The Late Show

21

Ballard’s first stop was at the critter sitter’s off Abbot Kinney. Sarah was reluctant to take the dog in, even though she was paid extra when Lola spent more than the night at her home.

“She’s getting depressed,” she said. “She misses you all the time.”

Sarah was a longtime resident of Venice who sold sunglasses on the boardwalk. She had offered to help when Ballard rescued Lola from her homeless and abusive owner. That had amounted to a place to stay while Ballard worked the midnight shift, but the schedule had gone out the window in recent days.

“I know,” Ballard said. “It’s not fair but I keep thinking that things will return to normal soon. I just got a bunch of cases all at once.”

“If it keeps up, maybe you should take her up to your grandmother’s to stay,” Sarah suggested. “So she has some continuity with someone.”

“That’s a good idea,” Ballard said. “But I hope soon it will all slow down and go back to normal.”

Ballard drove east toward Hollywood, trying to bury her frustrations from the conversations with both Sarah and Carr. With Carr she was particularly stressed because she had put herself on the line with her revelations and had not gotten a clear signal from him that he would push forward on the case in return. His final message was to stand down, but she didn’t know if that was because he was going to take it from there or if nothing would happen at all.

At the station she put the Chastain investigation aside for the time being and went back to work on the Ramona Ramone case. Her first move was to call Hollywood Presbyterian to check on the victim’s medical status. After a runaround that included several minutes of being on hold, she started to worry that Ramone had taken a bad turn and succumbed to her injuries. But finally Ballard was talking to an evening supervisor, who reported that earlier in the day the patient had been transferred to the Los Angeles County — USC Medical Center in downtown. Ballard asked if the transfer meant that Ramone had come out of the coma, but the supervisor refused to share details of her medical condition, citing privacy laws. Nevertheless, Ballard knew there were laws regulating patient dumping, and she didn’t think that moving a patient in a coma was allowed. This gave her hope that Ramona Ramone might finally be able to take part in the investigation.

Ballard decided that she would go down to County-USC to check on Ramone’s medical status, security, and availability as a witness as soon as possible. But for the moment her focus was still squarely on Thomas Trent, and it was time to get back on the case and keep pushing.

Ballard still wanted to talk to Trent’s ex-wife. Her ending the marriage following his arrest and her apparent decision not to fight for a share of the house in the hills indicated that this was a woman who just wanted to get away from a bad guy and a bad mistake. Ballard thought his ex-wife might talk about Trent without turning around and tipping him off to the police’s interest in him. There were other precautions that could be taken to guard against this, but overall Ballard felt confident in her decision to go directly to the ex — Mrs. Trent.

Tracing Beatrice Trent on the DMV database, Ballard was able to follow her through three addresses and a name change since the divorce. She was now Beatrice Beaupre, and by going back in time with the search, Ballard learned that that was her name when she received her first California driver’s license two decades earlier. She was now forty-four years old and currently listed on DMV records as living in Canoga Park.

Before leaving the station, she put together a six-pack of mug shots that included the photo taken of Thomas Trent after his arrest for the brass knuckles. She hoped that before the night was through, she would be showing the lineup to Ramona Ramone.

Sunday-evening traffic was a breeze and Ballard got to Canoga Park before nine. It was late to be calling on the unsuspecting Beatrice Beaupre, but not that late. Whether at nine in the morning or evening, Ballard always liked to employ the cold call at the odd hour. It put people back on their heels a bit, made them easier to talk to.

But it was Ballard who was knocked back on her heels when she got to the address on Owensmouth Avenue listed with the DMV as Beaupre’s home address. She was in the middle of a deserted warehouse district where small businesses and manufacturers operated by day but shut down tight at night. She pulled to a stop in front of an aluminum-sided building with a door that was marked only with an address number. There were five other cars and a van parked near the door and a flashing-red strobe located above it. Ballard knew enough about the Valley’s most prosperous industries to figure out that inside the warehouse, there was a porno shoot under way. The flashing light meant do not enter until the scene was completed.

Ballard sat in her car and watched the strobe. It stayed on for the next twelve minutes and she wondered if that meant people inside were having sex for that long. As soon as it went off, she got out and reached the door before it started flashing again. The handle was locked and she knocked. She was ready with her badge when the door opened, and a man wearing a wool beanie looked out.

“What’s up?” he said. “You checking condoms?”

“No, I don’t care about condoms,” Ballard said. “I need to talk to Beatrice Beaupre. Can you get her, please?”

He shook his head.

“Nobody named that here,” he said.

He started to pull the door closed but Ballard grabbed it and recited the description she remembered from Beaupre’s DMV records.

“Black female, five foot ten, forty-four years old. She might not be using the name Beatrice.”

“That sort of sounds like Sadie. Hold on.”

This time Ballard let him close the door. She clipped her badge to her belt and turned her back to the door as she waited. She noticed that two of the warehouses across the street had no outside signage either. One of them had a strobe light over the door as well. Ballard was at ground zero for the billion-dollar-plus industry that some said kept the Los Angeles economy rolling.

The door finally opened and a woman fitting the description in the DMV records stood there. She wore no makeup, her hair was pulled back in a haphazard knot, and she wore a T-shirt and baggy workout pants. She was not what Ballard expected a porn star to look like.

“What can I do for you, Officer?”

“It’s Detective. Are you Beatrice Beaupre?”

“I am, and I’m working. You need to state your business or be gone.”

“I need to talk to you about Thomas Trent.”

That hit Beaupre like a swinging door.

“I don’t know anything about him anymore,” she said. “And I gotta go.”

She started backing inside and pulling the door closed. Ballard knew that she had one shot and that it might risk the whole investigation if she took it.

“I think he hurt someone,” she said. “Badly.”

Beaupre paused, her hand on the knob.

“And he’ll do it again,” Ballard said.

That said it all. Ballard waited.

“Fuck,” Beaupre finally said. “Come in.”

Ballard followed her into a dimly lit entry with hallways that went right and left. A sign with an arrow said the stages were to the left and offices and craft services to the right. They went right and along the way passed the man who had originally opened the door to Ballard.

“Billy, tell them we’re taking a fifteen-minute break,” Beaupre said. “And I mean fifteen. Don’t let anybody leave the stage. In ten minutes, start Danielle fluffing. We shoot as soon as I get back.”

They next passed an alcove set up with a kitchen counter covered with baskets of snacks and candy bars as well as a coffeemaker. A long cooler was open on the floor and filled with water bottles and cans of soda. They went into an office with the name Shady Sadie on the door. The walls were lined with posters from adult film features that showed nearly nude performers in provocative poses. It looked to Ballard from the titles, costumes — what little there was of them — and poses that the videos slanted toward bondage and sadomasochistic fetishes. A lot of female domination.

“Have a seat,” Beaupre said. “I can give you fifteen minutes and then I have to shoot. Otherwise it will be like herding cats out there.”

Beaupre sat behind a desk and Ballard took the chair opposite her.

“You’re the director?” Ballard asked.

“Director, writer, producer, cinematographer — you name it,” Beaupre said. “I’d do the whipping and fucking, too, but I’m too old. Who did Thomas hurt?”

“At the moment he’s a person of interest. The victim was a transgender prostitute that I believe was abducted, raped, and tortured over a four-day period and then left for dead.”

“Fuck. I knew he would do it one day.”

“Do what?”

“Act out his fantasies. That’s why I left him. I didn’t want him acting them out on me.”

“Ms. Beaupre, before we go on, I need you to promise that what we talk about here will be kept confidential. Especially from him.”

“Are you kidding? I don’t talk to that man. He’s the last person on earth I would talk to.”

Ballard studied her for signs of deception. She saw nothing that dissuaded her from proceeding. She just wasn’t sure where to start. She pulled out her phone.

“Do you mind if I record this?” she asked.

“Yes, I do,” Beaupre said. “I don’t want to be involved in this and I don’t want a recording floating around out there that he might one day hear.”

Ballard put the phone away. She had expected Beaupre’s response. She proceeded without recording.

“I’m trying to get a bead on your ex-husband,” she began. “What kind of guy he is. What would make him do something like this crime. If he did it.”

“He’s fucked up,” Beaupre said. “Simple as that. I make S and M videos. The action is fake. The pain is not real. A lot of the audience knows that and a lot don’t want to know that. They want it to be real. He’s one of them.”

“Did you meet because he was interested in your videos?”

“No, we met because I wanted to buy a car.”

“He was the salesman?”

“That’s right. I think he recognized me but he always claimed he didn’t.”

“From directing?”

“No, I was still a performer back then. I think he’d seen me on video and came running across the showroom, you know, wanting to help put me into something sweet. He always denied it but I think he’d seen my work.”

Ballard pointed a thumb toward the door.

“Shady Sadie, that’s your porno name?”

“One of many. I’ve had a long line of names and looks. I sort of reboot every few years, like the audience does. Right now I’m Shady Sadie the director. Let’s see, I’ve been Ebony Nights, Shaquilla Shackles, B. B. Black, Stormy Monday, a few others. What, you seen me?”

She had noted Ballard’s smile.

“No, it’s just a weird coincidence,” Ballard said. “Two nights ago I met a man who called himself Stormy Monday.”

“In porn?” Beaupre asked.

“No, something else entirely. So you said Trent had fantasies.”

“He was all fucked up. He was into pain. He wanted to give pain, see it in their eyes.”

“Their eyes? Who are we talking about?”

“I’m talking about his fantasies. What he liked in my videos, what he wanted to do in real life.”

“You’re saying he never acted out?”

“Not with me. I don’t know about with others. But he got arrested and he had metal knuckles on him. That was crossing the line.”

“That’s why you left?”

“That whole thing. Not only was he going there to hurt someone but the police were saying it was a boy. When I heard that, I had to go. It was too fucked up, even for me.”

“What’s your take on the psychology of this?”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“My victim’s Latina. With the brass knuckles thing, he was going to see a Latino male. His ex-wife is African-American but light-skinned. There’s a victim type here and—”

“I was no fucking victim.”

“Sorry, I misspoke. But he’s got a type. It’s part of what is called a paraphilia. Part of his sexual program, for lack of a better word.”

“It’s part of the subjugation and control thing he has. In my films, I was the top, the dominatrix. In our marriage, he wanted to control me, keep me under his thumb. Like I was a challenge to him.”

“But he wasn’t abusive?”

“He wasn’t. Not to me, at least, because I would have been out the door. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t use intimidation and his physical size to control things. You can use your size without being physically abusive.”

“How much porno did he watch?”

“Look, don’t go down that road. The whole porno-made-him-do-it thing. We provide a service. People watch these films and that keeps them in check, keeps it in fantasy.”

Ballard was not sure Beaupre believed the words as she said them. Ballard could easily take the side that pornography was a gateway to aberrant behavior, but she knew now was not the time. She needed this woman as a source and eventually a potential witness. Calling her on her lifestyle and occupation was not the way to do it.

“I need to get back to the stage,” Beaupre said abruptly. “There’s no tomorrow on this. I lose one of my performers at midnight. She has school tomorrow.”

Ballard spoke urgently.

“Please, just a few more minutes,” she said. “You lived with him in the house on Wrightwood Drive?”

“Yes, he had that when I met him,” Beaupre said. “I moved in.”

“How’d he get a place like that selling cars?”

“He didn’t get it selling cars. He exaggerated his injuries from when he was in a helicopter crash coming back from Catalina. Got a hack doctor to back him on it and sued. He ended up getting like eight hundred thousand and bought the upside-down house.”

Ballard leaned forward in her chair. She wanted to proceed cautiously and not feed any answers to Beaupre.

“You mean like it was in foreclosure?” she asked. “They were upside down on their mortgage?”

“No, no, it was literally upside down,” Beaupre said. “The bedrooms were downstairs instead of up. Tom always called it the upside-down house.”

“Is that how he would describe it to others? To visitors? The upside-down house?”

“Pretty much, yeah. He thought it was funny. He said it was ‘an upside-down house for an upside-down world.’”

It was a key piece of information, and the fact that Beaupre had volunteered it made it all the more convincing. Ballard kept moving.

“Let’s talk about the brass knuckles,” she said. “What do you know about them?”

“I mean, I knew he had them,” Beaupre said. “But I didn’t think he’d ever use them. He had all kinds of weapons — stick knives, throwing stars, metal knuckles. He called them metal knuckles because technically not all of them were brass.”

“So he had multiple pairs?”

“Oh, yeah. He had a collection.”

“Did he have duplicates? The pair that were seized during his arrest said good and evil on them. Did he have another pair like that?”

“He had a bunch of them, and most said that. That was his thing. He said he would’ve had that tattooed on his knuckles — good and evil — except that he’d probably lose his job.”

Ballard knew it was a big get. Beatrice was giving her the building blocks of a case.

“He kept his weapons in the house?”

“Yeah, in the house.”

“Guns?”

“No guns. He didn’t like guns for some reason. He said he liked ‘weapons with edges.’”

“What else is in the house?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been there in a long time. I know this, though — he put all his money into buying the house because he said real estate was better than putting money in the bank, but that meant he didn’t have much left over to furnish the place. A couple of those bedrooms were completely empty, at least when I lived there.”

Ballard thought about the room she saw off the lower deck. Beaupre stood up.

“Look, we wrap at midnight,” she said. “You want to hang and watch or come back then, we can talk more. But I need to go. Time is money in this business.”

“Right,” Ballard said. “Okay.”

She decided to take a shot in the dark.

“Did you keep a key?” she asked.

“What?” Beaupre said.

“When you got divorced, did you keep a key to the house?

A lot of people who go through a divorce keep a key.”

Beaupre looked at Ballard with indignation.

“I told you, I wanted nothing to do with that man. Back then or now. I didn’t keep a key, because I never wanted to go near that place again.”

“Okay, because if you did, I might be able to use it. You know, in an emergency. The guy who did the damage to my victim, it wasn’t the kind of thing he’ll do only once. If he thinks he got away with it? He’ll do it again.”

“That’s too bad.”

Beaupre stood next to the door to usher Ballard out. They moved down the hallway, and when they passed by the alcove where the snacks were, Ballard saw a woman who was naked except for thigh-high boots, pausing over a choice of candy bar.

“Bella, we are shooting,” Beaupre said. “I’m going back now.”

Bella didn’t respond. Beaupre led Ballard to the front door and ushered her out, offering her good luck in her investigation. Ballard handed her a business card with the usual request to call if anything else came to mind.

“The DMV lists this as your home address,” Ballard said. “Is that true?”

“Isn’t a home the place where you eat and fuck and sleep?” Beaupre said.

“Maybe. So no other place?”

“I don’t need another place, Detective.”

Beaupre closed the door.

Ballard started her car but then opened her notebook and started writing down as much as she could remember from the interview. Head down and writing, she was startled by a sharp rap on the car window. She looked up to see Billy, the doorman in the beanie. She lowered the window.

“Detective, Shady said you forgot this,” he said.

He held out a key. It was not on a ring. It was just a key.

“Oh,” Ballard said. “Right. Thank you.”

She took the key and then put the window back up.