The Waiting

41

The Cleopatra casino and Resort on the Las Vegas Strip was a place of withered beauty. Built in the 1980s, it was now dwarfed by the opulent glass towers that surrounded it. Like everything and almost everyone in Vegas, it was slated for a ground-up rebuild. Once owned and operated by mobsters out of Chicago, the casino had long since passed to a corporate conglomerate that invested in hotels and amusement parks. Because its end was near, the casino’s interiors were not as polished as they once were. It felt second tier to Ballard. The glass skylight that stretched over the gaming floor had once been a point of pride, but the glass was now dirty with the debris of settling smog and auto exhaust, and several panels that had been cracked by falling liquor bottles from the tower rooms, presumably, had been replaced with plywood. Its signature pulpit, a faux-gold-leaf structure with the face of Cleopatra extending up toward the glass and over the gaming tables, was propped against collapse by two industrial stanchions. The Cleo had clearly seen better times, and this was reflected in the clientele that gathered at its five-dollar blackjack tables and one-dollar-minimum roulette wheels.

It had been a four-hour drive from Los Angeles after a 6:00 a.m. departure from the Ahmanson Center. In the course of those miles, Ballard and Maddie Bosch had covered the basic topics of casual conversation between two female law enforcement officers, one with most of her service years behind her, the other at the start of her career.

Maddie had expressed a dissatisfaction with patrol work and was hoping that her time with the Open-Unsolved Unit would fast-track her ascent to the detective ranks.

“I mean, I’d work auto theft,” she had said. “Anything to get out of the uniform.”

“I was the same,” Ballard responded. “Couldn’t wait to move my badge to my belt.”

The conversation was interrupted when Ballard took a call from Captain Gandle, who said he had received her request for the Las Vegas trip and was approving it. Little did he know that they were already going by Zzyzx and were approaching the state line and Nevada. After Ballard disconnected, Maddie started laughing.

“We didn’t have permission before we left?”

“Well, I figured we’d get it. I laid it all out for him in the request. I just didn’t want to wait around. You’ll learn this: Part of being a good detective is knowing your boss and how he thinks.”

“Or how she thinks.”

“Right. Your dad can tell you a lot about all of this.”

“Uh, I don’t think my dad did too well in supervisor psychology.”

“True.”

“I mean, he threw a lieutenant through a glass window in the watch office once. They still talk about that at Hollywood Division.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they do.”

After they parked in the garage at the Cleopatra, Ballard reminded Maddie to follow her lead during the play with Rodney Van Ness. The strategy they had discussed while in the car was simple: Set him up with questions that would reveal his level of candor. If he lied, that would give them leverage.

There was a line of people snaking through a velvet-roped warren in the lobby of the hotel. They were all waiting to check into their discounted rooms. Ballard scanned the space until she saw a man in a blue blazer with the telltale radio wire coiling up out of his collar and looping into his ear. She tapped Maddie on the arm and nodded in the man’s direction.

As they approached, Ballard pulled her badge off her belt, palmed it, and flashed it discreetly to the security man.

“We’re over from LAPD on a case,” she said. “Can you ask Rodney Van Ness to meet us in the lobby?”

“I don’t know who that is,” the man said.

“Last we checked, he was a security supervisor here.”

“Don’t know any Rodney Van Ness.”

Ballard nodded. There was no law about lying on LinkedIn. She started to wonder if the trip had been for nothing and blamed herself for not confirming Van Ness’s employment before leaving Los Angeles. It wasn’t hard to imagine what Captain Gandle’s response would be.

“Then could you call a supervisor down to talk with us?” she asked.

“That I can do.”

He raised his wrist to his mouth and spoke into a radio transmitter. He asked someone named Marty to come talk to two detectives from the LAPD.

“Marty will be down in five,” he said. “Wants you to wait over by the concierge.” He pointed across the lobby to a counter that had its own line of people waiting for attention.

“Thank you,” Ballard said.

“Hey, are they hiring at the LAPD?” the security man asked.

“These days, they’re always hiring,” Ballard said.

He looked at Maddie for a moment. “You seem kind of young for a detective,” he said.

“She just solved the biggest case in L.A. history,” Ballard said.

“Yeah?” he said. “Was it the O.J. case? You found out who really killed Nicole?”

“Funny,” Ballard said. “But not quite.”

They left him there and walked across the lobby to the concierge desk. They took a position to the side so people wouldn’t think they were trying to jump the line.

“It’s not officially solved yet, you know,” Maddie said.

“What do you mean?” Ballard asked.

“Black Dahlia. The DA has to sign off on it.”

“Maybe so, but I consider it solved and a closed case.”

“How long will it take them to decide?”

Before Ballard could answer, they were approached by a woman who also wore a blue blazer and had a wire loop over her ear, though hers was better camouflaged by her long hair.

“Are you the detectives from L.A.?” she asked.

“We are,” Ballard said. “I’m Renée Ballard, this is Maddie Bosch.”

“Marty Branch. Ballard, Bosch, and Branch — has a nice ring to it.”

They shook hands. Branch was in her forties. She was short and wide in the hips, and she eyed Maddie the way the first security man had.

“Honey, you look like a baby,” she said. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-six,” Maddie said. “And I’m a vol—”

“I’m sorry,” Ballard interrupted. “We’re working on a breaking case. We’re looking for a possible witness named Rodney Van Ness. His LinkedIn page says he works here as a security supervisor. Do you know him?”

“Rodney? Yes, I know Rodney,” Branch said. “But he hasn’t worked here in a good long time.”

“How long is a good long time?”

“Oh, two, three years at least.”

“Do you know why he left?”

“I know he was asked to leave and I got his job.”

“Why was he asked to leave?”

“That you’d have to get from HR — confidential.”

“Do you know where he went from here?”

“I heard he went to the Nugget but I don’t think that lasted too long. After that, I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything.”

“Do you have any records that would give us a home address?”

“Don’t you people have access to the DMV database? I’m sure the folks at Vegas Metro would help you out with that.”

“We checked the DMV. This is the address on his license. Do you have an office where we could maybe sit down and talk? We’re working a case involving multiple rapes and at least one murder, and Mr. Van Ness may have information that will help us identify a suspect.”

Branch nodded as she considered what to do.

“We wouldn’t have driven all the way over here just because of a LinkedIn profile if it weren’t important,” Ballard added.

Branch nodded again.

“Let’s go to the security office,” she finally said. “You two can wait at my desk while I talk to HR about this. But don’t you go flipping through my little black book, now. This way.”

She led them through a door at the side of the concierge counter to an employees-only elevator, which they took to the third floor.

“Did you all come over this morning or last night?” she asked.

“This morning,” Ballard said. “We left at six.”

“That’s early. How you fixed for coffee?”

“We could probably use some.”

“I can get that going.”

“Thank you.”

42

They arrived at the address that Marty Branch’s little black book had provided for Rodney Van Ness, a run-down apartment building in the Fremont East neighborhood of downtown. The book had also provided a cell phone number and work numbers that were different from the numbers posted on LinkedIn. But the entries in her book were at least three years old, and Branch had told them she could not vouch for the accuracy of any of the information. Ballard was worried. She didn’t want to have wasted a day and leave Las Vegas without finding and talking to Van Ness.

The Fremont Crest apartment building was two stories with exterior walkways branching right and left from a center entrance and staircase. It was white stucco with aquamarine doors and accents. The parking lot was located in front of the building, and there had been no effort — at least in recent years — to put any desert flora into the baked brown ground of its unpaved areas.

Prior to arriving, Ballard and Maddie had scouted the neighborhood for a location to take Van Ness to if he agreed to speak to them. The plan was simple. They wanted to take him out of the comfort zone of his own home. Based on a recommendation from Branch, they scoped out and chose a nearby restaurant called the Triple George Grill because it offered private booths and was favored by local law enforcement.

The apartment building’s security gate had not closed and locked after its last use and that allowed Ballard and Maddie to get to the second floor without having to use the call box. Ballard knew it was always better to knock directly on doors and keep the element of surprise.

They stopped in front of apartment 202 and Ballard leaned an ear toward the door. She heard no music, TV sounds, or people talking. She whispered to Maddie, “This reminds me of the sign your dad supposedly kept at his desk,” she said.

“‘Get off your ass and knock on doors,’” Maddie said, doing a not-so-good impression of her father. “Words for a detective to live by.”

Ballard nodded and knocked sharply on the door. After half a minute there was a verbal response from within the apartment. It was a female voice:

“Who is it?”

Ballard looked at Maddie and then responded.

“We’re looking for Rodney Van Ness.”

“He’s sleeping.”

Ballard pulled her phone and looked at the time. It was noon.

“Well, ma’am, wake him up,” she said. “This is a police matter.”

That got no response, so Ballard knocked on the door again, this time hard and loud enough that hopefully she could wake Van Ness herself.

“Hello?” she called. “Open the door, ma’am. This is the police.”

The door was finally opened by a young woman wearing a short silk robe and seemingly nothing else. Her unkempt hair and heavy-lidded eyes made it clear she had been roused from sleep

“He’s coming,” she said. “What’s this about anyway?”

“Who are you, ma’am?” Ballard asked.

“Harmony.”

“Harmony Van Ness?”

“Shit, no. We’re not married. We work together. That’s it.”

“Where do you work?”

“The Library.”

“You’re a librarian?”

“It’s a club.”

Ballard was getting the picture now. When you’ve been blackballed on the casino security circuit in Vegas, the next tier down was strip clubs, which were plentiful in Vegas and ran the gamut from hole-in-the-wall brothels to high-end nightclubs that catered to rappers and all manner of the rich and famous. It did not take a leap of imagination to guess what Harmony did for a living and where Van Ness would fit in with that.

“How long has Rodney been working at the Library?” she asked.

Before Harmony could respond, a deep male voice came from behind her:

“Don’t answer that.”

It was a command. Harmony stepped back, and the doorway was filled by a man Ballard recognized from the yearbook as Rodney Van Ness. He was taller than she had guessed from the yearbook photos, but then, a lot of kids shot up in their late teens. He was barefoot and wore board shorts and a misbuttoned Hawaiian shirt with a sailboats-on-water motif, the blue of the ocean matching the door-frame he leaned against. He had the same hair and beard as the kid in the yearbook prom photo. But he had grown into a two-hundred-plus-pound wedge in the twenty-five years since graduation.

“Go get dressed,” he said to Harmony.

He turned to watch Harmony go, the hem of her robe not quite covering the lines of her spray-tanned bottom. He turned back to Ballard and Maddie.

“Strippers,” he said, rolling his eyes. “What do you want?”

Ballard was not sure if that was a rhetorical question about strippers or a direct question to her and Maddie. But her quick take on Van Ness was that he was not much of a rhetoric man.

“You’re Rodney Van Ness?” Ballard asked.

“All day,” Van Ness said. “What do you want?”

This time the meaning of the question was clear.

“Mr. Van Ness, we’re with the LAPD. We need to ask you some questions in regard to an investigation we’re conducting involving crimes in Los Angeles.”

He held his hands up. “You got the wrong guy,” he said. “I haven’t been back to L.A. since my father’s funeral, and that was six years ago.”

“You’re not a suspect in anything, Mr. Van Ness,” Ballard said. “But we think you may have information that can help us identify a suspect. That’s why we came across the desert to talk to you.”

“Well, then, ask away.”

“Actually, we want you to come with us. We have a reservation for a booth at the Triple George. It would be best to do this in a quiet spot like that. Away from any distractions.”

“Uh... I thought this would be like a ten-minute thing. You said I’m no suspect, and I have stuff I gotta do today. You know, like, before work.”

“That’s okay. We won’t keep you long and you’ll get a free lunch out of it. Why don’t you put some shoes on? I’m sure you want to cooperate with the police, don’t you?”

Van Ness said nothing for a moment. Ballard knew he was measuring the implied threat in her words, a simple statement that even a glorified security guard like Van Ness would understand: Those who don’t cooperate with the police could very quickly become suspects.

“All right, let me get some shoes,” he finally said. “Can Harm come too?”

“Uh, do you mean Harmony?” Ballard asked.

“Yeah, Harmony. You mentioned lunch. We don’t have anything here.”

“Tell you what — leave Harmony home, and you can order takeout to bring back to her. On us. But it would be better if we spoke just to you.”

“Okay, I guess. I’ll get my shoes.”

He stepped back and closed the door.

Just in case he was staying on the other side of the door, watching through the peephole and listening, Ballard looked at the time on her phone and said, “We get this over by one, we drop him back here, and then we hit the road,” she said. “We’ll be back in L.A. by five.”

“That would be cool,” Maddie said, playing off the wink Ballard had given her. “I’ve got a date tonight.”

43

Rodney Van Ness had done Ballard a favor by just throwing on shorts and a shirt earlier, and he was wearing only sandals when he came out the door of his apartment. By the time they had walked down the stairs and into the parking lot, she was able to determine that he was not carrying a weapon. His shirt barely reached the top of his shorts, and it would have been impossible for him to have a gun or a knife tucked into his beltline without her noticing.

That was one of three obstacles out of the way. The other two were getting his permission to record their conversation and advising him of his right not to speak to law enforcement. Ballard was confident in her ability to get the first done. The rights requirement was a different story. Nothing ended the cooperation of someone who was straddling the line between witness and suspect like being told that his words could be used against him in a court of law.

The Triple George Grill was not very new but it was designed to look like it was as old as the Tadich Grill in San Francisco and Musso and Frank’s in Hollywood. It was all dark wood and light tile with a long bar running down the middle of the room and private booths with floor-to-ceiling dividers and curtains to ensure the visual and audio privacy of conversations. The grill was located near a former courthouse and was originally meant to accommodate lawyers and their clients during lunch breaks. But that courthouse was closed now; it had been turned into the Mob Museum, dedicated to the history of organized crime — specifically its part in the establishment and rise of Sin City — and law enforcement’s attempts to fight it.

They slid into one of the private booths, Ballard and Maddie sitting across from Van Ness. A waitress came and Ballard ordered coffee to start; Maddie asked for ice water, and Van Ness went for a Bloody Mary.

Ballard began casually.

“Van Ness,” she said. “There’s a Van Ness Avenue in L.A. — is that your family?”

“I wish,” Van Ness said. “You’d think I’d be running security at a strip club if it was?”

“But you grew up in Pasadena and went to St. Vincent’s, right? That sounds like old-school privilege.”

“My mother was a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic. I had to go, but technically I was from the wrong side of the tracks. South Pas. Those arroyo kids had all the privilege, not me.”

“You never did any of those genetic-heritage sites — Twenty-Three and Me, that sort of thing — to see if maybe...”

“Nah, not interested. So what’s this all about and how do you know I went to St. Vincent’s?”

“We’re looking for a classmate of yours. But before we start, is it all right if we record this?” Ballard reached into her pocket for her mini-recorder.

“If I’m not a suspect, like you say, why do you need to record it?” Van Ness protested.

“Good question,” Ballard said. “New rules. The LAPD has been burned so many times by witnesses recanting what they said, we have a rule now where we have to record every interview. It also helps when we’re writing reports to have the recorded version to refer to.”

She held up the recorder. Van Ness stared at it but said nothing.

“So, okay?” she asked. “I’ll send you a copy so you have it.”

“Whatever,” Van Ness said. “Go ahead.”

Ballard turned on the recorder and checked its small screen to make sure it was working and had enough battery.

“Okay, we’re recording,” Ballard said. “The time is twelve fourteen p.m. on Wednesday, February twenty-first. This is a conversation between Rodney Van Ness, Officer Madeline Bosch, and myself, Detective Renée Ballard. Now, rule two, we need to advise you of your constitutional rights to—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Van Ness said. “You say I’m no suspect but now you’re telling me about my rights? That’s not cool. I’m out of here.”

Ballard, who had the outside spot on her side of the booth, reached across the table and put her hand on Van Ness’s arm as he was trying to slide out.

“No, would you please wait a minute,” she said. “These are the rules we have to play by in the LAPD. Every interview recorded, every witness read their rights. That way everybody is protected. I know it’s a pain, but it’s just... bureaucracy, okay? I can assure you that you are not a suspect in any crime — and I’m saying that on tape.”

She pointed at the recorder on the table.

“So now it’s even recorded — you are not a suspect,” she said. “But we need to talk to you because you can help us. Please let’s just get through this so you can go home and we can get back to L.A.”

Van Ness stopped pushing his way out of the booth. He sat back and shook his head as if he was thinking about it. Just then the waitress parted the booth’s curtain and placed a Bloody Mary with a tall sprig of celery and a straw in front of him.

Van Ness looked at the drink and then at Ballard.

“So I can end the interview anytime I want?” he asked.

“Anytime,” Ballard said.

“Well, I don’t like this. Seems kind of sneaky, if you ask me. But go ahead. Let’s get this over with.”

“Officer Bosch, do you want to do the honors?”

Maddie recited the Miranda warning and Van Ness responded that he understood his rights. Ballard was pleased that they had succeeded in getting through the pre-interview gauntlet.

“Okay, then, let’s start,” she said. “We are in the middle of an active investigation that is confidential in nature. So we can’t share specifics, but we want to ask you about some people you associated with at St. Vincent’s.”

“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.”

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.”

“What about Taylor? He have a key?”

“I don’t think so but I don’t remember.”

“So, I want to be sure I’m clear. When Mallory was passed out in that room, anybody with a key could get access to the room. Is that right?”

“Yes, but I wish you would tell me what is going on here. You’re making it sound like we did something wrong and we didn’t.”

Ballard ignored the plea. She was too locked in on checking boxes with her questions.

“When Mallory got sick, was that in the bed or did she go into the bathroom?”

“The bathroom. She jumped up and ran in there. After a while I checked on her and she was leaning against the bathtub, passed out. I got her up and cleaned her up a little bit and then I helped her to the bed.”

Ballard wanted to say sarcastically that he had shown some real chivalry, but she kept editorial comments out of her questions.

“And this was after you two had had consensual intercourse, correct?” she asked.

“Yes, definitely consensual,” Van Ness said.

“What was she wearing at the time? When she got up to go into the bathroom after sexual relations and when you brought her out.”

“Uh, well, nothing. She had taken off her clothes.”

“When you got her back to the bed, did you cover her up with a blanket or something?”

“Of course. I put her head on a pillow and pulled the covers over her. I’m not an asshole.”

“And then you went downstairs to the dance.”

“Yes.”

“And did you give your key back to the person you borrowed it from?”

“Probably. I don’t remember if it was Andy or Victor.”

“Could you have given it to anybody else?”

“I mean, I don’t know. I doubt it. It was their room; they got the keys.”

While Ballard was able to hold her emotions in check, Maddie apparently could not.

“So you left a naked girl passed out in a room that just about any boy at that dance had access to,” Maddie said in a heated tone. “Do we have that right?”

“Look, she got drunk,” Van Ness protested. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Maybe protect her? Did you ever think once about how vulnerable she was?”

“I covered her up and locked the door. She was safe and nothing happened to her.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Van Ness did not answer. He shook his head, then turned his gaze as if looking out of the booth into the distance. But the curtain was closed.

“Are you saying something happened to her?” he asked in a quiet voice.

Ballard put her hand on Maddie’s arm to stop her from blasting him again.

“Yes, something happened to her,” she said. “She got pregnant and nine months later she had a baby.”

Van Ness turned to face them. Ballard could tell this was new information. He was stunned.

“Well, it wasn’t me!” he said. “We used protection. I had a rubber and I used it.”

“You sure about that?”

“I’m damn sure. She made me use it.”

“Then good news, Rodney. If you’re telling the truth, you’re in the clear. Because the man we’re looking for is the father of her baby.”

Van Ness’s mouth dropped open in surprise. This wasn’t remotely how he had anticipated this going.

“Well, it wasn’t me,” he finally said.

“Then your quickest way out of this is to give us your DNA,” Ballard said. “You volunteering to let us swab you would go a long way toward convincing us that you’re not the man we’re looking for.”

Ballard held back on telling him they already had the straw with his DNA on it. Van Ness shook his head like he should have known better than to come with them.

“Why are you looking for him?” he asked.

“A murder,” Ballard said. “And several rapes.”

Van Ness leaned his elbows on the table and ran his hands through his hair.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” he said. “That’s not me. You can’t believe...”

He didn’t finish.

“Then let us swab you and cross you off our list,” Ballard said.

Van Ness nodded.

“Where do we go for that?” he asked.

“We do it right here,” Ballard said. “Officer Bosch can do it.”

Van Ness hesitated, then nodded again.

“Okay, let’s do it,” he said. “I’m not your man.”

45

They dropped Van Ness off at his apartment building with a warning not to communicate with anyone from St. Vincent’s, especially the men he had shared the hotel room with on the night of the senior prom. Ballard told him that should he alert anybody to the investigation, he would be charged with aiding and abetting murder and rape. It seemed to properly scare him.

Ballard and Maddie then got in the car and headed to the freeway. They didn’t start to debrief until the neon glow of the Strip was in the rearview mirror. Maddie was the first to speak.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?” Ballard said. “You did good. We did good.”

“I know, but I shouldn’t have let my anger go like that. It was unprofessional. You were so good, holding it in the whole time. It kept him talking.”

“Maybe, but when you said what you did, it worked. He showed his guilt over how he’d left her that night and that made me think that he’s not our guy. Did you feel that?”

“I did, actually. He’s definitely a loser and will always be one, but I don’t think he’s our guy either. He wouldn’t have given us the swab.”

“Still, we give it to the lab and nail it down.”

“Right.”

“He was still hiding something he knew.”

“How so?”

“He lied by omission at first, supposedly not remembering Mallory was his date. That tells us he knew something had happened that night. When he did that, I thought he was our guy. But then no hesitation about the swab. That means he lied for some other reason. He probably told those guys that she was passed out in the room. He made her an easy target, whether he realized that or not.”

“Isn’t there some way we can nail his ass for that?”

“Maybe, but we may need him for the bigger picture.”

“Which is?”

“Prosecutors hate going into court with just DNA. Too many jurors either don’t trust it or don’t understand it. They want a person to tell the story, somebody who can connect the dots. Prosecutors want what they call DNA-plus cases. So the bigger picture here is the Pillowcase Rapist, not what Rodney Van Ness did or didn’t do the night of the prom. If we make a case on one of these other guys as the Pillowcase Rapist, we may need Rodney as a witness to tell a jury about the room and the keys and who had access.”

Maddie nodded. “You think two or three moves ahead,” she said.

“You have to,” Ballard said. “Do you have Colleen’s number?”

“Sure. She’s already texted three times today asking what’s happening.”

“Better you than me. Text her and see if she can start running down Victor Best in Hawaii. I take it you already found Andrew Bennett and Taylor Weeks?”

“I’m not sure about Weeks but I remember Bennett we found. I think he’s down in Orange County.”

“Not bad. A lot closer than Hawaii.”

Maddie pulled her phone and opened the text app.

“You might want to ask her to also do a media search in Oahu or wherever she finds Best,” Ballard said. “See if they’ve had a serial-rapist case in the last fifteen to twenty years there.”

“Got it,” Maddie said.

She typed the message on her phone. When she was finished, she had more questions.

“You think Taylor Weeks could be the guy? He had a date that night and now they’re supposedly married.”

“I’d bet on one of the other two first, but we have to nail all of them down. Never give a defense lawyer somebody else they can blame.”

“And any of them could have given the key to any guy at the dance. We could be running down names for weeks.”

“Don’t say that. I want to clear this one bad.”

“Sorry. You’re like my dad when he was on a case. Driven. Nothing else mattered.”

“You might not want to hear this, but that is a great compliment. Thank you.”

“No, I meant it as a compliment. My dad wasn’t always the easiest guy to live with but when he was engaged in something, he was fucking engaged. I hope I can be like that.”

“You already are, Maddie. And I am super-happy you joined the unit.”

Maddie’s phone dinged and she read a text. “Colleen’s on it,” she said. “I wonder if Mallory knew what had happened to her.”

“I think she must have,” Ballard said. “If she didn’t, she would’ve tagged Rodney as the father. But did you see his face when we said she got pregnant? That was news to him. I don’t see why she would have kept that to herself if she thought he was the father.”

“So fucking sad. It makes me angry.”

“Yeah.”

They lapsed into silence. They were about to cross back into California when Ballard’s phone buzzed. It was Gandle.

“Captain.”

“Ballard, a couple of things. First, guess what just came across my desk?”

“No idea, Captain.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. It’s the motor-pool record for the car you requisitioned last night. So I gotta ask: Did you go to Vegas before I gave you permission to go to Vegas?”

“Uh, well, I knew you’d approve the request because you want us to solve this case. So I was counting on that, yes, but I did not drive to Vegas last night, if that’s what you’re asking. I got to Vegas today. After you gave me permission.”

Ballard looked over at Maddie, who was watching her, and winked. Before Gandle could respond, she continued, “We’re heading back now. We got some solid leads that we’re already following up on.”

“What about the guy you went to interview? Is he a suspect?”

“We could count him as a suspect but he volunteered to let us swab him, so we’re kind of thinking he’s not our guy.”

“Then the trip was a bust.”

“No, not at all, Captain. He gave us some names, leads that I think could be fruitful.”

“I hope so, Ballard.”

“I’ve already got the team running them down.”

“Let me know what comes up.”

“Yes, sir. Did you say you had something else?”

“Yeah, I just got a reject from the DA’s office on Thawyer.”

“What?”

Ballard glanced at Maddie with distress in her eyes.

“It was rejected. Insufficient evidence for conviction.”

“That’s unbelievable. Who rejected the case, Plovc?”

“No, this comes from on high. Ernesto signed it.”

That explained it. Ernest O’Fallon was the recently elected district attorney. The chief of police had endorsed O’Fallon’s opponent in the election and that had led to an ongoing feud between the two. Neither side would concede any victories to the other, and it had resulted in some questionable applications of justice in the county. O’Fallon, nicknamed “Ernesto” by his detractors because of an ill-conceived attempt to claim partial Latino heritage during the election, would never give the LAPD the public relations bonanza of solving the iconic Black Dahlia case. And Ballard was upset with herself for not foreseeing this when she took the case to Plovc.

“That is complete bullshit,” she said. “That case is cleared.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Gandle said. “You know the protocol. If the DA doesn’t sign off on it, it’s not cleared.”

“We should go to the media. Reporters will love this story.”

“Ballard, think about what you’re saying. Don’t do something stupid that gets you demoted or worse. You’ve already been through that. You make a false move on this and you’re looking at freeway therapy just as a start. You’ll be out of cold cases before the dust even settles.”

“It’s still bullshit. We have the evidence.”

“You’re preaching to the choir. But sometimes the choir has to stop singing.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Doesn’t matter. Stand down. Stay on the Pillowcase investigation, and if we’re lucky we get to stick it up the DA’s ass with an arrest, a press conference, and everything else.”

“Whatever. I have to concentrate on driving.”

“Then I’ll let you go. But remember, Ballard, think before you act. There are consequences. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The laws of politics are the same as the laws of physics.”

Ballard said nothing.

“Are you there, Ballard?”

“I’m here.”

“I want to make sure you hear me.”

“Loud and clear, Captain.”

“Good. Get back safe and I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”

“Copy that.”

She disconnected, and Maddie was immediately on her.

“They rejected Thawyer?”

“Not they. One guy. O’Fallon — because he didn’t want to give the department a big win.”

“That makes no sense. It’s Thawyer, I know it.”

“No argument from me.”

“So what do we do?”

“Maddie, how long have you been in the department? Two years?”

“Coming up on three.”

“Okay, I know you know a lot from your dad. He got tangled in the politics and bureaucracy of it more than once. But even now, in the so-called new LAPD, you’ll learn that the politics of policing are ever present, and never more so than when you get into detective services.”

“And so — what? We just roll over because some elected asshole won’t close a case we know we solved?”

“That’s the point. We know it’s solved. We’re still going to call the Fords in Wichita and give them final answers. Okay, the DA won’t sign off on this because he doesn’t want to give our chief the win, but that doesn’t matter. We know what we know.”

“It matters to me.”

Ballard realized that it mattered to Maddie in part because the Black Dahlia case could launch her career and get her into the detective ranks sooner rather than later. Ballard suddenly felt bad about trying to educate her on the politics of the department.

“Look,” Ballard said, “people in the department will know what you did. Captain Gandle already does. When we get back, let’s see what we’ve got and what we could still get to make the case so bulletproof that the DA won’t have any choice but to sign off on it. We’re already close. There’s got to be something else. Something we haven’t thought of yet.”

Maddie responded in a dejected voice. “We already gave them enough,” she said.

“True — from our point of view. But O’Fallon’s a political animal. We have to think about it from his perspective and bring in something so important that the case becomes a liability to him if he doesn’t sign off on it.”

“Don’t you think if there was such a thing, we would have already found it?”

“Maybe. But there were photos of other victims. Let’s confirm another one. Or two more, whatever it takes. Then we go back to the DA.”

They passed a freeway sign announcing the exit to Zzyzx. Ballard opened her phone contacts and called Carol Plovc. She put the call on speaker so Maddie could hear.

“Carol, what happened?”

“Renée, I’m sorry. It was completely taken away from me. I brought it across the street to Nicki Gallant, and I had no idea she was going to take it up to O’Fallon. I knew as soon as that happened it would be a reject. I’m sorry.”

“Did you get anything back? Deficiencies? What can we do?”

“Nothing, and I don’t expect there to be any feedback. It’s the photo analysis. Like I told you, there’s reasonable doubt in the numbers.”

“Okay, Carol. Thanks for the effort.”

“If it were up to me, I would have signed off.”

“I know.”

Ballard disconnected.

“If she would have signed off on it, why did she send it across the street?” Maddie asked.

“Politics,” Ballard said. “She was in a lose-lose situation. If she signed off on it, O’Fallon would probably have demoted her. So she sent it across the street to die.”

The frustration in the car was palpable. Ballard and Maddie fell into silence. They had a hundred miles to go and nothing more to say.