Gus used his key and opened the door to a narrow hallway, the bathroom on the left. At the end of the hall was the combined kitchen, bedroom, and living space with a window overlooking Seventh Street. To fit inside the hallway without colliding, the three of them had to walk in single file. Eve took the lead, followed by Duncan and Gus.
The kitchen was L-shaped, laid out along the intersection of two walls, with new appliances, contemporary cabinets, and a dozen cartons of sugary breakfast cereals lined up like a row of books on the faux granite countertops.
“The man’s a gourmet,” Duncan said.
Framed movie posters for The Terminator, Avengers: Endgame, and Skyfall decorated the wall above his bed, which also doubled as his couch, one side facing his desk and a wall-mounted flat-screen TV. She noticed a charger plugged into the wall for a missing iPhone. There was a MacBook on the desk beside a stack of screenplays bound with brass brads between heavy-paper covers with studio logos on the front, the movie titles written on the spines with Magic Markers.
Eve gestured to the scripts. “Looks like he’s a reader for a production company, synopsizing and criticizing screenplay submissions for executives who have no time to read themselves. It pays about fifty dollars a script.”
“And he’s an aspiring writer, which pays nothing.” Gus picked up another script off the kitchen counter and read the title page aloud. “Thrack of Oberon by Gregory Nagy. Sounds thrilling.”
Eve started taking pictures. Duncan opened up the desk drawer and sorted through Greg’s bills and papers.
“How do you know about readers?” Duncan asked.
“I made extra cash working as a reader when I was in college. It was easy to do in my spare time,” Eve said. “My mom had a boyfriend who was in development.”
“You mean he was an adolescent?” Duncan said, grinning.
“I mean his job was to give writers creative suggestions on rewriting their scripts until they were good enough to never get produced.”
Gus slid open the built-in closet. It was clean and well organized. Nagy’s clothes were hung and neatly folded. His shoes were lined up in rows on the floor. On the top shelf there were several shoeboxes. Gus pulled one down and lifted the lid.
“I guess he didn’t want any of his houseguests stumbling on these.” He held out the box to Eve and Duncan. It contained loose bullets, a Patek Philippe watch, and a few rings.
“He’s got the same kind of goodies as Dalander and Colter,” Duncan said. “They all seem to have kept some loot for themselves.”
“Insurance for a rainy day?” Gus asked.
“I don’t know,” Eve said, “but it does make me wonder where the bulk of their money was going. None of these guys was living large. In fact, they all seemed to be just scraping by.”
“Maybe there are more accomplices out there,” Gus said. “Meaning a bigger split of the pot after each job.”
“If so, we haven’t got a lead on any of them yet,” Eve said. “Nor do we know what ties the three men together.”
“They are all in the morgue.” Duncan closed the desk drawer. “Let’s seal the place up. CSU will come by later to take the computer, watches, and shells.”
Gus gestured to the shoes on the closet floor. “The shoes might give you something. I once cracked a murder case because a piece of gravel stuck in the treads of the suspect’s Nikes was unique to the victim’s garden. The suspect had claimed that he’d never been to the house, so how did the gravel get there?”
“Good idea,” Duncan said. “We’ll bag the shoes at all three homes. Thanks for the tip.”
Eve didn’t think it was a useful tip and assumed Duncan was just being polite to his friend.
Gus put his arm around Duncan’s shoulders. “I want you to finish your career on a win.”
“Finishing alive is a win,” Duncan said.
Gus laughed. “Ain’t that the truth.”
Eve and Duncan stopped in at the Bay Cities Italian Deli up the street for two of their famous Godmother sandwiches-to-go, then ate their dinner as they drove up Pacific Coast Highway, their windows rolled down so they could smell the ocean even if they couldn’t see it in the darkness.
They rode in silence. The violence of the morning felt to Eve like it had happened years ago. She’d been constantly busy and on the move since the shootings, so she’d easily avoided thinking much about them, except for her interview with the Officer-Involved team.