Shaw frowned, his frustration beginning to show. “What about video from home security cameras? Did they catch anything?”
Eve answered. “No, sir. The majority of home security cameras in the community are motion activated. So, naturally, none of the cameras are pointed at the street or they’d be recording constantly. I didn’t get anything from them so far, but I’m still slogging through the footage, hoping to see one of the guys climbing over a backyard fence so at least we’d know how they got inside.”
“Tell me about the front gates and how the security system works,” Shaw said.
Eve did, and finished by detailing how guest passes were issued and controlled.
“Homeowners can put anybody they want on their permanent guest list and can order individual day passes by using an app or calling the guard at the front gate,” Eve said. “Either way, the guard keeps a log of every pass issued. On top of that, the license plates of every vehicle that enters the community, resident or guest, are automatically photographed by a camera and logged. I’ve checked the logs and videos. Every nonresident who came in through the Vista Grande gate yesterday also left the same way.”
Shaw thought about that for a moment. “So we don’t know how the three men got into the community or how they planned to get away.”
“That’s right,” Eve said. Not knowing that frustrated her. She was sure the answer to those questions was the key to truly solving the case.
“Have you compared the list of visitors at Vista Grande yesterday to the lists at the other gated communities on the days when they had home invasions?”
“I haven’t had a chance to do that yet, but we did it among the other communities that were hit and there was a lot of overlap. I’m sure there will be with Vista Grande, too.”
“It’s not surprising, sir,” Duncan added. “The same gardeners, pool men, delivery trucks, et cetera, serve all the adjacent communities along Parkway Calabasas. It didn’t really narrow the suspect pool down for us.”
“That’s why we did the sting house,” Eve said.
Shaw looked at Eve. “That was your idea?”
Duncan raised his hand. “It was mine. My grandfather always said, ‘You can’t catch fish with your line in the boat.’ So we put out a line.”
“He was a wise man.” Shaw got up and paced in front of the whiteboard, looking at the photos of the three men. “Where are you with warrants to track their phones?”
“The judge granted them,” Duncan said. “I emailed the warrants to the cellular providers, and now I’m just waiting for them to comply. I know the people over there and they know me. They’re usually pretty fast. We’ll get the information today.”
There was a long moment of silence as everyone digested the information and their pizza. Eve assumed they were all coming to the same conclusion—that they’d eaten too much and knew no more today about the home invasions than they did yesterday. Sherry Simms was the one person who might be able to tell them more, but she was in the wind. They hadn’t heard from her neighbor or the LAPD, which was sending patrol cars past her home on a regular basis to check for activity. Eve thought finding her should be their next move.
But before Eve could voice that opinion, Duncan’s phone rang. He answered it, listened for a moment, made some notes on a pad, and tore the sheet off as he hung up.
“That was the watch commander,” Duncan said. “The fire department and a deputy responded to an emergency call in Oakdale, one of the gated communities on Parkway Calabasas, from a woman giving birth in her home. The baby was dead when they got there, apparently a stillbirth.”
Shaw nodded. It was standard procedure for homicide detectives to initially investigate those deaths, which 99.9 percent of the time were quickly determined to be by natural causes. Even so, Duncan and Eve would have to go.
“While you’re out handling that, I’ll keep the train moving down the tracks,” the captain said. “The deputies will continue trying to match the goods recovered with the home invasion victims. And I’ll cross-reference the Vista Grande visitor list with the ones at the other communities on the days they had robberies.”
Eve gave him the Vista Grande list as she left the squad room with Duncan. They went outside to one of the plain-wrap Explorers in the parking lot.
“I’ll drive,” Duncan said.
That was fine with her.
They got onto the Ventura Freeway at Las Virgenes and headed east, around the northern edge of the ridge that Vista Grande and Oakdale were atop and that divided the east and west side of Calabasas geographically and socioeconomically. The east side had the Commons, city hall, the Hilton Garden Inn, Mercedes and BMW dealerships, and most of the homes and high-end gated communities. The west side had low-rise office parks, gas stations, fast-food restaurants, a cheap hotel, the Lost Hills station, and lots of condos. The freeway was the easiest and fastest way to cross from one side of the small city to the other.