Echo Burning jr-5

by Lee Child

  "He wasn't there. He was guarding her afterward, is all. And there's a lot of other stuff, too, going back a number of years."

  "Situation like this, he talks, he's going away for a long time."

  "He knows that. He accepts it. He's happy about it. He's looking for redemption."

  The cops just glanced at each other and went into the bathroom. Reacher heard people shuffling and moving around and handcuffs clicking.

  "I have to get back," Alice said. "I have to prepare the writ. Lot of work involved, with habeas corpus."

  "Take the Crown Vic," Reacher said. "I'll wait here with Ellie."

  The cops brought the driver out of the bathroom. He was dressed and his hands were cuffed behind him and each cop had hold of an elbow. He was bent over and white with pain and already talking fast. The cops hustled him straight out to their cruiser and the room door swung shut behind them. There was the muffled sound of car doors slamming and the growl of an engine.

  "What did you do to him?" Alice whispered.

  Reacher shrugged. "I'm a hard man. Like you said."

  He asked her to send the night clerk down with a master key and she walked away toward the office. He turned to Ellie.

  "You O.K.?" he said.

  "You don't need to keep asking me," she replied.

  "Tired?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "Your mom will come soon," he said. "We'll wait for her right here. But let's change rooms, shall we? This one's got a broken window."

  She giggled. "You broke it. With that rock."

  He heard the Crown Vic start up in the distance. Heard its tires on the road.

  "Let's try room eight," he said. "It's nice and clean. Nobody's been in it. It can be ours."

  She took his hand and they walked out together and along the concrete walkway to number eight, a dozen steps for him, three dozen for her, damp filmy tracks left in the wet behind both of them. The clerk met them with a pass key and Ellie got straight into the bed nearest the window. Reacher lay down on the other and watched her until she was sound asleep. Then he wrapped his arm under his head and tried to doze.

  * * *

  Less than two hours later the new day dawned bright and hot and the air stirred and the metal roof clicked and cracked and the timbers under it creaked and moved. Reacher opened his eyes after a short uneasy rest and swung his legs to the floor. Crept quietly to the door and opened it up and stepped outside. The eastern horizon was far off to his right beyond the motel office. It was flaring with pure white light. There were rags of old cloud in the sky. They were burning off as he watched. No storm today. People had talked about it for a week, but it wasn't going to happen. Last night's hour of rain was all it was ever going to be. A complete misfire.

  He crept back into the room and lay down again. Ellie was still asleep. She had kicked the sheet down and her shirt had ridden up and he could see the plump band of pink skin at her waist. Her legs were bent, like she had been running in her dreams. But her arms were thrown up above her head, which some army psychiatrist had once told him was a sign of security. A kid sleeps like that, he had said, deep down it feels safe. Safe? She was some kid. That was for damn sure. Most adults he knew would be wrecks after an experience like hers. For weeks. Or longer. But she wasn't. Maybe she was too young to fully comprehend. Or maybe she was just a tough kid. One or the other. He didn't know. He had no experience. He closed his eyes again.

  He opened them for the second time thirty minutes later because Ellie was standing right next to him, shaking his shoulder.

  "I'm hungry," she said.

  "Me too," he said back. "What would you like?"

  "Ice cream," she said.

  "For breakfast?"

  She nodded.

  "O.K.," he said. "But eggs first. Maybe bacon. You're a kid. You need good nutrition."

  He fumbled the phone book out of the bedside drawer and found a diner listed that was maybe a mile nearer Fort Stockton. He called them and bribed them with the promise of a twenty-dollar tip to drive breakfast out to the motel. He sent Ellie into the bathroom to get washed up. By the time she came out, the food had arrived. Scrambled eggs, smoked bacon, toast, jelly, cola for her, coffee for him. And a huge plastic dish of ice cream with chocolate sauce.

  Breakfast changes everything. He ate the food and drank the coffee and felt some energy coming back. Saw the same effect in Ellie. They propped the room door wide open while they ate to smell the morning air. Then they dragged chairs out to the concrete walk and set them side by side and sat down to wait.

  They waited more than four hours. He stretched out and idled the time away like he was accustomed to doing. She waited like it was a serious task to be approached with her usual earnest concentration. He called the diner again halfway through and they ate a second breakfast, identical menu to the first. They went in and out to the bathroom. Talked a little. Tried to identify the trees, listened to the buzz of the insects, looked for clouds in the sky. But mostly they kept their gaze ahead and half-right, where the road came in from the north. The ground was dry again, like it had never rained at all. The dust was back. It plumed off the blacktop and hung in the heat. It was a quiet road, maybe one vehicle every couple of minutes. Occasionally a small knot of traffic, stalled behind a slow-moving farm truck.

  A few minutes after eleven o'clock Reacher was standing a couple of paces into the lot and he saw the Crown Vic coming south in the distance. It crept slowly out of the haze. He saw the fake antennas wobbling and flexing behind it. Dust trailing in the air.

  "Hey kid," he called. "Check this out."

  She stood next to him and shaded her eyes with her hand. The big car slowed and turned in and drove up right next to them. Alice was in the driver's seat. Carmen was next to her. She looked pale and washed out but she was smiling and her eyes were wide with joy. She had the door open before the car stopped moving and she came out and skipped around the hood and Ellie ran to her and jumped into her arms. They staggered around together in the sunlight. There was shrieking and crying and laughter all at the same time. He watched for a moment and then backed away and squatted next to the car. He didn't want to intrude. He guessed times like these were best kept private. Alice saw what he was thinking and buzzed her window down and put her hand on his shoulder.

  "Everything squared away?" he asked her.

  "For us," she said. "Cops have got a lot of paperwork ahead. All in all they're looking at more than fifty homicides in seven separate states. Including what happened here twelve years ago and Eugene and Sloop and Walker himself. They're going to arrest Rusty for shooting Walker. But she'll get off easy, I should think, in the circumstances."

  "Anything about me?"

  "They were asking about last night. Lots of questions. I said I did it all."

  "Why?"

  She smiled. "Because I'm a lawyer. I called it self-defense and they bought it without hesitating. It was my car out there, and my gun. No-brainer. They'd have given you a much harder time."

  "So we're all home free?"

  "Especially Carmen."

  He looked up. Carmen had Ellie on her hip, with her face buried in her neck like the sweet fragrance of her was necessary to sustain life itself. She was walking aimless random circles with her. Then she raised her head and squinted against the sun and smiled with such abandoned joy that Reacher found himself smiling along with her.

  "She got plans?" he asked.

  "Moving up to Pecos," Alice said. "We'll sort through Sloop's affairs. There's probably some cash somewhere. She's talking about moving into a place like mine. Maybe working part-time. Maybe even looking at law school."

  "You tell her about the Red House?"

  "She laughed with happiness. I told her it was probably burned down to a cinder, and she just laughed and laughed. I felt good for her."

  Now Ellie was leading her by the hand around the parking lot, checking out the trees she had inspected previously, talking a mile a minute. They looked perfect
together. Ellie was hopping with energy and Carmen looked serene and radiant and very beautiful. Reacher stood up and leaned against the car.

  "You want lunch?"

  "Here?"

  "I've got a thing going with a diner. They've probably got vegetables."

  "Tuna salad will do it for me."

  He went inside and used the phone. Ordered three sandwiches and promised yet another twenty bucks for the tip. Came out and found Ellie and Carmen looking for him.

  "I'm going to a new school soon," Ellie said. "Just like you did."

  "You'll do great," he said. "You're smart as a whip."

  Then Carmen let go of her daughter's hand and stepped near him, a little shy and silent and awkward for a second. Then she smiled wide and put her arms around his chest and hugged him hard.

  "Thanks," was all she said.

  He hugged her back. "I'm sorry it took so long."

  "Did my clue help?"

  "Clue?" he said.

  "I left a clue for you."

  "Where?"

  "In the confession."

  He said nothing. She unwound herself from his embrace and took his arm and led him to where Ellie wouldn't hear her.

  "He made me say I was a whore."

  He nodded.

  "But I pretended to be nervous and I got the words wrong. I said 'street stroller.' "

  He nodded again. "I remember."

  "But it's really streetwalker, isn't it? To be correct? That was the clue. You were supposed to think to yourself, it's not stroller, it's walker. Get it? It's Walker. Meaning it's Hack Walker doing all of this."

  He went very quiet.

  "I missed that," he said.

  "So how did you know?"

  "I guess I took the long way around."

  She just smiled again. Laced her arm into his and walked him back to the car, where Ellie was laughing with Alice.

  "You going to be O.K.?" he asked her.

  She nodded. "But I feel very guilty. People died."

  He shrugged. "Like Clay Allison said."

  "Thanks," she said again.

  "No hay de que, senora."

  "Senorita, "she said.

  Carmen and Ellie and Alice drifted inside to get washed up for lunch. He watched the door close behind them and just walked away. It seemed like the natural thing to do. He didn't want anybody to try to keep him there. He jogged to the road and turned south. Walked a whole hot mile before he got a ride from a farm truck driven by a toothless old man who didn't talk much. He got out at the I-10 interchange and waited on the west ramp for ninety minutes in the sun until an eighteen-wheeler slowed and stopped next to him. He walked around the massive hood and looked up at the window. The window came down. He could hear music over the loud shudder of the diesel. It sounded like Buddy Holly. The driver leaned out. He was a guy of about fifty, fleshy, wearing a Dodgers T-shirt and about four days' growth of beard.

  "Los Angeles?" he called.

  "Anywhere," Reacher called back.

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