Bone Canyon

by Goldberg, Lee

  A man stood in the cobblestone driveway, waiting for them. He was in his fifties, with a goatee and long gray-flecked hair tied into a ponytail. He wore a faded Fleetwood Mac T-shirt, jeans with holes in the knees, and flip-flops.

  Eve parked the Explorer at the curb and the two detectives got out. She wore a white blouse, a loose-fitting navy-blue blazer to hide her hip-holstered Glock, and slacks. Duncan was in one of his many off-the-rack gray suits and ties.

  The man smiled with recognition when he saw Eve, as if they were old friends, and that made her uncomfortable.

  “Are you Sherwood Mintner?” Eve asked.

  “Yes I am,” Mintner said. “Are you the Deathfist?”

  “I’m Detective Eve Ronin and this is Detective Duncan Pavone,” she said, tipping her head toward her partner, who was grinning, enjoying her discomfort.

  Mintner nodded a few times, eager to get her back to his point. “Yes, but you’re the deputy who beat up Blake Largo, right?”

  She was. Eight months ago, she’d been off duty, riding her bike on Mulholland, not far from where they were standing right now, when she saw the movie star assaulting a woman in a restaurant parking lot. Eve stepped between the couple, Largo took a swing at her, and she swiftly planted him facedown on the pavement. The incident was filmed by several astonished onlookers with their phones.

  A video of a lean, radiantly blue-eyed young woman in a body-hugging bike jersey and shorts easily overpowering the muscled, internationally famous actor who played Deathfist, the invincible mixed-martial-arts-fighter-turned-vigilante, was irresistible clickbait. It immediately went viral, getting eleven million hits in a week.

  “I didn’t beat him,” Eve said. “I subdued him.”

  “It was awesome.” Mintner grinned, flashing his capped, too-white teeth. “The sequel was even better.”

  He was referring to another viral video, this one shot six weeks ago by a firefighter as Eve ran toward his rescue helicopter with a child in her arms, all of Malibu Creek State Park ablaze behind her. The video looked like the trailer for a Deathfist movie and only solidified her unwanted nickname within the department and among the public.

  “Could I get a selfie with you?” Mintner asked, taking his phone out of his back pocket.

  “No, sir,” she said. His smile disappeared. No selfie. “We’re here because you reported finding human remains on your property. Can you please show us what you found?”

  “Yeah, this way,” he said, his shoulders slumped in disappointment as he led them single file around the side of his property. “It’s in my backyard. It’s a piece of a skull, but it wasn’t here before.”

  “Before what?” Duncan asked, walking behind him.

  “The fire.”

  “How do you know?” Eve asked, bringing up the rear.

  “Because I’ve lived here for twenty years and we’ve relandscaped the backyard a few times. We definitely would have noticed it. The skull is right on top of the dirt.”

  The backyard had a pergola that jutted out from the house, a stone firepit, a swimming pool, and a gazebo. The property backed up to the canyon walls, which Eve figured had once provided some privacy. But all the thick vegetation on the slopes had burned away and anyone on Latigo Canyon Road could now look directly down into their yard. The upside was there was nobody on the road and probably wouldn’t be for a long time. Most of the homes above had burned down and the road was open only to locals until the cleanup was complete.

  Duncan took a notepad out of his back pocket. “How did you discover the skull?”

  “I was out here with a contractor, getting an estimate on building a new fence, and there it was.” Mintner pointed beyond the pool, to where his property abutted the hillside. “It was like something out of a horror movie. I should know.”

  “Why is that?” Eve asked.

  “I’m the Sherwood Mintner,” he said, waiting a beat for the recognition that didn’t come from Eve or Duncan. “The screenwriter of Bloodbath Day Camp for Girls.” He paused for a reaction again, but still got nothing. “It’s a horror classic, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Where’s the contractor?” Eve said.

  “Probably on his way to Oregon. Seeing that empty eye socket scared the shit out of him. He peeled out while I was calling you.”

  “Because he’s superstitious?” Duncan said.

  “Because he’s an illegal immigrant and an unlicensed contractor.”

  “But you were willing to hire him anyway,” Eve said.

  “I want to build a fence, not a nuclear reactor.” Mintner led them around the pool, past the gazebo, to one of the scorched fence posts. He stopped and pointed at the ground. “Here it is.”

  A jagged piece of a human skull peeked out of the dirt. It was part of a forehead, the left eye socket, part of the nasal cavity, and the cheekbone. The charred fragment reminded Eve of the mask worn by the Phantom of the Opera.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Mintner asked.

  “What is?” Duncan asked.

  “Hueso is Spanish for bone,” Mintner said. “This is Bone Canyon. It’s one of the reasons I built a house here. It fits my brand.”

  “Is this a stunt for your brand?” Duncan asked.

  Mintner held up his hands. “I have nothing to do with this bone being here. It’s divine providence.”

  Eve looked at Mintner. “Have you touched it?”

  “Nope,” he said.

  She gestured to the phone in his hand. “Have you taken a picture of it to enhance ‘your brand’?”

  Mintner shifted his weight between his feet. “A few.”

  “Have you posted them on social media?”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “Please don’t,” Duncan said.

  “Would it be a crime if I did?” Mintner asked.

  “No,” Duncan said, tipping his head toward the skull. “But that’s somebody’s spouse, son, or daughter. It wouldn’t be very sensitive to the families who loved this person to have those pictures out there, especially after we ID the remains.”

  “Oh well,” he said with a sigh. “There goes a couple of hundred likes.”

  “That’s important to you?” Duncan asked.

  “Of course it is. Likes are power,” Mintner said, and looked at Eve. “You know what I’m saying. Isn’t that how you became a homicide detective?”

  Everybody knew that. The YouTube video of her taking down the Deathfist made her a hero with the public and the media, right in the midst of a sheriff’s department scandal involving deputies beating up prisoners at the county jail. The embattled sheriff wanted to keep Eve, and the positive press she was generating, at the top of the news cycle for as long as possible. So Sheriff Lansing offered her a promotion. She asked for Homicide and got it, making history and more headlines. The public loved it. The rank and file within the department didn’t.

  “We have to treat this like a crime scene and seal the area,” she said. “That means your backyard is off-limits until we can get a forensic unit out here to process the evidence. You’ll have to go back inside your house.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Mintner said.

  “No she’s not,” Duncan said. “Please go inside, sir, and we’ll get a formal statement from you in a few minutes.”

  Mintner sighed and walked away.

  Eve glanced up at the barren slope. “I’ll bet the body was up there, hidden in the brush, and tumbled into the yard after the fire burned everything away.”

  “It’s a safe bet,” Duncan said. “It’s what’s happened with four of the bodies that have been discovered since the fire.”

  Three of the four were executed gang members whose bullet-riddled or multiply stabbed bodies were tossed into ravines by their killers. Those homicide cases were all being handled by the LASD gang unit. The fourth body belonged to an elderly man who’d wandered away from an Alzheimer’s care facility in Calabasas several years ago. The ME had determined that he’d died from a fall.

&nb
sp; “Don’t even think about climbing up there to look around,” Duncan said.

  “It’s not that steep.”

  “It’s not worth the risk.”

  “What risk?”

  “To your wrist, you idiot. What if you slip?”

  “My wrist is healed,” she said.

  “Are you in a hurry to break it again? Besides, it’s not your job to collect bones and your first physical therapy appointment is in an hour.”

  She’d forgotten about the appointment, which was back in Calabasas, eight miles northeast. “I’ll cancel it. This is more important.”

  “Go,” Duncan said. “I’ll stay here, get Mintner’s statement, and call in the forensic unit. I promise you won’t miss anything.”

  “You could get attacked by a death-crazed raccoon.”

  “Don’t say that. I’m 118 days from retirement,” Duncan said as she walked away. “With my luck, it’ll happen.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Old Town Calabasas was the eastern entrance to the city, a short stretch of road that looked like the set of a Hollywood western, abandoned after the cancellation of Gunsmoke or Bonanza, and left standing between the busy Ventura Freeway to the north, the forty-eight-acre Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital to the south, and Mulholland Road to the east. The authentic clapboard storefronts, and the historic Leonis Adobe ranch house, were undercut by the ornamental hitching posts and sidewalks made of synthetic material designed to resemble wooden slats. Eve’s physical therapy appointment was on the west end of Old Town in a contemporary two-story office building that stood out with its blandness and total rejection of the frontier theme.

  Her therapist, one of several working in the clinic, was Mitch Sawyer, an athletic-looking guy in his late twenties with sun-bleached hair who wore an Aloha shirt and board shorts that showed off his dark tan and strong build.

  He sat across from Eve at a table in a room full of exercise equipment. Mitch asked her to bend and turn her wrist while he took some measurements of her range of motion with a plastic ruler device.

  While Mitch did that, Eve’s gaze wandered to a flyer tacked on the wall behind him. The flyer asked people to look for Kendra Leigh, a sixty-five-year-old local woman who’d been missing for three weeks. Leigh was pictured standing on a mountain somewhere in hiking gear, smiling into the camera. Eve had seen the flyer all over Calabasas and Agoura, sharing lamppost, store window, and bulletin board space with posters seeking lost cats, dogs, and even a parakeet.

  “How does your wrist feel?” Mitch asked.

  “Fine,” she said. “Can I go now?”

  “Squeeze this,” he said, giving her a device with a gauge above the handle. She gripped the handle as hard as she could and he wrote down the reading on his notepad. “Are you experiencing any stiffness, numbness, or pain?”

  “Nope, it feels great, so I really don’t need any therapy.”

  “You do if you want to regain the grip strength and range of motion you had before you broke your wrist.”

  “No problem,” she said and stood up. “If you print out the exercises for me, I’ll be sure to do them at home.”

  “Yes, you will, but you will also do them with me, right here, three times a week,” he said. “Unless you want me to file a negative physical assessment today with the department that will immediately put you back on desk duty.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, wondering if this beach boy was the hard-ass he wanted her to think he was. She decided he was too blond, too tan, and therefore too laid-back to follow through on his threat. Besides, she’d been referred to him by her younger sister, Lisa, who was a nurse at West Hills Hospital. He wouldn’t want to piss off Lisa, too.

  Eve shook her head. “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “I should do it right now. Your measurements are lousy.” Mitch gestured to her wrist. “That’s no Deathfist.”

  “Very funny.” She’d assumed that Lisa would send her to someone located close to Lost Hills station who’d do a perfunctory assessment, give her a passing grade, and let her go on her merry way. Now Eve suspected that her sister had intentionally done the opposite, picking someone who’d be tough with her. “Did my sister put you up to this?”

  “Lisa warned me that you’d be a reluctant patient.”

  “So she told you to be hard on me.”

  “I know I look like I’d rather be outside surfing, or climbing a mountain, or running a marathon than sitting here with you, but don’t be fooled. I’m as serious about my job as you are about yours,” he said. “I’m only asking for another thirty minutes today. What’s the big rush?”

  “We found some human remains off Kanan Dume.”

  Mitch looked over his shoulder at the poster on the wall. “Is it her?”

  It wasn’t likely, she thought, since the skull fragment was charred and Kendra Leigh disappeared weeks after the fire. But Eve supposed it was possible that somebody had murdered her, burned the body, and tossed the remains in the ravine to cover up the crime.

  “I can’t discuss my cases,” Eve said.

  “Understood.” Mitch held up his hands in mock surrender. “So, here’s the deal. The sooner we do our exercises, the faster you can get back to your investigation. What’s it going to be?”

  Eve knew when she was beaten. She sat down.

  Eve spent the next half hour doing what initially seemed to be absurdly simple activities. They included raising, lowering, flipping, and waving her right hand and lifting, rolling, and squeezing a rubber ball. But by the time it was all over, her wrist was limp and sore. It felt like she’d been doing curls with heavy barbells.

  “Would you like some ice?” Mitch asked.

  Yes, she would, but she didn’t have time and she didn’t want to show any weakness. “No thanks. It’s not necessary and I really have to go.”

  “Okay,” he said, clearly not buying a word of it. “I’ll see you the day after tomorrow. Does the same time work for you?”

  “We’ll see.” Eve stood up and fought the urge to rub her wrist.

  “So we’re on. I’ll put it in the calendar.”

  “I don’t think you heard me.”

  “I can come to you. Your office, your home, wherever. Same ten-dollar deductible, same friendly service, so you have no excuse for missing a session.”

  “Lucky me,” Eve said.

  He filled out an appointment card and stapled it to a printout of her exercises. “My cell phone number is on the card. I want you to do these exercises at least once a day. You can do them anytime and anywhere.”

  “So why do I need to see you?”

  Mitch grinned. “Because I’m so lovable.”

  She took the printout and made a mental note to talk to her sister about getting this jerk off her back.

  The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was responsible for law enforcement in a jurisdictional patchwork of unincorporated areas, state parks, and municipalities that couldn’t afford their own police departments.

  The jurisdiction of the Lost Hills sheriff’s station was bordered by Ventura County to the west and northwest, the City of Los Angeles to the east and northeast, and Santa Monica Bay to the south. Within those borders, the sheriff was the law in the Santa Monica Mountains and the communities of Malibu, Westlake Village, Agoura Hills, Hidden Hills, and Calabasas, where the station was located.

  Eve’s drive back to Mintner’s house took her west on the Ventura Freeway, straight across their jurisdiction, then south on Kanan Dume Road, toward the center of it. The first thing she noticed when she arrived was that Duncan had strung yellow crime scene tape along the fence post stubs around Sherwood Mintner’s property. There were no patrol cars or CSU vehicles parked on the street yet, just somebody’s dusty old Ford Fusion. Duncan was right. She hadn’t missed anything.

  She parked the Explorer, walked to Mintner’s front door, and rang the bell. Duncan opened the door as if he lived there.

  “How was the PT?” h
e asked.

  “A waste of time.” Eve walked past him into the house, which had the stylish, coordinated, and utterly impersonal decor of a model home. She didn’t understand why anybody hired decorators. “Where’s the CSU?”

  “They’re wrapping things up at a drive-by shooting in Lancaster. They’ll be here in an hour or so.”

  She knew that bones that had already been exposed to the elements for a long time weren’t a high priority compared to collecting fresh evidence at a shooting. Still, she found the wait frustrating.

  Sherwood Mintner joined them from another room. She peeked inside the doorway he came from and saw it was a home theater, complete with a big screen, reclining seats, art deco sconces, and a popcorn machine.

  “Want to watch Bloodbath Day Camp for Girls while you’re waiting?” Mintner said. “I’ve got it all cued up.”

  “No thanks,” Duncan said. “I see enough blood in my job as it is. I like a good western, though.”

  “I’ve got every cowboy movie Clint Eastwood ever did.”

  “Perfect,” Duncan said.

  Eve left the two men in the home theater and went out to the backyard to look around. She got as far as the pool when she caught some movement in her peripheral vision.

  There was a man wearing an Australian bush hat, a khaki shirt, cargo pants, and hiking boots in the backyard of the burned-out property next door. He was crouched in the dirt near the hillside and taking pictures of something on the ground.

  She ducked under the yellow tape and marched over to him, taking her badge off her belt and holding it up as she got closer. “Excuse me. I’m Detective Eve Ronin with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. May I ask what you’re doing here?”

  He stood up and faced her. “Looking for bones.”

  The muscles in her shoulders tightened the way they always did when she anticipated conflict. “Are you a reporter?”