“I don’t personally care if Roland’s auntie played with his pee-pee when he was twelve and that’s why he needs to control women,” she said. “But I’ll use every tool in the box if it gets me my bad guy. If you can find something in his past that connects him to our present, I’m all for it. I’d be thrilled to be the one to close this case, if you don’t mind sharing.”

“I don’t mind sharing,” he said, skimming the pages in front of him. “If he did the Lawton girl, he needs to go away. I don’t give a shit about jurisdiction. As far as we know, he hasn’t done anything serious in Oak Knoll, but already I don’t want him there.”

He flicked through the pages, looking for the information regarding Ballencoa’s trouble in San Diego.

“Ballencoa did a few months in a San Diego jail for breaking and entering—”

“Stealing ladies’ undies.”

“Did you ever connect him to any B and Es here?” he asked.

“No,” Tanner said. “Our focus was the abduction. But Lauren Lawton was pretty adamant that he had been in her home not long before he moved out of town.”

“You didn’t believe her?”

“Actually, I did believe her, but it wasn’t my call,” she admitted. “Guys don’t get this, but a woman knows when somebody’s been touching her stuff. We’ve got a different instinct for that. I believed her. But we had nothing to go on. He didn’t leave any trace of himself. And by then the lead detective was so sick of Mrs. Lawton, I think he would have been just as happy to have her disappear.”

“That’s a great attitude,” Mendez said sarcastically. “No wonder she got herself a gun.”

Tanner’s eyes went wide. “Oh, Jesus. Lauren Lawton has a gun? That’s a bad idea.”

“She believes she had Ballencoa sitting in her house jerking off in her underwear while she was at the supermarket, and your people couldn’t be bothered to help her. Can you really blame her?”

“No. I can’t,” she conceded. “Like I said the other day: If I was her, I would have tortured that son of bitch until he gave up my kid, and then I would have killed him anyway.”

“She said he was stalking her,” Mendez said. “From a psychological standpoint, that makes sense. He got whatever thrill he got taking the daughter. Tormenting the mother furthers the kick for him. He gets to keep reliving whatever he did to the girl plus cause the mother to have to relive it and worry about the child she still has, to say nothing of being concerned for her own safety. Big bonus points for a sick fuck like him.”

“And now he’s brought his act to your town.”