“That’s Victor Best,” Hatteras said. “Head chef and kitchen manager.”
Ballard leaned in to read the two-paragraph bio of Best.
“‘Nearly twenty years of experience in restaurants in Hawaii,’” she read out loud. “If that’s true, he would’ve been over there when the last attack occurred here. Van Ness said the same thing.”
“So we scratch him off the list?” Hatteras asked.
“Not yet. We still need to confirm. Bios like this are exaggerated. And Van Ness was wrong about the island, so he could be wrong about the timing too.”
“Got it.”
Ballard stared at the photo of Best. He had a shaved head, a wide smile, and a deep tan. She could see how the kid in the yearbook photo had grown into the man on the screen. The eyes were the same, a deep brown so dark that she could barely see the ring around each iris. She wondered if she was staring at the eyes of a rapist-murderer.
Hatteras interrupted her thoughts by asking, “Did you ever live in Kona?”
“Uh, no, I never lived on the Big Island. I lived in Maui, and I went to J-school in Oahu.”
“J-school?”
“Journalism. I was a reporter for a while before I was a cop.”
“Interesting. I didn’t know that.”
The mention of her past suddenly gave Ballard an idea for how she might be able to learn when Best left California for Hawaii.
“Colleen, how did you find him?” she asked.
“It was easy,” Hatteras said. “I just googled ‘Victor Best Hawaii,’ and this page on the restaurant site came up. I wish it were always this easy.”
Ballard kept her plan for Best to herself and moved on with the report from Hatteras.
“Okay, what did you find on Andrew Bennett?”
“It was not as easy with him. As you can imagine, there are a lot of Andrew Bennetts out there. Again, based on what Maddie said Van Ness told you, I made Orange County one of my parameters and found four Andrew Bennetts in the county. I went through them and locked in on one down in Laguna Beach. He works for a real estate firm that has bios of its sales reps on its website. His bio says he was born in California, and then I just did a comparison to the yearbook. Take a look.”
Hatteras pulled up a photo of a smiling Andrew “Andy” Bennett on a real estate firm’s website, then put up next to it an enlarged photo she had scanned in of the Andy Bennett from the yearbook. There was no doubt that the agent was the Andy Bennett who had graduated in 1999 from St. Vincent’s in Pasadena. Unlike Victor Best, who had lost hair and added sun wrinkles around the eyes, Bennett looked like he had found the fountain of youth or a good plastic surgeon. There were no wrinkles, and he still had a full head of hair. Ballard realized the style had not changed either. His jet-black hair was still parted cleanly on the left. He was smiling broadly and standing by a SOLD sign in front of a house.
“I wonder how old this photo is,” Ballard said. “He looks like he’s about thirty.”
“I know,” Hatteras said. “I tried to find more photos but struck out. The California Department of Real Estate database has no record of complaints against him, and he’s been licensed since 2007.”
“I’ll run his DMV and hopefully we come up with a home address. But shoot me his office address on a text.”
“I already ran his DMV records and got the address. I’ll send it to you.”
“How did you run his DMV?”
“I used your password.”
“Colleen, how do you have my password?”
“Anders gave it to me.”
“What?”
“I think it’s yours. That’s what he said.”
“This can’t be happening. Look, whatever he gave you, do not use it again. You understand? That could bring the whole unit down. I’ll talk to Anders, but don’t use it anymore.”
“Okay, sorry. I didn’t know it was such a big deal. The other day you had me run a check on your screen because you were still logged in. I didn’t see the difference. I just thought you gave it to him.”
“No, I didn’t. He hacked it and I’ll take care of that with him. What you need to know is that the department is very serious about unauthorized users running DMV checks.”
“Like what you asked me to do the other day?”
Ballard was getting exasperated.
“Look, that was different,” she said. “And I’m not going to argue about it with you. Just don’t do it anymore. It’s actually illegal. It could get both you and me in trouble.”
“Okay, fine,” Hatteras said. “No more.”
“Send me Bennett’s address and then at least it will look legal.”
“Will do. Are you going to go down to Laguna to see him?”
“Eventually. Probably. Tell you what, see if you can find out if he has any open houses this weekend.”
“Ooh, that would be cool. You posing as a potential buyer to observe him. Before he knows you’re a cop.”
“Maybe.”
Ballard knew what was coming next and was not wrong.
“If you go down, can I tag along?” Hatteras asked. “Wait, don’t answer. I know it’s a no. Never mind.”
Ballard was relieved that she didn’t have to lower the boom one more time. Hatteras was self-editing.
“Colleen, you might want to think about taking a break and going home,” she said. “You’ve been here every day this week. I really don’t want you to burn out. You’re too valuable to the team.”
Ballard left Hatteras with that to think about and rolled her chair back to her desk, where she saw her coffee, now cold, waiting for her. That was two cups fallen by the wayside. Before she went upstairs for another refill she might actually drink, she checked her email.
First in the queue was the email that had just come in from Hatteras with Andrew Bennett’s DMV record. Though he sold homes in pricey Laguna Beach, he lived in Laguna Hills, a suburb west of Laguna Beach with lower housing costs because of its distance from the Pacific. The driver’s license had been issued three years ago, and the photo was of the same man in the one Hatteras had pulled up of Bennett in front of the SOLD sign. Bennett still looked younger than his years.
After writing down the pertinent information in a notebook she kept on her desk, Ballard signed in to the California DMV database. Through the interagency portal, she was able to pull up Victor Best’s Hawaii driver’s license records. These showed that Best had not been licensed in the state until 2008, with an address first in Oahu and then on the Big Island in subsequent renewals. But Best not getting his Hawaii driver’s license until after the Pillowcase Rapist’s L.A. rampage had stopped didn’t necessarily mean anything. He could have moved there years earlier and simply waited until his California license expired before getting the Hawaii license. The information was useful but it didn’t move the needle on Best. Ballard needed to know more precisely when he had left California for Hawaii. Ballard was also aware that no matter when Best moved to Hawaii, it was not a solid alibi. He could have gone back and forth between Hawaii and California and committed the Pillowcase crimes.
To help narrow his location history down, she pulled up the website of the Pasadena Star-News and scrolled through its pages until she saw the byline of a reporter named Claudia Gimble. She didn’t need to write the name down.
Ballard straightened up to look over the divider and saw that Hatteras was still at her desk. She didn’t want to make her next call with Colleen eavesdropping, so she stood up, coffee mug in hand. “You’re still here,” she said.
“I’m going to go,” Hatteras said. “Just finishing up a few things.”