Gated Prey (Eve Ronin #3)(31)

Duncan gestured to the gate and the steep hill of homes in front of them. “Is he home?”

“Oh no, he’s on a business trip in Europe somewhere, selling movies internationally for one of the studios. That’s how he met Anna. In Berlin, during a film market. She was a hostess at his hotel. He had an affair with her for months while he was still married to the first Mrs. McCaig.”

Eve leaned forward so Ruthie could see her. “How do you know all of that?”

“The first Mrs. McCaig told me when she moved out. She said they tried forever to have kids, and when she couldn’t, he dropped her for a fertile Romanian slut.”

“What does the second Mrs. McCaig do?”

“She’s overseeing the remodel of their house,” Ruthie said. “I suppose to make the place her own and so she has something to do when he’s away. They’re doing the kitchen now.”

“How far along was her pregnancy?” Eve asked.

“She was just about to pop,” Ruthie said. “That’s what makes it so sad. She must be devastated.”

“Thanks, Ruthie,” Duncan said. “I appreciate the briefing.”

“All of us who protect and serve have to stick together.” Ruthie hit a button on her desk, opening the gate. Duncan waved goodbye, then drove through the gate and up the hill.

The homes were architecturally similar to the ones in Vista Grande, but they were much smaller, bunched closer together, and had tiny front yards. The one-story McCaig house was easy to spot—a fire truck, a paramedic unit, an LASD patrol car, and an ambulance were parked out front. There was a large walk-in dumpster in the driveway and a porta-potty on the front lawn.

Duncan parked in the open half of the driveway. He and Eve got out and went inside the house, where the temperature dropped by about thirty degrees. It was like stepping into the cold room at Costco to buy vegetables, Eve thought.

The dining room was to the right and was being used as a temporary kitchen, with a microwave, coffee machine, paper plates, plastic cups, and disposable utensils on the table and boxes of food and drinks stacked against the walls. A couple of firemen with nothing to do stood there, out of everybody’s way.

Straight ahead of Duncan and Eve was a large family room, and that’s where the paramedics and the deputy were, and where a woman, crying inconsolably, was being lifted by two ambulance attendants onto a gurney. She was a petite bottle-blonde, with collagen-injected lips and augmented breasts.

Duncan and Eve were met by a crew-cutted deputy in his thirties who didn’t seem very happy to see either one of them. Perhaps, Eve thought, he was a friend of Collier’s.

“What’s the story, Joe?” Duncan asked him.

The deputy barely looked up from his notepad as he relayed the details in a robotic monotone. “The woman is Anna McCaig, age twenty-four. She reports that she was upstairs, taking a shower, when she felt pain in her abdomen and noticed that she was bleeding from her groinal vicinity.”

Groinal vicinity? Eve wondered if that bizarre terminology reflected his lack of familiarity with female anatomy or was an attempt to avoid saying something that could be construed as crude in front of a woman.

He cleared his throat and continued. “She put on a bathrobe, and was walking to the living room, when the pain got worse. She sat down on the couch and delivered the baby on the floor. She went to get a towel, came back, and saw the baby wasn’t breathing. She called 911 and started CPR, following instructions from the operator. She was still on the line, and performing CPR, when the paramedics arrived and determined that the baby was dead.”

Eve glanced at Anna, sobbing on the gurney, and saw past her to the bloodstained couch, where a paramedic stood over a blanket-wrapped bundle that she presumed was the baby.

“What was the sex of the baby?” Eve asked.

“A boy,” said the deputy.

“Wait outside for me,” Duncan told the deputy, then turned to Eve, his face pale. “I’ve seen enough dead children for one lifetime without seeing one more before I retire. Do you mind waiting here for the ME’s office to come collect the body? I’ll go to the hospital with Mrs. McCaig, get her official statement, and catch a ride back to the station with the deputy.”

“Sure,” Eve said, with the confidence of someone who’d handled a dozen cases like this before. But this was the first time she’d ever been called on a stillbirth and her inexperience made her uncomfortable.

Duncan approached the gurney as it was being wheeled toward them by the two ambulance attendants. He gestured to the attendants to stop and he leaned over Anna McCaig, who was covered up to her neck with a sheet and was still crying, though with less fervor, exhaustion or weakness calming her down.

“I’m Detective Pavone, Mrs. McCaig. I’ll be going with you to the hospital. Can I grab your purse and clothes for you?”

Anna nodded, sniffled, and said in a heavily accented voice, “My purse is in the dining room.”

Eve grabbed the purse from a dining room chair and set it on the gurney at Anna’s feet while Duncan went to get her clothes. She knew he didn’t make the offer just as a courtesy. It was also a sneaky way to get her permission to go to her bedroom, open a few drawers, and look in the closet. She wondered what he was looking for. Illegal drugs that might have provoked the stillbirth? Or perhaps he was just generally snoopy. She certainly was.