Mendez was busy stirring sugar into his third cup of coffee. He was tired. After leaving Lauren Lawton he had gone back to bed but hadn’t slept, finally turning the television on to stare at infomercials for spray-on hair and Veg-O-Matics. At five thirty he gave up and went for a run followed by fifty chin-ups, a hundred crunches, and ten minutes hitting the speed bag. Now he was tired and sore, and still brooding about Lauren Lawton.

“What plate?” he asked.

“The car Mavis Whitaker saw parked in front of Ballencoa’s house in San Luis,” Hicks said. “The guy who said he was a cop.”

He selected a coffee mug and poured himself a cup, arching a brow at his partner as Mendez picked a chocolate-glazed doughnut from the opened pink bakery box on the counter. “You know you’re perpetuating a stereotype, right?”

“We have them for a reason.”

“Long night, hot date?”

“Long night,” Mendez muttered. “Avis? It was a rental?”

“Yeah. So for sure the guy wasn’t on the job. And I called the Avis office in San Luis. That car was never on their lot.”

“What the fuck? Who rents a car to go to another town to spy on some dirtbag?”

“It all goes right along with this business,” Hicks said. “Someone rents a car out of town to go spy on a dirtbag who rents a house in one town and lives someplace else.”

Mendez fished a couple of Tylenol out of his pants pocket and tossed them back. “This is starting to sound like one of those long math word problems that used to make me want to puke in school.”

He took a seat at the table and looked up at the TV monitor on the wall. Detective Trammell was in an interview room with a suspect on a domestic abuse complaint.

“How much do you wanna bet he asks the guy if he still beats his wife?” he asked his partner.

“Nothing. That’s a sucker bet.” Hicks turned the volume up on the monitor and sat down.

In the interview room Detective Trammell sat back in his chair and regarded his suspect. Trammell was a guy’s guy, with a simple, straightforward style in an interview. Mano a mano. Let’s have a beer and talk shit.

“So, Gary,” he said, “are you still beating your wife?”

“Ha!” Hicks laughed. “That never gets old.”

The suspect fell all over himself saying he didn’t, hadn’t, never had, never could, it was all a big misunderstanding.

“Yeah, right,” Hicks said with disgust. “She misunderstood him swinging his fist and walked right into it with her face.”

“Lying sack of shit,” Mendez growled. “I pulled that asshole in here six months ago for the same thing. The wife wouldn’t press charges.”