Gated Prey (Eve Ronin #3)(13)

She left the interview room and went to the squad room, where she was surprised to see Duncan already at his cubicle, hunched over his computer.

“How did you get out so fast?” she asked.

“I didn’t have as much of a story to tell as you. I didn’t leave the house. Speaking of which, I just watched the video of you in the master bedroom when Dalander bolted. The what-the-hell look on your face is priceless.” Duncan pointed to his computer screen, where he’d freeze-framed on Eve’s face. “I think I’ll make a T-shirt out of it.”

“Let me see the video of your shooting.”

Duncan tapped a few keys and the videos came up. She saw Duncan, sitting in an easy chair in the great room, and Greg Nagy, his body half turned away from the backyard window, pointing his gun at him. Then, outside in the background, Dalander’s body seemingly dropped from the sky and hit the patio, startling Nagy, who whirled around to look. That’s when Duncan drew his gun. Nagy turned back, already in shock, and was doubly surprised to see a gun aimed at him. It was obvious to Eve that Nagy was a twitch away from shooting. But Duncan fired first, two shots right in the chest that sent Nagy stumbling backward and crashing through the window. He was dead before he hit the ground and Duncan hadn’t even risen from his chair.

“It’s a justified shooting,” Eve said.

“Of course it was. The security guard’s shoot was justified, too.”

“Justified, maybe. Necessary? I don’t know.”

“You just hate that somebody, especially a civilian, saved you.” Duncan gestured to the dry-erase board across the room. She saw that he’d taped eight-by-ten blowups of the assailants’ DMV photos onto the board under their names. “I ran our three robbers through the system and confirmed their present addresses. They’ve never been arrested, by the way.”

That was another surprise. Eve was expecting them to be career criminals, but she didn’t say that because she didn’t want to get another lecture about the pitfalls of preconceived notions.

“Whose place do you want to visit first?” he asked.

“Joel Dalander seemed to be the leader of the crew,” Eve said. “Let’s begin there.”

She started for the door.

“Hold up,” Duncan said, staying in his seat. “None of these addresses are in our jurisdiction. We need to call for babysitters.”

The LASD’s jurisdiction was limited to specific areas of Los Angeles County without police departments of their own. For Lost Hills, it was an area bordered by Santa Monica Bay to the south, Ventura County to the northwest, and the City of Los Angeles to the northeast and east. Within those boundaries, the LASD was the law in Malibu, the Santa Monica Mountains, and the surrounding communities of Calabasas, Westlake Village, and Agoura Hills. But stepping on the LAPD’s toes, and vice versa, was a daily, if not hourly, occurrence.

“We’re just going to talk to some people,” Eve said. “Maybe take a look around.”

“And there could be somebody with a gun waiting for us and the last thing we need is another shoot-out today.”

Duncan picked up the phone and began making calls to arrange for LAPD patrol cars to meet them at each location.



After World War II, the farmland in the San Fernando Valley was leveled and subdivided to build thousands of charmless stucco boxes for returning GIs and their families to live in. Eve thought the homes in this particular Reseda neighborhood, between Sherman Way and Saticoy, hadn’t aged well, many of them altered by slapdash second-floor additions and attached garages sloppily converted into rooms.

An LAPD black-and-white was parked in front of Dalander’s place, which was among the most well-kept homes on the street. The paint wasn’t peeling, the landscape was watered and trimmed, and the garage was still a garage, the roll-up door open, showing off a clean and orderly interior, not even an oil spot on the painted concrete floor.

Eve and Duncan emerged from the plain-wrap Explorer she was driving and met the officers on the street. Duncan handled the introductions.

“The garage was open when we got here,” the officer said. “And we haven’t seen any activity.”

“How long have you been here?” Duncan asked.

“Maybe two minutes,” he said. “What happened to your cheek?”

“I cut myself shaving.”

“Jesus. What do you shave with?”

“A switchblade,” Duncan said. “I have very hearty stubble.”

While they were talking, Eve walked up Dalander’s driveway toward the open garage. His next-door neighbor, a middle-aged man in a golf shirt, Bermuda shorts, and flip-flops, pretended to be watering his dead juniper hedge so he could observe what was going on. A dog barked loudly inside his house.

The man said, “If you’re looking for Sherry, she’s gone.”

“When did she leave?”

“Bolted out of here like her house was on fire a couple of hours ago. She ran over a squirrel.” He pointed to the roadkill on the street, not far from where Duncan and the officers were standing. Eve had run over it, too.

“Do you happen to know her full name?”

“Sure. It’s Sherry Simms. With two m’s.”

Duncan gestured to the officers to stay put and moseyed over, holding up his phone, which displayed the DMV photo of Joel Dalander. “Do you know this man?”