Echo Burning (17 page)

He pointed. “Tire marks. Some kind of a truck. Stopped here. Three people, crawled up to the edge on their knees.”

He put himself where the tracks ended at the rim of the gulch. Lay down on the hot grit and hauled himself forward on his elbows. Raised his head.

“Somebody was watching the house,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“Nothing else to see from here.”

She knelt alongside him, the chromium pistol in her hand.

“It's too far away,” she said.

“Must have used field glasses. Telescopes, even.”

“Are you sure?”

“You ever see reflections? The sun on glass? In the mornings, when the sun was in the east?”

She shuddered.

“No,” she said. “Never.”

“Tracks are fresh,” he said. “Not more than a day or two old.”

She shuddered again.

“Sloop,” she said. “He thinks I'm going to take Ellie. Now I know he's getting out. He's having me watched.”

Reacher stood up and walked back to the center of the bowl.

“Look at the tire tracks,” he said. “They were here four or five times.”

He pointed down. There were several overlapping sets of tracks in a complex network. At least four, maybe five. The tire treads were clearly pressed into the powdered sand. There was a lot of detail. The outside shoulder of the front right tire was nearly bald.

“But they're not here today,” Carmen said. “Why not?”

“I don't know,” Reacher said.

Carmen looked away. Held out the gun to him.

“Please show me how to use this,” she said.

He moved his gaze from the tracks in the sand and looked at the gun. It was a Lorcin L-22 automatic, two-and-a-half-inch barrel, chrome frame, with plastic molded grips made to look like pink mother-of-pearl. Made in Mira Loma, California, not too long ago, and probably never used since it left the factory.

“Is it a good one?” she asked.

“How much did you pay for it?”

“Over eighty dollars.”

“Where?”

“In a gun store up in Pecos.”

“Is it legal?”

She nodded. “I did all the proper paperwork. Is it any good?”

“I guess,” he said. “As good as you'll get for eighty bucks, anyway.”

“The man in the store said it was ideal.”

“For what?”

“For a lady. I didn't tell him why I needed it.”

He hefted it in his hand. It was tiny, but reasonably solid. Not light, not heavy. Not heavy enough to be loaded, anyway.

“Where are the bullets?” he asked.

She stepped back toward the horses. Took a small box out of her bag. Came back and handed it to him. It was neatly packed with tiny .22 shells. Maybe fifty of them.

“Show me how to load it,” she said.

He shook his head.

“You should leave it out here,” he said. “Just dump it and forget about it.”

“But why?”

“Because this whole thing is crazy. Guns are dangerous, Carmen. You shouldn't keep one around Ellie. There might be an accident.”

“I'll be very careful. And the house is full of guns anyway.”

“Rifles are different. She's too small to reach the trigger and have it pointing at herself simultaneously.”

“I keep it hidden. She hasn't found it yet.”

“Only a matter of time.”

She shook her head.

“My decision,” she said. “She's my daughter.”

He said nothing.

“She won't find it,” she said. “I keep it by the bed, and she doesn't come in there.”

“What happens to her if you decide to use it?”

She nodded. “I know. I think about that all the time. I just hope she's too young to really understand. And when she's old enough, maybe she'll see it was the lesser of two evils.”

“No, what
happens
to her? There and then? When you're in jail?”

“They don't send you to jail for self-defense.”

“Who says it's self-defense?”

“You
know
it would be self-defense.”

“Doesn't matter what I know. I'm not the sheriff, I'm not the DA, I'm not the judge and jury.”

She went quiet.

“Think about it, Carmen,” he said. “They'll arrest you, you'll be charged with first-degree homicide. You've got no bail money. You've got no money for a lawyer either, so you'll get a public defender. You'll be arraigned, and you'll go to trial. Could be six or nine months down the road. Could be a year. Then let's say everything goes exactly your way from that point on. The public defender makes out it's self-defense, the jury buys it, the judge apologizes that a wronged woman has been put through all of that, and you're back on the street. But that's a year from now. At least. What's Ellie been doing all that time?”

She said nothing.

“She'll have spent a year with Rusty,” he said. “On her own. Because that's where the court would leave her. The grandmother? Ideal solution.”

“Not when they understood what the Greers are like.”

“O.K., so partway through the year Family Services will arrive and haul her off to some foster home. Is that what you want for her?”

She winced. “Rusty would send her there anyway. She'd refuse to keep her, if Sloop wasn't around anymore.”

“So leave the gun out here in the desert. It's not a good idea.”

He handed it back to her. She took it and cradled it in her palms, like it was a precious object. She tumbled it from one hand to another, like a child's game. The fake pearl grips flashed in the sun.

“No,” she said. “I want to learn to use it. For self-confidence. And that's a decision that's mine to make. You can't decide for me.”

He was quiet for a beat. Then he shrugged.

“O.K.,” he said. “Your life, your kid, your decision. But guns are serious business. So pay attention.”

She passed it back. He laid it flat on his left palm. It reached from the ball of his thumb to the middle knuckle of his middle finger.

“Two warnings,” he said. “This is a very, very short barrel. See that?” He traced his right index finger from the chamber
to the muzzle. “Two and a half inches, is all. Did they explain that at the store?”

She nodded. “The guy said it would fit real easy in my bag.”

“It makes it a very inaccurate weapon,” he said. “The longer the barrel, the straighter it shoots. That's why rifles are three feet long. If you're going to use this thing, you need to get very, very close, O.K.? Inches away would be best. Right next to the target.
Touching
the target if you can. You try to use this thing across a room, you'll miss by miles.”

“O.K.,” she said.

“Second warning.” He dug a bullet out of the box and held it up. “This thing is tiny. And slow. The pointy part is the bullet, and the rest of it is the powder in the shell case. Not a very big bullet, and not very much powder behind it. So it's not necessarily going to do a lot of damage. Worse than a bee sting, but one shot isn't going to be enough. So you need to get real close, and you need to keep on pulling the trigger until the gun is empty.”

“O.K.,” she said again.

“Now watch.”

He clicked out the magazine and fed nine bullets into it. Clicked the magazine back in and jacked the first shell into the breech. Took out the magazine again and refilled the empty spot at the bottom. Clicked it back in and cocked the gun and left the safety catch on.

“Cocked and locked,” he said. “You do two things. Push the safety catch, and pull the trigger ten times. It'll fire ten times before it's empty, because there's one already in the mechanism and nine more in the magazine.”

He handed the gun to her.

“Don't point it at me,” he said. “Never point a loaded gun at anything you don't
definitely
want to kill.”

She took it and held it away from him, cautiously.

“Try it,” he told her. “The safety, and the trigger.”

She used her left hand to unlatch the safety. Then she pointed it in her right and closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. The gun twisted in her grip and pointed down. The blast
of the shot sounded quiet, out there in the emptiness. A chip of rock and a spurt of dust kicked off the floor ten feet away. There was a metallic ricochet
whang
and a muted ring as the shell case ejected and the horses shuffled in place and then silence closed in again.

“Well, it works,” she said.

“Put the safety back on,” he said.

She clicked the catch and he turned to look at the horses. He didn't want them to run. Didn't want to spend time chasing them in the heat. But they were happy enough, standing quietly, watching warily. He turned back and undid his top button and slipped his shirt off over his head. Walked fifteen feet south and laid the shirt on the rim of the gulch, hanging it down and spreading it out to represent a man's torso. He walked back and stood behind her.

“Now shoot my shirt,” he said. “You always aim for the body, because it's the biggest target, and the most vulnerable.”

She raised the gun, and then lowered it again.

“I can't do this,” she said. “You don't want holes in your shirt.”

“I figure there isn't much of a risk,” he said. “Try it.”

She forgot to release the safety catch. Just pulled on the unyielding trigger. Twice, puzzled why it wouldn't work. Then she remembered and clicked it off. Pointed the gun and closed her eyes and fired. Reacher guessed she missed by twenty feet, high and wide.

“Keep your eyes open,” he said. “Pretend you're mad at the shirt, you're standing there pointing your finger right at it, like you're yelling.”

She kept her eyes open. Squared her shoulders and pointed with her right arm held level. She fired and missed again, maybe six feet to the left, maybe a little low.

“Let me try,” he said.

She passed him the gun. It was tiny in his hand. The trigger guard was almost too small to fit his finger. He closed one eye and sighted in.

“I'm aiming for where the pocket was,” he said.

He fired a double-tap, two shots in quick succession, with
his hand rock-steady. The first hit the shirt in the armpit opposite the torn pocket. The second hit centrally but low down. He relaxed his stance and handed the gun back.

“Your turn again,” he said.

She fired three more, all of them hopeless misses. High to the right, wide to the left. The last hit the dirt, maybe seven feet short of the target. She stared at the shirt and lowered the gun, disappointed.

“So what have you learned?” he asked.

“I need to get close,” she said.

“Damn right,” he said. “And it's not entirely your fault. A short-barrel handgun is a close-up weapon. See what I did? I missed by twelve inches, from fifteen feet. One bullet went left, and the other went down. They didn't even miss consistently. And I can shoot. I won competitions for pistol shooting in the army. Couple of years, I was the best there was.”

“O.K.,” she said.

He took the gun from her and squatted in the dust and reloaded it. One up the spout and nine in the magazine. He cocked it and locked it and laid it on the ground.

“Leave it there,” he said. “Unless you're very, very sure. Could you do it?”

“I think so,” she said.

“Thinking so isn't enough. You've got to
know
so. You've got to be prepared to get real close, jam it into his gut, and fire ten times. If you don't, or if you hesitate, he'll take it away from you, maybe turn it on you, maybe fire wildly and hit Ellie running in from her room.”

She nodded, quietly. “Last resort.”

“Believe it. You pull the gun, from that point on, it's all or nothing.”

She nodded again.

“Your decision,” he said. “But I suggest you leave it there.”

She stood still for a long, long time. Then she bent down and picked up the gun. Slipped it back into her bag. He walked over and retrieved his shirt and slipped it over his head. Neither bullet hole showed. One was under his arm, and the other tucked in below the waistband of his pants. Then he tracked around the gulch and picked up all eight
spent shell cases. It was an old habit, and good housekeeping. He jingled them together in his hand like small change and put them in his trouser pocket.

 

They talked about
fear on the ride home. Carmen was quiet on the way back up the rise, and she stopped again at the peak. The Red House compound stretched below them in the distant haze, and she just sat and looked down at it, both hands clasped on the horn of her saddle, saying nothing, a faraway look in her eyes. Reacher's horse stopped as usual slightly behind hers, so he got the same view, but framed by the curve of her neck and her shoulder.

“Do you ever get afraid?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

She was quiet again for a spell.

“But how is that possible?” she asked.

He looked at the sky. “It's something I learned, when I was a little boy.”

“How?”

He looked at the ground. “I had a brother, older than me. So he was always ahead. But I wanted to be doing the same stuff as him. He had scary comics, and anywhere we had American television he'd be watching it. So I looked at the same comics and watched the same shows. There was one show about space adventures. I don't remember what it was called. We watched it in black-and-white somewhere. Maybe in Europe. They had a spaceship that looked like a little submarine with spider legs. They would land it somewhere and get out and go exploring. I remember one night they got chased by this scary creature. It was hairy, like an ape. Like Bigfoot. Long hairy arms and a big snarl. It chased them back to the spaceship, and they jumped in and slammed the hatch shut just as it was climbing in after them.”

“And you were scared?”