Echo Burning by Lee Child

by Echo Burning (com v2. 0) (lit)

  “What would you do if you were?”

  She shrugged. “I’d leave it, probably. Like you say, blundering into a conspiracy rap wouldn’t help her any.”

  She stood up, slowly, like it was an effort in the heat. She tapped Reacher on the shoulder. Gave him a what can we do? look and headed for the door. He stood up and followed her. Walker said nothing. Just watched them partway out of the room and then dropped his eyes to the old photograph of the three boys leaning on the pick-up’s fender.

  They crossed the street together and walked as far as the bus depot. It was fifty yards from the courthouse, fifty yards from the legal mission. It was a small, sleepy depot. No buses in it. Just an expanse of diesel-stained blacktop ringed with benches shaded from the afternoon sun by small white fiberglass roofs. There was a tiny office hut papered on the outside with schedules. It had a through-the-wall air conditioner running hard. There was a woman in it, sitting on a high stool, reading a magazine.

  “Walker’s right, you know,” Alice said. “He’s doing her a favor. It’s a lost cause.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  “So where will you head?” she asked.

  “First bus out,” he said. “That’s my rule.”

  They stood together and read the schedules. Next departure was to Topeka, Kansas, via Oklahoma City. It was due in from Phoenix, Arizona, in a half hour. It was making a long slow counterclockwise loop.

  “Been to Topeka before?” Alice asked.

  “I’ve been to Leavenworth,” he said. “It’s not far.”

  He tapped on the glass and the woman sold him a one-way ticket. He put it in his pocket.

  “Good luck, Alice,” he said. “Four and a half years from now, I’ll look for you in the Yellow Pages.”

  She smiled.

  “Take care, Reacher,” she said.

  She stood still for a second, like she was debating whether to hug him or kiss him on the cheek, or just walk away. Then she smiled again, and just walked away. He watched her go until she was lost to sight. Then he found the shadiest bench and sat down to wait.

  She still wasn’t sure. They had taken her to a very nice place, like a house, with beds and everything. So maybe this was her new family. But they didn’t look like a family. They were very busy. She thought they looked a bit like doctors. They were kind to her, but busy too, with stuff she didn’t understand. Like at the doctor’s office. Maybe they were doctors. Maybe they knew she was upset, and they were going to make her better. She thought about it for a long time, and then she asked.

  “Are you doctors?” she said.

  “No,” they answered.

  “Are you my new family?”

  “No,” they said. “You’ll go to your new family soon.”

  “When?”

  “A few days, O.K.? But right now you stay with us.”

  She thought they all looked very busy.

  The bus rolled in more or less on time. It was a big Greyhound, dirty from the road, wrapped in a diesel cloud, with heat shimmering visibly from its air conditioner grilles. It stopped twenty feet from him and the driver held the engine at a loud shuddering idle. The door opened and three people got off. Reacher stood up and walked over and got on. He was the only departing passenger. The driver took his ticket.

  “Two minutes, O.K.?” the guy said. “I need a comfort stop.”

  Reacher nodded and said nothing. Just shuffled down the aisle and found a double seat empty. It was on the left, which would face the evening sun all the way after they turned north at Abilene. But the windows were tinted dark blue and the air was cold, so he figured he’d be O.K. He sat down sideways. Stretched out and rested his head against the glass. The eight spent shells in his pocket were uncomfortable against the muscle of his thigh. He hitched up and moved them through the cotton. Then he took them out and held them in his palm. Rolled them together like dice. They were warm, and they made dull metallic sounds.

  Abilene, he thought.

  The driver climbed back in and hung off the step and looked both ways, like an old railroad guy. Then he slid into his seat and the door wheezed shut behind him.

  “Wait,” Reacher called.

  He stood up and shuffled forward again, all the way down the aisle.

  “I changed my mind,” he said. “I’m getting off.”

  “I already canceled your ticket,” the driver said. “You want a refund, you’ll have to mail a claim.”

  “I don’t want a refund,” Reacher said. “Just let me out, O.K.?”

  The driver looked blank, but he operated the mechanism anyway and the doors wheezed open again. Reacher stepped down into the heat and walked away. He heard the bus leave behind him. It turned right where he had turned left and he heard its noise fade and die into the distance. He walked on to the law office. Working hours elsewhere were over and it was crowded again with groups of quiet worried people, some of them talking to lawyers, some of them waiting to. Alice was at her desk in back, talking to a woman with a baby on her knee. She looked up, surprised.

  “Bus didn’t come?” she asked.

  “I need to ask you a legal question,” he said.

  “Is it quick?”

  He nodded. “Civilian law, if some guy tells an attorney about a crime, how far can the cops press the attorney for the details?”

  “It would be privileged information,” Alice said. “Between lawyer and client. The cops couldn’t press at all.”

  “Can I use your phone?”

  She paused a moment, puzzled. Then she shrugged.

  “Sure,” she said. “Squeeze in.”

  He took a spare client chair and put it next to hers, behind the desk.

  “Got phone books for Abilene?” he asked.

  “Bottom drawer,” she said. “All of Texas.”

  She turned back to the woman with the baby and restarted their discussion in Spanish. He opened the drawer and found the right book. There was an information page near the front, with all the emergency services laid out in big letters. He dialed the state police, Abilene office. A woman answered and asked how she could help him.

  “I have information,” he said. “About a crime.”

  The woman put him on hold. Maybe thirty seconds later the call was picked up elsewhere. Sounded like a squad room. Other phones were ringing in the background and there was faint people noise all around.

  “Sergeant Rodríguez,” a voice said.

  “I have information about a crime,” Reacher said again.

  “Your name, sir?”

  “Chester A. Arthur,” Reacher said. “I’m a lawyer in Pecos County.”

  “O.K., Mr. Arthur, go ahead.”

  “You guys found an abandoned automobile south of Abilene on Friday. A Mercedes Benz belonging to a lawyer called Al Eugene. He’s currently listed as a missing person.”

  There was the sound of a keyboard pattering.

  “O.K.,” Rodríguez said. “What can you tell me?”

  “I have a client here who says Eugene was abducted from his car and killed very near the scene.”

  “What’s your client’s name, sir?”

  “Can’t tell you that,” Reacher said. “Privileged information. And the fact is I’m not sure I even believe him. I need you to check his story from your end. If he’s making sense, then maybe I can persuade him to come forward.”

  “What is he telling you?”

  “He says Eugene was flagged down and put in another car. He was driven north to a concealed location on the left-hand side of the road, and then he was shot and his body was hidden.”

  Alice had stopped her conversation and was staring sideways at him.

  “So I want you to search the area,” Reacher said.

  “We already searched the area.”

  “What kind of a radius?”

  “Immediate surroundings.”

  “No, my guy says a mile or two north. You need to look under vegetation, in the cracks in the rock, pumping houses, anything there is.
Some spot near where a vehicle could have pulled off the road.”

  “A mile or two north of the abandoned car?”

  “My guy says not less than one, not more than two.”

  “On the left?”

  “He’s pretty sure,” Reacher said.

  “You got a phone number?”

  “I’ll call you back,” Reacher said. “An hour from now.”

  He hung up. The woman with the baby was gone. Alice was still staring at him.

  “What?” she said.

  “We should have focused on Eugene before.”

  “Why?”

  “Because what’s the one solid fact we’ve got here?”

  “What?”

  “Carmen didn’t shoot Sloop, that’s what.”

  “That’s an opinion, not a fact.”

  “No, it’s a fact, Alice. Believe me, I know these things.”

  She shrugged. “O.K., so?”

  “So somebody else shot him. Which raises the question, why? We know Eugene is missing, and we know Sloop is dead. They were connected, lawyer and client. So let’s assume Eugene is dead, too, not just missing. For the sake of argument. They were working together on a deal that sprung Sloop from jail. Some kind of a big deal, because that isn’t easy. They don’t hand out remissions like candy. So it must have involved some heavy-duty information. Something valuable. Big trouble for somebody. Suppose that somebody took them both out, for revenge, or to stop the flow of information?”

  “Where did you get this idea?”

  “From Carmen, actually,” he said. “She suggested that’s how I should do it. Off Sloop and make like stopping the deal was the pretext.”

  “So Carmen took her own advice.”

  “No, Carmen’s parallel,” Reacher said. “She hated him, she had a motive, she’s all kinds of a liar, but she didn’t kill him. Somebody else did.”

  “Yes, for her.”

  “No,” Reacher said. “It didn’t happen that way. She just got lucky. It was a parallel event. Like he was run over by a truck someplace else. Maybe she’s thrilled with the result, but she didn’t cause it.”

  “How sure are you?”

  “Very sure. Any other way is ridiculous. Think about it, Alice. Anybody who shoots that well is a professional. Professionals plan ahead, at least a few days. And if she had hired a professional a few days ahead, why would she trawl around Texas looking for guys like me hitching rides? And why would she allow Sloop to be killed in her own bedroom, where she would be the number-one suspect? With her own gun?”

  “So what do you think happened?”

  “I think some hit team took Eugene out on Friday and covered their ass by hiding the body so it won’t be found until the trail is completely cold. Then they took Sloop out on Sunday and covered their ass by making it look like Carmen did it. In her bedroom, with her own gun.”

  “But she was with him. Wouldn’t she have noticed? Wouldn’t she have said?”

  He paused. “Maybe she was with Ellie at the time. Maybe she walked back into the bedroom and found it done. Or maybe she was in the shower. Her hair was wet when they arrested her.”

  “Then she’d have heard the shots.”

  “Not with that shower. It’s like Niagara Falls. And a .22 pistol is quiet.”

  “How do you know where they’ll find Eugene’s body? Assuming you’re right?”

  “I thought about how I would do it. They obviously had a vehicle of their own, out there in the middle of nowhere. So maybe they staged a breakdown or a flat. Flagged him down, forced him into their vehicle, drove him away. But they wouldn’t want to keep him in there long. Too risky. Two or three minutes maximum, I figure, which is a mile or two from a standing start.”

  “Why north? Why on the left side?”

  “I’d have driven way north first. Turned back and scouted the nearside shoulder. Picked my place and measured a couple of miles backward, turned around again and set up and waited for him.”

  “Conceivable,” she said. “But the Sloop thing? That’s impossible. They went down to that house? In Echo, in the middle of nowhere? Hid out and crept in? While she was in the shower?”

  “I could have done it,” he said. “And I’m assuming they’re as good as me. Maybe they’re better than me. They certainly shoot better.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “No, for sure,” she said. “Because she confessed to it. Why would she do that? If it was really nothing at all to do with her?”

  “We’ll figure that out later. First, we wait an hour.”

  He left Alice with work to do and went back out into the heat. Decided he’d finally take a look at the Wild West museum. When he got there, it was closed. Too late in the day. But he could see an alley leading to an open area in back. There was a locked gate, low enough for him to step over. Behind the buildings was a collection of rebuilt artifacts from the old days. There was a small one-cell jailhouse, and a replica of Judge Roy Bean’s courthouse, and a hanging tree. The three displays made a nice direct sequence. Arrest, trial, sentence. Then there was Clay Allison’s grave. It was well tended, and the headstone was handsome. Clay was his middle name. His first name was Robert. Robert Clay Allison, born 1840, died 1887. Never killed a man that did not need killing. Reacher had no middle name. It was Jack Reacher, plain and simple. Born 1960, not dead yet. He wondered what his headstone would look like. Probably wouldn’t have one. There was nobody to arrange it.

  He strolled back up the alley and stepped over the gate again. Facing him was a long low concrete building, two stories. Retail operations on the first floor, offices above. One of them had Albert E. Eugene, Attorney at Law painted on the window in old-fashioned gold letters. There were two other law firms in the building. The building was within sight of the courthouse. These were the cheap lawyers, Reacher guessed. Separated geographically from the free lawyers in Alice’s row and the expensive lawyers who must be on some other street. Although Eugene had driven a Mercedes Benz. Maybe he did a lot of volume. Or maybe he was just vain and had been struggling with a heavy lease payment.

  He paused at the crossroads. The sun was dropping low in the west and there were clouds stacking up on the southern horizon. There was a warm breeze on his face. It was gusting strong enough to tug at his clothes and stir dust on the sidewalk. He stood for a second and let it flatten the fabric of his shirt against his stomach. Then it died and the dull heat came back. But the clouds were still there in the south, like ragged stains on the sky.

  He walked back to Alice’s office. She was still at her desk. Still facing an endless stream of problems. There were people in her client chairs. A middle-aged Mexican couple. They had patient, trusting expressions on their faces. Her stack of paperwork had grown. She pointed vaguely at his chair, which was still placed next to hers. He squeezed in and sat down. Picked up the phone and dialed the Abilene number from memory. He gave his name as Chester Arthur and asked for Sergeant Rodríguez.

  He was on hold a whole minute. Then Rodríguez picked up and Reacher knew right away they had found Eugene’s body. There was a lot of urgency in the guy’s voice.

  “We need your client’s name, Mr. Arthur,” Rodriguez said.

  “What did your people find?” Reacher asked.

  “Exactly what you said, sir. Mile and a half north, on the left, in a deep limestone crevasse. Shot once through the right eye.”

  “Was it a .22?”

  “No way. Not according to what I’m hearing. Nine millimeter, at least. Some big messy cannon. Most of his head is gone.”

  “You got an estimated time of death?”

  “Tough question, in this heat. And they say the coyotes got to him, ate up some of the parts the pathologist likes to work with. But if somebody said Friday, I don’t think we’d argue any.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  “I need some names,” Rodríguez said.

  “My guy’s not the doer,” Reacher said. “I
’ll talk to him and maybe he’ll call you.”

  Then he hung up before Rodríguez could start arguing. Alice was staring at him again. So were her clients. Clearly they spoke enough English to follow the conversation.

  “Which president was Chester Arthur?” Alice asked.

  “After Garfield, before Grover Cleveland,” Reacher replied. “One of two from Vermont.”

  “Who was the other?”

  “Calvin Coolidge.”

  “So they found Eugene,” she said.

  “Sure did.”

  “So now what?”

  “Now we go warn Hack Walker.”

  “Warn him?”

  Reacher nodded. “Think about it, Alice. Maybe what we’ve got here is two out of two, but I think it’s more likely to be two out of three. They were a threesome, Hack and Al and Sloop. Carmen said they all worked together on the deal. She said Hack brokered it with the feds. So Hack knew what they knew, for sure. So he could be next.”

  Alice turned to her clients.

  “Sorry, got to go,” she said, in English.

  Hack Walker was packing up for the day. He was on his feet with his jacket on and he was latching his briefcase closed. It was after six o’clock and his office windows were growing dim with dusk. They told him that Eugene was dead and watched the color drain out of his face. His skin literally contracted and puckered under a mask of sweat. He clawed his way around his desk and dumped himself down in his chair. He said nothing for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly.

  “I guess I always knew,” he said. “But I was, you know, hoping.”

  He turned to look down at the photograph.

  “I’m very sorry,” Reacher said.

  “Do they know why?” Walker asked. “Or who?”

  “Not yet.”

  Walker paused again. “Why did they tell you about it before me?”

  “Reacher figured out where they should look,” Alice said. “He told them, effectively.”

  Then she went straight into his two-for-three theory. The deal, the dangerous knowledge. The warning. Walker sat still and listened to it. His color came back, slowly. He stayed quiet, thinking hard. Then he shook his head.