“Not interested. He paid first and last month’s rent up front. He pays on time. Never asks me for anything. Has never caused any trouble.”

“He was accused of abducting a sixteen-year-old girl,” Mendez pointed out.

“If he’d done it, then he’d be sitting in prison, wouldn’t he?” Mr. Eddard declared. “Nobody wanted to rent to him here, he said. He was willing to pay me nearly half again what I normally rent that place for.”

A premium for the choice hunting ground across the street, Mendez thought, disgusted by Carl Eddard’s disregard for the public safety.

“When did he move out?” Hicks asked.

Eddard wiped the dirty spark plug off with a dirtier rag, then shoved it back in its place on the lawn mower motor.

“I don’t know,” the old man said, irritated, pulling his head down between his shoulders like a turtle, like it physically pained him to be put upon this way. “I don’t know that he has moved out.”

“Do you have a phone number for Mr. Ballencoa?” Hicks asked, pen poised to jot the number in his notebook.

“No. He doesn’t keep a phone.”

“Can you tell us what bank he used?” Hicks asked.

“He didn’t. He always paid with a money order.”

“That seems strange.”

“Better than a check as far as I’m concerned,” the old man said. “You know it’s good.”

He made his way to a bench at the back of the shed, his bowed legs giving him an odd gait.

“When did he stop paying his rent?” Mendez asked, following.

“He hasn’t,” Eddard said, selecting a wrench from a hook on the pegboard above the workbench. “He’s paid up.”

“Through when?”

“End of the month.”

“He hasn’t given notice?” Hicks asked.

The old man crabbed his way back and fitted the wrench over a rust-caked nut on the old lawn mower. “No.”

Mendez exchanged a glance with his partner. According to Mavis Whitaker, Ballencoa had moved out sometime between the end of April and the beginning of June. But he had paid his rent through the month of July. Because he didn’t want anyone to know he had moved? Mendez wondered. Or had his exodus been so hasty he simply hadn’t bothered to try to get his money back?

“Has it occurred to any of you geniuses that maybe he hasn’t moved at all?” Carl Eddard asked, struggling to loosen the nut. “Maybe the man has just gone somewhere. People travel, you know.”

“Would it be possible to go into the house?” Mendez asked, ignoring the raised eyebrows Hicks gave him.

Carl Eddard gave him the stink eye. “Do you have a warrant, young man?”