Lost Hills (Eve Ronin Book 1)

by Lee Goldberg

  Eve took the zigzag route back to the Lost Hills station. That meant driving west on Calabasas Road, then north over the freeway to Mureau Road, a very narrow tree-lined street of deep dips, sudden rises, and sharp blind curves that inexplicably enticed people into speeding and led to frequent, and horrific, car accidents. But today there was so much traffic on the road, with frustrated commuters using it as an alternative to the clogged freeway, that speeding wasn’t an option.

  She hit the T intersection with Las Virgenes Road. Turning right would have taken her to the front door of her condo. Instead, she turned left and headed south over the freeway again, following the route she took to work most mornings on her bike.

  She made a right onto Agoura Road and was passing the Good Nite Inn when guilt and responsibility tugged her into making a sharp U-turn and pulling into the hotel’s parking lot. Cleve had told her during their encounter outside the Lost Hills station that this was where he’d be staying until the case was closed.

  The Good Nite Inn was a two-star, two-story hotel with a low two-figure nightly rate, which brought the kind of clientele that guaranteed that sheriff’s deputies visited often. The hotel had outdoor hallways and was buffeted by the sound of traffic rushing past from the freeway on one side and Agoura Road on the other. The exhaust fumes settled in the hotel’s inner courtyard and mixed with the scent of the heavily chlorinated pool to create a toxic fragrance that kept the mosquitos away and probably killed bedbugs, too.

  Eve called Cleve on the phone from her car and asked if she could see him. He told her to come on up and stood waiting for her in the open doorway of his second-floor room as she came up the stairs.

  He was haggard, his hair askew, his eyes bloodshot, and he wore the wrinkled clothes from the previous night. His skin was pale, as if he’d been bled dry. Over his shoulder, Eve saw an unmade bed and a pizza box from Domino’s and a liter bottle of Coca-Cola on the floor.

  “Have you found my kids?” he asked, his voice low and hoarse. He stepped out of his doorway and went to the railing, making it clear he didn’t want to have this conversation inside his room.

  “No, but we’ve arrested a suspect and searched his home. We found this.” She held up her phone to show Cleve a picture of the pink camera. “Can you tell me what this is?”

  Cleve nodded, his chin trembling. “It’s Caitlin’s camera. I gave it to her as a birthday present a year ago.”

  “We found some pictures on it. Can you tell me when and where they were taken?”

  She handed him the phone and let him scroll through Caitlin’s pictures. All the shots were from a picnic at a lake with her brother, her father, and a golden retriever. There was only one picture of Caitlin, the one with the wet dog shaking off beside her. Caitlin was laughing and turning away, holding her hands up in a futile attempt to protect herself from getting wet but loving it all the same. It was a picture of pure happiness. Now it was a picture that brought heartbreak. She thought he would have cried if he had any tears left. Instead, his body shook with emotional dry-heaves.

  “Caitlin took these pictures in August at Lake Yosemite. It’s a park up in Merced.”

  “Did she ever tell you that she’d lost the camera?”

  He shook his head. “She might have told her mother but Caitlin wouldn’t have said anything to me. She would have been worried about me being hurt or upset that she’d lost her birthday present.” He handed the camera back to her, his hand shaking. “Who did you arrest?”

  “His name is Lionel Coyle. He’s a plumber who did some work at Tanya’s house.”

  “What did you arrest him for?”

  “Murder,” Eve said, the word catching in her throat.

  Cleve nodded, went back into his room, and closed the door softly behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Eve left the Good Nite Inn and drove the two blocks west to the Lost Hills station. The public parking lot was filled with satellite news trucks from the local TV channels. News of Coyle’s arrest must have leaked. She drove past the trucks, through the gate, and into the lot reserved for official vehicles.

  She went into the building, went straight to the squad room, and saw that Biddle and Garvey were at their desks and on their phones. They both acknowledged her with a nod. Duncan was at his desk, too, working his way through a mountain of paperwork. He looked up at her as she passed.

  “Make any progress?” he asked.

  “Two steps forward and one step back,” she said.

  “Let’s hear about the steps forward.”

  “Coyle’s got a drawer full of little knickknacks, stuff he could fit in his pocket, that he stole from the places he serviced as a plumber,” she said and told him about cross-referencing Coyle’s service calls with reports of crimes and how that led her to Vickie Denhoff and Esther Sondel. “I think he slipped into their houses later, when nobody was home, and took the items as souvenirs of his secret visit.”

  “How much of that can you prove?”

  “The women picked out their stuff from photos of his collection and Cleve Kenworth ID’d the pink camera as Caitlin’s.” “How do you know he didn’t steal those items during his service calls?” Duncan said. “It doesn’t prove he broke into the house later or killed Tanya and her kids.”

  “There’s more,” she said. “Denhoff came home early from work one day and was raped by a guy wearing a monster mask who was hiding in her bedroom. I think Tanya walked in on him in her house.”

  “Did we get any DNA from Denhoff’s rapist?”

  Eve shook her head. “She cleaned herself up before reporting the rape.”

  “Is that the step back?”

  “No, it’s bigger than that,” she said. “CSU hasn’t found anything in Coyle’s house or in his car that ties him to the murders. And before you ask, I checked with Mr. Plunger. All of their trucks were accounted for on Wednesday and Thursday, so he didn’t use one of their vehicles.”

  Duncan frowned, but he didn’t seem to Eve to be thrown by the setback, at least not to the degree that she was.

  “Coyle could have borrowed or stolen a car,” Duncan said. “Maybe one that belongs to one of his neighbors or a friend who was out of town.”

  “Even if he took another car to Tanya’s house, we know he went back there again in his own car after he went to Walmart for supplies.”

  “Maybe he’d finished covering up his tracks as best he could in Tanya’s house, hauled away the trash, and dumped the bodies and was going back to mop up the garage,” Duncan said. “The floor in there is painted concrete, not blood-soaked carpet. If he was careful, he might have been able to do it without stepping in anything that he’d track back into his own car. Even if he did step in something, maybe he dropped his shoes into a trash bag and changed into another pair before getting back in his car.”

  Eve liked that theory because it ruled out a second person but it raised almost as many questions as it answered. “But why would he use two different cars to begin with?”

  Duncan shrugged. “Why does he dress up as an ape?”

  “Where did he go to clean himself up after he left Tanya’s house and before he went to Walmart for more supplies to clean up the garage?”

  “The same place where he got the other car, the out-of-town neighbor or friend,” Duncan said. “He could have broken into their place or maybe he has a key and is collecting their mail or walking their dog while they are away. I can have Biddle and Garvey canvas the mobile home park, see if anybody knows something.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Eve said, feeling a lot better about the case than she did when she left Nan at Coyle’s place, and it was thanks to Duncan. He saw a pothole where she saw a bottomless abyss. Then again, he didn’t have as much riding on the case as she did. He had nothing to fear. It gave him the peace of mind to see the case from another perspective. She would remember that lesson.

  “What’s your next move?” he asked.

  “I’ll have a talk with Coyle and
see what I can bluff out of him now,” she said. “Unless you have a better idea.”

  “I wish I did,” he said.

  Eve went to her desk, printed out some photos, filled a file folder with a bunch of papers as a prop, picked up a yellow legal pad and pen, then went down the hall to the interrogation room.

  Coyle was already inside and had been for twenty minutes. He slouched in his purposely wobbly chair. He was wearing blue jailhouse scrubs and his hands weren’t cuffed.

  Eve dumped the thick folder and notepad on the table and dropped into the stable chair across from him with a weary sigh.

  “I’m absolutely exhausted. I would have come to talk to you sooner but we have been so busy.” Eve patted the thick folder and shook her head. “I’ve never seen a case come together this quickly. Every time I was about to see you, more evidence and answers would come in. It finally slowed down a bit.”

  He stared at her but didn’t say a word. She leaned toward him, resting her arms on the table.

  “I’m not here to question you, Coyle, because we know everything.”

  “There’s nothing to know,” he said.

  “Your drawer of souvenirs from the houses you broke into was a big help to us. I almost came by your cell to thank you. We would have discovered the woman you raped in West Hills when we ran your DNA through the system, but because you kept her tiny teacup, we found her today. She even recognized your monkey mask.”

  Coyle tried to keep a blank face but there was an involuntary twitch in his left eyelid that gave away that she’d scored a hit. Eve kept going.

  “You left some DNA at Tanya’s house and on the hill where you clobbered me, too. I won’t bore you with all the evidence.”

  Coyle stared at her. “Then why are you here?”

  Eve noted that he didn’t deny what she said. That, in itself, felt like a confession to her, but it wasn’t one. She needed more—much more.

  “Because, between you and me, I’m the one homicide detective in the LASD who does not support the death penalty. We devote ourselves to catching killers, so how can we kill them in cold blood and call it justice? The thing is, what you did was so horrible, and the evidence is so overwhelming, that the jury will find you guilty after thirty seconds, tops, of deliberation and then they will sentence you to the needle. No question about it. But there’s one thing right now I can do to change that outcome and that you can do to save yourself.”

  He seemed to sink deeper into his seat. It wobbled from side to side. “What’s that?”

  “I can get the DA to take the death penalty off the table if you tell me where they are.”

  “Who?”

  Eve shook her head, like she was disappointed in him. “Come on, Coyle. I’m trying to do you a favor here. Tell me where to find Tanya, Caitlin, and Troy’s body parts and you’ll live.”

  His whole body language changed. He sat up straight and smiled. It was like seeing a puppet being lifted up by his strings and start to perform. She knew in that instant that she’d somehow overplayed her hand. He leaned forward and looked her in the eye with smug satisfaction.

  “We’re done talking,” he said. “I want to call my lawyer.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Eve walked out of the interrogation room, the file and notepad under her arm, and didn’t let her anger show until the door was closed behind her. She’d tried to play him and somehow got played herself.

  The door to the observation room opened and Duncan emerged with a woman carrying a briefcase. Eve didn’t recognize her.

  The woman said to Eve: “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Detective. It was worth a try. But the bodies are like those souvenirs you found. He doesn’t want to give them up. As long as we don’t have them, he still does.”

  Duncan tipped his head toward the woman. “Do you know ADA Rebecca Burnside?”

  Burnside had a grim, serious demeanor that Eve suspected the prosecutor worked hard to maintain to dim the wattage of her fashion-model beauty. But her looks were something Burnside curated with care, putting time into applying her makeup, styling her shoulder-length hair, and choosing suits that accentuated her figure without exploiting it.

  Eve offered Burnside her hand. “I appreciate your fast work on those warrants.”

  They shook hands. Burnside’s grip was as firm as a linebacker’s. “My pleasure. Let’s go to the conference room and you can tell me what we really have on him and what is fake news.”

  Eve led them down the hall and into the conference room, which was filled by a long table with ten chairs, four on each side and one on each end. The blinds were drawn on the window, which looked out over the back parking lot.

  Burnside took a seat at one end and the two detectives each took a seat on either side of her. She pulled a legal pad out of her briefcase, set it in front of her, and uncapped a Mont Blanc pen. “Let’s start with your theory of the case.”

  “Lionel Coyle is a plumber who does service calls for insurance companies,” Eve said. “He goes back to the houses, particularly the ones occupied by women, when they are empty. He dresses up, at least partially, as an ape and roams around the empty home, searching for something small and personal he can steal as a souvenir that won’t be immediately missed. Then something changed.”

  “A woman walked in on him in West Hills,” Duncan said. “And he raped her.”

  “You think he liked it and that inspired him to change his MO,” Burnside said.

  “That’s right,” Eve said. “I believe he watched Tanya’s house from the hillside behind it and learned her routine. Once he was sure the house was empty, he broke in and waited for her to come home so he could rape her. Something went wrong and the rape became a murder. Things escalated from there and one murder became three, not counting the dog.”

  Burnside made some notes and doodled around some of the words. “And in the middle of all this, you think he made a run to Walmart to get more supplies.”

  “We think he ditched the bodies and cleaned himself up first,” Eve said. “But yes, he went out to Walmart, went back to the house to do some last-minute cleanup, then left again.”

  “But you believe he came back to the scene of the crime the next morning,” Burnside said. “When you were already on scene.”

  “That’s right,” Eve said. “He parked his car at the Topanga State Park trailhead down the street, hiked through the park to the hill above Tanya’s house, and retrieved his sleeping bag and some other trash that he’d left behind when he was staking out the place.”

  Burnside made some more doodles, giving some of the words a 3-D effect and sketching a movie marque around them. “It was the plastic bag in the garage that led you to Walmart and to a suspect. You saw him on surveillance video leave the Walmart in a Toyota Corolla, which you matched to the license plate of a Corolla at the Topanga Park trailhead, which is how you identified Coyle. You obtained a search warrant on his home and car, which you served this morning. Based on what you saw during that initial search, you arrested him for murder.”

  “That’s correct,” Eve said.

  Burnside leaned back in her chair. “What did you see that prompted you to arrest him?”

  “We found Caitlin’s camera, with photos of her and her brother on the memory card, in his home and an earring that may belong to her mother,” Eve said. “We also found a pair of shoes that match those worn by the killer.”

  “But not the actual shoes,” Burnside said.

  “No,” Eve said.

  “We did find an ape suit,” Duncan said. “He could have been wearing that mask when he raped the lady in West Hills.”

  Once again, Eve felt the guilt and shame of what her pride had cost her. If she’d told Duncan about being attacked by a “monster” at the crime scene, the ape suit could have been compelling evidence against Coyle. But she didn’t tell anyone, so now it was worthless. It was a huge mistake, one she’d carry for the rest of her life if Coyle got away with the murders.

 
“Did the victim really identify the ape mask?” Burnside asked and Eve shook her head. “And we don’t actually have any DNA evidence, do we?”

  Burnside drilled her with a gaze and Eve knew the ADA wanted to hear an answer this time.

  “No,” Eve said.

  “You’re saying that he raped that woman but all we actually have is a miniature teacup,” Burnside said. “I haven’t researched this yet, but I don’t think in the history of criminal law that a miniature teacup has ever led to a rape conviction.”

  “He did it,” Eve said, angered by Burnside’s contempt and even more so by her belief that she probably deserved it. “Coyle was rattled when I brought up the rape.”

  “I’d be rattled by a false rape accusation, too,” Burnside said.

  “It wasn’t,” Eve said. “He’s a rapist and he’s a killer.”

  Burnside didn’t argue the point. “Okay, let’s get back to the killing. Is there any other evidence that’s been found in his mobile home or car that ties him to the murders?”

  Duncan spoke up, clearly trying to take some of the pressure off Eve: “The camera and the earring put him in Tanya’s house.”

  “Wasn’t he in her house before the murders fixing their toilet or something?” Burnside asked.

  “Coyle was sent to her house twice by Mr. Plunger,” Duncan said. “That’s when he stole a spare key or unlocked a window so he could slip in later.”

  “How do we know he didn’t steal the camera and the earring during those two prior visits?” Burnside asked.