Bone Canyon

by Goldberg, Lee

  “I understand,” Eve said, rising from her seat. “I’ll do what I can to keep your name out of it.”

  Eve knew it would be impossible to keep Josie’s name from being revealed if her investigation established a connection between the rapes and Sabrina’s murder. But that was a big if for now.

  “Thank you,” Josie said.

  “I appreciate the help you’ve given me. I know how painful it must be for you.” Eve placed her card on Josie’s desk. “But if anything else occurs to you, please give me a call.”

  Josie nodded, but Eve doubted that she’d hear from her again.

  Eve walked out of the office, her heart racing. Duncan was right—there was momentum to this case. She could feel it now.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Eve was passing through Ventura on her way back, and wondering if she was a bad daughter for not stopping by to see her mom, when her phone rang. It startled her. Could it be her mom? Did she sense Eve was nearby? Did she see her car somehow?

  She looked at her phone and didn’t recognize the number on the screen. But she took the call anyway, hoping it wasn’t a robocaller offering her a deal on carpet cleaning or warning her that the IRS was about to arrest her for unpaid taxes.

  “Ronin.”

  “It’s Mitch Sawyer, your physical therapist. You missed our appointment.”

  She would have preferred her mom or the robocaller.

  “Oh crap, I forgot all about it,” Eve said. She’d also forgotten to do her home exercises, but she wasn’t going to admit that, too. “I’m sorry, Mitch, but this is a bad time for me to be doing physical therapy. I’m busy working a case right now.”

  “Of course you are, because that’s your job,” he said. “But if you don’t want to be doing it from a desk, you’ll make time to see me.”

  She didn’t like being threatened and she felt her cheeks get hot with anger. “Why are you being such a prick about this?”

  “A prick would charge you for the missed appointment, but I’m not,” he said lightheartedly. “I can see you tomorrow morning at seven thirty. How’s that work for you?”

  “I can’t wait.”

  She broke the connection and immediately called her sister, Lisa, something she should have done two nights ago.

  “Hey, Eve,” Lisa answered, groggy. “Make it quick. I worked an all-nighter and I’m asleep.”

  “You’ve got to call Mitch and tell him to back off.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m in the middle of working a case and he’s threatening to disqualify me for active duty unless I go to every useless PT session.”

  Lisa yawned. “That’s exactly why I recommended him.”

  “I asked you for a good physical therapist, somebody close to my home and the Lost Hills station who’d understand what I do and what I need.”

  “And that’s what you got,” Lisa said. “Calabasas is a very small town. There aren’t that many physical therapists and he’s the best. He looks like a beach bum but he’s a drill sergeant as a therapist. He will make you do rehab even when you try to wriggle out of it, which I knew you’d try to do.”

  There was no point pressing Lisa on this. Eve knew her sister was as stubborn as she was. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Because I love you,” Lisa said. “See you Saturday.”

  “Wait,” Eve said. “What should I get Cassidy for her birthday?”

  “Anything but toy handcuffs and a gun,” she said. “Try something fluffy. Good night.”

  Lisa hung up before Eve could tell her that it was day.

  The CSU was back in force in Hueso Canyon, working in the backyards of all the torched homes along the steep, fire-denuded hillside below Latigo Canyon Road. The LASD was also there in force, with uniformed deputies controlling traffic on both roads and keeping the media at a distance.

  A deputy that Eve didn’t know was manning the entry point to the crime scene and was responsible for keeping the log of everyone who came and went. He was barrel chested, flat nosed, and had an extreme buzz cut that left a mere shadow of stubble on his bullet head. She approached him, holding a Walmart bag in her hand.

  “I’m Detective Ronin.”

  “I know who you are.” He offered her the clipboard and a pen. She took them and glanced at the name tag on his chest: Charles Towler.

  “Have you seen Detective Pavone?” she asked as she signed in.

  “Under the tent at the far end of the canyon.”

  “Thanks,” Eve said, handed him the clipboard, and walked past him.

  She’d changed into her boots in the car, but it turned out that it wasn’t necessary. The CSU team had laid a plywood path through the field of tiny flags and numbered cones. She followed the path to the last tent, where Duncan sat in a folding camp chair watching Daniel, who was farther off, advancing the leading edge of the search, unmistakable in his Australian bush hat and cargo pants. Duncan’s jacket was draped over the back of the chair and his shirt was soaked with sweat.

  “Did you fall in a swimming pool?” Eve asked.

  “I wish.” Duncan wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “I’m already on my second shirt and the day isn’t over yet.”

  “Any action here besides your wardrobe changes?”

  “Indiana Jones has found more bones. I’ll let him give you the details.”

  “Indiana Jones is an archaeologist,” she said. “Daniel is an anthropologist.”

  Duncan looked up at her. “Is that what Daniel is? Thanks for the reminder.”

  “Has he found anything else?”

  “A belt buckle. Levi buttons. Some rivets.”

  “Rivets?” she asked.

  “The metal thingies that hold a pair of jeans together where there’s the most strain,” he said.

  “I thought the rivets were there for fashion, not function.”

  “They are,” Duncan said. “Until your gut is as big as mine.”

  “I learn something every day,” she said and walked out to Daniel, careful to stay on the plywood path.

  Daniel was crouched beside the bones on the white sheet. One of the bones was a blackened pelvis. It was one of the few human bones besides a skull that she could identify. He rose to his feet as she approached. There were dark circles under his eyes, which were bloodshot.

  “You look tired,” she said.

  “I am,” he said. “But I can’t stop now.”

  He felt the momentum in his case, too.

  “I know the feeling,” she said. “What have you found?”

  “For starters, I can tell you her bones were on the hillside before the fire, just like Sabrina Morton’s, maybe for months, maybe for years, and that she was white, middle-aged, and somebody’s mother.”

  “Is that all?” Eve said with a grin. “How do you know all of that about her?”

  He crouched beside the sheet again and pointed to the pelvis. “Well, the pelvis reveals her sex and the sacral anterior breadth indicates that she was Caucasian.”

  She squatted next to him. “What is a sacral interior breadth?”

  Daniel cocked his head, looking at her in a new light. “You really want to know?”

  “Of course I do,” she said.

  “No cop has ever asked me to define my terms before. They either pretend they already know or they don’t want to look dumb or they just don’t care.”

  “I’m dumb,” she said. “But I don’t mind admitting it. I want to know what I’m talking about, especially if I am going to build a case on a pile of bones.”

  He pointed to the arrowhead-shaped bone in the top center of the pelvis. “This is the sacrum, the bone between the spine and the tailbone. The sacral breadth is the distance across the front of the sacrum at its widest point. It’s typically 112 millimeters in a Caucasian woman versus, for example, 103 millimeters in someone of African American descent.”

  “And what told you that she was in her fifties and had given birth?”

  �
�The pubic symphysis is where the pelvis joins in the front. It’s a jagged line when a woman is young, but it smooths out and straightens by the time you’re fifty,” he said. “Hers is straight. Pregnancy and birthing can strain the pelvic bones and cause them to appear scarred, particularly along the pelvic opening. Hers are scarred.”

  Men have it so easy, Eve thought. “For your next trick, can you tell me how she died?”

  “I’ll need to find a lot more bones before I can pull that rabbit out of my bush hat.”

  “Then you’ll be needing these.”

  Eve handed him the Walmart bag. Daniel looked inside, broke into a smile, and pulled out the wire flags.

  “That was very thoughtful of you.”

  Eve shrugged. “I ran out of pens and straws.”

  She headed back to Duncan, who’d watched the exchange between Eve and Daniel.

  “He knows his stuff,” Duncan said.

  “It was nice of you to let him impress me.”

  “He earned it.” Duncan got up from the chair. “I need to change my shirt again. Walk me back to the car and tell me how it went with Josie Wallace.”

  She did. They were nearly at the Explorer when Duncan asked to see Nathan Holt’s drawing of the tattoo. She took out her phone, held it up to him, and showed him the picture.

  “Shit.” Duncan forced her hand down and looked around to see if anyone was watching them.

  “What’s wrong?” Eve asked.

  Duncan opened the car door. “Get in. Now.”

  Eve got into the passenger seat and she watched him walk around the car and get into the driver’s seat. She studied him. “You’ve seen the tattoo before.”

  He met her gaze. “Every fucking day. Half the deputies at Lost Hills station have it on their calves.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  For years, the LASD was rocked repeatedly by revelations that deputies and detectives charged in beatings, drug dealing, sex trafficking, and murder were also members of secret cliques tied to individual patrol stations or elite, special units. The cliques had names like the Grim Reapers, the Death Merchants, the Regulators, and the Vikings. Their members all had tattoos on their calves. It was rumored that they “earned their ink,” and were sent to a secret tattoo artist, either by beating inmates or shooting felons. One exasperated federal judge called these deputies and detectives “gang members with badges.” After a dozen tattooed deputies were imprisoned or fired for their conduct, and $17.5 million was paid out by the county in settlements to victims of their abuses, the previous sheriff promised to wipe out cliques in the department.

  Eve knew that history and shook her head in disgust. She could see how the old tattoos might have lingered among the deputies who’d remained with the department and weren’t outed, but not how the cliques could have survived. “I thought all the secret cliques were shut down fifteen years ago.”

  “They didn’t end,” Duncan said. “They just went deeper underground.”

  Eve hadn’t seen any of the tattoos, because women weren’t invited into cliques or men’s locker rooms. But it meant the tattoos had to be common knowledge among the brass.

  “And the department tolerates it?”

  “The cliques aren’t all bad,” Duncan said. “It’s a bonding thing, a brotherhood. It gives a deputy a sense of belonging to something bigger than himself.”

  “The badge should be enough,” she said. “Do you have a tattoo?”

  “I didn’t start out at Lost Hills. I started in patrol in Compton. And no, I don’t have a tattoo from there, either.”

  “What do the Lost Hills deputies call themselves?”

  “The Great Whites,” Duncan said.

  It was worse than she thought. “Are they white supremacists, too?”

  “No, no, there are black, Asian, and Hispanic deputies who wear that tattoo. We’re the station that patrols the beaches, so they just picked the scariest shark in the sea as their name without considering the racist meaning. But it’s only a bit more stupid than deputies calling themselves the Grim Reapers or the Death Merchants and implying they are only interested in inflicting violence on the people they are supposed to serve and protect.”

  Eve nodded, though she wasn’t as certain as Duncan was that the double meaning of the Great Whites wasn’t intentional. She took a deep breath. It was time to confront the obvious, ugly facts.

  “This means that the men who raped Sabrina Morton and Josie Wallace were deputies. That’s why there’s no mention of the tattoos in Ted Nakamura’s report and why he didn’t do shit on Sabrina’s rape or disappearance. He was protecting them.”

  “We don’t know that Sabrina ever told Teddy about the tattoo,” Duncan said. “When you are in a life-or-death situation, your brain doesn’t process things the same way it usually does. It can be two or three days before memories rise to the surface. She may not have remembered the tattoos in her first interview and there may never have been a second.”

  “There was,” Eve said.

  “Says who? Her parents? Josie Wallace? It’s been six years. Did it occur to you that over time their memories of the days leading up to Sabrina’s disappearance may have faded, or got mixed together or colored by their feelings of anger, frustration, and loss? You’re making some huge leaps that aren’t supported by any evidence.”

  “They will be.” She knew he was right, that memories weren’t reliable, but she was certain that she was right, too, even if she didn’t have the admissible evidence yet to back up her conclusions.

  Duncan sighed. “Keep this up, and you’ll be an ex-cop before I am.”

  She glared at him. “Are you suggesting that I bury this for the good of the department and my career?”

  “I’m suggesting that you don’t run blindfolded into a minefield.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Proceed with extreme caution and discretion. Think very carefully about every move you make and all of the possible consequences. Don’t jump to any conclusions that you can’t back up with evidence. Put justice for the victims first and your own agenda second,” Duncan said. “Because if you fuck this up, there’s going to be a lot of collateral damage.”

  “Justice for Sabrina and Josie is my agenda.”

  “Not if you’ve already decided you’re leading a one-woman crusade against police corruption.”

  “One woman?” she said. “Does that mean you’re abandoning me?”

  “Eve,” he said gently. “I’ve got your back until I retire. After that, you’re on your own, which is exactly what’s going to happen the way things are going.”

  “I’m not in this job to be loved by my fellow officers.”

  “Then congratulations,” Duncan said. “You’re succeeding brilliantly.”

  Eve went to the station and called Josie Wallace, who didn’t sound pleased to hear from her so soon.

  “I’m sorry to bother you again,” Eve said. “I just need to clarify something you told me. You mentioned that the day before Sabrina disappeared, she was pulled over by a deputy who warned her that it was dangerous for her to be showing the tattoo drawing around. Did Sabrina mention if he was in a patrol car?”

  “He was a uniformed deputy riding a police motorcycle,” Josie said. “She was on a motorcycle, too. It was on PCH. Why are you asking?”

  “I’d like to dig up his report and find out how he learned about what she was doing,” Eve said. “Maybe whoever called us had a motive for wanting her off the street.”

  “What does it matter after all of these years?”

  “It matters to me,” Eve said. “Sabrina deserves justice and so do you.”

  “I’ve made my peace with it.”

  “Sabrina never got that chance,” Eve said. “Maybe I can give her that peace now.”

  Eve thanked Josie for her help. The answer that Eve gave Josie was only partially the truth. What she was really interested in was confirming the deputy was in uniform and on duty that day. She already knew the date of the traffic
stop. What she’d needed was the deputy’s name.

  She pulled up the duty rosters on her computer for that day to see who was on patrol on PCH. The only deputy on motorcycle patrol was Brad Pruitt. She looked him up and discovered he was working out of the Santa Clarita station now and lived in Castaic. He’d never filed a field investigation report on his encounter with Sabrina, or it would have come up when Eve did her initial in-house records search on her. Why didn’t he?

  Out of curiosity, Eve checked the duty roster for the next day, when Sabrina disappeared, to see which deputies were on patrol in the vicinity of Kanan Dume and Latigo Canyon Road. Pruitt’s name came up again, along with Deputies David Harding and Charles Towler.

  She recognized Towler’s name. She’d just met him. He was the officer who was handling the crime scene log in Hueso Canyon. It gave her a shiver. Did he have a special-interest reason for watching the investigation unfold up close?

  Next, she checked the duty roster again to see which deputies were off duty the day that Sabrina and Josie were raped. There were over a dozen. Pruitt wasn’t on the list, but Harding and Towler were.

  Eve prepared a list of all the deputies working out of Lost Hills station at the time of Sabrina’s rape, downloaded their names and photos, and saved them to her personal account. It was a laborious process, since it was impossible to do in bulk, and there were sixty individuals.

  When Eve was finished, she leaned back in her seat and got an idea. She accessed the station’s front desk visitor logs for the day of Sabrina’s disappearance and scrolled backward. She discovered that Sabrina came in to see Detective Nakamura the day before she hit the beaches with her drawing. Eve went back and looked at Nakamura’s case file. He made no mention of Sabrina’s last visit.

  The discovery chilled Eve. Did Sabrina show him the tattoo drawing? If so, did he cover it up or did he warn the deputies? Did they kill her?

  Sabrina had no idea that the tattoos were part of a sheriff’s department clique and how dangerous it was for her to walk into the Lost Hills station with that drawing in her hand.

  But Nakamura certainly did.

  She was pondering those disturbing questions when Duncan came trudging in. He wore a different shirt and it was also soaked with sweat.