Down the Darkest Road

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