“Who were they trying to screw by moving the body over the line into Calabasas?” Eve asked. “You or me?”

“Let me give you some advice. I know you’re used to being the center of attention, but when shit happens to you, it isn’t always personal.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? They intended to screw us.”

“No, not us. All Knobb and Prescott knew was that two LASD detectives were going to show up. They didn’t know it was going to be the hotshot who didn’t deserve her promotion and the old fat ass on his way out the door.”

She nodded. “So they’re just lazy assholes.”

“That’s right. It’s nothing personal.” Duncan reached for the mike and let the dispatcher know that the body was in Los Angeles and that the LAPD was taking the case.

The dispatcher immediately responded with a new call for them, a possible person down at a home on a cul-de-sac in Topanga, which was only a few miles southeast of their current location.

“Reporting party Alexis Ward says the resident failed to show up for work and doesn’t answer her phone. The RP looked in a window and saw blood, believes the resident is inside, perhaps injured. 22-Paul-7, fire and paramedics are en route. You’re clear code three.”

“Copy,” Duncan said. “22-David-1 rolling from Mulholland Drive and Topanga Canyon.”

CHAPTER TWO

Topanga Canyon Boulevard was a wooded two-lane road that snaked up into the Santa Monica Mountains, then down alongside a mostly dry creek bed to the Pacific Coast Highway.

For Eve, it was a road into the past. It was a different way of life up there, rustic and isolated, still rooted in the beatnik and hippie cultures of the mid-twentieth century. But that lifestyle was facing extinction as seclusion-seeking celebrities and high-tech millionaires moved in, co-opting the culture as a retro design aesthetic and personal fashion statement, wearing their faux tie-dyed T-shirts as they drove their Bentley convertibles to brunch at the Inn of the Seventh Ray. For airport limo drivers and people who lived in the San Fernando Valley, Topanga Canyon was just a way to get into West LA without using the 405.

Deep into the canyon, she took a left onto a narrow country road with disintegrating asphalt that followed the southern slopes of Topanga State Park. The homes were few and far between, most of them ramshackle bungalows and ’70s-era ranch houses with a handful of new gated estates sprinkled among them.

The road ended in a cul-de-sac that abutted a steep wooded hillside. At the end of the court was a poorly maintained, unfenced ranch home with two cars in the driveway—an old Ford Taurus with oxidized paint and a Nissan Sentra. A woman in her early thirties paced anxiously in front of the house.

“She’s keyed up,” Duncan said as Eve pulled up to the driveway. “You better talk to her, woman-to-woman.”

“Good idea, because you know we don’t even have to speak to each other,” Eve said, putting the car into park. “Our uteruses can communicate telepathically.”