The Waiting

33

Because it was a holiday and she had moved the weekly team meeting to Tuesday, Ballard didn’t expect to find anyone on the raft when she arrived at Ahmanson Center with Mallory Richardson’s yearbook under her arm on Monday morning. Instead, she found Colleen Hatteras and Maddie Bosch sitting side by side in front of Colleen’s large computer screen.

“You guys know it’s a holiday, right?” Ballard said.

“I thought crime fighting never took a day off,” Hatteras said.

“We found Elyse Ford’s family,” Maddie said.

There was excitement in her voice. Ballard stayed standing at her desk. She slowly put the yearbook down on an envelope that had been sent from the photo lab.

“What do you mean, you found the family?” she asked.

“Colleen started with the name of Elyse’s mother — it was in the newspaper stories back then,” Maddie said. “She found a granddaughter online, the daughter of Elyse’s little sister.”

Colleen said, “She’s Elyse’s niece. I DM’d her and she responded and said her mother — Elyse’s sister — was still living. She’s in her eighties but still sharp, according to her daughter, and she agreed to talk to us, so we set up a Zoom.”

“When are you Zooming?” Ballard asked.

“In five minutes,” Hatteras said.

“Really?” Ballard said. “Last I heard, I was running this unit. Didn’t you think to clear this with me first?”

“Uh, we’re just going to talk to her,” Maddie said. “We’ll show her the photo from Thawyer’s files. The first shot. See if we can confirm ID.”

“Have you ever done this, told a family that their loved one was murdered?” Ballard asked. “Either of you?”

“Uh, no,” Hatteras said.

Maddie timidly shook her head. “My partner has,” she said. “After a TA. I was there but he did the talking.”

“This was no traffic accident,” Ballard said. “It doesn’t matter how much time has gone by. You tell someone her sister was murdered seventy years ago or seven hours ago, you’d better be prepared. You should have talked to me first.”

“I’m sorry,” Maddie said. “Should we cancel it?”

“It’s too late,” Ballard said. “It will be worse to leave her hanging.”

“And it’s time,” Maddie said. “The Zoom’s set for ten. Would you rather handle it?”

Ballard shook her head. “No, you do it,” she said. “It’ll be good for you to get the experience.”

Ballard sat down and moved the yearbook off the manila envelope from the lab. She opened it while listening to Maddie and Hatteras get ready for the Zoom call. The envelope contained a one-page lab report paper-clipped to Thawyer’s photos of the woman they believed was Elizabeth Short. Her eyes went to the summary box at the bottom of the page. It said that digital analysis of the photographs submitted and the photographs of Elizabeth Short in evidence and available online indicated a 92 percent probability that the photos were of the same woman.

Ballard sat up straight and looked over the privacy wall at Hatteras and Maddie. They had made the Zoom connection and were staring at the screen.

“Mrs. Fanning, my name is Madeline Bosch and this is Colleen Hatteras. We’re investigators with the Open-Unsolved Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department. We would like to talk to you about your sister, Elyse.”

“Yes, Martha told me. This is Martha. I wanted her here with me.”

“That’s fine, ma’am,” Maddie said. “Your sister was reported missing in Los Angeles in 1950. Do you remember that time?”

“I was a little girl. Elyse was my big sister, eight years older. But I remember those days well. It was an awful time for my family.”

“I understand. Uh, it was your parents in Wichita who reported her missing from Los Angeles?”

“Yes. I remember my father went out there to look for her because he didn’t think the police were trying very hard to find her. But he didn’t find anything and when he came back... he wasn’t the same man. He’d sit in the dark by himself a lot. I remember we felt helpless. There was nothing we could do but wait and hope and pray. We thought someday that she would just come home or call and say she was all right. We waited... but that never happened. My mother stopped coming out of her room. I remember having to make dinner for my father and me.”

“Martha told us you have photos of your sister from back then. Do you have them now? Could you show us?”

“I have these. This one is the whole family. That’s Elyse. She was a beautiful girl. Everyone said she should be in the movies.”

Ballard did not have to see the expression on the face of the old woman holding up the photos to know the pain of waiting that she and her family had been through.

“This one my father took when Lysie — that’s what I called her — was leaving on the train for Los Angeles. She called it the City of Angels.”

“Mrs. Fanning, we’re going to arrange to get copies of those photos. We would also like to show you a photo to see if you can confirm that it’s Elyse.”

Ballard watched Hatteras hold up what was likely the last photo taken of Elyse Ford when she was alive and unscathed.

“Yes,” the old woman said. “That’s Elyse.”

“Are you sure?” Maddie said.

“That’s my big sister. I’d know her anywhere.”

“Okay. Thank you for confirming that for us.”

“Did you find her?”

“No, ma’am, we haven’t. But, uh, we believe she was a victim of a man we’re investigating. I’m very sorry.”

“I guess our waiting is over. Did this man... make her suffer?”

“We don’t know, ma’am,” Maddie said.

Ballard could tell by the looks on the faces of Maddie and Hatteras that the two women on the screen were crying. She could hear Elyse’s sister and niece attempting to console each other. There were never enough decades to ease the pain of the murder victim’s loved ones.

“Has there been an arrest?” the older woman managed to ask. “How did you find her picture?”

“No, there is no arrest,” Maddie said. “We believe the man is dead now. We found your sister’s photos in the things he kept in storage.”

“There are other photos? Can we please see them?”

Ballard saw Maddie lean her head back as she realized her mistake. “Uh, we can’t show you those right now, ma’am,” she said.

“If you only have photos, how can you be sure that this man killed my sister?” the old woman asked.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you everything we know, Mrs. Fanning. But we are sure this man killed your sister. We know it was a long time ago, but we’re very sorry for your loss.”

“I never thought we would know.”

“I’m sorry to be the bearer of such upsetting news. We will be in touch through Martha as the investigation continues.”

“Thank you.”

Martha also thanked them, then they all said goodbye, and the Zoom ended. Ballard got up and walked over to Maddie and Hatteras with the photo-analysis report.

“Good job,” she said. “Those are not easy.”

Maddie just nodded. She looked a little shaken. Ballard put the report down on the desk.

“The photo analysis came back as a ninety-two percent probability that the woman in the photo is Elizabeth Short.”

“That’s pretty good, right?” Maddie asked, looking brighter.

“That will be up to the DA’s office to decide,” Ballard said.

“When do we go to them?”

“Soon.”

34

Ballard spent the rest of the morning running down the names from the yearbook with Hatteras and Maddie. Hatteras worked the social media and genealogy sites while Ballard and Maddie worked the DMV and law enforcement databases.

Ballard split the list with Maddie, telling her to start with the two girls Robin Richardson had identified as her daughter’s best friends. Ballard began with Rodney Van Ness, but she could find no current California license or criminal record in local, state, or national databases. From there, she moved on to the names of other boys in the class.

An hour into the project, Hatteras came to Ballard’s desk.

“Can I see the yearbook?” she asked. “Are there any pictures from the prom?”

“Yes and yes,” Ballard said. “There’s two pages of photos from the prom, but I already checked and Mallory isn’t in any of them.” She handed the book to Hatteras. “Is that what you’re looking for?” Ballard asked.

“Not really,” Hatteras said. “I just wanted to get...”

“A feel for it?”

“Sort of.”

Ballard was tired of trying to rein in Colleen’s “feelings.” “Have at it,” she said.

“I did the math,” Hatteras said. “I just think the prom is important.”

“The math?”

“Nicholas Purcell was born January twenty-ninth, 2000. You go back nine months from there and you are in April or May of 1999. Most proms are near the end of the school year.”

“You think something could have happened at the actual prom?”

“I do.”

Ballard was annoyed with herself for not having thought of doing the math.

“That’s good, Colleen,” she said. “Run with it. After you’re finished with the yearbook, see what you can find on Mallory’s date, Rodney Van Ness. He’s got a clean record, so I haven’t found him. His last California driver’s license expired in 2009. I think he moved out of state.”

“I’m on it,” Hatteras said.

Hatteras went back to her pod and Ballard checked her watch. She’d have to leave soon. Dr. Elingburg had texted her to say that she’d decided to keep her office open on the holiday because so many of her clients had expressed concern about missing their weekly therapy sessions and didn’t want to have them over Zoom. Ballard was not among those who had complained, but she was relieved when she read the text.

Elingburg had moved her usual noon appointment to one o’clock, so Ballard still had time to run a few names through the National Crime Information Center index. So far she had found only one senior boy with a criminal record, and that was for financial crimes.

After a few minutes Hatteras came back with the yearbook open to the two-page spread of photos from the senior prom.

“Look,” she said. “I think this was at the Huntington.”

The Huntington was an upscale hotel in a residential section of Pasadena. “Pretty nice for a prom,” Ballard said. “What makes you think it’s the Huntington?”

“I’ve been there for weddings over the years, including one about a month ago,” Hatteras said. “I remember these arched French doors leading out to the courtyard with the fountain.”

She pointed to the French doors that lined the wall behind the slow-dancing couples.

“Okay, so it was at the Huntington,” Ballard said. “What’s that get us?”

“It goes with the math,” Hatteras said. “The prom was at a hotel. Did you go to your prom?”

“Uh, no, I didn’t.”

“Me neither. But I know that when a prom is at a hotel, the kids — the boys, mostly — get hotel rooms and that’s where they sneak back for alcohol, drugs, and other things.”

“Like sex.”

“Exactly. I think something happened to Mallory at the prom, whether it was consensual or not. I really feel it.”

Ballard nodded. She was impressed by the way Colleen was putting things together. “Then we really need to find Rodney Van Ness,” she said.

“I already did,” Hatteras said. “He’s on LinkedIn. He lives in Las Vegas and is a security supervisor at the Cleopatra Casino.”

“You found him that quick?”

“Almost all these people have LinkedIn accounts. They’re in their early forties and in the business world. LinkedIn’s a better starting point than Facebook or Instagram.”

“What else does it say about him?”

“He’s been there nine years. He worked at Caesars before that.”

“What about a home address?”

“It doesn’t give that. But it has a work phone for him and a second number that I think might be a cell. Should we call him?”

“No, not yet. We have to think about the best approach to him. We might only get one shot. Did it say anything about him being in law enforcement before casino security?”

“Let me pull up his whole résumé and check.”

“If you’re locating a lot of these people, are you making a chart?”

“Oh, yes. I’m writing it all down.”

Ballard raised her voice so Maddie could hear her on the other side of the privacy wall: “Maddie, what about Mallory’s friends? Have you found them?”

“Found one — Jacqueline Todd,” Maddie said. “Has a clean record and is still local. By the way, my prom was at a hotel that was in the Galleria in the Valley. A lot of people got rooms, and all I’m saying is there were a lot of drugs.”

“That was where the prom was in Valley Girl,” Hatteras said.

“Love that movie,” Maddie said. “Nicolas Cage was awesome.”

“Okay, so, on the names,” Ballard said, bringing the conversation back to the point. “Let’s go see Mallory’s friend who stayed local.”

“When?” Maddie asked.

“I have a one o’clock appointment for an hour,” Ballard said. “Let’s go after that.”

“What about going to the DA on the Dahlia case?” Maddie asked.

“They’re dark today,” Ballard said. “We’ll think about that tomorrow.”

Ballard’s cell phone buzzed. She looked at the screen and saw that it was Harry Bosch. “I have to take this,” she said.

She grabbed the phone and headed for the evidence room, where her conversation would not be overheard.

“Hey,” she said on her way, purposely not saying his name.

“Can you talk?” Bosch asked.

“Yes. Let me just get to... hold on.”

She unlocked the room, entered, and closed the door behind her.

“Sorry — I can talk now,” she said. “What’s up?”

“Let me guess,” Bosch said. “Colleen was hanging around listening.”

“Well, your daughter’s here too and she hasn’t said anything about what happened Saturday, so I’m assuming you don’t want her to know.”

“Might not be able to prevent that now. I just heard from a reporter at the L.A. Times. That’s why I’m calling, to give you a heads-up that somebody in the FBI is leaking.”

“Damn. Who was the reporter?”

“Scott Anderson. I neither confirmed nor denied.”

“I saw that he wrote a couple of the initial stories. So he’s plugged in. What did he ask that you didn’t answer?”

“Somehow he knows I was the CI. He asked how I knew about these guys wanting to buy machine guns.”

“Ugh. Did he mention me?”

“No, but I didn’t give him a chance to. I no-commented and hung up on him. But even if he doesn’t know about you, if they run a story about me, there are people in the department who know that you and I are tight. So that’s the heads-up.”

“Okay, got it. I appreciate the call.”

“Let me know if you hear from him.”

“I will.”

“How’s Maddie doing? I thought she worked Mondays at Hollywood.”

“She’s doing really good. She does work Monday PMs, but she came in today and I didn’t even ask why. She’s going to be a good detective, Harry. You’re gonna be proud.”

“I already am.”

“Good. Talk to you later, then.”

Ballard disconnected and looked at her watch. She needed to leave for her appointment with Dr. Elingburg, but first she put in a call to Agent Olmstead.

“Ballard, how are you doing?”

“I’m good. You still basking in the glow of your domestic-terrorist takedown?”

“Well, you could say that the powers that be around here are my new best friends.”

“Good to hear. But what’s not good to hear is that the L.A. fucking Times is calling Harry Bosch about him being your undercover informant on the caper.”

There was a pause while Olmstead considered this news.

“When did this happen?” he asked.

“Today,” Ballard said.

“I hope he declined to comment.”

“Of course he did, but here’s the thing — his name should have never gotten to the media. He’s a confidential informant, for Chrissake, Gordon. If the Times comes out with a story, it could put him in danger. Who knows how many sympathizers and yahoos think that what Dehaven was planning was patriotic.”

“I know, I know. All I can tell you is that it wasn’t me and I’m going to jump on this and find out who the fuck it was.”

Ballard was not sure she believed him. It seemed to her that the feds always had ulterior motives. Her prior experiences with Olmstead made her think that he could be trusted, but if she was wrong about that, it wouldn’t be the first time.

“The other thing is that if your leak is giving me up too, you’re going to have a PR problem,” she said. “Because if I get named, I won’t hold back. I’ll tell the Times that I gave you this on a silver platter after I did the groundwork and ID’d Dehaven and his merry band of roaming terrorists. The powers that be won’t think you’re walking on water anymore when that comes out.”

There was another silence before Olmstead responded.

“Understood,” he finally said.

“Good,” Ballard said. “Let me know when you’ve shut it down.”

She disconnected without a goodbye to emphasize her anger over the situation. She called Harry Bosch back.

“I just read Olmstead the riot act. He might not care too much about you, but he is worried about keeping this as a big fat FBI and Gordon Olmstead win. All of that goes down the tubes if you and I get pulled into the media on it.”

“I knew you’d know how to handle it.”

“Well, hopefully he’ll take care of it.”

“You think there’s any chance he’s the leak?”

“I thought about that but it doesn’t make sense. Right now he’s a hero. If the whole truth comes out, he doesn’t look as good. It’s probably someone in that office who’s jealous of the attention he’s getting from this.”

“I think so too. But thanks for setting him right, Renée.”

“All in a day’s work.”

After disconnecting, Ballard checked her watch. She needed to get going. She noticed the old-style suitcase on the floor next to the file cabinet holding what was left of the Black Dahlia files. The suitcase, which contained Elizabeth Short’s clothes, had been found in a locker at the bus station in Hollywood several weeks after her murder in 1947. The locker’s rental time had expired and the janitor was cleaning it out. No one knew who had stored the suitcase there — it could have been Elizabeth or her killer.

Forensic analysts at the time had failed to find any fingerprints or other evidence on or in the case that might lead to a suspect. The suitcase and its contents had not been pilfered over the decades because the case was stored in the department’s secured evidence archive, whereas the file cabinet containing the investigative files was kept in the homicide unit offices, to which many people had access.

Seeing the suitcase gave Ballard an idea. She decided that she would follow up on it after the appointment with her therapist.

35

Ballard was five minutes late for her appointment with Dr. Elingburg. When she entered the waiting room, the door to the inner sanctum was already open, and she walked right in. Dr. Elingburg was in her usual spot on one of the couches. There were two glasses of water on the coffee table in front of her.

“Sorry I’m late,” Ballard said.

“Busy day?” Elingburg asked.

Ballard sat in her usual spot on the opposite couch. “Wasn’t supposed to be,” she said. “But, yeah, it got busy.”

“No holiday in the pursuit of justice,” Elingburg said.

“Something like that.”

“I see that you’re wearing a badge on your belt. Is that the badge that went missing or a replacement?”

“It’s the badge that was taken, yeah. A little worse for the wear, but I got it back.”

“Without your superiors finding out it had been stolen?”

“As of now they haven’t found out. But that could change. You never know.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t. Before we get started, is there anything you would like to discuss today?”

“Uh, not really. To be honest, I haven’t had a day off since our last session, so I haven’t really had time to think about therapy. But I’m here.”

Elingburg nodded and picked up the notebook she kept on the coffee table during their sessions. “Well, let’s go down our discussion list, then,” she said. “How has your sleep pattern been?”

“Uh, good and bad,” Ballard said. “I have the usual insomnia some nights and on others I’m so tired by the time I hit the pillow, it’s like I’m knocked out. But even after a few hours I’ll wake up and not be able to get back to sleep.”

“You told me once that you can hear the ocean from your bedroom. That doesn’t help?”

“In the winter, it’s too cold at night to keep a window open. So lately I don’t really hear the ocean.”

“I’m going to send you a link to a white-noise machine you can get online. It has various settings, like ocean, wind, leaves blowing across a lawn. I think it could be helpful, but the bottom line is your sleep mechanisms are not working.”

“I know that. Isn’t that why I came here in the first place?”

“It is and we need to keep trying to figure it out. Is there anything new with your mother?”

Ballard shook her head. “Not that I know of, and that’s my fault. I haven’t had time to call Farley since we last talked.”

“Farley is...”

“Dan Farley on the ID team. He’s my contact and he’s taken a special interest in my case, probably because I’m in law enforcement. Or, I should say, he’s taken a special interest in my mother’s case.”

“Well, maybe you’ll have an update by our next session. We can move on. With this busy week you’ve been having, have you been on the water much?”

“Not at all. I haven’t been on a board since the day my badge got stolen.”

“So, a week ago.”

Talk of surfing made Ballard remember that she had Seth Dawson’s watch and needed to get it back to him.

“Renée?”

“Sorry, what was the question?”

“I don’t know if there was one, but you sort of went away there. What were you thinking about?”

“Nothing, really. I recovered a watch that was stolen from a surfer and I have to get it back to him, that’s all.”

“It seems that you’re so caught up in and busy with work that you’ve had no time for the one thing that you’ve told me keeps your sanity intact: being on the water.”

“No argument there. I miss it.”

“What was it you said to me before about the water?”

“It’s my salvation. I know.”

“If you know that, why haven’t you been able to get out there?”

“I’ve had no time. I see the water when I’m driving to work, but I haven’t had the time to get out and on it. But if it will make you happy, I promise to get out there tomorrow morning.”

“That would make me very happy. For you.”

“I’ll do it.”

“So, I want to talk to you about something I said last week. The more I think about it, the more I feel like I was wrong.”

“About what?”

“Well, I wrote something down and you asked what it was. I had written ‘vicarious trauma,’ and I proceeded to tell you that I thought it was at the root of the agitation and insomnia you’re encountering. I more or less said that you were a sin eater, that you took in all the horrors you saw on your job and kept them inside, and they came out in these symptoms we are seeing: insomnia, agitation leading to a short temper.”

“And now you’re saying that’s not it?”

“It’s part of it. But I want to get into abandonment issues with you. Is that all right?”

“I guess so.”

“Let me start with a question that might be difficult for you to answer.”

“Just what I need.”

“Tell me your thinking on this. I know you have this man Farley in Maui who keeps you updated about the search for your mother, and you have a very busy job here, but—”

“Why haven’t I gone there to look for her myself?”

Elingburg pointed her pen at her. “Exactly. Sounds like you’ve thought about this.”

“Yeah, I have.”

“And?”

“And I don’t know. Sometimes I think I don’t go there because she didn’t come looking for me. You know, after my dad... died, I was left on my own. I was alone and scared and she should have come looking for me. But it was Tutu who came for me. She saved me. And I can’t get past that, you know?”

“It’s a common response. Abandonment resentment. What comes up for you when you understand that’s what’s going on?”

“Well, it makes me feel guilty as hell. Like I should be over there looking for her.”

“It’s a cycle. Lather, rinse, repeat.”

“I guess so. That’s why I can’t sleep?”

“Partly, yes. You’re not sleeping because your mind can’t rest. This cycle keeps it active. You need to break the cycle. You can’t just keep lathering, rinsing, and repeating forever — you have to find the triggers that begin the cycle and deal with them.”

“I mean, I see the triggers all the time. I deal with families that have been shattered by the sudden loss of a daughter or son or mother or father. Doesn’t matter who it is, I see the loss and it doesn’t ever go away. I see how they’ve been hollowed out by it. All of them waiting for some form of closure they know in their hearts isn’t coming. And I think, Why wasn’t she like that? Why was she okay with leaving me and with me dealing with what happened alone out there?”

Elingburg said nothing. Ballard knew this was a way to keep her talking and revealing herself. She used the same technique with suspects. And it worked.

“This morning we had a Zoom call with a woman whose sister disappeared almost seventy-five years ago. This woman tried to be so stoic, but I could hear the pain in her voice. It never goes away. Never...”

She didn’t finish.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m just rambling.”

“You’re not rambling,” Elingburg said. “You’re digging down to the core of this.”

Ballard smirked.

“What?” Elingburg asked.

“I have a sign on my pod wall that says ‘Dig Down,’” Ballard said. “It’s from a song I like. That’s what we do in cold cases. We dig down into the past.”

“And what we do in here.”

“I guess so. Maybe that makes me a cold case. Too cold to get on a plane to go find my missing mother. Waiting for somebody else to do it when deep in my heart I know it should be me.”

Ballard watched Elingburg write that down.

36

Colleen and Maddie were still working when Ballard got back to the Ahmanson Center. They showed her the chart they had put together. They had located fifty-two of the sixty-six seniors listed in the 1999 St. Vincent’s yearbook. Of the remaining fourteen, five were boys and nine were girls; the girls were more difficult to find because their last names sometimes changed when they got married. Additionally, Maddie had run criminal record checks, but those produced only two former students who had been convicted of crimes, the one for financial fraud that Ballard had also found, the other for indecent exposure.

They spent the next half hour putting together an interview-priority list. The name at the top was Rodney Van Ness, Mallory’s date for his senior prom. Although he was first on the list, because he was located in Las Vegas, he was probably not going to be the first interview. Taking a road trip required planning and approvals.

Next on the list was Jacqueline Todd, one of Mallory’s two best friends. She was still living in Los Angeles, according to LinkedIn, and working as a screenwriter. Mallory’s other best friend, Emma, was third on the priority list, but she had not been located. They hoped that Jacqueline Todd would have her contact information.

Fourth on the list was Nathan Hyatt, the former student who had been arrested for indecent exposure a year after graduation. He was living in Venice, according to the DMV. He had no criminal record since that arrest but was an obvious choice for scrutiny, as the indecent exposure could have been a precursor to more serious sexually motivated crimes. Most serial offenders follow an escalating path of sex crimes, Ballard knew. Her only hesitation about Hyatt was that he had most likely been interviewed by the original Pillowcase Rapist task force. She would have to pull the records, but she knew that the task force had thrown out a wide net and interviewed almost all known sex offenders living in the county then.

“Maddie, how much time you got before you go in today?” Ballard asked.

“A few hours,” Maddie said. “I have roll call at six.”

“Let’s go talk to Jacqueline Todd,” Ballard said.

“Sounds good,” Maddie said.

They took separate cars so Maddie could peel off and go to work if the interview went long or was delayed. Ballard took the lead, working her way to the 405 freeway and then heading north toward the Valley. Jacqueline Todd, according to the DMV, lived in Sherman Oaks.

Ballard’s GPS app said it was a thirty-eight-minute drive. She decided to use the time to make phone calls. The first was to Gordon Olmstead at the FBI, but it went straight to voicemail. She assumed Olmstead was avoiding her after the earlier call and left a message: “It’s Ballard. Just looking for an update on whether you shut down the leak. Call me back, please.”

She knew he wouldn’t. She thought about how aggressive she had been with Olmstead earlier and what Dr. Elingburg had said about her short temper. She called Olmstead back and left another message: “Gordon, me again. Sorry about being so testy last time we talked. A lot of stuff is going on and I overreacted. Call me when you can.”

She disconnected and drove for a bit, thinking about the interview she hoped to conduct with Jacqueline Todd. She knew the apartment complex she and Maddie were headed to because she had been there on prior cases. It made her think about her mother, so she made her next call to Dan Farley in Maui. It was a holiday but he had told her that MINT members were not taking any holidays off, other than Christmas, because of the urgency of identifying the dead from the fires and informing their families.

Farley took the call and Ballard could tell he was in a car.

“Hello, Renée.”

“Dan, did I catch you at a bad time? I thought you’d be working today.”

“I am. On my way down to Wailea to make a notification. Members of the family are staying at the Four Seasons.”

“Oh, man, that’s tough. Not the Four Seasons, the notification.”

“Yeah, but I find it’s better face-to-face than over the phone. I’ve done a lot of those and they seem so impersonal. This one’s a twenty-two-year-old son. He was bumming around the islands and went to Lahaina. Wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Yeah.”

There was a beat of silence before Farley spoke.

“If I had any news for you, I would have called, Renée.”

“I know. I was just thinking about her today. My mother. Whenever I talk to you, it sort of calms me. I don’t know why.”

“I understand. You know you can call me anytime. I deal with a lot of families waiting to hear something, whether it’s good or bad. But we haven’t found her among the dead so far, and that’s a good sign, right?”

“I guess so.”

“I think that when we find Makani, she’s going to be alive.”

With all the cases he was working and all the families he was dealing with, the fact that Farley remembered her mother’s name comforted Ballard.

“I hope so,” she said. “Thanks, Dan.”

“Call anytime,” Farley said again.

The freeway took her over the Santa Monica Mountains through the Sepulveda Pass, and on the downgrade Ballard transitioned to the 101 and then immediately exited at Van Nuys Boulevard. Jacqueline Todd lived in an apartment complex on Magnolia called the Horace Heidt Estates. It was a very large complex with a distinctive Hawaiian-village feel, with tiki bars and facilities with names like the Aloha Room. Horace Heidt had been a radio bandleader in the 1940s and ’50s and had built the apartments so members of his band could live and practice together. There were three pools and an executive golf course. There was also a mini-museum of Hollywood memorabilia that Ballard had toured with Heidt’s son, who now ran the place. It was largely photos, costumes, and other keepsakes Horace Heidt had collected during his time as a bandleader.

Ballard drove through the complex and found the building where Jacqueline Todd lived. As she parked, Maddie pulled in next to her. Before getting out, Ballard looked up Jacqueline Todd on IMDb and found her writing credits. Over the past ten years she had written and produced several episodes of various television series. Most of them were crime shows. Her latest credits were on a streaming series called Apex, about a squad of LAPD detectives who went after the “biggest predators out there.” The unit had a logo that showed a cartoonish great white shark’s gaping mouth and double rows of teeth. Ballard noted that the writer went by the name Jackie Todd professionally.

She got out with her leather laptop bag, though she had left the computer at the office.

“Let me do the talking,” she said to Maddie. “If I give you the nod, you take it from there.”

The knock on the door of apartment 241 was answered by a woman wearing baggy sweatpants and a T-shirt with the same shark logo Ballard had just seen on IMDb. She had short-clipped hair like the lead actress on a show Ballard liked, Criminal Record.

“Jackie Todd?” Ballard asked.

“Yes,” the woman said. “How can I... help you?”

“I’m Detective Ballard with the LAPD and this is Officer Bosch. We’d like to come in and ask you a few—”

Ballard didn’t finish. Todd had raised a hand to cover her mouth and hide a wide smile.

“Is something funny?” Ballard asked.

“Uh, no, I’m sorry,” Todd said. “Please, come in.”

She moved back so Ballard and Maddie could enter. They stepped into a living room with an old and lumpy couch and three cushioned chairs positioned around a bamboo-and-glass coffee table. A balcony off the living room looked down on a pool. It was a sunny day but February-cold, and the lounge chairs surrounding the water were empty. There was an adjoining dining room with a table holding an open laptop and several scripts and notebooks.

“Are you working today?” Ballard asked.

“I’m a writer,” Todd said. “I’m always working. Should I sit down, or how do you want to do this?”

“Sitting is good,” Ballard said. “How about over here?” She pointed to the couch and chairs.

“Sure,” Todd said. “But I’m warning you, don’t stand on the coffee table. It’s too rickety.”

“Uh, we weren’t planning to do that,” Ballard said, puzzled.

They moved toward the chairs, and Todd sat on the couch.

“Did you bring your music in that?” Todd asked. She pointed to Ballard’s laptop bag.

“Music?” Ballard asked. “No. We just want to ask you a few questions.”

“Okay...” Todd said. She smiled again and added a giggle.

Ballard was fully confused now, but Maddie apparently wasn’t.

“Do you think we’re fake cops?” she asked. “Like strippers or something?”

“Well, yeah,” Todd said. “Like a mother-and-daughter thing? Bernardo sent you, right?”

Ballard held up her hand as if to nip that thought in the bud.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re not strippers and not mother and daughter. And I don’t know who Bernardo is.” Ballard pulled her badge off her belt as she said this and held it out across the coffee table. Maddie did the same.

“These aren’t props,” Ballard said. “They’re real.”

Todd sat straight up.

“Oh my God!” she said. “I thought it was — I’m so sorry. Today’s my birthday and I thought the writing room sent you. Like, as a gag. They pranked me last year and... I just thought... you know.”

“This is the Apex writing room you’re talking about?” Ballard asked.

“Exactly,” Todd said. “I was told to expect a delivery today, even though it’s a holiday. I’m so embarrassed.”

“Well, I’m glad we cleared that up.”

“I don’t understand, though. Why would you want to talk to me?”

“Well, we were told that twenty-five years ago, you had a friend named Mallory Richardson. Do you remember her?”

Todd’s face took on a serious look.

“Mallory?” she asked. “Why are you asking about Mallory?”

“She’s come up in an investigation we’re conducting,” Ballard said. “What we would like to do is just ask you about the period when you two were friends. Is that all right?”

“Well, yeah. But you do know that Mallory’s been dead for a long time, right?”

“Yes, we know.”

“Are you saying she was murdered or something?”

“No, we’re not. Her death is not why we’re here. Can you tell us a little bit about your relationship with her? Like how you knew her and what sort of girl she was?”

“Well, we became friends because we went to school together.”

“St. Vincent’s in Pasadena?”

“Yes, St. V.’s, as we called it. And we weren’t part of the popular clique. We sat at the odd-fellows table in the cafeteria and that’s how we met.”

“What was the odd-fellows table?”

“You know, for the kids who didn’t fit in. That’s what we called it. I was one of only three Black kids at the school, and the other two were boys and athletes. I was writing poetry, not playing sports, so I wasn’t like them. The odd fellows were the nerds and outcasts. Late bloomers socially.”

“I think you just described me in high school. But they called our table the losers club,” said Ballard.

“Then you get it. So that’s how I knew Mallory. But that was like twenty-five years ago. She left after tenth grade and I never saw her again. Her family moved out to the desert and we lost touch.”

“Right. So you didn’t have any contact with her the summer after tenth grade or later?”

“No, it was kind of weird. It was like she dropped off the planet. And then, like a year after that, we heard that she’d taken pills and killed herself.”

“When you say ‘we,’ who else do you mean?”

“There was another girl we were friends with.”

“Was that Emma Arciniega?”

“Yes. Sounds like you already know a lot about it.”

“Well, you write cop shows, you know how it goes. Are you still in touch with Emma?”

“On occasion. She’s got her life and I have mine.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Marriage, kids, the whole thing. For her, I mean. I’m not married.”

“What’s Emma’s last name now? Where does she live?”

“Emma Sepulveda. Like the street. She’s still in South Pas.”

“She work?”

“She’s a court stenographer at the appeals court over there.”

“And her husband?”

“Randy Sepulveda. He’s an actor. Or trying to be. That’s when I usually hear from her, when she wants me to get him cast in a show I’m working on.”

“You ever do it?”

“You do know that I’m a writer, right? Writers don’t make those kinds of choices. I’ve had to explain that to Emma many times.”

Ballard turned slightly toward Maddie and gave her a single nod. Her turn.

“What about Rodney Van Ness?” Maddie asked. “Was he one of the odd fellows?”

Todd paused for a moment to search her memory.

“Rodney — no. He was two years ahead of us — a senior,” Todd said. “Odd fellows didn’t cross lines like that. You stuck to your own grade.”

“He took Mallory to his senior prom.”

“If you two already know everything, why come here?”

“We need to know more. Did you go to the senior prom when you were in the tenth grade?”

“I never went to the senior prom, even when I was a senior. Was never asked, and the patriarchy did not allow the girls to ask the guys back then.”

There was an undertone of bitterness to that answer that could not be missed, a resentment that had not gone away even after all these years.

“How did Rodney Van Ness know Mallory if they were two grades apart?” Maddie asked.

“The older boys were always checking out the younger girls,” Todd said. “I don’t think he knew her that well when he asked her to the prom.”

“Was she excited to be asked?”

“Sure.”

“Did she tell you about the prom afterward?”

“No, she wouldn’t talk about it.”

“How come?”

“Because — as I’m sure you know because you already know things — something happened.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I just said she didn’t talk about it.”

“Did her behavior change? What was the tell?”

“The tell?”

“That something had happened at the prom.”

“I don’t know if there was a tell. She wouldn’t talk about it, that’s all. Emma and me, we thought it had just been a really bad date. There were only a few weeks left of school at that point. And then she was gone and I never heard from her again.”

“What about when she died? How did you find out about it?”

Todd thought for a moment.

“You know, I can’t remember,” she finally said. “I think maybe Emma told me. But that’s when we started to think that something really bad had happened. Maybe at the prom.”

“But you have no idea what that was?” Ballard pressed.

“Well, the obvious thing is that she’d had sex with Rodney and it was her first time and it didn’t go well. Or she’d been coerced into having sex. Or even worse. But like I said, at the time I just thought it had been a bad date. Mal gave no indication it was anything else.”

Ballard nodded but didn’t say anything, waiting for Todd to continue, but she didn’t.

“Okay,” Ballard finally said. “We have a copy of the yearbook from when you were in tenth grade. I’m hoping you can look at it and tell me if you remember who some of the people in the photos are.”

“I can try,” Todd said. “But that was like twenty-five years ago.”

“I know,” Ballard said. “I just need you to give it a try. We’re interested in identifying people in the photos from the prom. Also, I assume there were more than just the three of you at the odd-fellows table. It would be good if we could get those names as well.”

“You know, you never said exactly what this is about,” Todd said. “I mean, if Mallory wasn’t murdered, then what are you investigating? Was it rape?”

“Like I said, we’re not investigating her death,” Ballard said. “But we can’t really give more information yet. When it comes together, we will let you know.”

Ballard pulled the yearbook out of her leather bag and opened it to the double-page spread of photos taken at the prom. There was a center photo showing the prom king and queen onstage with a cutline that identified the couple, but the four other photos did not have any captions beneath them.

“We’re trying to figure out who was at the prom because we might need to speak to them,” Ballard said. “Do you remember any of these people?”

Todd gazed down at the five black-and-white photos.

“I don’t think I can — well, that’s Rodney right there,” she said.

She tapped a photo of a group of boys standing around a table where some of their dates were seated.

The individual in the photo she tapped had a beard.

“Really?” Ballard said. “I thought that was a teacher.”

“No, he had a beard then,” Todd said. “I remember that. Made him look old.”

Ballard looked at the senior photo of Rodney Van Ness again and then flipped back and forth between that and the prom picture, doing a comparison between the clean-cut and studio-styled Rodney and the bearded prom-night Rodney.

“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.

“Send me that report too,” she said. “Then that’s enough for today, Colleen. I’ll see you tomorrow at the team meeting.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me for anything else?” Hatteras asked.

“Not today. It’s supposed to be a holiday, remember? I’m leaving too after I get some paperwork done.”

Ballard knew that if she went to the lockdown room now to retrieve the suitcase, Hatteras would never leave; she would stay and look over Ballard’s shoulder. So instead Ballard went to her desk, opened her terminal, and started writing a summary of the interview with Jackie Todd to send to Captain Gandle.

It was a waiting game. Hatteras was taking her time finishing up her work and shutting down. Ballard wrote a two-page summary on the interview, and Hatteras was still at her desk. Ballard could hear her keyboard clicking on the other side of the partition.

Once she filed the report and sent a copy to Gandle, she started an email to the captain requesting his approval for a trip to Las Vegas to interview Rodney Van Ness. She carefully outlined his connection to the Pillowcase Rapist case. Van Ness could be a key witness, a person of interest, or even a suspect, and she explained that he had to be approached in person so his reactions and answers could be properly gauged. Ballard wrote that the trip was critical and that money from her unit’s NIJ grant would pay for her and Officer Bosch to make the likely two-day road trip to Nevada and back.

“What’s that?”

Hatteras had come around the raft and walked up behind her without Ballard’s noticing while she was doing a final read of the email. She immediately clicked the send button. She turned to look at Hatteras, who had car keys in her hand. Finally, she was leaving.

“An email to the captain,” Ballard said. “You’re going home now?”

“Yes,” Hatteras said. “But are you going to Las Vegas?”

She had obviously spied the subject line of the email before Ballard sent it.

“I don’t know yet, and it’s not something you need to worry about,” Ballard said.

“I was just going to say I could go with you,” Hatteras said. “To help.”

“Colleen, it’s fieldwork and we talked about that. You need additional training if you want to do anything in the field.”

“Then sign me up,” Hatteras said. “I’m tired of being a computer nerd.”

“Colleen, you’re not a nerd. You are a very important part of this unit. Look at all the leads you have come up with in just the past few days. But this is a team, and every member of the team needs to do their part so that we can get the best results on our cases. I’m sorry I have to keep explaining this to you.”

“I know, I know. I just wish—”

“Look, you’ve put in a long day and I want you to go home and rest up. I need your best work when you come in tomorrow. Okay, Colleen?”

Hatteras frowned and nodded. “Are you leaving now? I’ll walk out with you.”

“No, I still have more paperwork and emails to do,” Ballard said. “And this is only delaying it. I want you to go home, Colleen.”

“Okay, okay. I get it. I’m leaving.”

“Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Nine o’clock?”

“Right, though we both know you’ll be in before that.”

Hatteras smiled slightly and nodded again. She turned and finally headed to the door.

Ballard waited, half expecting to see Colleen round the corner by the first row of the murder archives and come back to the raft.

Luckily, she didn’t.

When she was sure Hatteras was gone, Ballard stood, opened her desk drawer, and grabbed the key to the lockdown room. She picked up the file containing Thawyer’s photos of Elizabeth Short and went to open her suitcase.