The Perk by Mark Gimenez

Author:Mark Gimenez [Gimenez, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Thriller
ISBN: 9780748109654
Publisher: LITTLE BROWN-UK
Published: 2008-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The Gillespie County Courthouse marks the boundary between East and West Main Street. To the east are the "Three Magic Blocks." The 1.5 million tourists who visit Fredericksburg each year park their cars on East Main Street, shop at the stores on the Three Magic Blocks, then get back into their cars and drive home. Few tourists venture west of the courthouse. There was no magic on West Main Street.

The Krause Gas Station was located on West Main Street.

Beck drove west down Main Street past the courthouse. He crossed Crockett, Orange, Milam, Edison, Bowie, Acorn, Cherry, and Kay Streets, the first letters of which spelled COME BACK. He drove past dilapidated homes and abandoned gas stations, the Zion Lutheran Church and the old Catholic convent, the Amish Market and the shuttered Knopp & Metzger Department Store where his mother had taken him shopping as a boy, a health food store, and the Choo Choo Trolley Patio Shop.

The Krause station sat on the south side across from the Texas Pawn Shop just before the Y, where Main Street ended and split into Highway 290 West, the road to El Paso, and Highway 87 North, the road to Amarillo. Claude Krause repaired old cars in the old garage; Kim Krause watched the pumps from the desk inside and took the money. Krause's was not a pay-at-the-pump place.

But Claude Krause was sitting behind the desk and downing a Dinkel Acker beer when Beck walked in. It was 12:01 P.M. Claude said he never drank before noon. He also said that Kim had gone home to watch her favorite soap; home was an old frame house just behind the gas station. Beck now weaved around a dozen junk cars Claude was dismantling for the parts and a pile of tread-worn tires and walked across a dirt yard shaded by wide oak trees. He stepped up onto the creaky porch and knocked on the screen door.

Claude obviously enjoyed repairing old cars more than his old home; white paint was peeling from the siding and black paint from the wood trim. The Krause house made Aubrey's look new. Beck could hear a TV through the screen door. A young woman smoking a cigarette appeared and spoke through the screen like an inmate conversing with her lawyer.

"Yeah?"

"Kim?"

"Who's asking?"

"I'm Judge Hardin." Beck hoped his official title might encourage Kim to cooperate. "I'd like to talk to you about Heidi."

If Kim was Heidi's age, she'd be twenty now; she looked thirty. She shrugged and pushed open the screen door.

"You scared me, wearing that suit looking like the undertaker. Come on in."

"Is your mother home?"

Kim exhaled smoke. "She left us a long time ago."

Beck didn't think it wise for a judge to be alone in the house with a twenty-year-old girl, so he said, "Let's sit out here on the porch."

"Suit yourself."

Kim came outside and plopped down on the top step. She was blonde and blue-eyed like Heidi, but she didn't look like Heidi. She was wearing a black tube top and cut-off jean shorts.

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