“Nice,” Tanner said.
“Nice,” Mendez repeated.
Denise Garland didn’t know whether she was supposed to be happy or cry.
Mendez took a business card out of his wallet and handed it to her.
“Miss Garland,” Tanner said. “I have to be careful how I word this, but I want you to know that man has been a person of interest in a felony investigation in Santa Barbara.”
The girl’s eyes went impossibly wide. “Oh my God. What did he do? Do you think he broke into my house?”
“Double-check your locks,” Mendez suggested.
“And check your underwear drawer,” Tanner suggested. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Garland.”
“You’re late,” Cal Dixon said sharply as Mendez walked into his office.
“Roland Ballencoa is stalking a nurse from Mercy General Hospital,” Mendez returned.
Dixon sat back. “What?”
Mendez told him what had happened, weathering the scowl that came when he told the sheriff about tailing Ballencoa away from the diner. In this case, he felt the end more than justified the means.
“You’re sure he didn’t see you?” Dixon asked.
“Ninety-nine point nine percent. I think he would have already called you and raised a stink if he’d made me for a tail.”
Dixon cursed under his breath. That spot between the rock and the hard place was never comfortable. They had no legitimate call to tail Roland Ballencoa. They had nothing on him to link him to any of the B&Es. He had in fact been a victim of a crime with Lauren Lawton attacking him at the tennis courts. While they may have had their suspicions, he was not officially a suspect in anything.
Mendez had followed him to Denise Garland’s street, but they had nothing to link him to any crime committed against the nurse. As far as Denise Garland knew, there had been no crime committed. She couldn’t say anyone had been in her home without her consent. She couldn’t even swear that she hadn’t left her patio door open herself. And yet Mendez would have bet a week’s pay Ballencoa had been the one to leave that door open.
They couldn’t even follow Ballencoa on the excuse that he was a known predator because nothing had ever been proven against him in the Leslie Lawton case. They had no legitimate call to follow him, and yet in following him they now had every reason to find his behavior suspicious.
Hicks had pegged it right the day they had gone up to San Luis Obispo to begin their investigation into Roland Ballencoa:
Dixon huffed a sigh, got up from his chair, and paced behind his desk. He was a politician more by necessity than nature. By nature he was a cop first, a detective with a storied record in LA County. Yet he had to balance the two aspects of his job, Mendez knew. He didn’t envy his boss.
“We’ve got to run our investigation like we know he’s already done something,” Mendez said.
“But we can’t make a move against him without probable cause to believe he’s committed a crime,” Dixon countered. “I’ve already been on the phone with his attorney this morning. He wants to know what charges are going to be brought against Lauren Lawton.”
“He’s got balls,” Mendez grumbled. “He comes here to stalk the woman and make her life a misery, and he wants her in jail on top of it.”
“Vince is right,” Dixon said. “It’s a game to him.”
“The DA won’t charge her, will she?”
“I brought Kathryn Worth up to speed already,” Dixon said. “She’s not inclined to do anything, but she’s got a plan if Ballencoa presses the issue. The most Mrs. Lawton would be charged with is a petty misdemeanor. She’d plead out and get probation. A day or two of community service.”
Mendez bobbed his eyebrows but held his tongue. No part of that would sit well with Lauren. He had to hope, for everyone’s sake, Ballencoa let the issue die on the vine.
Dixon gave Mendez a sharp look. “What’s your plan, detective ?”
“We’ve got to link him to the B and Es.”
“Yes,” Dixon said drily. “Those non-crimes you didn’t want to bother with.”
“Lesson learned,” he conceded. “I’ve got Tanner here for the day from SB. She and Bill and I are going over everything. We’ll lay it all out and hope he’s left a loose thread dangling somewhere.”
“Yes,” Dixon said. “And we’ll hope it’s long enough Roland Ballencoa can hang himself with it.”
43
They moved around each other like two ghosts, each floating on their own plane, never touching, never speaking.
Leah ate a hard-boiled egg and half a grapefruit, went and brushed her teeth, came back to the kitchen, and sat down in silence.
Lauren drank a cup of coffee, picked at a blueberry muffin, took a couple of Tylenol, and sat at the table, silent.
She thought she should have been trying to draw her daughter out of her shell, into conversation, but every scenario she ran through in her head ended badly so she didn’t even try. The effort would have come across as desperate and phony. She didn’t want to put either of them through the awkwardness.
Leah had every right to be upset. Lauren had no words of wisdom. She had put the two of them in this place. She had no excuses. She had no solutions. She had made all of her promises and had promptly broken most of them. What was there to say?
She desperately wished she could think of something. She found herself absurdly thinking of the black-and- white wisdom of the television moms she had grown up on—Donna Reed and June Cleaver—who always managed to come up with some pearl of wisdom by the end of the half hour to reassure their children that all was right with the world.
All wasn’t right with the world. And it seemed like half of what was wrong was either directly or indirectly her own fault. Donna Reed had never been arrested for assault. June Cleaver had never contemplated hiring a hit man.
She was still stunned Greg Hewitt had made the offer. Twenty-five thousand dollars to end the life of Roland Ballencoa. She was even more stunned that she hadn’t rejected the idea on the spot. She knew the only reasons she hadn’t said yes were that her first priority was to find Leslie, to know what had happened to her, and second, that she wanted the satisfaction of killing Roland Ballencoa herself.
Their world had gone mad. How was she supposed to explain that to her fifteen-year-old daughter? She couldn’t, and so they left the house as they did every morning, going through the motions of what passed for normal. The usual twenty-minute drive to the Gracida ranch stretched out before them like the Bataan Death March, the silence between them as heavy as an anvil.
Lauren stood beside the door of the car, looking at her daughter across the black expanse of the roof. Leah looked back at her, wary, waiting. Unable to stand it any longer, Lauren finally blurted out: “I’m going to make an appointment with Anne Leone. For you.”
Leah gasped. “I’m not the crazy one attacking people!”
“I didn’t say you were crazy,” Lauren said. “But you have to deal with me, so we should just head that off at the pass. You can go to Anne and complain about me all you like. Tell her what a bad mother I am, and how I am single-handedly trying to ruin your life and mine.”
“It’s not funny,” Leah snapped.
“I’m not being sarcastic,” Lauren protested. “I know you’re miserable. You’re miserable. I’m miserable. We’re the
“I don’t know what to do about it, Leah,” she confessed. “The scary thing is I’m doing the best I can, which is truly pathetic. You should be able to go to someone and complain at the very least.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Leah argued. “I just want it to stop. I just want you to make it stop!”
