Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is the local law-enforcement presence at the remote ridge cabin where Paul Ulrich is shot. Its response brings deputies from the Malibu substation into an investigation already being watched closely by Milo Sturgis and Alex Delaware. The Department's role is practical but consequential: its personnel assemble the search party, manage access to the scene, and take custody of a potentially significant object, while the handling of that object leaves an important detail unspoken.

Response at the Ridge

The wait for help from the Malibu substation is prolonged. Once the sheriffs arrive, assembling a squad to go up to the ridge takes longer still. The deputies approach on the assumption that the shooter may remain nearby, and their nervousness is palpable: they are described as itchy-fingered and ready to fire. The scene is therefore not simply a place to investigate but a potentially active danger that shapes how law enforcement moves and behaves.

Coordination at the Crime Scene

While the deputies gather, Milo stays with the coroner and tries to let the sheriffs feel that they are in charge, even as he continues inspecting the scene. His conduct reveals a negotiated division of authority: the Department's personnel have the local response and scene presence, but Milo remains deeply involved in the investigative work. Tanya Stratton has been moved away from the crime scene and sits beneath a silver-dollar tree, withdrawn and distressed; Milo asks Alex to comfort her, but she refuses to talk to him. The deputies' separation of a witness from the immediate scene is part of the controlled response, though it cannot provide the emotional support she needs.

Evidence and Its Handling

A careful search of the cabin later that day finds little of evidentiary value beyond a doctor's bag. The old, burnished leather bag bears the gold initials EHM and contains surgical instruments, intravenous tubing, sterile needles, gauze, disposable injectors, and ampules labeled thiopental and potassium chloride. A sheriff's detective takes the bag into custody. He does not ask what the initials stand for, and Milo does not volunteer the answer. The episode establishes both a concrete act of evidence collection and a consequential gap in what the Department's investigator learns at the scene.

Investigative Significance

The Department's presence supplies the personnel and procedures needed to reach and search the isolated ridge, but the investigation is not shown as a single-agency effort. Milo's careful management of the sheriffs' authority, alongside his continued inspection, makes the boundary between formal scene control and active investigative knowledge visible. The doctor's bag sharpens that tension: it is collected, yet its initials are left uninterpreted, so custody of evidence does not automatically mean that its significance has been recognized.