“I’ll shut him down,” he said. “If Lauren Lawton doesn’t do it first. I need to keep that from happening.

“I’ve got some recent open B and Es that could fit him,” he said. “The MO would be right. He gets in, messes around, but doesn’t take anything—that they notice, anyway. When he leaves, he leaves the way he came in. If he came in through a window, he leaves the window open. If he came in through a door, he leaves the door open.”

“He wants the homeowner to know he’s been there,” Tanner said.

“It’s his way of saying, ‘Fuck you, you can’t touch me.’ It’s a power trip. He can come and go as he pleases. He doesn’t leave anything behind. Nobody sees him. There’s nothing we can do.”

“I’ll go back in our records and see if there were any unsolved similar cases while he was here,” Tanner said. “If we had any cases like that prior to Leslie Lawton’s abduction, could be nobody ever looked for a link. Did you ask the San Luis detectives?”

“No,” Mendez said. “But the guy we talked to up there couldn’t connect the links in a chain.”

“Neri? He’s counting the days until he can retire and be a mall cop in his free time. Let me make a couple of calls. I know some people up there.”

“Thanks.”

“Thank you,” she said, sliding off the table. She looked a little uncomfortable, like the admission she was about to make wanted to stick to the roof of her mouth. “For including me,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

“It was your case first,” he said. “Why would I try to shut you out?”

Tanner laughed. “Christ, what planet are you from? Can I go there? In my world, doors wouldn’t open if I didn’t kick them down. I only got this case because it’s colder than a well digger’s ass. Nobody wanted it. Nobody wanted to deal with Lauren Lawton, and nobody thinks I have a snowball’s chance in hell of solving it. I was beginning to think they might be right.”

“Let’s hope not.”

She gave him a long look, but he couldn’t read her. She was probably a hell of a poker player—if the boys ever let her in the game.

“I’ll go make that call,” she said.

He watched her walk out of the door, thinking there was a story behind Danni Tanner, and maybe someday he would find out what it was. Later. After he put Roland Ballencoa behind bars.

Chapter 33

33

Lauren felt like someone had beaten her from head to toe with a baseball bat. But the battery was more emotional than physical. Over and over her memory replayed Leah’s outburst, and her daughter’s pain was magnified many times by her own sense of guilt and grief.