“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?”

“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.