“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.’”