“The two suits are Detectives Frank Knobb and Arnie Prescott, out of Canoga Park,” Duncan said as she parked behind the black-and-white. “Our paths have crossed a few times. Between the two of ’em, they’ve been around as long as I have.”

Eve appreciated that Duncan didn’t use the opportunity to mention yet again that she wasn’t born when he’d first pinned on his badge.

Duncan got out, hiked up his pants, waited for a car to pass, then crossed the street to speak to the detectives. Eve went over to check out the truck, which was covered with pine needles. The windshield was spattered with blood from the inside and a body was slumped in the driver’s seat.

“Hey, Dunkin’ Donuts,” one of the detectives said as Duncan approached them. “How’s it going?”

“Counting the days, Frank,” Duncan said. “Another hundred and sixty-three and I’m out of here. Have you heard about my new partner, Detective Ronin?”

The two LAPD detectives looked over at Eve, who was still across the street, studying the truck.

“Deathfist?” Frank Knobb said. “Sure. She’s a legend.”

Eve was previously a deputy out in Lancaster and unknown to anybody on the LAPD or anywhere else. But four months ago, while off duty, she witnessed actor Blake Largo, who starred as the invincible action hero Deathfist in a globally successful string of movies, assault a woman in a restaurant parking lot. Eve confronted him, he took a swing at her, and she put him on the ground. She pressed his million-dollar face to the pavement until police arrived. A bystander got it all on video with his phone and uploaded it to YouTube. The video got eleven million hits in less than a week. Now everybody called her Deathfist.

So she ignored Knobb’s snide remark and focused her attention on the driver of the truck. His head lolled back on the headrest. His throat was slit and the jagged cut gaped open like an obscene, bloody smile. A Rambo knife lay on the passenger seat. She thought it might be a suicide, considering that the knife was right beside him and the largely residential, very safe neighborhood where the victim was found. But if it was suicide, he’d picked an odd place to end his life. The last thing he saw as he bled out was Gelson’s, an upscale supermarket. Then again, Gelson’s was heaven to some people.

“You’re shitting me,” Arnie Prescott said, studying Eve. “A viral video is all it takes at the sheriff’s department to step up from burglary to homicide?”

It had more to do with the timing of the video, which came out amid revelations that sheriff’s deputies were beating prisoners at the county jail. The enormous positive PR she got was a welcome distraction from the scandal and encouraged the embattled sheriff to keep her at the top of the news cycle for as long as possible. He did that by showering her with accolades, which included offering her a promotion. What she wanted was a transfer to Robbery-Homicide and she got it, making her the youngest woman ever in the division. The public and the media loved it. The rank and file at the LASD, primarily the 86 percent of them who had testicles, did not.