Lost Hills (Eve Ronin Book 1)

by Lee Goldberg

“There’s a connection. He was a plumber who did a service call in her house a few weeks prior to the rape.”

  “That could be a coincidence.”

  “There’s also a lot about the two cases that’s similar. In both cases, he was waiting in the house for the victims, he had a knife, and there were no signs of a break-in. We also found an ape suit in his closet.”

  “An ape suit,” Macahan repeated.

  “Full body. Have you ever come across that before?”

  “Rapists who wear animal costumes? Yeah, I’ve seen that before. I arrested a guy who dressed up like a bear and raped little boys. The rapist admitted to me, to prove that he was just a normal guy with normal urges, that he was part of a group of software designers that held furry parties.”

  “What are furry parties?”

  “Gatherings where everybody dresses up as animals and jerk off. One of the other guys at this furry party dressed up like a dog and had three Labradors at home that he sexually abused. We arrested him for bestiality. Here’s a fun fact: I read a study about furries—people who get off wearing animal costumes—and the researcher says that twenty-five percent of ’em believe they aren’t entirely human and wish they could become completely inhuman.”

  She was glad she didn’t have Macahan’s job. “Sounds like the guy you caught, and the one I have in a cell, succeeded in that goal.”

  “If you clear the Denhoff case with yours,” he said, “I’ll owe you one, Deathfist.”

  “You can start by calling me Eve.”

  “Let’s wait and see if you pull off the doubleheader.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Esther Sondel was a widow in her mideighties with some kind of bone disease that had nearly bent her in half. But she still spent two or three months a year traveling around the world.

  “I may not have the body I once had,” Esther had told the LASD detective who’d taken her initial burglary report, “but I still have my head.”

  The comment made such a strong impression on the detective, or amused him so much, that he’d put it in his report. It was Esther’s way of saying she wasn’t senile and the things that were missing from her house were stolen, not misplaced. They weren’t particularly valuable things in terms of financial worth but were rich in memories. She’d returned from one of her trips, noticed some trinkets were gone, and called the sheriff’s department.

  That’s what had brought a detective to her duplex on Park Sorrento in Calabasas eight months ago and why Eve was back today. Esther lived on Calabasas Lake, a private park that was home to ducks and notoriously aggressive geese that were so violent, deputies were often called by irate homeowners wanting the fowl shot. The Calabasas Park Homeowners Association, wary of lawsuits from their notoriously litigious residents, erected signs around the lake warning people not to piss off the birds.

  “This is a surprise,” Esther said, leaning on her gnarled carved-wood cane as she led Eve out onto her patio overlooking the lake. She was Gandalf without the beard. “I thought you’d written me off as a senile old bat.”

  “Not at all,” Eve said. “There just weren’t any leads for us to pursue.”

  They sat down at one of the tables. “So what has changed?”

  “I’d like you to browse through these photos and tell me if you recognize any items,” Eve said, passing her phone across to Esther. Nan had sent Eve all the pictures of everything in Coyle’s bottom dresser drawer. “Do you know how to swipe?”

  “Infants who can’t even talk yet can use iPads and iPhones,” Esther said. “What makes you think I can’t?”

  “Sorry,” Eve said.

  Esther swiped rapidly through the photos with a knobby arthritic finger for a minute or two, then froze.

  “What is it?” Eve asked.

  Esther’s finger trembled over the screen.

  “In the summer of 1975, my husband and I were driving through France in this horrible little Citroën. Our car broke down in some village in the middle of nowhere. We had no money, so we stayed in a room above the mechanic’s garage overnight while he fixed our car. My daughter was conceived that night.” She turned the camera to show Eve the picture. It was a leather key chain with the Citroën logo, two chevrons, on a metal medallion. “We kept this as a memento.”

  Eve’s suspicion was now confirmed. Coyle’s bottom dresser drawer was full of objects that he stole from the homes that he’d visited on service calls. Most of the knickknacks weren’t overtly valuable. They were personal trinkets that he could slip into his pocket and that could go missing, without being noticed by the owners, for days, months, or even years.

  The items didn’t prove he was anything more than a thief but they raised important questions. Did he steal the items on his service calls? Or did he come back later, when nobody was home, and keep the items as souvenirs of his secret intrusions? If so, did Tanya catch him in the act? Was that the reason for his homicidal fury?

  Now Eve was even more interested in showing Coyle’s collection of knickknacks to Vickie Denhoff, the rape victim, to confirm her suspicions about his activities.

  “Will I get this back?” Esther asked.

  Eve nodded. “But it might be a while.”

  “I can wait,” Esther said. “I intend to take it with me when I go.”

  “Go where?”

  “To the grave, dear,” Esther said. “I’m taking my wedding ring, the key chain, the first love letter Ira wrote to me, and the mink he bought me that I can’t wear in public anymore.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Vickie Denhoff lived in a decades-old one-story ranch-style home on Julie Lane in West Hills, which was once the western-most edge of Canoga Park until it split off into its own community in the late 1980s. The corner of West Hills that Denhoff lived in was under LASD jurisdiction, while the rest of the community fell under the LAPD’s protection.

  The exterior of the house was clean and meticulously maintained. The lawn was so perfectly manicured and green, and the bushes so symmetrically trimmed, that Eve had to touch grass and the leaves on her way to the front door to be sure the landscaping was real and not plastic.

  Eve had called ahead to make sure Vickie was there and so she’d be emotionally prepared for the questions she might be asked. Vickie opened the door so quickly, Eve suspected she’d been standing at the peephole watching her approach.

  “Detective Ronin?” Vickie asked. She wasn’t the OCD cliché that Eve was expecting, which was a socially awkward, demure woman with a severe haircut and wearing bland but perfectly pressed clothes that were buttoned up to the neck and didn’t show any skin. She wore a loose-fitting navy-and-white gingham sundress, scoop necked with thin shoulder straps that showed off her shoulders and cleavage. Her curly blonde hair was styled in a simple messy bob.

  Eve flashed her badge. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Ms. Denhoff. I’m sorry to intrude on your Saturday afternoon. This won’t take long.”

  “Please call me Vickie.” She stepped aside and let Eve in. The house, unlike Vickie, did fit the cliché. It was impeccably clean, not a speck of dust or anything out of place. The furniture and artwork were all centered in relation to the walls behind them and the pieces evenly spaced. It looked like a furniture store or a display of some kind rather than a place where a person lived and relaxed. “What can I do for you?”

  There was a hesitancy in Vickie’s voice that Eve could sympathize with. Vickie was wary of opening old wounds.

  “As I said on the phone, I’m investigating a case that could be related to yours, but I’m not going to ask you to go back over everything again. I’d just like you to look at some pictures and tell me if you recognize any of the items.” Eve took out her phone and held it out to her.

  Vickie regarded the screen, which was smudged with greasy fingerprints, and frowned. “Let’s sit down. You can scroll through the pictures and I’ll stop you if I see something I recognize. Is that okay?”

  “Of course,” Eve sai
d, feeling stupid for not cleaning her dirty phone before offering it to a germophobe. They sat down side by side on the couch and Eve slowly swiped through the photos of the things in Coyle’s drawer. They went through about two dozen items before Vickie said something, her eyebrows arching with surprise.

  “That’s mine.” She pointed to a picture of a miniature teacup.

  “How do you know?”

  “It was part of a four-piece tea set that was in a huge antique dollhouse that belonged to my mother. The dollhouse is long gone, but I kept the tea set on a bookshelf in the guest room where my mom stays when she visits. One day, I noticed a teacup was gone.”

  “Was this day before or after you were attacked?”

  “After,” she said, her voice a little shaky. “Two weeks after. My mom came to stay with me when I was recovering. When I was cleaning up the room prior to her arrival I saw that the cup was gone. It really threw me. I mean, what was I supposed to do? There was no way I could replace the cup before Mom got here and I couldn’t leave it like that. I had no choice but to remove one of the cups and hope for the best.”

  “I don’t understand,” Eve said. “Why did you remove a cup?”

  “So there would be two cups left instead of three,” Vickie said. “What would Mom think if she saw the room in disarray? She’d be even more concerned about me than she already was. The two cups worked out fine while she was here. She was too busy fussing over me to care. But after she left, I couldn’t live with it. Two cups would have been fine for anybody else who didn’t know they were part of a set. But I knew. I couldn’t fool myself and so I ended up throwing them all away.”

  Eve nodded, not because she thought what Vickie did was the common sense thing to do but to buy herself some time to decide whether to show her one more photo, one that could cause her some pain.

  Vickie asked, “Where did you find my cup?”

  “We found it in the home of a man we believe attacked another woman,” Eve said and made her decision. “There’s another picture I’d like to show you.”

  Eve went online and found a headshot of actor Roddy McDowall in his ape makeup from Planet of the Apes. “Is this the monster mask your attacker was wearing?”

  She showed Vickie the photo. Vickie stared at it analytically, showing no emotional reaction.

  “It could be but I can’t be sure,” she said, unconsciously touching the spot on her throat that had been cut with the knife. There was no visible scar there but Eve was sure there was one that Vickie could feel. “My memory of it is blurred. All I know was that it wasn’t a human face. I closed my eyes and didn’t open them again until he was gone.”

  Eve certainly understood that and had no interest in bringing back more bad memories for her. She pocketed her phone and stood up. “Thank you, Vickie. You’ve been a big help.”

  Vickie rose to her feet and walked Eve to the door. “Do you think this is the same man who raped me?”

  “I think it’s very likely,” Eve said.

  “Do you have him in jail?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Keep him there.” Vickie opened the door. “I might be able to start sleeping at night with the lights off again.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Eve stopped at the Commons, an outdoor shopping center in Calabasas that was meant to evoke a quaint French village, and got a sandwich and coffee at Le Pain Quotidien, which she ate at a table outside under the shadow of a clock tower that held the world’s largest Rolex. She’d never been to France, but she doubted many villages had Rolex clock towers.

  It was 5:00 p.m. and beginning to get dark. Her phone vibrated. Eve picked it up and saw that Nan had sent her the photos from Caitlin’s camera. She downloaded them and texted Nan.

  How much longer are you going to be at Coyle’s place?

  Nan texted back.

  Another hour or so.

  Eve replied that she was on her way over to get the rundown and asked if there was anything she could bring her.

  Nan asked for a Caramel Coconut Iced Latte from Coffee Bean, which was at the shopping center across the street from the Commons. Eve said that would be no problem.

  She got a couple of the iced lattes and headed up to the mobile home park, where she saw that there was still a crowd of people, most of them tenants of the park, standing outside the yellow police tape watching the CSU team do their work at Coyle’s place.

  Eve parked her car, got out with the two lattes, and closed the door with her hip. She handed one of the drinks to Deputy Clayton, who lifted up the yellow tape for her.

  “You just became my nominee for detective of the year,” he said.

  “Do you ever take your sunglasses off?” she asked.

  “Did the Lone Ranger ever take off his mask?”

  She smiled and continued on to Coyle’s mobile home. Nan met her outside the carport. Another CSU tech was on his knees outside the open driver’s side door of Coyle’s Toyota, taking samples from the carpet. Eve handed Nan the latte and she took a big sip.

  “Thanks, I’ve been craving this all day,” Nan said. “What do I owe you?”

  “I’ll settle for a single piece of evidence linking Coyle to the murders of Tanya Kenworth and her kids,” Eve said and got a frown from Nan, indicating they’d come up with nothing so far. “Don’t tell me that. What about the work boots?”

  “They are the same brand and style of work boot but not the actual ones that he wore at the scene. This pair is brand new and they’ve never been worn, at the crime scene or anywhere else. These were his spares.”

  “Spares?”

  “He has three pairs of the same Nike running shoes, two that are still in boxes and one that he’s wearing regularly. My guess is that he waits for sales and then he buys multiple pairs of the shoes he likes.”

  “What about the carpet and floors? Surely he tracked some blood, cleanser, and motor oil into his house.”

  “I won’t be one hundred percent certain until we get the samples back to the lab, but there doesn’t appear to be any trace evidence from the crime scene in his house. We’ve checked everything, including the drains in the shower and sinks. Speaking of which, we also checked the drains at Tanya’s house and we didn’t find any hairs that match his.”

  Eve motioned to the Toyota. “You must have found something in his car.”

  Nan shook her head again. “It’s clean.”

  It was frustrating and infuriating. “So he thoroughly scrubbed his car down after the killings.”

  “Definitely not,” Nan said. Eve was confused and Nan could see it on her face. “When I said it was clean, I meant we haven’t found any blood, body fluids, bone fragments, or anything else connected to the crime scene. But outside of that, the car is filthy. See for yourself.”

  Eve turned and looked at the car. It was covered in dirt and there was bird crap on the trunk lid and back window. The car obviously hadn’t been washed in weeks. It didn’t make any sense to her. If the car was clean, how did he get the trash and body parts out of the house? If his mobile home was clean, then where did he go to change his clothes and wash the blood off himself before going shopping at Walmart?

  Despite all the evidence pointing to Coyle, there was still a big hole in the narrative, something she hadn’t found, or couldn’t see in front of her, that would explain it all and prove him guilty. Unless she figured out fast what it was, Coyle could be bailed out on Monday and only face a burglary charge.

  One thought occurred to her. She took out her phone and called Mr. Plunger. Brandy answered cheerfully, as usual. “This is Detective Ronin again. I have a quick question. Are your plumbers allowed to take the service vehicles home with them?”

  “No, of course not,” Brandy said. “Why would they want to do that?”

  Instead of answering the question, Eve asked another. “Were all of your trucks in service on Wednesday and Thursday?”

  “Yes, they were,” she said.

  “There weren’t any in
the shop or sidelined for any reason?”

  “Nope,” she said.

  “Is your parking lot under video surveillance?”

  “Twenty-four seven because of vandalism and people trying to steal tools and parts off the trucks,” she said. “It’s all recorded on DVR that recycles every sixty days.”

  “Thanks for your help, I appreciate it.” Eve disconnected the call and saw Nan studying her.

  “You’re wondering how he got the bodies out of the house if he didn’t use his car or his plumbing truck,” Nan said.

  The answer was obvious. “He had another car or an accomplice.”

  “Or both,” Nan said.

  The notion of a second killer had never occurred to Eve until now. Her entire focus for the last forty-eight-plus hours was finding a single individual. She didn’t know where to start looking for a second man or woman.

  “Is there any evidence you’ve seen that points to a second person?” Eve asked.

  Nan shrugged. “Sometimes it’s the lack of evidence that does the pointing.”

  Like it did right now, though Eve wasn’t convinced that a second person was the missing piece, not that she had the slightest idea what the hell it was. There was just a big, gaping hole in the case.

  Eve felt a tremble of panic in her chest for the first time since the investigation began. It was the fear of failure and what it would mean. Her promotion to homicide detective would be condemned as a disastrous and irresponsible publicity stunt, one that revealed her arrogance and incompetence and the sheriff’s frantic desperation to distract attention from the department’s scandals. Their careers would be over and their reputations irreparably destroyed. They would deserve it, too.

  But the prospect of that shame and ridicule wasn’t what scared her the most. It was failing to get justice for Tanya, Caitlin, and Troy. She could not, she would not, let that happen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Calabasas was divided by steep hills that were designated as permanent open space. There were no roads that cut straight across them. As a result, to get to the other side of the city, it was necessary to take one of three routes: the 101 freeway to the north, the most direct route, but one that was often clogged with traffic, turning a three-mile drive into a thirty-minute ordeal; or Mulholland Highway, a two-lane road that took a long, winding route up and through the hills but required you to go several miles south and then backtrack north again; or a zigzag route that paralleled the freeway and crossed over it twice, following the crazy borders of a city created by piecemeal annexations of unincorporated land rather than a rational plan.