Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36) (32)

“Must be pretty good at it. This neighborhood is seven figures easily.”

“It could be rented. Shall we?”

Ballard opened her door. The slope was so severe that the door immediately slammed shut under its own weight. She tried again, putting her foot out to push it all the way into a holding position. Bosch struggled to get out as well, and then came around the back of the city car.

“He knows we’re coming?” he asked.

“Nope,” Ballard said. “Wanted it to come out of the blue.”

Bosch nodded his approval.

“Hope he’s home,” Ballard said. “It was a lot easier catching people at home during the lockdown days.”

Ballard got to the front door and then waited for Bosch to catch up. He had taken the steps up slowly and was huffing by the time he reached her.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Never better,” he said.

Ballard punched a Ring doorbell, knowing that they were on camera. It wasn’t long before the door was answered by a man in blue jeans and a denim shirt.

“Mr. Beecher?” Ballard asked.

“That’s right,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

Ballard badged him and identified herself and Bosch as her partner.

“We’d like to come in and ask you a few questions,” she said.

“About what?” Beecher said. “I’m actually working and have a Zoom in, like, twenty minutes that I have to prep for.”

“This won’t take long, sir. May we?”

“Uh, I guess.”

He stepped back and opened the door for them. They entered a neat and expensively furnished living room with a dining area and kitchen beyond and a hallway toward the back of the house. There were large canvases framed in wood on the walls, all studies of the male figure.

“Is this about the robbery?” Beecher asked.

“What robbery is that?” Ballard asked.

“The Tilbrooks next door. Their house got hit a few nights ago. First time out to the movies in more than two years, and their house gets robbed while they’re gone. What a town, right?”

“That would be a burglary and we’re investigating a homicide.”

“A homicide? Shit. Who?”

“Can we sit down, sir?”

“Sure.”

He gestured to the couch and chairs configured around a coffee table that appeared to be a two-inch-thick cut of redwood. There was a small sculpture on the table. An angel sitting in repose, one of his wings broken on the ground at his feet. Ballard sat down in the middle of the couch, on the front edge of the cushion, pulling out a small pad from the pocket of her Van Heusen sport coat. Bosch took a black leather chair off the corner of the coffee table, and that left Beecher the twin in the matching set.

Ballard began the questioning.

“Mr. Beecher, we have reopened an investigation into the 2005 homicide of Laura Wilson. You were acquainted with her, correct?”

“Oh, Laura, yes, we were in theater together. Oh my god, I think about her all the time. It so bothered me that they never caught anybody. I can’t imagine what her family has gone through.”

“You were questioned back then by Detective Dubose. Do you remember that?”

“I do, yes.”

“You told Detective Dubose that you were with Harmon Harris on the night of the murder.”

Ballard watched as Beecher’s face darkened and his eyes flitted away. He obviously didn’t think of Harmon Harris in the affectionate way he thought of Laura Wilson.

“I did, yes,” he said.

“We are here because we want to give you the opportunity to retract that statement if you wish,” Ballard said.

“What do you mean, that I lied?”

“What I mean is, if it wasn’t true that you were with him, then now is the time to set the record straight, Mr. Beecher. This is an unsolved homicide. We need to know the truth.”

“I have nothing to set straight.”

“Are you still in the theater, Mr. Beecher? An actor?”

“I rarely act. I just got too busy with my other work.”

“What work is that?”

“I’m in locations for L.A.-based productions. It’s more work than I can handle, to tell you the truth.”

Ballard noted that he could not acknowledge that he didn’t quite make it as an actor. He claimed something else had pulled him away from that work.

“You know that Harmon Harris is dead, right?” she said.

“Yes,” Beecher said. “That was a tragedy.”

“He drove into a concrete pillar on the freeway a month after being outed as being abusive to his students and employees at the theater. It was a story in the Los Angeles Times. Did you know about that, too?”

Beecher nodded vigorously. His hands were gripped together tightly in his lap.

“Yes, I knew about that,” he said.

“The article anonymously quoted three different men who said that Harris threatened to spread the word in the industry that they were gay if they did not have relations with him. You read that, too, right?”

“Yes.”

“You’re gay as well, sir—correct? Your alibi for him was that you spent the night together on the night Laura Wilson was murdered.”