Lauren Lawton huffed a sigh, yanked a chair out from the head of the big harvest table, and sat, the fingers of one hand drumming impatiently on the tabletop.

“Is this now when you give me the ‘we can’t do anything’ lecture? And then I have to wonder aloud if you’ll do anything after the bastard kills me?”

Mendez seated himself to her left, purposely delaying his answer. She was spoiling for a fight. He wouldn’t give her one.

“We’re trying to locate Mr. Ballencoa,” he said calmly. “It seems he hasn’t been living in his residence in San Luis Obispo for some time now. He didn’t leave a forwarding address with anyone.”

Lauren looked at him, trying to decide if he was going to be a good guy or not. She looked exhausted—pale and drawn with sooty purple smudges below her eyes. She wore gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt with a too-big black sweater wrapped over it. The tips of her fingers barely peeked out of the ends of the sleeves. It had probably belonged to her husband, he guessed.

“What time did you come into the house this evening?” he asked, taking out his little spiral notebook and pen.

“I got home around five.”

“And when did you find the photograph?”

“It was after two.”

“What made you go out to the car after two in the morning?”

She sighed as if the answer was going to be a long story, but she opted for the short version. “I had left my purse in the car. I wanted it.”

“Have you been alone all evening?”

“Yes. My daughter is spending the night with a girlfriend.”

Her eyes welled with sudden tears, and she stood up abruptly and went to the refrigerator, where she pulled a bottle of Absolut vodka from the freezer. She threw a handful of ice cubes into a tumbler, poured a stiff four fingers, and brought the drink back to the table.

He could only imagine what she was feeling, thinking that the man who had abducted her older daughter had come to her home in the dead of night, that he had been right outside the house she and her younger child had come to for refuge. Her sense of security had been breached. She probably felt violated.

She looked at him now with defiance in her eyes as she raised the glass to her lips and took a long pull on the vodka.

“Did Detective Tanner tell you I’m an alcoholic?”

“No, ma’am,” he said without emotion. “Are you?”

“No,” she said, one corner of her mouth twisting upward in the smallest, most bitter kind of smile. “Despite my own best efforts.”