Ballard opened the yearbook again and slid it across the table until it was right in front of him. It was open to the page with Mallory Richardson’s photo.
“Her,” Ballard said. “You say you didn’t know her.”
“No, I said I didn’t know her well,” Van Ness protested. “You can check your recorder.”
“But did you forget something?”
“No. I mean, yes, I could have. It was a long time ago.”
“Did you forget that you took her to your senior prom?”
Van Ness looked up from the yearbook. Ballard knew that if he was smart, he’d slide out of the booth, push past Maddie, cut through the curtains, and be gone. But she was banking on him not having the guts to do that.
Instead of leaving, he put on an amateurish look of surprise.
“Oh, shit, you’re right,” he said. “I did. I mean, we did go together. But it was a one-and-done date.”
“And you couldn’t remember that when I first showed you the book and her photo?”
“Look, to be honest, I did a lot of drugs back then. I was high that night and it’s always been a blur.”
Wrong answer. It opened a door.
“Did you give her drugs?” Ballard asked.
“No way,” he said. “I didn’t give drugs to anybody.”
Ballard reached over and flipped the pages to the Post-it marking the photos from the prom. She put her finger down on Van Ness standing in the group photo without Mallory.
“Why isn’t she in this photo, Rodney?” she asked. “Where was she?”
“I don’t know,” Van Ness said. “Probably the bathroom. How would I know?”
“You’re saying she’d ducked out of a group prom photo to go to the bathroom?”
“I told you, I don’t know where she was.”
Ballard moved her finger over to the image of Victor Best.
“What about Victor?” she asked. “Where is his date?”
“I don’t know,” Van Ness said. “I don’t think he had one. A lot of guys came stag ’cause it was the last dance.”
The courts had long ago ruled that police could lie to suspects about evidence they had against them, the thinking being that if the suspects were innocent, they would know the police were lying. Ballard had always used the privilege judiciously because it never went over well with juries. The logic was murky, and at the end of the day, people didn’t like their police to lie.
Ballard and Maddie had strategized the interview on the drive from L.A., and they had come up with a lie that Ballard could inject into the interview if the moment called for it.
The moment was calling for it now.
Ballard tapped the group photo again.
“This was at the Huntington,” she said. “You know what’s a cool thing about the Huntington and really useful to law enforcement?”
“I don’t know,” Van Ness said. “Cameras?”
“Not back then. But what they have done since day one is keep their occupancy and banquet records.”
“So?”
“Well, we went back and found that the St. Vincent’s senior prom was held on May twenty-second, 1999. Then we looked at hotel occupancy on that night and we found a room with your name on it.”
“That’s bullshit. I didn’t have a room.”
Ballard stared at him. He had called her bluff and now she was scrambling.
“You sure about that?” she said. “If you lie to the police, you know you can get into some deep shit. I’m trying to get you back home, but this—”
“Look, if they put my name on the room, they didn’t tell me,” Van Ness said. “But I didn’t rent the room and I didn’t pay for the room. My name shouldn’t have been on it.”
Ballard nodded as her adrenaline kicked up. She had used the lie, the bluff, to get to a hidden truth, and her instincts told her this was going to lead to something.
“Who is ‘they’?” she asked. “Who put your name on the room?”
“Fine, we got a room to party in,” Van Ness said. “Lots of kids did. They all shared rooms and most of us were on the same hallway. It was party central.”
“I get that. Who did you share a room with?”
“Look, I had no money back then. Remember, South Pas? So some guys added me to their room.”
“Okay, sure. Which guys? Show me.”
Ballard opened the yearbook to the senior photos. Van Ness leaned in.
“One was Victor,” he said. “Then there was Andy Bennett and Taylor Weeks.”
He flipped through the pages and tapped on the photo of each senior.
“Okay,” Ballard said. “You said Victor didn’t have a date. What about Bennett and Weeks?”
“Uh, Andy I think went stag. Taylor had a date. Katie Randolph. I think she was a junior and I heard they ended up getting married.”
Ballard nodded. She was in the flow, getting solid new information with every answer, getting names of people who were at the heart of the case. Interviews didn’t always go this way, but when they did, it felt like there was no stopping her momentum.
“What happened in that room, Rodney?” she asked.
“The usual, I guess,” Van Ness said.
“Don’t guess. Tell me. What was the usual?”
“You know, we partied. Got there early and partied before the dance.”
“The four boys and Mallory and Katie?”
“Well, I think Taylor and Katie got there late. But yeah.”
“Was it drugs or alcohol or both?”
“There was a bottle of gin. So we did that.”
“You brought the gin?”
“No, I think it was Andy.”
“Did Mallory drink gin?”
“Yeah, she drank. Nobody forced her. She drank a lot.”
“How long did Andy and Victor stay in the room partying with you?”
“I don’t know. It was a while and then they went down the hall to visit other rooms and get more booze.”
“You ran out of gin?”
“Eventually, yeah.”
“And you were left alone with Mallory?”
“Just for a little bit.”
“Did you have sex with her?”
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here but it wasn’t rape, okay? She wanted to have sex, so we did.”
“Was that before or after she passed out?”
Another bluff, but based on what had been revealed, an informed bluff.
“I’m not like that,” Van Ness protested. “She wanted to do it, so we did. There was no rape and you can’t prove that there was. This is complete bullshit.”
“We are not saying it was rape,” Ballard said. “We weren’t in the room. I just want to hear from you whether she was conscious when you had sex.”
“Yes! She was awake and willing. Yes, goddamn it!”
“Okay, let’s keep our voices down here.”
“Okay, but you are saying shit that isn’t true.”
“Look, I believe you, Rodney, but we need to understand what happened. Mallory did pass out, right? That’s why she wasn’t in the photo, correct?”
Van Ness shook his head as if it were wrong to give up secrets about the dead.
“She got sick from the gin, okay?” he said. “Then she crawled back into one of the beds in the room and fell asleep. And that’s it. She never made it to the dance. I had to wake her up to get her home.”
“So you went down to the dance without her?”
“Yes, I did. It was my senior prom and I didn’t want to spend it in a hotel room babysitting a girl who couldn’t hold her liquor.”
“Did all four of the guys have keys to that room?”
“Uh, yes. I mean no. There were two keys, so we had to share.”
“You had a key?”
“No, I borrowed Andy’s or Victor’s when I went up. They had the keys. I told you, it wasn’t my room. I didn’t have a key.”