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Authors: Tami Hoag

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BOOK: Down the Darkest Road
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Turned out, she had.
She wanted to go find Greg Hewitt’s body and kill him all over again for the beating he had given Leah. But at the heart of it, Lauren still believed it was her own fault. Her mission on behalf of Leslie had cost Leah a terrible price.
“Let me tell you something, Lauren,” Tanner said. She paused for a moment, glancing at Mendez out of the corner of her eye, as if weighing whether or not she wanted to share what she had to say with him as well. She took a deep breath and sighed, and began her story.
“When I was fourteen I was walking home from school with my best friend. Molly Nash. Molly was a really sweet girl. A girly girl. And I was . . . me. A tomboy. I picked the way home that day. I wanted to take a shortcut that took us through a not-so-great area. Molly didn’t want to go that way, but I teased her into it.
“So we were walking along and talking about boys, and we both had a crush on the same boy, and of course he didn’t know either one of us was alive,” she said, smiling at that part of the memory. Then the smile went away. “And . . . uh . . . these two men grabbed us off the street, and . . . we got raped. And I managed to get away, and I ran for help. But when I brought the police back to where it happened, the two men were gone, and my friend Molly . . . She didn’t make it. She died. And . . . um . . . the men were never caught. They got away with it. And I had to live with that. It had been my choice to go that way. If anybody should have died, it should have been me.”
“You were just a little girl,” Lauren said. A little girl Wendy Morgan’s age, a year younger than Leah.
“I made a bad choice. My friend died a terrible death because of it. I had to learn to live with that,” Tanner said. “That’s why I’m a cop. That’s how I pay back Molly Nash.
“I know people have told you to move on from losing your daughter Leslie,” she said. “And I have no doubt that people have told you not to let what happened be the defining moment of your life. I also know that’s all bullshit. You don’t let go of something like that, not ever. That tragedy
will
be one of the defining moments of your life. It has to be. Otherwise it was for nothing. And how tragic would that be?
“It’s what we learn and what we do to come out of that dark place that makes the difference,” she said. “For you, and for the daughter you have left.
“Anybody can pay penance, Lauren. That’s the easy part. Anybody can be a victim, and anybody can flog themselves. Big fucking deal. But you put one foot on a ladder and climb to the next rung. Then you’ve done something. Then you’ve made a difference. And then what happened matters. Otherwise, it’s just old news, and nobody wants to hear about it.
“There,” she said with a sheepish little smile as she slid off the stool and tucked her notebook in the breast pocket of the loose blazer she wore. “My big speech. We should let you get some sleep if you can. I’ve got to go find myself a hotel room.”
Lauren reached a hand out to her. “Thank you,” she said, really looking at Danni Tanner for perhaps the first time since she’d known her. “Really.”
Uncomfortable with the gratitude, Tanner made a funny little shrug and backed away. “Get some sleep.”
63
 
Mendez followed Tanner out of Lauren Lawton’s hospital room. They walked down the dark hall without speaking, then took the elevator together down to the ground floor. Unfamiliar with Mercy General, Tanner looked both ways up and down the hall, uncertain which direction they had come from earlier.
Mendez put a hand on her back and guided her toward the ER. They walked out of the big sliding doors into the night that had grown cool and damp, and headed to the short-term parking. Seemingly lost in her own thoughts, Tanner started around the car for the passenger’s side.
“Danni,” Mendez said, finding his tongue.
She turned around and looked up at him, her face open and vulnerable in the grainy filtered light of the parking lot.
He reached his hand up and touched her cheek. She gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
“Please don’t make a big deal,” she said quietly.
She was supposed to be tough, or so she thought. Kindness would be her undoing. Everything about that touched him. He leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips . . . just because.
Her breath caught. A little rush of excitement went through him despite the fatigue.
When he raised his head she looked up at him with a funny little smile and said, “About that hotel room . . .”
Dawn was just beginning to pink the sky in the east when Lauren woke to find Leah staring at her, her precious face bruised, one eye swollen nearly shut, the other as wide as a small child’s. Lauren tried to manage a smile despite the tightness of her own battered face. She slipped her hand through the railings of the beds and touched her daughter’s hand.
“Do you know how much I love you?” she whispered.
Leah nodded, not looking all that certain.
“You saved my life,” Lauren said, tears rising. “In ways you don’t even know. I owe you so much, Leah. You have been so brave, and so strong. I will never be as brave and strong as you.”
“I don’t want to be brave anymore, Mommy,” Leah said. “I just want us to be a family.”
“We will be,” Lauren promised. “We will be. We are.”
64
 
It wasn’t truly over for months. It took that long for the investigators to go through Roland Ballencoa’s journals and contact the girls and women he had stalked, and to identify and locate all the girls whose photographs he had filed away in boxes in the small shed at the back of his property. Photographs of unsuspecting potential victims and of actual victims as well.
In addition to photographs, they had found container after container of women’s lingerie—all very neatly organized by date with painstaking care to note the name of the woman it had belonged to, and her address, and her page number in the corresponding journal.
In many cases Ballencoa had also photographed himself modeling the feminine articles of clothing.
Many of the victims found were unaware Ballencoa had ever had an interest in them. Some had known and liked him. Others met the news of his demise with relief.
Seven were never found at all.
Seven young women listed in his journals, seven young women Roland Ballencoa had photographed from northern California to San Diego County, had simply disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. Ballencoa had never been considered a person of interest in six of those cases.
Detectives Mendez and Tanner would head the joint task force and organize a central clearing house for the cases. Their efforts would receive national attention, and serve as a model for future multijurisdictional investigations across the country.
My focus in those months was divided between healing and helping. Healing physically had been the easy part. Both Leah and I had managed that within weeks of our ordeal. We help each other with the rest. I have a remarkable daughter, alive and with me. And I now can focus on being a mother to that precious child I have while I say good-bye to the daughter I lost.
Photographs of Leslie had been found along with those of the other victims. I never saw them. A part of me thought I should look at them, that as her mother, I should have to see what she had been put through, that I should have to suffer as Leslie had suffered. But to what end? We had all suffered enough. Nothing would bring Leslie back. I choose to remember Leslie as I knew her—a beautiful vibrant girl, a gift born of love.
Life is about choices, good and bad, and the consequences of those choices. Roland Ballencoa and Greg Hewitt chose evil. I chose revenge. Now I choose a second chance for Leah and me, for the two of us to be a family and to move forward with our lives.
As Winston Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” I know from hard experience that can be the longest journey down the darkest road. And I have learned that sometimes the shortest distance isn’t forward, but up.
As Danni Tanner told me, you put one foot on the ladder and climb to the next rung. Then you do it again . . . and again . . . and again . . .
My daughter and I try every day to climb another rung on the ladder. Some days we make it. Some days we don’t. The most important thing is that we don’t look down. The important thing is to climb.
 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 
Tami Hoag’s novels have appeared on national bestseller lists regularly since the publication of her first book in 1988. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages worldwide. She is a dedicated equestrian in the Olympic discipline of dressage and shares her home with two English cocker spaniels. She lives in Palm Beach County, Florida.
 
Find Tami Hoag on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/TamiHoag
.
And on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/TamiHoag
.
Also by Tami Hoag
 
Secrets to the Grave
Deeper Than the Dead
The Alibi Man
Prior Bad Acts
Kill the Messenger
Dark Horse
Dust to Dust
Ashes to Ashes
A Thin Dark Line
Guilty as Sin
Night Sins
Dark Paradise
Cry Wolf
Still Waters
Lucky’s Lady
Sarah’s Sin
Magic
BOOK: Down the Darkest Road
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