Down the Darkest Road (4 page)

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Authors: Tami Hoag

BOOK: Down the Darkest Road
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“And you were going to chase that person down in your car?” Mendez asked. “We don’t do that here, ma’am.”
“Of course not,” she said. “We don’t do that in Santa Barbara either.”
This is real life, Lauren, not
The French Connection.
Car chases are for the movies. What the hell is wrong with you?
Detective Mendez seemed at a loss. “Let’s have a seat in my car.”
He used his radio to call in her driver’s license, speaking in cop code, no doubt asking for reports of past lunatic behavior. There had to be a thick file on her in Santa Barbara. She was well known at both the police and the sheriff’s departments. Anyone there would tell him she was a bitch and a pain in the ass—titles she wore with pride.
“What brings you to Oak Knoll, Ms. Lawton?”
“My daughter and I just moved here.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m an interior decorator.”
“And your husband?”
He had caught sight of her ring finger. She had never taken off her wedding band. It didn’t matter that Lance was gone. She would always be married to him.
“My husband is dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
She never knew what to say to that.
Thank you
sounded stupid. She didn’t appreciate automatic sympathy from people she didn’t know, people who had never known her husband. What was the point?
Some unintelligible lingo crackled over the radio. Mendez acknowledged it with a brisk “10-4.”
“Your name is familiar.”
Lauren laughed without humor. This was where conversations always took a turn for the worse on so many levels. “Well, I
am
famous. Or
in
famous—depending on your point of view. My daughter Leslie was abducted four years ago.”
Mendez nodded as the memory came to him. “The case is still open.”
“Yes.”
It sounded so clinical when he said it, so sterile. The case. Like what had happened was a book that could be opened and studied and closed again and put away on a shelf. Her reality was so much messier than that, ragged and torn and shredded, oozing and dripping. The case was still open. Her daughter was still missing.
“You said you just moved here. Do you have friends in Oak Knoll?”
“I hardly know anyone here.”
“Then who did you think you saw?” he asked. “Who were you trying to follow?”
“The man who took my daughter.”
He was taken aback by that. “Excuse me?”
“His name is Roland Ballencoa. I thought I saw him in the supermarket,” Lauren said, “and then he drove right past me in the parking lot.”
“What was he driving?”
“A brown van.”
“Did you get a plate number?”
“No.”
“If you know he took your daughter, why isn’t he in jail?”
Defeat weighed down on her in the form of exhaustion. The adrenaline rush had crashed. He wasn’t going to help her. No one would help her. Roland Ballencoa was a free man.
“Because there isn’t a shred of evidence against him,” she said, resigned. “If you’re going to write me a ticket, detective, can we get on with it? I have things to do.”
“I’m not exactly sure what to do with you, Mrs. Lawton,” he admitted. “I’m not sure I should let you get back behind the wheel of a car.”
“You want me to walk a straight line heel-to-toe?” she asked. “Close my eyes and touch the tip of my nose? I’m as sober as a judge,” she said. “I’ll take a Breathalyzer test. You can have my blood drawn if you want. I’m not on anything.”
“You thought you saw this man in the supermarket, but you rammed your cart into me,” he pointed out. “You took after a man in a van and nearly hit half a dozen pedestrians. You tell me this guy abducted your daughter, but that there’s no evidence to prove it.”
“I didn’t say I was in my right mind,” Lauren admitted. “But lucky for me, it’s not against the law to be a little crazy. In fact, a lot of people would say I get a free pass to be mentally unbalanced. That’s one of the perks of being a survivor of tragedy.”
He didn’t react to her sarcasm. He reached a thick hand up and rubbed the back of his neck, as if to stimulate thought by increasing circulation to his brain.
He got back on the radio and requested information on Roland Ballencoa. Wants, warrants, physical address.
“Where are you living?” he asked.
“Twenty-one Old Mission Road. The house belongs to friends from Santa Barbara—the Bristols,” she explained, as if he would care.
“Your phone number?” he asked, jotting her answers into a little spiral notebook he had taken from the inside breast pocket of his sport coat.
“You’ll want to speak to Detective Tanner at the Santa Barbara Police Department,” she said, assuming he would follow through. He had that air about him—that he would be a stickler for details. “The detective in charge of my daughter’s case.”
“Do you have any reason to believe Ballencoa is in Oak Knoll?” he asked.
“Would I have brought my daughter here if I did?” Lauren challenged.
Mendez didn’t react—another irritating cop trait. “Do you have any reason to think he might know you’re here?”
“I didn’t send him the ‘We’re Moving’ notice,” she snapped. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“No, ma’am.”
“No. You think I’m a lunatic.”
“No, ma’am.”
“You are infuriatingly polite, detective,” she said. “You have every reason to think there’s something wrong with me. And I’m being a bitch on top of it.”
Mendez said nothing.
Lauren found an ironic smile for that. “Your mother raised you well.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The radio crackled and spewed out another short stream of information. Roland Ballencoa’s last known address was in San Luis Obispo, almost two hours away. No wants. No warrants.
Mendez gave her a look.
“That doesn’t mean he couldn’t be here,” Lauren argued. “The last I knew, people were free to come and go from San Luis Obispo.”
“You think he came down here to shop at Pavilions?” the detective asked.
Sudden tears burned the backs of Lauren’s eyes. She felt stupid and defeated and helpless.
“Can I go now?” she asked in a small voice.
Mendez gave her a long look that was like a silent lecture. She felt it on her like a ray of light, but she didn’t meet his eyes.
Finally he handed her driver’s license back to her along with his business card.
“If you think you see him again, don’t follow him,” he said. “Call the sheriff’s office.”
“And tell them what?” she asked. “That I saw a man who isn’t wanted for anything shopping for groceries?”
He let out a slow, measured sigh that might have been concession or frustration or impatience. His face gave nothing away. “Call me.”
“Right,” she said, looking down at the card.
Detective Anthony Mendez.
She opened the door and got out of the car.
“Drive safe, ma’am.”
3
 
Mendez watched Lauren Lawton walk back to her black BMW. She looked defeated and frail in a way. According to her driver’s license, she was forty-two. The photograph showed a vibrant woman with a beautiful smile, black hair, and ice-blue eyes. The woman who had been sitting in the seat next to him looked older, thinner, paler, as if the experience of losing her daughter had worn years of life out of her. He supposed it had.
He had watched the case unfold in Santa Barbara. It was in the spring, just after Vince and Anne’s wedding, he recalled. His friends had gone off to Italy for a well-deserved honeymoon. The next day the supposed abduction of a teenage girl in Santa Barbara had led the news.
He had been among a group from the sheriff’s office to volunteer on several searches for the girl. Between the Santa Barbara Police Department and the Santa Barbara County SO, there had already been a lot of manpower available, but search and rescue groups and volunteers from all over southern California had showed up to help.
Their efforts had been futile. The only traces of the girl ever found had been her bicycle and a penny loafer found in a ditch alongside a quiet country road on the edge of town.
He remembered seeing the parents from a distance at one of the searches, making a public plea for help in finding their daughter. It was a hard thing to watch—people in so much emotional agony it was as if they were being skinned alive for all the world to see.
The case had been in the news all that summer. Then in the fall a brutal murder in Oak Knoll had taken the spotlight away, and Mendez had been immersed in running that investigation. The missing girl in Santa Barbara had faded from his attention.
Every once in a while over the intervening years the Lawton case had come back into the spotlight on the evening news out of Santa Barbara. As far as Mendez knew, nothing had ever come of it. He had never heard of Roland Ballencoa.
Lauren Lawton signaled and carefully pulled away from the curb. Mendez waited for a couple of cars to put distance between them, then pulled out and followed her.
She took a right on Via Verde and drove so slowly down the residential section that one of the cars behind her honked at her, then jerked out of line and blasted past her. Mendez ignored the traffic violation. It wasn’t his job to dole out tickets. Her reckless driving had not been the reason he’d pulled Lauren Lawton over.
The look on her face as she had rammed her shopping cart into his, and the look on her face as she had realized he wasn’t who she’d thought he was, had intrigued him. He had watched her come out of Pavilions looking pale and shaky. When she had pulled out of her parking spot and taken off, he had to follow.
She was looking for the brown van now, he supposed. And what if she found it sitting in one of the driveways along Via Verde? Would she go up to the front door of the house expecting to find the man she believed had taken her daughter?
He supposed so. And then what? No good scenarios came to mind. Mendez tried to put himself in her shoes. If he knew the guy who had taken his kid was walking around scot-free, what would he do?
Track him down like a fucking dog and blow his brains out.
He made a mental note to find out if Mrs. Lawton or her late husband owned a gun.
Not finding the brown van, she continued down Via Verde, through the area lined with trendy boutiques and coffee shops, and on past the scenic campus of McAster College with its green lawns shaded by huge spreading oak trees.
Mendez kept well back as they turned onto Old Mission Road and the residences became fewer and farther between. He pulled over and watched from a distance as Lauren Lawton drove to the very end of the road and into the gated driveway of a sprawling white house with elaborate flower beds in tiers down the front yard.
The BMW disappeared into the garage.
He checked his watch and contemplated what to do. Technically speaking, he had the day off. He was only riding around in an unmarked car because his personal vehicle had gone into the shop to have a dent taken out. He had spent a couple of hours in the morning at the courthouse to testify at a hearing. The rest of the day was his. If he wanted to spend it in Santa Barbara, he was free to do so. If he left now, he could stop in at the PD to get some questions answered, then treat himself to a nice dinner by the ocean.
He drove back to Via Verde, bought himself a coffee, found a pay phone, called the Santa Barbara Police Department, and asked to speak with Detective Tanner.
“Investigative Division, Detective Tanner speaking.”
The voice belonged to a woman. It was a little hoarse and scratchy, but definitely a woman’s voice. Mendez looked at the receiver like maybe there was something wrong with it. “Detective Tanner?”
“Yes? How can I help you?”
“Uh . . . this is Detective Mendez in Oak Knoll.”
“And . . . ?”
“I have a couple of questions for you,” he said, manually shifting his brain into gear. “Regarding a case I was told you’re working.”
“What case?”
“The Lawton kidnapping. Lauren Lawton has recently relocated to Oak Knoll.”
“Oh,” she said, then with great joy in her voice added: “Hallelujah!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means better you than me, pal. Good luck with that.”
“She’s difficult?” Mendez asked.
Tanner’s laugh held a note of near-hysteria. “Ha! She ran one detective into early retirement, another moved to Barstow, and if I wasn’t related to a bad-ass attorney, she would have gotten me fired.”
Maybe you deserved it
, Mendez thought, not liking her attitude. Maybe the cops in SB spent too much time surfing. Maybe they were a bunch of incompetent assholes.

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