Tami Hoag - Down the Darkest Road

“Possibly,” Vince conceded. “Just like he was ready with that tape recorder to nail your ass.”

“Clearly, he enjoys playing games with people,” Mendez said. “Going into the Lawtons’ home after he was already a suspect was a total fuck-you.”

“Absolutely,” Vince agreed. “He’s arrogant. He enjoys showing everyone how smart he is. If he took the Lawton girl and got away with it—that had to be the highest high for him. It’s hard to imagine he won’t do it again. It’s hard to imagine he hadn’t done it before.

“You need to go back and talk to the detectives in San Diego again,” he said. “Find out if they have any open abduction cases or attempted abductions that could be connected to Ballencoa in any way. I’ll call my buddies at ViCAP. They’ve been expanding their database to include kidnappings and sexual assaults.”

The original focus of the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program had been to gather data on transient serial killers who crossed jurisdictional lines. The database housed crime scene details, suspect details, signature aspects of the homicides. ViCAP’s analysts went over the information, looking for possible links between cases. That the program would become a national repository for information on violent crimes of all types was welcome news to law enforcement agencies across the country.

For the time being, the information was directly accessible only to FBI personnel. Even though Vince was officially retired from the Bureau, every door there remained open to him because of who he was. No one said no to Vince Leone.

“That’d be great.”

“And I know the special agent in charge of the San Diego field office. I’ll call him.”

“Thanks,” Mendez said. “So far Ballencoa really has been smarter than everybody else. We have to hope he gets cocky again. He followed Lauren Lawton here for a reason. I can’t believe he’ll be content to just fuck with her head.”

“No,” Vince said soberly. “He came here for a reason. Something’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of time. So what are you going to do about it?”

“Every deputy on patrol has an eye peeled for Ballencoa’s van. We’ve stepped up patrols on Lauren Lawton’s street. Bill and I are going to go back through what we have on those B and Es. Tanner is doing the same in Santa Barbara. If we can pick him up on one of those, he’s off the streets, at least.”

“I can’t tell you how many murderers have been arrested because they ran a red light,” Vince said. “Or had a taillight out.”

“If we can pick him up on a B and E, we can finagle a search warrant. Who knows? And if we could put him away on a B and E, it would buy us some time. Maybe the DNA technology advances enough that the blood sample from his van can be tested and it links him to the Lawton girl.”

“It’s a sad thing when we have to hope we find proof a sixteen-year-old girl is dead,” Vince said.

“Yeah,” Mendez agreed. “But I think you and I both know that no matter what happens, this story isn’t going to have a happy ending.”

36

The McAster student, Renee Paquin, was not a good choice, but as he had developed her photographs that afternoon he had become slightly addicted to her.

She lived in a house with too many other girls. There was too much risk involved in pursuing his fantasy of her. Although that was part of what intrigued him—the danger of going into a house where he might be caught.

He had always had the discipline to refrain from taking foolish chances. His fantasies were usually one-on-one. But the idea of involving several girls at once was intoxicating. And the idea of risk was becoming seductive.

He had been so careful, so restrained in the last few years, he had grown a little bored. His mind games with the police amused him little more than completing the crossword puzzle in the Times . He wanted something more. He wanted a challenge. He had come to Oak Knoll for a challenge.

Among other things, he had begun thinking about going into the sorority house. He imagined going from room to room, bed to bed. He imagined himself walking through the house naked. In each girl’s room he would rub himself against her pillow, then imagine her putting her head on that pillow to sleep. He would put on a pair of her panties and wear them, then imagine the girl putting those same panties on the next day.

He imagined opening a bedroom door and finding Renee Paquin half undressed, the top of her tennis outfit tossed carelessly on the bed, her small breasts bare. She would be startled. She would try to cover herself. She would scream at him to get out. She would try to strike him as he reached for her. He would catch her by the wrist.

He was fascinated by her wrists, the delicacy of them, the strength in them. In his first series of photographs of her, he had isolated different parts of her body as she played tennis. Some of his favorites had been of her wrists as she held the racquet. Her hands were elegant, her wrists delicate, and yet there was a tensile strength in the way her fingers curled around the handle of the tennis racquet, and power in the tension of her forearm.

This juxtaposition of delicacy and strength was what drew him as an artist to athletic girls. The thrust of a thigh muscle as she jumped into her tennis serve paired with the elegantly pointed toe of a dancer. The bulge of a calf muscle and the curve of the back. These were the lines that made athletic girls visually exciting to him.

He had shot a lot of photographs of Renee Paquin and her friends playing doubles. He had chatted them up, given them his business cards, promised to bring them proofs tonight.

He arrived at the tennis courts in the late afternoon with a need to relax and clear his mind. He parked his van in the lot, slung his messenger bag and camera bag over his shoulder, and walked past the tennis courts, heading for the center of the park.

The tennis courts were only one part of Oak Knoll’s municipal sports park complex. Indoor and outdoor swimming pools, racquetball courts, sand volleyball courts, tennis courts, and a children’s playground filled the acreage. Jogging paths ran through and around it. At the center a pavilion with concessions and a pro shop connected all the sports.

The place was beautifully landscaped and dotted with the city’s namesake spreading oak trees, creating a parklike atmosphere. He went to the concession stand and bought a lemonade, flirting with the girl behind the counter. She was young, with wide blue eyes that had never seen the world before this lifetime. Her name was Heather. He sat on a park bench under a tree and jotted her information in his notebook.

The complex was busy with people of all ages, from mothers with small children to students to young professionals working off the day’s tensions with a game, a match, a run, a swim. Oak Knoll had a large population of retired academics and professional people, also well represented. The atmosphere was social, almost festive.

He liked a busy place like this. Much like Santa Barbara, much like the area around Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, people were active and engaged and busy—too busy to notice someone observing too closely. He could be as anonymous as he liked, he could watch who he wanted to; busy people paid no attention.

Renee Paquin and her friends were not due to arrive for another hour or so. He made his way to the tennis courts at an easy pace, snapping the occasional shot as he went.

He took pictures of children on the playground, chatted up their mothers, handed out his business cards. No one seemed bothered or suspicious of him because he appeared to be friendly and open. He smiled a lot. He wore a baseball cap backward on his head because it gave the message that he was open—as opposed to wearing the bill low over his eyes, which gave the impression of wanting to hide the face.