Lost Hills

by Goldberg, Lee

  The house and the grounds were lit up by portable floodlights so crime scene techs could see where they were going and so deputies could spot any interlopers. One of the benefits of being deep in Topanga was that there were very few neighbors or other onlookers for the deputies to keep away. But that would change soon. Eve saw two TV satellite trucks setting up down the street for live broadcasts on the late local news. Once the details got out, the number of reporters and lookie-loos would increase exponentially.

  She put on rubber gloves and Tyvek shoe covers in her car and entered the house through the kitchen. This was her third time in the crime scene and each visit provoked a different reaction. The first time she’d felt the urgency of the mission and the shock of what she’d discovered. The second time, her reaction was emotional. Now she found herself feeling detached, her interest more clinical and detail oriented. It may also have been a reaction to how the house and circumstances had changed.

  There were now multicolored plastic cones on the floor and numbered pieces of tape on the walls to mark different kinds of evidence. A lot more technicians were in the house, collecting samples, taking photos, and making measurements, creating a work environment alive with activity and purpose. It was a stage that had been reset for the second act.

  Eve went to the refrigerator and examined a child’s crayon drawing of a dog, presumably Jack Shit, pinned to the appliance with a plunger-shaped magnet from Mr. Plunger. It wasn’t the emotional tug of the artwork that drew her interest. It was spots of blood on the paper that were at eye level to her. The spots got larger as Eve followed the spray over the cupboards and down across the boxes of cereal and granola bars on the counter.

  Nan Baker came into the kitchen and Eve turned to her. The CSU chief had a surgical mask over her nose and mouth.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Eve asked.

  Nan lowered her face mask to speak. “I can say with reasonable certainty that three people and a dog were stabbed to death and dismembered in this house.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Eve wasn’t surprised by Nan’s conclusion but it confirmed her worst fears about what she was dealing with. “How can you be so sure?”

  “There are three groups of bloodstain patterns in three separate areas of the house, three places where there’s significant blood saturation, and three places where there are drag patterns of blood on the carpets and floors that lead to the bathroom. That tells me that three people were assaulted, fell, bled extensively for a while, and then were dragged into the bathroom, where we’ve found bone, brain matter, and other fragments consistent with dismemberment.”

  “How do you know it’s human blood?”

  Nan gave her a withering look that immediately made Eve regret asking the question. But Eve was just trying to cover every base.

  “It was obvious to me it was blood and from the amount and the spatter that it was human. But even so, we first test stains we think are blood with tetramethylbenzidine, to determine if we are correct, and then do a field test using HemDirect to determine if it’s animal or human. As it turns out, we did find a small amount of animal blood, but I will get into that shortly.”

  That would be the dog. Eve asked, “When did the attacks happen?”

  “Timing bloodstains is very tricky and depends on many environmental factors, so the best I can give you at this point is an educated guess, based on the weather and how dry the blood is in various places in the house,” Nan said. “I’d say sometime Wednesday morning or afternoon. It’s hard to be certain without the bodies.”

  “How many assailants were there?”

  “The evidence at this time indicates only one. That’s based primarily on footprints in the blood. Unless the assailant or assailants were capable of levitation, it would have been impossible to walk through this kind of carnage without leaving footprints of some kind, even if their shoes were covered with booties.”

  Eve noted how carefully Nan qualified her conclusions to cover her ass in case she overlooked something or new information came to light. “Are there any signs of forced entry?”

  “Not that we can see,” Nan said.

  The CSU chief was covering her ass again. But her preliminary conclusion suggested to Eve that the assailant came in through an unlocked door or window or had a key.

  “I can only speculate on the sequence of events,” Nan said. “But based on the law of superposition—”

  Eve interrupted. “Layers of artifacts will be deposited by age, with the oldest at the bottom.”

  Nan was clearly irritated by the interruption. But Eve was only trying to show the CSU chief that it wasn’t necessary to spoon-feed things to an apparently neophyte detective. Eve knew more than people thought.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Nan said, “and it gives us a starting point. Unfortunately, the killer removed evidence, starting with the bodies themselves. He also attempted to clean up some of his work, particularly in the bathroom, with cleansers. But there was just too much blood. So he tried to taint what was left behind with bleach and motor oil, a trick I’m assuming he picked up from all those damn CSI shows on television.”

  That explained the odd smell and why it conjured images in Eve’s mind of an overchlorinated pool and an auto mechanic.

  “But we can still tell quite a lot by looking at the bloodstain patterns,” Nan continued. “The first attack happened here in the kitchen.”

  Eve knew that. The blood was a storyboard, every bit as vivid as comic book panels in describing the action that occurred. That’s because, as Eve learned in her training and through her own reading, there were many different kinds of bloodstains, and each indicated the action that caused the blood to be spilled, including impact or projected stains, passive stains, and transfer stains. A spatter stain, for example, was the result of an external force hitting liquid blood, while a projection spatter was the result of blood propelled by arterial spray or cast off by an object that struck the liquid blood. A saturation stain will reveal where a victim fell and bled extensively. Eve could see right away what happened in the kitchen and said so.

  “Tanya was the victim, judging by the height of the projection spatter and the purse on the floor. She came back from her nine a.m. Pilates class and wanted something to eat. That’s when she was confronted by an intruder, who slashed her across the throat, and she fell here.” Eve tapped her foot near the puddle of blood. “But she didn’t bleed out here or there would be a lot more blood.”

  Eve looked up to see Nan glaring at her with her arms crossed under her chest.

  “You can stop trying to impress me, Detective. I don’t care how you got into Homicide or if you’re qualified to be there. My job is only to give you the facts as I see them. Do you want to hear them or would you prefer to continue with your own analysis? Because I have lots of work I can be doing.”

  Eve felt her face flush with embarrassment. She wasn’t trying to impress Nan, at least not intentionally—she was just thinking out loud.

  “I’m sorry. Go ahead. Please.”

  Nan uncrossed her arms, acknowledging the apology with a nod, and went on. “Your analysis is essentially correct. The blood trail indicates the killer dragged Tanya out of here, down the hall, and into the master bedroom.”

  The CSU chief led Eve into the master bedroom and stopped at the foot of the bed. “He lifted her onto the bed and stabbed her repeatedly in a wild rage.”

  “What makes you think he was angry?”

  “The amount of spatter on the walls, headboard, and nightstand suggest a rapid, powerful succession of blows, more like hacking than stabs. Some wounds were so deep that the knife went through her into the mattress.” Nan pointed to the deep rips and tears in the blood-soaked mattress.

  “She was butchered,” Eve said.

  “Yes, she was, but not here. She was yanked off the bed and dragged out of the bedroom”—Nan abruptly marched out and Eve followed her to the bathroom door—“and into the bathtub, where she was disme
mbered.”

  “With what?”

  “Probably the same knife that was used to kill her.”

  “How do you know it was that knife and not something else?”

  “Something like a hacksaw or an ax would have left bone and tissue fragments distinctively different from what we’ve found.”

  “He knew what he was doing,” Eve said.

  Nan shook her head. “I wouldn’t say that. Anyone who has carved a turkey knows how to cut at the joints. But it’s hard, messy work dismembering a body. It would have taken him a couple of hours, not counting the time spent on the dog.”

  “Where was the dog killed?”

  “In the tub, based on the spatter and fur on the tile. But I can’t say whether the dog was killed before or after Tanya.”

  “Do you know if the knife came from the house?”

  “My guess is that he brought it with him. The cutlery set in the kitchen is complete and it seems to me that the weapon the killer most likely used is something closer to a tactical hunting knife. That said, I suppose it’s possible that someone in the house might have owned a knife like that and could tell you if it’s missing.”

  “The killer was in here a long time,” Eve said. “Any chance he left fingerprints, hair, or DNA behind?”

  “We’re dusting every surface but we’re not optimistic. Preliminary indications are that he didn’t leave any fingerprints, which tells me he wore gloves. My guess is dish gloves.”

  “Why dish gloves?”

  “Because there’s an empty box of them under the sink and no dish gloves anywhere in the house. He also wiped everything down with household cleansers and bleach that we believe he found here in the house.” Nan gestured to the one-gallon jugs of Clorox and Simple Green. “There are more bottles of the same brands in the hall closet.”

  “She bought stuff in bulk to save money.” Just like Eve’s mom did. Everything they had came from Costco. Eve still did most of her shopping there, not so much to save money but to save time. Buying in bulk meant fewer trips to the grocery store.

  “Same goes for the dish gloves, garbage bags, and sponges,” Nan said. “We found the empty packaging and wrappers for the bags and sponges under the kitchen sink, too.”

  Eve noticed what looked like a shoe tread in the blood on the bathroom floor. She hadn’t seen it before. “Is that a partial shoe print?”

  “A man’s work boot is my guess. He tried to wipe the print away but we brought it back with a spritz of Leuco Crystal Violet, which reacts to hemoglobin,” Nan said. “It’s our secret weapon. We raised more partial shoe impressions throughout the house and in the garage. All the prints and impressions were mixed with blood, cleaners, and motor oil, which tells us they were made after the killings.”

  “You’ve told me about Tanya and the dog,” Eve said, and then asked the question she was dreading. “What about the kids?”

  “He got them at the front door.” Nan led Eve out to the entry hall and the two backpacks. “I believe they came home from school and were taking off their backpacks when the killer confronted them. He stabbed the boy first, probably in the throat based on the blood spray, and the girl ran to her room. The killer chased her, leaving the boy to bleed out here.”

  Nan gestured to a saturation stain in the carpet that proved her point and then walked silently with Eve to Caitlin’s room. They stood in the center of the room for a moment. Eve looked at the bed. It was unmade and the pillowcase was missing. Her gaze drifted over the blood spatter on the walls, the stuffed animals, and the Barbie dolls and realized something was wrong.

  “The spatter pattern is almost my height,” Eve said. “Caitlin wasn’t that tall.”

  “That puzzled me, too. I believe she jumped on her bed and was going for the window when he got her. He grabbed her by the neck or arm with one hand, lifted her up with his other hand, then finished her off on the floor, where she bled out.” She gestured with her foot at the big saturation stain on the carpet and the bloody drag marks leading to the door. “Then he dragged both of the bodies to the bathtub and cut them up. He put the body parts in trash bags from the kitchen and carried them out to the garage. And that’s where we may have caught a break.”

  “A big one?”

  “Barely visible to the naked eye,” Nan said and walked down the hall, stopping near the door to the garage. She squatted and pointed to a single tiny spot of blood on the wall. “This spot of blood is unique. It’s fresh, nondiluted, and it’s nowhere near where the killings occurred.”

  “So it fell after the killings,” Eve said.

  “And only one person walked out of here alive,” Nan said. “He might have cut himself struggling with a victim or while dismembering a body. We’ll run the blood for DNA, but don’t get too excited. If he, a parent, or sibling aren’t already in the system, it won’t tell you who he is.”

  “But it might convict him once he’s caught,” Eve said. Then a smear of blood on the floor caught her eye. It was similar to the shoe print in the bathroom but it was smaller and with a different pattern. “What’s that?”

  “Another shoe print, made in the blood and motor oil that was used to dilute the evidence,” she said. “The shoe belongs to one of the children, so we know it was created after the killings.”

  “How is that footprint possible?”

  “The shoe probably fell out of an overstuffed trash bag that he was carrying,” Nan said. “It underscores that he took all the evidence that he could with him—soiled bedding, gloves, clothes, and the bodies, of course. I’m sure he would have pulled up the soiled carpeting and taken it, too, if he could.”

  “It would have been easier to set fire to the house.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to draw a crowd here too soon,” Nan said. “But that’s your department. I’m not a detective.”

  The killer had been in this house for hours, killing, dismembering, and cleaning up after himself. This was not a man in a hurry. Eve wondered why he wasn’t worried that Jared or somebody else might show up. Or would he have just butchered them, too? Had he been watching the house and keeping track of Jared’s work schedule? Or, as Duncan suggested, had the killer been hired by Jared and known that nobody would be coming home?

  Nan opened the door to the garage and they went inside. There was a washer and dryer against the wall to their left and a metal shelving unit full of gallon jugs of Kirkland detergent and bulk packages of paper towels and toilet paper. The floor was painted concrete with swirls of blood on top created when the killer tried to mop up the mess. Amid the swirls, a couple of footprints stood out.

  “It looks like he tried to mop up his footprints,” Eve said and gestured to a mop and bucket against the far wall beside a Walmart bag, which she could see contained more cleaning supplies and trash bags.

  “He did a pretty good job of it, too,” Nan said. “But we were able to raise them anyway.”

  Eve walked to the end of the blood trail, where there were old stains, infused with dirt and leaves, from fluids that had leaked from a car over a long period of time. She wondered if the car was the Taurus parked in the driveway. “Did you find anything in Tanya’s car?”

  “No, it was clean. Not a spec of the blood, cleansers, or motor oil that we found in the house.”

  “Did he already have a car stowed in the garage when Tanya came home or did he bring it over later to haul away everything?”

  “I have no idea,” Nan said. “That’s a mystery you’ll have to solve on your own.”

  Eve spent a few more minutes walking through the crime scene, taking lots of pictures with her phone, hoping something would stick out and reveal some answers to her, but nothing did.

  She walked out of the house and spotted reporter Kate Darrow and her cameraman waiting at the plain-wrap Explorer. Darrow was a familiar face on local news who wanted to be taken seriously as a journalist but had sabotaged herself by getting a boob job and dressing to accentuate her sex appeal. It was a shame, Eve thought,
because Darrow was tenacious and smart and didn’t kiss anybody’s ass.

  Darrow was widely disliked within the sheriff’s department. She’d interviewed the tearful families of the gang members who were beaten by sheriff’s deputies at the county jail. There was no excuse for the beatings, but Eve and most of the rank and file within the department were infuriated by Darrow depicting the victims—imprisoned for crimes ranging from rape to murder—as sweet, innocent little angels.

  The scandal seemed to deepen with each passing day as new revelations emerged. A half dozen deputies were charged by the FBI with beating prisoners or staging fights among them and gambling on the outcome. Other deputies were charged with smuggling in cell phones and drugs to prisoners. And still other deputies and supervisors were charged with covering up the various crimes.

  The latest revelation was that three of the deputies accused of beating prisoners had matching badge-and-skull tattoos hidden under their sleeves that suggested they were members of a secret, perhaps racist society within the department.

  Given Darrow’s history covering the department, Eve knew that talking to her was taking a big risk. If Eve said the wrong thing, there could be massive blowback. But there was no way she could get to her car and avoid the reporter. So Eve went to the CSU truck, stripped off her gloves and booties and dropped them in the disposal bag, then approached Darrow like a woman on a mission.

  The cameraman swung his camera her way and illuminated her with the spotlight on top. Darrow thrust a microphone in Eve’s face. The local news was at 11:00, and it was 10:15 p.m., so at least they weren’t live. That took some of the pressure off Eve.

  “Detective Ronin, what can you tell me about the bloodbath in there?”

  It was a question packed with land mines. “If you want a comment, you’ll rephrase the question.”