Down the Darkest Road

by Tami Hoag

  He stumbled backward at the last possible second, dropping the camera to swing from the strap around his neck. Lauren ran right into him, shoving him backward.

  “You bastard!” She spat the words at him, grabbing for the camera, catching hold of the strap. “How dare you! How dare you look at my daughter! You filthy rotten son of bitch!”

  Ballencoa stumbled backward another few steps, trying to push her away, ducking his head as the camera strap pulled hard against his neck.

  “Crazy bitch!” he shouted.

  “I’ll show you crazy, you fucking pervert!”

  Lauren fought and kicked and yanked on the camera strap as Ballencoa tried to pull away from her. Suddenly the strap gave way and she went stumbling backward, tripping, falling, landing hard on the ground. Ballencoa’s camera came with her, bouncing off the hard surface of the tennis court, the expensive lens breaking free of the body of the camera.

  “Fucking bitch!” Ballencoa shouted, scrambling for the camera.

  Lauren pushed to her feet with the intent of kicking either him or the camera, she didn’t care which. But as she went to move forward she was pulled back, a man’s arms banding around her from behind.

  Ballencoa yanked his ruined camera up by its broken strap, shouting, “Call the police! I want her arrested!”

  Lauren stared at him, at the rage on his face as he gathered up the camera. It was the first time she had ever seen him express an emotion of any kind. Over a camera. He had taken her daughter, had probably killed her, and he wanted her arrested for breaking his fucking camera.

  “Mommy! Oh my God!”

  Leah’s voice turned her head. Her daughter and Wendy came running, eyes wide with shock.

  Ballencoa came toward her, red-faced, thrusting a finger at her. “You’re going to jail, you crazy bitch!”

  The man who had caught hold of Lauren let her go and put himself between her and Ballencoa. Greg Hewitt.

  He stiff-armed Ballencoa with a hand to the chest, and shouted in his face. “Back off! Back off!”

  “She’s crazy!” Ballencoa shouted. “She attacked me!”

  “Calm down!” Hewitt shouted back.

  Lauren turned to her daughter.

  “Mommy! Oh my God!” Leah said again. There were tears in her eyes. Her face was white as chalk.

  Lauren caught her by the arms. “It’s all right,” she said stupidly. Of course it wasn’t all right. She could see a sheriff’s deputy hustling toward the scene of the melee.

  Wendy’s mother, Sara, came running across the tennis court. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”

  “That woman attacked me!” Ballencoa said loudly to the deputy.

  Sara Morgan looked from him to Lauren with shock.

  “Can you please take care of Leah?” Lauren asked her. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to miss dinner.”

  The deputy came up to her, stone-faced. “Ma’am, can I have a word with you?”

  Lauren ignored him.

  “Of course,” Sara Morgan said, still confused. “Don’t worry about her.”

  Leah was crying. “Are they taking you to jail? Oh my God! Mommy, no!”

  Lauren pulled her close for a quick hug. “It’s all right, honey. It’ll be fine,” she said, managing to sound much calmer than she was. “I’ll have to go and explain what happened, that’s all. Don’t worry about it. You go with Mrs. Morgan and Wendy. I’ll pick you up later.”

  The deputy put a hand on her arm. “Ma’am?”

  Lauren shook him off with a dirty look. “Take your hands off me. I want to speak to Detective Mendez as soon as possible.”

  “Mommy, your purse,” Leah said, holding the bag out to her. “You dropped it.”

  Lauren looked at her handbag, thinking of the Walther in its special pocket and the fact that she had no license to carry the gun.

  “You keep it for me, sweetheart,” she said. “I won’t be needing it.”

  38

  “She did what?” Mendez said, incredulous.

  “She assaulted a man at the sports complex,” the deputy explained. “Then she demanded to see you.”

  The page had come just as he had been finishing his dinner with Vince and Anne and their kids. Lauren Lawton had been brought in on assault charges. Intrigued, Vince had invited himself along on the ride to the SO. They stood now in the hall outside the interview rooms.

  “Did you tell her she’s being charged with anything?” Mendez asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you read her her rights?”

  “No. The whole scene was kind of crazy, and then she asked to speak to you—demanded to speak to you is more like it—and she was going on about how the guy is some kind of child predator,” the deputy said. “And that he had kidnapped her daughter.”

  “Roland Ballencoa?” Mendez said. “She assaulted Roland Ballencoa ?”

  The deputy nodded. “Yeah, that’s his name. And he was screaming that she attacked him and busted his camera and he wants to press charges and he demands to see the sheriff. I thought the best thing would be to bring them both in here and sort it out.”

  “Good call,” Mendez said.

  “He’s in one with Detective Trammell. She’s in two. They’re all yours,” the deputy said, raising his hands in surrender as he backed away down the hall. “Good luck.”

  Vince tipped his head in the direction of the break room on the opposite side of the hall. “I’ll go watch the show.”

  Mendez took a deep breath and let it out, then turned the doorknob and went into interview room two. Lauren was pacing at the back wall of the tiny white room, looking like she was physically trying to hold herself together, her arms banded tight around her chest, her shoulders hunched. She looked small and fragile, and like somebody had taken a couple of good swings at her. There was an angry red abrasion on her cheek, and the knuckles of one hand were scraped and bloody. Her linen pants were torn at the knee on one leg.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “No. No, I’m not fucking all right!” she snapped, lashing out at him like a wounded wild animal trapped in a cage. “And don’t tell me to sit down, because I don’t want to sit down! And don’t tell me to calm down, because I don’t want to calm down. I am not all right!”

  “Okay,” Mendez said calmly. He sat down on the edge of the small table that was situated to one side of the room. “You look like somebody beat you up. Do I need to take you to the ER ?”

  “No.”

  “How did you get hurt?”

  “I fell.”

  “While you were assaulting Roland Ballencoa?”

  She looked at him sharply and with suspicion. “Do I need an attorney?”

  “I haven’t read you your rights,” he said. “You haven’t been charged with anything. This isn’t an official interview. It’s not being recorded. A good lawyer could make an argument down the road that nothing you tell me now would be admissible against you. On top of that, I’m on suspension, so I’m not even supposed to be here. It’s like this isn’t even happening.”

  She laughed at that, although there was no humor in the sound. “I wish that were true.”

  The tremor of desperation in her voice cut at his heart. He knew she had no one—that she believed she had no one—on her side. He was close enough to reach out and touch her, but he kept his hands to himself. Her fucking coward of a husband should have been there to put his arms around her and hold her. She needed someone to take the burden off her shoulders before she collapsed beneath the weight of it.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asked softly.

  She was close to tears. He could hear it in the way her breath hitched as she inhaled. She hugged herself tighter.

  “He was taking pictures of Leah,” she said. She paused to fight with the emotions that rose up inside her. “She was having a tennis lesson with her friend . . . He was watching them . . . He was taking pictures of them . . . When I saw him, he looked right at me
and kept taking pictures.”

  That was enough to make Mendez want to go to the interview room next door and assault Roland Ballencoa himself.

  “Why didn’t you go to a security person?”

  He asked because it was what he was supposed to ask even though it sounded completely stupid. Would he have gone to a security guard if he had been the parent and Roland Ballencoa had been taking pictures of his kid? What if Leah Lawton had been Haley Leone or one of his nieces? He would have taken Ballencoa’s camera away from him and beat the shit out of him with it.

  “And tell them what?” she asked. “Is it against the law to take photographs in a public park? Would someone have put a stop to it?”

  “You went after him,” he said.

  “He took my daughter,” she returned. “He took my oldest child. He was taking pictures of my baby—like he could just reach out and touch her if he wanted to. And he did it right in front of me. What would you have done?”

  “I’m not judging you, Lauren,” he said quietly. “I need to know what you’re up against here. He’s in the next room telling another detective he wants to press charges against you. On the face of it, you committed assault.”

  “You’re going to put me in jail?” she said, stunned with disbelief. “That’s priceless! He can abduct my daughter, do whatever to her—rape her, kill her—and you want to put me in jail because I broke his fucking camera?”

  “I don’t want to put you in jail,” he said. “I’ll do what I can to keep that from happening. But you’ll probably be charged with something. Simple assault—it’s a misdemeanor. You’d have to pay a fine.”

  “A fine!”

  “You went after him in front of witnesses in a public place—”

  “He was going after my daughter in front of witnesses in a public place,” she argued. “But that’s okay. He was only using a camera—this time.”

  “You can’t take matters into your own hands,” he said, miserable because that was exactly what he would have wanted to do himself.

  “But you people won’t do anything to stop him!” she shouted. “Whose hands am I supposed to leave it in? He put a note in my mailbox yesterday. It said, ‘Did you miss me?’ It’s like a game to him. He gets to break the law, then hide behind it, then twist it around and use it against his victims. I can’t stop him, and you won’t stop him. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

  “Why didn’t you call me about this note?” Mendez asked. “Where is it?”

  “I threw it away,” she said, annoyed. “Why would I call you? What would you have done about it? Nothing. You probably would have told me it’s not your jurisdiction and maybe I should call a postal inspector.”

  “If we can prove he’s harassing you—”

  “He didn’t sign it, for Christ’s sake! He didn’t even address it. He just left it. And now he’s taking pictures of me and my daughter in a public place, in front of witnesses, but that’s not proof he’s stalking me? That’s ludicrous!”

  “I know you’re frustrated, Lauren—”

  “You know?” she challenged. “You know? You don’t know jack shit!”

  “What I meant—”

  “You don’t know what this monster has cost me,” she said angrily. “You don’t know what it is to carry a child inside you for nine months, give birth to it, nurture it, love it, then have someone take that child away from you for their own perverted pleasure.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like to watch that man walk around free while your child is gone, while your husband is dead.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like to have him claim his rights while I have none,” she said bitterly, tears now streaming down her face. “I have no recourse. I have nothing left except my only remaining child, and I’m supposed to just stand there and watch him take her picture for his catalog of victims?”

  In that moment Mendez felt so ashamed of the system he was sworn to protect that he couldn’t even meet Lauren Lawton’s eyes. What was wrong with a world where a predator had more rights than the people he preyed upon?

  He could feel the hot contempt in her stare.

  “Don’t tell me you know my frustration, detective,” she said. “I am trapped in this fucking nightmare and you are part of the problem, not the solution!”

  She turned away from him then, putting her hands and her forehead against the wall as if perhaps she might be able to push her way through to the other side. Or maybe it was that the world was reeling so beneath her feet, she needed the wall to remain upright.

  “I can’t believe this is happening!” she cried with such raw despair it cut through Mendez like a knife.

  He went to stand beside her and spread one hand between her shoulder blades in some stupid feeble attempt to offer her comfort.

  “I want to help you, Lauren,” he said quietly. “I do.”

  She gave him a cutting sideways look. “You can’t help me.”

  She was trapped in a hell he could only imagine. What good was he with his platitudes and his empty promises? She was locked in an epic battle between good and evil, and he was little more than a spectator, ineffectual and impotent to help her.

  She shrugged his hand off her back like she couldn’t stand the feel of it, went to the corner farthest from him, and sank down to sit on the floor with her face buried against her knees.

  Mendez went out into the hall and paced up and down for a minute, trying to clear his head. He was upset in a way he didn’t know quite what to do with. He was a goal-oriented problem solver by nature, but he didn’t see a good way to solve Lauren Lawton’s problems. He felt hamstrung by the rules and regulations he was bound to follow. He felt as useless as a boy in the face of her fury and pain.

  He went into the break room, where Vince sat watching the Ballencoa interview on the closed-circuit TV. Out of habit he went to the coffeemaker, but the idea of coffee seemed pointless to him. He wanted a stiff drink—but probably not half as much as Lauren did, he thought.

  Vince flicked a glance at him.

  “This guy’s a piece of work,” he said, nodding toward the screen.

  Mendez flung himself into a chair with a sharp sigh and looked up at the television. Ballencoa sat at the table facing the door, wearing the sour expression of a petulant child. Trammell sat across from him, laid back, his body language calm and relaxed. Just having a chat with a citizen.

  “He’s been telling Trammell how Lauren Lawton is stalking him and he wants to get a restraining order against her.”

  “Fucking piece of shit,” Mendez growled. “He was taking pictures of the daughter at the tennis courts.”

  “Which he says is his right and his livelihood.”

  “His rights.” The words were bitter in his mouth. “Like he’s a victim. Lauren needs the protection order against him. He’s the fucking criminal. The fucking nerve of that guy—taking pictures of the daughter! If I’d been in her place, he’d be talking out the other side of his head right now.”

  “And you’d be under arrest,” Vince pointed out.

  “It’s not right.”

  “If somebody looked funny at one of my kids . . . I don’t want to know what I’d do,” Vince admitted. “But there’s what’s right, and there’s the law. And unfortunately, the two don’t always go together.”

  “Try explaining that to Lauren,” Mendez said. “I tried. I felt like something you’d scrape off the sole of your shoe. She lost her daughter to this dirtbag. She doesn’t even have the peace of knowing what he did to her.”

  “How’s she doing in there?” Vince asked.

  “She’s furious, she’s scared. She just handed me my ass,” Mendez said. “And it wasn’t any less than I deserved—or than our system deserves, I should say. When we threaten to arrest her for protecting her own child, where’s she supposed to turn?”

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  Unable to sit still, he got up aga
in and started to pace. “I don’t know. It’s up to Cal. What can I do?”

  Dixon arrived then from an interrupted evening and came into the break room, all business, with a dark scowl on his face. He was dressed for some fund-raising dinner in a smart gray suit with a blue tie that intensified the color of his eyes.

  He looked at Mendez. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “It’s not by choice,” Mendez said.

  “I don’t like that either,” Dixon snapped. “Mrs. Lawton asked for you specifically, and Ballencoa has already filed a complaint against you. Tell me Ballencoa hasn’t seen you.”

  “No. Good for him. At this point I’d be happy to finish what she started.”

  “Don’t even start with me, talking like that,” Dixon said. “You’re a sworn officer of the court. Act like it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Vince, what’s your role here?”

  Leone got to his feet slowly, the deliberate quality of his movement immediately slowing down the hot energy in the room. “Observing,” he said. “Tony filled me in on the history. I wanted to see Ballencoa for myself.”

  “And?”

  “Based on what little I know and what little I’ve seen, I don’t like him,” he said. “He’s manipulative, narcissistic, vindictive—”

  The sheriff looked impatient. “So far you’ve described my ex-mother-in-law.”

  “Your ex-mother-in-law isn’t a sexual predator, is she?” Vince asked.

  “No. That’s one thing she’s not.”

  “Well, by most accounts, this guy is,” Vince said. “And he thinks he’s got you all by the balls, and that you can’t or won’t do anything about it.”

  “So far, he’s right,” Mendez said. “If I’d been able to put someone on this creep—”

  “What?” Dixon challenged. “We could have stopped him from taking photographs? There’s no law against taking photographs. There is, however, a law against physically assaulting someone and destroying their property.”

  Agitated by his boss’s turn of conversation, Mendez held up a warning finger. “If you tell me we’re arresting Lauren Lawton and charging her for trying to protect her child, I fucking quit!”