The Perk (28 page)

"Why are you asking about Heidi?" she
said.

"A favor, for her father. We were like
brothers back in high school."

She nodded. "Me and Heidi, we were like
sisters."

"Tell me about her."

"She was beautiful."

"What did she want out of life?"

"To be a star."

"Why?"

"To get out of this town."

"Why? This is a nice place to live."

"Oh yeah, it's a real nice place to live … unless you're a girl or gay or Mexican or don't like football or George
Bush. Then it sucks."

"How did she plan to become a star?"

"Send her pictures to Hollywood, get an
audition."

"You have pictures of her?"

Kim smiled. "Do I have pictures of Heidi Fay?"

"Heidi
Fay?
"

"Heidi Fay Geisel, but Geisel didn't sound Hollywood so she dropped it for her stage name." Kim took a drag on her cigarette and
said, "Why do you want to see her pictures?"

"I'm trying to understand why she ended up
in that ditch."

"You been to her house?"

"Yeah, just now."

"Seen her room?"

He nodded. "Aubrey's kept it just like it
was."

"He would. Those pictures on the wall,
those were for him."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, that wasn't the real Heidi."
Kim hesitated then said, "I have her portfolio. Come on in, I'll show
you. It's on my laptop."

"Can you bring it out here?"

"Suit yourself."

Kim disappeared inside and returned with a laptop.
She sat, opened the laptop, and took one last drag on her cigarette then
flicked it into the dirt yard. She tapped the keyboard several times until the
wide screen was filled with a close-up shot of Heidi's face: her hair was blonde,
her eyes as blue as the sky, her skin smooth and flawless, and her teeth a
brilliant white. She was, in fact, gorgeous.

"She never drank tea or coffee," Kim
said. "To keep her teeth white. And she never had braces or caps."

Kim's face was now that of a kid opening Christmas
presents. She tapped twice again, and another photo appeared on the screen.
This one was a full-body shot of Heidi wearing short-shorts, cowboy boots, and
a pink halter top. Her thumbs were stuck in her front pockets, the snap was
unbuttoned, and the zipper was halfway unzipped, revealing a lot of white skin
below her navel. Her abs were lean and her legs muscular. She was not the
German Fräulein or the all-American high school cheerleader in the photographs
in her bedroom. She was a sexy twenty-five-year-old woman.

"Her legs were incredible," Kim said.

"How old was she in this one?"

"Sixteen. Couple months before she …"
Kim shook her head. "She was so beautiful."

There was no envy on Kim's face. There was pure
admiration. She tapped again, and Beck recoiled. In this photo, Heidi was
still wearing the same clothes in the same pose, but her halter top was untied
and her breasts were fully exposed.

"She had perfect tits," Kim said. "And
those aren't implants. They're real."

Beck—State District Judge John Beck Hardin—felt uneasy
looking at the bare breasts of a sixteen-year-old girl, even in a photo. So he
said, "Next."

Kim tapped again. This one was worse.

"Look at that butt," Kim said.
"Also perfect."

The photo showed Heidi with her back to the
camera and twisting her upper body around. Her halter top was off, and her
shorts were pulled down enough to show her bare bottom. She was wearing a
black thong.

"She wore thongs?"

Kim shrugged. "Sure. Everyone does. You
can buy them at the Wal-Mart."

Beck said, "Next," but when the next
photo appeared, he wished he hadn't. Heidi was now completely nude, a full
frontal. Her blonde hair framed her perfect face … bare breasts … a narrow
waist … and a genital area without pubic hair.

"Brazilian wax job," Kim said.

Beck blew out a breath, stood, and walked a few
steps into the yard. He needed to gather himself. Here he was, on the front
porch of a little house in a small Texas town at the intersection of no place
and nowhere and this girl was showing him nude photos of her dead best friend
as casually as a new mother showing her baby pictures. Was this considered
normal today? Had he been locked away in a Chicago law office for seventeen
years while the outside world had taken a sudden sharp turn and didn't tell
him? Is this what teenage girls did these days, take nude photos of each other
and get Brazilian wax jobs? When Beck returned to his spot next to Kim, she was
grinning.

"We went to Austin to get our wax jobs. Now
that was weird."

"Why?"

"How would you like some strange Korean
woman messing with your privates, yanking your—"

"No. Why'd y'all do that?"

"Oh. All the Playmates do, and stars like Britney
and Paris. The paparazzi caught them getting out of their limos without their panties
on. Could you imagine how much fun that'd be?"

"Not wearing underwear?"

"No. Being so famous that photographers
followed you everywhere."

"Why did she want to be famous?"

Kim looked at him like he was nuts. "Everyone
wants to be famous."

"I don't."

"You're old." She got a faraway look
in her eyes. "If you're famous, people recognize you … they're
jealous of you … of your life. You got people to do your hair and put on
your makeup and paint your nails and run get stuff for you. You can have
anything you want anytime you want it. You're special. You're somebody. You're
not a nobody in a hick town where goats and football are the biggest things in
the whole world."

She threw a hand toward the gas station.

"My daddy's been fixin' cars in this
no-count town his whole life and what's he got to show for it? That dump of a
gas station and this dump of a house. He didn't get no government money for
fixin' cars."

"Why don't you go to college?"

"And work all my life?"

"Do you have any friends? A
boyfriend?"

"My friend died. And I don't want a
boyfriend, not here."

"Why not?"

"
Why?
So
I can get married, have a bunch of kids, and be fat and bored all my life with
a German guy starts drinking beer at noon and smacks me around at night? No
thanks. I've already lived that life."

She lit another cigarette.

"I'm sorry, Kim."

"Ain't your fault."

"Where did you take these photos?"

"I didn't. Her mom did."

"Her
mom?
"

"Yeah, with a digital camera. I uploaded
them. But I didn't touch them up, that's really her."

"Heidi's mother took nude photos of
her?"

Kim shrugged. "You gotta do nudes for
Playboy
."

"Her mother wanted her to pose for
Playboy?
"

She nodded. "When she turned eighteen. Her
mom figured if she could pose in
Playboy,
she'd get to live in the Mansion
out in Hollywood—"

"What mansion?"

"The
Playboy
Mansion. Her mom figured she'd get discovered there. She was, like,
obsessed with Heidi becoming a star."

"Her mother pushed her?"

"Heidi was her ride out of town … mine,
too, I guess. She was gonna take me with her, to Hollywood, when she hit it
big. I was gonna be her gofer."

"You were okay with that?"

Another shrug. "Sure. All the stars have
an entourage. And I'd be in Hollywood. Better than living in a town that don't
even have a Hooters."

"What do you want out of life, Kim?"

She blew out smoke and turned her big blue eyes
up at Beck and said, "I want to be rich. I want to have everything. I
want to live like those people on TV."

"Were you with Heidi the night she
died?"

Kim's face changed, and Beck knew from his
experience cross-examining reluctant witnesses that she was about to lie.

She shook her head. "Nunh-uh."

"You don't have any idea where Heidi went
that night?"

She shook her head again. "Nunh-uh."

Kim wouldn't make eye contact with him now. She
was lying. But why?

"Did Heidi drink?"

"Not even beer. She didn't want to gain
weight."

"Drugs?"

"No way. You see how people look old when
they do meth? Like Dee Dee? Heidi knew her looks were her ticket out of here."

"She died of a cocaine overdose, you know
that?"

She nodded.

"But you never saw her use cocaine or other
drugs?"

"No."

"Did she have a boyfriend?"

"Nope. She didn't want any ties to this
place. She said she wanted Fred in her rearview mirror."

"Fred?"

"Fredericksburg."

"Did she hang out with Mexican boys?"

"In this town?"

"Any college boys?"

"What college guys would come here?"

"Kim, Heidi had sex with a man the night
she died, did you know that?"

"I figured, with
the sheriff wanting DNA samples from every guy in town. I saw that on
CSI
Miami
. I like that show."

"She apparently wasn't raped."

Kim nodded.

"Which means, Kim, that Heidi met a man.
Where would she meet a man in Fredericksburg?"

No eye contact again. She shrugged. Beck
decided to gut-punch Kim.

"Kim, there's something else you should
know. Heidi was with two men that night."

Now she made eye
contact. "
Two
men?"

Beck nodded. "Apparently she gave oral sex
to the first man earlier and then had unprotected intercourse with the second
man, the man that dumped her in the ditch."

Kim's eyes dropped. She bit her lower lip and wiped
a tear from her cheek. Now she looked thirteen.

"Does Coach know?"

"No."

She looked up. "Don't tell him, okay? He would
die. He thought she was his little princess. He always called her that. I
thought it was corny back then, but now I kind of like it, that he felt that
way about her. My dad wanted me to be a mechanic."

"She wasn't? A princess?"

"She was on the pill. Her mom got them for
her, right after—"

Kim caught herself. She tossed the cigarette
into the dirt, slammed the laptop shut, stood, and walked into the house. The
interview was apparently over.

When Beck walked back into his chambers, he found retired
Judge Bruno Stutz leaned back in Beck's chair with his feet kicked up on Beck's
desk. His eyes were closed. He was a white-haired man in his seventies with sharp
facial features.

Bruno Stutz was an old German.

Beck cleared his
throat loudly. Stutz's eyes opened to slits. He slowly removed his feet from
Beck's desk and stood. He was tall and lanky and dressed in a simple black
suit—his suit
did
look like the undertaker's.

"Every day for forty-six years, I took a
nap in that chair."

Bruno Stutz spoke with a thick German accent.
He walked around the desk; they shook hands.

"Beck Hardin."

"Bruno Stutz. So, the prodigal son returns
and is now the judge."

"How's your heart?"

"Still ticking."

"Must have improved since you resigned the
bench."

A thin smile. "Well, that sounded better
than the truth."

"Which was?"

"Quentin McQuade offered me a half-million-dollar salary to be
his lawyer."

"His lawyer or Slade's?"

A shrug. "All
in
der Familie
, as we say."

Stutz settled into the visitor's chair without
an invitation. Beck walked around and sat behind the desk. His gut told him
to keep some distance from Stutz. The old judge's next words proved his gut
right.

"Beck, I don't want Slade in your courtroom.
I want you to rescind your order. I want that examining trial in the J.P.
court just as I had planned. Take care of that today, okay?"

Beck stared across his desk at the old man issuing
orders to a district judge like he was ordering bratwurst and sauerkraut for dinner.
Who the hell does he think he is?

"Bruno, that's not going to happen. Slade McQuade's
examining trial will be held Friday morning upstairs in the district courtroom.
And this is an
ex parte
communication between the court and one party to
a case. I don't do that."

Stutz smiled. "
Sohn
, nothing would
ever get done in a courthouse without
ex parte
communications. That's
why lawyers give campaign contributions, to buy the right to
ex parte
the judge."

"Not with me."

Stutz reached inside his coat and came out with
a document. He unfolded it, and tossed it on the desk: CONSENT TO EX PARTE
COMMUNICATIONS. Beck scanned the document. The D.A. had waived all objections
to Stutz having private conversations with Beck regarding Slade McQuade.

"The D.A. and I, we agreed to give Slade a
break, so he can get on with his football career."

"He beat the hell out of that kid. He
doesn't deserve a break."

"Did you?"

"I never beat anyone up."

"Someone still got hurt."

"That was different … and twenty-four
years ago."

"I have a long memory." Stutz sighed
heavily. "Look, Beck, there's an easy way and a hard way to do this.
That was the easy way. You won't like the hard way."

"Are you threatening a state district judge?"

"Did you threaten a justice of the
peace?"

"Is that what Schmidt said?"

"
Ja
, that
is exactly what he said. You know, threatening Walt with that tape recording,
that's something I would've done. Wouldn't have expected that from you."

"That tape recording is public record, Bruno.
It's not a threat to disclose a public record."