Echo Burning jr-5

by Lee Child

  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 actual
ly 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 do
n'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?"