Echo Burning

The trooper clicked the microphone and called in for backup and an ambulance. Then he dictated an interim report to the dispatcher. He used the words gunshot wounds twice and homicide three times.

"Hey," Reacher called to him. "Stop calling it homicide on the radio."

"Why?"

"Because it was self-defense. He was beating her. We all need to get that straight, from the start."

"Not for me to say. You, either."

Reacher shook his head. "It is for you to say. Because what you say now counts for something, later. You put it in people's heads it's a homicide, it'll be tough for her. Better that everybody's real clear from the start about what it is."

"I don't have that kind of influence."

"Yes, you do."

"How would you know what kind of influence I have?"

"Because I was you, once upon a time. I was a cop, in the military. I called things in. I know how it works."

The trooper said nothing.

"She's got a kid," Reacher said. "You should remember that. So she needs minimum bail, and she needs it tonight. You can influence that for her."

"She shot him," the trooper said. "She should have thought about all that before."

"The guy was beating up on her. It was self-defense."

The trooper said nothing.

"Give her a break, O.K.? Don't make her a victim twice over."

"She's the victim? Her husband is the one lying there dead."

"You should have sympathy. You must know how it is for her."

"Why? What's the connection between her and me?"

Now it was Reacher who said nothing.

"You think I should cut her a break just because I'm Hispanic and she is too?"

"You wouldn't be cutting her a break," Reacher said. "You'd be being accurate, is all. She needs your help."

The trooper hung up the microphone.

"Now you're offending me," he said.

He backed out of the car and slammed the door. Walked away, up to the house again. Reacher glanced through the window to his right, toward the rocky land west of the compound, full of regret. I knew how it would be, he thought. I should have made her leave the damn gun up there on the mesa. Or I should have taken care of the whole thing myself.

The state cops stayed inside the house and Reacher saw nothing until the backup arrived more than an hour later. It was an identical cruiser with another trooper driving and another sergeant riding alongside him. This time the trooper was white and the sergeant was Hispanic. They got out of their car and walked straight into the house. The heat and the quiet came back. There were animal howls in the far distance and the whisper of insects and the beating of invisible wings. Lights came on in some of the house windows and then snapped off again. After twenty minutes, the Echo sheriff left. He came out of the house and stumbled down the porch steps to his car. He looked tired and disoriented. His shirt was dark with sweat. He maneuvered his cruiser out from behind the tangle of police vehicles and drove away.

Another hour later, the ambulance came. It had its emergency lights on. Reacher saw the night pulsing red far to the south and then bright headlight beams and a boxy vehicle painted red and gold and white lurching in through the gate. It was marked PRESIDIO FIRE DEPARTMENT. Maybe it was the same truck Billy had called the night before. It turned a slow circle in the yard and backed up to the porch steps. The crew got out lazily and stretched and yawned in the dark. They knew they weren't about to be called on for their paramedic skills.

They opened the rear doors and took out a rolling gurney and the backup sergeant met them on the steps and led them inside. Reacher was sweating inside the car. It was airless and hot. He traced in his mind the medics walking through the interior hallways to the bedroom. Attending to the corpse. Lifting it onto the gurney. Rolling the gurney out. It was going to be difficult to handle. There were narrow stairs and tight corners.

But they came back out about as fast as was feasible and lifted the gurney down the porch steps. Sloop Greer was just a large heavy shape on it, wound into a white sheet. The medics lined up the gurney with the rear of the ambulance and pushed. The wheels folded up and the gurney slid inside and the medics closed the doors on it.

Then they stood around in a group with three of the cops. The trooper who Reacher had offended wasn't there. He must have been guarding Carmen, somewhere inside the house. The three cops out in the yard were slow and relaxed. The excitement was over. The deal was done. So they were standing there a little deflated, and maybe a little disappointed, like cops often get, like something had happened they were supposed to prevent from happening. Reacher knew exactly how they felt.

They talked for a couple of minutes and then the ambulance crew climbed back into their cab and bounced their vehicle across the yard to the gate. It paused there for a second and turned right and headed slowly north. The cops watched it until it was gone and then they turned together and headed back inside the house. Five minutes later they came out again, all four of them, and this time they brought Carmen with them.

She was dressed in the same jeans and shirt. Her hair was heavy with water. Her hands were cuffed behind her back. Her head was down and her face was pale and filmed with sweat and her eyes were blank. The backup cops held an elbow each. They brought her down the steps slowly and clumsily, three people moving out of step. They stopped and regrouped in the dirt and walked her over to their cruiser. The trooper opened the rear door and the sergeant placed a hand on the top of her head and folded her inside. She offered no resistance. She was completely passive. Reacher saw her shuffle sideways on the seat, looking awkward and uncomfortable with her hands trapped behind her. Then she hitched her feet in after her, pointing her toes, suddenly looking elegant again. The trooper waited a beat and closed the door on her and Rusty and Bobby came out on the porch to watch her go.

Rusty's hair was a mess, like she'd been to bed and gotten up again. She was wearing a short satin robe that shone in the porch lights. It was white, and below it her legs were as pale as the fabric. Bobby was behind her. He was in jeans and a T-shirt, and he was barefoot. They pressed up against the porch rail. Both of their faces were pale and stunned. Their eyes were wide and blank and staring.

The backup cops climbed into their cruiser and started it up. The first two slid into the front of Reacher's car and did the same. They waited for the backup to ease ahead and then followed it out to the gate. Reacher turned his head and saw Rusty and Bobby craning to watch them go. The cars paused and turned right together and accelerated north. Reacher turned his head the other way and the last thing he saw was Ellie stumbling out onto the porch. She was in her rabbit pajamas and was carrying a small bear in her left hand and had the knuckles of her right pressed hard into her mouth.

The inside of the cop car cooled right down after about a mile. There was an aperture in the wire grille in front of him and if he sat in the middle of the seat and ducked his head he could line it up with the view through the windshield above the radar unit and below the mirror. It was like watching a movie unfold in front of him. The backup car swayed in the headlight beams, close and vivid and unreal in the intense dusty blackness all around it. He couldn't see Carmen. Maybe she was slumped down in the seat and her head was hidden behind the police lights stacked along the rear shelf, behind the glass.

"Where are they taking her?" he called.

The sergeant shifted in his seat. Answered a hundred yards later.

"Pecos," he said. "County jail."

"But this is Echo," Reacher said. "Not Pecos."

"There are a hundred and fifty people in Echo County. You think they operate a separate jurisdiction just for them? With jails and all? And courthouses?"

"So how does it work?"

"Pecos picks it up, that's how it works. For all the little counties, around and about. All the administrative functions."

Reacher was quiet for a beat.

"Well, that's going to be a real big problem," he said.

"Why?"

"Because Hack Walker is the Pecos DA. And he was Sloop Greer's best buddy. So he'll be prosecuting the person who shot his friend."

"Worried about a conflict of interest?"

"Aren't you?"

"Not really," the sergeant said. "We know Hack. He's not a fool. He sees some defense counsel about to nail him for an impropriety, he'll pass on it. He'll have to. What's the word, excuse himself?"

"Recuse," Reacher said.

"Whatever. He'll give it to an assistant. And I think both the Pecos ADAs are women, actually. So the self-defense thing will get some sympathy."

"It doesn't need sympathy," Reacher said. "It's plain as day."

"And Hack's running for judge in November," the sergeant said. "Bear that in mind. Lots of Mexican votes in Pecos County. He won't let anybody do anything that'll give her lawyer a chance to make him look bad in the newspaper. So she's lucky, really. A Mexican woman shoots a white man in Echo, gets tried for it by a woman ADA in Pecos, couldn't be better for her."

"She's from California," Reacher said. "She's not Mexican."

"But she looks Mexican," the sergeant said. "That's what's important to a guy who needs votes in Pecos County."

The two state police cruisers drove on in convoy. They caught and passed the ambulance just short of the school and the gas station and the diner at the crossroads. Left it lumbering north in their wake.

"The morgue's in Pecos, too," the sergeant said. "One of the oldest institutions in town, I guess. They needed it right from the get-go. Pecos was that kind of a place."

Reacher nodded, behind him.

"Carmen told me," he said. "It was the real Wild West."

"You going to stick around?"

"I guess so. I need to see she's O.K. She told me there's a museum in town. Things to see. Somebody's grave."

"Clay Allison's," the sergeant said. "Some old gunslinger."

"Never killed a man who didn't need killing."

The sergeant nodded in the mirror. "That could be her position, right? She could call it the Clay Allison defense."

"Why not?" Reacher said. "It was justifiable homicide, any way you cut it."

The sergeant said nothing to that.

"Should be enough to make bail, at least," Reacher said. "She's got a kid back there. She needs bail, like tomorrow."

The sergeant glanced in the mirror again.

"Tomorrow could be tough," he said. "There's a dead guy in the picture, after all. Who's her lawyer?"

"Hasn't got one."

"She got money for one?"

"No."

"Well, shit," the sergeant said.

"What?" Reacher asked.

"How old is the kid?"

"Six and a half."

The sergeant went quiet.

"What?" Reacher asked again.

"Having no lawyer is a big problem, is what. Kid's going to be seven and a half before mom even gets a bail hearing."

"She'll get a lawyer, right?"

"Sure, Constitution says so. But the question is, when? This is Texas."

"You ask for a lawyer, you don't get one right away?"

"Not right away. You wait a long, long time. You get one when the indictment comes back. And that's how old Hack Walker is going to avoid his little conflict problem, isn't it? He'll just lock her up and forget about her. He'd be a fool not to. She's got no lawyer, who's to know? Could be Christmas before they get around to indicting her. By which time old Hack will be a judge, most likely, not a prosecutor. He'll be long gone. No more conflict of interest. Unless he happens to pull the case later, whereupon he'd have to excuse himself anyway."

"Recuse."

"Whatever, not having her own lawyer changes everything."

The trooper in the passenger seat turned and spoke for the first time in an hour.

"See?" he said. "Didn't matter what I called it on the radio."

"So don't you spend your time at the museum," the sergeant said. "You want to help her, you go find her a lawyer. You go beg, borrow or steal her one."

Nobody spoke the rest of the way into Pecos County. They crossed under Interstate 10 and followed the backup car across more empty blackness all the way to Interstate 20, about a hundred miles west of where Reacher had forced his way out of Carmen's Cadillac sixty hours previously. The sergeant slowed the car and let the backup disappear ahead into the darkness. He braked and pulled off onto the shoulder a hundred yards short of the cloverleaf.

"We're back on patrol from here," he said. "Time to let you out."

"Can't you drive me to the jail?"

"You're not going to jail. You haven't done anything. And we're not a taxicab company."

"So where am I?"

The sergeant pointed straight ahead.

"Downtown Pecos," he said. "Couple miles, that way."

"Where's the jail?"

"Crossroads before the railroad. In the courthouse basement."

The sergeant opened his door and slid out and stretched. Stepped back and opened Reacher's door with a flourish. Reacher slid out feet first and stood up. It was still hot. Haze hid the stars. Lonely vehicles whined by on the highway bridge, few enough in number that absolute silence descended between each one. The shoulder was sandy, and stunted velvet mesquite and wild indigo struggled at its margin. The cruiser's headlights picked out old dented beer cans tangled among the stalks.

"You take care now," the sergeant said.

He climbed back into his seat and slammed his door. The car crunched its way back to the blacktop and curved to the right, onto the cloverleaf, up onto the highway. Reacher stood and watched its taillights disappear in the east. Then he set off walking north, under the overpass, toward the neon glow of Pecos.

* * *

He walked through one pool of light after another, along a strip of motels that got smarter and more expensive the farther he moved away from the highway. Then there was a rodeo arena set back from the street with posters still in place from a big event a month ago. There's a rodeo there in July, Carmen had said. But you've missed it for this year. He walked in the road because the sidewalks had long tables set up on them, like outdoor market stalls. They were all empty. But he could smell cantaloupe on the hot night air. The sweetest in the whole of Texas, she had said. Therefore in their opinion, in the whole of the world. He guessed an hour before dawn old trucks would roll in loaded with ripe fruit from the fields, maybe hosed down with irrigation water to make it look dewy and fresh and attractive. Maybe the old trucks would have whole families crammed in the cabs ready to unload and sell all day and find out whether their winter was going to be good or bad, lean or prosperous. But really he knew nothing at all about agriculture. All his ideas came from the movies. Maybe it was all different in reality. Maybe there were government subsidies involved, or giant corporations.

Beyond the cantaloupe market was a pair of eating places. There was a doughnut shop, and a pizza parlor. Both of them were dark and closed up tight. Sunday, the middle of the night, miles from anywhere. At the end of the strip was a crossroads, with a sign showing the museum was straight across. But before the turn, on the right, was the courthouse. It was a nice enough building, but he didn't spend any time looking at it. Just ducked around the side to the back. No jail he had ever seen had an entrance on the street. There was a lit doorway in the back wall at semi-basement level with two cement steps leading down from a parking area. There was a dusty four-cylinder Chevrolet in one corner. The lot was fenced with razor wire and hung with large notices warning unauthorized parkers their cars would be towed. There were yellow lightbulbs mounted on the fence posts. Clouds of silent insects crowded each of them. The blacktop was still hot under his feet. No cooling breezes back there. The jail door was scarred steel and had No ADMITTANCE stenciled across it in faded paint. Above it was a small video camera angled down, with a red diode glowing above the lens.

He went down the steps and knocked hard on the door. Stepped back a pace so the camera could pick him up. Nothing happened for a long moment. He stepped forward and knocked again. There was the click of a lock and a woman opened the door. She was dressed in a court bailiff's uniform. She was white, maybe fifty, with gray hair dyed the color of sand. She had a wide belt loaded with a gun and a nightstick and a can of pepper spray. She was heavy and slow, but she looked awake and on the ball.

"Yes?" she said.

"You got Carmen Greer in here?"

"Yes."

"Can I see her?"

"No."

"Not even for a minute?"

"Not even."

"So when can I?"

"You family?"

"I'm a friend."

"Not a lawyer, right?"

"No."

"Then Saturday," the woman said. "Visiting is Saturday, two to four."

Almost a week.

"Can you write that down for me?" he said. He wanted to get inside. "Maybe give me a list of what I'm allowed to bring her?"

The bailiff shrugged and turned and stepped inside. Reacher followed her into the dry chill of an air conditioner running on high. There was a lobby. The bailiff had a high desk, like a lectern. Like a barrier. Behind it were cubbyholes covering the back wall. He saw Carmen's lizard-skin belt rolled into one of them. There was a small Ziploc bag with the fake ring in it. Off to the right was a barred door. A tiled corridor beyond.

"How is she?" he asked.

The bailiff shrugged again. "She ain't happy."

"About what?"

"About the cavity search, mainly. She was screaming fit to burst. But rules are rules. And what, she thinks I enjoy it either?"

She pulled a mimeographed sheet from a stack. Slid it across the top of the desk.

"Saturday, two to four," she said. "Like I told you. And don't bring her anything that's not on the list, or we won't let you in."

"Where's the DAs office?"

She pointed at the ceiling. "Second floor. Go in the front."

"When does it open?"

"About eight-thirty."

"You got bail bondsmen in the neighborhood?"

She smiled. "Ever see a courthouse that didn't? Turn left at the crossroads."

"What about lawyers?"

"Cheap lawyers or expensive lawyers?"

"Free lawyers."

She smiled again.

"Same street," she said. "That's all it is, bondsmen and community lawyers."

"Sure I can't see her?"

"Saturday, you can see her all you want."

"Not now? Not even for a minute?"

"Not even."

"She's got a daughter," Reacher said, irrelevantly.

"Breaks my heart," the woman said back.

"When will you see her?"

"Every fifteen minutes, whether she likes it or not. Suicide watch, although I don't think your friend is the type. You can tell pretty easy. And she's a tough cookie. That's my estimation. But rules are rules, right?"

"Tell her Reacher was here."

"Who?"

"Reacher. Tell her I'll stick around."

The woman nodded, like she'd seen it all, which she probably had.

"I'm sure she'll be thrilled," she said.

Then Reacher walked back to the motel strip, remembering all the jailhouse duty he'd pulled early in his career, wishing he could put his hand on his heart and say he'd acted a whole lot better than the woman he'd just met.

He walked almost all the way back to the highway, until the prices ducked under thirty bucks. Picked a place and woke the night clerk and bought the key to a room near the end of the row. It was worn and faded and crusted with the kind of dirt that shows the staff isn't all the way committed to excellence. The bedding was limp and the air smelled dank and hot, like they saved power by turning the air conditioning off when the room wasn't rented. But it was serviceable. One advantage of being ex-military was almost any place was serviceable. There was always somewhere worse to compare it with.

* * *

He slept restlessly until seven in the morning and showered in tepid water and went out for breakfast at the doughnut shop halfway back to the courthouse. It was open early and advertised Texas-sized doughnuts. They were larger than normal, and more expensive. He ate two with three cups of coffee. Then he went looking for clothes. Since he ended his brief flirtation with owning a house he had gone back to his preferred system of buying cheap items and junking them instead of laundering them. It worked well for him. It kept the permanence monkey off his back, literally.

He found a cheap store that had already been open an hour. It sold a little bit of everything, from bales of cheap toilet paper to work boots. He found a rack of chinos with the brand labels cut out. Maybe they were flawed. Maybe they were stolen. He found the right size and paired them with a khaki shirt. It was thin and cut loose like something from Hawaii, but it was plain, and it cost less than a Texas-sized doughnut. He found white underwear. The store had no fitting rooms. It wasn't that kind of a place. He talked the clerk into letting him use the staff bathroom. He put on the new gear and transferred his stuff from pocket to pocket. He still had the eight shell cases from Carmen's Lorcin, rattling around like loose change. He weighed them in his hand and then dropped them in his new pants pocket.

He balled up the old clothes and stuffed them in the bathroom trash. Went back out to the register and paid thirty bucks in cash. He might get three days out of it. Ten bucks a day, just for clothes, made no sense at all until you figured a washing machine cost four hundred and a dryer another three and the basement to put them in implied a house which cost at least a hundred grand to buy and then tens of thousands a year in taxes and maintenance and insurance and associated bullshit. Then ten bucks a day for clothes suddenly made all the sense in the world.

He waited on the sidewalk until eight o'clock, leaning against a wall under an awning to stay out of the sun. He figured the bailiffs would change shifts at eight. That would be normal. And sure enough at five minutes past he saw the heavy woman drive herself out of the lot in the dusty four-cylinder Chevrolet. She made a left and drove right past him. He crossed the street and walked down the side of the courthouse again. If the night shift won't help you, maybe the day shift will. Night workers are always tougher. Less regular contact with the public, less immediate supervision, makes them think they're king of the castle.

But the day worker was just as bad. He was a man, a little younger, a little thinner, but otherwise the exact equivalent of his opposite number. The conversation was just the same. Can I see her? No. When, then? Saturday. Is she O.K.? As well as can be expected. It sounded like something you would hear in front of a hospital, from a cautious spokesperson. The guy confirmed that only lawyers were allowed unrestricted access to the prisoners. So Reacher came back up the steps and went out looking for a lawyer.

* * *

It was clear that the events of the previous night had left the red house stunned and quiet. And depopulated, which suited the killing crew just fine. The ranch hands weren't there, the tall stranger was gone, and Carmen Greer was gone. And her husband, obviously. That left just the old woman, the second son, and the granddaughter. Three of them, all at home. It was Monday, but the kid hadn't gone to school. The bus came and went without her. She just hung around, in and out of the barn. She looked confused and listless. They all did. Which made them easier to watch. Better targets.

The two men were behind a rock, opposite the ranch gate, well hidden and elevated about twenty feet up the slope. Their view was good enough. The woman had dropped them three hundred yards north and driven back toward Pecos.

"When do we do this?" they had asked her.

"When I say," she had replied.

* * *

Reacher turned left at the crossroads in the center of Pecos and followed a street that ran parallel with the railroad tracks. He passed the bus depot and hit a strip that might have started out as anything but now was made up entirely of low-rent operations serving the courthouse population, bail bondsmen and storefront legal missions, like the night shift woman had said. The legal missions all had rows of desks facing the store windows with customer chairs in front of them and waiting areas inside the doors. All of them were grimy and undecorated and messy, with piles of files everywhere, and notes and memos taped and tacked to the walls next to the desks. Twenty past eight in the morning, they were all busy. They all had patient knots of people waiting inside and anxious clients perched on the customer chairs. Some of the clients were on their own, but most of them were in family groups, some of them with a bunch of children. All of them were Hispanic. So were some of the lawyers, but overall they were a mixed bunch. Men, women, young, old, bright, defeated. The only thing they had in common was they all looked harassed to the breaking point.

He chose the only establishment that had an empty chair in front of a lawyer. It was halfway down the street and the chair was way in back of the store and the lawyer was a young white woman of maybe twenty-five with thick dark hair cut short. She had a good tan and was wearing a white sports bra instead of a shirt and there was a leather jacket slung over the back of her chair. She was nearly hidden behind two tall stacks of files. She was on the phone, and she was at the point of tears.

He approached her desk and waited for a sit down gesture. He didn't get one, but he sat down anyway. She glanced at him and glanced away. Kept on talking into the phone. She had dark eyes and white teeth. She was talking slow Spanish with an East Coast accent, haltingly enough that he could follow most of it. She was saying yes, we won. Then but he won't pay. He simply won't. He just refuses. Time to time she would stop and listen to whoever was on the other end. Then she would repeat herself. We won, but he still won't pay. Then she listened again. The question must have been so what do we do now, because she said we go back to court, to enforce the judgment. Then the question was obviously how long does that take because she went very quiet and said a year. Maybe two. Reacher heard clear silence at the other end and watched the woman's face. She was upset and embarrassed and humiliated. Blinking back tears of bitter frustration. She said, "Llamarede nuevo mds tarde" and hung up. "I'll call again soon."

Then she faced front and closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose, in and out, in and out. She rested her hands palms-down on the desk. Breathed some more. Maybe it was a relaxation technique they taught you in law school. But it didn't seem to be working. She opened her eyes and dropped a file into a drawer and focused between the piles of paper across the desk at Reacher.

"Problem?" he asked her.

She shrugged and nodded all at the same time. An all-purpose expression of misery.

"Winning the case is only half the battle," she said. "Sometimes, a lot less than half, believe me."

"So what happened?"

She shook her head. "We don't need to go into it."

"Some guy won't pay up?" Reacher said.

She shrugged and nodded again.

"A rancher," she said. "Crashed his car into my client's truck. Injured my client and his wife and two of his children. It was early in the morning. He was on his way back from a party, drunk. They were on their way to market. It was harvest time and they couldn't work the fields and they lost their whole crop."

"Cantaloupe?"

"Bell peppers, actually. Rotted on the vine. We sued and won twenty thousand dollars. But the guy won't pay. He just refuses. He's waiting them out. He plans to starve them back to Mexico, and he will, because if we have to go back to court it'll take at least another year and they can't live another whole year on fresh air, can they?"

"They didn't have insurance?"

"Premiums are way too expensive. These people are barely scratching a living. All we could do was proceed directly against the rancher. Solid case, well presented, and we won. But the old guy is sitting tight, with a big smirk on his damn face."

"Tough break," Reacher said.

"Unbelievable," she said. "The things these people go through, you just wouldn't believe it. This family I'm telling you about, the border patrol killed their eldest son."

"They did?"

She nodded. "Twelve years ago. They were illegals. Paid their life savings to some guide to get them here, and he just abandoned them in the desert. No food, no water, they're holing up in the daytime and walking north at night, and a patrol chases them in the dark with rifles and kills their eldest boy. They bury him and walk on."

"Anything get done about it?"

"Are you kidding? They were illegals. They couldn't do anything. It happened all the time. Everybody's got a story like that. And now they're settled and been through the immigration amnesty, we try to get them to trust the law, and then something like this happens. I feel like such a fool."

"Not your fault."

"It is my fault. I should know better. Trust us, I tell them."

She went quiet and Reacher watched her try to recover.

"Anyway," she said, and then nothing more. She looked away. She was a good-looking woman. It was very hot. There was a single air conditioner stuck in the fanlight over the door, a big old thing, a long way away. It was doing its best.

"Anyway," she said again. Looked at him. "How can I help you?"

"Not me," Reacher said. "A woman I know."

"She needs a lawyer?"

"She shot her husband. He was abusing her."

"When?"

"Last night. She's across the street, in jail."

"Is he dead?"

Reacher nodded. "As a doornail."

Her shoulders sagged. She opened a drawer and took out a yellow pad.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"My name?"

"You're the one talking to me."

"Reacher," he said. "What's your name?"

She wrote "Reacher" on the pad, first line.

"Alice," she said. "Alice Amanda Aaron."

"You should go into private practice. You'd be first in the Yellow Pages."

She smiled, just a little.

"One day, I will," she said. "This is a five-year bargain with my conscience."

"Paying your dues?"

"Atoning," she said. "For my good fortune. For going to Harvard Law. For coming from a family where twenty thousand dollars is a month's common charge on the Park Avenue co-op instead of life or death during the winter in Texas."

"Good for you, Alice," he said.

"So tell me about your woman friend."

"She's of Mexican heritage and her husband was white. Her name is Carmen Greer and her husband was Sloop Greer."

"Sloop?"

"Like a boat."

"O.K.," Alice said, and wrote it all down.

"The abuse stopped for the last year and a half because he was in prison for tax evasion. He got out yesterday and started it up again and she shot him."

"O.K."

"Evidence and witnesses are going to be hard to find. The abuse was covert."

"Injuries?"

"Fairly severe. But she always passed them off as accidental, to do with horses."

"Horses?"

"Like she fell off of them."

"Why?"

Reacher shrugged. "I don't know. Family dynamic, coercion, shame, fear, embarrassment, maybe."

"But there's no doubt the abuse happened?"

"Not in my mind."

Alice stopped writing. Stared down at the yellow paper.

"Well, it's not going to be easy," she said. "Texas law isn't too far behind the times on spousal abuse, but I'd prefer lots of clear evidence. But his spell in prison helps us. Not a model citizen, is he? We could plead it down to involuntary manslaughter. Maybe settle for time served, with probation. If we work hard, we stand a chance."

"It was justifiable homicide, not manslaughter."

"I'm sure it was, but it's a question of what will work, and what won't."

"And she needs bail," Reacher said. "Today."

Alice looked up from the paper and stared at him.

"Bail?" she repeated, like it was a foreign word. "Today? Forget about it."

"She's got a kid. A little girl, six and a half."

She wrote it down.

"Doesn't help," she said. "Everybody's got kids."

She ran her fingers up and down the tall stacks of files.

"They've all got kids," she said again. "Six and a half, one and a half, two kids, six, seven, ten."

"She's called Ellie," Reacher said. "She needs her mother."

Alice wrote "Ellie" on the pad, and connected it with an arrow to "Carmen Greer."

"Only two ways to get bail in a case like this," she said. "First way is we stage essentially the whole trial at the bail hearing. And we're not ready to do that. It'll be months before I can even start working on it. My calendar is totally full. And even when I can start, it'll take months to prepare, in these circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

"Her word against a dead man's reputation. If we've got no eyewitnesses, we'll have to subpoena her medical records and find experts who can testify her injuries weren't caused by falling off horses. And clearly she's got no money, or you wouldn't be in here on her behalf, so we're going to have to find some experts who'll appear for free. Which isn't impossible, but it can't be done in a hurry."

"So what can be done in a hurry?"

"I can run over to the jail and say 'Hi, I'm your lawyer, I'll see you again in a year.' That's about all can be done in a hurry."

Reacher glanced around the room. It was teeming with people.

"Nobody else will be faster," Alice said. "I'm relatively new here. I've got less of a backlog."

It seemed to be true. She had just two head-high stacks of files on her desk. The others all had three or four or five.

"What's the second way?"

"Of what?"

"Getting bail. You said there were two ways."

She nodded. "Second way is we convince the DA not to oppose it. If we stand up and ask for bail and he stands up and says he has no objection, then all that matters is whether the judge thinks it's appropriate. And the judge will be influenced by the DA's position, probably."

"Hack Walker was Sloop Greer's oldest buddy."

Alice's shoulder's sagged again.

"Great," she said. "He'll recuse himself, obviously. But his staff will go to bat for him. So forget bail. It isn't going to happen."

"But will you take the case?"

"Sure I will. That's what we do here. We take cases. So I'll call Hack's office, and I'll go see Carmen. But that's all I can do right now. You understand? Apart from that, right now taking the case is the same thing as not taking the case."

Reacher sat still for a second. Then he shook his head. "Not good enough, Alice," he said. "I want you to get to work right now. Make something happen."

"I can't," she said. "Not for months. I told you that." She went quiet and he watched her for a second more.

"You interested in a deal?" he asked.

"A deal?"

"Like I help you, you help me."

"How can you help me?"

"There are things I could do for you. Like, I could recover the twenty grand for your pepper growers. Today. And then you could start work for Carmen Greer. Today."

"What are you, a debt collector?"

"No, but I'm a quick learner. It's probably not rocket science."

"I can't let you do that. It's probably illegal. Unless you're registered somewhere."

"Just suppose the next time you saw me I was walking back in here with a check for twenty grand in my pocket?"

"How would you do that?"

He shrugged. "I'd just go ask the guy for it."

"And that would work?"

"It might," he said.

She shook her head. "It would be unethical."

"As opposed to what?"

She didn't answer for a long time. Just stared off somewhere behind his head. But then he saw her glance down at the phone. He saw her rehearsing the good news call in her mind.

"Who's the rancher?" he asked.

She glanced at the drawer. Shook her head again. "I can't tell you," she said. "I'm worried about the ethics."

"I'm offering," he said. "You're not asking."

She sat still.

"I'm volunteering," he said. "Like a paralegal assistant."

She looked straight at him. "I have to go to the bathroom," she said.

She stood up suddenly and walked away. She was wearing denim shorts, and she was taller than he had guessed. Short shorts, long legs. A fine tan. Walking, she looked pretty good from the back. She went through a door in the rear wall of the old store. He stood up and leaned over the desk and pulled open the drawer. Lifted the top file out and reversed it so he could read it. It was full of legal paper. He shuffled through to some kind of a deposition printed on a single sheet. There was a name and address typed neatly in a box labeled "Defendant." He folded the paper into quarters and put it in his shirt pocket. Closed the file and dropped it back in the drawer. Hooked the drawer shut and sat down again. A moment later Alice Amanda Aaron came out through the rear door and walked back to the desk. She looked pretty good from the front, too.

"Any place around here I can borrow a car?" he asked her.

"You don't have one?"

He shook his head.

"Well, you can borrow mine, I guess," she said. "It's in the lot, behind the building."

She fiddled in her jacket pocket, behind her. Came out with a set of keys.

"It's a VW," she said.

He took the keys from her.

"There are maps in the glove compartment," she said. "You know, in case a person isn't familiar with the area."

He pushed back from the desk.

"Maybe I'll catch you later," he said.

She said nothing. He stood up and walked through the quiet crowd of people and out into the sun.