“Have you noticed anyone strange hanging around the neighborhood lately?” Tanner asked, drawing the girl’s attention to her, allowing Mendez to move a little farther into the room.

The kitchen was to his left, the living room to the right. The place was the size of a postage stamp. It was clean with a normal amount of clutter. A pile of mail here. A stack of magazines there. Some dishes in the sink.

“No,” she said. “But I work nights. I just got home.”

“You’re a nurse?” Tanner said.

“Yes. I work in the ER.”

Half of her furniture was white plastic. The kind that was always on display on the sidewalk outside of Ralphs market and Thrifty drugstores. He could see a small table and four chairs of the same white plastic out on a little patio area on the other side of a flimsy-looking sliding glass door.

“Have you noticed anything out of place?” Tanner asked. “Anything missing?”

Denise Garland frowned as she thought. “No.”

“Do you keep your doors locked, Ms. Garland?” Mendez asked, walking over to the patio door.

Even as she said yes he pushed the door open with a finger.

“Well,” she said, flustered. “Sometimes I forget that one. I have to be more careful, I know. My mom is always harping at me about locking my doors. I accidentally left it open the other night. Stupid.”

“Did you?” Mendez asked, looking at Tanner. “Are you sure you forgot to close it?”

The girl looked puzzled by the question. “I thought I closed it. It was open when I got home. You don’t think . . . ?”

“Did anything seem disturbed?” Tanner asked. “Is anything missing?”

“No . . . I don’t think so . . .” Now she seemed unsure of everything as she tried to recall. “My friend Candace came over in the afternoon. We cooked out. I was late leaving for work. I was in a hurry. I figured I just didn’t remember to close the door.”

“Do you have a washing machine?” Tanner asked.

Now every question sounded strange and sinister to her. “No. Why?”

“Have you noticed any articles of your clothing missing?”

“No. What kind of question is that?” she asked, getting more agitated by the second.

A drawing on the counter between the kitchen and living area caught the eye of Mendez as he came back toward the front door. A pencil drawing. A cartoon. A caricature of a group of nurses, Denise Garland with her heart-shaped face among them. The artist had signed it in the lower right-hand corner: ROB.

A memory scratched at him. From the afternoon Ballencoa had come to the SO to file his complaint. Him asking Hicks what had been in Ballencoa’s messenger bag. A sketch pad, a notebook, a couple of rolls of film . . .

“Ms. Garland,” he said, “do you know a man named Roland Ballencoa?”

“No.”