“God help me if you worked up an appetite,” Mendez said, holding the door. “I’m already out two days’ pay.”

He had called her the night before to ask when she might finish looking at the B&Es in her jurisdiction during the time Roland Ballencoa had lived there, thinking it might take her a day or two to get to it. But she had spent the better part of the day and evening going through the files after he had left Santa Barbara. She had offered to bring what she had to Oak Knoll so they could get going.

“How’d you get away without your charming partner?” Mendez asked as they walked to his car.

“It’s my day off,” she said. “You’d better make it worth my while.”

He went to open the passenger door for her, but she beat him to it.

“I would have done that for you,” he said.

She looked up at him, puzzled. “What?”

“Opened the door.”

She laughed. “Oh, Christ, I forgot you’re a gentleman! That’ll take some getting used to.”

As he drove he filled her in on the details of the previous night’s excitement. She listened intently, frowning when he told her Ballencoa had been at the sports complex photographing Leah and Wendy.

“Fucking slimy piece of shit,” she said. “That’s exactly what he did in SB. It’s a hell of a front, you’ve gotta say. He takes pictures—and you’ll find out he takes pictures of everybody: girls, boys, old people, little kids. So if you look at his proofs or his negatives, you can’t say he’s a perv targeting teenage girls. It’s brilliant, actually. And he makes money doing it. That’s what gets me. He makes money at it. He’s good at it.”

“Well, he won’t be making any money at it today,” Mendez said. “She busted that camera in about five pieces.”

Tanner laughed an evil laugh. “Good for her. I’ll bet Roland about ruptured his spleen over that. He doesn’t like people touching his stuff. That’s how you can tweak him: touch his stuff, move it, handle it. He can’t stand it. He’ll blow a gasket.”

“My partner and I went into the house he rents in San Luis. It looks like no one has ever lived there.”

“That’s Roland. He’s got a place for everything and everything is in its place. It was some kind of incredible miracle that we got that blood sample out of his van. Eventually we’ll hang him with that.”

“Not soon enough,” Mendez said, pulling into the parking lot of the diner on La Quinta. The place was a favorite haunt of hospital personnel, EMTs, and cops. His tastes ran more to huevos rancheros with jalapeños and black beans, but for good old American grease, this was the place to come.