“She told us she’s had this discussion with you on more than one occasion. How is that not significant to us?”

“If I thought there was anything to it, I would have said so, Detective,” he said, getting irritated. But he got up from the arm of the sofa he had been sitting on and started to pace, arms crossed over his chest—which told Mendez he wasn’t comfortable with the subject.

“Did Jane bring this up to you?” Dixon asked.

“Actually, Steve Morgan brought it up,” Hicks said.

“Don’t you think Jane would have been the first person to say something about it if she felt it was significant?” Dixon said.

“Except that she trusts you. She trusts your judgment,” Mendez said.

Dixon glared at him. “And you don’t?”

“Don’t jump on me, boss. I’m doing the job you hired me to do.”

“A couple of the deputies seem to have a written a lot of stops on women from the center,” he conceded. “But they’re deputies who write a lot of tickets across the board. The numbers didn’t bother me. And I’m sure as hell not going to tell them to treat Thomas Center clients any differently from the rest of the population.”

“I just want to know one thing,” Mendez said, dreading asking the question, already knowing the answer. “Is one of those deputies Frank?”

Dixon sighed heavily. “Yes. Of course. Frank leads the league in traffic citations—and in complaints from the people he’s written up. That’s hardly news.”

“I want to see his file,” Mendez said.

“I’ve reviewed his file.”

“Yeah, well, I want to see it.”

“You think I’m trying to protect him?”

“I think you and Frank go way back, and it’s not appropriate or fair to you to make a call on him. Sir.”

He half expected Dixon to blow a gasket. His boss was a by-the-book kind of guy, and he had toed that line so far with Frank Farman, but friendship and history could make that line blur, even with men like Cal Dixon.

But Dixon held his temper. He stopped his pacing, staring down at the gray industrial-grade carpet on the floor.

“Frank’s wife is missing,” he said quietly. “His son is saying Frank killed her.”

Mendez felt all the blood in his body free-fall to his feet. Hicks got up from the arm on the other end of the sofa and said, “What?”

Dixon filled them in on what had transpired that afternoon while they had been at the hospital with Wendy Morgan and Cody Roache.

“Where is he now?” Mendez asked.