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Ballard leaned in to read the two-paragraph bio of Best.
“‘Nearly twenty years of experience in restaurants in Hawaii,’” she read out loud. “If that’s true, he would’ve been over there when the last attack occurred here. Van Ness said the same thing.”
“So we scratch him off the list?” Hatteras asked.
“Not yet. We still need to confirm. Bios like this are exaggerated. And Van Ness was wrong about the island, so he could be wrong about the timing too.”
“Got it.”
Ballard stared at the photo of Best. He had a shaved head, a wide smile, and a deep tan. She could see how the kid in the yearbook photo had grown into the man on the screen. The eyes were the same, a deep brown so dark that she could barely see the ring around each iris. She wondered if she was staring at the eyes of a rapist-murderer.
Hatteras interrupted her thoughts by asking, “Did you ever live in Kona?”
“Uh, no, I never lived on the Big Island. I lived in Maui, and I went to J-school in Oahu.”
“J-school?”
“Journalism. I was a reporter for a while before I was a cop.”
“Interesting. I didn’t know that.”
The mention of her past suddenly gave Ballard an idea for how she might be able to learn when Best left California for Hawaii.
“Colleen, how did you find him?” she asked.
“It was easy,” Hatteras said. “I just googled ‘Victor Best Hawaii,’ and this page on the restaurant site came up. I wish it were always this easy.”
Ballard kept her plan for Best to herself and moved on with the report from Hatteras.
“Okay, what did you find on Andrew Bennett?”
“It was not as easy with him. As you can imagine, there are a lot of Andrew Bennetts out there. Again, based on what Maddie said Van Ness told you, I made Orange County one of my parameters and found four Andrew Bennetts in the county. I went through them and locked in on one down in Laguna Beach. He works for a real estate firm that has bios of its sales reps on its website. His bio says he was born in California, and then I just did a comparison to the yearbook. Take a look.”
Hatteras pulled up a photo of a smiling Andrew “Andy” Bennett on a real estate firm’s website, then put up next to it an enlarged photo she had scanned in of the Andy Bennett from the yearbook. There was no doubt that the agent was the Andy Bennett who had graduated in 1999 from St. Vincent’s in Pasadena. Unlike Victor Best, who had lost hair and added sun wrinkles around the eyes, Bennett looked like he had found the fountain of youth or a good plastic surgeon. There were no wrinkles, and he still had a full head of hair. Ballard realized the style had not changed either. His jet-black hair was stillparted cleanly on the left. He was smiling broadly and standing by aSOLDsign in front of a house.
“I wonder how old this photo is,” Ballard said. “He looks like he’s about thirty.”
“I know,” Hatteras said. “I tried to find more photos but struck out. The California Department of Real Estate database has no record of complaints against him, and he’s been licensed since 2007.”
“I’ll run his DMV and hopefully we come up with a home address. But shoot me his office address on a text.”
“I already ran his DMV records and got the address. I’ll send it to you.”
“How did you run his DMV?”
“I used your password.”
“Colleen, how do you have my password?”
“Anders gave it to me.”
“What?”
“I think it’s yours. That’s what he said.”
“This can’t be happening. Look, whatever he gave you, do not use it again. You understand? That could bring the whole unit down. I’ll talk to Anders, but don’t use it anymore.”
“Okay, sorry. I didn’t know it was such a big deal. The other day you had me run a check on your screen because you were still logged in. I didn’t see the difference. I just thought you gave it to him.”
