“I’ll be damned,” he said.
She swiveled in her seat to face his cubicle. “Let me guess. They turned off their phones at their homes a couple of hours before each of those crimes, too.”
“They did,” he said. “This ties them to all the other robberies.”
“Circumstantially, anyway.”
“It’d convince a jury . . . if these guys were still alive to be tried.”
“Out of curiosity,” she said, “after the other robberies, when and where did they turn their phones back on?”
Duncan typed in some commands and checked the results on his screen. “A few hours later, when they got back home.”
“Smart guys,” she said.
“Not as smart as you,” he said. “They didn’t see how the cover-up would nail them, assuming they’d been caught instead of killed.”
“It doesn’t do us much good now.”
“It tells us they were the bad guys.”
That was true. At least they’d solved something. It helped take the sting off her embarrassing conversation with the guy from the ME’s office.
Captain Shaw came in. “I have good news. While you two were in the field, the victim in the Calabasas Estates home invasion told the deputies about a stain in her purse and they matched it to a bag recovered at Dalander’s. That ties the three guys to at least one other robbery.”
“We can tie them to the rest,” Duncan said, then explained what they’d learned from the phone tracking information.
Shaw broke into a big smile. “Exceptional work. You’ve closed the case in one day. The sheriff will be very pleased.”
“It’s not closed, sir,” Eve said. “The tracking information suggests they had accomplices out there they didn’t want to incriminate.”
“Suggests being the key word,” Shaw said.
“There’s more. We still don’t know how they got into Vista Grande, or any of the other communities, or how they planned to leave, and Sherry Simms is on the run. We know she’s guilty of selling stolen goods.”
Shaw waved off her concern. “You can’t always tie up everything in a neat bow. This is good enough. Write up your reports.” He started to go, then turned back, something occurring to him. “The awards ceremony for Grayson Mumford will be at city hall on Thursday at eight a.m. The sheriff wants you both to be there.”
The captain walked out. As soon as he was gone, Eve faced Duncan.
“Good enough?” Eve repeated Shaw’s words. “That’s a pretty low bar.”
“Look at the bright side—if there were others involved in the invasions, they were probably scared straight when their three friends got killed.”
“What about Sherry Simms?”
Duncan shrugged. “She could be in Paris, Texas, or Paris, France, by now. Besides, we don’t have enough evidence to convict her of anything. She’ll claim she had no idea that what her boyfriend gave her to sell was stolen goods.”
“Do you believe that?”
“No, but I also don’t believe she’s worth chasing across the country or around the globe.”
Eve wasn’t satisfied. “We have enough grounds to get an arrest warrant on her and I want to go for it. That way, if she’s ever pulled over for speeding, she’ll be dragged back here to answer for her crimes.”
Duncan sighed. “Go ahead.”
“You’re giving up,” Eve said.
“No, Eve. I’m retiring.”
They spent the rest of the day on paperwork, writing up their reports on the home invasion case and Anna McCaig’s stillbirth.
Afterward, Eve drove to her condo on Las Virgenes, across the freeway, a half block north of the overpass. It was a very short trip, but even so, she rolled down all the windows and tried to breathe only through her mouth. Her car had been completely cleaned, but it still reeked of dog shit. Or was it her imagination? She wasn’t sure.
She parked in front of her place, a two-story, two-bedroom townhouse, and saw three weeks’ worth of yellowed, soggy issues of the Acorn, the local newspaper, piled on her front steps.
Eve stepped over the newspapers, unlocked her door, and went inside. The air was hot, stuffy, and still. There was a fine layer of dust on everything, despite the huge sheets of plastic that were taped between her open-concept kitchen and her living room. Her bike, propped behind her IKEA couch, was covered in white powder.
The plastic barrier, white dust clinging to it on the kitchen side, was attached to a temporary wooden frame of two-by-fours wedged between the ceiling and floor. There was a vertical zippered seam in the plastic to allow entry and exit to the kitchen. Eve unzipped the opening and stepped inside.