She wanted to cross-reference all of the homes or businesses Coyle visited as a plumber, and the people who lived or worked in those places, to the sheriff’s department database to see if there were any crimes, arrests, patrol calls, or miscellaneous field observations at those same addresses. Miscellaneous field observations were the notes deputies made, and later filed in the database, whenever they saw something suspicious or stopped a suspicious individual without taking any action.

Eve was especially interested in “dead on arrival” burglary reports. During her time in burglary, the bulk of her reports fit that category. They were the cases when a homeowner was certain somebody had stolen items from their home, but there were no signs of a break-in. On top of that, they couldn’t say what day the item went missing, only the day they first noticed it was gone, and therefore couldn’t point to a specific service worker, like a cleaning lady or electrician, as the culprit. More often than not, it was likely the homeowner simply misplaced the item that they were certain was stolen. But she had a feeling the seemingly worthless items in Coyle’s bottom drawer could be souvenirs stolen from homes he visited.

It would be laborious and time consuming for Eve to cross-reference the list herself, inputting one address at a time into the search box in the database. But fortunately, she knew that the LASD’s Crime Analysis Unit had different resources and could probably do it within a few hours. The CAU was made up of civilian techies who loved to prove how useful, thorough, and revealing the information in the database could be to law enforcement and how fast they could deliver it. They also saw delivering thorough, high-value responses in “granular” detail as an incentive to get detectives and deputies, who hated paperwork and loathed the boxes they had to fill in on the online forms, to put as many facts as possible into the data they inputted into the system.

She emailed the list to CAU and followed up by immediately calling one of the techies there, Sue Trowbridge. Eve told Sue that she was working a triple-murder case, had a suspect in custody, and needed the information as fast as possible to make sure he didn’t get back on the street.

“I’m a big fan of the red velvet cake at Nothing Bundt,” Sue said.

“Are you asking for a bribe?” Eve asked lightheartedly.

“I’m asking for a reward. There’s a subtle difference.”

“You got it,” Eve said. “I’ll throw in a Chocolate Turtle bundtlet if I get the info in two hours. It’s the flavor of the month.”

“Deal,” Sue said. “And I’m not going to ask how you know what their flavor of the month is.”