Echo Burning (22 page)

She thought about it, with intense concentration.

“O.K.,” she said.

“Be quick.”

She looked at him for a moment, and then she turned and ran into the house.

 

At a quarter
to one, Bobby came outside. He was clean and dressed in fresh jeans and a new T-shirt. He had alligator boots on his feet. They had silver accents at the toe. He was wearing another red ball cap. It was backward on his head, and it had a flash on the side reading
Division Series 1999
.

“They lost, right?” Reacher said.

“Who?”

“The Texas Rangers. In the 1999 Division Series. To the Yankees.”

“So?”

“So nothing, Bobby.”

Then the door opened again and Carmen and Ellie came out together. Carmen was still in the cowgirl outfit. She had the makeup on again. Ellie was still in the yellow seersucker. Her hair was wet and tied back into a ponytail with a ribbon. Carmen was holding her hand and staggering slightly, like her knees were weak.

Reacher stood up and gestured that she should sit down. Ellie climbed up and sat next to her. Nobody spoke. Reacher stepped to the porch rail and watched the road. He could see all the way to where the power lines disappeared in the haze. Maybe five miles north. Maybe ten. It was hard to be certain.

He was deep in the shadow of the porch, and the world was hot and white in front of him. He saw the dust cloud right at the extremity of his vision. It smudged in the haze and hung and drifted east, like a faint desert breeze was catching it and pushing it over toward Greer land. It grew until he could make out its shape. It was a long yellow teardrop of dust, rising and falling, dodging left and right with the curves of the road. It grew to a mile long, and many generations of it bloomed and dissipated before it came close enough for him to see the lime green Lincoln at its head. It came up over a contour in the road and shimmered through the haze and slowed where the barbed wire gave way to the red picket fence. It looked dusty and tired and travel-stained. It braked hard close to the gate and the front end squatted as the suspension compressed. It turned in sharply. The cone of dust
behind it drifted straight on south, like it had been outwitted by the abrupt change of direction.

There was a crunch of dirt and gravel and the sun flashed once in the windshield as the car came through its turn, and then three figures were clearly visible inside. Hack Walker was at the wheel. Rusty Greer was in the backseat. And there was a large pale man in the front. He had short fair hair and a plain blue shirt. He was craning his neck, looking around, smiling broadly. Sloop Greer, arriving home.

The Lincoln stopped
next to the porch and the suspension settled and the engine died. Nobody inside the car moved for a moment. Then three doors opened up and all three people spilled out and Bobby and Ellie clattered down the porch steps toward them. Reacher moved back from the rail. Carmen stood up slowly and stepped forward and took his place there.

Sloop Greer left his door open and stretched in the sun like anyone would after a year and a half in a cell and six hours on the road. His face and hands were white with prison pallor and he was overweight from the starchy food, but he was Bobby's brother. There was no doubt about that. He had the same hair, the same face, the same bones, the same posture. Bobby stepped straight in front of him and held his arms wide and hugged him hard. Sloop hugged back and they staggered around and whooped and clapped each other on the back like they were on a lawn in front of a frat house and somebody had done something big in a game of college football.

Ellie froze and hung back, like she was suddenly confused by the noise and the commotion. Sloop let Bobby go and squatted down and held his arms out to her. Reacher turned and watched Carmen's face. It was locked up tight. Ellie stood in the dirt, shy and motionless, knuckles in her mouth, and then she made some kind of a mental connection and launched herself into Sloop's embrace. He whirled her up into the air and hugged her. Kissed her cheek. Danced her around and around in a circle. Carmen made a small sound in her throat and looked away.

Sloop set Ellie down on the ground and looked up into the porch and smiled triumphantly. Behind him Bobby was talking to his mother and Hack Walker. They were huddled together behind the car. Sloop was holding out his hand, beckoning to his wife. She backed away from the porch rail, deep into the shadow.

“Maybe you should talk to him after all,” she whispered.

“Make your mind up,” Reacher whispered back.

“Let me see how it goes,” she said.

She took a deep breath and forced a smile and skipped down the steps. Took Sloop's hands and folded herself into his arms. They kissed, long enough that nobody would think they were brother and sister, but not long enough that anybody would think there was real passion there. Behind the car Bobby and his mother had detached themselves from Hack and were walking around the hood and heading for the porch. Bobby had a worried look on his face and Rusty was fanning herself with her hand and looking hard in Reacher's direction, all the way up the steps.

“I hear Bobby invited you to lunch,” she said quietly, at the top.

“Very gracious of him,” Reacher said.

“Yes, it was. Very gracious. But it's going to be a purely family thing today.”

“Is it?” Reacher said.

“Not even Hack is staying,” she added, like it was final proof of something.

Reacher said nothing.

“So I'm sorry,” she said. “But the maid will bring your
meals down to the bunkhouse, in the usual way. You boys can get together again tomorrow.”

Reacher was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded.

“O.K.,” he said. “I wouldn't want to intrude.”

Rusty smiled and Bobby avoided his eye. They walked into the house and Reacher went down the steps into the yard, out into the midday heat. It was like a furnace. Hack Walker was on his own next to the Lincoln, getting ready to leave.

“Hot enough for you?” he asked, with his politician's smile.

“I'll survive,” Reacher said.

“Going to be a storm.”

“So people say.”

Walker nodded. “Reacher, right?”

Reacher nodded. “So everything went O.K. in Abilene, I guess.”

“Like clockwork,” Hack said. “But I'm tired, believe me. Texas is a big, big place. You can forget that, sometimes. You can drive forever. So I'm leaving these folks to their celebrations and hitting the rack. Gratefully, let me tell you.”

Reacher nodded again. “So I'll see you around, maybe.”

“Don't forget to vote in November,” Hack replied. “For me, preferably.”

He used the same bashful expression he had used the night before. Then he paused at the car door and waved across the roof to Sloop. Sloop made a gun with his fingers and leveled it at Hack and pursed his lips like he was supplying the sound of the shot. Hack slid into the car and fired it up and backed into a turn and headed for the gate. He paused a second and made a right and accelerated away and a moment later Reacher was watching a new cone of dust drifting north along the road.

Then he turned back and saw Sloop strolling up across the yard, holding Ellie's hand in his right and Carmen's in his left. His eyes were screwed tight against the sun. Carmen was saying nothing and Ellie was saying a lot. They all walked straight past him and up the steps, three abreast. They paused at the door and Sloop turned his right shoulder to allow Ellie
in ahead of him. He followed her across the threshold and then turned his shoulder the other way to pull Carmen in after him. The door closed on them hard enough to raise a puff of hot dust off the porch floorboards.

 

Reacher saw nobody
except the maid for nearly three hours. He stayed inside the bunkhouse and she brought him lunch and then came back to collect the plate an hour later. Time to time he would watch the house from the high bathroom window, but it was closed up tight and he saw nothing at all. Then late in the afternoon he heard voices behind the horse barn and walked up there and found Sloop and Carmen and Ellie out and about, taking the air. It was still very hot. Maybe hotter than ever. Sloop looked restless. He was sweating. He was scuffing his shoes through the dirt. Carmen looked very nervous. Her face was slightly red. Maybe tension, maybe strain. Maybe the fearsome heat. But it wasn't impossible she'd been slapped a couple of times, either.

“Ellie, come with me to see your pony,” she said.

“I saw him this morning, Mommy,” Ellie said.

Carmen held out her hand. “But I didn't. So let's go see him again.”

Ellie looked mystified for a second, and then she took Carmen's hand. They stepped behind Sloop and set off slowly for the front of the barn. Carmen turned her head and mouthed
talk to him
as she walked. Sloop turned around and watched them go. Turned back and looked at Reacher, like he was seeing him for the first time.

“Sloop Greer,” he said, and held out his hand.

Up close, he was an older, wiser version of Bobby. A little older, maybe a lot wiser. There was intelligence in his eyes. Not necessarily a pleasant sort of intelligence. It wasn't hard to imagine some cruelty there. Reacher shook his hand. It was big-boned, but soft. It was a bully's hand, not a fighter's.

“Jack Reacher,” he said. “How was prison?”

There was a split-second flash of surprise in the eyes. Then it was replaced by instant calm.
Good self-control,
Reacher thought.

“It was pretty awful,” Sloop said. “You been in yourself?”

Quick, too
.

“On the other side of the bars from you,” Reacher said.

Sloop nodded. “Bobby told me you were a cop. Now you're an itinerant worker.”

“I have to be. I didn't have a rich daddy.”

Sloop paused a beat. “You were military, right? In the army?”

“Right, the army.”

“I never cared much for the military, myself.”

“So I gathered.”

“Yeah, how?”

“Well, I hear you opted out of paying for it.”

Another flash in the eyes, quickly gone.
Not easy to rile,
Reacher thought.
But a spell in prison teaches anybody to keep things well below the surface
.

“Shame you spoiled it by crying uncle and getting out early.”

“You think?”

Reacher nodded. “If you can't do the time, then don't do the crime.”

“You got out of the army. So maybe you couldn't do the time either.”

Reacher smiled.
Thanks for the opening,
he thought.

“I had no choice,” he said. “Fact is, they threw me out.”

“Yeah, why?”

“I broke the law, too.”

“Yeah, how?”

“Some scumbag of a colonel was beating up on his wife. Nice young woman. He was a furtive type of a guy, did it all in secret. So I couldn't prove it. But I wasn't about to let him get away with it. That wouldn't have been right. Because I don't like men who hit women. So one night, I caught him on his own. No witnesses. He's in a wheelchair now. Drinks through a straw. Wears a bib, because he drools all the time.”

Sloop said nothing. He was so silent, the skin at the inside corners of his eyes turned dark purple.
Walk away now,
Reacher thought,
and you're confessing it to me
. But Sloop stayed exactly where he was, very still, staring into space,
seeing nothing. Then he recovered. The eyes came back into focus. Not quickly, but not too slowly, either. A smart guy.

“Well, that makes me feel better,” he said. “About withholding my taxes. They might have ended up in your pocket.”

“You don't approve?”

“No, I don't,” Sloop said.

“Of who?”

“Either of you,” Sloop said. “You, or the other guy.”

Then he turned and walked away.

 

Reacher went back
to the bunkhouse. The maid brought him dinner and came back for the plate. Full darkness fell outside and the night insects started up with their crazy chant. He lay down on his bed and sweated. The temperature stayed rock-steady around a hundred degrees. He heard isolated coyote howls again, and cougar screams, and the invisible beating of bats' wings.

Then he heard a light tread on the bunkhouse stair. He sat up in time to see Carmen come up into the room. She had one hand pressed flat on her chest, like she was out of breath, or panicking, or both.

“Sloop talked to Bobby,” she said. “For ages.”

“Did he hit you?” Reacher asked.

Her hand went up to her cheek.

“No,” she said.

“Did he?”

She looked away.

“Well, just once,” she said. “Not hard.”

“I should go break his arms.”

“He called the sheriff.”

“Who did?”

“Sloop.”

“When?”

“Just now. He talked to Bobby, and then he called.”

“About me?”

She nodded. “He wants you out of here.”

“It's O.K.,” Reacher said. “The sheriff won't do anything.”

“You think?”

Reacher nodded. “I squared him away, before.”

She paused a beat. “I've got to get back now. He thinks I'm with Ellie.”

“You want me to come with you?”

“Not yet. Let me talk to him first.”

“Don't let him hit you again, Carmen. Come get me, soon as you need me. Or make noise, O.K.? Scream and shout.”

She started back down the stairs.

“I will,” she said. “I promise. You sure about the sheriff?”

“Don't worry,” he said. “The sheriff won't do a thing.”

 

But the sheriff
did one thing. He passed the problem to the state police. Reacher found that out ninety minutes later, when a Texas Ranger cruiser turned in under the gate, looking for him. Somebody directed it all the way down past the barns and in behind the bunkhouse. He heard its motor and the sound of its tires crushing the dust on the track. He got off of his bed and went down the stairs and when he got to the bottom he was lit up by the spotlight mounted in front of its windshield. It shone in past the parked farm tractors and picked him out in a bright cone of light. The car doors opened and two Rangers got out.

They were not similar to the sheriff. Not in any way. They were in a different class altogether. They were young and fit and professional. Both of them were medium height, both of them were halfway between lean and muscled. Both had military-style buzz cuts. Both had immaculate uniforms. One was a sergeant and the other was a trooper. The trooper was Hispanic. He was holding a shotgun.

“What?” Reacher called.

“Step to the hood of the car,” the sergeant called back.

Reacher kept his hands clear of his body and walked to the car.

“Assume the position,” the sergeant said.

Reacher put his palms on the fender and leaned down. The sheet metal was hot from the engine. The trooper covered him with the shotgun and the sergeant patted him down.

“O.K., get in the car,” he said.

Reacher didn't move.

“What's this about?” he asked.

“A request from a property owner to remove a trespasser.”

“I'm not a trespasser. I work here.”

“Well, I guess they just terminated you. So now you're a trespasser. And we're going to remove you.”

“That's a state police job?”

“Small community like this, we're on call to help the local guys, their days off, or serious crimes.”

“Trespassing is a serious crime?”

“No, Sunday is the Echo sheriff's day off.”

The moths had found the spotlight. They fluttered in and crowded the lens, landing and taking off again when the heat of the bulb got to them. They batted against Reacher's right arm. They felt dry and papery and surprisingly heavy.

“O.K., I'll leave,” he said. “I'll walk out to the road.”

“Then you'll be a vagrant on a county highway. That's against the law, too, around here, especially during the hours of darkness.”

“So where are we going?”

“You have to leave the county. We'll let you out in Pecos.”

“They owe me money. I never got paid.”

“So get in the car. We'll stop at the house.”

Reacher glanced left at the trooper, and the shotgun. Both of them looked businesslike. He glanced right, at the sergeant. He had his hand on the butt of his gun. He saw in his mind the two Greer boys, two versions of the same face, both of them grinning, smug and triumphant. But it was Rusty he saw mouthing
checkmate
at him.