Then she laughed delightedly.
“Ellie,” her mother said.
“Sorry, Mommy. But it’s only the boys who do that. I wouldn’t do it.”
“Go again anyway, O.K.?”
Ellie rolled her eyes theatrically and clambered over her mother’s lap and ran to the back of the diner. Reacher put a five over the check.
“Great kid,” he said.
“I think so,” Carmen said. “Well, most of the time.”
“Smart as anything.”
She nodded. “Smarter than me, that’s for sure.”
He let that one go, too. Just sat in silence and watched her eyes cloud over.
“Thanks for the sodas,” she said.
He shrugged. “My pleasure. And a new experience. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a soda for a kid before.”
“So you don’t have any of your own, obviously.”
“Never even got close.”
“No nieces or nephews? No little cousins?”
He shook his head.
“I was a kid myself,” he said. “Once upon a time, and a long time ago. Apart from what I remember about that, I don’t know too much about it.”
“Stick around a day or two and Ellie will teach you more than you ever wanted to know. As you’ve probably guessed.”
Then she looked beyond his shoulder and he heard Ellie’s footsteps behind him. The floor was old and there were obviously air pockets trapped under the buckled linoleum because her shoes made hollow slapping sounds.
“Mom, let’s go,” she said.
“Mr. Reacher is coming, too,” Carmen said. “He’s going to work with the horses.”
He got up out of the booth and saw her watching him.
“O.K.,” she said. “But let’s go.”
They pushed outside into the heat. Past the middle of the afternoon, and it was hotter than ever. The Crown Victoria was gone. They walked around to the Cadillac and Ellie climbed through to the backseat. Carmen sat for a long moment with her hand resting on the key. She closed her eyes. Then she opened them again and started the engine.
She drove back through the crossroads and past the school again and then more than sixty miles straight south. She went pretty slowly. Maybe half the speed she had used before. Ellie didn’t complain. Reacher guessed she thought this was normal. He guessed Carmen never drove very fast on her way home.
They didn’t pass much. There were power lines looping rhythmically between weathered poles on the left shoulder. There were windmills and oil pumps here and there in the distance, some of them working, most of them seized up and still. There were more V-8 irrigation rigs on the western side of the road, on the edges of old fields, but they were silent and rusted because the winds had scoured the earth shallow. Some places, it was cleaned right back to dry caliche ledges. Nothing much left to irrigate. The eastern side was better. There were whole square miles of mesquite, and sometimes broad patches of decent grassland running in irregular linear shapes, like there must be water underground.
Every ten or twelve miles there would be a ranch gate standing isolated by the side of the road. They were simple right-angle shapes, maybe fifteen feet wide, maybe fifteen feet high, with beaten earth tracks running through them into the distance. Some of them had names on them, made up from strips of wood nailed into the shapes of letters. Some of them had the names formed from iron, worked by hand into fancy script. Some of them had old bleached cattle skulls fixed centrally, with long horns curving outward like vulture’s wings. Some of them were supplemented by old barbed wire strands running aimlessly into the middle distance, sketching the location of ancient boundaries. The wire was on wooden posts, and the posts were weathered and twisted into corkscrew shapes and looked as if they would turn to dust if you touched them.
Some of the ranch houses were visible, depending on the contours of the land. Where it was flat, Reacher could see clusters of buildings in the far distance. The houses were two-story, mostly painted white, crouching among huddles of low barns and sheds. They had windmills out back, and satellite dishes, and they looked quiet and stunned in the heat. The sun was getting low in the west, and the outside temperature was still showing a hundred and ten.
“It’s the road, I think,” Carmen said. “It soaks up the sun all day, and gives it back later.”
Ellie had fallen asleep, sprawled across the rear seat. Her head was pillowed on the briefcase. Her cheek was touching the edges of the papers that outlined how her mother could best escape her father.
“Greer property starts here,” Carmen said. “On the left. Next track is ours, about eight miles.”
It was flat land, rising slightly on the right to a fragmented mesa about a mile away to the west. On the left, the Greers had better barbed wire than most. It looked like it might have been restrung less than fifty years ago. It ran reasonably straight into the east, enclosing patchy grassland that showed about equal parts green and brown. Miles away there was a forest of oil derricks visible against the skyline, all surrounded by tin huts and abandoned equipment.
“Greer Three,” Carmen said. “Big field. It made Sloop’s grandfather a lot of money, way back. Ran dry about forty years ago. But it’s a famous family story, about that gusher coming in. Most exciting thing that ever happened to them.”
She slowed a little more, clearly reluctant to make the final few miles. In the far distance the road rose into the boiling haze and Reacher could see the barbed wire change to an absurd picket fence. It was tight against the shoulder, like something you would see in New England, but it was painted dull red. It ran about half a mile to a ranch gate, which was also painted red, and then ran on again into the distance and out of sight. There were buildings behind the gate, much closer to the road than the ones he had seen before. There was a big old house with a two-story core and a tall chimney and sprawling one-story additions. There were low barns and sheds clustered loosely around it. There was ranch fencing enclosing arbitrary squares of territory. Everything was painted dull red, all the buildings and all the fences alike. The low orange sun blazed against them and made them glow and shimmer and split horizontally into bands of mirage.
She slowed still more where the red fence started. Coasted the last hundred yards with her foot off the gas and then turned in on a beaten dirt track running under the gate. There was a name on the gate, high above their heads, red-painted wood on red-painted wood. It said Red House. She glanced up at it as she passed through.
“Welcome to hell,” she said.
The Red House itself was the main building in a compound of four impressive structures. It had a wide planked porch with wooden columns and a swinging seat hung from chains, and beyond it eighty yards farther on was a motor barn, but she couldn’t drive down to it because a police cruiser was parked at an angle on the track, completely blocking her way. It was an old-model Chevy Caprice, painted black and white, with Echo County Sheriff on the door, where it had said something else before. Bought by the county secondhand, Reacher thought, maybe from Dallas or Houston, repainted and refurbished for easy duty out here in the sticks. It was empty and the driver’s door was standing open. The light bar on the roof was flashing red and blue, whipping colors horizontally over the porch and the whole front of the house.
“What’s this about?” Carmen said.
Then her hand went up to her mouth.
“God, he can’t be home already,” she said. “Please, no.”
“Cops wouldn’t bring him home,” Reacher said. “They don’t run a limo service.”
Ellie was waking up behind them. No more hum from the engine, no more rocking from the springs. She struggled upright and gazed out, eyes wide.
“What’s that?” she said.
“It’s the sheriff,” Carmen said.
“Why’s he here?” Ellie asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Why are the lights flashing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did somebody call
911? Maybe there’s been a burglar. Maybe he wore a mask and stole something.”
She crawled through and knelt on the padded armrest between the front seats. Reacher caught the school smell again and saw delighted curiosity in her face. Then he saw it change to extreme panic.
“Maybe he stole a horse,” she said. “Maybe my pony, Mommy.”
She scrambled across Carmen’s lap and scrabbled at the door handle. Jumped out of the car and ran across the yard, as fast as her legs would carry her, her arms held stiff by her sides and her ponytail bouncing behind her.
“I don’t think anybody stole a horse,” Carmen said. “I think Sloop’s come home.”
“With the lights flashing?” Reacher said.
She unclipped her seat belt and swiveled sideways and placed her feet on the dirt of the yard. Stood up and stared toward the house, with her hands on the top of the door frame, like the door was shielding her from something. Reacher did the same, on his side. The fierce heat wrapped around him. He could hear bursts of radio chatter coming from the sheriff’s car.
“Maybe they’re looking for you,” he said. “You’ve been away overnight. Maybe they reported you missing.”
Across the Cadillac’s roof, she shook her head. “Ellie was here, and as long as they know where she is, they don’t care where I am.”
She stood still for a moment longer, and then she took a sideways step and eased the door shut behind her. Reacher did the same. Twenty feet away, the house door opened and a uniformed man stepped out onto the porch. The sheriff, obviously. He was about sixty and overweight, with dark tanned skin and thin gray hair plastered to his head. He was walking half-backward, taking his leave of the gloom inside. He had black pants and a white uniform shirt with epaulettes and embroidered patches on the shoulders. A wide gun belt with a wooden-handled revolver secured into a holster with a leather strap. The door closed behind him and he turned toward his cruiser and stopped short when he saw Carmen. Touched his forefinger to his brow in a lazy imitation of a salute.
“Mrs. Greer,” he said, like he was suggesting something was her fault.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Folks inside will tell you,” the sheriff said. “Too damn hot for me to be repeating everything twice.”
Then his gaze skipped the roof of the Cadillac and settled on Reacher.
“And who are you?” he asked.
Reacher said nothing.
“Who are you?” the guy said again.
“I’ll tell the folks inside,” Reacher replied. “Too damn hot for me to be repeating everything twice.”
The guy gave him a long calm look, and finished with a slow nod of his head, like he’d seen it all before. He dumped himself inside his secondhand cruiser and fired it up and backed out to the road. Reacher let its dust settle on his shoes and watched Carmen drive the Cadillac down the track to the motor barn. It was a long low farm shed with no front wall, and it was painted red, like everything else. There were two pick-ups and a Jeep Cherokee in it. One of the pick-ups was recent and the other was sitting on flat tires and looked like it hadn’t been moved in a decade. Beyond the building a narrow dirt track looped off into the infinite desert distance. Carmen eased the Cadillac in next to the Jeep and walked back out into the sun. She looked small and out of place in the yard, like an orchid in a trash pile.
“So where’s the bunkhouse?” he asked.
“Stay with me,” she said. “You need to meet them anyway. You need to get hired. You can’t just show up in the bunkhouse.”
“O.K.,” he said.
She led him slowly to the bottom of the porch steps. She took them cautiously, one at a time. She arrived in front of the door and knocked.
“You have to knock?” Reacher asked.
She nodded.
“They never gave me a key,” she said.
They waited, with Reacher a step behind her, appropriate for the hired help. He could hear footsteps inside. Then the door swung open. A guy was standing there, holding the inside handle. He looked to be in his middle twenties. He had a big square face, with the skin blotched red and white. He was bulky with frat-boy muscle turning to fat. He was wearing denim jeans and a dirty white T-shirt with the sleeves rolled tight over what was left of his biceps. He smelled of sweat and beer. He was wearing a red baseball cap backward on his head. A semicircle of forehead showed above the plastic strap. At the back, a shock of hair spilled out under the peak, exactly the same color and texture as Ellie’s.
“It’s you,” he said, glancing at Carmen, glancing away.
“Bobby,” she said.
Then his glance settled on Reacher.
“Who’s your friend?”
“His name is Reacher. He’s looking for work.”
The guy paused.
“Well, come on in, I guess,” he said. “Both of you. And close the door. It’s hot.”
He turned back into the gloom and Reacher saw the letter T on the ball cap. Texas Rangers, he thought. Good ball club, but not good enough. Carmen followed the guy three steps behind, entering her home of nearly seven years like an invited guest. Reacher stayed close to her shoulder.
“Sloop’s brother,” she whispered to him.
He nodded. The hallway was dark inside. He could see the red paint continued everywhere, over the wooden walls, the floors, the ceilings. Most places it was worn thin or worn away completely, just leaving traces of pigment behind like a stain. There was an ancient air conditioner running somewhere in the house, forcing the temperature down maybe a couple of degrees. It ran slowly, with a patient drone and rattle. It sounded peaceful, like the slow tick of a clock. The hallway was the size of a motel suite, filled with expensive stuff, but it was all old, like they’d run out of money decades ago. Or else they’d always had so much that the thrill of spending it had worn off a generation ago. There was a huge mirror on one wall, with the ornate frame painted red. Opposite to it was a rack filled with six bolt-action hunting rifles. The mirror reflected the rack and made the hallway seem full of guns.
“What did the sheriff want?” Carmen called.
“Come inside,” Bobby called back.
We are inside, Reacher thought. But then he saw he meant “Come into the parlor.” It was a big red room at the back of the house. It had been remodeled. It must have been a kitchen once. It opened out through the original wall of the house to a replacement kitchen easily fifty years old. The parlor had the same worn paint everywhere, including all over the furniture. There was a big farmhouse table and eight wheelback chairs, all made out of pine, all painted red, all worn back to shiny wood where human contact had been made.
One of the chairs was occupied by a woman. She looked to be somewhere in her middle fifties. She was the sort of person who still dresses the same way she always did despite her advancing age. She was wearing tight jeans with a belt and a blouse with a Western fringe. She had a young woman’s hairstyle, colored a bright shade of orange and teased up off her scalp above a thin face. She looked like a twenty-year-old prematurely aged by some rare medical condition. Or by a shock. Maybe the sheriff had sat her down and given her some awkward news. She looked preoccupied and a little confused. But she showed a measure of vitality, too. A measure of authority. There was still vigor there. She looked like the part of Texas she owned, rangy and powerful, but temporarily laid low, with most of her good days behind her.
“What did the sheriff want?” Carmen asked again.
“Something happened,” the woman said, and her tone meant it wasn’t something good. Reacher saw a flicker of hope behind Carmen’s eyes. Then the room went quiet and the woman turned to look in his direction.
“His name is Reacher,” Carmen said. “He’s looking for work.”
“Where’s he from?”
Her voice was like rawhide. I’m the boss here, it said.
“I found him on the road,” Carmen answered.
“What can he do?”
“He’s worked with horse
s before. He can do blacksmithing.”
Reacher looked out of the window while she lied about his skills. He had never been closer to a horse than walking past the ceremonial stables on the older army bases that still had them. He knew in principle that a blacksmith made horseshoes, which were iron things horses had nailed to their feet. Or their hoofs. Hooves? He knew there was a charcoal brazier involved, and a bellows, and a great deal of rhythmic hammering. An anvil was required, and a trough of water. But he had never actually touched a horseshoe. He had seen them occasionally, nailed up over doors as a superstition. He knew some cultures nailed them upward, and some downward, all to achieve the same good luck. But that was all he knew about them.
“We’ll talk about him later,” the woman said. “Other things to talk about first.”
Then she remembered her manners and sketched a wave across the table.
“I’m Rusty Greer,” she said.
“Like the ballplayer?” Reacher asked.
“I was Rusty Greer before he was born,” the woman said. Then she pointed at Bobby. “You already met my boy Robert Greer. Welcome to the Red House Ranch, Mr. Reacher. Maybe we can find you work. If you’re willing and honest.”
“What did the sheriff want?” Carmen asked for the third time.
Rusty Greer turned and looked straight at her.
“Sloop’s lawyer’s gone missing,” she said.
“What?”
“He was on his way to the federal jail to see Sloop. He never got there. State police found his car abandoned on the road, south of Abilene. Just sitting there empty, miles from anywhere, keys still in it. Situation doesn’t look good.”
“Al Eugene?”
“How many lawyers you think Sloop had?”
Her tone added: you idiot. The room went totally silent and Carmen went pale and her hand jumped to her mouth, fingers rigid and extended, covering her lips.
“Maybe the car broke down,” she said.
“Cops tried it,” Rusty said. “It worked just fine.”
Echo Burning by Lee Child Page 10