Echo Burning

She got there at seven-twenty. He woke from a feverish overheated doze and heard a tentative knock at his door. Rolled off the bed and wrapped a damp towel around his waist and padded barefoot across the dirty carpet and opened up. Alice was standing there. He looked at her. She just shook her head. He stared out at the dusk light for a second. Her yellow car was parked in the lot. He turned and stepped back into the room. She followed him inside.

"I tried everything," she said.

She had changed back into her lawyer outfit. The black pants and the jacket. The pants had a very high waistband, so high it almost met the bottom edge of the sports bra. There was an inch of tanned midriff showing. Apart from that, she looked exactly like the real deal. And he couldn't see how an inch of skin would be significant to a woman in Carmen's position.

"I asked her, was it me?" Alice said. "Did she want somebody different? Older? A man? A Hispanic person?"

"What did she say?"

"She said she didn't want anybody at all."

"That's crazy."

"Yes, it is," Alice said. "I described her predicament. You know, in case she wasn't seeing it clearly. It made no difference."

"Tell me everything she said."

"I already have."

Reacher was uncomfortable in the towel. It was too small.

"Let me put my pants on," he said.

He scooped them off the chair and ducked into the bathroom. The pants were wet and clammy. He pulled them on and zipped them up. Came back out. Alice had taken her jacket off and laid it on the chair, next to his wet shirt. She was sitting on the bed with her elbows on her knees.

"I tried everything," she said again. "I said, show me your arm. She said, what for? I said, I want to see how good your veins are. Because that's where the lethal injection will go. I told her she'd be strapped down on the gurney, I described the drugs she'd get. I told her about the people behind the glass, there to watch her die."

"And?"

"It made no difference at all. Like talking to the wall."

"How hard did you push?"

"I shouted a little. But she waited me out and just repeated herself. She's refusing representation, Reacher. We better face it."

"Is that kosher?"

"Of course it is. No law says you have to have counsel. Just that you have to be offered counsel."

"Isn't it evidence of insanity or something?"

She shook her head.

"Not in itself," she said. "Otherwise every murderer would just refuse to have a lawyer and automatically get off with an incapacity defense."

"She's not a murderer."

"She doesn't seem very anxious to prove it."

"Did anybody hear her?"

"Not yet. But I'm worried. Logically her next move is to put it in writing. Then I can't even get in the door. Nor can anybody else."

"So what do we do?"

"We have to finesse her. That's all we can do. We just have to ignore her completely and keep on dealing with Walker behind her back. On her behalf. If we can get him to drop the charges, then we've set her free whether she wants us to or not."

He shrugged. "Then that's what we'll do. But it's completely bizarre, isn't it?"

"It sure is," Alice said. "I never heard of such a thing before."

* * *

A hundred miles away, the two male members of the killing crew returned to their motel after eating dinner. They had chosen pizza, too, but with pitchers of cold beer instead of water and coffee. They found their woman partner waiting for them inside their room. She was alert and pacing, which they recognized as a sign of news.

"What?" the tall man asked.

"A supplementary job," she said.

"Where?"

"Pecos."

"Is that smart?"

She nodded. "Pecos is still safe enough."

"You think?" the dark man asked.

"Wait until you hear what he's paying."

"When?"

"Depends on the prior commitment."

"O.K.," the tall man said. "Who's the target?"

"Just some guy," the woman said. "I'll give you the details when we've done the other thing."

She walked to the door.

"Stay inside now," she said. "Get to bed, get some sleep. We've got a very busy day coming up."

* * *

"This is a crummy room," Alice said.

Reacher glanced around. "You think?"

"It's awful."

"I've had worse."

She paused a beat. "You want dinner?"

He was full of pizza and ice cream, but the inch of midriff was attractive. So was the corresponding inch of her back. There was a deep cleft there. The waistband of the pants spanned it like a tiny bridge.

"Sure," he said. "Where?"

She paused again.

"My place?" she said. "It's difficult for me to eat out around here. I'm a vegetarian. So usually I cook for myself."

"A vegetarian in Texas," he said. "You're a long way from home."

"Sure feels like it," she said. "So how about it? And I've got better air conditioning than this."

He smiled. "Woman-cooked food and better air? Sounds good to me."

"You eat vegetarian?"

"I eat anything."

"So let's go."

He shrugged his damp shirt on. She picked up her jacket. He found his shoes. Locked up the room and followed her over to the car.

She drove a couple of miles west to a low-rise residential complex built on a square of scrubby land trapped between two four-lane roads. The buildings had stucco walls painted the color of sand with dark-stained wooden beams stuck all over the place for accents. There were maybe forty rental units and they all looked half-hearted and beaten down by the heat. Hers was right in the center, like a small city townhouse sandwiched between two others. She parked outside her door on a fractured concrete pad. There were parched desert weeds wilting in the cracks.

But it was gloriously cool inside the house. There was central air running hard. He could feel the pressure it was creating. There was a narrow living room with a kitchen area in back. A staircase on the left. Cheap rented furniture and a lot of books. No television.

"I'm going to shower," she said. "Make yourself at home." She disappeared up the stairs.

He took a look around. The books were mostly law texts. The civil and criminal codes of Texas. Some constitutional commentaries. There was a phone on a side table with four speed dials programmed. Top slot was labeled Work. Second was / Home. Third was / Work. Fourth was M & D. On one of the bookshelves there was a photograph in a silver frame, showing a handsome couple who could have been in their middle fifties. It was a casual outdoors shot, in a city, probably New York. The man had gray hair and a long patrician face. The woman looked a little like an older version of Alice herself. Same hair, minus the color and the youthful bounce. The Park Avenue parents, no doubt. Mom and Dad, M & D. They looked O.K. He figured was probably a boyfriend. He checked, but there was no photograph of him. Maybe his picture was upstairs, next to her bed.

He sat in a chair and she came back down within ten minutes. Her hair was wet and combed, and she was wearing shorts again with a T-shirt that probably said Harvard Soccer except it had been washed so many times the writing was nearly illegible. The shorts were short and the T-shirt was thin and tight. She had dispensed with the sports bra. That was clear. She was barefoot and looked altogether sensational.

"You played soccer?" he asked.

"My partner did," she said.

He smiled at the warning. "Does he still?"

"He's a she. Judith. I'm gay. And yes, she still plays."

"She any good?"

"As a partner?"

"As a soccer player."

"She's pretty good. Does it bother you?"

"That she's pretty good at soccer?"

"No, that I'm gay."

"Why would it?"

Alice shrugged. "It bothers some people."

"Not this one."

"I'm Jewish, too."

Reacher smiled. "Did your folks buy you the handgun?"

She glanced at him. "You found that?"

"Sure," he said. "Nice piece."

She nodded. "A gay Jewish vegetarian woman from New York, they figured I should have it."

Reacher smiled again. "I'm surprised they didn't get you a machine gun or a grenade launcher."

She smiled back. "I'm sure they thought about it."

"You obviously take your atoning seriously. You must feel like I did walking around in the Lebanon."

She laughed. "Actually, it's not so bad here. Texas is a pretty nice place, overall. Some great people, really."

"What does Judith do?"

"She's a lawyer, too. She's in Mississippi right now."

"Same reasons?"

Alice nodded. "A five-year plan."

"There's hope for the legal profession yet."

"So it doesn't bother you?" she said. "That it's just a meal with a new friend and then back to the motel on your own?"

"I never thought it would be anything else," he lied.

The meal was excellent. It had to be, because he wasn't hungry. It was some kind of a homemade dark chewy confection made out of crushed nuts bound together with cheese and onions. Probably full of protein. Maybe some vitamins, too. They drank a little wine and a lot of water with it. He helped her clear up and then they talked until eleven.

"I'll drive you back," she said.

But she was barefoot and comfortable, so he shook his head.

"I'll walk," he said. "Couple of miles will do me good."

"It's still hot," she said.

"Don't worry. I'll be O.K."

She didn't put up much of a protest. He arranged to meet her at the mission in the morning and said goodnight. The outside air was as thick as soup. The walk took forty minutes and his shirt was soaked again when he got back to the motel.

* * *

He woke early in the morning and rinsed his clothes and put them on wet. They were dry by the time he reached the law offices. The humidity had gone and the hot desert air sucked the moisture right out of them and left them as stiff as new canvas. The sky was blue and completely empty.

Alice was already at her usual desk in a black A-line dress with no sleeves. A Mexican guy was occupying one of her client chairs. He was talking quietly to her. She was writing on a yellow pad. The young intern from Hack Walker's office was waiting patiently behind the Mexican guy's shoulder. He was holding a thin orange and purple FedEx packet in his hand. Reacher took a place right behind him. Alice was suddenly aware of the gathering crowd and looked up. Sketched a surprised just a minute gesture in the air and turned back to her client. Eventually put her pencil down and spoke quietly in Spanish. The guy responded with stoic blank-faced patience and stood up and shuffled away. The intern moved forward and laid the FedEx packet on the desk.

"Carmen Greer's medical reports," he said. "These are the originals. Mr. Walker took copies. He wants a conference at nine-thirty."

"We'll be there," Alice said.

She pulled the packet slowly toward her. The intern followed the Mexican guy out. Reacher sat down in the client chair. Alice glanced at him, her fingers resting on the packet, a puzzled expression on her face. He shrugged. The packet was a lot thinner than he had expected, too.

She unfolded the flap and pressed the edges of the packet inward so it opened like a mouth. Held it up and spilled the contents on the desk. There were four separate reports packed loose in individual green covers. Each cover was marked with Carmen's name and her Social Security number and a patient reference. There were dates on all of them. The dates ranged back more than six years. The older the date, the paler the cover, like the green color had faded out with age. Reacher slid his chair around the desk and put it next to Alice's. She stacked the four reports in date order, with the oldest at the top of the pile. She opened it up and nudged it left, so it was exactly between them. Then she moved her chair a fraction, so her shoulder was touching his.

"O.K.," she said. "So let's see."

The first report was about Ellie's birth. The whole thing was timed in hours and minutes. There was a lot of gynecological stuff about dilation and contractions. Fetal monitors had been attached. An epidural anesthetic had been administered at thirteen minutes past four in the morning. It had been judged fully effective by four-twenty. There had been a delivery-room shift change at six. Labor had continued until the following lunchtime. Accelerants had been used. An episiotomy had been performed at one o'clock. Ellie had been born at twenty-five minutes past. No complications. Normal delivery of the placenta. The episiotomy had been stitched immediately. The baby was pronounced viable in every respect.

There was no mention of facial bruising, or a split lip, or loosened teeth.

The second report concerned two cracked ribs. It was dated in the spring, fifteen months after childbirth. There was an X-ray film attached. It showed the whole left side of her upper torso. The ribs were bright white. Two of them had tiny gray cracks. Her left breast was a neat dark shape. The attending physician had noted that the patient reported being thrown from a horse and landing hard against the top rail of a section of ranch fencing. As was usual with rib injuries, there was nothing much to be done except bind them tight and recommend plenty of physical rest.

"What do you think?" Alice asked.

"Could be something," Reacher said.

The third report was dated six months later, at the end of the summer. It concerned severe bruising to Carmen's lower right leg. The same physician noted she reported falling from a horse while jumping and landing with her shin against the pole that constituted the obstacle the horse was attempting. There was a long technical description of the contusion, with measurements vertically and laterally. The affected area was a tilted oval, four inches wide and five long. X rays had been taken. The bone was not fractured. Painkillers had been prescribed and the first day's supply provided from the emergency room pharmacy.

The fourth report was dated two and a half years later, which was maybe nine months before Sloop went to prison. It showed a broken collarbone on the right side. All the names in the file were new. It seemed like the whole ER staff had turned over. There was a new name for the attending physician, and she made no comment about Carmen's claim to have fallen off her horse onto the rocks of the mesa. There were extensive detailed notes about the injury. They were very thorough. There was an X-ray film. It showed the curve of her neck and her shoulder. The collarbone was cleanly snapped in the middle.

Alice squared all four reports together, upside down on the desk.

"Well?" she said.

Reacher made no reply. Just shook his head.

"Well?" she said again.

"Maybe she sometimes went to another hospital," he said.

"No, we'd have picked it up. I told you, we ask at all of them. Matter of routine."

"Maybe they drove out of state."

"We checked," she said. "Domestic violence, we cover all neighboring states. I told you that, too. Routine guidelines."

"Maybe she used another name."

"They're logged by Social Security number."

He nodded. "This isn't enough, Alice. She told me about more than this. We've got the ribs and we've got the collarbone, but she claimed he broke her arm, too. Also her jaw. She said she'd had three teeth reimplanted."

Alice said nothing. He closed his eyes. Tried to think about it like he would have in the old days, an experienced investigator with a suspicious mind and thirteen years of hard time behind him.

"Two possibilities," he said. "One, the hospital records system screwed up."

Alice shook her head. "Very unlikely."

He nodded again. "Agreed. So two, she was lying."

Alice was quiet for a long moment.

"Exaggerating, maybe," she said. "You know, to lock you in. To make sure of your help."

He nodded again, vaguely. Checked his watch. It was twenty past nine. He leaned sideways and slipped the stacked reports back into the FedEx packet. "Let's go see what Hack thinks," he said.

* * *

Two thirds of the killing crew rolled south out of Pecos, uncharacteristically quiet. The third member waited in the motel room, pensive. They were taking risks now. Twelve years in the business, and they had never worked one area so long. It had always seemed too dangerous. In and out, quick and clean, had been their preferred method. Now they were departing from it. Radically. So there had been no conversation that morning. No jokes, no banter. No pre-mission excitement. Just a lot of nervous preoccupation with private thoughts.

But they had readied the car on schedule, and assembled the things they would need. Then they had half-eaten breakfast, and sat quiet, checking their watches.

"Nine-twenty," the woman said eventually. "It's time."

* * *

There was a visitor already seated in Walker's office. He was a man of maybe seventy, overweight and florid, and he was suffering badly in the heat. The air conditioners were going so hard that the rush of air was audible over the drone of the motors and papers were lifting off the desk. But the indoor temperature was still somewhere in the middle nineties. The visitor was mopping his brow with a large white handkerchief. Walker himself had his jacket off and was sitting absolutely still in his chair with his head in his hands. He had copies of the medical reports laid side by side on his desk and he was staring at them like they were written in a foreign language. He looked up blankly, and then he made a vague gesture toward the stranger.

"This is Cowan Black," he said. "Eminent professor of forensic medicine, lots of other things, too. The renowned defense expert. This is probably the first time he's ever been in a DA's office."

Alice stepped over and shook the guy's hand.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, sir," she said. "I've heard a lot about you."

Cowan Black said nothing. Alice introduced Reacher and they all shuffled their chairs into an approximate semicircle around the desk.

"The reports came in first thing this morning," Walker said. "Everything on file from Texas, which was one hospital only. There was nothing at all from New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, or Louisiana. I personally photocopied everything and immediately sent the originals over to you. Dr. Black arrived a half hour ago and has studied the copies. He wants to see the X rays. Those, I couldn't copy."

Reacher passed the FedEx packet to Black, who spilled the contents the same way Alice had and extracted the three X-ray films. The ribs, the leg, the collarbone. He held them up against the light from the window and studied them, one by one, for minutes each. Then he slipped them back in their appropriate folders, neatly, like he was a man accustomed to order and precision.

Walker sat forward. "So, Dr. Black, are you able to offer us a preliminary opinion?"

He sounded tense, and very formal, like he was already in court. Black picked up the first folder. The oldest, the palest, the one about Ellie's birth.

"This is nothing at all," he said. His voice was deep and dark and rotund, like a favorite uncle in an old movie. A perfect voice for the witness stand. "This is purely routine obstetrics. Interesting only in that a rural Texas hospital was operating at a level that would have been considered state-of-the-art a decade or so earlier."

"Nothing untoward?"

"Nothing at all. One assumes the husband caused the pregnancy, but aside from that there's no evidence he did anything to her."

"The others?"

Black switched files, to the damaged ribs. Pulled the X-ray film out and held it ready.

"Ribs are there for a purpose," he said. "They form a hard, bony, protective cage to protect the vulnerable internal organs from damage. But not a rigid cage. That would be foolish, and evolution isn't a foolish process. No, the rib cage is a sophisticated structure. If it were rigid, the bones would shatter under any kind of severe blow. But there's complex ligament suspension involved at each of the bone terminations, so the cage's first response is to yield and distort, in order to spread the force of the impact."

He held up the X-ray film and pointed here and there on it. "And that's exactly what happened here," he said. "There is obvious stretching and tearing of the ligaments all over the place. This was a heavy diffuse blow with a broad, blunt instrument. The force was dissipated by the flexibility of the rib cage, but even so was sufficient to crack two of the bones."

"What kind of a blunt instrument?" Walker asked.

"Something long and hard and rounded, maybe five or six inches in diameter. Something exactly like a fencing rail, I would think."

"It couldn't have been a kick?"

Black shook his head.

"Emphatically, no," he said. "A kick transfers a lot of energy through a tiny contact area. The welt at the toe of a boot is what? Maybe an inch and a half by a quarter inch? That's essentially a sharp object, not a blunt object. It would be too sudden and too concentrated for the yielding effect to operate. We would see the cracked bones, for sure, but we wouldn't see the ligament stretching at all."

"What about a knee?"

"A knee in the ribs? That's similar to a punch. Blunt, but an essentially circular impact site. The ligament stretching would show a completely different pattern."

Walker drummed his fingers on his desk. He was starting to sweat. "Any way a person could have done it?" he asked.

Black shrugged. "If he were some kind of contortionist, maybe. If he could hold his whole leg completely rigid and somehow jump up and hit her in the side with it. Like it was a fence railing. I would say it was completely impossible."

Walker went quiet for a second. "What about the bruised shin?" he asked.

Black swapped the third file into his hand. Opened it and read through the description of the contusion again. Then he shook his head.

"The shape of the bruise is crucial," he said. "Again, it's what you'd get from the impact of a long hard rounded object. Like a fence rail again, or maybe a sewer pipe, striking against the front of the shin at an oblique angle."

"Could he have hit her with a length of pipe?"

Black shrugged again.

"Theoretically, I suppose," he said. "If he was standing almost behind her, and somehow could reach over her, and he swung a hard downward blow, and struck her almost but not quite parallel with her leg. He'd have to do it two-handed, because nobody can hold a six-inch diameter pipe one-handed. Probably he'd have to stand on a chair, and position her very carefully in front of it. It's not very likely, is it?"

"But is it possible?"

"No," Black said. "It isn't possible. I say that now, and I'd certainly have to say it under oath."

Walker was quiet again.

"What about the collarbone?" he asked.

Black picked up the last report.

"These are very detailed notes," he said. "Clearly an excellent physician."

"But what do they tell you?"

"It's a classic injury," Black said. "The collarbone is like a circuit breaker. A person falls, and they try to break their fall by throwing out their hand. Their whole body weight is turned into a severe physical impact which travels upward as a shock wave through their rigid arm, through their rigid shoulder joint, and onward. Now, if it wasn't for the collarbone, that force would travel into the neck, and probably break it, causing paralysis. Or into the brain pan, causing unconsciousness, maybe a chronic comatose state. But evolution is smart, and it chooses the least of all the evils. The collarbone snaps, thereby dissipating the force. Inconvenient and painful, to be sure, but not life-threatening. A mechanical circuit breaker, and generations of bicyclists and inline skaters and horseback riders have very good reason to be grateful for it."

"Falling can't be the only way," Walker said.

"It's the main way," Black said. "And almost always the only way. But occasionally I've seen it happen other ways, too. A downward blow with a baseball bat aimed at the head might miss and break the collarbone. Falling beams in a burning building might impact against the top of the shoulder. I've seen that with firefighters."

"Carmen Greer wasn't a firefighter," Walker said. "And there's no evidence a baseball bat was involved any other time."

Nobody spoke. The roar of the air conditioners filled the silence.

"O.K.," Walker said. "Let me put it this way. I need evidence that there was violent physical abuse against this woman. Is there any here?"

Black went quiet for a spell. Then he simply shook his head.

"No," he said. "Not within the bounds of reasonable likelihood."

"None at all? Not even a shred?"

"No, I'm afraid not."

"Stretching the bounds of reasonable likelihood?"

"There's nothing there."

"Stretching the bounds all the way until they break?"

"Still nothing. She had a normal pregnancy and she was an unlucky horseback rider. That's all I see here."

"No reasonable doubt?" Walker said. "That's all I need. Just a shred will do."

"It's not there."

Walker paused a beat. "Doctor, please let me say this with the greatest possible respect, O.K.? From a DA's point of view, you've been a pain in the rear end many more times than I can remember, to me and my colleagues throughout the state. There have been times when we're not sure what you've been smoking. You've always been capable of coming up with the most bizarre explanations for almost anything. So I'm asking you. Please. Is there any way at all you could interpret this stuff differently?"

Black didn't answer.

"I'm sorry," Walker said. "I offended you."

"Not in the way you think you did," Black said. "The fact is, I've never offered a bizarre explanation of anything. If I see possible exoneration, I speak up in court, sure. But what you clearly fail to understand is if I don't see possible exoneration, then I don't speak up at all. What your colleagues and I have clashed over in the past is merely the tip of the iceberg. Cases that have no merit don't get to trial, because I advise the defense to plead them out and hope for mercy. And I see many, many cases that have no merit."

"Cases like this one?"

Black nodded. "I'm afraid so. If I had been retained by Ms. Aaron directly, I would tell her that her client's word is not to be trusted. And you're right, I say that very reluctantly, with a long and honorable record of preferring to take the defense's side. Which is a record I have always maintained, despite the attendant risk of annoying our districts' attorneys. And which is a record I always aim to continue, for as long as I am spared. Which might not be much longer, if this damn heat keeps up."

He paused a second and looked around.

"For which reason I must take my leave of you now," he said. "I'm very sorry I was unable to help you, Mr. Walker. Really. It would have been enormously satisfying."

He squared the reports together and slipped them back into the FedEx packet. Handed it to Reacher, who was nearest. Then he stood up and headed for the door.

"But there has to be something," Walker said. "I don't believe this. The one time in my life I want Cowan Black to come up with something, and he can't."

Black shook his head. "I learned a long time ago, sometimes they're just guilty."

He sketched a brief gesture that was half-wave, half-salute, and walked slowly out of the office. The breeze from the air conditioners caught the door and crashed it shut behind him. Alice and Reacher said nothing. Just watched Walker at his desk. Walker dropped his head into his hands and closed his eyes.

"Go away," he said. "Just get the hell out of here and leave me alone."

* * *

The air in the stairwell was hot, and it was worse still out on the sidewalk. Reacher swapped the FedEx packet into his left hand and caught Alice's arm with his right. Stopped her at the curb.

"Is there a good jeweler in town?" he asked.

"I guess," she said. "Why?"

"I want you to sign out her personal property. You're still her lawyer, as far as anybody knows. We'll get her ring appraised. Then we'll find out if she's telling the truth about anything."

"You still got doubts?"

"I'm from the army. First we check, then we double-check."

"O.K.," she said. "If you want."

They turned around and walked down the alley and she took possession of Carmen's lizard skin belt and her ring by signing a form that specified both items as material evidence. Then they went looking for a jeweler. They walked away from the cheap streets and found one ten minutes later in a row of upmarket boutiques. The window display was too crowded to be called elegant, but judging by the price tags the owner had a feel for quality. Or for blind optimism.

"So how do we do this?" Alice asked.

"Make out it's an estate sale," Reacher said. "Maybe it belonged to your grandmother."

The guy in the store was old and stooped. He might have looked pretty sharp forty years ago. But he still acted sharp. Reacher saw a flash in his eyes. Cops? Then he saw him answer his own question in the negative. Alice didn't look like a cop. Neither did Reacher, which was a mistaken impression he'd traded on for years. Then the guy went into an assessment of how smart these new customers might be. It was transparent, at least to Reacher. He was accustomed to watching people make furtive calculations. He saw him decide to proceed with caution. Alice produced the ring and told him she'd inherited it from family. Told him she was thinking of selling it, if the price was right.

The guy held it under a desk lamp and put a loupe in his eye.

"Color, clarity, cut and carat," he said. "The four Cs. That's what we look for."

He turned the stone left and right. It flashed in the light. He picked up a slip of stiff card that had circular holes punched through it. They started small and got bigger. He fitted the stone in the holes until he found one that fit exactly.

"Two and a quarter carats," he said. "Cut is real handsome. Color is good, maybe just on the yellow side of truly excellent. Clarity isn't flawless, but it's not very far off. This stone ain't bad. Not bad at all. How much do you want for it?"

"Whatever it's worth," Alice said.

"I could give you twenty," the guy said.

"Twenty what?"

"Thousand dollars," the guy said.

"Twenty thousand dollars?"

The guy put up his hands, palms out, defensively.

"I know, I know," he said. "Someone probably told you it's worth more. And maybe it is, retail, some big fancy store, Dallas or somewhere. But this is Pecos, and you're selling, not buying. And I have to make my profit."

"I'll think about it," Alice said.

"Twenty-five?" the guy said.

"Twenty-five thousand dollars?"

The guy nodded. "That's about as high as I can go, being fair to myself. I got to eat, after all."

"Let me think about it," Alice said.

"Well, don't think too long," the guy said. "The market might change. And I'm the only game in town. Piece like this, it'll scare anybody else."

They stopped together on the sidewalk right outside the store. Alice was holding the ring like it was red hot. Then she opened her pocketbook and put it in a zippered compartment. Used her fingertips to push it all the way down.

"Guy like that says twenty-five, it's got to be worth sixty," Reacher said. "Maybe more. Maybe a lot more. My guess is he's not the Better Business Bureaus poster boy."

"A lot more than thirty dollars, anyway," Alice said. "A fake? Cubic zirconium? She's playing us for fools."

He nodded, vaguely. He knew she meant playing you for a fool. He knew she was too polite to say it.

"Let's go," he said.

They walked west through the heat, back to the cheap part of town, beyond the courthouse, next to the railroad tracks. It was about a mile, and they spent thirty minutes on it. It was too hot to hurry. He didn't speak the whole way. Just fought his usual interior battle about exactly when to give up on a lost cause.

He stopped her again at the door to the mission.

"I want to try one last thing," he said.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because I'm from the army," he said. "First we double-check, then we triple-check."

She sighed. A little impatience there. "What do you want to do?"

"You need to drive me."

"Where?"

"There's an eyewitness we can talk to."

"An eyewitness? Where?"

"In school, down in Echo."

"The kid?"

He nodded. "Ellie. She's sharp as a tack."

"She's six years old."

"If it was happening, I'll bet she knows."

Alice stood completely still for a second. Then she glanced in through the windows. The place was crowded with customers. They looked listless from the heat and beaten down by life.

"It's not fair to them," she said. "I need to move on."

"Just this one last thing."

"I'll lend you the car again. You can go alone."

He shook his head. "I need your opinion. You're the lawyer. And I won't get in the schoolhouse without you. You've got status. I haven't."

"I can't do it. It'll take all day."

"How long would it have taken to get the money from the rancher? How many billable hours?"

"We don't bill."

"You know what I mean."

She was quiet for a moment.

"O.K.," she said. "A deal's a deal, I guess."

"This is the last thing, I promise."

"Why, exactly?" she asked.

* * *

They were in the yellow VW, heading south on the empty road out of Pecos. He recognized none of the landmarks. It had been dark when he came the other way in the back of the police cruiser.

"Because I was an investigator," he said.

"O.K.," she said. "Investigators investigate. That, I can follow. But don't they stop investigating? I mean, ever? When they know already?"

"Investigators never know," he said. "They feel, and they guess."

"I thought they dealt in facts."

"Not really," he said. "I mean, eventually they do, I suppose. But ninety-nine percent of the time it's ninety-nine percent about what you feel. About people. A good investigator is a person with a feel for people."

"Feeling doesn't change black into white."

He nodded. "No, it doesn't."

"Weren't you ever wrong before?"

"Of course I was. Lots of times."

"But?"

"But I don't think I'm wrong now."

"So why, exactly?" she asked again.

"Because I know things about people, Alice."

"So do I," she said. "Like, I know Carmen Greer suckered you, too."

He said nothing more. Just watched her drive, and locked at the view ahead. He could see mountains in the distance, where Carmen had chased the school bus. He had the FedEx packet on his knees. He fanned himself with it. Balanced it on his fingers. Turned it over and over, aimlessly. Stared down at the front and the back, at the orange and purple logo, at the label, at the meaningless little words all over it, sender, addressee, extremely urgent, commodity description, dimensions in inches, twelve-by-nine, weight in pounds, two-point-six, payment, recipient's contact information, overnight, no post office box number, shipper must check: this shipment does not contain dangerous goods. He shook his head and pitched it behind him, onto the backseat.

"She had no money with her," he said.

Alice said nothing back. Just drove on, piloting the tiny car fast and economically. He could feel her pitying him. It was suddenly coming off her in waves.

"What?" he said.

"We should turn around," she said. "This is a complete waste of time."

"Why?"

"Because exactly what is Ellie going to tell us? I mean, I can follow your thinking. If Carmen really did get a broken arm, then she must have been wearing a plaster cast for six weeks. And Ellie's a smart kid, so she'll recall it. Same for the jaw thing. Broken jaw, you're all wired up for a spell. Certainly a kid would remember that. If any of this really happened, and if it happened recently enough that she can remember anything at all."

"But?"

"But we know she was never in a cast. We know she never had her jaw wired. We've got her medical records, remember? They're right here in the car with us. Everything she ever went to the hospital for. Or do you think setting bones is a do-it-yourself activity? You think the blacksmith did it in the barn? So the very best Ellie can do is confirm what we already know. And most likely she won't remember anything anyway, because she's just a kid. So this trip is a double waste of time."

"Let's do it anyway," he said. "We're halfway there already. She might recall something useful. And I want to see her again. She's a great kid."

"I'm sure she is," Alice said. "But spare yourself, O.K.? Because what are you going to do? Adopt her? She's the one with the raw end of this deal, so you might as well accept it and forget all about her."

They didn't speak again until they arrived at the crossroads with the diner and the school and the gas station. Alice parked exactly where Carmen had and they got out together into the heat.

"I better come with you," Reacher said. "She knows me. We can bring her out and talk in the car."

They went through the wire gate into the yard. Then through the main door into the schoolhouse itself, into the school smell. They were out again a minute later. Ellie Greer wasn't there, and she hadn't been there die day before, either.

"Understandable, I guess," Alice said. "Traumatic time for her."

Reacher nodded. "So let's go. It's only another hour south."

"Great," Alice said.

They got back in the VW and drove the next sixty miles of parched emptiness without talking. It took a little less than an hour, because Alice drove faster than Carmen had wanted to. Reacher recognized the landmarks. He saw the old oil field, on the distant horizon off to the left. Greer Three.

"It's coming up," he said.

Alice slowed. The red-painted picket fence replaced the wire and the gate swam into view through the haze. Alice braked and turned in under it. The small car bounced uncomfortably across the yard. She stopped it close to the bottom of the familiar porch steps and turned off the motor. The whole place was silent. No activity. But people were home, because all the cars were lined up in the vehicle barn. The white Cadillac was there, and the Jeep Cherokee, and the new pick-up, and the old pick-up. They were all crouched there in the shadows.

They got out of the car and stood for a second behind the open doors, like they offered protection from something. The air was very still, and hotter than ever. Easily a hundred and ten degrees, maybe more. He led her up the porch steps into the shadow of the roof and knocked on the door. It opened almost immediately. Rusty Greer was standing there. She was holding a .22 rifle, one-handed. She stayed silent for a long moment, just looking him over. Then she spoke.

"It's you," she said. "I thought it might be Bobby."

"You lost him?" Reacher said.

Rusty shrugged. "He went out. He isn't back yet."

Reacher glanced back at the motor barn.

"All the cars are here," he said.

"Somebody picked him up," Rusty said. "I was upstairs. Didn't see them. Just heard them."

Reacher said nothing.

"Anyway," Rusty said. "I didn't expect to see you again, ever."

"This is Carmen's lawyer," Reacher said.

Rusty turned and glanced at Alice. "This is the best she could do?"

"We need to see Ellie."

"What for?"

"We're interviewing witnesses."

"A child can't be a witness."

"I'll decide that," Alice said.

Rusty just smiled at her.

"Ellie's not here," she said.

"Well, where is she?" Reacher said. "She's not in school."

Rusty said nothing.

"Mrs. Greer, we need to know where Ellie is," Alice said.

Rusty smiled again. "I don't know where she is, lawyer girl."

"Why not?" Alice asked.

"Because Family Services took her, that's why not."

"When?"

"This morning. They came for her."

"And you let them take her?" Reacher said.

"Why wouldn't I? I don't want her. Now that Sloop is gone."

Reacher stared at her. "But she's your granddaughter."

Rusty made a dismissive gesture. The rifle moved in her hand.

"That's a fact I was never thrilled about," she said.

"Where did they take her?"

"An orphanage, I guess," Rusty said. "And then she'll get adopted, if anybody wants her. Which they probably won't. I understand half-breeds are very difficult to place. Decent folk generally don't want beaner trash."

There was silence. Just the tiny sounds of dry earth baking in the heat.

"I hope you get a tumor," Reacher said.

He turned around and walked back to the car without waiting for Alice. Got in and slammed the door and sat staring forward with his face burning and his massive hands clenching and unclenching. She got in beside him and fired up the motor.

"Get me out of here," he said. She took off in a cloud of dust. Neither of them spoke a single word, all the way north to Pecos.

* * *

It was three in the afternoon when they got back, and the legal mission was half empty because of the heat. There was the usual thicket of messages on Alice's desk. Five of them were from Hack Walker. They made a neat little sequence, each of them more urgent than the last.

"Shall we go?" Alice asked.

"Don't tell him about the diamond," Reacher said.

"It's over now, don't you see?"

And it was. Reacher saw it right away in Walker's face. There was relaxation there. Some kind of finality. Closure. Some kind of peace. He was sitting behind his desk. His desk was all covered with papers. They were arranged in two piles. One was taller than the other.

"What?" Reacher asked.

Walker ignored him and handed a single sheet to Alice.

"Waiver of her Miranda rights," he said. "Read it carefully. She's declining legal representation, and she's declaring that it's entirely voluntary. And she adds that she refused your representation from the very start."

"I doubted her competence," Alice said.

Walker nodded. "I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But there's no doubt now. So you're here purely as a courtesy, O.K.? Both of you."

Then he handed over the smaller pile of papers. Alice took them and fanned them out and Reacher leaned to his right to look at them. They were computer printouts. They were all covered in figures and dates. They were bank records. Balance statements and transaction listings. Credits and debits. There seemed to be five separate accounts. Two were regular checking accounts. Three were money-market deposits. They were titled Greer Non-Discretionary Trust, numbers one through five. The balances were healthy. Very healthy. There was a composite total somewhere near two million dollars.

"Al Eugene's people messengered them over," Walker said. "Now look at the bottom sheets."

Alice riffed through. The bottom sheets were paper-clipped together. Reacher read over her shoulder. There was a lot of legal text. It added up to the formal minutes of a trust agreement. There was a notarized deed attached. It stated in relatively straightforward language that for the time being a single trustee was in absolute sole control of all Sloop Greets funds. That single trustee was identified as Sloop Greer's legal wife, Carmen.

"She had two million bucks in the bank," Walker said. "All hers, effectively."

Reacher glanced at Alice. She nodded.

"He's right," she said.

"Now look at the last clause of the minutes," Walker said.

Alice turned the page. The last clause concerned reversion. The trusts would become discretionary once again and return the funds to Sloop's own control at a future date to be specified by him. Unless he first became irreversibly mentally incapacitated. Or died. Whereupon all existing balances would become Carmen's sole property, in the first instance as a matter of prior agreement, and in the second, as a matter of inheritance.

"Is all of that clear?" Walker asked.

Reacher said nothing, but Alice nodded.

Then Walker passed her the taller pile.

"Now read this," he said.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A transcript," Walker said. "Of her confession."

There was silence.

"She confessed?" Alice said.

"We videotaped it," Walker said.

"When?"

"Noon today. My assistant went to see her as soon as the financial stuff came in. We tried to find you first, but we couldn't. Then she told us she didn't want a lawyer anyway. So we had her sign the waiver. Then she spilled her guts. We brought her up here and videotaped the whole thing over again. It's not pretty."

Reacher was half-listening, half-reading. It wasn't pretty. That was for damn sure. It started out with all the usual assurances about free will and absolute absence of coercion. She stated her name. Went all the way back to her L.A. days. She had been an illegitimate child. She had been a hooker. Street stroller, she called it. Some odd barrio expression, Reacher assumed. Then she came off the streets and started stripping, and changed her title to sex worker. She had latched onto Sloop, just like Walker had claimed. My meal ticket, she called him. Then it became a story of impatience. She was bored witless in Texas. She wanted out, but she wanted money in her pocket. The more money the better. Sloop's IRS trouble was a godsend. The trusts were tempting. She tried to have him killed in prison, which she knew from her peers was possible, but she found out that a federal minimum-security facility wasn't that sort of a place. So she waited. As soon as she heard he was getting out, she bought the gun and went recruiting. She planned to leverage her marks with invented stories about domestic violence. Reacher's name was mentioned as the last pick. He had refused, so she did it herself. Having already fabricated the abuse claims, she intended to use them to get off with self-defense, or diminished responsibility, or whatever else she could manage. But then she realized her hospital records would come up blank, so she was confessing and throwing herself on the mercy of the prosecutor. Her signature was scrawled on the bottom of every page.

Alice was a slow reader. She came to the end a full minute after him.

"I'm sorry, Reacher," she said.

There was silence for a moment.

"What about the election?" Reacher asked. The last hope.

Walker shrugged. "Texas code says it's a capital crime. Murder for remuneration. We've got enough evidence to choke a pig. And I can't ignore a voluntary confession, can I? So, couple hours ago I was pretty down. But then I got to thinking about it. Fact is, a voluntary confession helps me out. A confession and a guilty plea, saves the taxpayer the cost of a trial. Justifies me asking for a life sentence instead. The way I see it, with a story like that, she's going to look very, very bad, whoever you are. So if I back off the death penalty, I'll look magnanimous in comparison. Generous, even. The whites will fret a little, but the Mexicans will eat it up with a spoon. See what I mean? The whole thing is reversed now. She was the good guy, I was the heavy hand. But now she's the heavy hand, and I'm the good guy. So I think I'm O.K."

Nobody spoke for another minute. There was just the omnipresent roar of the air conditioners.

"I've got her property," Alice said. "A belt and a ring."

"Take them to storage," Walker said. "We'll be moving her, later."

"Where?"

"The penitentiary. We can't keep her here anymore."

"No, where's storage?"

"Same building as the morgue. Make sure you get a receipt."

* * *

Reacher walked with her over to the morgue. He wasn't aware of taking a single step. Wasn't aware of the heat, or the dust, or the noise, or the traffic, or the smells of the street. He felt like he was floating an inch above the sidewalk, insulated inside some kind of sensory-deprivation suit. Alice was talking to him, time to time, but he was hearing nothing that she said. All he could hear was a small voice inside his head that was saying you were wrong. Completely wrong. It was a voice he had heard before, but that didn't make it any easier to hear again, because he had built his whole career on hearing it fewer times than the next guy. It was like a box score in his mind, and his average had just taken some serious damage. Which upset him. Not because of vanity. It upset him because he was a professional who was supposed to get things right.

"Reacher?" Alice was saying. "You're not listening, are you?"

"What?" he said.

"I asked you, do you want to get a meal?"

"No," he said. "I want to get a ride."

She stopped walking. "What now? Quadruple-check?"

"No, I mean out of here. I want to go somewhere else. A long way away. I hear Antarctica is nice, this time of year."

"The bus depot is on the way back to the office."

"Good. I'll take a bus. Because I'm all done hitchhiking. You never know who's going to pick you up."

The morgue was a low industrial shed in a paved yard behind the street. It could have been a brake shop or a tire depot. It had metal siding and a roll-up vehicle door. There was a personnel entrance at the far end of the building. It had two steps up to it, framed by handrails fabricated from steel pipe. Inside, it was very cold. There were industrial-strength air conditioners running full blast. It felt like a meat store. Which it was, in a way. To the left of the foyer was a double door that gave directly onto the morgue operation. It was standing open, and Reacher could see the autopsy tables. There was plenty of stainless steel and white tile and fluorescent light in there.

Alice put the lizard skin belt on the reception counter and dug in her pocketbook for the ring. She told the attendant they were for Texas vs. Carmen Greer. He went away and came back with the evidence box.

"No, it's personal property," she said. "Not evidence. I'm sorry."

The guy gave her a why didn't you say so look and turned around.

"Wait," Reacher called. "Let me see that."

The guy paused, and then he turned back and slid the box across the counter. It had no lid, so it was really just a cardboard tray maybe three inches deep. Somebody had written Greer on the front edge with a marker pen. The Lorcin was in a plastic bag with an evidence number. Two brass shell cases were in a separate bag. Two tiny .22 bullets were in a bag each. They were gray and very slightly distorted. One bag was marked Intercranial #1 and the other was marked Intercranial #2. They had reference numbers, and signatures.

"Is the pathologist here?" Reacher asked.

"Sure," the counter guy said. "He's always here."

"I need to see him," Reacher said. "Right now."

He was expecting objections, but the guy just pointed to the double doors.

"In there," he said.

Alice hung back, but Reacher went through. At first he thought the room was empty, but then he saw a glass door in the far corner. Behind it was an office, with a man in green scrubs at a desk. He was doing paperwork. Reacher knocked on the glass. The man looked up. Mouthed come in. Reacher went in.

"Help you?" the guy said.

"Only two bullets in Sloop Greer?" Reacher said.

"Who are you?"

"I'm with the perp's lawyer," Reacher said. "She's outside."

"The perp?"

"No, the lawyer."

"O.K.," the guy said. "What about the bullets?"

"How many were there?"

"Two," the guy said. "Hell of a time getting them out."

"Can I see the body?"

"Why?"

"I'm worried about a miscarriage of justice."

It's a line that usually works with pathologists. They figure there's going to be a trial, they figure they'll be called on for evidence, the last thing they want is to be humiliated by the defense on cross-examination. It's bad for their scientific image. And their egos. So they prefer to get any doubts squared away beforehand.

"O.K.," he said. "It's in the freezer."

He had another door in back of his office which led to a dim corridor. At the end of the corridor was an insulated steel door, like a meat locker.

"Cold in there," he said.

Reacher nodded. "I'm glad somewhere is."

The guy operated the handle and they went inside. The light was bright. There were fluorescent tubes all over the ceiling. There was a bank of twenty-seven stainless steel drawers on the far wall, nine across, three high. Eight of them were occupied. They had tags slipped into little receptacles on the front, the sort of thing you see on office filing cabinets. The air in the room was frosty. Reacher's breath clouded in front of him. The pathologist checked the tags and slid a drawer. It came out easily, on cantilevered runners.

"Had to take the back of his head off," he said. "Practically had to scoop his brains out with a soup ladle, before I found them."

Sloop Greer was on his back and naked. He looked small and collapsed in death. His skin was gray, like unfired clay. It was hard with cold. His eyes were open, blank and staring. He had two bullet holes in his forehead, about three inches apart. They were neat holes, blue and ridged at the edges, like they had been carefully drilled there by a craftsman.

"Classic .22 gunshot wounds," the pathologist said. "The bullets go in O.K., but they don't come out again. Too slow. Not enough power. They just rattle around in there. But they get the job done."

Reacher closed his eyes. Then he smiled. A big, broad grin.

"That's for sure," he said. "They get the job done."

There was a knock at the open door. A low sound, like soft knuckles against hard steel. Reacher opened his eyes again. Alice was standing there, shivering.

"What are you doing?" she called to him.

"What comes after quadruple-check?" he called back.

His breath hung in the air in front of him, like a shaped cloud.

"Quintuple-check," she said. "Why?"

"And after that?"

"Sextuple," she said. "Why?"

"Because we're going to be doing a whole lot of checking now."

"Why?"

"Because there's something seriously wrong here, Alice. Come take a look."