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Wrong answer. It opened a door.
“Did you give her drugs?” Ballard asked.
“No way,” he said. “I didn’t give drugs to anybody.”
Ballard reached over and flipped the pages to the Post-it marking the photos from the prom. She put her finger down on Van Ness standing in the group photo without Mallory.
“Why isn’t she in this photo, Rodney?” she asked. “Where was she?”
“I don’t know,” Van Ness said. “Probably the bathroom. How would I know?”
“You’re saying she’d ducked out of a group prom photo to go to the bathroom?”
“I told you, I don’t know where she was.”
Ballard moved her finger over to the image of Victor Best.
“What about Victor?” she asked. “Where is his date?”
“I don’t know,” Van Ness said. “I don’t think he had one. A lot of guys came stag ’cause it was the last dance.”
The courts had long ago ruled that police could lie to suspects about evidence they had against them, the thinking being that if the suspects were innocent, they would know the police were lying. Ballard had always used the privilege judiciously because it never went over well with juries. The logic was murky, and at the end of the day, people didn’t like their police to lie.
Ballard and Maddie had strategized the interview on the drive from L.A., and they had come up with a lie that Ballard could inject into the interview if the moment called for it.
The moment was calling for it now.
Ballard tapped the group photo again.
“This was at the Huntington,” she said. “You know what’s a cool thing about the Huntington and really useful to law enforcement?”
“I don’t know,” Van Ness said. “Cameras?”
“Not back then. But what they have done since day one is keep their occupancy and banquet records.”
“So?”
“Well, we went back and found that the St. Vincent’s senior prom was held on May twenty-second, 1999. Then we looked at hotel occupancy on that night and we found a room with your name on it.”
“That’s bullshit. I didn’t have a room.”
Ballard stared at him. He had called her bluff and now she was scrambling.
“You sure about that?” she said. “If you lie to the police, you knowyou can get into some deep shit. I’m trying to get you back home, but this—”
“Look, if they put my name on the room, they didn’t tell me,” Van Ness said. “But I didn’t rent the room and I didn’t pay for the room. My name shouldn’t have been on it.”
Ballard nodded as her adrenaline kicked up. She had used the lie, the bluff, to get to a hidden truth, and her instincts told her this was going to lead to something.
“Who is ‘they’?” she asked. “Who put your name on the room?”
“Fine, we got a room to party in,” Van Ness said. “Lots of kids did. They all shared rooms and most of us were on the same hallway. It was party central.”
“I get that. Who did you share a room with?”
“Look, I had no money back then. Remember, South Pas? So some guys added me to their room.”
“Okay, sure. Which guys? Show me.”
