The scab on Eve’s head itched and she resisted the urge to scratch it. The last thing she needed was to break the scab and have to hide the blood in her hair again. But thinking about that gave her an idea. “I might have an easier way to find out who he is.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not telling you yet because you’re so negative,” Eve said. “Have some faith.”
“That’s the first thing you lose doing this job,” he said. “If you want to be any good at it.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When they returned to the station shortly after 3:00 p.m., Eve went straight to her cubicle and searched through the stacks of papers on her desk. Duncan joined her a moment later, smelling like the McDonald’s meals they’d eaten in the car on the way back and slurping on what was left of his large Coke. Biddle and Garvey were out in the field.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“I had some deputies log the make, model, and license plate numbers of all the cars parked at the Topanga Park trailheads.” She found the reports and began sorting through them.
“That’s a long shot.”
“Not if I’m right about who attacked me on the hill.” She yanked a paper from the pile and held it up to Duncan. “One of the cars at the trailhead was a white Toyota Corolla.”
“Did the deputy interview the owner?”
“No, but he got the license plate.” She turned to her computer, logged in to the DMV database, and ran the plate number. The details came up almost immediately. “The Corolla is registered to Beatrice Coyle, 4201 Topanga Canyon Drive, #A171.”
Duncan dropped his cup, still half filled with ice, into her trash can and looked over her shoulder. “That’s the mobile home park on the way up Topanga, the one tucked into that sharp curve.”
She was familiar with the trailer park. A few years ago, an elderly woman suffering chest pains pulled a gun on paramedics, who fled and called for backup. The woman sat on the patio of her trailer and held off a sheriff’s department SWAT team for twenty-two hours. A crisis negotiation robot was sent in to make contact with her and she shot it twice, whacked it with a broom, attacked it with a drill, and threw a tarp over it. Even flash grenades and tear gas failed to dislodge her. She didn’t come out until she was good and ready.
Eve pulled up Beatrice Coyle’s personal details and her DMV photo. When the picture was taken, Beatrice was a sixty-seven-year-old lady with a stern headmaster expression and a purple beehive hairdo. She wore glasses with lenses thick enough to see the surface of Mars and a set of fake pearl earrings that looked like they were made out of jawbreakers.
“Beatrice Coyle died two years ago, but let’s see if there are any other licensed drivers living at that address.” Eve typed some more and hit pay dirt. “Her son, Lionel Coyle, age twenty-four.”