opportunity to move to Oak Knoll to run his own outfit. He was an excellent sheriff, well respected both by his cops and by citizens. Still a detective at heart, he had set up his office such that his second in command saw to a lot of the administrative duties so Dixon himself could oversee the detective division.
Mendez had brought coffee and started the workday by telling Dixon about Lauren Lawton, Roland Ballencoa, and his illuminating evening in Santa Barbara with Danni Tanner.
“I’ve got a call in to the San Luis PD,” he said. “They should be keeping tabs on Ballencoa.”
“Who has never been charged with anything.”
“No. Santa Barbara didn’t have enough to hold him.”
“They didn’t have anything,” Dixon corrected him.
“They had enough to suspect him. He’s still a person of interest,” Mendez said. “They’re hanging on to some blood evidence, waiting for the DNA technology to advance a little more. The sample is too small to test at this point in time.”
He had been reading about the development of techniques to multiply DNA samples so that a small piece of evidence would be able to yield much more information. But those techniques were still tantalizingly out of reach for law enforcement.
Dixon frowned, silver brows slashing down over blue eyes. Mendez always felt like Dixon’s laser gaze could probably cut steel if he put his mind to it.
“He was a person of interest four years ago in another jurisdiction,” he said. “As far as we know, if he
“As far as we know,” Mendez agreed. “But I don’t like coincidences. If the Lawton woman is here and Ballencoa is here too . . . That makes me uncomfortable. Lawton accused him of stalking her in Santa Barbara.”
“But the detective there said they had no proof of anything,” Dixon pointed out.
“Maybe he’s really good at it,” Mendez suggested. “Lawton and her daughter moved here a month ago. If Ballencoa showed up after that . . . You have to wonder.”
“If,” Dixon said. He leaned his forearms on his immaculate blotter and sighed. Mendez could see the wheels turning as he weighed the pros and cons. “You have actual crimes to investigate.”
Mendez scratched his head and gave a little shrug. “I’m capable of multitasking. We’re nowhere on those B and Es. We’ve got no prints, no witnesses, and nothing of value was taken at any of the three scenes. They’re like the crimes that never were.”
“Breaking and entering is a crime all by itself,” Dixon reminded him.
“I know, but these feel more like kid pranks than serious crimes.”
“Until somebody confronts a perp and one of them has a knife or a gun. Then suddenly we’ve got an assault or a homicide on our hands.”
“That’s my point exactly with Lauren Lawton and Roland Ballencoa,” Mendez returned. “That’s a crime waiting to happen. Leslie Lawton went missing and never came back. If Ballencoa did it—and the SBPD believes he did—and now he’s here in Oak Knoll, is he going to try to take the younger sister? Is he going to stalk the mother? Is it all a game for him? That’s a game we need to shut down before somebody gets hurt.”
“Okay,” Dixon said with a nod. “Good point. You and Bill look into it. But don’t ignore your caseload. It’s not up to us to investigate that kidnapping, Tony.”
“I know.” Mendez got up and headed for the door. “I just want to prevent one of our own.”
“Man, I don’t know what I’d do if somebody took one of my kids.”
Bill Hicks sat in the passenger seat, eating trail mix as they headed north on the 101. A few years older than Mendez, Hicks was a tall, lean, redheaded guy with a wife and three redheaded daughters.
“You’d track that bastard down and feed him a gun, that’s what,” Mendez said.
“Yeah. I probably would.”
“I have to think the only reason Lauren Lawton hasn’t done that is that she doesn’t own a gun.”
“Maybe she wants justice, not revenge.”
“Revenge
“She’d ruin her own life,” Hicks pointed out. “She’d end up in prison, and her other daughter would become an orphan for all intents and purposes—father dead, mother put away for life.”
“Hopefully we can head that off at the pass—that or something worse. If Ballencoa still has his eye on the family, there’s plenty more hell to put them through.”
“Seems to me he’d have to be stupid to mess with them,” Hicks said. “As it stands, he’s a free man. Why poke a stick at a hornet’s nest?”
“You know as well as I do, the guys who get off on this kind of thing . . . their brains don’t work like yours or mine. They get a rush playing with fire.”
“The SBPD never developed any other suspects?” Hicks asked.
“They looked at the father for a while, but it didn’t go anywhere.”
“But he ended up killing himself. Could be guilt drove him to it.”
“Could be,” Mendez agreed. “Could be grief.”
“Could be both.”
“Could be neither.”
San Luis Obispo was like Oak Knoll North. A town of thirty-five or forty thousand, not counting college students—it was home to the prestigious Cal Poly University. Like Oak Knoll, it had been built around a Spanish mission—the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa—in 1772. Like Oak Knoll, the town was nestled between two mountain ranges—the Santa Lucia Mountains to the east and the Morros to the west. The surrounding countryside was dotted with farms and vineyards. The downtown boasted a charming shopping district with an array of boutiques, restaurants, coffeehouses, and galleries.
Unlike Oak Knoll, San Luis had its own police force. The city of Oak Knoll contracted with the sheriff’s office to protect and serve its residents. Though, as Oak Knoll continued to grow, there was talk that might change in the future.
The San Luis Police Department was a single-story building just off the 101 at Santa Rosa and Walnut. It housed fewer than one hundred personnel, with only about sixty or so sworn officers—only eight of whom were detectives. Two worked crimes against property. Three worked crimes against persons. Three had other duties.
Mendez and Hicks checked in at the desk and were asked to wait for their contact to come out and get them.
Detective Ron Neri was small, middle-aged, and rumpled in a way that suggested he had recently been trampled by a mob. He came down the hall, shuffling through a messy stack of papers that were barely contained in an open file folder. His pants were too long.
“Tony Mendez,” Mendez said, sticking a hand out for Neri. “This is my partner, Bill Hicks.”
Neri reached out for the handshake and nearly overturned his folder. “Ron Neri. Come on back.”
They followed along to an interview room and he motioned them to take seats.
Still fussing with his paperwork, Neri barely glanced up at them. “What can I do for you guys?”
“We’re looking for information on Roland Ballencoa,” Mendez said. “I left a message for you earlier. We came up from Oak Knoll.”
“Oh, right, yeah,” Neri said. “I meant to call you back. Did I call you back?”
Mendez shot a look at Hicks as if to say,
“No, actually,” Mendez said. “It doesn’t matter. I would have come up anyway. Have you seen Ballencoa lately?”
“Ballencoa,” Neri said. “There’s a name I wish I’d never heard in my life.”
“He’s been a problem?” Mendez asked, feeling that zip of electricity down his back that always came with the expectation of a hot lead.
