“Tell me about it. The bastard got me suspended.”

Surprised, she arched a brow. “What’d he do? Make you forget to dot an i or cross a t?”

“He pissed me off,” Mendez admitted. “I said something he misconstrued as a threat.”

“Like what?”

“Basically, I told him if he took a step wrong in my town, I’d have his ass.”

Tanner chuckled as she opened the door to the small room with the Lawton case files stacked up inside. “So you’re not so buttoned-up all the time, Mr. National Academy? You have a little hot side, do you?” she teased. “I like that.”

Mendez pretended not to notice the flirtatious look she gave him as he walked into the room. “Ballencoa had a tape recorder in his pocket. He played the tape for my boss.”

“Ouch,” she said, wincing. “He’s an asshole like that, you know? He’s like that creepy little shit that everybody went to school with and nobody could stand. The kid that would rat you out to the teacher for a piece of gum, then spend his free time pulling the wings off flies. Fucking little weirdo.

“He’s an asshole all the way around,” she said. “A puckered, shriveled-up, cancerous asshole. Here he threatened to sue the department and the lead detective on the case at the time. He actually started proceedings. The town council offered him a settlement to make him go away.”

“How much of a settlement?”

“Fifty K, I heard. He would have sued for six figures. I guess they thought they would get off cheaper this way.”

“That explains how he can afford to rent two places,” Mendez said.

“Oh, that’s walking-around money for Roland. He inherited a tidy sum from the aunt that raised him.”

“What did she die of?”

“Personally, I think she died of being Roland’s aunt,” Tanner said as she scanned the file boxes for the one she wanted.

“The official cause of death was head trauma due to an accidental fall down a flight of stairs. She was dead on the floor for four or five days during a heat wave before she was found. Major decomp. It would have been hard for the coroner to tell the difference between a fall and a beating. Ballencoa was her sole heir.”

“To how much?”

“Around two million.”

“How old was he at the time?”

“Twenty-one. Fresh out of the can from his lewd acts conviction.” She tapped the end of a box stacked taller than she was. “That’s the one you want.”

Mendez reached up to get it. The room was so small they were almost body to body. She ducked under his arm and sidled toward the door to get out of his way, briefly putting a hand against his side to keep her balance. He was more aware of her touch than he should have been.

“Did the cops look at him?” he asked.