Echo Burning (27 page)

“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 actually 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 when 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 don'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?”

“Yes, she did. She said she called them. Some special unit.”