Lost Hills (Eve Ronin Book 1) Read online

  “That’s right. It’s nothing personal.” Duncan reached for the mike and let the dispatcher know that the body was in Los Angeles and that the LAPD was taking the case.

  The dispatcher immediately responded with a new call for them, a possible person down at a home on a cul-de-sac in Topanga, which was only a few miles southeast of their current location.

  “Reporting party Alexis Ward says the resident failed to show up for work and doesn’t answer her phone. The RP looked in a window and saw blood, believes the resident is inside, perhaps injured. 22-Paul-7, fire and paramedics are en route. You’re clear code three.”

  “Copy,” Duncan said. “22-David-1 rolling from Mulholland Drive and Topanga Canyon.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Topanga Canyon Boulevard was a wooded two-lane road that snaked up into the Santa Monica Mountains, then down alongside a mostly dry creek bed to the Pacific Coast Highway.

  For Eve, it was a road into the past. It was a different way of life up there, rustic and isolated, still rooted in the beatnik and hippie cultures of the mid-twentieth century. But that lifestyle was facing extinction as seclusion-seeking celebrities and high-tech millionaires moved in, co-opting the culture as a retro design aesthetic and personal fashion statement, wearing their faux tie-dyed T-shirts as they drove their Bentley convertibles to brunch at the Inn of the Seventh Ray. For airport limo drivers and people who lived in the San Fernando Valley, Topanga Canyon was just a way to get into West LA without using the 405.

  Deep into the canyon, she took a left onto a narrow country road with disintegrating asphalt that followed the southern slopes of Topanga State Park. The homes were few and far between, most of them ramshackle bungalows and ’70s-era ranch houses with a handful of new gated estates sprinkled among them.

  The road ended in a cul-de-sac that abutted a steep wooded hillside. At the end of the court was a poorly maintained, unfenced ranch home with two cars in the driveway—an old Ford Taurus with oxidized paint and a Nissan Sentra. A woman in her early thirties paced anxiously in front of the house.

  “She’s keyed up,” Duncan said as Eve pulled up to the driveway. “You better talk to her, woman-to-woman.”

  “Good idea, because you know we don’t even have to speak to each other,” Eve said, putting the car into park. “Our uteruses can communicate telepathically.”

  “I think the correct term is ‘uteri.’”

  The two detectives emerged from the car. Duncan took a notebook from his back pocket as they approached the woman. Eve noticed that the notepad was curved by his buttocks.

  Eve flashed her badge. “I’m Detective Eve Ronin and this is Detective Duncan Pavone with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Are you the woman who called 911?”

  “Alexis Ward,” she said, nodding, her voice cracking just a bit with concern. “You’ve got to get in there. Something’s wrong.”

  “We will, but we need more information before we can bust in,” Eve said. “Who lives here?”

  “Tanya Kenworth. That’s her Taurus, just like her sign. Mine, too.” Alexis touched her necklace. A silver bull’s head dangled from the thin chain. “We’re astrological sisters, both born in April. I think that’s why we became friends the instant we started waitressing together at Rockne’s.”

  “Oh yeah, up on Kanan,” Duncan said. “I thought you looked familiar. I go there a lot. They’ve got great tri-tip.”

  “Tanya was supposed to pick me up at six this morning to make our seven o’clock call time at Paramount,” Alexis said. “She’d never miss that. Never.”

  “Call time?” Duncan asked, looking up from the notes he was jotting on his pad.

  “When we’re supposed to be on set for hair and makeup. We’re extras on Grey’s Anatomy. I went to the set on my own but I must’ve left a hundred voice mail and text messages for her. I came here as soon as we wrapped the scene I was in.”

  Eve asked: “Does Tanya live here alone?”

  “She’s got two kids, Caitlin and Troy,” Alexis said. “They’re ten and seven. This is her boyfriend’s house, but she’s moving out as soon as she can find a place.”

  Eve felt the muscles in her shoulder tighten up, a common reaction to stress, specifically the kind caused by her mother. This house was a dead ringer for her childhood home in Encino and Tanya sounded just like her mom, a single mother on the fringes of Hollywood trying to raise three kids. She rolled her shoulders to loosen them up. “Does he know that?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “It got ugly. That’s why I was worried when I couldn’t reach her. What if he hurt her? What if she’s inside there right now, bleeding to death, while we’re out here talking?”

  The pitch of Alexis’ voice increased as she spoke and Eve held up her hands in a halting gesture to calm her down. “Okay, okay, wait right here. We’ll go check things out. You told the 911 operator that you peeked in the kitchen window and saw blood. Where was that?”

  “Back of the house,” Alexis said.

  At that moment, a sheriff’s department patrol car rolled up behind their Explorer and two uniformed deputies, Tom Ross and Eddie Clayton, got out. Ross was an ex-marine and everything about his body language screamed military. He could be dressed as Santa Claus and it wouldn’t fool anyone. People called Clayton “Shades” because he almost never took off his wraparound sunglasses.

  Duncan waved them over. “Stay with Ms. Ward, will you? The fire department will be here in a minute. Tell ’em to sit tight.”

  Eve and Duncan walked into the backyard. Some rusting lawn furniture, a deflated soccer ball, and a torn standing umbrella were strewn amid the dead grass and weeds.

  “My mom was an extra,” Eve said, surprising herself by volunteering the information to Duncan. “They’re human set dressing, decoration like a couch or a potted plant. The thing is, they’re hoping to be discovered by somebody when their job is not to attract any attention at all.”

  “Was your mother discovered?”

  “Nope,” Eve said as they approached the door and the kitchen window. “But she still hasn’t given up hope.”

  Eve and Duncan peeked in the window, which was over the sink, and saw a pool of blood in the center of the yellowed linoleum floor. Bloody drag marks ran out into the hallway.

  “Shit,” Duncan said.

  She looked at him. “Exigent circumstances?”

  In the absence of a search warrant, in order to enter the house they needed credible grounds to believe that immediate action was necessary to save a person’s life, prevent evidence from being destroyed, or stop a suspect from escaping.

  “Exigent as it gets,” Duncan said.

  Both of the detectives drew their guns. He gestured to her to take the lead. She tested the doorknob. It was locked. She took a step back and kicked the door open.

  The first thing Eve noticed was the strange smell. She’d been expecting the oddly metallic scent of blood. Instead, the odor evoked the ridiculous image in her mind of an overchlorinated swimming pool in a mechanic’s garage. It didn’t make sense. But she couldn’t think about that now.

  She cleared her mind and moved into the kitchen, careful not to step in any of the bloody smears. Duncan moved off to one side, his eyes on the hallway, and gestured her forward with a nod of his head.

  “Police,” Eve shouted. “Is anybody here?”

  The house was quiet, the air still, in sharp contrast to the story of violence illustrated in blood on the floor and in the spatter she saw on the cupboards. But the dark energy generated by the violence was gone. Now all she felt was the emptiness, the vacancy of anything living besides her and Duncan.

  Duncan took a covering position as Eve edged around the doorway into the hall. The shag carpet was soaked with blood and there were crimson streaks on the wall. The story was getting more horrific with each step they took.

  “This is the police,” Eve said loudly and firmly. “If there’s anybody in this house, you need to come out now, hands in the ai
r.”

  Nobody appeared. The only sound Eve heard was her own breathing.

  Eve and Duncan shared grim looks and moved slowly into the living room. The front door was spattered with blood and two children’s backpacks were lying in dried puddles of blood on the floor. Eve felt a pang of fear in her chest for the children. She hoped that they were in school or at a friend’s house. Anywhere but here.

  “Tanya, Caitlin, Troy, if you’re hiding, it’s safe to come out now,” Eve said. “We’re the police. You’re safe with us.”

  The house remained deathly quiet. The only people moving here were the two of them. But that didn’t mean they were alone.

  She scanned the rest of the room. There was a bed pillow, a blanket, and a sheet on the couch, which faced a flat-screen TV that was way too big for the room. A small dog bed, with a chewed-up Nylabone in it, was against one wall. Where was the dog?

  Eve turned and looked back down the hall, where trails of blood led into three different doorways. Flies were coming into the house now, buzzing loudly past her ears. She looked at Duncan and he nodded. Eve followed one of the blood trails into a bedroom while Duncan went into the bedroom across the hall.

  She stood in the doorway, taking in the pink walls and the blood spatter on the shelves of dolls and stuffed animals. Eve moved into the room, eased around the blood-soaked carpet, and bumped into a standing electric fan, nearly knocking it over. She crouched down and peered under the bed. The lifeless eyes of a stuffed bear stared back at her.

  Eve rose, crossed the room, and opened the sliding mirrored closet door with the toe of her foot. A young girl’s clothes hung from the rod, including a princess gown, probably from Halloween. Eve’s sister, Lisa, three years younger than her, once had a costume like that.

  “Clear,” Eve shouted and went back to the hall.

  Duncan emerged from what appeared to be Troy’s room. There were toy cars on the floor and Marvel superhero posters on the walls. Eve’s little brother, Kenny, five years younger than her, liked superheroes, too, when he was a kid. But only the DC ones like Superman and Batman.

  “Clear,” Duncan said.

  They moved in unison, following a blood trail to the next open doorway. It was the bathroom and there was blood everywhere, as if someone had heaved buckets of it into the room, especially in the bathtub. Every surface was splashed or spattered with blood, even the ceiling.

  Eve’s own blood went cold, chilling her from the inside out, goose bumps rising on her flesh. The flies had found the room, too, and their buzzing seemed amplified, as if channeled through loudspeakers, but she knew it was all in her head.

  There were blood-soaked dish sponges and several blood-smeared bottles of Clorox on the counter and in the sink. The smell of cleanser and motor oil was overpowering and, combined with the bloody tableau, repulsive. She fought her gag reflex, willing her muscles to relax. She would not humiliate herself, and contaminate the crime scene, by vomiting.

  “My God,” Duncan said.

  Somehow hearing his shaky voice was reassuring and helped her maintain control. He was as disturbed by this as she was.

  They backed away from the bathroom and eyed the two remaining doors, both ajar, both at the end of blood trails on the carpet. Eve took the door on the left and Duncan took the one on the right.

  Eve stepped into the master bedroom. The bedding was missing from the king-size bed, the blood-soaked mattress was hacked to shreds, and the headboard was speckled with blood. She crouched down, peered under the bed, saw nothing but a pair of women’s slippers and a small marijuana pipe, then moved to the closet, nudging it open with her shoe. It was filled with clothes, belonging to a man and woman, but nobody was inside.

  “Clear,” Eve said and returned to the hallway.

  The other door was open to the garage. Duncan came back in, holstering his weapon.

  “The garage is empty, but there are some drops of blood leading to where a car must have been parked.”

  Eve swallowed back some bile and cleared her throat. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

  Duncan shook his head. “Thanks a lot.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If we’d taken the dead guy in the truck, Crockett and Tubbs would have got this call,” Duncan said, referring to the other team of homicide detectives at the station. “But you had to point out the pine needles.”

  Duncan marched back to the kitchen and out into the backyard, where he stopped to get some fresh air. Eve followed him out and stood beside him, neither of them visible to the deputies, Alexis Ward, or anybody else in the cul-de-sac.

  After a long moment, Duncan spoke again. “There’s going to be a shitload of desk work and legwork on this case.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Eve said, irritated. “The other case would have been a lot less trouble.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I’ll take the desk, you take the street.”

  She looked at him. “You’re the senior detective. You should take the lead.”

  “I just did by dividing the workload.”

  It took her a second to figure out his angle. “You’re making me the face of the investigation.”

  “And the first set of eyes,” he said. “My sight isn’t so good anymore. I missed those pine needles, didn’t I?”

  “That’s not it,” she said. “What’s the real reason you’re putting me in the spotlight?”

  He sighed and glanced back at the house. “This case is going to get very big and very ugly very fast. It won’t make or break my career, and I sure as hell don’t need more nightmares to take with me into retirement.”

  He was telling her, honestly and directly, that he was done. Eve respected him for that and didn’t blame him for his decision. He’d put in his time. It was going to be her neck and soul on the line from now on.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I’ll call in CSU and get a warrant started,” Duncan said. “You should find out what you can about the kids and the boyfriend.”

  She nodded. The enormity of what she was taking on was beginning to sink in and it left her momentarily at a loss for words. Something awful had happened in that house and it was going to be her job to find out what it was, seek some measure of justice, and live with the horrors that were revealed.

  She took a deep breath, put on her best poker face, and walked with Duncan to the front of the house.

  CHAPTER THREE

  An ambulance and fire truck had arrived and the first responders were standing around, waiting for instructions.

  Alexis ran up to Eve. “What’s wrong? Is she in there?”

  “Nope,” Eve said. “The house is empty.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Same thing you did,” Eve said. Alexis looked relieved, but that was only because she hadn’t seen all the blood beyond the kitchen.

  “So where’s Tanya?”

  “I don’t know,” Eve said, feeling guilty. Nothing that she’d said to Alexis was a lie but it was all misleading. “Excuse me for a moment.”

  Eve went over to the ambulance crew and the firemen. “You can go. There’s nobody home.”

  She turned to Deputies Ross and Clayton, making sure her back was to Alexis and Duncan, and lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Call in two more units. Freeze the scene. Nobody goes in or out except CSU.”

  They nodded their understanding and she went back to Alexis and Duncan, who had his curled pad out again and was making notes.

  “Where do Caitlin and Troy go to school?” he asked.

  “Canyon Oaks Elementary,” she said.

  Duncan glanced at Eve. He had what he needed to work with.

  “Where is their father?” Eve asked, taking over questioning and giving Duncan an out to go back to their SUV to start making calls.

  “Up in Merced. His name is Cleve Kenworth. He and Tanya divorced a few years ago. She doesn’t talk about him.”

  Eve took out her pad from the in
side pocket of her navy-blue Ann Taylor blazer, one of three in the same style, but in different colors, that she bought online when she got her detective shield and hung up her uniform. “What do you know about Tanya’s boyfriend?”

  The ambulance and fire trucks began backing out of the cul-de-sac and that seemed to give Alexis some reassurance that things were going to be okay. Eve could see Alexis relaxing, her body loosening up.

  “He’s an asshole,” Alexis said.

  “Let’s start with his name and his job and work our way up to the asshole part,” Eve said.

  Alexis smiled, more evidence to Eve that she was calming down. “Jared Rawlins. He’s a grip. One of the guys who moves lights and carries stuff on movie sets.”

  Eve knew what a grip was. Her sister’s father was a grip who dated their mother for a few weeks. He came around to see Lisa at Christmas and on her birthday for a few years, then disappeared from their lives. Eve remembered his freckled face and calloused hands and that he was nice. He had brought all three kids See’s caramel lollipops when he came to visit Lisa.

  “What show is he on?” Eve asked.

  “He’s a day player. Something different all the time. Does a lot of stuff. Movies, TV series, commercials, videos, an occasional porno.”

  “What makes him an asshole?”

  “The way he talks to Tanya, always putting her down. He hates the kids, too. He calls them rats like he’s joking, but he’s not.”

  Eve’s father was like that. A journeyman TV director who never married but had fathered a lot of children, all with aspiring actresses and production assistants, and rarely paid a dime of child support. The few times Eve saw him during her early childhood was when her mother would bring her to family court in an effort to influence the judge. Now her dad lived in a bungalow at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, not even five miles from her condo or where she worked, but she’d never visited him.

  “Where’s Jack Shit?” Alexis asked, breaking into Eve’s thoughts.

  “Excuse me?” Eve said.

  “Their dog. An old Jack Russell terrier–shih tzu mix. He barks at everything. Did you see him?”