“She reported everything. I didn’t keep up on her feud while I was up in Berkeley, but I know he even tried to buy our house, offering her way more than it was worth, just to get her off his back. But she refused.”
“Has he offered to buy it from you since she disappeared?”
Celeste shook her head. “The war is over. She’s gone and I haven’t been complaining.”
“The noise doesn’t bother you?”
“I’ve learned to live with it,” she said. “Besides, if it wasn’t for him calling every politician in California during the wildfire, demanding that they bombard this hill with retardant, our houses wouldn’t be here.”
So much for believing in miracles, Eve thought.
Eve promised that she’d keep Celeste updated on the investigation and then she headed back to the station. She wasn’t going to bother talking with Egan unless it turned out that Debbie Crawford’s death wasn’t natural or accidental.
She was walking down the hall to the squad room when Captain Moffett stepped out of his office in front of her, followed by Assistant Sheriff Ted Nakamura in his perfectly pressed LASD uniform. Nakamura was in his fifties, graying at the temples, and had a tiny scar that split his left eyebrow in half, like two parallel lines.
“Detective Ronin,” Nakamura said. “Just the person I hoped to see. I got Duncan’s call about Sabrina Morton but haven’t had a chance to respond.”
Eve forced a polite smile. “You didn’t have to come all the way out here, sir. We could have spoken on the phone.”
“I had business to discuss with Captain Moffett and I like any excuse to get out of Monterey Park and back to my old stomping ground.” Nakamura turned to Moffett. “Are we good?”
“I’ll get back to you tomorrow with the numbers.”
“Excellent,” Nakamura said, and turned back to Eve as the captain went back in his office. “Is Donuts around?”
“Actually, Duncan is out in Monterey Park,” she said, “trying to run down Sabrina Morton’s rape kit.”
Nakamura appeared confused. “That’s not his job. We have evidence specialists for that.”
“Well, the specialists have lost the kit, so he’s making it his job.”
Nakamura arched his bifurcated eyebrow. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”
They headed to the break room, where he poured himself and Eve each a Styrofoam cup of coffee and tossed a dollar into the empty Kirkland cashew jar on the counter. The money was used to buy better coffee than the Folgers the county was willing to pay for.
“I don’t see why the rape kit matters,” Nakamura said. “The captain tells me it’s a murder investigation now.”
He led her to one of the four empty tables in the room and they sat down.
“Her murder could be connected to the rape,” she said.
Nakamura took a sip of his coffee. She was surprised he didn’t gag. It had probably been days since anyone had made a fresh pot. “Do you have any evidence to support that belief?”
“No.” She wasn’t ready to tell him about the tattoos or Josie. As far as she was concerned, he was a suspect, not a colleague. “But I don’t have any evidence to the contrary, either.”
“To be honest, I wasn’t convinced that a rape even occurred.”
“Why was that?”
“Sabrina admitted that she’d been drinking and doing drugs with some guys, partying so hard that she blacked out. When she sobered up, she remembered doing some things under the influence that she was deeply ashamed of.” He got up, grabbed a half dozen packets of sugar, and came back to the table. “Sometimes the only way a person can reconcile that conduct with how they see themselves is to say it happened against their will.” He tore open two packets at once and emptied the sugar into his coffee. “So she says someone must have slipped a roofie into her drink. I’ve seen it dozens of times before.”
“Or she was raped,” Eve said. “I’m sure that’s happened dozens of times before, too.”
He took another sip of his coffee but she was sure that it still tasted lousy. “I dutifully investigated it as a rape. But the fact is, even if I’d been able to find the guys that she partied with, we wouldn’t have been able to make the charge stick. It was a very weak case.”
“The rapists didn’t know that,” Eve said.
Nakamura set the coffee aside and looked at Eve. “For the sake of argument, let’s say she wasn’t raped a few weeks before her killing. Let’s say instead that her car was stolen.”
“Okay.”
“Would your first investigative step in her homicide today, six years later, be to hunt down the car thief?”
“No, sir, it probably wouldn’t,” Eve said. “But car theft and rape are two very different crimes.”
“Yes, they are, and that’s precisely my point. You’re outraged that her rape wasn’t solved, I get that. But your emotions are muddying your thinking,” Nakamura said. “Your job now is to find her killer, not her rapist.”
It was hard for her not to toss her coffee in his face.
Her emotions were clouding her judgment? Did he really just use that old sexist trope? At least he didn’t ask her if she was menstruating. But Eve kept those thoughts to herself and said: “It may be the same person.”
Nakamura frowned—this wasn’t going the way he wanted it to. He took a deep breath and then a new approach.
“When you buy a puzzle, there’s a picture on the box of what you’re putting together. That’s handy, because it tells you how the hundreds of pieces are supposed to fit together. In your job, you just get the pieces without the box. You have to put the pieces together without the picture to guide you. Are you following me?”
No, I’m too emotional. “Yes, I am.”
“The worst thing you can do is come up with the picture yourself. Because then your pride and ego get involved . . . and you’ll make the pieces fit your picture even if they don’t. The physical evidence dictates the theory, not the other way around.” Nakamura wagged his index finger at her. “You don’t have any evidence that the rape and the murder are connected, but you sure as hell want it to be, don’t you?”
“I hear what you’re saying, sir,” Eve said. “Let the evidence dictate the theory, not the other way around, or I won’t solve the murder.”
“That’s right. Let that be your golden rule.” Nakamura smiled and leaned back in his seat. “I’m a big fan of yours, Eve. I think you’ve got a brilliant future in the department. I’d hate to see your career derailed by a bad decision made on your second murder case.”
“I appreciate that, sir.”
Nakamura looked around, as if worried about eavesdroppers, even though they had the room to themselves. “There are people in the department who resent you for using that viral video to get yourself my old desk.”
“Do you?”
“I see a woman with political savvy. Then you solved a triple murder. Some people in the department say it was a lucky break. I see a talented detective with great instincts,” Nakamura said. “I believe in you. But you’re still green. Donuts will be retiring soon and when that happens, you’re going to need a new mentor, someone in your corner with the experience to help you avoid the kind of mistakes you almost made in this case. I want you to know I’ll be here for you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’m glad we had this talk.”
“So am I,” Eve said. “I think it set me straight.”
He smiled, stood up, and placed a firm, reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Call me any time. I mean that. I’m glad to be a sounding board for you on this case, or any others down the road.”
“I’ll try not to abuse the courtesy,” Eve said and watched him go. She sat still for a long moment, trying to control her anger at his patronizing effort to shift her focus away from him and the deputies. Her gaze rested on his coffee cup. Did he have a tattoo on his leg? Did he toss Sabrina’s rape kit in the trash?
She took a napkin from the dispenser on
the table, picked up his cup with it, walked over to the sink, and poured the remaining coffee in the drain.
But she kept the cup.
Eve brought Nakamura’s cup to her desk as if it were her own and, when she was certain none of the detectives in the room were paying any attention to her, she pulled a transparent plastic evidence bag out of a drawer, used a Sharpie to fill out the case number and collection details on the form printed on the front, put the cup inside, and sealed it.
She dropped the evidence bag in her drawer and locked it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Deputy Chuck Towler was on duty again at the Hueso Canyon scene, handling the log and keeping a wary eye on the press vehicles on the street. Eve pulled up in her Explorer, grabbed two bottles of water from the passenger seat, and peeled the edge of the label off one of them.
Eve got out of the car with both bottles, approached Towler, and offered him the water with the altered label. “I’ll trade you this for the log.”
“Deal,” he said, taking the water and handing her the log to fill out.
She gestured to the media as she signed in. “How long have they been here?”
“An hour or so.” He twisted the cap and took a long sip.
“You’re putting in a lot of overtime here. You must like standing around in the hot sun.” She handed the clipboard back to him.
“I like the extra money, except now it’s my shift, and when I’m on the clock, I’d rather be on patrol. But I got assigned here. Ironic, huh?”
Was it a coincidence that Towler was assigned here or did he angle for it somehow? Was he trying to keep tabs on the investigation? Did he know that Eve was onto him?
“You can’t have it all,” she said.
Eve took a drink from her bottle and looked back at the reporters. Kate Darrow and her cameraman were here again, which meant it must be a slow news day or else she suspected something was up. Otherwise, there would be other TV reporters at the scene.
The other two reporters present were Scott Peck from the Acorn, the free local newspaper, and Zena Faust, a blogger from the Malibu Beat. Of the three, Eve thought that Zena was the one most plugged in to what was happening in the communities between PCH and the Ventura Freeway. Her sources were usually nosy residents with agendas.
Eve headed over to the reporters and they gathered around her like ducks to someone tossing bits of bread on the water.
“Have you got anything for us?” asked Peck, who was Eve’s age. This was his first newspaper job, one he’d hoped would be a stepping-stone on his way to the Los Angeles Times, which kept cutting back their staff. He’d been standing on his stepping-stone for five years.
“I do, Scott.” Eve gave them a second to get their cameras fired up and their audio-recording apps set up.
“We’re rolling,” Darrow said.
Eve took that as her cue to begin. “We’ve identified the remains that we recovered on Monday. They belong to Sabrina Morton, age twenty-four, of Malibu, who was reported missing by her parents six years ago.” Eve stole a glance at Towler to see if he showed any reaction, but his face was impassive.
“How was she killed?” asked Zena. She was covered with piercings and tattoos, so some people thought she wasn’t serious about her work and underestimated her reporting skills. Eve was sure Zena knew that and used it.
“We don’t know yet how she died.”
“Was she buried?” asked Darrow.
“No, she wasn’t. We believe her bones were on the hillside and fell into the yards below as a result of the wildfire burning away vegetation,” Eve said. “The bones have been up there a long time, they’ve been charred, and they’ve been scattered by firefighters, rain, and animals. It’s a difficult case.”
“But you’ve found two bodies, haven’t you?” Darrow said. “Or perhaps more?”
So Darrow did get a tip, Eve thought. “In the course of gathering the bones of Ms. Morton, which were dispersed over a wide area, we discovered the remains of another person, who has been identified as Debbie Crawford, age fifty-seven, also of Malibu. She disappeared two years ago.”
Eve saw the name register on Zena’s face and wondered what that meant.
“How did she die?” Zena asked.
“We don’t know that yet, either,” Eve said. “But we believe her body was also tangled in vegetation on the hillside before the fires.”
“Is this the work of a serial killer?” Peck asked, obviously hopeful that this could be the local story that would get him out of Calabasas. This must be the speculation that Captain Moffett was worried about, Eve thought.
“That’s reckless speculation, Scott. I’m surprised at you. We don’t even know how both of these women died yet,” Eve said, not quite lying but not being exactly truthful, either. “As far as we can tell, there’s nothing connecting these two women.”
“Except they were both found in Bone Canyon within a hundred yards of each other,” Darrow said. Eve assumed she was calling Hueso Canyon by its English translation because it sounded more sensational. It was as if Darrow was practicing, seeing how it sounded to her ear before using it in her news report.
“A few weeks ago, we found the bodies of Aurelio Rojas, an MS-13 gang member, and later Ezra Wilkins, an eighty-year-old Alzheimer’s patient, in Malibu Canyon below Las Virgenes Road. Rojas had seventy-seven stab wounds and a gunshot to the head. He was executed by a rival gang. Wilkins died from injuries sustained in a fall,” Eve said. “What those two cases, and now these two, have in common is that they died years apart and their bodies were found in deep canyons below a well-traveled road, in this case Latigo Canyon Road, after the fire.”
“Were either of these women stabbed, shot, or suffering from Alzheimer’s?” Darrow asked.
Eve didn’t fall for the trick question. If she answered no, she would be admitting that they knew something about their causes of death. “What I can tell you is that Latigo Canyon Road was used by countless drivers, joggers, hikers, and bicyclists every day before the fires. There’s also a popular hiking trail that runs through here, the Backbone Trail. Both women lived nearby and were active outdoors. There are lots of ways a person walking on a ridgeline road or trail in these mountains, over a very steep gorge, could accidentally fall, land in the thick brush, and go unseen for years.”
“That’d be a horrible way to die,” Peck said.
“There aren’t many nice ones. That’s it for me today,” Eve said and started to walk away.
But Zena chased after her, waiting to speak until they were out of earshot of the others. “I knew Debbie.”
Eve stopped. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“We weren’t close. She used to bombard me with emails, recordings, and photos of Nick Egan harassing her.”
“What kind of recordings and photos?”
“Photos of protected oak trees he cut down and audio recordings of all his noisy parties and hot tub orgies. We posted it all online. Have you talked with him?”
“Why would I?”
“He threatened to sue me out of existence, and blanket social media with the pics of my pierced labia that I texted to my girlfriend, if I didn’t pull everything off the blog. So I did. I can’t imagine what he threatened Debbie with.”
“I don’t investigate things that people imagine,” Eve said, though she couldn’t help imagining Zena’s labia piercing, which made her cringe.
Eve walked up to Towler. “We’re going to see more media out here and make sure they stay away from the crime scene, especially up along Latigo, where they can get a bird’s-eye view of what we’re doing.”
“Roger that,” he said. “I’ll spread the word among the troops.”
She walked past Towler and out on the plywood path to Daniel, who was in a tent, photographing some items on the white sheet on the ground. He smiled and got to his feet when he saw her.
“How was PT?” he asked.
“A waste of time. I could have slept in.”
; “No you couldn’t,” he said with a grin.
She glanced back at Towler. He tossed his empty water bottle into the trash box that the CSU team placed beside their van so no outside objects would contaminate the crime scene. She looked back at Daniel. “Have you had any luck here?”
“We’ve found more bone fragments, but nothing that immediately suggests a cause of death. That might change once Nan and I put the pieces together at the lab.”
“Have you found any personal effects?”
“We found some buttons from a blouse, part of a zipper. It’s all being cataloged.”
So a dead end. “Okay, I’ll catch you later.”
“I hope so,” he said.
She walked back to her car, pausing by the trash can at the CSU truck. Towler was signing in a newly arrived CSU tech, so Eve used the opportunity to snatch the doctored water bottle out of the trash. When she got back to her Explorer, she dropped Towler’s empty water bottle into an evidence baggie and sealed it.
At the station, Eve went straight to her desk, unlocked her bottom drawer, and placed the new evidence bag inside, next to the bag with Nakamura’s cup.
“Hey!”
The man’s voice startled her and she slammed the drawer shut. She looked up to see Garvey leaning over the partition of her cubicle.
“What?” she said.
“Sorry, did I startle you?”
“My mind was on a case I’m working on.”
“Yeah, I heard the pile of bones you found was Debbie Crawford,” Garvey said. “What a batshit crazy, hippie-dippie psycho she was.”
“I know she filed a lot of disturbing-the-peace complaints against Nick Egan, but how does that make her batshit crazy? Was she hearing things?”
“No, Nick partied hard, that’s true, and sure, maybe he cranked up the volume too high sometimes, and maybe he pleasured a few girls who loudly expressed their delight, but what she did was worse.”
“Nick? You’re on a first-name basis with the guy?”
“That tells you how often he called me out there to deal with her,” Garvey said. “She was constantly harassing him, screaming at his guests, throwing dead rats over the fence into his pool, and blasting harpsichord music when he was entertaining.”
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