Down the Darkest Road

“You fucking idiot!” Ballencoa shouted, diving back toward the table, just getting his hands on the bag before Trammell could snatch it off the chair.

“Sorry,” Trammell said, grabbing up napkins with one hand, reaching for the bag with the other. “Let me help you with that. I hope it didn’t get wet inside.”

Ballencoa pulled the bag against himself like he was pulling a child out of harm’s way. “Don’t touch it!”

A knock sounded on the door and Cal Dixon let himself into the room.

“Mr. Ballencoa. I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I was on a call with the head of the detective division in the Santa Barbara PD. I wanted to get some background on your allegations against Mrs. Lawton.”

Ballencoa, frantically swiping the coffee off his bag, arched a brow at the sheriff. “My allegations? The woman stalked me. She attacked me last night. Now this.”

He reached into the bag and pulled out a small square envelope, and thrust it at Dixon.

Dixon pulled a note card from the envelope and looked at it, frowning.

“She put that in the mailbox on my front porch,” Ballencoa said. “I found it this morning.”

“Did you see her do it?” the sheriff asked.

“No.”

“Then how do you know it was her?” Dixon looked at both sides of the note and the envelope. “There’s no signature. If you didn’t see her do it, and there’s no signature or anything else to indicate the note came from Mrs. Lawton, I don’t see how we can help you, Mr. Ballencoa.”

“Her fingerprints will be on it,” Ballencoa said. “You must have fingerprinted her last night when she was arrested.”

“Mrs. Lawton hasn’t been processed,” Dixon said. “We’re waiting for word from the district attorney.”

Ballencoa went very still, like a snake ready to strike. “You didn’t charge her? She attacked me. She destroyed my camera and a lens worth more than five hundred dollars. Now she’s threatened me.”

“It’s a case of simple assault, Mr. Ballencoa,” Dixon said. “A misdemeanor. And Mrs. Lawton can make a damn good argument that she feared for her child. It’s the DA’s discretion whether or not to charge that out. You can press the issue with Kathryn Worth if you like, but frankly, I don’t think she’ll touch it. You are, of course, free to pursue the matter of any monetary loss in the civil courts.”

“This is outrageous!” Ballencoa snapped. “You’ll be hearing from my attorney, sheriff. That woman should be arrested and put away.”

“She says the same thing about you, Mr. Ballencoa,” Dixon returned. “My suggestion is for you each to stay away from the other or I’ll see you both in jail. My detectives have actual crimes to investigate. I don’t appreciate wasting manpower on something as juvenile as this note.”

“It’s a threat,” Ballencoa argued.

Dixon frowned at the note and shrugged. “That’s a matter of interpretation,” he said, “just as you may construe this however you like, Mr. Ballencoa: Don’t waste my time or the time of my office with petty game playing and bullshit.”

On that note, Dixon turned and left the room.

Sitting relaxed at the table, Trammell looked up at Ballencoa and spread his hands. “That didn’t really work out for you, did it?”

Dixon entered the break room and handed the note to Mendez. “File that somewhere.”

“Under ‘Pain in the Ass,’” Tanner suggested.

Mendez looked at the note.

Typed across the center of the note card were the words: Did you miss me?

And scrawled beneath in an angry hand: I’d sooner see you in hell than see you at all.

Heat crept up from his chest to his throat to his face. He could feel Tanner’s eyes on him.

“What’s wrong?”

He swore under his breath, handed her the note, and strode out of the break room and down the hall. In the war room he stood in front of the whiteboard with his hands on his hips, staring at the time line.

“I don’t understand,” Tanner said. “Ballencoa probably did this note himself just to stir up shit. What’s it got to do with anything?”

He could still see the look on Lauren Lawton’s face last night as she told him.

“She told me last night Ballencoa had left a note in her mailbox that said ‘Did you miss me?’ She told me she threw the note away because she knew we wouldn’t do anything about it.”

“So she wrote on it and gave it back to him,” Tanner said. “So what?”

“How does she know where he lives?” Mendez asked. “She let Bill and me spend two days trying to figure out if the guy was even here. But she drove to his house and put this in the mailbox on his front porch.”

And I want to fucking shake her, he thought.

“Damnit,” he muttered, staring at the time line. “Goddamnit.”

In mid-April someone had been poking around Ballencoa’s neighborhood, watching him. Roland Ballencoa had moved to Oak Knoll the first of May.

“When did the Lawtons move here?” he asked no one in particular.

“I don’t know,” Hicks said. “Her daughter would have been in school in Santa Barbara. It’s safe to assume they waited until the end of the school year, so . . . June.”

Mendez wanted to kick something.

“He didn’t follow her here,” he said. “She followed him.”

45

I need to end this. I need to take action. I can’t rely on someone else to do it. I can’t pay someone else to do it. I can’t hope someone else will do it.

I have to stop Roland Ballencoa from ruining my life and my youngest daughter’s life the way he ruined the life of my husband, and the life of our family, by taking the life of my firstborn.

That is what’s at stake: our lives.

The people in law enforcement want to solve a case. Their jobs are at stake. Greg Hewitt would solve my problem—for money. Their stakes aren’t high enough. The outcome doesn’t mean to them what it means to me or to Leah.

It might be a game to Roland Ballencoa. He might enjoy cat and mouse. But the idea that any of this has been a game makes me furious. This is my life, the lives of my daughters, the life of my husband, the life of our dreams. I have to fight for those things.

I am tired of waiting for someone else to find an answer, to find evidence, to find my daughter, to find her body. I can’t wait for technology to advance. Waiting has gained me nothing but a simmering hatred that burned away what was good in me.

I used to be a good person, a good mother, a good wife. Now I am consumed with anger. Blinded by my obsession, I have put my youngest child in harm’s way. I have nothing left to give to anyone.

Winston Churchill once said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” I have been going, and have kept going. It’s time for that journey to reach its destination. I’ve been in hell too long.

The Walther was clean, oiled, and loaded. Seven in the clip, one in the chamber.

Lauren had cut the legs off a pair of control-top hose and fashioned a holster of sorts from the panty. She was able to slip the gun inside the stretchy waistband and have it held snugly against her belly. No chance of it falling from the loose waist of her jeans, which no longer fit.

She put on one of Lance’s old black T-shirts and tied the overlong tail up in a knot at her right hip. The shirt was baggy enough to hide the outline of the gun and allow her quick access to it.

She had a drink to steady her nerves, then got behind the wheel of her car and headed toward the home of Roland Ballencoa.