Mendez cut to the chase. “Can you tell us where you were last night between nine thirty and two this morning?”

While Lauren Lawton had told him she had gone into her home late in the afternoon, it seemed logical to assume her visitor had waited until cover of darkness to leave the photograph on her windshield.

Ballencoa blinked the big sloe eyes at him. “I was in my darkroom, working. Do you have somebody telling you I was someplace else?”

“Do you know a woman named Lauren Lawton?”

“I’m sure you already know that I do.”

“Have you seen her recently?”

“The last I knew, the Lawtons lived in Santa Barbara.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Mendez said. “Have you seen her recently?”

“No,” Ballencoa said, “and I hope never to see her again. I had to take out a restraining order on her in Santa Barbara. She’s not mentally stable. Her harassment ruined my business. I had to move away.”

“Her harassment ruined your business?” Mendez said. “You don’t think your business suffered because you were suspected of abducting a sixteen-year-old girl?”

“Suspected is not convicted,” Ballencoa said evenly. “They had no evidence I did anything to that girl.”

Hicks and Mendez exchanged a glance, both of them very aware that Ballencoa hadn’t denied doing anything to Leslie Lawton. He had denied the existence of evidence to prove it. The hackles went up on the back of Mendez’s neck.

“Lauren Lawton and the Santa Barbara Police Department waged a smear campaign against me in the press,” Ballencoa said.

The muscles flexed in Mendez’s wide jaw. His eyes were flat as a shark’s. “Poor you. Let me tell you something here, Mr. Ballencoa. We’re very aware of your record and your history. We don’t like predators in our community.”

“Are you threatening me, detective?”

“I’m telling you how it is. If we get one complaint that you’re looking too long at some young lady or that you’re hanging around where you shouldn’t be, we’ll be all over you like stink on shit.”

Ballencoa didn’t so much as blink. “I’m a taxpaying, law-abiding citizen, detective. Unless I break a law, you don’t have any right to harass me or follow me or come into my home. And neither does anyone else.”

On that note, Ballencoa shut the door in their faces and they heard the dead bolt slide home.

“I don’t think he likes us,” Hicks said.

Mendez shrugged. “I thought I was charming. Didn’t you think I was charming?”

“Like a hammer between the eyes.”

“Oh well. I’ll try harder next time.”

“At least now we know he’s here,” Hicks said as they got back in their car.

“And he knows we’re here,” Mendez said as he started the engine.