“I’m one part of an entire profession dedicated to finding justice for people like you and your daughter. This is what we do. This is what we live for. We get that you’ve lost a child. We get that this asshole has ruined your life, and given the chance he’ll ruin someone else’s.”
“Then do something about it!” Lauren snapped back at him.
“We’re trying!” he shouted back in her face. “I just told you that. It kills me that I can’t throw Ballencoa in a hole and let him rot. I feel like a heel that I had to question you tonight for taking action against him when I couldn’t.
“I’m on your side, Lauren. And I don’t appreciate you sitting on your high horse like you’re the queen of the victims, looking down your nose at me like I’m some worthless lackey who doesn’t give a shit. I’m on suspension because I stood up for you, and I’d do it again because it was the right thing to do.”
Lauren looked away, torn between the need to argue with him and the need to apologize. It seemed like she’d been the only one fighting for Leslie for so long. Mendez was new to the battle, but she could see him tire of it like all the others had, and in the end she would be the only one again.
But she didn’t bother to explain that to him. In the end she sighed in resignation and murmured, “I’m sorry.”
She could feel his gaze on her for a long, silent moment, but if he wanted to say something, he held it back. Finally, he put the car back in gear and pulled away from the curb.
The Morgans lived in a newer two-story clapboard house in a style Lance had always called “California Country,” a West Coast interpretation of a Middle America country house with shutters and a porch. Though at five thousand square feet, set in a modern subdivision with a pool out back, there was very little “country” about it.
Mendez led the way up the walk to the front door and rang the bell as if he’d done so before. Lauren hadn’t asked him how he knew Sara Morgan, though she supposed now it had something to do with the murder investigation Wendy had been involved in.
Sara Morgan answered the front door, looking startled to see him.
“Tony.”
“I brought Mrs. Lawton by to pick up her daughter,” he said. He turned to Lauren and said curtly, “I’ll wait in the car.”
Lauren was too concerned with her own awkwardness to notice his. Her stomach clenched like a fist. “Can I come in?” she asked. “I know I have some explaining to do.”
Sara Morgan opened the door.
“The girls are upstairs,” she said. “I was just having a glass of wine. I’m guessing you might want one.”
“I would be grateful,” Lauren said, following her through the gracious home to the big country kitchen. “Frankly, I’m grateful you didn’t slam the door in my face.”
“Leah explained who that guy was,” Sara said, pouring from an open bottle of Merlot. “I can’t imagine what you must have felt when you saw him.”
Wendy was her mother’s spitting image. Sara Morgan had the same wild mane of multi-blond waves, the same cornflower blue eyes. She was tall and athletic, casually dressed in yoga clothes. She handed a glass to Lauren and took a seat on a stool at the breakfast bar.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Lauren said. “I’m sorry, first of all.”
“Did you know he was here in Oak Knoll?”
“I just found that out,” she lied. She took a sip of the wine, wishing she could drink half the glass at once. “The sheriff’s office is aware now, obviously. They know all about him.”
As if that was supposed to offer Sara Morgan comfort. The sheriff’s office was aware of a man no one had been able to pin an abduction on, a man who was free to go about his life doing whatever he pleased—even if what pleased him was taking photographs of young girls playing tennis.
“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.