The Perk (16 page)

"Why do you say that?"

"How many virgins would start with two
men?"

"No, the cocaine."

"Oh. My older boy, he was in school with
Heidi. If she was a cokehead, everyone would've known it. Small town. My boy
said she was obsessed with staying gorgeous, wouldn't even drink beer 'cause it
might hurt her looks."

"Was she? Gorgeous?"

"Drop-dead. She was our beauty
queen." Grady shook his head. "I kid you not, Beck, every time she
walked down Main Street, we had three traffic accidents. No one had ever seen
anything like her around here before … or since. We all figured she'd be
Miss America one day."

"Then how'd she end up in that ditch?"

Grady shrugged and turned his palms up.
"Wish I knew."

"Did she have a boyfriend?"

"Nope. She wouldn't have nothing to do
with the local boys. Rumor had it she liked girls, like our lesbians over at the
bookstore. She hung out there some. But her best friend says she wasn't like
that, said she was just too mature for high school boys."

"So this guy could've been a college
boy?"

"Could've been."

"Two guys at the same time?"

"Forensics said the semen on her shirt had
caked before the rain hit it. So some time elapsed between the two
encounters."

"And she was only sixteen?"

Grady nodded. "Sad, ain't it? And playing
Russian roulette, sex without a condom. Kids think they're bullet-proof."

"So she either knew this guy well enough
not to be worried about contracting a disease or—"

"She was too drunk and stoned to care. But
we got his DNA. We just don't got him."

"The paper said you got samples from every
male in town."

"Yep. We even accounted for every college
boy home for the holidays."

"They all came in voluntarily?"

"It was like a blood drive, everyone asking
each other if they gave yet. She was the coach's daughter, whole town wanted
the guy found. We had to use our emergency fund to pay for the tests, over a
thousand."

"That's all?"

"Males fifteen to sixty-five. Hell, half
the population is over sixty-five, Beck. This is a retirement place now, like Florida without the hurricanes."

"Or the ocean."

"That, too. Results started coming in a couple
months later. Aubrey would be here waiting for the FedEx truck like an
old-timer waiting for the mailman to bring his social security check. But no
matches, so he ain't a local. Which is about the only good thing in this damn
case, at least one of our boys didn't do it."

"Aubrey said illegal Mexicans didn't give
samples."

"Nope. Scared they might get deported. I
told them I wouldn't give their names to the Feds, but they didn't go for it."

"D.A. seems to think an illegal did
it."

"He's just politicking. Mexican boys,
they're too scared to even look at a German girl. And if Heidi was hanging with
a Mexican, whole town would've known."

"Is the autopsy report in the file?"

"Yep. Cause of death was acute cocaine
intoxication."

Grady was now cleaning his fingernails with the
pocketknife.

"Did they check under her nails?"

Grady stared at his handiwork a moment, then
looked up at Beck. "No tissue under her fingernails, no bruising around
her genitals, no scratches, no fight marks—M.E. says sex was consensual. He
found a few fibers, probably from a towel, inside her underwear. Figures the
guy wiped her."

"Why?"

"Must've figured it all come out and he could wipe his DNA off her." He shrugged. "That's why they call it dope. That's also what tells me he
wasn't a Mexican."

"Because he wiped her?"

"Because he
thought about it. Means he watched those
CSI
shows."

"And?"

"And most Mexicans
here can't speak English. They watch the Spanish channels and Mexican soccer
on satellite. They don't watch
CSI
."

Beck nodded. "No other evidence?"

"Nope. No fingerprints, no other trace
evidence of any kind. It was raining that night, so any trace evidence
would've washed away."

"So what's your theory?"

"Not sure it qualifies as a theory, but way
I figure, she was at a party, snorted coke, had sex with a couple college boys
from UT. Gets in a car with the second boy, then she ODs. He panics, dumps
her, hightails it back to Austin."

"She was only sixteen, Grady. That's
statutory rape."

"Only if the boy was more than three years
older than her. College boy, might not be."

Grady inhaled and blew out a breath.

"Look, I know Aubrey wants this guy caught
and put in prison, but Heidi looked twenty-five and snorted coke like she was
twenty-five and screwed like she was twenty-five. Now we're gonna make out
like she was the Virgin Mary and put some kid in prison for twenty years for
thinking he was screwing a twenty-five-year-old girl? Is that justice? When
the stat rape age was put on the books, sixteen-year-old girls were virgins.
Today, you got a better chance of winning the lottery than finding a
sixteen-year-old virgin." Grady pointed the pocketknife at the window.
"You walk down Main Street when the tourists are in town? Looks like a
goddamn hooker convention."

"I saw that."

"We ain't isolated anymore, Beck. We got
cable, the Internet, Facebook, freak dancing—"

"Freak dancing? What's that?"

"How old are your kids?"

"Ten and five."

"You don't want to know."

"Grady, how do you raise your kids with all
that around them?"

"It ain't easy. Not like when we were
growing up here—worst trouble we could get into was drinking beer and
skinny-dipping in the river. Coke was something you drank from a bottle and
you couldn't die from getting laid." He exhaled. "It's a different
world now."

"I've got a girl."

"Raising girls is double-tough. They're a
different breed, Beck. I can't figure mine out. Hell, if not for the wife—"
Grady grimaced. "Sorry."

"How'd you learn so much about kids?"

"Hand-to-hand combat." A little
smile. "I got four of 'em, two teenagers. And I'm the sheriff. You're
gonna find out, Beck, if you're the judge, you learn a lot more about people in
town than you want to know."

Beck picked up Heidi's file. "Mind if I
borrow this?"

Grady waved the pocketknife at Heidi's file. "Knock
yourself out." He then closed the pocketknife and stuffed it into his
pants pocket. "Beck, I never had the heart to tell Aubrey, about the two DNA samples. He was real proud of her. Figured I'd let him keep on being proud. Every morning
driving in, I see him stopped by the city limits sign out on 290, putting fresh
flowers by that white cross. Every day going on five years now."

"Four years, seven months, and fifteen days.
He keeps a calendar. Called me this morning, to see if I had talked to you yet."

Grady shook his head. "All he's got left
is football and dreaming of finding that guy … and drinking."

"I've noticed."

"If I arrest him for DUI, he'll lose his
coaching job."

"Maybe if he knew what happened to his
girl, he wouldn't need to drink."

"Maybe."

Beck pushed himself out of the chair and turned
to the door.

"Guess you can decide now," Grady
said.

"Decide what?"

"Whether Aubrey wants to know what's in
that file."

"Thanks."

"You asked."

"Yeah … I asked."

"Good luck with the election. Say hidi to
J.B. for me."

J.B. Hardin was standing at the open barn doors at the rear
of the winery and gazing out at the vineyards. He and Luke had spent the day
picking ripe grapes and dumping them into the destemmer for Hector. He now
called over to his grandson.

"Luke, let's take a last run through the
vineyards."

The boy met J.B. at the two-seater Gator. J.B.
got in behind the wheel; Luke jumped into the passenger seat.

"Buckle up."

J.B. shifted the John Deere utility vehicle into
gear and drove into the vineyards.

"You put in a man's day of work,
Luke."

The boy didn't say much; he was a lot like J.B.
He didn't talk just to hear his own voice.

"You gonna play baseball this year?"

"No."

"You're not gonna play your favorite
sport?"

"I quit."

"Oh, can't hit?"

"I can still hit."

"Can't catch?"

"I can catch."

"Throw?"

"I had the strongest arm on the team last
year."

"So why'd you quit?"

"Mom."

"She wanted you to quit?"

"She died."

"You quitting baseball 'cause your mama
died?"

"It's not right for me to play when she's
dead."

"Oh, I see. You're punishing
yourself."

"God."

"You're punishing God?"

"Because He took her."

J.B. stopped the Gator. "Yep, He sure did,
Luke, and I don't have a clue why. But that's the way it is, and there ain't nothing
we can do about it. I'd trade places with your mother if I could—I guess maybe
I have. But life is for the living, Luke. Your mama emailed me many times
before she died, and she told me to tell you she's cheering for you from
heaven."

Tears came now, so he reached over and pulled
the boy in next to him the way he should have pulled his own son next to him
twenty-nine years before, but didn't. J.B. let the boy cry; sometimes a good
cry is the best thing for the human soul. Many were the times J.B. Hardin had
stood on this land and cried after his wife had died, and then again when his
only son had left here hating him. He didn't want this boy to hate his daddy;
and he didn't want the boy's daddy to feel the hurt of a son's hate. After the
boy's tears had run out, J.B. got out and walked around to the passenger side
and said to his grandson, "Scoot over. You're living in the country now,
time you learned to drive."

The boy took the wheel but said, "I miss
her."

J.B. sighed. "I know you do."

Heidi Geisel might have been a beauty queen in life, but
she wasn't in death.

Beck had never before looked at crime scene photographs.
It wasn't a pleasant experience. The DPS crime lab technicians had taken color
photos of Heidi's body lying in the ditch: location shots, full-length shots,
and close-up shots of her face and arms and legs and torso and hips from every
conceivable angle; and the file included a DVD in a plastic pouch containing
even more photos.

She had been found lying face-down on the county
side of the city limits sign. Her blonde hair was dirty and wet from the
previous night's rain. Her clothes were soaked and stuck to her body and did
not completely cover her pale flesh; her wet mascara had made black lines
across her face. Her eyes were closed, as if she were sleeping peacefully.

Beck knew how it felt to lose a wife to death;
how would it feel to lose a child? To be awakened early one morning with a
call and learn that your child was dead—that you would never see or touch or
hold or speak to your child again? How had Aubrey and Randi survived that
call? Or had they?

And how had Heidi ended up in that ditch?

The six-inch-thick file contained the photos, the
Offense Report, the DNA Report, the Autopsy Report, the Evidence Report, and
sworn statements from family and friends. The Offense Report detailed the
facts surrounding the discovery of her body: the trucker's 911 call; the units
dispatched to the scene; the crime scene diagram; statements of officers. But there
was no more information than had been in the newspapers.

The DNA Report stated that none of the 1,017
samples obtained from local males matched the DNA samples obtained from Heidi's
clothes and body.

The Evidence Report listed the personal effects
recovered from Heidi's body and at the crime scene: white shirt, black skirt,
black undergarment, three silver loop earrings, silver ankle bracelet. That's
all? Beck flipped through the pages and thought of Annie: What had she worn
when they had gone out? Glasses, earrings, necklace, bracelet, wedding and
engagement rings, watch; bra and panties and sometimes pantyhose, dress or blouse
and slacks, shoes; purse, keys, and cell phone.

Heidi was sixteen, so she might not have needed
glasses, she wouldn't have had a wedding or engagement ring, and she might not
have worn a bra or pantyhose. But wouldn't she have worn shoes and carried a
purse? And every teenage girl Beck had seen in Chicago had been texting on a cell
phone. Wouldn't Heidi have had one? Beck shut the file.

Where were Heidi's cell phone, purse, and shoes?

Beck was double-knotting the laces of
Meggie's shoes.

"Now, don't be nervous, honey."

"We're not nervous. Mommy says school is
fun."

The doll was in her backpack.

Beck stood. Meggie's
kindergarten teacher was looking at him with a sympathetic expression that
said,
Father's first day of school
. Beck Hardin had never before taken
his children to their first day of school. But he had taken them to their
last.

The Gillespie County Consolidated School District covered the 1,061 square miles in the county and educated four thousand
students at four campuses: primary, elementary, middle, and high. Beck and
J.B. had already dropped Luke off at the elementary school. They were now
delivering Meggie to the primary school.

"My mommy's visiting Jesus," she said
to the teacher. "She'll be back soon, probably by Christmas."

"Welcome to kindergarten, Meggie," the
teacher said. To Beck: "Hi, I'm Gretchen Young."

She was young, a slim blonde woman wearing a
denim skirt and a colorful shirt; she looked like Mary Jo Meier in high school.