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“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?”
