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“I guess so.”
“Let me start with a question that might be difficult for you to answer.”
“Just what I need.”
“Tell me your thinking on this. I know you have this man Farley in Maui who keeps you updated about the search for your mother, and you have a very busy job here, but—”
“Why haven’t I gone there to look for her myself?”
Elingburg pointed her pen at her. “Exactly. Sounds like you’ve thought about this.”
“Yeah, I have.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know. Sometimes I think I don’t go there because she didn’t come looking for me. You know, after my dad… died, I was left on my own. I was alone and scared and she should have come looking for me. But it was Tutu who came for me. She saved me. And I can’t get past that, you know?”
“It’s a common response. Abandonment resentment. What comes up for you when you understand that’s what’s going on?”
“Well, it makes me feel guilty as hell. Like I should be over there looking for her.”
“It’s a cycle. Lather, rinse, repeat.”
“I guess so. That’s why I can’t sleep?”
“Partly, yes. You’re not sleeping because your mind can’t rest. This cycle keeps it active. You need to break the cycle. You can’t just keep lathering, rinsing, and repeating forever—you have to find the triggers that begin the cycle and deal with them.”
“I mean, I see the triggers all the time. I deal with families that have been shattered by the sudden loss of a daughter or son or mother or father. Doesn’t matter who it is, I see the loss and it doesn’t ever goaway. I see how they’ve been hollowed out by it. All of them waiting for some form of closure they know in their hearts isn’t coming. And I think,Why wasn’t she like that? Why was she okay with leaving me and with me dealing with what happened alone out there?”
Elingburg said nothing. Ballard knew this was a way to keep her talking and revealing herself. She used the same technique with suspects. And it worked.
“This morning we had a Zoom call with a woman whose sister disappeared almost seventy-five years ago. This woman tried to be so stoic, but I could hear the pain in her voice. It never goes away. Never…”
She didn’t finish.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m just rambling.”
“You’re not rambling,” Elingburg said. “You’re digging down to the core of this.”
Ballard smirked.
“What?” Elingburg asked.
“I have a sign on my pod wall that says ‘Dig Down,’” Ballard said. “It’s from a song I like. That’s what we do in cold cases. We dig down into the past.”
“And what we do in here.”
“I guess so. Maybe that makes me a cold case. Too cold to get on a plane to go find my missing mother. Waiting for somebody else to do it when deep in my heart I know it should be me.”
Ballard watched Elingburg write that down.
36
COLLEEN AND MADDIEwere still working when Ballard got back to the Ahmanson Center. They showed her the chart they had put together. They had located fifty-two of the sixty-six seniors listed in the 1999 St. Vincent’s yearbook. Of the remaining fourteen, five were boys and nine were girls; the girls were more difficult to find because their last names sometimes changed when they got married. Additionally, Maddie had run criminal record checks, but those produced only two former students who had been convicted of crimes, the one for financial fraud that Ballard had also found, the other for indecent exposure.
They spent the next half hour putting together an interview-priority list. The name at the top was Rodney Van Ness, Mallory’s date for his senior prom. Although he was first on the list, because he was located in Las Vegas, he was probably not going to be the first interview. Taking a road trip required planning and approvals.
Next on the list was Jacqueline Todd, one of Mallory’s two best friends. She was still living in Los Angeles, according to LinkedIn, and working as a screenwriter. Mallory’s other best friend, Emma, was third on the priority list, but she had not been located. They hoped that Jacqueline Todd would have her contact information.
