“I think you’re right,” Ballard said.
“I know I’m right,” Todd said. “He had a full beard by the end of the year. I think he might have been held back a year in grammar school. He was like a grown man by graduation.”
Ballard counted six boys standing behind the table and only four girls seated.
“So if that’s Rodney, where is Mallory?” she asked.
“She’s not there,” Todd said. “Maybe she was in the restroom or something.”
“And maybe not,” Ballard said. “Do you know the names of anybody else in this shot?”
Todd tapped the boy standing next to Rodney.
“That’s Victor somebody,” she said. “I can’t remember his last name. He and Rodney were tight.”
“Victor,” Ballard said. She turned back through the senior photos looking for a Victor. There was only one. “Victor Best,” she said.
“That’s it,” Todd said. “Victor Best. I should have remembered a name like that.”
“He was friends with Rodney?” Ballard asked.
“Yes,” Todd said. “He and Rodney and a few other guys used to hang out on these benches behind the school. Down in the arroyo. The rumor was that they’d get high there during lunch. Seniors were allowed to go off campus.”
“You remember the names of any of the other guys in the photos?” Ballard asked.
“No. They weren’t really on my radar, you know,” Todd said. “They were seniors.”
“What about the girls?”
“Same thing. I didn’t know any seniors. In fact, I think Mallory was the only sophomore who went to the prom that year. From what I remember.”
Ballard pointed to the arched windows behind the photo of the slow dancers.
“Was it at the Huntington that year?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” Todd said. “I didn’t go, remember?”
“Right,” Ballard said. “Well, I think that’s good for now, Jackie. Thank you for your help. We really appreciate it.”
“Sure,” Todd said. “I mean, I guess. If it was useful to you, that’s cool.”
“It was,” Ballard said.
“Would you be able to give us contact information for Emma Sepulveda?” Maddie said. “It would save us some time.”
“Sure,” Todd said. “If you give me your contact information.”
Maddie looked confused but Ballard had a sense of what was coming.
“I’m tired of working on other people’s shows,” Todd said. “I want to create my own and I need someone to bounce ideas off of. Maybe give me some ideas too. It will be a female lead.”
“Uh,” Maddie said. “I guess that’s okay.”
She looked at Ballard to see if she was making a mistake. Ballard just nodded.
After exchanging contact details, including an email address for Emma Sepulveda, Ballard and Maddie thanked Todd and left the apartment. When they got back to their cars, they stood between them to talk.
“Victor Best,” Ballard said. “Did you and Colleen run him down?”
“He was one of the seniors we couldn’t find,” Maddie said. “But Colleen was still at it when we left.”
“Well, I want to find him and talk to him. Along with Rodney Van Ness.”
“Interesting that Mallory wasn’t in that photo. What do you think that means?”
“That’s what we’re going to talk to Rodney and Victor about.”
37
Hatteras was still in her pod when Ballard got back to the Ahmanson Center.
“Colleen, what are you doing? You are spending too much time here,” Ballard said. “I don’t want you to burn out.”
“I won’t,” Hatteras said. “I like being here and I wanted to stay to find out how it went with Jacqueline Todd.”
Ballard filled her in briefly on the interview with Jackie Todd and then asked if she had been able to locate a senior from the yearbook named Victor Best.
“No, there’s nothing on social on the Victor Best from St. Vincent’s,” Hatteras said. “There are other Victor Bests out there, but I was able to determine pretty quickly they were not our guy. And you didn’t find any criminal record when you looked him up, right?”
“Right. Nothing criminal.”
“I could start a genealogy run, if you want.”
“Okay, but maybe wait till tomorrow. You’ve put in enough time today. Anything else come up I should know about?”
“Well, I jumped back on the Black Dahlia case for a while and worked on Willa Kenyon.”
“Anything new on that?”
“Yes. I reached out to the site manager at Lost Angels and she called me back. She was intrigued enough by what I told her that she—”
“Wait, what did you tell her, Colleen? I said nothing about this case should leave the raft. You were right here when I said that.”
“I know, I know. You don’t have to worry. I didn’t mention Elizabeth Short or Black Dahlia or anything that would lead her to make a connection. I simply said that while we were working a cold-case investigation, Willa Kenyon’s name came up on a genealogy tree, and we wanted to know what they had on her disappearance. That’s all.”
“Okay, fine. I’m sorry I jumped on you like that. So what did the site manager have?”
“Well, she got curious enough to go into the office even though it’s a holiday because she said they have physical files on many of the really old cases. Lost Angels was operating before there was an internet, so there are paper files. She pulled the Willa Kenyon file and it had some family names in it — the parents who reported her missing — and also a boyfriend. I was able to confirm that her parents have long passed and there were no siblings. The boyfriend is dead too, but his name was pretty unique: Adolfo Galvez. I plugged that in on Ancestry and found a son and grandson still here in L.A. Adolfo got married a long time after Willa disappeared, when it became clear she wasn’t coming back, and I think maybe there’s a chance he talked about Willa with his son or grandson. But I didn’t call anyone. I thought you’d want to weigh in, since we sort of jumped the gun with Elyse Ford’s sister today.”
“Okay, send me what you’ve got, but I’m okay with you taking it forward and talking to them. You and Maddie handled Elyse Ford’s family well. So — your lead, your move. But not today. I want you to start on that tomorrow.”
“Okay. Tomorrow.”
There was an excitement in her voice, although whether it was due to the compliment or the approval to continue with the lead, Ballard didn’t know.
“Was there anything else in the file besides the names?” Ballard asked.
“There was a copy of the police report the family made when she went missing,” Hatteras said. “She scanned it and sent it to me.”
“Anything stand out?”
“Not really. But, here, I’ll pull it up. It’s pretty short.”
Hatteras turned to her screen and opened a document. It was an LAPD missing person report dated June 21, 1950. The color scanner had picked up the yellowed edges of the seventy-three-year-old document. The missing individual was identified as Willa Kenyon, age twenty-two, and gave her address as an apartment on Selma in Hollywood. The summary said she had been missing two days at the time of the report. Her occupation was listed simply as singer.
“That’s interesting,” Ballard said. “She was a singer. Depending on what that actually means, she could have needed photos for promotion.”
“She could have somehow contacted Thawyer and gone to him,” Hatteras said.
Ballard nodded, more to herself than Hatteras. She was seeing possible connections coming together. It reminded her that she needed to get into the lockdown room and open Elizabeth Short’s suitcase. She had a hunch she wanted to follow up on.