Echo Burning (Jack Reacher #5)

Echo Burning (Jack Reacher #5) Page 11

Alice's car was the only VW in the lot behind the building. It was baking in the sun right in the center, a new-shape Beetle, bright yellow in color, New York plates, about a year and a half old, and there was more than a bunch of maps in the glove compartment. There was a handgun in there, too.

It was a beautiful nickel-finished Heckler & Koch P7M10, four-inch barrel, ten .40 caliber shells. In Reacher's day the army had wanted the same thing in the 9mm blued-steel version, but the defense department had balked at the cost, which must have been about sixteen times the price of Carmen Greer's eighty-dollar Lorcin. It was a fine, fine piece. One of the best available. Maybe it was a gift from the family back on Park Avenue. Maybe the car was, too. He could just imagine it. The VW was an easy choice. The perfect graduation present. But the gun might have caused some consternation. The parents would have been sitting up there on their high floor in New York, worrying about it. She's going to work where? With poor people? She'll need protection, surely. So they would have researched the whole matter thoroughly and gone out and bought her the best on the market, like they would have bought her a Rolex if she had needed a watch.

Out of habit he took it apart and checked the action and reassembled it. It was new, but it had been fired and cleaned maybe four or five times. It spoke of conscientious hours put in at the practice range. Maybe some exclusive Manhattan basement. He smiled. Slotted it back in the glove compartment under the maps. Then he racked the seat all the way back and fiddled with the key and fired the engine up and started the air running. He took the maps out of the glove compartment and spread them on the empty seat beside him. Took the folded paper from his shirt pocket and checked the maps for the rancher's address. It seemed to be somewhere north and east of town, maybe an hour away if he hustled hard.

The VW had a manual transmission with a sharp clutch and he stalled out twice before he got the hang of driving it. He felt awkward and conspicuous. The ride was firm and there was some kind of a bud vase attached to the dash, loaded with a little pink bloom that was reviving steadily as the car got colder. There was subtle perfume in the air. He had learned to drive nearly twenty-five years before, underage and illegally, in a Marine Corps deuce-and-a-half with the driving seat six feet off the ground, and he felt about as far away from that experience as it was possible to get.

The map showed seven ways out of Pecos. He had come in on the southernmost, and it didn't have what he was looking for. So he had six to cover. His instinct led him west. The town's center of gravity seemed to be lumped to the east of the crossroads, therefore east would be definitely wrong. So he drove away from the lawyers and the bondsmen in the direction of El Paso and followed a slight right-hand curve and found exactly what he wanted, all spread out in front of him and receding into the distance. Every town of any size has a strip of auto dealers clustered together on one of the approaches, and Pecos was no different.

He cruised up the strip and turned around and cruised back, looking for the right kind of place. There were two possibilities. Both of them had gaudy signs offering FOREIGN CAR SERVICE. Both of them offered FREE LOANERS. He chose the place farther out of town. It had a used car business in front with a dozen clunkers decked with flags and low prices on their windshields. An office in a trailer. Behind the sales lot was a long low shed with hydraulic hoists. The floor of the shed was oil-stained earth. There were four mechanics visible. One of them was halfway underneath a British sports car. The other three were unoccupied. A slow start to a hot Monday morning.

He drove the yellow VW right into the shed. The three unoccupied mechanics drifted over to it. One of them looked like a foreman. Reacher asked him to adjust the VW's clutch so its action would be softer. The guy looked happy to be offered the work. He said it would cost forty bucks. Reacher agreed to the price and asked for a loaner. The guy led him behind the shed and pointed to an ancient Chrysler LeBaron convertible. It had been white once, but now it was khaki with age and sunlight. Reacher took Alice's gun with him, wrapped up in her maps like a store-bought package. He placed it on the Chrysler's passenger seat. Then he asked the mechanic for a tow rope.

"What you want to tow?" the guy asked.

"Nothing," Reacher said. "I just want the rope, is all."

"You want a rope, but you don't want to tow anything?"

"You got it," Reacher said.

The guy shrugged and walked away. Came back with a coil of rope. Reacher put it in the passenger footwell. Then he drove the LeBaron back into town and out again heading north and east, feeling a whole lot better about the day. Only a fool would try unlicensed debt-collecting in the wilds of Texas in a bright yellow car with New York plates and a bud vase on the dash.

He stopped once in empty country, to unscrew the Chrysler's plates with a penny from his pocket. He stored them on the floor on the passenger's side, next to the coil of rope. Put the bolts in the glove compartment. Then he drove on, looking for his destination. He was maybe three hours north of the Greer place, and the land looked pretty much the same, except it was better irrigated. Grass was growing. The mesquite had been burned back. There were cultivated acres, with green bushes all over them. Peppers, maybe. Or cantaloupe. He had no idea. There was wild indigo on the shoulders of the road. An occasional prickly pear. No people. The sun was high and the horizons were shimmering.

The rancher's name was listed on the legal paper as Lyndon J. Brewer. His address was just a route number which Alice's map showed was a stretch of road that ran about forty miles before it disappeared into New Mexico. It was the same sort of road as the drag heading south out of Echo down to the Greer place, a dusty blacktop ribbon and a string of drooping power lines punctuated by big ranch gates about every fifteen miles. The ranches had names, which weren't necessarily going to be the names of the owners, like the Red House had nowhere been labeled Greer. So finding Lyndon J. Brewer in person wasn't necessarily going to be easy.

But then it was, because the road was crossed by another and the resulting crossroads had a line of mailboxes laid out along a gray weathered plank and the mailboxes had people's names and ranch names on them together. BREWER was painted freehand in black on a white box, and BIG HAT RANCH was painted right below it.

He found the entrance to the Big Hat Ranch fifteen miles to the north. There was a fancy iron arch, painted white, like something you might see holding up a conservatory roof in Charleston or New Orleans. He drove right past it and stopped on the shoulder of the road at the foot of the next power line pole. Got out of the car and looked straight up. There was a big transformer can at the top of the pole where the line split off in a T and ran away at a right angle toward where the ranch house must be. And, looping parallel all the way, about a foot lower down, the telephone line ran with it.

He took Alice's gun from under the maps on the passenger seat and the rope from the footwell. Tied one end of the rope into the trigger guard with a single neat knot. Passed twenty feet of rope through his hands and swung the gun like a weight. Then he clamped the rope with his left hand and threw the gun with his right, aiming to slot it between the phone line and the electricity supply above it. The first time, he missed. The gun fell about a foot short and he caught it coming down. The second time he threw a little harder and hit it just right. The gun sailed through the gap and fell and snagged the rope over the wire. He played the rope out over his left palm and lowered the gun back down to himself. Untied it and tossed it back into the car and clamped the looped rope in both hands and pulled sharply. The phone line broke at the junction box and snaked down to the ground, all the way up to the next pole a hundred yards away.

He coiled the rope again and dropped it back in the footwell. Got in the car and backed up and turned in under the white-painted gate. Drove the best part of a mile down a private driveway to a white-painted house that should have been in a historical movie. It had four massive columns at the front, holding up a second-story balcony. There were broad steps leading up to a double front door. There was a tended lawn. A parking area made from raked gravel.

He stopped the car on the gravel at the bottom of the steps and shut off the motor. Tucked his shirt tight into the waistband of his pants. Some girl who worked as a personal trainer had told him it made his upper body look more triangular. He slipped the gun into his right hip pocket. Its shape showed through nicely. Then he rolled the sleeves of his new shirt all the way up to the shoulders. Gripped the LeBaron's wheel and squeezed until it started to give and the veins in his biceps were standing out big and obvious. When you've got arms bigger than most people's legs, sometimes you need to exploit what nature has given you.

He got out of the car and went up the steps. Used a bell he found to the right of the doors. Heard a chime somewhere deep inside the mansion. Then he waited. He was about to use the bell again when the left-hand door opened. There was a maid standing there, about half the height of the door. She was dressed in a gray uniform and looked like she came from the Philippines.

"I'm here to see Lyndon Brewer," Reacher said.

"Do you have an appointment?" the maid said. Her English was very good.

"Yes, I do."

"He didn't tell me."

"He probably forgot," Reacher said. "I understand he's a bit of an asshole."

Her face tensed. Not with shock. She was fighting a smile.

"Who shall I announce?"

"Rutherford B. Hayes," Reacher said.

The maid paused and then smiled, finally.

"He was the nineteenth President," she said. "The one after Ulysses S. Grant. Born 1822 in Ohio. Served from 1877 until 1881. One of seven presidents from Ohio. The middle one of three consecutive."

"He's my ancestor," Reacher said. "I'm from Ohio, too. But I've got no interest in politics. Tell Mr. Brewer I work for a bank in San Antonio and we just discovered stock in his grandfather's name worth about a million dollars."

"He'll be excited about that," the maid said.

She walked away and Reacher stepped through the door in time to see her climbing a wide staircase in back of the entrance foyer. She moved neatly, without apparent effort, one hand on the rail all the way. The foyer was the size of a basketball court, and it was hushed and cool, paneled in golden hardwood polished to a deep luster by generations of maids. There was a grandfather clock taller than Reacher, ticking softly to itself once a second. An antique chaise like you see society women perched on in oil-painted portraits. Reacher wondered if it would break in the middle if he put his weight on it. He pressed on the velvet with his hand. Felt horsehair padding under it. Then the maid came back down the stairs the same way she had gone up, gliding, her body perfectly still and her hand just grazing the rail.

"He'll see you now," she said. "He's on the balcony, at the back of the house."

There was an upstairs foyer with the same dimensions and the same decor. French doors let out onto the rear balcony, which ran the whole width of the house and looked out over acres of hot grassland. It was roofed and fans turned lazily near the ceiling. There was heavy wicker furniture painted white and arranged in a group. A man sat in a chair with a small table at his right hand. The table held a pitcher and a glass filled with what looked like lemonade, but it could have been anything. The man was a bull-necked guy of about sixty. He was softened and faded from a peak that might have been impressive twenty years ago. He had plenty of white hair and a red face burned into lines and crags by the sun. He was dressed all in white. White pants, white shirt, white shoes. It looked like he was ready to go lawn bowling at some fancy country club.

"Mr. Hayes?" he called.

Reacher walked over and sat down without waiting for an invitation.

"You got children?" he asked.

"I have three sons," Brewer replied.

"Any of them at home?"

"They're all away, working."

"Your wife?"

"She's in Houston, visiting."

"So it's just you and the maid today?"

"Why do you ask?" He was impatient and puzzled, but polite, like people are when you're about to give them a million dollars.

"I'm a banker," Reacher said. "I have to ask."

"Tell me about the stock," Brewer said.

"There is no stock. I lied about that."

Brewer looked surprised. Then disappointed. Then irritated.

"Then why are you here?" he asked.

"It's a technique we use," Reacher said. "I'm really a loan officer. A person needs to borrow money, maybe he doesn't want his domestic staff to know."

"But I don't need to borrow money, Mr. Hayes."

"You sure about that?"

"Very."

"That's not what we heard."

"I'm a rich man. I lend. I don't borrow."

"Really? We heard you had problems meeting your obligations."

Brewer made the connection slowly. Shock traveled through his body to his face. He stiffened and grew redder and glanced down at the shape of the gun in Reacher's pocket, like he was seeing it for the first time. Then he put his hand down to the table and came back with a small silver bell. He shook it hard and it made a small tinkling sound.

"Maria!" he called, shaking the bell. "Maria!"

The maid came out of the same door Reacher had used. She walked soundlessly along the boards of the balcony.

"Call the police," Brewer ordered. "Dial 911. I want this man arrested."

She hesitated.

"Go ahead," Reacher said. "Make the call."

She ducked past them and into the room directly behind Brewer's chair. It was some kind of a private study, dark and masculine. Reacher heard the sound of a phone being picked up. Then the sound of rapid clicking, as she tried to make it work.

"The phones are out," she called.

"Go wait downstairs," Reacher called back.

"What do you want?" Brewer asked.

"I want you to meet your legal obligation."

"You're not a banker."

"That's a triumph of deduction."

"So what are you?"

"A guy who wants a check," Reacher said. "For twenty thousand dollars."

"You represent those... people?"

He started to stand up. Reacher put his arm out straight and shoved him back in his chair, hard enough to hurt.

"Sit still," he said.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because I'm a compassionate guy," Reacher said. "That's why. There's a family in trouble here. They're going to be upset and worried all winter long. Disaster staring them in the face. Never knowing which day is going to bring everything crashing down around them. I don't like to see people living that way, whoever they are."

"They don't like it, they should get back to Mexico, where they belong."

Reacher glanced at him, surprised.

"I'm not talking about them," he said. "I'm talking about you. Your family."

"My family?"

Reacher nodded. "I stay mad at you, they'll all suffer. A car wreck here, a mugging there. You might fall down the stairs, break your leg. Or your wife might. The house might catch on fire. Lots of accidents, one after the other. You'll never know when the next one is coming. It'll drive you crazy."

"You couldn't get away with it."

"I'm getting away with it right now. I could start today. With you."

Brewer said nothing.

"Give me that pitcher," Reacher said.

Brewer hesitated a moment. Then he picked it up and held it out, like an automaton. Reacher took it. It was fancy crystal with a cut pattern, maybe Waterford, maybe imported all the way from Ireland. It held a quart and probably cost a thousand bucks. He balanced it on his palm and sniffed its contents. Lemonade. Then he tossed it over the edge of the balcony. Yellow liquid arced out through the air and a second later there was a loud crash from the patio below.

"Oops," he said.

"I'll have you arrested," Brewer said. "That's criminal damage."

"Maybe I'll start with one of your sons," Reacher said. "Pick one out at random and throw him off the balcony, just like that."

"I'll have you arrested," Brewer said again.

"Why? According to you, what the legal system says doesn't matter. Or does that only apply to you? Maybe you think you're something special."

Brewer said nothing. Reacher stood up and picked up his chair and threw it over the rail. It crashed and splintered on the stone below.

"Give me the check," he said. "You can afford it. You're a rich man. You just got through telling me."

"It's a matter of principle," Brewer said. "They shouldn't be here."

"And you should? Why? They were here first."

"They lost. To us."

"And now you're losing. To me. What goes around, comes around."

He bent down and picked up the silver bell from the table. It was probably an antique. Maybe French. The cup part was engraved with filigree patterns. Maybe two and a half inches in diameter. He held it with his thumb on one side and all four fingers on the other. Squeezed hard and crushed it out of shape. Then he transferred it into his palm and squashed the metal flat. Leaned over and shoved it in Brewer's shirt pocket.

"I could do that to your head," he said.

Brewer made no reply.

"Give me the check," Reacher said, quietly. "Before I lose my damn temper."

Brewer paused. Five seconds. Ten. Then he sighed.

"O.K.," he said. He led the way into the study and over to the desk. Reacher stood behind him. He didn't want any revolvers appearing suddenly out of drawers.

"Make it out to cash," he said.

Brewer wrote the check. He got the date right, he got the amount right, and he signed it.

"It better not bounce," Reacher said.

"It won't," Brewer said.

"It does, you do, too. Off the patio."

"I hope you rot in hell."

Reacher folded the check into his pocket and found the way out to the upstairs foyer. Went down the stairs and walked over to the grandfather clock. Tilted it forward until it overbalanced. It fell like a tree and smashed on the floor and stopped ticking.

The two men exfiltrated after nearly three hours. The heat was too brutal to stay longer. And they didn't really need to. Nobody was going anywhere. That was clear. The old woman and her son stayed mostly in the house. The kid was hanging around in the barn, coming out now and then until the sun drove her back inside, once walking slowly back to the house when the maid called her to come and eat. So they gave it up and crawled north in the lee of the rocks and came out to wait on the dusty shoulder as soon as they were out of sight of the house. The woman in the Crown Vic turned up right on time. She had the air blasting and water in bottles. They drank the water and made their report.

"O.K.," the woman said. "So I guess we're ready to make our move."

"I guess we are," the dark man said.

"Sooner the better," the fair man agreed. "Let's get it done."

Reacher put the plates back on the old LeBaron as soon as he was out of sight of the Brewer house. Then he drove straight back to Pecos and reclaimed Alice Aaron's VW from the mechanics. He paid them their forty bucks without complaint, but afterward he wasn't really sure they'd done anything to the car. The clutch felt just as sharp as it had before. He stalled out twice on the way back to the legal mission.

He left it in the lot behind the building with the maps and the handgun in the glove compartment where he had found them. Entered the old store from the front and found Alice at her desk in back. She was on the phone and busy with clients. There was a whole family group in front of her. Three generations of quiet, anxious people. She had changed her clothes. Now she was wearing black high-waisted pants made out of some kind of thin cotton or linen, and a black jacket to match. The jacket made the white sports bra look like a shirt. The whole thing looked very formal. Instant attorney.

She saw him and put her hand over the phone and excused herself from her clients. She twisted away from them and he leaned down next to her.

"We've got big problems," she said quietly. "Hack Walker wants to see you."

"Me?" he said. "Why?"

"Better you hear it from him."

"Hear what? Did you meet with him?"

She nodded. "I went right over. We talked for a half hour."

"And? What did he say?"

"Better you hear it from him," she said again. "We can talk about it later, O.K.?"

There was worry in her voice. He looked at her. She turned back to the phone. The family in front of her desk leaned forward to catch her words. He took the twenty-thousand-dollar check out of his pocket and unfolded it and smoothed it on the desktop. She saw it and stopped talking. Put her hand over the phone again. Took a deep breath.

"Thanks," she said.

Now there was embarrassment in her voice. Like maybe she had reconsidered her end of the bargain. He dropped her car keys on the desk and walked back out to the sidewalk. Turned right and headed for the courthouse.

The Pecos County District Attorney's office occupied the whole of the courthouse's second floor. There was an entry door from the stairwell that led to a narrow passage that passed through a wooden gate into an open area used as a secretarial pen. Beyond that were three doors leading into three offices, one for the DA and one for each of the assistants. All the interior walls separating the offices from the pen and from each other were glass from the waist up. They had old-fashioned Venetian blinds covering the glass, with wide wooden slats and cotton tapes. The whole place looked cramped and out-of-date. There were air conditioners in every external window. They were all set on high and their motors put a deep booming tone into the structure of the walls.

The secretarial pen had two cluttered desks, both of them occupied, the farther one by a middle-aged woman who looked like she belonged there, the nearer one by a young man who could have been an intern working his summer vacation from college. Clearly he doubled as the office receptionist, because he looked up with a bright how may we help you expression on his face.

"Hack Walker wants to see me," Reacher said.

"Mr. Reacher?" the kid asked.

Reacher nodded and the kid pointed to the corner office.

"He's expecting you," he said.

Reacher threaded his way through the cluttered space to the corner office. The door had a window with an acetate plaque below it. The plaque read HENRY F. W. WALKER, DISTRICT ATTORNEY. The window was covered on the inside by a closed blind. Reacher knocked once and went in without waiting for a reply.

The office had a window on each wall and a mess of filing cabinets and a big desk piled with paper and a computer and three telephones. Walker was in his chair behind it, leaning back, holding a photograph frame in both hands. It was a small wooden thing with a fiberboard tongue on the back that would prop it upright on a desk or a shelf. He was staring at the front of it. Some kind of serious distress on his face.

"What can I do for you?" Reacher asked.

Walker transferred his gaze from the photograph.

"Sit down," he said. "Please."

The hearty politician's boom had gone from his voice. He sounded tired and ordinary. There was a client chair in front of the desk. Reacher picked it up and turned it sideways to give himself some legroom.

"What can I do for you?" he asked again.

"You ever had your life turned upside down overnight?"

Reacher nodded. "Now and then."

Walker propped the photograph on the desk, sideways, so it was visible to both of them. It was the same color shot he had seen in Sloop Greer's closet. The three young men leaning on the old pick-up's fender, good friends, intoxicated with youth, on the cusp of infinite possibilities.

"Me and Sloop and Al Eugene," he said. "Now Al's a missing person and Sloop is dead."

"No word on Eugene?"

Walker shook his head. "Not a thing."

Reacher said nothing.

"We were such a threesome," Walker said. "And you know how that goes. Isolated place like this, you get to be more than friends. It was us against the world."

"Was Sloop his real name?"

Walker looked up. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I thought yours was Hack. But I see from the sign on your door it's Henry."

Walker nodded, and smiled a tired smile. "It's Henry on my birth certificate. My folks call me Hank. Always did. But I couldn't say it as a youngster, when I was learning to talk. It came out Hack. It kind of stuck."

"But Sloop was for real?"

Walker nodded again. "It was Sloop Greer, plain and simple."

"So what can I do for you?" Reacher asked for the third time.

"I don't know, really," Walker said. "Maybe just listen awhile, maybe clarify some things for me."

"What kind of things?"

"I don't know, really," Walker said again. "Like, when you look at me, what do you see?"

"A district attorney."

"And?"

"I'm not sure."

Walker was quiet for a spell.

"You like what you see?" he asked.

Reacher shrugged. "Less and less, to be honest."

"Why?"

"Because I come in here and find you getting all misty-eyed over your boyhood friendship with a crooked lawyer and a wife-beater."

Walker looked away. "You certainly come straight to the point."

"Life's too short not to."

There was silence for a second. Just the dull roar of all the air conditioner motors, rising and falling as they slipped in and out of phase with each other.

"Actually I'm three things," Walker said. "I'm a man, I'm a DA, and I'm running for judge."

"So?"

"Al Eugene isn't a crooked lawyer. Far from it. He's a good man. He's a campaigner. And he needs to be. Fact is, structurally, the state of Texas is not big on protecting the rights of the accused. The indigent accused, even worse. You know that, because you had to find a lawyer for Carmen yourself, and that can only be because you were told she wouldn't get a court appointment for months. And the lawyer you found must have told you she's still looking at months and months of delay. It's a bad system, and I'm aware of it, and Al is aware of it. The Constitution guarantees access to counsel, and Al takes that promise very seriously. He makes himself available to anybody who can find his door. He gives them fair representation, whoever they are. Inevitably some of them are bad guys, but don't forget the Constitution applies to bad guys too. But most of his clients are O.K. Most of them are just poor, is all, black or white or Hispanic."

Reacher said nothing.

"So let me take a guess," Walker said. "I don't know where you heard Al called crooked, but a buck gets ten it was from an older white person with money or position."

It was Rusty Greer, Reacher thought.

"Don't tell me who," Walker said. "But ten gets a hundred I'm right. A person like that sees a lawyer sticking up for poor people or colored people, and they regard it as a nuisance, or as an unpleasantness, and then as some of kind of treachery against their race or their class, and from there on it's a pretty easy jump to calling it crooked."

"O.K.," Reacher said. "Maybe I'm wrong about Eugene."

"I guarantee you're wrong about him. I guarantee you could go back to the very day he passed the bar exam and not find any crooked behavior, anywhere at all."

He placed his fingernail on the photograph, just below Al Eugene's chin.

"He's my friend," he said. "And I'm happy about that. As a man, and as a DA."

"What about Sloop Greer?"

Walker nodded. "We'll get to that. But first let me tell you about being a DA."

"What's to tell?"

"Same kind of stuff. I'm like Al. I believe in the Constitution, and the rule of law, and impartiality, and fairness. I can absolutely guarantee you could turn this office upside down and never find one single case where I've been less than fair and impartial. I've been tough, sure, and I've sent lots of people to prison, and some of them to death row, but I've never done anything if I wasn't absolutely convinced it was right."

"Sounds like a stump speech," Reacher said. "But I'm not registered to vote."

"I know," Walker said. "I checked, finally. That's why I'm talking like this. If this was politics, it would be too hokey for words. But this is for real. I want to be a judge, because I could do some good. You familiar with how things work in Texas?"

"Not really."

"Judges in Texas are all elected. They have a lot of power. And it's a weird state. A lot of rich people, but a lot of poor people, too. The poor people need court-appointed lawyers, obviously. But there's no public defender system in Texas. So the judges choose the poor people's lawyers for them. They just pick them out, from any old law firm they want. They're in control of the whole process. They determine the fees, too. It's patronage, pure and simple. So who is the judge going to appoint? He's going to appoint somebody who contributed to his election campaign. It's about cronyism, not fitness or talent. The judge hands out ten thousand dollars of taxpayer money to some favored law firm, the law firm assigns some incompetent lackey who puts in a hundred dollars' worth of work, the net result being nine thousand nine hundred dollars unearned profit for the law firm and some poor guy in jail for something he maybe didn't do. Most defense lawyers meet their clients for the first time at the start of the trial, right there in the courtroom. We've had drunk lawyers and lawyers who fall asleep at the defense table. They don't do any work. They don't check anything. Like, the year before I got here, some guy was on trial for the rape of a child. He was convicted and went to prison for life. Then some pro-bono operation like you went and proved the guy had actually been in jail at the time the rape happened. In jail, Reacher. Fifty miles away. Awaiting trial for stealing a car. There was paperwork from here to there, proving it beyond any doubt, all of it in black and white in the public record. His first lawyer never even checked."

"Not too good," Reacher said.

"So I do two things," Walker said. "First, I aim to become a judge, so I can help to put things right in the future. Second, right now, right here in the DA's office, we act out both sides. Every single time, one of us assembles the prosecution case, and another of us does the defense's work and tries to tear it down. We work real hard at it, because we know nobody else will, and I couldn't sleep nights if we didn't."

"Carmen Greer's defense is rock solid," Reacher said.

Hack Walker looked down at the desk.

"No, the Greer situation is a nightmare," he said. "It's a total disaster, all ways around. For me personally, as a man, as a DA, and as a candidate for a judgeship."

"You have to recuse yourself."

Walker looked up. "Of course I'll recuse myself. No doubt about that. But it's still personal to me. And I'm still in overall charge. Whatever happens, it's still my office. And that'll have repercussions for me."

"You want to tell me what your problem is?"

"Don't you see? Sloop was my friend. And I'm an honest prosecutor. So in my heart and in my head, I want to see justice done. But I'm looking at sending a Hispanic woman to death row. I do that, I can forget about the election, can't I? This county is heavily Hispanic. But I want to be a judge. Because I could do some good. And asking for the death penalty against a minority woman now will stop me dead. Not just here. It will be headline news everywhere. Can you imagine? What's The New York Times going to say? They already think we're dumb redneck barbarians who marry our own cousins. It'll follow me the rest of my life."

"So don't prosecute her. It wouldn't be justice, anyhow. Because it was self-defense, pure and simple."

"She got you convinced of that?"

"It's obvious."

"I wish it was obvious. I'd give my right arm. For the first time in my career, I'd twist and turn to make this go away."

Reacher stared at him. "You don't need to twist and turn. Do you?"

"Let's talk it through," Walker said. "Step by step, right from the beginning. The spousal-abuse defense can work, but it has to be white-heat, spur-of-the-moment stuff. You understand? That's the law. There can't be premeditation. And Carmen premeditated like crazy. That's a fact, and it won't go away. She bought the gun more or less immediately she heard he was coming home. The paperwork comes through this office eventually, so I know that's true. She was ready and waiting to ambush him."

Reacher said nothing.

"I know her," Walker said. "Obviously, I know her. Sloop was my friend, so I've known her as long as he did, near enough."

"And?"

Walker shrugged, miserably. "There are problems."

"What problems?"

He shook his head. "I don't know how much I should say, legitimately. So I'm just going to take a few guesses, O.K.? And I don't want you to respond at all. Not a word. It might put you in a difficult position."

"Difficult how?"

"You'll see, later. She probably told you she comes from a rich wine-growing family north of San Francisco, right?"

Reacher said nothing.

"She told you she met Sloop at UCLA, where they were students together."

Reacher said nothing.

"She told you Sloop got her pregnant and they had to get married and as a consequence her parents cut her off."

Reacher said nothing.

"She told you Sloop hit her from the time she was pregnant. She said there were serious injuries that Sloop made her pass off as riding accidents."

Reacher said nothing.

"She claimed it was her who tipped off the IRS, which made her all the more frantic about Sloop coming home."

Reacher said nothing.

"O.K.," Walker said. "Now strictly speaking, anything she told you is merely hearsay and is inadmissible in court. Even though they were spontaneous statements that indicated how acute her anguish was. So in a situation like this, her lawyer will try hard to get the hearsay admitted, because it goes to her state of mind. And there are provisions that might allow it. Obviously most DAs would fight it, but this office wouldn't. We'd tend to allow it, because we know marital abuse can be covert. My instinct would be to allow anything that gets us nearer to the truth. So let's say you or a person like you were allowed to testify. You'd paint a pretty horrible picture, and in the circumstances, what with his return home looming over her and all, the jury might tend to be sympathetic. They might overlook the element of premeditation. She might get a not guilty verdict."

"So where's the problem?"

"Problem is, if you testified, you'd be cross-examined, too."

"So?"

Walker looked down at the desk again. "Let me take a couple more guesses. Don't respond. And please, if I'm guessing wrong, don't be offended. If I'm wrong, I apologize most sincerely in advance. O.K.?"

"O.K."

"My guess is the premeditation was extensive. My guess is she thought about it and then she tried to recruit you to do it for her."

Reacher said nothing.

"My guess is she didn't pick you up by accident. She selected you in some way and tried hard to persuade you."

Reacher said nothing. Walker swallowed.

"Another guess," he said. "She offered you sex as a bribe."

Reacher said nothing.

"Another guess," Walker said. "She didn't give up. At some stage, she tried again to get you into bed."

Reacher said nothing.

"You see?" Walker said. "If I'm right, and I think I am, because I know this woman, all that stuff would come out too, under cross-examination. Evidence of thorough preparation. Unless you were to lie on the stand. Or unless we didn't ask the right questions. But assuming we asked the right questions and you told us the truth, the whole premeditation issue would be damaged. Very seriously. Probably fatally."

Reacher said nothing.

"And it gets worse, I'm afraid," Walker said. "Much worse. Because if she's told you things, what matters then is her credibility, right? Specifically, was she telling you the truth about the abuse, or was she not? We'd test that by asking you questions we do know the answers to. So under cross-examination, we'd ask you innocent stuff first, like who she is and where she's from, and you'd tell us what she told you."

"And?"

"And her credibility would fall apart. Next stop, death by lethal injection."

"Why?"

"Because I know this woman, and she makes things up."

"What things?"

"Everything. I've heard her stories, over and over. Did she in fact tell you she's from a rich wine-growing family?"

Reacher nodded. "More or less. She said she's from a thousand acres in the Napa Valley. Isn't she?"

Walker shook his head. "She's from some barrio in South Central L.A. Nobody knows anything about her parents. She probably doesn't, either."

Reacher was quiet for a moment. Then he shrugged. "Disguising a humble background isn't a crime."

"She was never a student at UCLA. She was a stripper. She was a whore, Reacher. She serviced the UCLA frat parties, among other things. Sloop met her when she was performing. Part of her repertoire was an interesting little trick with a long-neck beer bottle. He fell for her, somehow. You know, let me take you away from all this sort of thing. I guess I can understand it. She's cute now. She was stunning then. And smart. She looked at Sloop and saw a rich man's son from Texas, with a big fat wallet. She saw a meal ticket. She went to live with him. Came off the pill and lied about it and got herself pregnant. Whereupon Sloop did the decent thing, because he was like that, in a gentlemanly way. She suckered him, and he let her."

"I don't believe you."

Walker shrugged. "Doesn't matter if you do or if you don't, and I'll tell you exactly why in a moment. But it's all true, I'm afraid. She had brains. She knew what happens to whores when they get old. It goes right downhill, and it doesn't start very high, does it? She wanted a way out, and Sloop was it. She bled him for years, diamonds, horses, everything."

"I don't believe you," Reacher said again.

Walker nodded. "She's very convincing. Can't argue with that."

"Even if it is true, does it justify him hitting her?"

Walker paused a beat.

"No, of course not," he said. "But here's the big problem. The thing is, he didn't hit her. Never, Reacher. He wasn't violent with her. Not ever. I knew Sloop. He was a lot of things, and to be absolutely honest about it, not all of them were good. He was lazy, he was a little casual in business. A little dishonest, to be truthful. I'm not wearing rose-colored spectacles. But all his faults came from the feeling he was a Texan gentleman. I'm very aware of that, because I was a poor boy by comparison. Practically trash. He had the big ranch and the money. It made him a little arrogant and superior, hence the laziness and the impatience with strict principle. But part of being a gentleman in Texas is you would never, ever hit a woman. Whoever the woman was. Not ever. So, she's making all that up, too. I know it. He never hit her. I promise you that."

Reacher shook his head. "What you promise me doesn't prove a damn thing. I mean, what else would you say? You were his friend."

Walker nodded again. "I take your point. But there's nothing else to go on. There's just nothing there. Absolutely no evidence, no witnesses, no nothing. We were close. I was with them a thousand times. I heard about the horseback riding accidents as they happened. There weren't that many, and they seemed genuine. We'll ask for the medical records, of course, but I don't hold out much hope they'll be ambiguous."

"You said it yourself, abuse can be covert."

"That covert? I'm a DA, Reacher. I've seen everything. Some lone couple in a trailer park, maybe. But Sloop and Carmen lived with family, and they saw friends every day. And before you told the story to Alice Aaron, nobody in the whole of Texas had ever heard the faintest whiff of a rumor about violence between them. Not me, not Al, nobody. So do you understand what I mean? There's no evidence. All we've got is her word. And you're the only other person who ever heard it. But if you take the stand to back her up, then her trial is over before it's begun, because the other stuff you'll have to say will prove she's a pathological liar. Like, did she say she'd tipped off the IRS?"

"Yes, she did. She said she called them. Some special unit."

Walker shook his head. "They caught him through bank records. It was just a purely accidental by-product of an audit on somebody else. She knew nothing about it. I know that for sure, for an absolute fact, because Sloop went straight to Al Eugene and Al came straight to me for advice. I saw the indictment. Black and white. Carmen is a liar, Reacher, pure and simple. Or maybe not pure and simple. Maybe there are some very complicated reasons behind it."

Reacher paused a long moment.

"Maybe she is a liar," he said. "But liars can still get abused, same as anybody else. And abuse can be covert. You don't know it wasn't happening."

Walker nodded. "I agree. I don't know. But I would bet my life it wasn't."

"She convinced me."

"She probably convinced herself. She lives in a fantasy world. I know her, Reacher. She's a liar, is all, and she's guilty of first-degree homicide."

"So why are we talking?"

Walker paused.

"Can I trust you?" he asked.

"Does it matter?" Reacher said.

Walker went very quiet. Just stared at his office wall, a whole minute, then another. And another. The boom of the air conditioners crowded into the silence.

"Yes, it matters," he said. "It matters plenty. To Carmen, and to me. Because right now you're reading me completely wrong. I'm not an angry friend trying to protect my old buddy's reputation. Fact is, I want to find a defense for Carmen, don't you see that? Even invent one. You know, maybe just pretend the abuse happened and back-pedal like crazy on the premeditation. I'm seriously tempted. Because then I don't need to charge her at all and I can probably save my shot at the judgeship."

The silence came back. Nothing but the air conditioner motors and telephones ringing faintly outside the office door. The distant chatter of a fax machine.

"I want to go see her," Reacher said.

Walker shook his head. "Can't let you. You're not her lawyer."

"You could bend the rules."

Walker sighed again and dropped his head into his hands. "Please, don't tempt me. Right now I'm thinking about throwing the rules off the top of the building."

Reacher said nothing. Walker stared into space, his eyes jumping with strain.

"I want to figure out her real motive," he said finally. "Because if it was something real cold, like money, I don't have a choice. She has to go down."

Reacher said nothing.

"But if it wasn't, I want you to help me," Walker said. "If her medical records are remotely plausible, I want to try to save her with the abuse thing."

Reacher said nothing.

"O.K., what I really mean is I want to try to save myself," Walker said. "Try to save my chances in the election. Or both things, O.K.? Her and me. Ellie, too. She's a great kid. Sloop loved her."

"So what would you want from me?"

"If we go down that road."

Reacher nodded. "If," he said.

"I'd want you to lie on the stand," Walker said. "I'd want you to repeat what she told you about the beatings, and modify what she told you about everything else, in order to preserve her credibility."

Reacher said nothing.

"That's why I need to trust you," Walker said. "And that's why I needed to lay everything out for you. So you know exactly what you're getting into with her."

"I've never done that sort of a thing before."

"Neither have I," Walker said. "It's killing me just to talk about it."

Reacher was quiet for a long moment.

"Why do you assume I'd want to?" he asked.

"I think you like her," Walker said. "I think you feel sorry for her. I think you want to help her. Therefore indirectly you could help me."

"How would you work it?"

Walker shrugged. "I'll be withdrawn from the case from the start, so one of my assistants will be handling it. I'll find out exactly what she can prove for sure, and I'll coach you on it so you don't get tripped up. That's why I can't let you go see Carmen now. They keep a record downstairs. It would look like prior collusion."

"I don't know," Reacher said.

"I don't, either. But maybe it won't have to go all the way to trial. If the medical evidence is a little flexible, and we take a deposition from Carmen, and one from you, then maybe dropping the charges altogether would be justified."

"Lying in a deposition would be just as bad."

"Think about Ellie."

"And your judgeship."

Walker nodded. "I'm not hiding that from you. I want to get elected, no doubt about it. But it's for an honest reason. I want to make things better, Reacher. It's always been my ambition. Work my way up, improve things from the inside. It's the only way. For a person like me, anyway. I've got no influence as a lobbyist. I'm not a politician, really. I find all that stuff embarrassing. I don't have the skills."

Reacher said nothing.

"Let me think it over," Walker said. "A day or two. I'll take it from there."

"You sure?"

Walker sighed again. "No, of course I'm not sure. I hate this whole thing. But what the hell, Sloop's dead. Nothing's going to change that. Nothing's going to bring him back. It'll trash his memory, of course. But it would save Carmen. And he loved her, Reacher. In a way nobody else could ever understand. The disapproval he brought down on himself was unbelievable. From his family, from polite society. He'd be happy to exchange his reputation for her life, I think. His life for her life, effectively. He'd exchange mine, or Al's, or anybody's, probably. He loved her."

There was silence again.

"She needs bail," Reacher said.

"Please," Walker said. "It's out of the question."

"Ellie needs her."

"That's a bigger issue than bail," Walker said. "Ellie can stand a couple of days with her grandmother. It's the rest of her life we need to worry about. Give me time to work this out."

Reacher shrugged and stood up.

"This is all in strict confidence, right?" Walker said. "I guess I should have made that clear right from the start."

Reacher nodded.

"Get back to me," he said.

Then he stood up and walked out the room.