In that moment Mendez felt so ashamed of the system he was sworn to protect that he couldn’t even meet Lauren Lawton’s eyes. What was wrong with a world where a predator had more rights than the people he preyed upon?
He could feel the hot contempt in her stare.
“Don’t tell me you know my frustration, detective,” she said. “I am trapped in this fucking nightmare and you are part of the problem, not the solution!”
She turned away from him then, putting her hands and her forehead against the wall as if perhaps she might be able to push her way through to the other side. Or maybe it was that the world was reeling so beneath her feet, she needed the wall to remain upright.
“I can’t believe this is happening!” she cried with such raw despair it cut through Mendez like a knife.
He went to stand beside her and spread one hand between her shoulder blades in some stupid feeble attempt to offer her comfort.
“I want to help you, Lauren,” he said quietly. “I do.”
She gave him a cutting sideways look. “You can’t help me.”
She was trapped in a hell he could only imagine. What good was he with his platitudes and his empty promises? She was locked in an epic battle between good and evil, and he was little more than a spectator, ineffectual and impotent to help her.
She shrugged his hand off her back like she couldn’t stand the feel of it, went to the corner farthest from him, and sank down to sit on the floor with her face buried against her knees.
Mendez went out into the hall and paced up and down for a minute, trying to clear his head. He was upset in a way he didn’t know quite what to do with. He was a goal-oriented problem solver by nature, but he didn’t see a good way to solve Lauren Lawton’s problems. He felt hamstrung by the rules and regulations he was bound to follow. He felt as useless as a boy in the face of her fury and pain.
He went into the break room, where Vince sat watching the Ballencoa interview on the closed-circuit TV. Out of habit he went to the coffeemaker, but the idea of coffee seemed pointless to him. He wanted a stiff drink—but probably not half as much as Lauren did, he thought.
Vince flicked a glance at him.
“This guy’s a piece of work,” he said, nodding toward the screen.
Mendez flung himself into a chair with a sharp sigh and looked up at the television. Ballencoa sat at the table facing the door, wearing the sour expression of a petulant child. Trammell sat across from him, laid back, his body language calm and relaxed. Just having a chat with a citizen.
“He’s been telling Trammell how Lauren Lawton is stalking him and he wants to get a restraining order against her.”
“Fucking piece of shit,” Mendez growled. “He was taking pictures of the daughter at the tennis courts.”
“Which he says is his right and his livelihood.”
“His rights.” The words were bitter in his mouth. “Like he’s a victim. Lauren needs the protection order against him. He’s the fucking criminal. The fucking nerve of that guy—taking pictures of the daughter! If I’d been in her place, he’d be talking out the other side of his head right now.”
“And you’d be under arrest,” Vince pointed out.
“It’s not right.”
“If somebody looked funny at one of my kids . . . I don’t want to know what I’d do,” Vince admitted. “But there’s what’s right, and there’s the law. And unfortunately, the two don’t always go together.”
“Try explaining that to Lauren,” Mendez said. “I tried. I felt like something you’d scrape off the sole of your shoe. She lost her daughter to this dirtbag. She doesn’t even have the peace of knowing what he did to her.”
“How’s she doing in there?” Vince asked.
“She’s furious, she’s scared. She just handed me my ass,” Mendez said. “And it wasn’t any less than I deserved—or than our system deserves, I should say. When we threaten to arrest her for protecting her own child, where’s she supposed to turn?”
“What are you going to do with her?”
Unable to sit still, he got up again and started to pace. “I don’t know. It’s up to Cal. What can I do?”
Dixon arrived then from an interrupted evening and came into the break room, all business, with a dark scowl on his face. He was dressed for some fund-raising dinner in a smart gray suit with a blue tie that intensified the color of his eyes.
He looked at Mendez. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“It’s not by choice,” Mendez said.
“I don’t like that either,” Dixon snapped. “Mrs. Lawton asked for you specifically, and Ballencoa has already filed a complaint against you. Tell me Ballencoa hasn’t seen you.”
“No. Good for him. At this point I’d be happy to finish what she started.”
“Don’t even start with me, talking like that,” Dixon said. “You’re a sworn officer of the court. Act like it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Vince, what’s your role here?”
Leone got to his feet slowly, the deliberate quality of his movement immediately slowing down the hot energy in the room. “Observing,” he said. “Tony filled me in on the history. I wanted to see Ballencoa for myself.”
“And?”
“Based on what little I know and what little I’ve seen, I don’t like him,” he said. “He’s manipulative, narcissistic, vindictive—”
The sheriff looked impatient. “So far you’ve described my ex-mother-in-law.”
“Your ex-mother-in-law isn’t a sexual predator, is she?” Vince asked.
“No. That’s one thing she’s not.”
“Well, by most accounts, this guy is,” Vince said. “And he thinks he’s got you all by the balls, and that you can’t or won’t do anything about it.”
“So far, he’s right,” Mendez said. “If I’d been able to put someone on this creep—”
“What?” Dixon challenged. “We could have stopped him from taking photographs? There’s no law against taking photographs. There is, however, a law against physically assaulting someone and destroying their property.”
Agitated by his boss’s turn of conversation, Mendez held up a warning finger. “If you tell me we’re arresting Lauren Lawton and charging her for trying to protect her child, I fucking quit!”
“Don’t you threaten me, detective,” Dixon barked back. “We haven’t charged anyone with anything.”
“No,” Mendez said angrily, gesturing toward the TV monitor. “Until that piece of dirt threatens to sue again, and then we’ll all jump through our little hoops to keep him out of the county coffers. A fucking child predator. A convicted felon. And you’re more worried about him than the mother of a stolen child.”
Dixon gave him a hard look. “Rein it in, detective. I’m warning you.”
“Tony.” Vince put a hand on his shoulder. “Step back and cool down. Come on.”
“Fuck this,” Mendez growled, shrugging him off. He started for the door. “Like you said, boss, I’m not even supposed to be here.”
“Where do you think you’re going?” Dixon asked.
“I’m taking Lauren Lawton home,” he said. “She’s been through enough. If you decide Roland Ballencoa is running this outfit, you can come and arrest her yourself.”
“You’re not taking her anywhere until I’ve spoken with her,” Dixon said, following him out into the hall. “You can introduce me now.”
She was sitting exactly where Mendez had left her—on the floor in the corner with her head on her knees. She looked up at them, bored to see them. She got up slowly. Stiff from her fall, but trying to hide it.
“Mrs. Lawton,” Mendez said. “This is Sheriff Dixon.”
Dixon offered his hand. She stared at it like it might be dirty, with no intention of shaking it.