Lost Hills

by Goldberg, Lee

  As Coyle turned right onto Saticoy, Biddle pulled in behind him and the two cars moved into the left turn lane at the intersection with Canoga.

  Coyle headed south on Canoga for four blocks and then turned right on Sherman Way. At that point, Eve got behind him and Biddle lagged a few cars behind her. Coyle turned left into a parking lot beside a Kentucky Fried Chicken on the southeastern corner of Sherman Way and Topanga.

  Eve continued on, turned left at Topanga, and pulled over into a Bank of America parking lot half a block down. Biddle parked on Sherman Way across the street from KFC.

  She assumed Coyle was getting dinner and that he’d be heading south on Topanga afterward to go home. If she was wrong, Biddle would pick up the tail again and she’d catch up with them.

  Coyle went into the KFC, came out a few minutes later carrying a takeout bag, and got back into his car. He drove out of the parking lot, turned left going westbound on Sherman Way, and then, on the yellow light, turned left onto southbound Topanga. Eve exited the Bank of America parking lot and slipped into traffic two cars behind him.

  She alerted Garvey that they were on their way. Coyle headed down Topanga into the hills. Eve turned off at Mulholland Drive and Biddle followed Coyle until he went into the mobile home park. Biddle kept on going, pulling into the overlook farther up Topanga.

  Garvey called in moments later to report that Coyle was in his house. Eve passed an unmarked LASD Crown Vic at the corner of Mulholland and Mulholland, manned by Deputy Ross in plain clothes.

  She instructed the three men to keep an eye on Coyle and told them that she was headed back to the station to start slogging through the paperwork that needed to be done while they waited on the warrant. On the way to the station, Duncan called her.

  “How’s it going with Coyle?” he asked.

  “He’s at home and under surveillance. How’s the warrant going?”

  “ADA Burnside is doing a rewrite,” Duncan said. “Then we have to find a judge. It will probably be another few hours until we get the warrant.”

  “I’ll be at the station, writing up reports.”

  “I have a better idea. Go home, get some sleep. I’ll call you if anything happens or the moment the warrant comes through.”

  “I need to be here,” she said. “I have work to do.”

  “You haven’t slept in two days,” Duncan said. “You’re setting yourself up for disaster. When you’re that tired, you make bad decisions and your reaction time is shit. You could hurt the case or, worse, get me killed when I’m only weeks away from retirement. You know what a tragic cliché that would be?”

  She knew he was right. “Okay. But call me the instant anything breaks.”

  Eve drove back to the station, unloaded her bike, and was riding out to Agoura Road just as Cleve Kenworth pulled into the parking lot in his Chevy Malibu. He was going too fast and his tires squealed as he came to a hard stop in the parking space. She pulled up beside his car as he kicked open his door and got out, his face as red as his bloodshot eyes.

  “I heard on the radio coming down here that there’s blood all over Tanya’s house, and you’re out searching the woods with dogs for my kids,” he said in a loud voice. “Is that true?”

  “Calm down, Mr. Kenworth. Let’s talk inside.”

  “Fuck that,” he said, stabbing a finger at her. “It’s my kids who are missing and a Goddamn reporter and everybody in LA knows more about what’s going on than I do. It isn’t right.”

  Eve knew she’d made a big mistake. She’d told the public more than she’d told him. But it was a lot easier to talk to a camera than to a man who’d lost his family. So to spare herself discomfort, she’d jacked up his torture instead. It was a selfish, cruel thing to do and she couldn’t understand how she had done it so easily, without a second thought or regret. Sometimes it felt like she was a stranger to herself.

  “No, it isn’t, and I’m sorry.” The apology wasn’t enough and she knew it.

  “So answer the question,” Cleve said.

  “There’s a lot of blood at the house. But we don’t know who it came from yet. Your family wasn’t there.”

  “You mean there were no bodies. Is that what the dogs are looking for?”

  “They’re looking for a trail that will lead us to your children,” Eve said, baffled that, even now, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth. What was wrong with her? There was no hope and she wasn’t sparing him any pain by implying that there was. In the end, she would just be hurting him more. But she’d done it again anyway.

  “Did you know all that this morning when we talked?”

  She nodded. “There are still a lot of unanswered questions right now and I’m—”

  “Going on a fucking bike ride,” he interrupted, his voice tinged with disgust. “Have fun.”

  “It’s not what it looks like,” she said, feeling as if she were standing in front of him naked instead of in her cycling wear. She had this ridiculous urge to cover her chest and crotch. “I was on surveillance. But that’s not important. Here’s what I know. There was some horrible violence in that house and your children are missing. It’s unlikely that we are going to find them unharmed . . . but I’m trying to keep an open mind.”

  “You believe my children are dead but you won’t know until you find their bodies,” he said. “That’s what you’re telling me.”

  There it was. She’d made him say it because she couldn’t. He had more guts than she did and she was ashamed, but still not enough to do the right thing when it counted.

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Kenworth.”

  He looked as disgusted with her as she was with herself.

  “I’ll be at the Good Nite Inn down the street until this is over.” He turned his back on her, got into his car, and drove off.

  She watched him go, then got on her bike and started riding home. It wasn’t until she got to her door that she realized she’d been crying the whole way.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Eve was awakened the next morning by insistent knocking at her front door, followed by the distinctive ringtone of her iPhone. She reached out to her nightstand, picked up her phone, and looked at the screen. It said MOM.

  She answered the call as she got out of bed in her T-shirt and panties. “I can’t talk right now. There’s someone at the door.”

  “It’s me. You didn’t hear my knocking so I called,” her mom said. “Do you have a man over?”

  “No,” Eve said, reaching for her bathrobe.

  “That’s a shame.” Her mom disconnected.

  Eve checked the time on her phone as she went downstairs. It was 7:00 a.m. She’d been asleep for twelve hours and probably would have slept for a few more if not for the wake-up call. She quickly checked her recent calls to see if she’d slept through Duncan trying to reach her and was relieved to see that she hadn’t. On the other hand, it meant the warrant still hadn’t come through.

  She opened the door and Jen Ronin bounded in, clutching a brown paper bag. Her mom was dressed in a vibrantly colorful, busy blouse from Chico’s that looked like a Jackson Pollock painting and purple capri pants that could have been stolen from Mary Tyler Moore’s dressing room on the original Dick Van Dyke Show. Jen was beautiful once, but too much bad plastic surgery gave her face the sculpted edges of a mannequin and a pair of hard, upright boobs to match.

  “This place is like visiting the IKEA store only with less warmth and personality.” Jen kissed her daughter on the cheek. “Would it kill you to put a picture on the wall?”

  “I don’t spend that much time here.”

  “I don’t blame you. Prison cells are better decorated. I know. I was in one.”

  Eve closed the door. “Being an extra in a women-in-prison movie is nothing like a real prison.”

  “What do you know?” Her mom dismissed the criticism with a wave of her hand.

  “I spent a year as a deputy at the county jail.”

  “Not in the Deep South, honey. It�
��s a different world there. I was in a chain gang in a swamp. They don’t have swamps in LA.”

  “You shot the movie in Burbank.”

  “Do you always have to argue with me about everything?”

  Eve’s shoulders were tensing up already. She didn’t like the terse, uptight person she became when her mother was around but she couldn’t help it. “What are you doing here, Mom? It’s seven a.m. on a Saturday.”

  “I know you get up early on Saturdays to ride your bike and I was in the neighborhood.”

  “You live in Ventura.” It was a beach community thirty miles northwest of Calabasas. Her mother rented a tiny apartment close enough to the ocean to smell it but not see it.

  “I’m visiting your brother today and taking my granddaughter out for a manicure.”

  “She’s four,” Eve said.

  “It’s never too early to discover the secrets of beauty and marshal your feminine power.” Jen took Eve’s hand and regarded her short, unpolished nails. “She could teach you some things.”

  “Cops don’t polish their nails.”

  “It would be a nicer world if they did. I brought you bagels and lox spread.” Jen set her paper bag on the kitchen table and went into the kitchen. “Do they sell plates and knives at IKEA?”

  “Sit down, Mom. I’ll get it,” Eve said and started gathering the plates and silverware. “But I have to get going soon. I’m in the middle of a case.”

  “I know all about it. I saw you again on TV. You were on every local channel.” Jen opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk, checked the date, and brought it over to the table. “You’re becoming a celebrity again.”

  “It’s not intentional,” Eve said and put a glass, a plate, and a knife in front of her mother.

  “It’s so easy for you.” Jen reached into the bag and took out the plastic container of lox spread. “No effort required.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” Eve poured milk into their glasses.

  “You don’t appreciate the exposure you’re getting,” Jen said. “You never had to work for it.”

  “Because I don’t want it, Mom. I’m not an actress or a model.” Eve pulled an onion bagel out of the bag, set it on her plate, and sat down across from her mother. “I don’t need the exposure.”

  “Not now, but you certainly used it to your benefit before,” Jen said. She took an onion bagel for herself and began slicing it in half. “You can do it again.”

  “I got what I wanted and I’m where I want to be,” Eve said, cutting her bagel, too. “It’s not going to get me any further.”

  “Maybe not in the sheriff’s department.”

  Eve put some lox spread on her bagel while she eyed her mother. “What are you getting at?”

  “The studios and networks watch the news, you know. So do writers and producers.” Jen picked up Eve’s knife and used it to put lox spread on her own bagel. “What happened to you before, that was a moment, but what you’re doing now, with this triple murder case, that’s a story. They are going to see that. You could be in a series or a movie.”

  “I don’t think so, but even if you’re right, I’m not interested. I’m not going to cash in on this tragedy. That’s not why I’m doing this job.”

  “You should talk to your father,” Jen said.

  Eve dropped her bagel and stared at her mother, who’d made that outrageous statement as casually as if they were discussing the weather. “You want me to talk to Vince, a man I haven’t seen in ten years. Why would I do that?”

  “He owes you years of unpaid child support,” Jen said.

  “I’m an adult now. It’s not an issue anymore. What do you want me to do, arrest him?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Jen said. “That can be our fallback.”

  “Fallback?”

  “He directed hundreds of TV shows before he retired and some of the baby writers he worked with then are big-time showrunners now. He could start paying back the child support by introducing you to some of them. If he doesn’t, you’ll put him in San Quentin, though it probably isn’t much worse than where he is living now. Have you ever been there? The whole place reeks of adult diapers and breath mints.”

  Eve’s shoulders were so tight that the rigidity was spreading up her neck, too. She’d have a bad headache soon if she didn’t release some of the tension. She rolled her head and her shoulders but it didn’t help.

  “I know what you really want and you can forget it,” Eve said. “You’re too old to play me anyway.”

  “I know that. I’d be your captain,” Jen said. “Tough, but sexy.”

  “I’m not going to sell myself as a movie or TV show and I sure as hell am not talking to Vince.”

  “Hollywood will be calling, and when they do, you can be ready with a writer, maybe even a script, and get this made on your terms,” Jen said. “People wait a lifetime for an opportunity like this.”

  “You mean that you have,” Eve said. “This is all about you trying to exploit me to make your own dreams come true.”

  “Why not?” Jen said. “If it wasn’t for you kids, I could have become a star.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I couldn’t have a career and be a single mother. So I chose motherhood over stardom.”

  “You’re delusional,” Eve said, her voice rising. “I raised Lisa and Kenny. I packed their lunches. I took them to school. I made their—”

  “You love playing the martyr,” her mother interrupted, dismissing her grievance with her signature wave, which only pissed off Eve more. “But I’ve seen this performance a thousand times and I know all of your lines.”

  Eve’s phone rang in her bathrobe pocket. She took out her phone and answered it without looking at the caller ID. “Hello?”

  “We just got the warrant,” Duncan said. “We’re staging in the Gelson’s parking lot. I’ll pick you up in five minutes.”

  Thank God, Eve thought, getting up from her seat.

  “I’ll meet you outside.” Eve ended the call and faced her mom. “This has been a real treat but I have to go and search a man’s home for pieces of the family that he butchered.”

  Jen smiled at her daughter. “Now that’s a new line but it’s still very much in character. You could play Joan of Arc.”

  Eve went upstairs to get dressed without saying goodbye to her mother.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Gelson’s parking lot was only a few yards north of the WELCOME TO CALABASAS boulder on Mulholland Highway. On their way there, Eve strapped on her Kevlar vest and Duncan told her Coyle hadn’t left the house.

  “Why isn’t the Special Enforcement Detail handling this?” Eve asked, referring to the LASD’s SWAT unit, which was usually brought in on a warrant service when a suspect was likely to be armed and dangerous.

  “They’re tied up raiding a big meth lab in Palmdale.”

  Eve was glad they were busy. She wanted to be the first in the door on this one, not standing around outside waiting for SED to clear the place. But she frowned as if this development pissed her off, though she doubted that Duncan was fooled.

  When they got to Gelson’s, she could see a half dozen patrol cars were in the parking lot and a dozen deputies were standing outside, waiting for action. The CSU van was there, too, Nan and her team milling around it, sipping coffees from Starbucks.

  Eve was out of the car before it came to a complete stop and approached the deputies, who gathered around her. A couple of them sniffled, fighting allergies exacerbated by the Santa Anas that were blowing through the mountains, spreading pollen everywhere.

  “Here’s the situation,” she began. “We’re serving a no-knock search warrant on Lionel Coyle. We believe he murdered and dismembered a woman, her two children, and their dog in a house up in Topanga but we haven’t found the bodies.”

  “Jesus,” one of the deputies said.

  “A guy capable of that kind of brutality probably won’t just smile and invite u
s in, especially if he has the bodies in his trailer,” Eve said. “He could put up a fight, which is why we’re authorized to do a dynamic entry.”

  That meant they would be breaking in the door instead of knocking on it.

  Duncan spread a map of the mobile home park across the hood of a patrol car. “There’s only one way in or out of the park, so sealing the place up tight won’t be an issue. However, it’s like a rat’s nest inside. All the trailers and carports are packed real tight. The walls on these places are thin. Bullets start flying, or there are any fireworks, and there could be a lot of collateral damage.”

  “That’s why we have to go in hard and fast,” Eve said. “If we try to evacuate his neighbors first, even if we’re on our tippy-toes, I believe he’ll hear us coming and could hunker down for a long fight.”

  “A feeble old lady with a gun kept us up there for twenty-two hours,” Deputy Clayton said. “I wonder whatever happened to that robot she shot.”

  “I heard it’s an ATM in West Covina now,” Deputy Ross said with a grin, “but it freaks out whenever somebody tries to deposit a Social Security check.”

  “PTSD is a bitch,” Clayton said.

  Eve didn’t have the time or patience for banter. She tapped a spot on the map to focus their attention. “Coyle’s place is right here.”

  The deputies gathered around to look. The trailer was on the northern edge of the complex, overlooking a steep slope of heavy brush below, and was sandwiched between trailers on either side.

  “Four of us will take the door,” Eve said. “Four others will surround the trailer in case he tries to make a break through a window or a trapdoor.”

  Eve spent the next few minutes going over the logistics and assigning deputies to keep people in their trailers and away from Coyle’s place during the raid and for as long as it took to search his home and car afterward. Duncan volunteered to stay outside and handle crowd control during the breach.

  Eve wasn’t surprised but couldn’t resist teasing him. “Are you sure you don’t want to go in with me?”

  “Hell no. I’m retiring in a few weeks,” Duncan said. “I’m not going to press my luck.”