“Jeez, that was like twenty-five years ago,” Van Ness said.
“Do you remember a girl in your class named Gina Falwell?” Ballard asked.
It was just a random name Ballard had pulled from the yearbook. Gina Falwell had no bearing on the Pillowcase Rapist case, but Ballard wanted Van Ness to think that she was on a fishing expedition.
“Can’t say that I do,” Van Ness replied.
“No memory of her at all?” Ballard asked.
“Nope.”
“Okay. We have a yearbook from St. Vincent’s with us. All right if I show you Gina’s photo to see if it jogs anything loose?”
“You can if you want, but I don’t remember her.”
Ballard pulled the yearbook out of her bag. She had marked several pages with Post-its as part of her prep for the interview, and she flipped the book open to the page that had Gina Falwell’s senior photo, turned it so Van Ness could see it, and tapped the photo.
“Her. You recognize her?”
“Well, I recognize her, yeah. But I didn’t know her. What is the... is she, like, dead?”
“We can’t really get into that. What about Mallory Richardson, did you know her?”
Van Ness didn’t answer. Ballard could see the wheels turning. He bought time by taking a long pull of his Bloody Mary through the straw.
“I think I remember that name,” he finally said. “But I can’t really place her.”
Ballard flipped the pages to another Post-it and showed him a photo of Mallory.
“Remember now?” she asked.
Van Ness nodded.
“Yeah, I remember her,” he said. “But we weren’t in the same class. She’s the one... I heard she died. After graduation.”
“Who told you that?” Ballard asked.
“I can’t remember. It happened, like, pretty soon after graduation, I think.”
“You mean your graduation or hers?”
“Mine.”
“How well did you know her?”
“Not very well. It wasn’t a big school, and she was... I’d see her around, you know. Like at football games and shit.”
Ballard nodded like she understood. Van Ness was cagey with his answers, but he had just crossed a line from using the fogginess of memory as a cover to making a statement that conflicted with common sense. How could he forget who he went to his senior prom with? Would a jury believe that? He admitted to knowing she died but couldn’t remember that she had been his date?
In crossing that line, Van Ness had also crossed from witness to person of interest. The next stop was suspect. But Ballard had to continue to play the interview as routine. She flipped to another Post-it.
“Okay, here is the important one,” she said. “Victor Best.”
Van Ness leaned over to look at the yearbook photo. Ballard tapped the page.
“Yeah, Victor, I knew him,” he said.
“Were you friends?” Ballard asked.
“Yeah, we were friends. We hung out.”
“Still in touch?”
“No, not really. We’ve got a twenty-fifth reunion coming up and he sent me an email to see if I was going. You know, stuff like that.”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“Going to the reunion.”
“No, I’m not into that stuff. I told him no.”
“So, where’s he live now?”
Van Ness paused and took another pull through the straw.
“So, he’s the guy you’re trying to find?” he said.
“We want to talk to him, yeah,” Ballard said. “Do you know where he is?”
“Last I heard, he lived in Hawaii.”
“Where? What island?”
“Oahu... I think.”
“What’s he do in Hawaii?”
“Runs a restaurant in one of the hotels over there. Last I heard.”
“He went there from St. Vincent’s and never came back?”
“Well, not right away. He went to school. Then he ended up over there as a chef or something.”
“When would that have been? That he went over there.”
“I don’t know. Twenty years ago? We’re not really in touch, not since high school.”
“What about you? Did you go to college after high school?”
“Me? Yeah, CSUN.”
CSUN was in Northridge — the Valley, where several of the Pillowcase rapes had occurred.
“When did you graduate?” Ballard asked.
“I didn’t get a degree, if that’s what you mean,” Van Ness said. “I left school for a job.”
“Doing what?”
“Security at the school.”
“CSUN?”
“Yeah, my first security gig.”
Ballard nodded. She was confident that they had enough leverage on Van Ness to turn the interview into an interrogation. It was just a matter of how long she could keep him talking once he was confronted. As she was considering how to begin that phase, the waitress ducked through the curtain to see if they were ready to order lunch. Ballard asked her to come back in fifteen minutes.
Before the waitress left, Van Ness held out his empty Bloody Mary glass and asked for another. Ballard looked at the straw still in the glass. The waitress took the glass and left. It was an opportunity Ballard didn’t want to miss. She glanced at Maddie, hoping she would get it.
“You know what, I need to hit the restroom,” Maddie said. “It was a long drive, lots of coffee.”
“Sure,” Ballard said. She slid out of the booth quickly, and Maddie moved just as quickly to follow the waitress.
Ballard didn’t want to continue asking significant questions without Maddie present, so she detoured into questions about Van Ness’s move to Las Vegas and his work for casinos.
“We found you through LinkedIn,” she said. “But you haven’t updated your résumé.”
“I never got a bite through LinkedIn,” he said. “So why bother, you know?”
“How long have you been at the Library?”
“Just a couple years. I’m waiting for something to open up on the Strip again.”
“Why’d you leave in the first place?”
“A bunch of bullshit is why. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s fine. I was just making conversation until—”
As if on cue, Maddie split the curtain. Ballard slid over to make room. Maddie gave a slight nod that Ballard took to mean she had secured the straw from the Bloody Mary glass.
It was time to put Rodney Van Ness in a corner.
44
Ballard looked Van Ness directly in the eye.
“You know, Rodney, we have a problem,” she said.
“Here we go,” Van Ness said, shaking his head. “I knew this was bullshit. Give it to me. What problem?”
“Well, to begin with, parts of your story don’t add up. And that concerns me because we came here hoping you’d provide information that would help us find Victor Best. But I gotta be honest, I have problems with what you’ve been telling us.”
Van Ness put his hands flat on the table as if he was about to push himself up to leave. Ballard hoped Maddie would be quick to put an arm out to dissuade him.
“Hey, I’m trying to help you,” Van Ness said. “I told you all I know about Victor. I haven’t seen the guy in like twenty years. I got an email from him, big deal. Everybody’s email was on the thing the reunion committee sent out. That’s it.”
“You said he runs a restaurant over there,” Ballard said. “How do you know that?”
“He said it in the email. He said if I ever went over there, he’d comp me a meal. He was hoping I’d comp him in Vegas. That’s it.”
“Fine, but that’s not where my problem really lies. It’s right here, Rodney.”