"Oh, yes,
mucho
."
The D.A.: "What is this, a courtroom or Dr.
Phil?"
Beck ignored the D.A. "Mr. Ramirez, do you
promise the court that you will stop drinking?"
"Oh, yes, sir. No more drinking for Jesús."
"And you will not throw frozen products at
your wife again?"
"No, I will not do that no more."
"All right, Mr. Ramirez." Beck turned
to Lawyer Polk. "Do you have anything to say on behalf of your client,
Mr. Polk?"
Lawyer Polk shrugged. "No, sir."
Beck stared at Lawyer Polk a minute and shook
his head. He turned back to the D.A.
"Mr. Eichman, the defendant is the sole
support for his family. If I put him in jail for six months, he'll lose his
job. What will happen to his wife and children?"
"Your Honor, that is not the state's
concern."
"Does the state really want to prosecute
this case?"
"Not unless you're going to send someone to
jail today."
"No one yet, Mr. Eichman. So the state
dismisses the charges against Mr. Ramirez?"
The D.A. shrugged. "Why not? He'll smack
her around another Saturday night."
Two hours later, Beck had sentenced the Latino
defendants and three of the women, all charged with possession of small amounts
of marijuana, meth, and cocaine and other minor violations of parole, to fines,
probation, and community service. He saw no sense in sending poor people to
prison for non-violent crimes. The D.A. saw red.
Beck now had to send someone to prison.
The last defendant of the day was a
twenty-year-old woman named Dee Dee Birck. She was the descendant of a wealthy
old-line German family. She had been given everything in life, and she had
sold everything for drugs. When her family had cut her money off, she had
stolen for drug money. This was her sixth trip through the system. On her
last trip she had been sentenced to two years, but Stutz had probated her sentence.
Dee Dee Birck had then violated probation: she had robbed her mother at gunpoint.
She needed money for meth. She would be boarding the bus to Huntsville
tomorrow morning.
She was short and skinny; her hair was brown and
ratty. Her face had been ravaged by five years of methamphetamine use: she
looked twice her age. She stood before Beck, and her lawyer stood beside her.
Beck glanced at the older white couple sitting in the front row. The woman was
crying. Mavis leaned in and whispered, "Her folks." Dee Dee had put
a gun to her mother's head, but her mother cried when she was being sentenced
to prison. A mother's love.
"Ms. Birck, you are charged with violating
your probation, do you understand that?"
"Yeah."
"Do you plead true or false?"
"Yeah."
"Yes, you plead true?"
"Yeah."
"You understand that because you violated
your probation, I must now enforce your original sentence?"
"Yeah."
"Which was two years in the state
penitentiary?"
"Yeah."
Beck leaned back in his chair and stared at this
young woman. She just stood there. She wasn't crying or begging for mercy or
showing any emotion at all. She was about to be incarcerated for two yearsâand
she just stood there! What had happened to her? What if fifteen years from
now, that were Meggie standing there? What if Meggie got off track in life because
of drugs? It broke Beck's heart to think of that, just as it was breaking his
heart to send this young woman to prison. He sighed.
"Ms. Birck, your probation is revoked. You
are hereby remanded to the custody of the Texas Department of Corrections for confinement
in the state penitentiary for a period of two years pursuant to your original
sentence. Good luck to you."
Dee Dee Birck broke into a big grin, turned
around, and waved at her parents like they had just dropped her off at summer
camp. Deputy Clint escorted her to the door. Beck's eyes followed her all the
way out of the courtroom.
She was grinning!
Mavis was crying.
"What's wrong, Mavis?"
"Nothing."
"Why are you crying?"
"I always cry at weddings, funerals, and sentencings."
"Okay. Why was Dee Dee Birck grinning?"
Mavis dabbed her eyes. "Because she's been
in the system. She knows TDC can't afford to keep her in prison for her full
sentence and she knows she gets credit for time served in the county jail. She
knows she won't spend more than sixty days in prison." Mavis shrugged.
"She did the math."
Sentencing day was over.
Dee Dee Birck's grinâand the fact that a
twenty-year-old girl knew how to do the time-served mathâhad so disturbed Beck
that he had no appetite for lunch. So he walked out the back door of the
courthouse and across the rear parking lot and into the Gillespie County Law Enforcement Center; he was carrying the Heidi Geisel file. Doreen jumped up this
time.
"Judge Hardin, sir."
"Grady in?"
"Yes, sir. I'll get him for you."
She almost ran to the back offices. When she
returned, she was followed closely by Gillespie County Sheriff Grady Guenther
with a toothpick in his mouth.
"Judge, I would've come over to the
courthouse."
"I needed some air after this morning."
"First sentencing day. Don't worry, you'll
get used to it."
"That's what I'm afraid of. And, Grady, I'm
still just Beck, except when I'm in the courtroom."
"And I'm still just Grady ⦠except when
I pull you over and conduct a body cavity search on the side of the highway."
He smiled. "Come on back."
Beck followed Grady into his office, placed
Heidi's file on the desk, and sat. Grady plopped into his chair behind the
desk and picked up a massive hot dog.
"Mind if I finish my lunch? Kraut dog. You
want Doreen to run get you one?"
Beck shook his head. Grady blew the toothpick into
a trash can across the room like an aborigine firing a dart out of a blowgun.
He then bit down on the dog.
"First sentencing day and you get 'assault
with a frozen burrito.' " Grady shook his head. "Don't know why the
city cops arrested Jesús. He's a good man, works at the turkey plant,
construction on weekends. Built my barn. And Macarena, she does have a mouth,
that one. Was me, I'd've thrown a side of beef at her, something with some heft
behind it. You did the right thing, sending Jesús home. Hell, living with her
is hard time compared to six months in my jail."
"What about Ignacio Perez? I do the right
thing with him?"
"Questionable."
"Why?"
Grady swallowed hard. "Ignacio, he's a two-bit
user. I told Junior not to waste county money on him, but he wants to build his
conviction record. I wanted to use Ignacio to get the suppliers."
"Is there a drug problem here?"
Grady drank from a can of root beer. "Meth
and marijuana, some coke, kids huffing, puffing, and dusting."
"I don't know what any of that means."
"You will soon enough." Another bite
of the dog. "Alcohol's still the biggest problem here, kids raised on Weissbier,
drinking and driving." He grimaced. "Sorry. But drugs came to our
townâhell, cartels tried to fly a few tons of marijuana straight into our
little county airport a while back. No Homeland Security here. Gutsy
bastards. What'd you have today, ten drug cases?"
"A dozen."
"Used to be none."
"Why so many Latinos? Anglos don't
use?"
"Course white kids use. Hell, last year couple
cheerleaders got caught snorting coke in the restroom at the high school. Most
of the softball team after that. Good German girls."
"What happened to them?"
"Nothing."
"Why not?"
" 'Cause their daddies run this town."
"Twenty-four years and nothing's
changed."
"You won the election. That's a change."
"I didn't win."
"No, you didn't. But you're the judge just
the same."
"So Heidi could've gotten the cocaine here?"
Grady finished off the root beer, swiped his
sleeve across his mouth, and wadded the wrapping into a ball. He tossed it at
the waste basket like Shaq shooting a free throw. He missed.
"Yep. You can buy condoms at the H-E-B and
cocaine at the high school."
Grady was now digging around in his desk drawer;
he gave up and dug into his pants pocket instead. He pulled out the pocketknife
and opened a small blade. He picked his teeth.
"Used to be, Mexicans
wanting to come north for work could just walk across the border. After 9/11 the
Feds clamped down hard, so now they gotta hire the
coyotes
âsmugglers,
they charge a thousand bucks a head. Migrants can't afford that, so the
coyotes
make them mules to pay the fare. Which means we got more people bringing more dope
across the border. They pack marijuana, cocaine, iceâcrystal methâup to San Antonio, locals bring it back here. They're the ones I'm after. And I'm gonna find 'em
before they start selling meth over at the middle school."
He shook his head.
"Wouldn't know it now, but Dee Dee Birck
used to be a cute kid."
"Grady, it's more than a job for you."
He nodded. "I got kids, and a grandkid now.
I don't want it to happen to mine like it happened to Dee Dee ⦠and Heidi.
You look at her file?"
Beck nodded. "What happened to her shoes
and purse?"
"Never found them. We searched a
hundred-yard radius from where she was found and up and down Baron's Creek
right there."
"New Year's Eve and she was
barefooted?"
"She was stoned."
"And now she's dead."
"So, you find something I didn't?"
"No."
"Then do him a favor ⦠Aubrey. Get him
to let her go. She's never coming back, and we're never gonna find the
guy."
"He's really fixed on finding him."
"Needs to find a woman."
"He wants Randi back."
"He's still pining for her after all these
years?"
"Yeah. Said she lives in Austin."
"And he figures she's still available?"
"I guess."
"Doubtful. She was a good-looking gal,
most likely married money."
"Aubrey figures winning state might land
him a college job, maybe at UT. More money, he might be able to win her back."
Grady shook his head. "Men get a serious
case of the stupids when it comes to women, don't we? Course, you take the
stupid out of life, me and you wouldn't have jobs. So he's banking on winning
state to get his life back together?"
"That seems to be the plan."
"That kind of puts you between a rock and a
hard place, don't it, Beck?"
"What does?"
"You figuring on finding his daughter's
killer, make amends for the past ⦠now you hold his future in your
hands."
"Grady, what are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about Slade."
"The quarterback? What about him?"
"His case."
"What case?"
"You don't know?"
"I must not."
"Three weeks ago, Slade beat the hell out
of a Mexican boy over at the movie theater. Julio Espinoza. Good kid, stays
out of trouble. Theater's outside the city limits, my jurisdiction. Time we
got there, the boy was a mess ⦠broken nose, broken jaw. We arrested Slade
for aggravated assault. Second-degree felony plus hate crime enhancement, he's
looking at five to ninety-nine years in the state pen."
"
Hate crime?
"
"He was calling Julio a wetback and a spic, while he was
hitting him. Took four deputies to pull him off the boy. They would've just
shot him, except the backup quarterback ain't no good."
"Four cops? Was he on drugs?"
"Toxicology came back clean for alcohol,
coke, meth, PCP. Slade's a big boy, but he was wired on something."
Grady opened a side drawer and removed a file.
He placed the file on his desk and pushed it across. Beck opened the file and
recoiled at a color photo of a slight Latino boy. His face was badly bruised
and cut in several places; his left eye was swollen shut; his lips were cut and
puffy. His nose sat lopsided. Blood stained his white shirt.
"
Jesus
. What'd
he hit him with?"
"His fists."
"
Why?
"
"Caught him talking to his girlfriend.
Nikki Ernst, she's a cheerleader. That's what I'm talking about, why Mexicans
don't even look at German girls. They don't want trouble."
"He did this just because the boy was
talking to his girl?"
"Yep."
"No provocation?"
"Nope. Julio was working the snack bar,
talking to the girl ⦠witnesses say Slade stormed in, didn't say nothin',
just grabbed Julio, dragged him over the counter, commenced to hitting him. Julio
was in the hospital five days, signed his affidavit there. We got statements
from Nikki and a few other kids."
"Slade played Friday, so he must've made
bail."
"No bail. J.P. released him on his personal
bond."
"For aggravated assault?"
"Walt's a big football fan. Walt Schmidt,
he's the Justice of the Peace."
"So the star quarterback's case is on my
docket?"
"Not your docket."
"What do you mean?"
Grady let out a deep sigh. "I knew this
boy was trouble when they moved to town."
"Slade?"
"Yep. Now he beats up Julio, starts a time bomb ticking in my
town. Got my men on alert in case that bomb goes off."
"
Time bomb?
What's going on, Grady?"
Grady shut the pocketknife and stuffed it back
into his pants pocket.
"First off, we ain't having this
conversation. This is between you, me, and that stuffed buck up there."
"Okay."
"Second, you need to know the lay of the
land these days. How long you been gone?"