They made a big loop, coming back onto the street the Toyota had turned down from the opposite direction.

“Ho-ly shit,” Tanner murmured excitedly. “He’s following her. That nurse.”

Mendez felt a little rush of adrenaline. The Toyota had parked in front of a little cracker box house. There was no sign of the nurse. Ballencoa cruised slowly past, then made a right. Mendez went straight onto the next block, did a three-point turn, and doubled back, parking at the corner with a sight line to the red Toyota.

Ballencoa’s van came back onto the block from the opposite direction and pulled over and parked maybe twenty yards from the Toyota.

Neither Mendez nor Tanner said anything. They waited. They held their breath. They waited for Ballencoa to get out of the van, to approach the little square house the Toyota had parked in front of.

“Do you think he made us?” Tanner asked softly, as if there was some chance of Ballencoa hearing her a block away.

“I don’t think he would have stopped if he’d made us,” Mendez said.

“Or he would—just to yank our chains.”

“Maybe.”

“This is like watching one of those nature shows,” Tanner murmured. “Watching the tiger stalk some poor unsuspecting whatever the hell tigers stalk.”

They sat there for nearly ten minutes before Ballencoa pulled away from the curb and came toward them. Shit, Mendez thought. He was going to come right past them. No way he wouldn’t see them. Tanner slid down in her seat and ducked her head. Mendez twisted around and pretended to look for something in the backseat.

But Ballencoa turned left at the corner just in front of them, never looking their way.

Tanner and Mendez exhaled together. They waited another ten minutes to make sure he didn’t come back, then went to knock on the door of the nurse with the red Toyota.

Chapter 42

42

Mendez ran the tag on the Toyota before they went to the door. It came back to Denise Marie Garland, twenty, no wants or warrants.

He checked his watch as they went up the sidewalk. He was due in Dixon’s office in seventeen minutes. He rapped his knuckles hard on the door and said, “Miss Garland? Sheriff’s office.”

Denise Garland came to the door clutching her bathrobe closed at the throat, her mousy brown hair hanging in wet strings around her head, her brown eyes wide.

Mendez showed her his badge. “Miss Garland, I’m Detective Mendez, this is Detective Tanner. We need to ask you a few questions. May we come in?”

She stepped back from the door. “Did I do something? I know I’m not supposed to park in the doctors’ lot, but I was so late—”

“You haven’t done anything, ma’am,” Mendez said. “We’re investigating a string of break-ins in your neighborhood. We’d like to ask you some questions, that’s all.”

“Break-ins?”