely.
On the one hand he was angry over the destruction of his camera. His camera was his instrument. What he did with it was his art. He never allowed anyone to handle his cameras or his lenses. Seeing that camera hit the ground, seeing the lens wrench off the body, had been like watching his own limb being torn off. Having it destroyed by Lauren Lawton—by a woman he just seconds before had control over—had infuriated him. The rage he had felt had almost overwhelmed his control. The prospect of losing control left him feeling agitated.
Control was essential. Control equaled success. Losing control meant making mistakes. Mistakes equaled failure. Failure was not an option. Failure meant going to prison. He wasn’t going to prison again. Ever.
He was an intelligent person. A highly intelligent person. He was certainly more intelligent than any of the cops who had investigated him. Over the years he had learned from his mistakes and perfected his methods.
Success was all about control.
Control was the sensation that had filled him as he had photographed Leah Lawton and her little blonde friend. They had been unaware of him. The control had been his as he captured their images: their slender tanned legs and arms, their budding breasts, the sliver of belly the blonde girl showed every time she raised her tennis racquet. Each separate piece of girl was controlled by him as he captured it on film.
Control was what he had felt as Lauren Lawton had raced toward him, her face twisting in anger. He had created that emotion. He had captured the images of that emotion and frozen them in time.
Every time he closed his eyes he could see her expression, the raw hatred, and that excited him. There was his challenge: to create that hatred and to manipulate it and turn it around on her. The potential power in that success was enough to give him a hard-on.
Overall, he decided he was feeling good. Not just good. Great. He had almost everything he wanted. Almost.
Toward the front of the restaurant the same group of night shift nurses he had been watching all week were getting ready to leave—Denise Garland among them. They had gotten up from their table, talking and laughing. One of the older fat ones spotted him and waved. He waved back.
As the nurses headed for the front door, he put a ten and a five down next to his plate to pay his bill and leave Ellen Norman, twenty-four, with the curly strawberry blond hair and receding chin, a nice tip.
“Pervert at two o’clock!” Tanner said as Ballencoa came out of the diner.
He walked out into the sunshine, settled a pair of sunglasses on his nose, hitched at the waist of his baggy cargo pants, and looked around like he was pleased with himself.
“Oh, yeah, Roland,” Tanner said. “You’re all that. King of the Panty Whackers.”
“What’d you find in your files?” Mendez asked. “Was he up to that shit in SB?”
“I found half a dozen cases that fit the B and E MO, spread out over eighteen months before Leslie Lawton went missing. Nobody gave them much attention because nothing of value was taken, nobody was home at the time of the break-ins, there was no violence involved.”
“Any fingerprints?”
“Nope. But one of the homeowners mentioned that clothes had gotten run through the washing machine,” she said. “The reason it got mentioned was that the machine was broken, it wouldn’t drain. The homeowner hadn’t used it in a week. That was the woman’s first clue that someone had been in her house.”
“And he ran a load of laundry at the Lawtons’ house too,” Mendez said, putting the car in gear, waiting for Ballencoa to drive out of the parking lot and pick a direction. Two other cars pulled out onto La Quinta—nurses who had left the restaurant ahead of him.
“Right,” Tanner said. “Underwear. As soon as she told us that, I knew what he’d done. Just another big fuck-you from Roland. He could be in that house, be comfortable enough to play milk the snake with her panties, then wash the evidence away in a way everyone would notice, and no one could do anything about. Like a dog pissing on a fence.”
Ballencoa took a right, pulling out behind a red Toyota Corolla with a nurse in it. Mendez let two cars fall in behind him before pulling out into the flow of traffic.
“You guys do the most disgusting things,” Tanner commented.
“Don’t look at me!” Mendez said, offended.
“Well, maybe not all of you,” she conceded. “But you gotta admit you never see women breaking into guys’ houses to masturbate with their underwear. Not that I’ve ever heard of.”
They passed Mercy General Hospital and took a left on Third Avenue.
“Although,” Tanner mused, “I suppose if a guy came home and found that going on, he probably wouldn’t call the cops. He’d call himself a lucky son of a bitch!”
“Now who’s disgusting?” Mendez complained.
“Am I embarrassing your delicate sensibilities?”
“As a matter of fact . . .”
One of the cars acting as a buffer between them and Ballencoa’s van turned off to the right. Mendez swore under his breath and eased off the gas. There were half a dozen reasons he couldn’t have Ballencoa see them or suspect them—not the least of which would be having Dixon kick his ass for following the guy.
“Sorry,” Tanner said. “I’m too used to working with assholes.”
The red Toyota ahead of Ballencoa took a right. The car behind Ballencoa pulled over and parked. Ballencoa went straight, but took the following right. Mendez slowed to a crawl, waiting, then took the same turn.
They made a big loop, coming back onto the street the Toyota had turned down from the opposite direction.
“Ho-ly shit,” Tanner murmured excitedly. “He’s following her. That nurse.”
Mendez felt a little rush of adrenaline. The Toyota had parked in front of a little cracker box house. There was no sign of the nurse. Ballencoa cruised slowly past, then made a right. Mendez went straight onto the next block, did a three-point turn, and doubled back, parking at the corner with a sight line to the red Toyota.
Ballencoa’s van came back onto the block from the opposite direction and pulled over and parked maybe twenty yards from the Toyota.
Neither Mendez nor Tanner said anything. They waited. They held their breath. They waited for Ballencoa to get out of the van, to approach the little square house the Toyota had parked in front of.
“Do you think he made us?” Tanner asked softly, as if there was some chance of Ballencoa hearing her a block away.
“I don’t think he would have stopped if he’d made us,” Mendez said.
“Or he would—just to yank our chains.”
“Maybe.”
“This is like watching one of those nature shows,” Tanner murmured. “Watching the tiger stalk some poor unsuspecting whatever the hell tigers stalk.”
They sat there for nearly ten minutes before Ballencoa pulled away from the curb and came toward them.
Shit
, Mendez thought. He was going to come right past them. No way he wouldn’t see them. Tanner slid down in her seat and ducked her head. Mendez twisted around and pretended to look for something in the backseat.
Shit
, Mendez thought. He was going to come right past them. No way he wouldn’t see them. Tanner slid down in her seat and ducked her head. Mendez twisted around and pretended to look for something in the backseat.
But Ballencoa turned left at the corner just in front of them, never looking their way.
Tanner and Mendez exhaled together. They waited another ten minutes to make sure he didn’t come back, then went to knock on the door of the nurse with the red Toyota.
42
Mendez ran the tag on the Toyota before they went to the door. It came back to Denise Marie Garland, twenty, no wants or warrants.
He checked his watch as they went up the sidewalk. He was due in Dixon’s office in seventeen minutes. He rapped his knuckles hard on the door and said, “Miss Garland? Sheriff’s office.”
Denise Garland came to the door clutching her bathrobe closed at the throat, her mousy brown hair hanging in wet strings around her head, her brown eyes wide.
Mendez showed her his badge. “Miss Garland, I’m Detective Mendez, this is Detective Tanner. We need to ask you a few questions. May we come in?”
She stepped back from the door. “Did I do something? I know I’m not supposed to park in the doctors’ lot, but I was
so
late—”
so
late—”
“You haven’t done anything, ma’am,” Mendez said. “We’re investigating a string of break-ins in your neighborhood. We’d like to ask you some questions, that’s all.”
“Break-ins?”
“Have you noticed anyone strange hanging around the neighborhood lately?” Tanner asked, drawing the girl’s attention to her, allowing Mendez to move a little farther into the room.
The kitchen was to his left, the living room to the right. The place was the size of a postage stamp. It was clean with a normal amount of clutter. A pile of mail here. A stack of magazines there. Some dishes in the sink.
“No,” she said. “But I work nights. I just got home.”
“You’re a nurse?” Tanner said.
“Yes. I work in the ER.”
Half of her furniture was white plastic. The kind that was always on display on the sidewalk outside of Ralphs market and Thrifty drugstores. He could see a small table and four chairs of the same white plastic out on a little patio area on the other side of a flimsy-looking sliding glass door.
“Have you noticed anything out of place?” Tanner asked. “Anything missing?”
Denise Garland frowned as she thought. “No.”
“Do you keep your doors locked, Ms. Garland?” Mendez asked, walking over to the patio door.
Even as she said yes he pushed the door open with a finger.
“Well,” she said, flustered. “Sometimes I forget that one. I have to be more careful, I know. My mom is always harping at me about locking my doors. I accidentally left it open the other night. Stupid.”
“Did you?” Mendez asked, looking at Tanner. “Are you sure you forgot to close it?”
The girl looked puzzled by the question. “I thought I closed it. It was open when I got home. You don’t think . . . ?”
“Did anything seem disturbed?” Tanner asked. “Is anything missing?”
“No . . . I don’t think so . . .” Now she seemed unsure of everything as she tried to recall. “My friend Candace came over in the afternoon. We cooked out. I was late leaving for work. I was in a hurry. I figured I just didn’t remember to close the door.”
“Do you have a washing machine?” Tanner asked.
Now every question sounded strange and sinister to her. “No. Why?”
“Have you noticed any articles of your clothing missing?”
“No. What kind of question is that?” she asked, getting more agitated by the second.
A drawing on the counter between the kitchen and living area caught the eye of Mendez as he came back toward the front door. A pencil drawing. A cartoon. A caricature of a group of nurses, Denise Garland with her heart-shaped face among them. The artist had signed it in the lower right-hand corner: ROB.
A memory scratched at him. From the afternoon Ballencoa had come to the SO to file his complaint. Him asking Hicks what had been in Ballencoa’s messenger bag.
A sketch pad, a notebook, a couple of rolls of film . . .
A sketch pad, a notebook, a couple of rolls of film . . .
“Ms. Garland,” he said, “do you know a man named Roland Ballencoa?”
“No.”
He picked up the drawing and held it so Tanner could see it. “Where did you get this?”
“Oh, that’s from Rob,” the girl said, relaxing. This was something that wasn’t scary to her. A pleasant memory.
“Who’s Rob?”
“The guy at the diner,” she explained, finding a little smile. “He’s always there for breakfast. He does those and gives them to people. Just for fun. He’s nice.”
Other books
Surprise Island by Rob M. Worley
Imperfect Contract by Brickman, Gregg E.
HeatedMatch by Lynne Silver
A Courted Affair by Jane Winston
Bolt (Storm Runner's MC 1) by Lauren Devane
Voices on the Wind by Evelyn Anthony
Did You Declare the Corpse? by Sprinkle, Patricia
Done for a Dime by David Corbett
Polar Bears Past Bedtime by Mary Pope Osborne
Devil's Bargain by Christine Warren
