The woman said to Eve: “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Detective. It was worth a try. But the bodies are like those souvenirs you found. He doesn’t want to give them up. As long as we don’t have them, he still does.”

Duncan tipped his head toward the woman. “Do you know ADA Rebecca Burnside?”

Burnside had a grim, serious demeanor that Eve suspected the prosecutor worked hard to maintain to dim the wattage of her fashion-model beauty. But her looks were something Burnside curated with care, putting time into applying her makeup, styling her shoulder-length hair, and choosing suits that accentuated her figure without exploiting it.

Eve offered Burnside her hand. “I appreciate your fast work on those warrants.”

They shook hands. Burnside’s grip was as firm as a linebacker’s. “My pleasure. Let’s go to the conference room and you can tell me what we really have on him and what is fake news.”

Eve led them down the hall and into the conference room, which was filled by a long table with ten chairs, four on each side and one on each end. The blinds were drawn on the window, which looked out over the back parking lot.

Burnside took a seat at one end and the two detectives each took a seat on either side of her. She pulled a legal pad out of her briefcase, set it in front of her, and uncapped a Mont Blanc pen. “Let’s start with your theory of the case.”

“Lionel Coyle is a plumber who does service calls for insurance companies,” Eve said. “He goes back to the houses, particularly the ones occupied by women, when they are empty. He dresses up, at least partially, as an ape and roams around the empty home, searching for something small and personal he can steal as a souvenir that won’t be immediately missed. Then something changed.”

“A woman walked in on him in West Hills,” Duncan said. “And he raped her.”

“You think he liked it and that inspired him to change his MO,” Burnside said.

“That’s right,” Eve said. “I believe he watched Tanya’s house from the hillside behind it and learned her routine. Once he was sure the house was empty, he broke in and waited for her to come home so he could rape her. Something went wrong and the rape became a murder. Things escalated from there and one murder became three, not counting the dog.”

Burnside made some notes and doodled around some of the words. “And in the middle of all this, you think he made a run to Walmart to get more supplies.”

“We think he ditched the bodies and cleaned himself up first,” Eve said. “But yes, he went out to Walmart, went back to the house to do some last-minute cleanup, then left again.”