The bridge was part of the route that connected the Santa Ynez Valley to Santa Barbara. The thing stretched for twelve hundred feet over one hellacious long fall to the canyon floor. It was a notoriously popular spot for people to commit suicide.

“It was a hell of a wreck,” Tanner said. “He had to be doing eighty or better. In my humble opinion, it was no accident.”

“You think he killed himself.”

“I think he couldn’t live with the grief anymore. Lauren channeled all her emotions into fighting the good fight and keeping the case in the news. Lance just fell apart. He just couldn’t deal with it.”

But he could leave his wife to deal with it, Mendez thought, frowning. He could let her carry the whole load while he opted out of the pain. That didn’t sit well with Mendez. No wonder Lauren Lawton no longer resembled her driver’s license photo or that she was seeing things that weren’t really there.

“You looked at him in the beginning, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course. We always have to look at the family with something like this—and family friends as well. We heard Lance and the daughter had been butting heads. They’d had a big blowout the night before Leslie went missing.”

“About what?”

“She had just turned sixteen. She was a pretty headstrong girl trying to be independent. She wanted to go on a road trip with some friends up to San Francisco. Dad said no. They had a big argument in a restaurant and got asked to leave. Lance was a guy with a temper. Shit happens. There were a couple of holes in his time line the day the girl went missing.”

“But nothing came of it.”

“No, but the scrutiny was hard on him. He was well liked in the community, then suddenly people were looking at him sideways. According to everyone we spoke to, he adored his daughters and doted on them. He was just having a little trouble with the idea that his oldest was growing up. I think it was all more than he could take.”

“Or he did it and he couldn’t live with the guilt,” Mendez said.

“Meanwhile, Lauren soldiered on. No offense, but no guy could ever be as tough as a mother on a mission for her kid.”

“That’s a lot of tragedy for one family,” Mendez said. “Who else did you look at?”

“Of course we spoke to everyone Leslie had contact with, including her tennis coach, the softball coach, her parents’ friends. The night they got kicked out of the restaurant, they were having dinner with her old pediatrician’s family. The doctor was bent out of shape over the girl’s behavior that night too, and said a few things about her needing to learn a lesson.”

“And?”