45

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.