“All right, wait for me,” Decker said. “I’ll take Tarpin because I have a job for you—Dee Baldwin. I know she’s not at her residence or at the office. I want you to talk to some of their friends and find out if they—she and Mervin—had a special vacation spot or cabin retreat up in the mountains—a place where she could be hiding out.”

“You think she did it?”

“Ernesto and Mervin looked pretty cozy, so who knows? Or maybe she’s hiding out because she’s scared. Another avenue is Ernesto as the target. He didn’t do the vandalism alone. Which means that he may have fallen in with some very bad dudes. Specifically, I’m interested in Ruby Ranger. You need to find out where she is as well.”

“I can certainly go back to Alice Ranger, but I don’t think she’ll be too cooperative.”

“Lean on her. It’s important.” Decker paused. “Also, did we ever get an actual photograph of Ricky Moke?”

“No. It never seemed important because Ernesto confessed. Do you want me to go back to Darrell Holt with a police artist and a kit?”

“After we find out about Dee Baldwin, then go back to Holt.”

“Not a problem if you trust his eye…if you trust him period. He could be lying.” A pause. “He probably is lying. Those types lie outta force of habit.”

He sat with Tarpin overlooking the precipice of the mountain, side by side, because Decker knew that men talked more freely without eye contact. The corporal’s face was glistening with sweat, beads forming on his sizeable nose. He wore a camouflage cap over his bald head and had his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. He wore the same stony expression, making him hard to read, and Decker supposed that that was the objective.

Taking out his notebook with pen poised in hand, Decker took a few moments to breathe in the scenery. The mountains were wide and vast, their tips iced with a brown translucent layer of summer smog. Oven hot, he could feel himself drip underneath his clothing even though they were shaded by the canopy of a sycamore. Staring outward, Tarpin asked about Dee Baldwin.

“She’s not at her residence or at the office.”

“That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not. Do you know of anywhere else that she might be? Did she and Dr. Baldwin have a second home anywhere? We checked locally, but maybe they had something out of state?”

“Sometimes they went to the beach for weekends.”

Decker started writing. “Good. Where?”

“Malibu.”

Decker waited for more. “Do you know where? Malibu’s a long stretch of sand.”

“Nah, not my territory. I think they rented.”

That narrowed it down to fifty zillion people. “A house? A condo?”