Authors: Tami Hoag

Down the Darkest Road (32 page)

BOOK: Down the Darkest Road

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“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.”

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.

He made his way back to the tennis courts by way of several other sports. The courts were busy with players in serious combat, casual matches, having lessons. He walked the perimeter, stopping to snap a shot here and there. He would choose an individual, take a face shot first, then zoom in, continuing his study of segments of the athletes’ bodies. He shot both men and women, young and old.

Eventually his lens found a pair of girls having a lesson with a male pro. A tanned girl in a white skirt and a hot-pink top that lifted to show a strip of tanned belly every time she raised her racquet over her head. She had small breasts and an impossibly thick mane of variegated blond hair. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen.

The other girl was taller, dressed in a pair of black shorts that showed off coltish legs, and a black polo shirt worn untucked. She might have been slightly older than the blonde girl. His focus remained on her body for a while. The lines were elegant, lithe, slender, strong. A dancer’s body. And somehow vaguely familiar, he thought.

He lifted his lens a few inches and zoomed in on the girl’s face, and something like a bolt of lightning went through him.

Leslie Lawton.

No. Not Leslie Lawton. The younger sister.

Leah.

Lauren turned into the sports complex, dreading the evening ahead of her. She wanted to pick Leah up and just leave—abandon dinner with Wendy and her mother, abandon Oak Knoll, abandon the last four years of her life.

I want a do-over
, she thought, fully aware of how childish that sounded.

Oh, for the luxury of being a child. She couldn’t make a wrong decision if the decision-making process was taken away from her.

But then she thought of Leah, and Leah’s plea that morning:
What about me
? To have no control of the decisions didn’t change the impact of the consequences.

There was no running from the heart of the torment, at any rate. The tragedies that had changed their lives couldn’t be left behind. The grief and the need for closure would always be in Lauren like a malignant tumor. The only thing that could remove even part of it would be justice.

She pulled into the parking lot nearest the tennis courts and checked herself in her visor mirror. It always surprised her that she didn’t look as crazy as she felt. She had kept her hair swept back into a ponytail and made the attempt to soften the harsh lines of her face with makeup.

In the old days she would have put on something pretty—a sundress or a soft summer skirt with a feminine top. She would have accessorized with fun vintage jewelry—chunky, colorful Bakelite pieces; a necklace and an arm full of bangle bracelets. Her shoes would have been the latest fashion.

God, she had loved shoes. In Santa Barbara she had an entire walk-in closet of shoes and bags. Now she didn’t care. She had brought three pair of shoes with her to Oak Knoll. The woman she was had been put into storage. She had put the house Lance had designed for them on the market, unable to stay there with all the memories.

She got out of the car, smoothing the wrinkles from her tan linen slacks and black summer sweater set. She looked around, anxious, half expecting to see Greg Hewitt watching her from a distance. She had no doubt she would see him again. He wouldn’t simply go away because she’d told him to, or because she had pulled a gun on him. He hadn’t gone to the trouble of coming here only to turn around and leave.

But it wasn’t Greg Hewitt she saw as she turned around. It was Roland Ballencoa’s van.

Her heart began a bass drumbeat in her chest. Now when she looked around, it was with the anxiety of a wild animal looking for a predator. The park was full of people going on with their ordinary lives, none of them looking for a cobra in the grass.

Lauren hitched the strap of her handbag up on her shoulder and pressed the bag close against her side, slipping her hand into the zippered compartment. She touched the Walther like a worry stone.

The cab of the van appeared to be empty. She walked toward it and around it, giving it a wide berth, as if it were a dangerous creature, not just a vehicle that transported a dangerous creature. She couldn’t see into the back of it. Ballencoa could have been inside. Or his next victim.

She came closer, imagining not just someone inside the back of the van, but Leslie in the back of the van. The police had speculated that Ballencoa had probably grabbed her off the side of the road and put her in the back of the van bound and gagged. The mental image of that had haunted Lauren’s nightmares night after night after night. She could see her daughter, see the fear in her eyes, as she lay helpless.

She imagined the horror of being trapped in a vehicle sitting in a public place like this with people all around and no one suspecting. Every moment that passed was a moment closer to the return of the monster who had taken you.

Lauren moved closer, her back to the van as she scanned the area for any sign of Ballencoa. She turned and looked in the passenger window. The cab was clean and empty, without so much as a piece of mail or a gum wrapper to be seen. A fabric curtain behind the bucket seats hid whatever—or whoever—might have been in the back.

Trying to look casual, she walked along the van, rapping her knuckles a couple of times on the side as she went, thinking if someone was trapped inside, they might try to make some kind of sound if they thought someone might hear and try to help. Or they might be too afraid, thinking it could be Ballencoa coming back.

No sound answered hers.

She went around to the back of the van and tried the handle on the back door. Locked.

It occurred to her that this might not be Ballencoa’s van at all. Yet the anxiety remained as she walked away from it and headed toward the tennis courts. She wanted Leah and Wendy off the courts and in the car as quickly as possible, before Ballencoa could spot them if he was here. He would recognize Leah. Even though she had grown up since he left Santa Barbara, she resembled Leslie more and more.

The idea of that bastard looking at her youngest brought Lauren’s anger and protective instincts boiling up. Her step quickened. She started scanning the busy tennis courts, looking for Leah and Wendy, spotting them on court four, working with Wendy’s instructor.

Leah saw her coming and lifted a hand. “Hi, Mom!”

Lauren raised a hand and forced a smile. She didn’t want to scare the girls, and at the same time she almost hoped to see Ballencoa so she could point him out, so they would recognize him and be aware of the danger.

And then she spotted him, standing off to the far side of court four with a serious professional’s camera slung around his neck and a baseball cap backward on his head.

She stopped dead, frozen for a moment. Leah’s smile vanished.

“Mom? What’s wrong?”

Ballencoa raised the camera deliberately. She could hear the motor drive whir and the shutter
click-click-click-click
as he photographed her and the girls standing there.

“Stay there,” Lauren snapped. Leah turned her head to see what her mother was fixed on, and gasped aloud.

Lauren’s feet were moving before she could even think what she would do next. Faster and faster, until she was running. Her purse slipped from her shoulder and dropped to the ground. She kept running straight for Roland Ballencoa.

“You son of a bitch!” she shouted.

Ballencoa stood his ground and kept the camera clicking, capturing the rage on her face as she advanced on him.

“Drop the fucking camera!” Lauren shouted. “Drop it! Drop it!”

He stumbled backward at the last possible second, dropping the camera to swing from the strap around his neck. Lauren ran right into him, shoving him backward.

“You bastard!” She spat the words at him, grabbing for the camera, catching hold of the strap. “How dare you! How dare you look at my daughter! You filthy rotten son of bitch!”

Ballencoa stumbled backward another few steps, trying to push her away, ducking his head as the camera strap pulled hard against his neck.

“Crazy bitch!” he shouted.

BOOK: Down the Darkest Road

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