Echo Burning (3 page)

“So, did you explore Lubbock?” she asked.

“I saw the Buddy Holly statue.”

He saw her glance down at the radio, like she was thinking
this guy likes music, maybe I should put some on
.

“You like Buddy Holly?” she asked.

“Not really,” Reacher said. “Too tame for me.”

She nodded at the wheel. “I agree. I think Ritchie Valens was better. He was from Lubbock, too.”

He nodded back. “I saw him in the Walk of Fame.”

“How long were you in Lubbock?”

“A day.”

“And now you're moving on.”

“That's the plan.”

“To wherever,” she said.

“That's the plan,” he said again.

They passed the city limit. There was a small metal sign on a pole on the sidewalk. He smiled to himself. City Police, the
shield on the cop car had said. He turned his head and watched danger disappear behind him.

 

The two men
sat in the front of the Crown Victoria, with the tall fair man driving to give the small dark man a break. The woman sat in the back. They rolled out of the motel lot and picked up speed on I-20, heading west, toward Fort Worth, away from Dallas. Nobody spoke. Thinking about the vast interior of Texas was oppressing them. The woman had read a guidebook in preparation for the mission that pointed out that the state makes up fully seven percent of America's land mass and is bigger than most European countries. That didn't impress her. Everybody knew all that standard-issue Texas-is-real-big bullshit. Everybody always has. But the guide book also pointed out that side-to-side Texas is wider than the distance between New York and Chicago. That information had some impact. And it underlined why they were facing such a long drive, just to get from one nowhere interior location to another.

But the car was quiet and cool and comfortable, and it was as good a place to relax as any motel room would be. They had a little time to kill, after all.

 

The woman slowed
and made a shallow right, toward New Mexico, then a mile later a left, straight south, toward old Mexico. Her dress was creased across the middle, like maybe she was wearing it a second day. Her perfume was subtle, mixed into the freezing air from the dashboard vents.

“So is Pecan worth seeing?” Reacher asked, in the silence.

“Pecos,” she said.

“Right, Pecos.”

She shrugged.

“I like it,” she said. “It's mostly Mexican, so I'm comfortable there.”

Her right hand tensed on the wheel. He saw tendons shifting under the skin.

“You like Mexican people?” she asked.

He shrugged back. “As much as I like any people, I guess.”

“You don't like people?”

“It varies.”

“You like cantaloupe?”

“As much as I like any fruit.”

“Pecos grows the sweetest cantaloupe in the whole of Texas,” she said. “And therefore, in their opinion, in the whole of the world. Also there's a rodeo there in July, but you've missed it for this year. And just north of Pecos is Loving County. You ever heard of Loving County?”

He shook his head. “Never been here before.”

“It's the least-populated county in the whole of the United States,” she said. “Well, if you leave out some of the places in Alaska, I guess. But also the richest, per capita. Population is a hundred and ten souls, but there are four hundred and twenty oil leases active.”

He nodded. “So let me out in Pecos. It sounds like a fun place.”

“It was the real Wild West,” she said. “A long time ago, of course. The Texas and Pacific Railroad put a stop there. So there were saloons and all. Used to be a bad place. It was a word, too, as well as a town. A verb, and also a place. To pecos somebody meant to shoot them and throw them in the Pecos River.”

“They still do that?”

She smiled again. A different smile. This smile traded some elegance for some mischief. It eased her tension. It made her appealing.

“No, they don't do that so much, now,” she said.

“Your family from Pecos?”

“No, California,” she said. “I came to Texas when I got married.”

Keep talking,
he thought.
She saved your ass
.

“Been married long?” he asked.

“Just under seven years.”

“Your family been in California long?”

She paused and smiled again.

“Longer than any Californian, that's for sure,” she said.

They were in flat empty country and she eased the silent
car faster down a dead-straight road. The hot sky was tinted bottle-green by the windshield. The instrumentation on her dashboard showed it was a hundred and ten degrees outside and sixty inside.

“You a lawyer?” he asked.

She was puzzled for a moment, and then she made the connection and craned to glance at her briefcase in the mirror.

“No,” she said. “I'm a lawyer's client.”

The conversation went dead again. She seemed nervous, and he felt awkward about it.

“And what else are you?” he asked.

She paused a beat.

“Somebody's wife and mother,” she said. “And somebody's daughter and sister, I guess. And I keep a few horses. That's all. What are you?”

“Nothing in particular,” Reacher said.

“You have to be something,” she said.

“Well, I used to be things,” he said. “I was somebody's son, and somebody's brother, and somebody's boyfriend.”

“Was?”

“My parents died, my brother died, my girlfriend left me.”

Not a great line,
he thought. She said nothing back.

“And I don't have any horses,” he added.

“I'm very sorry,” she said.

“That I don't have horses?”

“No, that you're all alone in the world.”

“Water under the bridge,” he said. “It's not as bad as it sounds.”

“You're not lonely?”

He shrugged. “I like being alone.”

She paused. “Why did your girlfriend leave you?”

“She went to work in Europe.”

“And you couldn't go with her?”

“She didn't really want me to go with her.”

“I see,” she said. “Did
you
want to go with her?”

He was quiet for a beat.

“Not really, I guess,” he said. “Too much like settling down.”

“And you don't want to settle down?”

He shook his head. “Two nights in the same motel gives me the creeps.”

“Hence one day in Lubbock,” she said.

“And the next day in Pecos,” he said.

“And after that?”

He smiled.

“After that, I have no idea,” he said. “And that's the way I like it.”

She drove on, silent as the car.

“So you
are
running away from something,” she said. “Maybe you had a very settled life before and you want to escape from that particular feeling.”

He shook his head again. “No, the exact opposite, really. I was in the army all my life, which is very
un
settled, and I grew to like the feeling.”

“I see,” she said. “You became habituated to chaos, maybe.”

“I guess so.”

She paused. “How is a person in the army all his life?”

“My father was in, too. So I grew up on military bases all over the world, and then I stayed in afterward.”

“But now you're out.”

He nodded. “All trained up and nowhere to go.”

He saw her thinking about his answer. He saw her tension come back. She started stepping harder on the gas, maybe without realizing it, maybe like an involuntary reflex. He had the feeling her interest in him was quickening, like the car.

 

Ford builds Crown
Victorias at its plant up in St. Thomas, Canada, tens of thousands a year, and almost all of them without exception are sold to police departments, taxicab companies, or rental fleets. Almost none of them are sold to private citizens. Full-size turnpike cruisers no longer earn much of a market share, and for those die-hards who still want one from the Ford Motor Company, the Mercury Grand Marquis is the same car in fancier clothes for about the same money, so it mops up the private sales. Which makes private Crown Vics rarer than red Rolls-Royces, so the subliminal
response when you see one that isn't taxicab yellow or black and white with
Police
all over the doors is to think it's an unmarked detective's car. Or government issue of some other kind, maybe U.S. Marshals, or FBI, or Secret Service, or a courtesy vehicle given to a medical examiner or a big-city fire chief.

That's the subliminal impression, and there are ways to enhance it a little.

In the empty country halfway to Abilene, the tall fair man pulled off the highway and headed through vast fields and past dense woodlands until he found a dusty turn-out probably ten miles from the nearest human being. He stopped there and turned off the motor and popped the trunk. The small dark man heaved the heavy valise out and laid it on the ground. The woman zipped it open and handed a pair of Virginia plates to the tall fair man. He took a screwdriver from the valise and removed the Texas plates, front and rear. Bolted the Virginia issue in their place. The small dark man pulled the plastic covers off all four wheels, leaving the cheap black steel rims showing. He stacked the wheel covers like plates and pitched them into the trunk. The woman took radio antennas from the valise, four of them, CB whips and cellular telephone items bought cheap at a Radio Shack in L.A. The cellular antennas stuck to the rear window with self-adhesive pads. She waited until the trunk was closed again and placed the CB antennas on the lid. They had magnetic bases. They weren't wired up to anything. They were just for show.

Then the small dark man took his rightful place behind the wheel and U-turned through the dust and headed back to the highway, cruising easily. A Crown Vic, plain steel wheels, a forest of antennas, Virginia plates. Maybe an FBI pool car, three agents inside, maybe on urgent business.

 

“What did you
do in the army?” the woman asked, very casually.

“I was a cop,” Reacher said.

“They have cops in the army?”

“Sure they do,” he said. “Military police. Like cops, inside the service.”

“I didn't know that,” she said.

She went quiet again. She was thinking hard. She seemed excited.

“Would you mind if I asked you some questions?” she said.

He shrugged. “You're giving me a ride.”

She nodded. “I wouldn't want to offend you.”

“That would be hard to do, in the circumstances. Hundred and ten degrees out there, sixty in here.”

“There'll be a storm soon. There has to be, with a temperature like this.”

He glanced ahead at the sky. It was tinted bottle-green by the windshield glass, and it was blindingly clear.

“I don't see any sign of it,” he said.

She smiled again, briefly. “May I ask where you live?”

“I don't live anywhere,” he said. “I move around.”

“You don't have a home somewhere?”

He shook his head. “What you see is what I've got.”

“You travel light,” she said.

“Light as I can.”

She paused for a fast mile.

“Are you out of work?” she asked.

He nodded. “Usually.”

“Were you a good cop? In the army?”

“Good enough, I guess. They made me a major, gave me some medals.”

She paused. “So why did you leave?”

It felt like an interview. For a loan, or for a job.

“They downsized me out of there,” he said. “End of the Cold War, they wanted a smaller army, not so many people in it, so they didn't need so many cops to look after them.”

She nodded. “Like a town. If the population gets smaller, the police department gets smaller, too. Something to do with appropriations. Taxes, or something.”

He said nothing.

“I live in a very small town,” she said. “Echo, south of Pecos, like I told you. It's a lonely place. That's why they
named it Echo. Not because it's echoey, like an empty room. It's from ancient Greek mythology. Echo was a young girl in love with Narcissus. But he loved himself, not her, so she pined away until just her voice was left. So that's why it's called Echo. Not many inhabitants. But it's a county, too. A county and a township. Not as empty as Loving County, but there's no police department at all. Just the county sheriff, on his own.”

Something in her voice.

“Is that a problem?” he asked.

“It's a very
white
county,” she said. “Not like Pecos at all.”

“So?”

“So one feels there
might
be a problem, if push came to shove.”

“And has push come to shove?”

She smiled, awkwardly.

“I can tell you were a cop,” she said. “You ask so many questions. And it's me who wanted to ask all the questions.”

She fell silent for a spell and just drove, slim dark hands light on the wheel, going fast but not hurrying. He used the cushion-shaped buttons again and laid his seat back another fraction. Watched her in the corner of his eye. She was pretty, but she was troubled. Ten years from now, she was going to have some excellent frown lines.

“What was life like in the army?” she asked.

“Different,” he said. “Different from life outside the army.”

“Different how?”

“Different rules, different situations. It was a world of its own. It was very regulated, but it was kind of lawless. Kind of rough and uncivilized.”

“Like the Wild West,” she said.

“I guess,” he said back. “A million people trained first and foremost to do what needed doing. The rules came afterward.”

“Like the Wild West,” she said again. “I think you liked it.”