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Van Ness hesitated, then nodded again.
“Okay, let’s do it,” he said. “I’m not your man.”
45
THEY DROPPED VANNess 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 Oahuor 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.”
