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
