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“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.
