Jurisdictional disputes were inevitable, given the geography. The sheriff’s department was responsible for law enforcement in Malibu, the Santa Monica Mountains, and the surrounding communities of Westlake Village, Agoura Hills, Hidden Hills, and Calabasas. It was an enforcement area bordered by Ventura County to the west and northwest, the City of Los Angeles to the east and northeast, and Santa Monica Bay to the south. The intersection of Mulholland and Mulholland, on the northern lowlands of the Santa Monica Mountains, was the boundary between the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles and the City of Calabasas.

Eve had only been in the Robbery-Homicide Division, and working out of the Lost Hills station in Calabasas, for three months and this was her first encounter with a jurisdictional dispute. She was keenly aware of what she didn’t know and so was everybody else around her.

“How do you resolve the situation if it isn’t clear-cut?” Eve asked, even though she knew the question would reinforce the low opinion that Duncan and the other detectives already had about her qualifications for the job. But getting the knowledge was more important to her than her image.

“You piss, moan, and argue that the corpse is on their side or that the crime happened there. You get out a tape measure to prove where the boundary is or who has the bigger dick. You use whatever dirt you have on them, whatever favors they owe you, whatever leverage you’ve got to make them take the body and the aggravation that comes with it,” Duncan said. “But I almost always end up taking the body because I’m a softy.”

She took her eyes off the road to give him an incredulous look. “You care that much about some LAPD cop having a bad day?”

“Hell no,” Duncan said. “I do it because the victim deserves a cop who will work the case instead of one who is more intent on figuring out how some poor bastard who got shot four times in the back, and got dumped on the jurisdictional line, can be written off as a suicide.”

Eve smiled to herself. Maybe she was lucky to get partnered with a guy on his way out who didn’t give a damn anymore. At least he had once, and that counted for something. They made an odd-looking couple. He was old and fat and had a creative comb-over to hide his thinning hair. She was young and slim, her brown hair cut into a practical bob. They could be mistaken for a father and daughter who liked to carry Glocks.

At the intersection of Mulholland and Mulholland, there were some houses to the north, a two-story office building on the western corner behind a line of pines, and a wooded patch of oaks to the east that ran through the hillside between a private school and a housing tract.

Eve turned right onto Mulholland Drive, heading southbound, and saw a black-and-white parked behind a pickup truck on the side of the road. An LAPD plain-wrap Crown Vic was parked across the street, facing north. Two detectives leaned against their car, chatting with a uniformed officer. The detectives looked like they’d taken advantage of the “buy one, get one free” sale at Men’s Wearhouse and split the cost to get the off-the-rack suits they were wearing.