Tami Hoag - Down the Darkest Road

“Leah said he stalked your family in Santa Barbara.”

Lauren nodded.

“That’s terrifying. I have to say, that’s terrifying to me too, Lauren. Wendy and Leah have become such close friends. But if Leah is in danger, then Wendy is too when they’re together. I can’t have that.”

Lauren closed her eyes against the wave of pain she felt for her daughter. “I understand,” she said. “Better than anyone.”

“I’m sorry,” Sara said. “I know the girls are totally in love with each other, but unless I can be right there with them, I really can’t let them see each other.”

“I understand,” Lauren said again.

“At least until the sheriff’s office can do something about him. They can do something, can’t they?”

“Unfortunately, I’m the only one who broke the law tonight.”

“That’s crazy!”

Lauren managed a bitter smile. “Welcome to my world.”

She checked her watch, as if it mattered. The time didn’t even register in her mind. It could have been eight o’clock or midnight. “I should take Leah home. Thank you for looking after her.”

Sara Morgan called the girls downstairs. They came as if they were marching to their doom, Leah looking particularly grim-faced. They promised to call each other the next day. Leah picked up Lauren’s purse from the front hall table and handed it to her without a word.

Lauren tried to put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder as they walked out to the car. Leah shrugged her off and hurried ahead of her.

It was going to be a long ride home.

40

No one spoke on the ride to the sports complex. The only sound in the car was the unintelligible cackling of the police radio and Leah’s occasional sniffling in the backseat as she tried not to cry.

Lauren’s BMW was the only car still in the parking lot. Mendez said nothing as he pulled up beside it. Lauren said nothing as she got out. The sound of car doors slamming seemed deafening. Leah got in the backseat rather than sit beside her mother. Lauren made no comment.

Mendez followed them out of the parking lot, then turned and went his own way. Lauren drove away from downtown into the night that seemed to grow darker with every block. The charming house at the end of Old Mission Road looked large and foreboding, its dark windows like gaping holes in a fright-house smile.

Lauren turned on every light she passed as they went inside. Leah went straight upstairs without a word. Lauren let her go, at a loss.

What was she supposed to do? What was she supposed to say? She couldn’t tell Leah their lives would be normal in a day or two or ten. She couldn’t tell her Roland Ballencoa wouldn’t be a threat to her or to her friends. She couldn’t make anything right. She only managed to make things worse and worse and worse by trying to do the right thing.

She poured herself a drink and stood looking out into the night. Headlights came down the street, then swung around at the gate. The security light illuminated the logos of the sheriff’s office on the side of the car as it turned around and cruised away.

Five minutes later a second set of headlights came slowly down the road. Lauren’s heart beat just a little harder. She held her breath in her lungs just a little longer.

Ballencoa had been screaming for her arrest when last she’d seen him. Would they have told him at the sheriff’s office that they had sent her home? She had broken his camera—his alleged livelihood, though Lauren knew he lived as much off the proceeds of his lawsuits as he did his abilities as a photographer.

She suspected the worst of what she had damaged had been his dignity, as if he deserved to have any.

The car slowed and swung around at the gate. A car, not a van. The lights cut out.

Lauren went to her handbag and got out the Walther. Feeling more numb than frightened, she went to the door and stepped out onto the front porch. She left the door open. She could quickly dart back inside and call 911 if she needed to. A warning shot would buy her a little extra time.

The driver’s door opened on the car, and Greg Hewitt stepped out under the security light.

Sticking the gun in the pocket of her torn linen slacks, Lauren walked down to the gate.

“Are you all right?” he asked as she stepped into the pool of light.

“They didn’t throw me in jail, as you can see,” she said, lifting her arms away from her body.

He sighed and frowned. “Jesus Christ, Lauren, what were you thinking?”

“I’m tired, Greg. I don’t want to have to explain myself to you. You of all people should know what I was doing. He was taking pictures of my daughter.”

He swept a hand back over his surfer-blond hair and rubbed at the tension in the back of his neck. “If I’d gotten there two minutes sooner . . .”

“Why were you there at all?”

“I followed him there. I figured he’d be up to his old tricks. Then I had to go to the john and I lost him. Next thing I heard the commotion.”

And then he’d been there, pulling her away from Ballencoa, putting himself between them, shoving Ballencoa back as he tried to advance on her.

“I didn’t ask for your help,” she said, thinking, My God, what an ungrateful bitch you are, Lauren.

“Yeah, well, too bad. No charge,” he said. “Or maybe I could have a drink for my trouble.”

She should have dismissed him out of hand. She had thrown him off the property just a few hours before. But she was exhausted and worn down, and tired of drinking alone. He had come to her rescue at the tennis courts as if he hadn’t cared that she had belted him in the mouth just that afternoon. That could pass for friendship, she supposed. It would for now.

“You’re not coming in my house,” she said, even as she stepped back from the gate and pressed the button to open it manually. “My daughter is asleep upstairs.”

He took a seat on the porch. Lauren went back inside and fixed two drinks without allowing herself to think about what she was doing. Her brain ached from thinking. Her soul ached from the constant self-flagellation. She wanted the numbness the alcohol would bring.

She didn’t ask Greg Hewitt if he liked vodka. She didn’t care. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, after all. She went back out onto the porch, handed him his glass, and took a seat.

She remembered when she and Sissy had bought the bent willow porch furniture at a flea market in Los Olivos. They had been tickled to death to find it—two settees, two high-backed chairs, an assortment of side tables and footstools. Lauren had had pillows and cushions made from faded old quilts and coverlets.

“Is he pressing charges?” Hewitt asked.

Lauren shrugged. “I doubt the district attorney will want the trouble. The court of public opinion holds more sway on political careers than the opinion of Roland Ballencoa.

“He’ll sue me for the camera and the lens, and loss of income, no doubt,” she said. “So I can have the pleasure of paying to put him back in business as a pervert.”

“That sucks, but it beats jail.”

“You said you followed him to the sports complex. What else has he been doing today?”

“Nothing much. I went by his house as he was leaving. He made a couple of stops—the gas station, the drugstore, one of those mailbox places—then went to the sports center.”

She wondered if he’d bothered to check his mail at his house. Maybe not if he used a rented mailbox. Now that she thought of it, it seemed odd no one at the sheriff’s office had mentioned the note she had put back in his mailbox that morning. Further evidence that she was stalking him, he would say. True enough, she thought.

How will you like the tables turned on you, asshole?