Echo Burning jr-5

by Lee Child

  "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.

  Chapter 12

  "One simple question," Alice said. "Is it plausible that domestic abuse could be so covert that close friends are totally unaware of it?"

  "I don't know," Reacher said. "I don't have much experience."

  "Neither do I."

  They were on opposite sides of Alice's desk in the back of the legal mission. It was the middle of the day, and the heat was so brutal it was enforcing a de facto siesta on the whole town. Nobody was out and about who didn't desperately need to be. The mission was largely deserted. Just Alice and Reacher and one other lawyer twenty feet away. The inside temperature was easily over a hundred and ten degrees. The humidity was rising. The ancient air conditioner above the door was making no difference at all. Alice had changed into shorts again. She was leaning back in her chair, arms above her head, her back arched off the sticky vinyl. She was slick with sweat from head to foot. Over the tan it made her skin look oiled. Reacher's shirt was soaked. He was reconsidering its projected three-day life span.

  "It's a catch-22," Alice said. "Abuse you know about isn't covert. Really covert abuse, you might assume it isn't happening. Like, I assume my dad isn't beating my mom. But maybe he is. Who would know? What about yours?"

  Reacher smiled. "I doubt it. He was a U.S. Marine. Big guy, not especially genteel. But then, you should have seen my mother. Maybe she was beating him."

  "So yes or no about Carmen and Sloop?"

  "She convinced me," Reacher said. "No doubt about it."

  "Despite everything?"

  "She convinced me," he said again. "Maybe she's all kinds of a liar about other things, but he was beating her. That's my belief."

  Alice looked at him, a lawyer's question in her eyes.

  "No doubt at all?
" she asked.

  "No doubt at all," he said.

  "O.K., but a difficult case just got a lot harder. And I hate it when that happens."

  "Me too," he said. "But hard is not the same thing as impossible."

  "You understand the exact legalities here?"

  He nodded. "It's not rocket science. She's in deep shit, whichever way you cut it. If there was abuse, she's blown it anyway by being so premeditated. If there wasn't, then it's murder one, pure and simple. And whatever, she has zero credibility because she lies and exaggerates. Ballgame over, if Walker didn't want to be judge so bad."

  "Exactly," Alice said.

  "You happy about riding that kind of luck?"

  "No."

  "Neither am I."

  "Not morally, not practically," Alice said. "Anything could happen here. Maybe Hack's got a love child somewhere, and it'll come out and he'll have to withdraw anyway. Maybe he likes to have sex with armadillos. It's a long time until November. Counting on him to stay electable no matter what would be foolish. So his tactical problem with Carmen could disappear at any time. So she needs a properly structured defense."

  Reacher smiled again. "You're even smarter than I figured."

  "I thought you were going to say than I looked."

  "I think more lawyers should dress that way."

  "You need to stay off the stand," she said. "Much safer for her. No deposition, either. Without you, the gun is the only thing that suggests premeditation. And we should be able to argue that buying the gun and actually using it weren't necessarily closely connected. Maybe she bought it for another reason."

  Reacher said nothing.

  "They're testing it now," she said. "Over at the lab. Ballistics and fingerprints. Two sets of prints, they say. Hers, I guess, maybe his, too. Maybe they struggled over it. Maybe the whole thing was an accident."

  Reacher shook his head. "The second set must be mine. She asked me to teach her how to shoot. We went up on the mesa and practiced."

  "When?"

  "Saturday. The day before he got home."

  She stared at him.

  "Christ, Reacher," she said. "You definitely stay off the stand, O.K.?"

  "I plan to."

  "What about if things change and they subpoena you?"

  "Then I'll lie, I guess."

  "Can you?"

  "I was a cop of sorts for thirteen years. It wouldn't be a totally radical concept."

  "What would you say about your prints on the gun?"

  "I'd say I found it dumped somewhere. Innocently gave it back to her. Make it look like she had reconsidered after buying it."

  "You comfortable with saying stuff like that?"

  "If the ends justify the means, I am. And I think they do here. She's given herself a problem proving it, is all. You?"

  She nodded. "A case like this, I guess so. I don't care about the lies about her background. People do stuff like that, all the time, all kinds of reasons. So all that's left is the premeditation thing. And most other states, premeditation wouldn't be an issue. They recognize the reality. A battered woman can't necessarily be effective on the spur of the moment. Sometimes she needs to wait until he's drunk, or asleep. You know, bide her time. There are lots of cases like that in other jurisdictions."

  "So where do we start?"

  "Where we're forced to," Alice said. "Which is a pretty bad place. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. Res ipsa loquitur, they call it. The thing speaks for itself. Her bedroom, her gun, her husband lying there dead on the floor. That's murder one. We leave it like that, they'll convict her on the first vote."

  "So?"

  "So we back-pedal on the premeditation and then we prove the abuse through the medical records. I already started the paperwork. We joined with the DA's office for a common-cause subpoena. All Texas hospitals, and all neighboring states. Domestic violence, that's standard procedure, because people sometimes drive all over to hide it. The hospitals generally react pretty fast, so we should get the records overnight. Then it's res ipsa loquitur again. If the injuries were caused by violence, then the records will at least show they could have been. That's just common sense. Then she takes the stand and she talks about the abuse. She'll have to take it on the chin over the bullshit stories about her past. But if we present it right, she could even look quite good. No shame in being an ex-hooker trying to reform. We could build up some sympathy there."

  "You sound like a pretty good lawyer."

  She smiled. "For one so young?"

  "Well, what are you, two years out of school?"

  "Six months," she said. "But you learn fast down here."

  "Evidently."

  "Whatever, with careful jury selection, we'll get at least half and half don't-knows and not-guiltys. The not-guiltys will wear down the don't-knows within a couple of days. Especially if it's this hot."

  Reacher pulled the soaked fabric of his shirt off his skin. "Can't stay this hot much longer, can it?"

  "Hey, I'm talking about next summer," Alice said. "That's if she's lucky. Could be the summer after that."

  He stared at her. "You're kidding."

  She shook her head. "The record around here is four years in jail between arrest and trial."

  "What about Ellie?"

  She shrugged. "Just pray the medical records look real good. If they do, we've got a shot at getting Hack to drop the charges altogether. He's got a lot of latitude."

  "He wouldn't need much pushing," Reacher said. "The mood he's in."

  "So look on the bright side. This whole thing could be over in a couple of days."

  "When are you going to go see her?"

  "Later this afternoon. First I'm going to the bank to cash a twenty-thousand-dollar check. Then I'm going to put the money in a grocery bag and drive out and deliver it to some very happy people."

  "O.K.," Reacher said.

  "I don't want to know what you did to get it."

  "I just asked for it."

  "I don't want to know," she said again. "But you should come with me and meet them. And be my bodyguard. Not every day I carry twenty thousand dollars around the Wild West in a grocery bag. And it'll be cool in the car."

  "O.K.," Reacher said again.

  * * *

  The bank showed no particular excitement about forking over twenty grand in mixed bills. The teller treated it like a completely routine part of her day. She just counted the money three times and stacked it carefully in a brown-paper grocery bag Alice provided for the purpose. Reacher carried it back to the parking lot for her. But she didn't need him to. There was no danger of getting mugged. The fearsome heat had just about cleared the streets, and what few people remained were moving slowly and listlessly.

  The interior of the VW had heated up to the point where they couldn't get in right away. Alice started the air going and left the doors open until the blowers took thirty degrees off it. It was probably still over a hundred when they slid inside. But it felt cool. All things are relative. Alice drove, heading north and east. She was good. Better than him. She didn't stall out a single time.

  "There'll be a storm," she said.

  "Everybody tells me that," he said. "But I don't see it coming."

  "You ever felt heat like this before?"

  "Maybe," he said. "Once or twice. Saudi Arabia, the Pacific. But Saudi is drier and the Pacific is wetter. So, not exactly."

  The sky ahead of them was light blue, so hot it looked white. The sun was a diffuse glare, like it was located everywhere. There was no cloud at all. He was squinting so much the muscles in his face were hurting.

  "It's new to me," she said. "That's for sure. I figured it would be hot here, but this is completely unbelievable."

  Then she asked him when he'd been in the Middle East and the Pacific islands, and he responded with the expanded ten-minute version of his autobiography because he found he was enjoying her company. The first thirty-six years were easy enough, as always. They made a nicely linear tale of c
hildhood and adulthood, accomplishment and progress, punctuated and underlined in the military fashion with promotions and medals. The last few years were harder, as usual. The aimlessness, the drifting. He saw them as a triumph of disengagement, but he knew other people didn't. So as always he just told the story and answered the awkward questions and let her think whatever she wanted.

  Then she responded in turn with an autobiography of her own. It was more or less the same as his, in an oblique way. He was the son of a soldier, she was the daughter of a lawyer. She had never really considered straying away from the family trade, just like he hadn't. All her life she had seen people talk the talk and walk the walk and then she had set about following after them, just like he had. She spent seven years at Harvard where he spent four at West Point. Now she was twenty-five and the rough equivalent of an ambitious lieutenant in the law business. He had been an ambitious lieutenant at twenty-five, too, and he could remember exactly how it felt.

  "So what's next?" he asked.

  "After this?" she said. "Back to New York, I guess. Maybe Washington, D.C. I'm getting interested in policy."

  "You won't miss this down-and-dirty stuff?"

  "I will, probably. And I won't give it up completely. Maybe I'll volunteer a few weeks a year. Certainly I'll try to fund it. That's where all our money comes from, you know. Big firms in the big cities, with a conscience."

  "I'm glad to hear it. Somebody needs to do something."

  "That's for sure."

  "What about Hack Walker?" he asked. "Will he make a difference?"

  She shrugged at the wheel. "I don't know him very well. But his reputation is good. And he can't make things any worse, can he? It's a really screwed-up system. I mean, I'm a democrat, big D and little d, so theoretically to elect your judges is perfectly fine with me. Theoretically. But in practice, it's totally out of hand. I mean, what does it cost to run a campaign down here?"