Eve slipped some disposable booties over her shoes—she wasn’t going to ruin another pair—before getting out of the Explorer in front of Sherwood Mintner’s house. She was bringing Daniel lunch from In-N-Out to reward him for going beyond the call of duty in his efforts to collect every last bone fragment that he could.
Only two CSU techs were left behind, and they were packing up. All the yellow tape that had marked the crime scene and all the string that had defined the search quadrants were already gone.
At first, she didn’t see Daniel, then she spotted him far beyond the parameters of what had been the crime scene. She felt a tug when she saw him, like a rope pulling her to him. The tug also came with a jolt of excitement that she felt inside her chest. The reaction surprised her. She hadn’t felt a tug like that in a long time.
Eve trooped through the backyards of three destroyed homes to reach him. Daniel turned and gave her a big smile as she approached. She wasn’t sure if the smile was for her or the bag of burgers from In-N-Out and the two Cokes that she was carrying.
“I’m so glad to see you,” he said.
Eve was surprised how good that made her feel. She offered him the bag and the drink. “I thought you might be hungry. I hope you aren’t a vegan.”
“It’s not a meal if there isn’t meat in it,” Daniel said, but he didn’t take the bag from her yet. “Do you have a little wire flag? I found a metacarpal.”
“I appreciate your dedication, but I don’t think even Sabrina’s family expects you to find every last bone.”
“It’s part of a finger.”
“We already know she was murdered, Daniel. We don’t need a finger now unless it’s pointing at the killer.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “We’ve already recovered all of Sabrina Morton’s fingers.”
Eve understood now. There was a second body.
“I don’t have a flag,” she said. “Will a straw do?”
Eve called Nan to get the CSU unit back—then she called Duncan, who told her that after he ate his very late lunch, the two of them needed to brief Captain Moffett. Duncan’s priorities never change, she thought. Food first, law and order later.
She’d swung through the In-N-Out Burger in Westlake again on her way back to the station to get Duncan his lunch. He wolfed down his burger at his cubicle so quickly his burp afterward might as well have been a sonic boom.
They walked down the hall together to Captain Moffett’s office. He was a square-shouldered man in his forties who wore his pressed uniform like a second skin and somehow exuded a military bearing at all times, no matter how he was dressed or what he was doing. Eve was sure he was saluted at birth by the obstetrician instead of spanked.
Moffett saw them at his door and waved them into his office without rising from behind a neatly organized desk.
“What’s the story on those bones out in Hueso Canyon, Donuts?” He asked Duncan the question without so much as a glance at Eve, a detail that wasn’t lost on her. Ever since she’d arrived at Lost Hills, Moffett had tried his best to pretend she wasn’t there. She hadn’t made that easy, especially the way her first homicide case went down. It was hard to ignore a Ford Explorer in flames.
“It keeps changing,” Duncan said and quickly briefed the captain on what they knew about Sabrina Morton and the discovery an hour ago of a second set of remains in the same ravine. Moffett listened without asking a question or shifting his attention from Duncan.
“We’re lucky the finger was discovered today,” Moffett said, “and not two months from now by some grandma planting roses.”
“I’m beginning to think that news lady was right,” Duncan said. “The mountains are a graveyard.”
So Duncan saw her on the news last night, too. Eve was tempted to ask him if he also thought she looked fat.
“Search the whole damn ravine if necessary,” Moffett said. “We’ll look like fools if any bodies turn up out there after we’re gone.”
“We’ll need more manpower to secure the wider scene,” Duncan said.
“You’ll get whatever you need,” Moffett said. “I’ll approve the overtime.”
Eve wondered if the answer would have been the same, or as swift, if she’d made the request. “That’s going to draw a crowd.”
Moffett glanced at her like she’d farted in church. “You mean your friends in the media. You must be getting itchy, Ronin. You haven’t had a viral video in weeks.”
“She’s right, Captain,” Duncan said. “The press will come like flies to shit. What do we tell them?”
“That we’ve identified the remains as Sabrina Morton, but let’s keep the homicide determination and the discovery of more bones to ourselves for as long as we can,” Moffett said. “Let them think we’re still collecting Morton’s bones. I don’t want to give the press anything that will fuel irresponsible speculation.”
Eve wondered what sort of speculation that would be, and if any of the possible reasons running through her head for two bodies being in the same canyon would qualify. But she didn’t ask. She turned toward the door, sensing that the meeting was over, but Duncan didn’t move. He had one more thing to say.
“Maybe Crockett and Tubbs should handle these new remains.”
Eve couldn’t believe what she’d heard. Even Captain Moffett seemed startled, enough to actually glance at her to gauge her reaction before he responded.
“It’s your case, Donuts,” Moffett said. “The bones were found on your crime scene.”
“Technically, they were found outside of it,” Duncan said.
“It’s your case,” Moffett repeated firmly. “If you need help, I’ll get it for you. Keep me informed. I’ll brief the sheriff.”
That was definitely a dismissal. Duncan and Eve walked out. As soon as they were away from the captain’s view, Eve pulled Duncan into an interrogation room and slammed the door.
“What the hell was that all about? Why were you trying to give away our case? Have you decided to retire early?”
“The new bones could belong to some Cherokee,” Duncan said.
“I don’t think there were any Cherokees in the Santa Monica Mountains.”
“Or they could belong to another executed gangbanger. Or to another senile old coot who wandered off.”
“What’s your point?” she asked.
“Just because the bones were found in the same ravine as Sabrina Morton’s, that doesn’t mean there’s any connection. It could be a big time-sucking distraction that takes us away from her case.”
“Or there is a connection,” Eve said.
Duncan waved the notion away. “I’ll go to Hueso Canyon and stay on top of the new search while you start the investigation of Sabrina Morton’s murder. I don’t want to lose momentum.”
“What momentum? She’s been dead for six years.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
Eve was confused. “You’re supposed to be the voice of reason. Why do I feel like we’ve switched roles?”
“If I’ve learned anything in this job, it’s that once an investigation starts, it generates its own heat. You have to chase the case now, while it’s hot. If you put on the brakes, the case will go cold and stay that way,” he said. “We can’t do that to Sabrina Morton, not after she spent six years lost in the weeds.”
Eve was ashamed of herself. She’d completely misjudged Duncan, and not for the first time, either.
She smiled at him. “You never stopped being a junior crossing guard.”
“What job do you think I’ve got lined up for my retirement?”
Since San Luis Obispo was 160 miles north of Calabasas, Eve decided to make the two-hour-plus trip to see Josie Wallace before her shift early the next morning. So she spent the rest of the afternoon updating the Sabrina Morton case file, which was now a murder book, the official record of their homicide investigation that would become a key piece of evidence in any eventual prosecution. Duncan went out to the new crime scene, even though she
reminded him he’d be as useful as makeup on a mule.
“Have you looked at a mule lately?” Duncan said. “Some lip gloss couldn’t hurt.”
She rode her bike home at the end of the day, got into her car, and went to the Walmart in Canoga Park to search for a birthday present for her niece. Nothing excited her. She drifted over to the garden section, found the irrigation aisle, and bought a pack of one hundred wire marker flags for Daniel and a hundred more for herself. On the way home, she asked herself if that was the real reason she’d gone to Walmart to start with, but she didn’t trust herself to answer truthfully.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When Eve was in high school, her class took a field trip to San Luis Obispo and learned that the quaint college town got its name from the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, which was built in 1772 and was widely known for having a beautiful red-tiled roof that was the architectural inspiration for countless California homes to this day. The mission was less known for entertaining parishioners with bear-baiting shows, a blood sport where a bear with one leg chained to a post had to fend off a pack of ravenous dogs. But that was the fact that had stuck with Eve, and that was on her mind at 9:00 a.m. Wednesday morning when she parked in front of Josie Wallace’s office on Monterey Street, around the corner from the mission.
Josie worked in an insurance brokerage on the second floor of an ornate old building. Eve took the stairs and approached the young receptionist at the front desk.
“May I help you?” the woman asked. Eve guessed, by the open agricultural sciences textbook on the desk, that she was a Cal Poly student working part-time.
“Yes, I’m looking for Josie Wallace. A friend of mine recommended that I talk to her about my insurance needs.” Eve didn’t want Josie’s coworkers to wonder why a Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective was there to see her. She was also worried that if she revealed that she was a sheriff’s detective from LA, Josie would find some excuse not to talk with her.
“May I get your name?”
“Eve Ronin.”
The receptionist picked up the phone, dialed an extension, and repeated what Eve had told her. She listened for a moment, hung up, and flashed a polite smile at Eve. “She’ll be out in a moment.”
Eve’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and saw that she’d received a text from Nathan Holt. His timing was impeccable. The text read:
I found the original drawing. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help.
The drawing depicted two surfboards, a gun, and a great white shark, arranged together so that the pointed tips of the surfboards, the front sight of the gun barrel, and the fins and tail of the shark created the six points of a star set against the backdrop of a monster wave.
Eve was trying to figure out what it all meant when a woman stepped out of the office behind the receptionist. She was in her thirties, with her Vietnamese mother’s eyes and coal-black hair, and her father’s pale skin and tall, slender build. She wore a sleeveless blouse that accentuated her strong arms and shoulders.
“Hello, I’m Josie,” she said with a bright smile. “What can I do for you?”
Eve slipped the phone back into her pocket and took a furtive glance at the receptionist for Josie’s benefit. “It’s a very personal matter. Can we talk in your office?”
“Of course,” Josie said, beckoning her to the door with a sweep of her arm. “Please come in.” Eve walked past her and Josie closed the door. “Do you mind if I ask who recommended me?”
“Actually, nobody did. I wanted to speak with you privately and I didn’t want to put you in an awkward situation with your coworkers.” Eve parted her blazer to show Josie the badge clipped to her belt. “I’m a detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. We’ve found Sabrina Morton’s bones in Hueso Canyon, not far from where the two of you shared a guesthouse.”
Josie’s pleasant, upbeat demeanor evaporated. She sat down in one of two guest chairs in front of her desk. “How did she die?”
Eve positioned the other chair so it faced Josie and took a seat. “We don’t know yet.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that she’s dead, but I don’t understand why you came all the way here to tell me in person.”
“I’m wondering if her death might have something to do with her rape,” Eve said. “And yours.”
There was a brief flash of anger in Josie’s eyes. “I thought Sabrina kept my name out of it. She’d promised that she would.”
“She kept her word, but you went with her to meet an artist. She wanted him to draw a sketch of the tattoo you saw on your attackers. He mentioned your name to me.”
Josie shook her head with a grimace of regret. “I knew that going with her to see him was a mistake, but Sabrina pleaded with me to help her remember. I just wanted to forget.”
And now Eve was here, making her relive it again. She felt a stab of guilt but pushed it down. She had a job to do. “Is that why you didn’t report the sexual assault on you?”
Josie stood up, walked around her desk, and took a seat behind it. Eve saw it for what it was, an unconscious defensive move, using the desk for protection, something for Josie to hide behind while she was vulnerable. It took a moment for Josie to collect her thoughts, or perhaps to wrestle with her emotions, before she spoke.
“I went with Sabrina to the beach to watch the surfers. We met some guys on the beach. I don’t remember how. I suppose we drank, smoked some pot, and did a few lines of coke with them before we blacked out.”
“You suppose?” It came out sounding like an accusation and Eve immediately wished she’d found another way to pose her question.
“Because I don’t remember what actually happened but that’s what we were into back then. That’s why I didn’t want to report the rape. I knew the police would take blood and urine samples from us and our partying would come out,” she said. “We’d be trashed in court as a couple of drunken druggie sluts. Nobody would believe that we were raped. Even if they did, by some miracle, and the men were convicted, I’d still lose. Everything that was said about us would haunt me on Google for the rest of my life. I was thinking about going to medical school at the time . . . and no school would have accepted me if they found out about my partying.”
Eve didn’t blame her for staying quiet. She thought Josie’s fears were entirely justified. It was a cruel, painful decision that Josie had to make and then had to live with ever since. But it raised a question. “Sabrina wasn’t worried about any of that?”
“All she cared about was nailing those men,” Josie said. “So Sabrina was crushed when the detective told her the same thing I did, that even if he caught them, they’d never be convicted. He said she should be thankful that she couldn’t remember the worst of it . . . and just go on with her life. But Sabrina wouldn’t do that.”
Eve tried to keep her expression blank although she felt her anger rising. How could any detective say that to a possible rape victim? That was assuming, of course, that what Sabrina told Josie was true. Eve knew that she should give Nakamura the benefit of the doubt. But she believed what she was hearing.
“So that’s when Sabrina decided to find an artist to draw the tattoo,” Eve said. Josie nodded. “What do you remember about the rape?”
“Their faces were a blur, thanks to whatever they put in our drinks, but they all had that same calf tattoo.”
“How do you know they all did?”
“I was pinned on the sand, my head turned to one side . . . that tattoo is what I saw as each man stood, waiting his turn with me . . . that’s why I remember it so clearly and so did she.”
Eve took out her phone and showed Josie the drawing Nathan had texted to her. “Is this it?”
The look of revulsion on Josie’s face was the only answer Eve needed.
“I’ve never forgotten it,” Josie said.
Eve put the phone away. “What did Sabrina do with the drawing?”
“She went to Topanga Beach,
Surfrider Beach, Zuma . . . showing the tattoo to every surfer she could find, hoping somebody would give her a name. She was only at it an hour or so before a deputy got word somehow, pulled her over, and told her what she was doing was stupid and dangerous. Sabrina told him to fuck off, that if the cops weren’t going to do anything about it, she would,” Josie said, smiling at the memory. “That was Sabrina. But it was all bravado. She came home and cried for three hours. She felt helpless.”
Sabrina wasn’t helpless, Eve thought. Far from it. She was unwilling to be a silent victim and fought for herself, loud and strong, not just against her attackers, but against the detective who didn’t believe her.
Eve admired Sabrina’s tenacity and was even more determined now to continue the woman’s fight and get her the justice that she’d been denied. She’d start by finding the deputy who’d pulled Sabrina over and tried to shut down her efforts to expose her attackers. “What did Sabrina do after that?”
“She walked out the door the next day and never came back,” Josie said. “I thought she’d killed herself.”
“Did she have any enemies? A bitter ex-boyfriend, maybe? A rival at work?”
“The only enemies she had were the men who raped us,” Josie said. “Is that what you think happened? That they found out what she was doing and killed her?”
It seemed a lot more likely to Eve now than it had before she made the trip to see Josie, but she couldn’t say that. She couldn’t even admit that they already knew that Sabrina was murdered.
“I don’t know if they were involved in her death, directly or indirectly.”
“You mean if they murdered her or if she killed herself because of what they did to her.”
And to you, too, Eve thought. “No matter how Sabrina died, I’m going to find the men who raped you.”
“Oh no, keep me out of it.” Josie stood up, holding her hands out in front of her, palms out, as if pushing Eve away. “Nobody knows what happened to me and I want it to stay that way.”
Bone Canyon Page 7
