“You guys do the most disgusting things,” Tanner commented.
“Don’t look at me!” Mendez said, offended.
“Well, maybe not all of you,” she conceded. “But you gotta admit you never see women breaking into guys’ houses to masturbate with their underwear. Not that I’ve ever heard of.”
They passed Mercy General Hospital and took a left on Third Avenue.
“Although,” Tanner mused, “I suppose if a guy came home and found that going on, he probably wouldn’t call the cops. He’d call himself a lucky son of a bitch!”
“Now who’s disgusting?” Mendez complained.
“Am I embarrassing your delicate sensibilities?”
“As a matter of fact . . .”
One of the cars acting as a buffer between them and Ballencoa’s van turned off to the right. Mendez swore under his breath and eased off the gas. There were half a dozen reasons he couldn’t have Ballencoa see them or suspect them—not the least of which would be having Dixon kick his ass for following the guy.
“Sorry,” Tanner said. “I’m too used to working with assholes.”
The red Toyota ahead of Ballencoa took a right. The car behind Ballencoa pulled over and parked. Ballencoa went straight, but took the following right. Mendez slowed to a crawl, waiting, then took the same turn.
They made a big loop, coming back onto the street the Toyota had turned down from the opposite direction.
“Ho-ly shit,” Tanner murmured excitedly. “He’s following her. That nurse.”
Mendez felt a little rush of adrenaline. The Toyota had parked in front of a little cracker box house. There was no sign of the nurse. Ballencoa cruised slowly past, then made a right. Mendez went straight onto the next block, did a three-point turn, and doubled back, parking at the corner with a sight line to the red Toyota.
Ballencoa’s van came back onto the block from the opposite direction and pulled over and parked maybe twenty yards from the Toyota.
Neither Mendez nor Tanner said anything. They waited. They held their breath. They waited for Ballencoa to get out of the van, to approach the little square house the Toyota had parked in front of.
“Do you think he made us?” Tanner asked softly, as if there was some chance of Ballencoa hearing her a block away.
“I don’t think he would have stopped if he’d made us,” Mendez said.
“Or he would—just to yank our chains.”
“Maybe.”
“This is like watching one of those nature shows,” Tanner murmured. “Watching the tiger stalk some poor unsuspecting whatever the hell tigers stalk.”
They sat there for nearly ten minutes before Ballencoa pulled away from the curb and came toward them.
But Ballencoa turned left at the corner just in front of them, never looking their way.
Tanner and Mendez exhaled together. They waited another ten minutes to make sure he didn’t come back, then went to knock on the door of the nurse with the red Toyota.
42
Mendez ran the tag on the Toyota before they went to the door. It came back to Denise Marie Garland, twenty, no wants or warrants.
He checked his watch as they went up the sidewalk. He was due in Dixon’s office in seventeen minutes. He rapped his knuckles hard on the door and said, “Miss Garland? Sheriff’s office.”
Denise Garland came to the door clutching her bathrobe closed at the throat, her mousy brown hair hanging in wet strings around her head, her brown eyes wide.
Mendez showed her his badge. “Miss Garland, I’m Detective Mendez, this is Detective Tanner. We need to ask you a few questions. May we come in?”
She stepped back from the door. “Did I do something? I know I’m not supposed to park in the doctors’ lot, but I was
“You haven’t done anything, ma’am,” Mendez said. “We’re investigating a string of break-ins in your neighborhood. We’d like to ask you some questions, that’s all.”
“Break-ins?”
“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.
“Ms. Garland,” he said, “do you know a man named Roland Ballencoa?”
“No.”
He picked up the drawing and held it so Tanner could see it. “Where did you get this?”
“Oh, that’s from Rob,” the girl said, relaxing. This was something that wasn’t scary to her. A pleasant memory.
“Who’s Rob?”
“The guy at the diner,” she explained, finding a little smile. “He’s always there for breakfast. He does those and gives them to people. Just for fun. He’s nice.”
