Echo Burning (36 page)

Then she went straight into his two-for-three theory. The deal, the dangerous knowledge. The warning. Walker sat still
and listened to it. His color came back, slowly. He stayed quiet, thinking hard. Then he shook his head.

“Can't be right,” he said. “Because the deal was really nothing at all. Sloop caved in and undertook to pay the taxes and the penalties. That was all. Nothing more. He got desperate, couldn't stand the jail time. It happens a lot. Al contacted the IRS, made the offer, they didn't bat an eye. It's routine. It was handled at a branch office. By junior-grade personnel. That's how routine it was. The federal prosecutor needed to sign off on it, which is where I came in. I hustled it through, is all, a little faster than it might have gone without me. You know, the old boys' club. It was a routine IRS matter. And believe me, nobody gets killed over a routine IRS matter.”

He shook his head again. Then he opened his eyes wide and went very still.

“I want you to leave now,” he said.

Alice nodded. “We're very sorry for your loss. We know you were friends.”

But Walker just looked confused, like that wasn't what he was worrying about.

“What?” Reacher said.

“We shouldn't talk anymore, is what,” Walker said.

“Why not?”

“Because we're going around in a circle, and we're finishing up in a place where we don't want to be.”

“We are?”

“Think about it, guys. Nobody gets killed over a routine IRS matter. Or do they? Sloop and Al were fixing to take the trust money away from Carmen and give most of it to the government. Now Sloop and Al are dead. Two plus two makes four. Her motive is getting bigger and better all the time. We keep talking like this, I've
got
to think conspiracy. Two deaths, not one. No choice, I've got to. And I don't want to do that.”

“There was no conspiracy,” Reacher said. “If she'd already hired people, why did she pick me up?”

Walker shrugged. “To confuse the issue? Distance herself?”

“Is she
that
smart?”

“I think she is.”

“So prove it. Show us she hired somebody.”

“I can't do that.”

“Yes, you can. You've got her bank records. Show us the payment.”

“The payment?”

“You think these people work for free?”

Walker made a face. Took keys from his pocket and unlocked a drawer in his desk. Lifted out the pile of financial information.
Greer Non-Discretionary Trust,
numbers 1 through 5. Reacher held his breath. Walker went through them, page by page. Then he squared them together again and reversed them on the desk. His face was blank.

Alice leaned forward and picked them up. Leafed through, scanning the fourth column from the left, which was the debit column. There were plenty of debits. But they were all small and random. Nothing bigger than two hundred and ninety-seven dollars. Several below a hundred.

“Add up the last month,” Reacher said.

She scanned back.

“Nine hundred, round figures,” she said.

Reacher nodded. “Even if she hoarded it, nine hundred bucks doesn't buy you much. Certainly doesn't buy you somebody who can operate the way we've seen.”

Walker said nothing.

“We need to go talk to her,” Reacher said.

“We can't,” Walker said. “She's on the road, headed for the penitentiary.”

“She didn't do it,” Reacher said. “She didn't do anything. She's completely innocent.”

“So why did she confess?”

Reacher closed his eyes. Sat still for a moment.

“She was forced to,” he said. “Somebody got to her.”

“Who?”

Reacher opened his eyes.

“I don't know who,” he said. “But we can find out. Get the bailiff's log from downstairs. See who came to visit her.”

Walker's face was still blank and sweaty. But he picked up the phone and dialed an internal number. Asked for the
visitor's log to be brought up immediately. Then they waited in silence. Three minutes later they heard the sound of heavy footsteps in the secretarial pen and the bailiff came in through the office door. It was the day guy. He was breathing hard after running up the stairs. He was carrying a thick book in his hand.

Walker took it from him and opened it up. Scanned through it quickly and reversed it on the desk. Used his finger to point. Carmen Greer was logged in during the early hours of Monday morning. She was logged out two hours ago, into the custody of the Texas Department of Correction. In between she had received one visitor, twice. Nine o'clock on Monday morning and again on Tuesday at noon, the same assistant DA had gone down to see her.

“Preliminary interview, and then the confession,” Walker said.

There were no other entries at all.

“Is this right?” Reacher asked.

The bailiff nodded.

“Guaranteed,” he said.

Reacher looked at the log again. The first ADA interview had lasted two minutes. Clearly Carmen had refused to say a word. The second interview had lasted twelve minutes. After that she had been escorted upstairs for the videotape.

“Nobody else?” he asked.

“There were phone calls,” the bailiff said.

“When?”

“All day Monday, and Tuesday morning.”

“Who was calling her?”

“Her lawyer.”

“Her
lawyer?”
Alice said.

The guy nodded.

“It was a big pain in the ass,” he said. “I had to keep bringing her in and out to the phone.”

“Who was the lawyer?” Alice asked.

“We're not allowed to ask, ma'am. It's a confidentiality thing. Lawyer discussions are secret.”

“Man or woman?”

“It was a man.”

“Hispanic?”

“I don't think so. He sounded like a regular guy. His voice was a little muffled. I think it was a bad phone line.”

“Same guy every time?”

“I think so.”

There was silence in the office. Walker nodded vaguely and the bailiff took it for a dismissal. They heard him walk out through the secretarial pen. They heard the lobby door close behind him.

“She didn't tell us she was represented,” Walker said. “She told us she didn't
want
representation.”

“She told me the same thing,” Alice said.

“We need to know who this person was,” Reacher said. “We need to get the phone company to trace the calls.”

Walker shook his head. “Can't do it. Legal discussions are privileged.”

Reacher stared at him. “You really think it was a
lawyer?”

“Don't you?”

“Of course not. It was some guy, threatening her, forcing her to lie. Think about it, Walker. First time your ADA saw her, she wouldn't say a word. Twenty-seven hours later, she's confessing. Only thing that happened in between was a bunch of calls from this guy.”

“But what kind of threat could make her say that?”

 

The killing crew
was uneasy in its new role as baby-sitter. Each member felt exactly the same way, each for the exact same reasons. Holding a child hostage was not a normal part of their expertise. Taking her in the first place had been. That was a fairly standard operation, based as always on lure and deception. The woman and the tall fair man had gone to the Red House as a pair, because they figured that would match the public's perception of how social workers operate. They had arrived in the big official-looking sedan and used a brisk professional manner. They had mixed it with a generous helping of pious do-gooder sanctimony, like they were desperately concerned with the child's welfare above all else. They had a thick wad of bogus papers to display. The papers
looked exactly like Family Services warrants and relevant authorizations from state agencies. But the grandmother hardly even looked at them. She offered no resistance at all. It struck them as unnatural. She just handed the kid over, like she was real glad about it.

The kid put up no resistance, either. She was very earnest and silent about the whole thing. Like she was trying to be on her best behavior. Like she was trying to please these new adults. So they just put her in the car and drove her away. No tears, no screaming, no tantrums. It went well, all things considered. Very well. About as effortless as the Al Eugene operation.

But then they departed from the usual. Radically. Standard practice would have been to drive straight to a scouted location and pull the triggers. Conceal the body and then get the hell out. But this task was different. They had to keep her hidden. And alive and unharmed. At least for a spell. Maybe days and days. It was something they had never done before. And professionals get uneasy with things they've never done before. They always do. That's the nature of professionalism. Professionals feel best when they stick to what they know.

 

“Call Family Services,”
Reacher said. “Right now.”

Hack Walker just stared at him.

“You asked the question,” Reacher said. “What kind of a threat could make her confess to something she didn't do? Don't you see? They must have gotten her kid.”

Walker stared a beat longer, frozen. Then he wrestled himself into action and unlocked another drawer and rattled it open. Lifted out a heavy black binder. Opened it up and thumbed through and grabbed his phone and dialed a number. There was no answer. He dabbed the cradle and dialed another. Some kind of an evening emergency contact. It was picked up and he asked the question, using Ellie's full name, Mary Ellen Greer. There was a long pause. Then an answer. Walker listened. Said nothing. Just put the phone down, very slowly and carefully, like it was made out of glass.

“They never heard of her,” he said.

Silence. Walker closed his eyes, and then opened them again.

“O.K.,” he said. “Resources are going to be a problem. State police, of course. And the FBI, because this is a kidnap. But we've got to move immediately. Speed is absolutely paramount here. It always is, with kidnap cases. They could be taking her anywhere. So I want you two to go down to Echo right now, get the full story from Rusty. Descriptions and everything.”

“Rusty won't talk to us,” Reacher said. “She's too hostile. What about the Echo sheriff?”

“That guy is useless. He's probably drunk right now. You'll have to do it.”

“Waste of time,” Reacher said.

Walker opened another drawer and took two chromium stars from a box. Tossed them onto the desk.

“Raise your right hands,” he said. “Repeat after me.”

He mumbled his way through some kind of an oath. Reacher and Alice repeated it back, as far as they could catch it. Walker nodded.

“Now you're sheriff's deputies,” he said. “Valid throughout Echo County. Rusty will
have
to talk to you.”

Reacher just stared at him.

“What?” Walker said.

“You can still do that here? Deputize people?”

“Sure I can,” Walker said. “Just like the Wild West. Now get going, O.K.? I've got a million calls to make.”

Reacher took his chromium star and stood up, an accredited law enforcement official again for the first time in four and a quarter years. Alice stood up alongside him.

“Meet back here directly,” Walker called. “And good luck.”

Eight minutes later they were in the yellow VW again, heading south toward the Red House for the second time that day.

 

The woman took
the call. She let the phone ring four times while she got the voice-altering device out of her bag and switched it on. But she didn't need it. She didn't need to talk
at all. She just listened, because it was a one-sided message, long and complex but basically clear and concise and unambiguous, and the whole thing was repeated twice. When it was over, she hung up the phone and put the electronics back in her bag.

“It's tonight,” she said.

“What is?” the tall man asked.

“The supplementary job,” she said. “The Pecos thing. Seems like the situation up there is unraveling slightly. They found Eugene's body.”

“Already?”

“Shit,” the dark man said.

“Yes, shit,” the woman said. “So we move on the supplementary right away, tonight, before things get any worse.”

“Who's the target?” the tall man asked.

“His name is Jack Reacher. Some drifter, ex-military. I've got a description. There's a girl lawyer in the picture, too. She'll need attention as well.”

“We do them simultaneous with this baby-sitting gig?”

The woman shrugged. “Like we always said, we keep the baby-sitting going as long as possible, but we reserve the right to terminate when necessary.”

The men looked at each other. Ellie watched them from the bed.

Reacher was not
good company on the ride south. He didn't talk at all for the first hour and a half. Evening dark had fallen fast and he kept the VW's dome light on and studied the maps from the glove compartment. In particular he concentrated on a large-scale topographical sheet that showed the southern part of Echo County. The county boundary was a completely straight line running east to west. At its closest point, it was fifty miles from the Rio Grande. That made no sense to him.

“I don't understand why she lied about the diamond,” he said.

Alice shrugged. She was pushing the little car as fast as it was willing to go.

“She lied about everything,” she said.

“The ring was different,” he said.

“Different how?”

“A different sort of lie. Like apples are different from oranges.”

“I don't follow.”

“The ring is the only thing I can't explain to myself.”

“The
only
thing?”

“Everything else is coherent, but the ring is a problem.”

She drove on, another mile. The power line poles came and went, flashing through the headlight beams for a split second each.

“You know what's going on, don't you?” she said.

“You ever done computer-aided design?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Me neither.”

“So?”

“Do you know what it is?”

She shrugged again. “Vaguely, I guess.”

“They can build a whole house or car or whatever, right there on the computer screen. They can paint it, decorate it, look at it. If it's a house, they can go
in
it, walk around. They can rotate it, look at the front, look at the back. If it's a car, they can see how it looks in daylight and in the dark. They can tilt it up and down, spin it around, examine it from every angle. They can crash it and see how it holds up. It's like a real thing, except it isn't. I guess it's a
virtual
thing.”

“So?” she said again.

“I can see this whole situation in my mind, like a computer design. Inside and out, up and down. From every angle. Except for the ring. The ring screws it up.”

“You want to explain that?”

“No point,” he said. “Until I figure it out.”

“Is Ellie going to be O.K.?”

“I hope so. That's why we're making this trip.”

“You think the grandmother can help us?”

He shrugged. “I doubt it.”

“So how is this trip helping Ellie?”

He said nothing. Just opened the glove compartment and put the maps back. Took out the Heckler & Koch handgun. Clicked out the magazine and checked the load.
Never assume
. But it still held its full complement of ten shells. He put the magazine back in and jacked the first round into the chamber. Then he cocked the pistol and locked it. Eased up off the passenger seat and slipped it into his pocket.

“You think we're going to need that?” she asked.

“Sooner or later,” he said. “You got more ammo in your bag?”

She shook her head. “I never thought I'd actually
use
it.”

He said nothing.

“You O.K.?” she asked.

“Feeling good,” he said. “Maybe like you did during that big trial, before the guy refused to pay.”

She nodded at the wheel. “It was a good feeling.”

“That's your thing, right?”

“I guess it is.”

“This is my thing,” he said. “This is what I'm built for. The thrill of the chase. I'm an investigator, Alice, always was, always will be. I'm a
hunter
. And when Walker gave me that badge my head started working.”

“You know what's going on, don't you?” she asked again.

“Aside from the diamond ring.”

“Tell me.”

He said nothing.

“Tell me,” she said again.

“Did you ever ride a horse?”

“No,” she said. “I'm a city girl. Openest space I ever saw was the median strip in the middle of Park Avenue.”

“I just rode one with Carmen. First time ever.”

“So?”

“They're very tall. You're way up there in the air.”

“So?” she said again.

“You ever ride a bike?”

“In New York City?”

“Inline skating?”

“A little, back when it was cool.”

“You ever fall?”

“Once, pretty badly.”

He nodded. “Tell me about that meal you made for me.”

“What about it?”

“Homemade, right?”

“Sure.”

“You weighed out the ingredients?”

“You have to.”

“So you've got a scale in your kitchen?”

“Sure,” she said again.

“The scales of justice,” he said.

“Reacher, what the hell are you talking about?”

He glanced to his left. The red picket fence was racing backward through the edge of her headlight beams.

“We're here,” he said. “I'll tell you later.”

She slowed and turned in under the gate and bumped across the yard.

“Face it toward the motor barn,” he said. “And leave the headlights on. I want to take a look at that old pick-up truck.”

“O.K.,” she said.

She coasted a yard or two and hauled on the steering wheel until the headlight beams washed into the right-hand end of the barn. They lit up half of the new pick-up, half of the Jeep Cherokee, and all of the old pick-up between them.

“Stay close to me,” he said.

They got out of the car. The night air felt suddenly hot and damp. Different than before. It was cloudy and there were disturbed insects floating everywhere. But the yard was quiet. No sound. They walked over together for a better look at the abandoned truck. It was some kind of a Chevrolet, maybe twenty years old, but still a recognizable ancestor of the newer truck alongside it. It had bulbous fenders and dulled paint and a roll bar built into the load bed. It must have had a million miles on it. Probably hadn't been started in a decade. The springs sagged and the tires were flat and the rubber was perished by the relentless heat.

“So?” Alice said.

“I think it's the truck in the photograph,” Reacher said. “The one in Walker's office? Him and Sloop and Eugene leaning on the fender?”

“Trucks all look the same to me,” she said.

“Sloop had the same photograph.”

“Is that significant?”

He shrugged. “They were good friends.”

They turned away. Alice ducked back into the VW and killed the lights. Then he led her to the foot of the porch
steps. Up to the main entrance. He knocked. Waited. Bobby Greer opened the door. Stood there, surprised.

“So you came home,” Reacher said.

Bobby scowled, like he had already heard it.

“My buddies took me out,” he said. “To help with the grieving process.”

Reacher opened his palm to show off the chromium star.
The badge flip
. It felt good. Not quite as good as flashing a United States Army Criminal Investigation Division credential, but it had an effect on Bobby. It stopped him closing the door again.

“Police,” Reacher said. “We need to see your mother.”

“Police? You?”

“Hack Walker just deputized us. Valid throughout Echo County. Where's your mother?”

Bobby paused a beat. Leaned forward and glanced up at the night sky and literally sniffed the air.

“Storm's rolling in,” he said. “It's coming now. From the south.”

“Where's your mother, Bobby?”

Bobby paused again.

“Inside,” he said.

Reacher led Alice past Bobby into the red foyer with the rifles and the mirror. It was a degree or two cooler inside the house. The old air conditioner was running hard. It thumped and rattled patiently, somewhere upstairs. They walked through the foyer and into the parlor in back. Rusty Greer was sitting at the table in the same chair as the first time he had seen her. She was wearing the same style of clothes. Tight jeans and a fringed blouse. Her hair was lacquered up into a halo as hard as a helmet.

“We're here on official business, Mrs. Greer,” Reacher said. He showed her the badge in his palm. “We need some answers.”

“Or what, big man?” Rusty said. “You going to arrest me?”

Reacher pulled out a chair and sat opposite her. Just looked at her.

“I've done nothing wrong,” she said.

Reacher shook his head. “As a matter of fact, you've done everything wrong.”

“Like what?”

“Like, my grandmother would have died before she let her grandchildren get taken away. Literally. Over her dead body, she'd have said, and she'd have damn well meant every word.”

Silence for a second. Just the endless tick of the fan.

“It was for the child's own good,” Rusty said. “And I had no choice. They had papers.”

“You given grandchildren away before?”

“No.”

“So how do you know they were the
right
papers?”

Rusty just shrugged. Said nothing.

“Did you check?”

“How could I?” Rusty said. “And they looked right. All full of big words, aforementioned, hereinafter, the State of Texas.”

“They were fakes,” Reacher said. “It was a kidnap, Mrs. Greer. It was coercion. They took your granddaughter to threaten your daughter-in-law with.”

He watched her face, for dawning realization, for guilt or shame or fear or remorse. There was some expression there. He wasn't exactly sure what it was.

“So we need descriptions,” he said. “How many were there?”

She said nothing.

“How many people, Mrs. Greer?”

“Two people. A man and a woman.”

“White?”

“Yes.”

“What did they look like?”

Rusty shrugged again.

“Ordinary,” she said. “Normal. Like you would expect. Like social workers. From a city. They had a big car.”

“Hair? Eyes? Clothes?”

“Fair hair, I think. Both of them. Cheap suits. The woman wore a skirt. Blue eyes, I think. The man was tall.”

“What about their car?”

“I don't know about cars. It was a big sedan. But kind of ordinary. Not a Cadillac.”

“Color?”

“Gray or blue, maybe. Not dark.”

“You got any humble pie in the kitchen?”

“Why?”

“Because I should cram it down your throat until it chokes you. Those fair-haired white people with the blue eyes are the ones who killed Al Eugene. And you gave your own granddaughter to them.”

She stared at him. “Killed? Al is dead?”

“Two minutes after they took him out of his car.”

She went pale and her mouth started working. She said
what about,
and then stopped. And again,
what about
. She couldn't add the word
Ellie
.

“Not yet,” Reacher said. “That's my guess. And my hope. Ought to be
your
hope, too, because if they hurt her, you know what I'm going to do?”

She didn't answer. Just clamped her lips and shook her head from side to side.

“I'm going to come back down here and break your spine. I'm going to stand you up and snap it like a rotten twig.”

 

They made her
take a bath, which was awful, because one of the men watched her do it. He was quite short and had black hair on his head and his arms. He stood inside the bathroom door and watched her all the time she was in the tub. Her mommy had told her,
never let anybody see you undressed, especially not a man
. And he was right there watching her. And she had no pajamas to put on afterward. She hadn't brought any. She hadn't brought
anything
.

“You don't need pajamas,” the man said. “It's too hot for pajamas.”

He stood there by the door, watching her. She dried herself with a small white towel. She needed to pee, but she wasn't going to let him watch her do
that
. She had to squeeze very near him to get out of the room. Then the other two watched her all the way to the bed. The other man, and the woman. They were horrible. They were
all
horrible. She got into the
bed and pulled the covers up over her head and tried hard not to cry.

 

“What now?” Alice
asked.

“Back to Pecos,” Reacher said. “I want to keep on the move. And we've got a lot of stuff to do tonight. But go slow, O.K.? I need time to think.”

She drove out to the gate and turned north into the darkness. Switched the fan on high to blow the night heat away.

“Think about what?” Alice asked.

“About where Ellie is.”

“Why do you think it was the same people as killed Eugene?”

“It's a deployment issue,” he said. “I can't see anybody using a separate hit team and kidnap team. Not down here in the middle of nowhere. So I think it's one team. Either a hit team moonlighting on the kidnap, or a kidnap team moonlighting on the hits. Probably the former, because the way they did Eugene was pretty expert. If that was moonlighting, I'd hate to see them do what they're
really
good at.”

“All they did was shoot him. Anybody could do that.”

“No, they couldn't. They got him to stop the car, they talked him into theirs. They kept him quiet throughout. That's really good technique, Alice. Harder than you can imagine. Then they shot him through the eye. That means something, too.”

“What?”

He shrugged. “It's a tiny target. And in a situation like that, it's a snap shot. You raise the gun, you fire.
One, two
. No rational reason to pick such a tiny target. It's a kind of exuberance. Not exactly showing off, as such. More like just celebrating your own skill and precision. Like reveling in it. It's a joy thing.”

Silence in the car. Just the hum of the motor and the whine of the tires.