Lost Hills (Eve Ronin Book 1) Read online

  “No, we didn’t.” Eve had forgotten about the empty dog bed in the living room.

  “That makes no sense,” Alexis said, stiffening up again. “They’d never let Jack Shit out of the house off leash. He’d be coyote bait.”

  “I’ll look into that.” Eve waved to Deputy Clayton to come over and faced Alexis again. “Thank you for everything, Ms. Ward. Please give the deputy your contact information before you go home. We’ll be in touch as soon as we know something.”

  Eve left Alexis with Clayton and went over to her SUV, where Duncan sat in the passenger seat holding a cell phone to his ear.

  “I’m on hold waiting to talk to the ADA about the warrant,” he said. “CSU is on the way and I had dispatch send a patrol unit to Canyon Oaks to check on the kids. What did you learn?”

  “The boyfriend’s name is Jared Rawlins. He’s a grip. Maybe his union can tell us where he’s working.”

  “If he’s working,” Duncan said. “Could be he’s in the wind.”

  “Her ex-husband’s name is Cleve and he lives up in Merced,” Eve said. All she knew about Merced was that it was a small town in central California, 275 miles north of Los Angeles. She’d never been there.

  “I’ll contact Merced PD and get them to track him down,” Duncan said.

  “The family dog is missing, too. Maybe it ran off when whatever happened in the house went down. Do you think we can get animal control to look for him?”

  He looked at her, straight-faced. “Sure thing, they search for lost dogs all the time. That’s what they do.”

  “You’re being sarcastic,” she said.

  “They’d only look for it if it was rabid, and even then I’m not so sure. What do you think we’d get from the dog anyway?”

  “Jack Shit,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s the dog’s name. Jack Shit. He’s a Jack Russell terrier–shih tzu mix.”

  “Adorable,” Duncan said.

  Eve knew that there was nothing to be gained from finding the dog. She just didn’t like the idea of it being some coyote’s dinner.

  “I’ll secure the scene for CSU,” she said.

  She went to the rear of the Explorer, opened the back, took out a big roll of yellow CRIME SCENE tape from the trunk, and walked back to the house. She tied one end of the tape to a streetlight and walked the perimeter of the property, stopping every now and then to secure the tape around a tree, bush, lawn chair, or other object. As she walked, she kept her eyes open for anything out of the ordinary.

  It made her look busy while giving her an excuse to think about what she was taking on. Most of her investigative experience was in home and business burglaries. The few homicides that she’d worked were hardly big mysteries. One was an elderly man who killed his Alzheimer’s-afflicted wife, then himself. Another was a homeless man who stabbed another homeless man in a dispute over scavenging rights to a dumpster behind a grocery store. This case was more complex than anything she’d tackled before.

  But what did she know? Only that a woman was missing and that some terrible violence had seemingly occurred in her house. There were no bodies. So was she dealing with a murder? Multiple murders? An abduction? It was way too soon to tell.

  Eve was in the backyard when she noticed a depression in the dry brush going from the dead lawn up into the grove of trees at the top of the hill. Someone, or some animal, had trampled through the weeds recently. Perhaps it was the trail left by the dog when it fled the house.

  She set down the roll of tape on a lawn chair and trudged up the hillside, creating a parallel path alongside the one that was already there so she wouldn’t contaminate any possible evidence. The dirt was hard and the weeds were like hay.

  She stepped up into the trees and was surprised to see a rumpled sleeping bag on the ground surrounded by trash from a McDonald’s takeout meal. The sleeping bag wasn’t soiled, dirty, or covered with leaves. She squatted beside the trash and looked at a pickle slice in a Big Mac carton. The pickle was still moist.

  This campsite hadn’t been here long. Maybe a day at most.

  She looked back the way she came. Whoever was here had a clear view of Tanya’s house, front yard, and the cul-de-sac. She could see the Crime Scene Unit van arriving. Had somebody been watching the house? If so, why and for how long? Did whoever it was have something to do with Tanya’s disappearance and the violence? If not, did he see what happened?

  She was about to start taking pictures with her phone when a twig snapped behind her. She whirled around and at the same instant some rampaging hairy monster—a grizzly bear? a werewolf?—burst out of the trees and whacked her across the head with a rock.

  She felt a blinding explosion of pain and fell on her side. The enraged beast kicked her hard in the stomach, forcing the air out of her lungs. She couldn’t breathe and instinctively curled into a fetal position, protecting her midsection.

  The beast kicked her in the head and everything went dark.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Eve opened her eyes, cheek to the ground, her vision blurred, and immediately sucked in air, drawing in some dirt along with it. She coughed, breathed deeply again, and unfurled herself, her vision sharpening on a bit of chopped white onion just beyond her nose. Her head throbbed and it hurt to breathe, but she didn’t think she had any broken ribs.

  Her gun was pressing painfully against her side, pinned between her and the ground, but it was a good pain. It meant that whoever struck her hadn’t taken her weapon and wasn’t going to shoot her or somebody else with it.

  She sat up slowly, slightly dizzy. The sleeping bag and trash were gone and so was whoever, or whatever, had attacked her. No, it was a whoever. She didn’t believe in monsters, despite what she saw.

  Or thought she saw.

  Eve looked back down at the cul-de-sac. The CSU team was just emerging from their van, so she’d been out for only a minute or two. Bracing herself on a pine tree for support, she rose unsteadily to her feet. She touched the side of her head, above her right temple, where she’d been hit with the rock and kicked. Her hair was wet and when she lowered her hand, she saw blood on her fingertips.

  Shit.

  She glanced around and spotted a rock a foot away with fresh blood on a sharp edge. He could have caved her head in with it but didn’t. She was lucky to be alive.

  Eve took a deep breath and, still shaky, started back down the hill, immediately lost her footing, and slid on her ass for a few feet. She sat still for a moment, feeling stupid, then got up slowly, brushed the dirt and weeds off herself, and tried going down the hill again, more carefully this time.

  She got down to the backyard without stumbling and headed for the Explorer. Duncan got out of the passenger seat when he spotted her and met her halfway.

  “What the hell happened to you?” he said.

  She knew how awful she looked. Her head was bleeding and her clothes were dirty. She wasn’t off to a great start as a lead detective. But she pressed on as if she was oblivious to it. Maybe that would make him ignore it, too.

  “I was looking around up on the hill and came across a sleeping bag and some trash,” she said and kept walking, Duncan keeping pace beside her. “Before I could take any pictures, someone hit me from behind and ran off with the stuff.”

  “Did you get a look at him?”

  She wasn’t going to tell him about the hairy beast. It was a crazy story that would go viral around the station and undermine any chance she’d ever have of establishing credibility.

  “No,” she said, and reached into the Explorer’s passenger door pocket for one of the napkins Duncan always kept there. He spilled a lot of stuff on himself.

  Duncan tipped his head toward the hill. “That’s Topanga State Park. It’s crawling with the homeless. They can be fiercely protective about their things. He probably didn’t realize you were a cop.”

  “Whoever it was had a clear view of the house.” She dabbed a napkin against her wound. The napk
in came back red. “We need to talk to him.”

  “I’ll send CSU up there to see what evidence they can find and I’ll get the park rangers to look for a guy in a hurry lugging a sleeping bag.”

  “Tell the CSU guys that the blood on the rock is mine.”

  He squinted at her head. “That’s a nasty cut. You need to go to the ER.”

  “The hell with that.” Eve balled up the napkin, stuffed it in her pocket, and went to the back of the SUV. She raised the tailgate, found her LASD baseball cap, and gently placed it on her head, neatly hiding the blood in her hair. “There, all better.”

  Duncan stared at her. She stared back at him. It felt like an ax was cleaving her skull apart.

  “What?” she said. “Are you going to tell me how often people who suffer head injuries but don’t see a doctor afterwards die hours later from subdural hematomas?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Duncan said. “What I’ve got to tell you is that Tanya’s kids didn’t show up for school today.”

  She looked back at the house, thought about the two backpacks left by the door, and was filled with dread.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A half hour later, Eve and Duncan were still waiting on a warrant authorizing the CSU team to enter the house. There were two CSU techs up on the hill—the other four were laying down a paper carpet between the sidewalk and the kitchen door in preparation for going in.

  Eve’s headache had ebbed and she could feel that the baseball cap was stuck to the dried blood in her hair. She was antsy to get something done, so she gathered the half dozen uniformed deputies at her SUV and addressed them as a group.

  “I need you to talk to the neighbors along the road. I know this house is isolated, but there’s still a chance that somebody saw or heard something. Also go to all of the trailheads for the Topanga State Park, take down license numbers, makes, and models of any cars that are parked there, and talk to any hikers who come back, ask them if they saw anything. Hold any guy you see carrying a sleeping bag.” She looked back at Duncan, who sat in the SUV, the air-conditioning running, his door open a crack. “Did I miss anything?”

  “You covered it all,” he said. Then his phone buzzed. He answered it.

  “Okay,” she said to the deputies. “You’ve got your jobs. Bring your reports to me at the station.”

  The deputies nodded and headed off. A CSU tech in a Tyvek jumpsuit and booties approached Eve from the backyard. He was tall, very thin, and his Adam’s apple was so big he looked like he was trying to swallow a baseball. His name was Lou Noomis and he was one of the two techs who’d gone up the hill.

  “Find anything up there?” she asked.

  “Not really. I took some pictures and collected these.” Noomis held up an evidence baggie containing dirt with one hand and another baggie with chips of bark in the other.

  “What for?” she asked.

  “I smelled urine on the base of a tree. So I took a sample of the bark and dirt for the DNA.”

  “How do you know it’s human pee and not animal pee?”

  “They smell different.”

  He started to bring the bags to her to sniff but she shooed him away. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Duncan got out of the SUV and pocketed his phone. “We’ve got a warrant.”

  Eve, Duncan, and the CSU techs put Tyvek shoe covers over their footwear and rubber gloves on their hands.

  Nan Baker, the large African American woman in her forties who led the CSU, pulled the hood of her Tyvek suit over her hair, picked up her bag, and led the way down the paper carpet like a general going into battle.

  Eve went into the kitchen more slowly this time, paying closer attention to the details she missed on her first visit. The kitchen hadn’t been updated in twenty years. The appliances were old and the countertops were granite tiles. She noticed an array of magnets on the front of the refrigerator. The magnets were from Domino’s, Mr. Plunger, a gardener, and other restaurants and services and held artwork by the kids, a school calendar, and discount coupons. A CSU tech stationed himself in the kitchen and began taking pictures of the blood.

  There was a purse on the floor that looked as if it had been dropped. Some of the contents—a roll of lip balm and a tiny bottle of Purell—had spilled out. Eve crouched beside the purse and used her pen to peek inside.

  “No cell phone. No house keys.” She teased out a key chain with a Ford logo from the purse and dangled it on the end of her pen. “But the car keys are here.”

  The CSU tech held out an open baggie to Eve. “Saves us the trouble of breaking into her car.”

  Eve dropped the keys in the bag, stood up, and followed Duncan into the living room.

  Another CSU tech was photographing everything. Duncan stopped and stared at the puddle of blood and the backpacks and she knew what he was thinking: the children were either gravely injured or dead.

  Eve went to Caitlin’s room and found Nan leaning close to a row of Barbie dolls that sat on the edge of a shelf, their legs crossed, blood spattered on their happy plastic faces.

  “What’s your initial impression?” Eve asked.

  Nan straightened up and answered without looking at her. “People died here.”

  “How many?”

  “Certainly more than one, based on the amount of blood I can see, particularly the spatter patterns on the walls, indicating blunt force trauma or arterial spray, and multiple, deep saturation stains on the carpets indicating catastrophic blood loss. Come back in a few hours and ask me again.” Nan looked at her now. “We’re going to be here processing this scene for a long time.”

  “How long is long?”

  “A couple of days at least.”

  Someone outside called Eve’s name. She turned and went back through the kitchen and out into the yard, where Deputy Ross was waiting for her on the grass.

  “A guy just showed up in a truck, says he lives here,” Ross said. “His name is Jared Rawlins.”

  Duncan joined Eve. “What’s up?”

  “The boyfriend is here,” Eve said, not sure how to handle this new development. He was an obvious suspect, given what they’d learned about him from Alexis, but if he was responsible for whatever violence had happened here, it was pretty ballsy of him to show up at the scene as it was being processed. She decided to let Jared’s demeanor and Duncan’s body language guide her tactics.

  Eve and Duncan peeled off their gloves and followed Deputy Ross back out to the cul-de-sac, where Deputy Clayton was standing in front of a dirt-caked Ford F-150 pickup, preventing it from going to the house. The man in the driver’s seat had a deep tan, a day’s growth of beard, and a military buzz cut to compensate for a receding hairline.

  Duncan approached the driver’s side window, which was rolled down. “Mr. Rawlins? I’m Detective Pavone and this is Detective Ronin.”

  “What the hell is going on? What are you doing in my house?”

  “Step out of the truck and we can discuss it,” Duncan said.

  Jared sighed, shut off his truck, and got out. Eve looked him over. He was a muscled man and spent a lot of time outdoors. His tank top and cargo shorts were faded and his chest and arms were as tan as his face and neck. There was dirt caked on his work boots.

  “Now are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on here?” Jared said. “Why can’t I go in my own house?”

  His anger didn’t make sense to Eve. “Have you got a reason to be ticked off, Mr. Rawlins?”

  “Wouldn’t you be if you came home to a bunch of cops who wouldn’t let you in your house?”

  “No,” Eve said. “The first thing I’d want to know is if Tanya and the kids are okay.”

  “Why? She’s at work and the kids are at school. The problem here is that something is happening in my house and I’m not being told what it is or let inside.”

  His anger was making a little more sense to Eve. The house had become a battleground for him, first with Tanya and now with the police. H
e wanted to assert his authority over what was his. The question Eve had now was how far he’d gone to assert it.

  “Tanya is not at work and the kids aren’t in school,” Duncan said. “They’re all missing.”

  “That’s what this big production is about?” Jared laughed. “Jesus. It’s nothing.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Eve said.

  “Because she’s a flake. She could’ve woken up this morning, looked at the big blue sky, and decided, ‘Hey, it’s a beach day. I’ll just blow off everything and hit the sand with the kids.’ That’s her. Whoever called you freaked out over nothing.”

  “She freaked out over the blood,” Eve said.

  “Blood?”

  “It’s all over the place, Mr. Rawlins,” Duncan said. “It looks like a butcher shop in there.”

  Jared stared at them for a long moment, studying their faces, adding something up in his mind. “You said Tanya and the kids are gone, right?”

  “And the dog, too,” Eve said.

  “So it’s just blood,” Jared said.

  Duncan cocked his head, studying Jared now. “Just blood?”

  “Look, we’re having some problems. I told her to move out. Maybe this is payback. Maybe she went batshit, tossed a bucket of pig blood all over the place, and hit the road.”

  “That seems extreme,” Eve said.

  “She’s an actress, or at least she thinks she is. She turns everything into a major drama. She’d love all this attention.”

  Eve couldn’t reject the possibility that he was right, but the spatter told her a tale of violence that wouldn’t emerge from somebody simply splashing the blood around the house. And she had a hard time believing that Tanya would paint with the blood to create the impression of a terrible struggle.

  Even so, Eve forced herself to keep an open mind to all possibilities. Making any assumptions this early in the investigation could lead to tunnel vision that would prevent her from spotting any evidence that didn’t reinforce her preconceptions. That was especially dangerous in the initial hours of an investigation. She’d learned that from books, not experience.