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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."