The Perk (30 page)

"Heck, I'd wear a thong to keep Earl in my
bed."

Kim Krause was lying. She knew where Heidi had gone that
night. She might have even gone with her. But why would she lie about it?
Did she know the man … the men … Heidi had been with that night? Was
she protecting them? Or Heidi? Or herself?

Beck opened the case
file to the interview statements and found Kim's. She said she had picked up
Heidi about noon on New Year's Eve, and they had driven into town. Heidi had
been wearing jeans, a tee shirt, and sneakers. Beck turned back to the Evidence
Report: Heidi's body had been found clothed in a skirt and blouse, not jeans
and a tee shirt. Back to Kim's statement: She said most of the stores had
closed early for New Year's Eve, so they had window-shopped on Main Street and eaten at the brew pub. At approximately 4:00
P.M.
, Kim had gotten bored and returned home. Heidi
wanted to remain in town. She said she'd call her mother to pick her up. That
was the last time Kim had talked to Heidi. She had stayed at home the rest of
the night. Her father had vouched for her presence.

Claude Krause did not strike Beck as a liar.

But he was sure Kim was lying.

Beck exited the courthouse and cut across the lawn past the
Eagle Tree. Brown oak leaves were floating through the air on a cool northerly
breeze and falling on the courthouse grounds. Traffic on Main Street consisted
of three cars backed up at the red light at the busiest intersection in town.
Rush hour.

He walked east on Main Street two blocks and
turned up the rock path leading to the bookstore. He needed a coffee and he
needed to ask Jodie about Heidi; the sheriff said she had hung out here. Beck
found Jodie at the checkout counter.

"Hi, Jodie. Small nonfat latte, please."

She looked up at him. "Figured you'd be
over at the primary school, Judge."

She looked back down.
Judge?

"Jodie, are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't seem fine." Beck Hardin
didn't know women, but he knew a pissed-off woman. "Something you want to
talk about?"

"Yes, there is." She called out,
"Ella, I'll be in the courtyard!"

"Can I get my coffee first?"

"No."

She came around from behind the counter and
walked outside; Beck followed her to the two-person bench. They sat quietly
while she worked up to what she had to say.

"Beck, I've tried to help you with
Meggie."

He nodded. "We're making progress."

"Then I don't want to see her
regress."

"
Regress?
How?"

"Finding out her father is dating her
teacher. Beck, it's all over town."

"How can it be all over town? We haven't
even gone out yet."

"It's a small town." She faced him.
"Don't you think Gretchen's a little young for you?"

"That's what I told her."

"And what did she say?"

"She said she has needs."

Jodie gave a knowing nod. "She wants
sex."

"She hasn't had a date in over a year."

"Oh, what, this is like community service
for you? You're just being neighborly to the teacher? Carrying her books to
the car, cleaning the chalkboard, satisfying her needs …"

"She's twenty-five."

"And you're forty-two."

"I feel like I'm sixty-two."

"But she made you feel young?"

He nodded. "Just her asking made me feel like
I was nineteen again. I didn't feel so tired."

"My husband said his secretary made him
feel young."

"He was an idiot."

"I know that but how do you know
that?"

"Because I know you." Almost a smile.
"Jodie, can I ask you something?"

She nodded.

"Would it hurt Annie? I feel like I'd be
cheating on her."

"Did you ever cheat on her?"

"No."

"Never?"

"No."

She gave him a suspicious look. "Not even
a little touchy-feely with a secretary, maybe a few drinks and some grab-ass
with a female associate after-hours?"

"No. Nothing. I loved her. I still do."

Jodie sighed. "Annie wouldn't mind then.
It's cheating on us while we're alive that pisses us off."

"She wasn't happy."

"Annie?"

"She told J.B., in her emails. Because I
worked long hours, was out of town a lot. She said she was lonely, learned to
sleep without me."

"Ouch. It's hard to be married to a
lawyer."

"Were you ever happy, with your
husband?"

"Maybe at the beginning. It didn't last
long."

"You seem happy now."

"Not living with a lawyer will do
that."

She straightened herself, and Beck noticed that instead
of jeans, she was wearing a skirt and a short denim jacket over a black tee
shirt. She was still wearing the red cowboy boots.

"That's a nice outfit. Makes you look
young."

"Hey, I'm only—" She caught herself.
"Nice try."

"Thanks. Are we okay?"

She smiled reluctantly and nodded.

"Good. Do you know Kim Krause?"

"Yeah. She tagged along with Heidi. No
one ever saw her. Heidi got all the attention."

"Was she jealous of Heidi?"

"More like in awe of her."

"She has nude photos of Heidi. Her mother
took them."

"Heidi's mom?"

Beck nodded. "Her mom wanted her to pose
for
Playboy
."

"
Playboy
came to Austin one time. UT
girls lined up. They were interviewed on TV, said their parents thought posing
nude was a great opportunity. I remember thinking, an opportunity for what? Harvard Law School? Med school?"

"I thought women wanted an equal right to
be doctors and lawyers … and bookstore owners."

"Girls don't want to be regular people
anymore. They want to be Paris Hilton."

"Why?"

"Because she's rich and famous."

"Kim said she doesn't wear any underwear."

"Kim?"

"Paris. She said all the girls here wear thongs, said you can
buy them at the Wal-Mart."

Jodie nodded. "Yep. I thought we had left
all that behind in Austin, but it's here now. Only difference is, girls in Austin can afford to buy their thongs at Victoria's Secret."

"In Chicago, at Luke's soccer games, all
the mothers wore thongs. You could see them right through their shorts."

"Soccer moms in thongs." She shook
her head. "I thought feminism was about financial freedom. Turns out, it
was just about sex. The thong won out over feminism."

"So how do I protect Meggie from all that?
Not let her wear a thong?"

"Not at five anyway." She smiled.
"You can't protect them, Beck. You just try to teach them to protect
themselves, to think for themselves, to make good decisions. And when they
make bad decisions, and they will, you talk to them and maybe you punish them,
and then you hug them. You always love them."

" 'Is your mama a llama? I asked my friend Dave. No,
she is not, is the answer Dave gave.' "

Beck was reading Meggie's
favorite book,
Is Your Mama a Llama?
by Deborah Guarino. He had read it
five times that night and had just started over.

"J.B. has a llama named Sue," Meggie
said.

"He sure does."

"Can I have a pony?"

"You've got a goat."

"I can't ride Frank."

"When you're a little older."

"When did you learn to ride?"

"Oh, about your age, but I was raised here,
in the country."

"Other kids at school, they're riding
horses."

"They're country kids."

"What am I?"

"You're my kid."

Beck found an email from March of last year:

 
Dear J.B.,

First chemo treatment. Beck
went with me, but halfway through he had to leave the room. I think he was
crying. I'm going to beat this disease, J.B., even if it kills me. (That's a
joke.) Just threw up in the sink.

And one three weeks later, from April:

 
Hair started falling out. I think I'm going to shave
it all off, I'll look like a football player. Second treatment today. Makes
me so tired. Beck's in trial, billions at stake. I told him I could do it alone.
I wish now I had told him the truth.

A month later, from May:

 
I'm bald as a baby's butt now.
Bought a wig. Hate it. Too hot, makes my head sweat. I look like an old guy
with a bad toup. So I went to a biker shop and bought doo-rags. They had a
biker tee shirt, on the back it said, "If you can read this my bitch fell
off." I started laughing so hard I had to sit down on the floor and then
I started crying. The shop owner is this big hairy guy with tattoos. He came
over and asked if he should call the ambulance. I yanked off my wig and screamed,
"They can't help me!" I shouldn't have done that. He sat down on
the floor with me, said he lost his wife three years ago. Breast cancer. We
cried together, the bald and the beast. He wouldn't let me pay for the
doo-rags. Meggie wants to shave her head and wear doo-rags to school. She
doesn't understand. Luke is getting scared. Beck is afraid to touch me now.

Beck was wearing latex gloves.

It was 8:30 the next morning, and he was in the
sheriff's office. Grady was showing him the physical evidence from the crime
scene box labeled GEISEL, HEIDI FAY. Grady removed a large plastic bag from
the box. He unzipped the bag and removed a white blouse; he held it up with
his gloved hands. The light shone through the material.

"Nothing left to the imagination
there," Grady said.

"Where was the DNA sample located?"

Grady pointed to a spot just below the collar on
the right side.

"Right there."

He folded the shirt in mid-air and replaced it
in the bag.

"Hear you're dating Gretchen."

"You know her?"

"Beck, I'm the sheriff of a small rural
county—I know everyone."

"You know Kim Krause?"

"Her and Heidi were friends. Said she wasn't with Heidi that
night, didn't know where Heidi went."

"She's lying."

"How do you know?"

"I've cross-examined enough lying witnesses
to know."

"Why would she lie?"

"That's what I don't know. Did you
polygraph her?"

"No reason to. Claude said she was home
all night. But if you want, I'll bring her in, give her a little scare."

"No. I need to figure some things out
first."

The next bag contained a black miniskirt that
seemed too small for a sixteen-year-old girl. Grady pulled on the material
then released it; it snapped back.

"Spandex."

Grady removed another black item from the next
bag: a tiny black thong with a red sequined star on the front.

"I never showed her clothes to
Aubrey."

"Why not?"

"Would you want to know if your girl was
wearing this stuff?" He shrugged. "And he never asked. Maybe he
knew the way she was, didn't want to face it."

"That's all she was wearing?"

"That's all we recovered."

"Kim's statement said Heidi was wearing
jeans that day."

Grady nodded. "Aubrey and Randi said the
same thing. I figured she changed clothes. Girls do that. They get past the
folks wearing jeans, then change to go partying in Austin."

"No shoes? No purse?"

"Nope and nope."

"Your wife ever leave home barefoot or
without her purse?"

"Nope."

"Doesn't seem right, does it?"

"Beck, there ain't nothing right about this
case. Or Slade's."

The local paper that week made no
mention of Slade McQuade's assault of Julio Espinoza or his upcoming examining
trial. So when Judge John Beck Hardin climbed the spiral staircase to the second
floor of the Gillespie County Courthouse at nine that Friday morning, he
entered a nearly vacant courtroom.

It was his fifth day on the job.

He sat behind the bench. The D.A. occupied the
prosecution table, and Bruno Stutz the defense table. Slade loomed large next
to Stutz; he looked like an action-figure in a suit. Quentin McQuade sat
directly behind them in the spectator pews; next to him sat a teenage girl who
looked as if she'd rather be taking the SAT.

Only a handful of people inhabited the spectator
pews. On the front row across the aisle from Quentin McQuade sat a young woman
with a small notebook in one hand and a pen in the other, no doubt a reporter.
About halfway back sat a Latino boy whom Beck recognized as Julio Espinoza;
sitting next to him was an older white-haired Latino man dressed in a suit, former
Congressman Felix Delgado. In the pew directly behind them sat three Latinos
whose body language said "La Raza Unida." Leaning against the back wall
by the entrance doors was Sheriff Grady Guenther.

Beck turned to his left: the jury box was
empty—an examining trial was before a judge, not a jury—but the court
reporter's chair was also empty. He turned to his right.

"Mavis, where's the court reporter?"

The D.A. stood. "Your Honor, I informed Bernice
that her services would not be required today."

"
You
informed her?"

"Yes, sir. As you know, Judge, this is an
informal proceeding, so Judge Stutz and I agreed that there was no need for a
transcript of the proceedings."

Beck turned to Mavis: "Call Bernice and
get her over here."

"Well, Judge," the D.A. said,
"she's out of town today. Said she was taking a long weekend in San Antonio."

Beck again turned to Mavis: "Call Bernice
and tell her she's fired. Hire a new court reporter who understands that she works
for the judge, not the D.A."

"Judge, if you'd prefer, we can postpone
this proceeding until such time as a court reporter is available."