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 napkin 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.