Echo Burning by Lee Child

by Echo Burning (com v2. 0) (lit)

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

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

  “I want you to leave now,” he said.

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

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

  “What?” Reacher said.

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

  “Why not?”

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

  “We are?”

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

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

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

  “Is she that smart?”

  “I think she is.”

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

  “I can’t do that.”

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

  “The payment?”

  “You think these people work for free?”

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

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

  “Add up the last month,” Reacher said.

  She scanned back.

  “Nine hundred, round figures,” she said.

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

  Walker said nothing.

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

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

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

  “So why did she confess?”

  Reacher closed his eyes. Sat still for a moment.

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

  “Who?”

  Reacher opened his eyes.

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

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

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

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

  There were no other entries at all.

  “Is this right?” Reacher asked.

  The bailiff nodded.

  “Guaranteed,” he said.

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

  “Nobody else?” he asked.

  “There were phone calls,” the bailiff said.

  “When?”

  “All day Monday, and Tuesday morning.”

  “Who was calling her?”

  “Her lawyer.”

  “Her lawyer?” Alice said.

  The guy nodded.

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

  “Who was the lawyer?” Alice asked.

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

  “Man or woman?”

  “It was a man.”

  “Hispanic?”

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

  “Same guy every time?”

  “I think so.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Don’t you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Hack Walker just stared at him.

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

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

  “They never heard of her,” he said.

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

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

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

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

  “Waste of time,” Reacher said.

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

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

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

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

  Reacher just stared at him.

  “What?” Walker said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “It’s tonight,” she said.

  “What is?” the tall man asked.

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

  “Already?”

  “Shit,” the dark man said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  15

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

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

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

  “She lied about everything,” she said.

  “The ring was different,” he said.

  “Different how?”

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

  “I don’t follow.”

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

  “The only thing?”

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

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

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

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

  “No,” she said.

  “Me neither.”

  “So?”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  She shrugged again. “Vaguely, I guess.”

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

  “So?” she said again.

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

  “You want to explain that?”

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

  “Is Ellie going to be O.K.?”

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

  “You think the grandmother can help us?”

  He shrugged. “I doubt it.”

  “So how is this trip helping Ellie?”

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

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

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

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

  He said nothing.

  “You O.K.?” she asked.

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

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

  “That’s your thing, right?”

  “I guess it is.”

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

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

  “Aside from the diamond ring.”

  “Tell me.”

  He said nothing.

  “Tell me,” she said again.

  “Did you ever ride a horse?”

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

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

  “So?”

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

  “So?” she said again.

  “You ever ride a bike?”

  “In New York City?”

  “Inline skating?”

  “A little, back when it was cool.”

  “You ever fall?”

  “Once, pretty badly.”

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

  “What about it?”

  “Homemade, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “You weighed out the ingredients?”

  “You have to.”

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

  “Sure,” she said again.

  “The scales of justice,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

  “O.K.,” she said.

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