Lost Hills (Eve Ronin Book 1)

by Lee Goldberg

  “I love you, hardnose.” Jen made a kissing sound into the phone. “Get some sleep.”

  “I will,” Eve said, but she didn’t go to bed.

  She spent another hour putting pins in the map and then, after accidentally sticking herself in the finger with a pushpin, she decided to take a break and approach her investigation from another angle.

  Eve opened up her laptop on the coffee table, logged on to Amazon, and rented the original Planet of the Apes, hoping it might give her some insights into Coyle. She sat back on the couch and watched as astronaut Charlton Heston crashed on an alien planet where apes were the superior species and humans were inferior.

  It was a heavy-handed allegorical tale, and although the apes were more advanced than man, they didn’t have any technology and lived in earthen huts in a time period similar to the Old West.

  She fell asleep and dreamed of apes on horseback rampaging through the women’s department of Neiman Marcus.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The sound of the doorbell ringing, and a fist pounding on the door, woke Eve up, dazed and disoriented.

  “Hold on, Mom, I’m coming.” Eve got up from the couch, stretched her stiff back, and shuffled to the door. But it wasn’t her mom standing outside, it was Duncan Pavone holding a box of donuts, a sight that Eve found very confusing, since she’d just been talking to her mom on the phone.

  She looked at her hand and realized she wasn’t holding a phone and hadn’t been talking to anyone. The fog in her head began to clear. Her mom had been banging on the door yesterday. This was a new day, a new rude awakening.

  “Sorry to make such a racket, but you didn’t answer the phone.” Duncan invited himself in and gave her the once-over as she closed the door. “Isn’t that what you wore yesterday?”

  Eve went back to the couch to look for her phone. “What’s the big emergency?”

  “Coyle’s lawyer called. They want to talk to us.”

  She found her phone on the coffee table. The phone’s battery was dead. “What do they want to talk about?”

  “Maybe he wants to confess. Or maybe he still wants that selfie with you.” Duncan went to the map on the wall, which was covered with pushpins. “What is this?”

  “All of Coyle’s service calls. The Xs mark Coyle’s house, Tanya’s house, and where he works. I’m trying to use geographical profiling to figure out where the bodies may be. It’s where Coyle goes when he’s not breaking into houses, raping, and killing people that will be the key to finding the bodies.” She pointed to the circles she’d drawn in a three-mile radius from Tanya’s house, Esther Sondel’s house, and some of the other service calls. “The rape in West Hills was an outlier. I think we’ll find the bodies on one of these clusters of pins where the circles overlap.”

  Most of those pushpins marking service calls were grouped in the southeastern edge of Calabasas and the Santa Monica Mountains near Topanga Canyon to the east and Las Virgenes to the west.

  Eve picked up her shoes and socks, sat on the arm of the couch, and put them on.

  Duncan looked at the map, then at the papers strewn amid the Chinese takeout boxes, and shook his head. “I’ve seen TV cops do this, but never a real person.”

  “Do what?”

  “Bring a case home and put it on their wall to illustrate their obsession. Is that where you picked this up? A TV show?”

  “The sheriff ordered me to go home but I still had work to do, that’s all.” She went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a can of Coke.

  “You caught the bad guy. You were publicly commended by the sheriff. You’ve already proven yourself. You can stop trying so hard to impress everybody.”

  Eve popped open the can, took a mouthful of Coke, swished it around, and spit it out like mouthwash. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “Well, not right now,” he said, then gestured to the wall. “All of this work isn’t impressive. It’s kind of pathetic.”

  She took another swig of Coke, but this time she swallowed it. “I just want to close the case. There are big holes we need to fill or tomorrow morning Coyle could be back on the street.”

  Duncan sighed. “I’ve been doing this for decades. I’ve solved lots of crimes. I’ve put away some very bad people. I’m a damn good detective, if I do say so myself.”

  “I know you are.” Eve had some more Coke and wondered where he was going with this.

  “But now that my career is nearly over, do you want to know what I am most proud of? Being married for thirty years and raising two kids who don’t hate me. I’m not an alcoholic or a prescription drug addict, either. All of that makes me an exception to the rule in our profession.”

  She tilted her can of Coke toward the box of donuts in his hands. “You eat a ton of donuts.”

  “Because it makes me happy,” he said. “I made happiness a priority. That’s key to achieving my stats.”

  Eve set her empty can on the table and gathered up her badge and gun. “I can’t be happy when things are unsettled. Order is what makes me happy.”

  “You can’t keep up like this, Eve. You’ll burn out fast.”

  She pocketed her badge and holstered her gun on her belt. She was ready to go. “It’s just this one case.”

  “Uh-huh,” Duncan said. “You aren’t going to change your clothes?”

  Eve lifted her arms and sniffed under her armpits. “I’m good.”

  Duncan handed her the box of donuts. “I’ll drive while you have breakfast.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  It was 8:40 on Sunday morning. The Santa Ana winds were blowing at thirty miles an hour through the Los Angeles Basin, fanning the flames in Valencia, and humidity was barely measurable, prompting the fourth straight day of red flag warnings in Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara counties.

  The ride to the Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, where Coyle had been transferred on the previous night, took them nearly ninety minutes in rush-hour traffic, though “rush hour” was a misnomer. The traffic ordinarily didn’t ebb until about lunchtime, even on Sunday, and that was only if there were no serious accidents to clear.

  The Men’s Central Jail was the epicenter of the ongoing scandals that were dogging the department. Now that the jail was under a media and Justice Department spotlight, every deputy and civilian employee was on their best behavior, assuming that any prisoner, lawyer, or family member entering the facility was a potential media source or FBI informant.

  Eve and Duncan locked up their weapons, filled out the necessary paperwork, and were led to an interview room where Coyle and his lawyer were already waiting. Coyle was relaxed, stretched out in his hard chair as if it were a comfy recliner. The lawyer stood up and introduced herself as Stella Winters. She was a short, barrel-bodied woman in her fifties whose chin seemed to have been absorbed by her neck. A man would have compensated for his lost chin by growing a beard to establish some definition. Winters tried to use makeup to create some shadow but it didn’t work.

  “Thank you for coming down, Detectives,” Winters said. “We won’t keep you long.”

  “Why isn’t the assistant district attorney here?” Eve asked as she sat down.

  “Because Burnside is not the one with the most at stake here,” Winters said.

  “Say what?” Duncan said. “Your client is the one looking at the death penalty. Are there stakes higher than death?”

  Winters gave him a polite smile, the kind reserved for someone you don’t want to hurt who has told a bad joke. “This case will never get that far, Detective Pavone. The only charge Mr. Coyle faces is petty theft of a digital camera and even that charge is weak.”

  Eve sighed. “We can prove he butchered a woman, two children, and their dog.”

  “You wish you could. You’ve found nothing at the crime scene, at his home, in his car, or on his person that ties him to those murders. The fact is, all you can prove is that my client was in that family’s house twice, at their r
equest, to fix plumbing problems. That’s a shameful basis for an arrest,” Winters said. “We’re giving you an opportunity today to redeem yourself before it’s too late.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Eve said.

  Winters leaned across the table toward Eve, as if to confide in her. “You are the face of this investigation, Detective Ronin. You are the one who will be pilloried and ruined when I get this case thrown out due to an appalling lack of sufficient evidence. But if you drop the charges now, there’s a chance your career might survive the justified humiliation. You can blame your youth, inexperience, and overzealousness. You can blame the sheriff for exploiting your YouTube popularity as a salve for his scandals. Mr. Coyle might even be willing to publicly forgive you.”

  Coyle smiled and winked at Eve. “Only if I can have that selfie with you.”

  Eve knew the lawyer was right about what would happen to her if the case against Coyle cratered on Monday. But Winters overestimated how important Eve’s career was to her and how much she was willing to sacrifice for it. Eve was far more afraid of living with the guilt of letting a killer go free than she was about being humiliated and losing her job. She didn’t deserve to have the badge if she couldn’t keep Coyle in a cell.

  “I have a better idea, Lionel,” Eve said. “You can tell us where to find the bodies and we’ll take the death penalty off the table.”

  Coyle dropped his gaze to her chest. “You have sprinkles on your shirt.”

  Eve looked down and, sure enough, there were some multicolored sugar sprinkles on her blouse from the donut she ate in the car. She wiped the sprinkles off, well aware that Coyle was using it as an excuse to stare at her breasts. It also meant she had his full attention and she was going to use it.

  “I watched Planet of the Apes in bed last night.” She added the “in bed” to tantalize him. It worked. His breath caught and he looked her in the eye.

  “Did you like it?”

  “It’s cheesy fun, but I don’t see why you’re so wild about it.”

  “Because it’s a great movie that works on so many levels. It really says something about our society and all of the things that are wrong with it.”

  Eve shook her head. “It’s more than that to you, Lionel. You have an ape suit in your closet.”

  Winters spoke up. “Nice try, Detective, but my client is not going to answer any—”

  Coyle interrupted her, his eyes still on Eve. “You make it sound like having an ape suit is something crazy. It’s no different than a Star Trek fan who has a Starfleet uniform.”

  “Who says that isn’t crazy, too?” Duncan said.

  But Coyle ignored Duncan. He was only interested in what Eve had to say.

  “It’s not just the one movie you like, it’s all the sequels and spin-offs, too,” Eve said. “What’s the attraction?”

  “It’s a world upside down. It’s a place where apes, creatures that we consider inferior today, are ruling the world and keeping humans as house pets, slaves, and lab animals.”

  “It sounds to me like you’re rooting for the apes.”

  “I am.”

  “But aren’t they the bad guys?”

  Winters spoke up again, directing herself to Coyle this time. “Mr. Coyle, I must insist that you—”

  “You’re missing the point of the movie, Deathfist,” Coyle said, speaking over Winters’ objection. “The bad guys are whoever it is who think they are better than everybody else. This world needs to be turned upside down.”

  “I’ll have to watch the movie again,” Eve said. “Where’s the DVD you bought at Walmart?”

  That question made Coyle’s eyelid twitch, just like it did when Eve told him yesterday that she’d tied him to Vickie Denhoff’s rape. Eve found it very curious that mentioning the DVD got the same involuntary response.

  Winters slapped her hand on the table. “This conversation is over. We’re not here to answer your questions. We’re making you a face-saving offer. You should take it. The offer expires in an hour.”

  “You heard Detective Ronin’s generous offer,” Duncan said. “I’d take it if I were you, Lionel. Because if we find the bodies without your help—”

  Duncan jerked violently in his chair as if a thousand volts were coursing through his body.

  Winters bolted up out of her seat in outrage. “That’s enough! That was way out of line, Detective.”

  “She’s right.” Eve turned to Duncan and stood up, too. “You were wrong. They don’t use the electric chair anymore. It’s lethal injection.”

  “That’s what lethal injection looks like.” Duncan rose to his feet and smiled at Coyle. “When they screw up the dosage and the prisoner endures intense agony. You’ll see.”

  Eve and Duncan walked out, closed the door, and headed down the corridor toward the iron security gate, which was manned by a guard. She was troubled by the encounter with Coyle. She couldn’t get a sense of what he or his lawyer hoped to gain from it. Did they really think she’d drop the charges to save herself?

  “That was a strange meeting,” Eve said.

  “He wants out of jail, that’s all, and believes we don’t have the evidence to hold him.”

  “So why not wait until tomorrow and have the pleasure of humiliating me and the entire department in court?” She had the nagging feeling that she was missing something important.

  “He hates being cooped up and the more time he gives us, the better the odds are that we’ll get the evidence we need but don’t have yet. They had nothing to lose by taking the shot.”

  Eve didn’t buy it. “If Stella Winters really believed we had nothing, she’d relish the opportunity to skin us alive in open court in front of the media. It would raise her public profile, bring her clients, maybe even get her a legal pundit gig on CNN. Something else is going on here.”

  “Not everybody looks at the media angle first and how they can leverage it for personal gain.”

  Eve ignored the swipe at her. They reached the security gate and were buzzed through by the guard on duty. They walked down another corridor toward the next gate.

  “Where did Coyle find Winters?” Eve asked.

  “He didn’t. His mother did. Stella Winters represented Coyle on those jerking-off-in-public cases when he was in high school and at Pierce College. Winters got the charges dropped in exchange for him going into counseling.”

  “Winters must be good,” Eve said. “How did Coyle’s mother get so lucky?”

  “Beatrice worked as a receptionist at a law firm in Woodland Hills and one of the lawyers there recommended Winters.”

  “What happened to Lionel’s father?”

  “I don’t know. Beatrice was a single parent, never married,” Duncan said. “Why did you ask Coyle about the DVD he bought at Walmart? Out of all the questions we have, that had to be the least important one.”

  “It made his eyelid twitch. I wonder why that is.”

  “Fatigue, dry eye, a nervous tick. Who cares? You wasted an opportunity on something insignificant.”

  “Is imitating death by electric chair an effective interrogation technique for you?”

  “It doesn’t get any answers,” Duncan said, “but it never fails to amuse me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Eve and Duncan walked into a squad room that was packed with detectives and deputies talking on telephones and taking notes. It reminded Eve of a telethon phone bank. Biddle and Garvey were at their side-by-side cubicles, doing paperwork.

  “What are all these people doing here?” Eve asked Duncan.

  “After the press conference last night, the tip lines lit up. The sheriff assigned a bunch of personnel to answer phones and more deputies to the search for the bodies. The captain is having the watch commander coordinate the search, which is expanding beyond the department to volunteer groups.”

  “We could make better use of some of those people who are answering phones,” Eve said. “I’d like to see them out on the street, visiting each
home Coyle serviced as a plumber and seeing if we can match more of his souvenirs to his past clients. Getting some more hits on Coyle’s burglaries will help us use the geographic profile of his movements to narrow down the hot zones where the bodies might be buried.”

  “You’re the task force leader,” Duncan said. “You can allocate the personnel any way you want.”

  “Okay, then let’s do it. We still need to know a lot more about Coyle’s life. The answer to what he did with the bodies may lie in what he’s done in the past and what he likes to do when he isn’t unclogging toilets or chopping up families. You and me and Crockett and Tubbs should talk to his coworkers, his neighbors, any relatives he might have. Am I missing anything?”

  Duncan smiled at her. “Nope.”

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “I like that you’re confident but not overconfident,” Duncan said. “Smart people are the ones who know how stupid they are.”

  “I’m not sure that tracks, or that it’s a compliment, but I’ll take it.”

  Garvey wheeled backward in his chair from his cubicle as he saw them approach. “How did it go with monkey boy?”

  “It was a waste of time,” Eve said, scanning all the pictures of Garvey with film, music, and sports celebrities that lined the three walls of his cubicle. There was one taken in the Lost Hills lobby with an intoxicated A-list movie star after he was released without being charged, no doubt thanks to Garvey’s intervention.

  Duncan flashed a sly grin. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Biddle shared a knowing look with Garvey, then looked back at Duncan. “Did you do your electric chair shtick?”

  “Hell yes,” Duncan said and the three men laughed.

  “Then it was time well spent,” Biddle said. “That might have been your last chance to do it before your retirement party.”

  “He’ll do it at the party,” Garvey said. “You’ll see.”

  Eve was impatient. She gestured to all the people on the phones. “Are we getting anything at all from the tip lines?”