Down the Darkest Road

by Tami Hoag

  “It was a hell of a wreck,” Tanner said. “He had to be doing eighty or better. In my humble opinion, it was no accident.”

  “You think he killed himself.”

  “I think he couldn’t live with the grief anymore. Lauren channeled all her emotions into fighting the good fight and keeping the case in the news. Lance just fell apart. He just couldn’t deal with it.”

  But he could leave his wife to deal with it, Mendez thought, frowning. He could let her carry the whole load while he opted out of the pain. That didn’t sit well with Mendez. No wonder Lauren Lawton no longer resembled her driver’s license photo or that she was seeing things that weren’t really there.

  “You looked at him in the beginning, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “Yeah, of course. We always have to look at the family with something like this—and family friends as well. We heard Lance and the daughter had been butting heads. They’d had a big blowout the night before Leslie went missing.”

  “About what?”

  “She had just turned sixteen. She was a pretty headstrong girl trying to be independent. She wanted to go on a road trip with some friends up to San Francisco. Dad said no. They had a big argument in a restaurant and got asked to leave. Lance was a guy with a temper. Shit happens. There were a couple of holes in his time line the day the girl went missing.”

  “But nothing came of it.”

  “No, but the scrutiny was hard on him. He was well liked in the community, then suddenly people were looking at him sideways. According to everyone we spoke to, he adored his daughters and doted on them. He was just having a little trouble with the idea that his oldest was growing up. I think it was all more than he could take.”

  “Or he did it and he couldn’t live with the guilt,” Mendez said.

  “Meanwhile, Lauren soldiered on. No offense, but no guy could ever be as tough as a mother on a mission for her kid.”

  “That’s a lot of tragedy for one family,” Mendez said. “Who else did you look at?”

  “Of course we spoke to everyone Leslie had contact with, including her tennis coach, the softball coach, her parents’ friends. The night they got kicked out of the restaurant, they were having dinner with her old pediatrician’s family. The doctor was bent out of shape over the girl’s behavior that night too, and said a few things about her needing to learn a lesson.”

  “And?”

  “He didn’t have much of an alibi, but he didn’t have much of a motive, either,” she said. “If it was a crime to be angry with badly behaving kids in restaurants, I’d be doing life myself. Kent Westin is a well-respected physician. He offered to take a polygraph, and passed it.”

  That didn’t necessarily mean anything, Mendez thought. He would have been willing to bet Peter Crane would have passed a polygraph too if he had consented to take the test. It wasn’t hard to fool the machine if you didn’t have a conscience.

  “We questioned all of Lance’s polo buddies,” Tanner went on, “all the Lawtons’ social acquaintances. That was hard on the family too—having their friends put in that position.”

  And no matter how you looked at it, the storm wasn’t over, Mendez thought. It had been four years since Leslie Lawton went missing. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be under that kind of pressure for such a long time.

  “Do you know what Ballencoa is driving these days?” he asked as he signed the credit card receipt for dinner. He didn’t spend that much on groceries in a month.

  “He used to have a white Chevy panel van.”

  Which could have easily been repainted brown. And Lauren Lawton was right: People were free to come and go from San Luis Obispo. It wasn’t completely implausible that he could have been in Oak Knoll. But it seemed unlikely.

  Given what Tanner had told him, and what he had observed for himself, it seemed more likely the Lawton woman was seeing things that weren’t there because she needed closure on a nightmare that wouldn’t end.

  “Can I get a copy of that file?” he asked as they left the restaurant.

  The pier was busy with tourists walking up and down, visiting the shops, heading to dinner. A saxophonist sat on a park bench, playing jazz for tips. A couple of hundred yards out to sea, three big yachts had dropped anchor for the night. On the horizon the sun appeared to be melting into a hot orange puddle as it touched the ocean.

  “This is a copy,” Tanner said, handing him the folder. “You can have it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. Thanks for dinner.”

  “You’re welcome. I hope it holds you over for a couple of days.”

  She looked up at him and laughed, and he was struck by the fact that she was pretty and genuine.

  “You’re okay, Mendez,” she said as they got to their cars. “I wish you luck with your new citizen, but I’ll say it again: Better you than me, pal.”

  7

  Leslie had just turned sixteen—that magic number when we all believe we know more than our parents and should be treated like adults. She was old enough to drive a car, but still slept in a bed full of stuffed animals. She was old enough to have a job, but still begged Daddy for money to go to the movies.

  It was a time of contradictions for Lance and me as well. We were proud of the young lady our little girl was growing up to be, but terrified of the dangers she faced. Dangers like drugs and alcohol and horny teenage boys. The dangers an inexperienced driver faced on the California freeways. Dangers like peer pressure.

  Stranger danger was something we had talked about with her since she was small. But as vigilant as we were, we never truly expected to confront the reality of it.

  We lived in a gated community with guards monitoring who came and went. We lived in a city with a low crime rate and a high quality of life. The girls attended the best private schools, where everyone knew everyone’s kids and parents, and the parents were all connected socially. We all existed in the blissful bubble of a false sense of security. And while we were all diligent about looking for monsters in the shadows, none of us were looking for the snakes in the grass.

  The week before it happened was a difficult one in our house. School was about to end for the summer. Some of Leslie’s older friends were planning a weeklong car trip up the coast to San Francisco, and she wanted to go with them. Neither Lance nor I thought allowing a sixteen-year-old to go off with high school seniors was a good idea. It was a recipe for disaster. Even though we knew the kids were good kids, they were still kids, and we weren’t too old to have forgotten fake IDs and the ready accessibility of pot and other recreational chemicals. The potential for disaster was too high.

  Leslie took our decision badly. She cried and pouted and threw a tantrum. She sang the age-old teenager’s song of angst: We didn’t trust her, we treated her like a child, her friends’ parents were so much cooler than we were. Lance and I stood our ground. But it was harder for my husband.

  Lance and Leslie were too alike. She shared her father’s sense of adventure. She was the apple of his eye in part because of her stubborn, independent spirit. They had always been especially close, and it was difficult for him to deny her anything. Probably more to the point, he couldn’t take falling out of favor with her. Lance had always been the cool dad—a title that was important to him. His insecurity clashed hard with his role of authority.

  So on the night before our daughter went missing, my husband was in a foul mood with a short fuse. We were supposed to go to dinner with friends.

  We had known the Westins since Leslie was in kindergarten. Kent and Jeanie and their kids, Sam and Kelly. Sam was the same age as Leslie. Kelly was Leah’s best friend. Kent had been our girls’ pediatrician. He and Lance and a couple of other guys spent a week deep-sea fishing every summer.

  This was to be our annual birthday celebration for both Leslie and Kelly. Leslie didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay home and pout and talk to her girlfriends on the phone, complaining about what horrible, cruel parents she had. Lance
and I insisted she go. The dinner was partly in her honor, and it was a tradition between our families. She would go and she would be civil.

  The skirmishes between Leslie and her father began as we were getting ready to leave, and continued in the car. A sharp word here, a snotty tone there. Leslie thought the tradition was stupid. She had outgrown it. She didn’t like the Westins. She thought Dr. Westin was creepy. Sam Westin was a dork.

  In the backseat, Leah, our rule follower, took her father’s side, and Leslie snapped at her, making tears well up in Leah’s eyes. We should have aborted the plan, turned around, and gone home, but we were in too deep by then.

  The mood at dinner was tense and awkward. Having a sulky teenager present was like being set upon by a poltergeist. No one knew quite what to do. Engage Leslie in conversation and try to turn her mood around? Difficult to do when her answers were all monosyllables followed by huffy sighs and eye rolling. Ignore her? That was like trying to ignore the gorilla in the room.

  And all through the evening the sniping between Leslie and Lance continued. I could see my husband’s temper growing shorter and shorter, and Leslie’s belligerence getting sharper and sharper.

  One sarcastic remark too many, and that was it.

  Lance blew up like Krakatoa, and his daughter did the same. We were asked to leave the restaurant.

  Leah was in tears. The Westins were embarrassed. Kent had a few sharp words for Leslie. We were humiliated. A vein bulged out in my husband’s neck, and I was afraid he might have a stroke. His blood pressure ran high in ordinary circumstances. His face and neck were bright red.

  When we got home Lance went into Leslie’s room and ripped the phone cord out of the jack. He took the phone, shouting at her as he left the room that she was absolutely grounded for the next month.

  I went to Leah’s room and reassured her that things would be better tomorrow. I let Leslie stew.

  The next day Leslie snuck out of the house to go to a softball game.

  She never came home.

  The tears came in a burning torrent, as they always did. Lauren buried her face in her hands and tried not to make any noise.

  It was one forty-five in the morning. Leah was asleep in her room down the hall.

  The pain never lessened. Never. Every time the wound opened anew, it was just as hot and raw as when it had first happened.

  People always tried to tell her that the pain would lessen over time, that time healed all wounds. People who said those things had never been in pain, not this pain. This pain was like an alien living in her chest. Only, when it burst out of her, she didn’t die from it. She only wished she could.

  She cried and cried and cried. She tried to choke the sobs back down her throat, swallowing and gasping like she was drowning. She didn’t want Leah to hear her. She was supposed to be the rock her younger daughter could rely on. What kind of mother could she be like this?

  Despondent, she grabbed a handful of Kleenex and blew her nose. She grabbed the glass off the desk and drank the vodka like it was water.

  The thing with alcohol was that the effects were not immediate enough.

  She drank the whole glass of vodka and still felt the guilt, the despair, the fear for Leslie, the fear for Leah, and the fear for herself. She still felt like some giant hand had broken through her ribs and torn out her heart.

  All she could do was wait for the numbness to come.

  8

  “You’re not supposed to go anywhere, Leslie,” Leah said. “Daddy grounded you. I heard him. The neighbors probably heard him. Everybody in town probably knows it by now.”

  Leslie gave her a nasty look from the corner of her eye as she stood primping in front of the bathroom mirror.

  “Daddy’s not here,” she said. “And Mom’s not here either. They won’t know.”

  “I’m here,” Leah said. “I’ll know.”

  Leslie rolled her eyes. “Why do you have to be such a little Goody Two-shoes? I’m just going to a softball game. What’s the big deal?”

  “You’re grounded,” Leah said, not understanding why Leslie didn’t think that was a big deal.

  Leah had never been grounded in her life—nor did she ever plan on being grounded. Getting grounded meant you broke the rules, and if you broke the rules, Mom and Daddy would be disappointed in you. Leah couldn’t stand the idea of disappointing her parents.

  Leslie heaved a sigh. “You’re such a child, Leah. It’s not the end of the world if you break a stupid rule. So what if Daddy’s pissed off? He’ll get over it.”

  Leah frowned her disapproval, but tipped her head down so Leslie couldn’t see it. She didn’t like to disappoint her big sister either.

  “You’re not telling, are you?” Leslie asked.

  She assessed herself in the mirror. She had very carefully dressed in khaki shorts and penny loafers with a lightweight, off-the-shoulder, oversized black sweater over a hot-pink tank top. She had smoothed her long dark hair into a ponytail with a pink scrunchie, and made sure her bangs were just so to frame her big blue eyes.

  Leah said nothing.

  “You’re such a baby,” Leslie declared. “I’ll be back before they get home.”

  As she watched her sister ride down the street on her bike, Leah secretly hoped that didn’t happen. She hoped Leslie would be hours late for dinner so she would get in even more trouble than she was already in.

  Leslie became smaller and smaller as she rode away, and then she was gone.

  She never came back.

  Leah sat up in bed, gasping for air. She had left the light on, as she did most nights. She had never been afraid of the dark as a child. Now she dreaded it for the dreams it would bring.

  Tears streamed down her face as she pulled her knees to her chest and pulled the covers up to her chin. The guilt felt like she had swallowed something that was too big for her throat.

  She knew logically that she hadn’t wished her sister away, but that didn’t change the feelings. She was almost the same age Leslie had been that terrible day, but in the wake of the nightmares, she felt like the child her sister had called her.

  She wanted desperately to cry, but not alone. Crying alone was one of the most miserable, depressing things she knew. It only left her feeling even more empty and abandoned than she already felt, as if the earth had opened up a huge black hole for her to fall into all by herself.

  If Daddy had still been alive, she would have gone to him and asked him to hold her and comfort her, but she didn’t want to go to her mother. Both her parents had been devastated by the loss of Leslie, but they had reacted differently.

  Where Daddy had seemed sad and lost, her mother’s emotions had been raw and angry. Her mother had needed to fight against the pain, where Daddy had gradually let it crush him. It made Leah angry sometimes that he had given up and left them, and at the same time it made her all the more sad that he hadn’t thought she was reason enough to get up and fight. Had he loved Leslie so much more that he couldn’t bear the thought of life without her?

  The tears welled up and balanced on the ridge of Leah’s eyelashes. She felt so alone. She didn’t want to go to her mother, but she got out of bed just the same, and went out into the hall. She could see the light shining in the study where her mother was working on her book. Slowly, reluctantly, she made her way toward the door, holding herself tight, being so careful with each step not to make noise.

  When she got to the door, she stopped, holding her breath. She didn’t want to knock. She didn’t want to say anything. She was trying so hard not to cry that her eyes felt like they would explode. What she really wished was that her mom would have come to her bedroom to check on her and realized that she needed a hug. But that hadn’t happened. It hardly ever did.

  A fresh, bitter feeling of despair pressed down on her as she heard her mother crying on the other side of the door. Leah could tell she was trying not to make noise as she did it, just as Leah was trying not to make noise as the tears spilled down her ow
n cheeks.

  As she leaned back against the wall for support, she pulled the bottom of her T-shirt up and covered her face with it, and cried into it.

  She couldn’t go to her mother. Her mother had her own grief, her own guilt, her own struggle to deal with her feelings. Leah wouldn’t add the weight of her own pain to her mother’s.

  She wished she could, but she couldn’t.

  Instead, she tiptoed carefully back to her room, where she grabbed a pillow off the bed to muffle her sobs as she curled into the upholstered chair by the window and let the emotions go.

  She sobbed for herself, for her loneliness, for the feelings that she wasn’t important, that she didn’t matter. She sobbed in grief for the father she had lost and for the sister who had left her alone. She sobbed in grief and in pain and in anger. The emotions were so huge and overwhelming she felt both crushed by them and stuffed with them. The pressure came from within and without, inescapable. She didn’t know what to do with it. She thought—as she had thought many times before—that she might die from it.

  Desperate to put a stop to it, she threw the pillow aside and opened the drawer in her nightstand where she kept a paperback book she had been pretending to read for almost two years now. She grabbed the book and went into her bathroom, where she pulled down her pajama bottoms and sat down on the edge of the bathtub.

  Thin, dark, angry-looking scars ran in inch-long horizontal lines across the otherwise smooth, soft skin of her lower abdomen. Each scar looked exactly the same as the one before it, above it, below it. There were many—some old, some newer, some had been healed over and reopened. She had stopped counting them long ago.

  Buried between pages deep inside the book was a razor blade. Leah removed it, holding it delicately between thumb and forefinger. Looking at it, the anticipation of the relief it would bring instantly calmed her. As she looked at the light gleam against the blade, her breathing slowed. Her heart rate slowed. She placed the steel against her skin and drew the next line.