by Lee Child
Reacher nodded. “More or less. She said she’s from a thousand acres in the Napa Valley. Isn’t she?”
Walker shook his head. “She’s from some barrio in South Central L.A. Nobody knows anything about her parents. She probably doesn’t, either.”
Reacher was quiet for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Disguising a humble background isn’t a crime.”
“She was never a student at UCLA. She was a stripper. She was a whore, Reacher. She serviced the UCLA frat parties, among other things. Sloop met her when she was performing. Part of her repertoire was an interesting little trick with a long-neck beer bottle. He fell for her, somehow. You know, let me take you away from all this sort of thing. I guess I can understand it. She’s cute now. She was stunning then. And smart. She looked at Sloop and saw a rich man’s son from Texas, with a big fat wallet. She saw a meal ticket. She went to live with him. Came off the pill and lied about it and got herself pregnant. Whereupon Sloop did the decent thing, because he was like that, in a gentlemanly way. She suckered him, and he let her.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Walker shrugged. “Doesn’t matter if you do or if you don’t, and I’ll tell you exactly why in a moment. But it’s all true, I’m afraid. She had brains. She knew what happens to whores when they get old. It goes right downhill, and it doesn’t start very high, does it? She wanted a way out, and Sloop was it. She bled him for years, diamonds, horses, everything.”
“I don’t believe you,” Reacher said again.
Walker nodded. “She’s very convincing. Can’t argue with that.”
“Even if it is true, does it justify him hitting her?”
Walker paused a beat.
“No, of course not,” he said. “But here’s the big problem. The thing is, he didn’t hit her. Never, Reacher. He wasn’t violent with her. Not ever. I knew Sloop. He was a lot of things, and to be absolutely honest about it, not all of them were good. He was lazy, he was a little casual in business. A little dishonest, to be truthful. I’m not wearing rose-colored spectacles. But all his faults came from the feeling he was a Texan gentleman. I’m very aware of that, because I was a poor boy by comparison. Practically trash. He had the big ranch and the money. It made him a little arrogant and superior, hence the laziness and the impatience with strict principle. But part of being a gentleman in Texas is you would never, ever hit a woman. Whoever the woman was. Not ever. So, she’s making all that up, too. I know it. He never hit her. I promise you that.”
Reacher shook his head. “What you promise me doesn’t prove a damn thing. I mean, what else would you say? You were his friend.”
Walker nodded again. “I take your point. But there’s nothing else to go on. There’s just nothing there. Absolutely no evidence, no witnesses, no nothing. We were close. I was with them a thousand times. I heard about the horseback riding accidents as they happened. There weren’t that many, and they seemed genuine. We’ll ask for the medical records, of course, but I don’t hold out much hope they’ll be ambiguous.”
“You said it yourself, abuse can be covert.”
“That covert? I’m a DA, Reacher. I’ve seen everything. Some lone couple in a trailer park, maybe. But Sloop and Carmen lived with family, and they saw friends every day. And before you told the story to Alice Aaron, nobody in the whole of Texas had ever heard the faintest whiff of a rumor about violence between them. Not me, not Al, nobody. So do you understand what I mean? There’s no evidence. All we’ve got is her word. And you’re the only other person who ever heard it. But if you take the stand to back her up, then her trial is over before it’s begun, because the other stuff you’ll have to say will prove she’s a pathological liar. Like, did she say she’d tipped off the IRS?”
“Yes, she did. She said she called them. Some special unit.”
Walker shook his head. “They caught him through bank records. It was just a purely accidental by-product of an audit on somebody else. She knew nothing about it. I know that for sure, for an absolute fact, because Sloop went straight to Al Eugene and Al came straight to me for advice. I saw the indictment. Black and white. Carmen is a liar, Reacher, pure and simple. Or maybe not pure and simple. Maybe there are some very complicated reasons behind it.”
Reacher paused a long moment.
“Maybe she is a liar,” he said. “But liars can still get abused, same as anybody else. And abuse can be covert. You don’t know it wasn’t happening.”
Walker nodded. “I agree. I don’t know. But I would bet my life it wasn’t.”
“She convinced me.”
“She probably convinced herself. She lives in a fantasy world. I know her, Reacher. She’s a liar, is all, and she’s guilty of first-degree homicide.”
“So why are we talking?”
Walker paused.
“Can I trust you?” he asked.
“Does it matter?” Reacher said.
Walker went very quiet. Just stared at his office wall, a whole minute, then another. And another. The boom of the air conditioners crowded into the silence.
“Yes, it matters,” he said. “It matters plenty. To Carmen, and to me. Because right now you’re reading me completely wrong. I’m not an angry friend trying to protect my old buddy’s reputation. Fact is, I want to find a defense for Carmen, don’t you see that? Even invent one. You know, maybe just pretend the abuse happened and back-pedal like crazy on the premeditation. I’m seriously tempted. Because then I don’t need to charge her at all and I can probably save my shot at the judgeship.”
The silence came back. Nothing but the air conditioner motors and telephones ringing faintly outside the office door. The distant chatter of a fax machine.
“I want to go see her,” Reacher said.
Walker shook his head. “Can’t let you. You’re not her lawyer.”
“You could bend the rules.”
Walker sighed again and dropped his head into his hands. “Please, don’t tempt me. Right now I’m thinking about throwing the rules off the top of the building.”
Reacher said nothing. Walker stared into space, his eyes jumping with strain.
“I want to figure out her real motive,” he said finally. “Because if it was something real cold, like money, I don’t have a choice. She has to go down.”
Reacher said nothing.
“But if it wasn’t, I want you to help me,” Walker said. “If her medical records are remotely plausible, I want to try to save her with the abuse thing.”
Reacher said nothing.
“O.K., what I really mean is I want to try to save myself,” Walker said. “Try to save my chances in the election. Or both things, O.K.? Her and me. Ellie, too. She’s a great kid. Sloop loved her.”
“So what would you want from me?”
“If we go down that road.”
Reacher nodded. “If,” he said.
“I’d want you to lie on the stand,” Walker said. “I’d want you to repeat what she told you about the beatings, and modify what she told you about everything else, in order to preserve her credibility.”
Reacher said nothing.
“That’s why I need to trust you,” Walker said. “And that’s why I needed to lay everything out for you. So you know exactly what you’re getting into with her.”
“I’ve never done that sort of a thing before.”
“Neither have I,” Walker said. “It’s killing me just to talk about it.”
Reacher was quiet for a long moment.
“Why do you assume I’d want to?” he asked.
“I think you like her,” Walker said. “I think you feel sorry for her. I think you want to help her. Therefore indirectly you could help me.”
“How would you work it?”
Walker shrugged. “I’ll be withdrawn from the case from the start, so one of my assistants will be handling it. I’ll find out exactly what she can prove for sure, and I’ll coach you on it so you don’t get tripped up. That’s why I can’t let you go see Carmen now. They keep a re
cord downstairs. It would look like prior collusion.”
“I don’t know,” Reacher said.
“I don’t, either. But maybe it won’t have to go all the way to trial. If the medical evidence is a little flexible, and we take a deposition from Carmen, and one from you, then maybe dropping the charges altogether would be justified.”
“Lying in a deposition would be just as bad.”
“Think about Ellie.”
“And your judgeship.”
Walker nodded. “I’m not hiding that from you. I want to get elected, no doubt about it. But it’s for an honest reason. I want to make things better, Reacher. It’s always been my ambition. Work my way up, improve things from the inside. It’s the only way. For a person like me, anyway. I’ve got no influence as a lobbyist. I’m not a politician, really. I find all that stuff embarrassing. I don’t have the skills.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Let me think it over,” Walker said. “A day or two. I’ll take it from there.”
“You sure?”
Walker sighed again. “No, of course I’m not sure. I hate this whole thing. But what the hell, Sloop’s dead. Nothing’s going to change that. Nothing’s going to bring him back. It’ll trash his memory, of course. But it would save Carmen. And he loved her, Reacher. In a way nobody else could ever understand. The disapproval he brought down on himself was unbelievable. From his family, from polite society. He’d be happy to exchange his reputation for her life, I think. His life for her life, effectively. He’d exchange mine, or Al’s, or anybody’s, probably. He loved her.”
There was silence again.
“She needs bail,” Reacher said.
“Please,” Walker said. “It’s out of the question.”
“Ellie needs her.”
“That’s a bigger issue than bail,” Walker said. “Ellie can stand a couple of days with her grandmother. It’s the rest of her life we need to worry about. Give me time to work this out.”
Reacher shrugged and stood up.
“This is all in strict confidence, right?” Walker said. “I guess I should have made that clear right from the start.”
Reacher nodded.
“Get back to me,” he said.
Then he stood up and walked out the room.
12
“One simple question,” Alice said. “Is it plausible that domestic abuse could be so covert that close friends are totally unaware of it?”
“I don’t know,” Reacher said. “I don’t have much experience.”
“Neither do I.”
They were on opposite sides of Alice’s desk in the back of the legal mission. It was the middle of the day, and the heat was so brutal it was enforcing a de facto siesta on the whole town. Nobody was out and about who didn’t desperately need to be. The mission was largely deserted. Just Alice and Reacher and one other lawyer twenty feet away. The inside temperature was easily over a hundred and ten degrees. The humidity was rising. The ancient air conditioner above the door was making no difference at all. Alice had changed into shorts again. She was leaning back in her chair, arms above her head, her back arched off the sticky vinyl. She was slick with sweat from head to foot. Over the tan it made her skin look oiled. Reacher’s shirt was soaked. He was reconsidering its projected three-day life span.
“It’s a catch-22,” Alice said. “Abuse you know about isn’t covert. Really covert abuse, you might assume it isn’t happening. Like, I assume my dad isn’t beating my mom. But maybe he is. Who would know? What about yours?”
Reacher smiled. “I doubt it. He was a U.S. Marine. Big guy, not especially genteel. But then, you should have seen my mother. Maybe she was beating him.”
“So yes or no about Carmen and Sloop?”
“She convinced me,” Reacher said. “No doubt about it.”
“Despite everything?”
“She convinced me,” he said again. “Maybe she’s all kinds of a liar about other things, but he was beating her. That’s my belief.”
Alice looked at him, a lawyer’s question in her eyes.
“No doubt at all?” she asked.
“No doubt at all,” he said.
“O.K., but a difficult case just got a lot harder. And I hate it when that happens.”
“Me too,” he said. “But hard is not the same thing as impossible.”
“You understand the exact legalities here?”
He nodded. “It’s not rocket science. She’s in deep shit, whichever way you cut it. If there was abuse, she’s blown it anyway by being so premeditated. If there wasn’t, then it’s murder one, pure and simple. And whatever, she has zero credibility because she lies and exaggerates. Ballgame over, if Walker didn’t want to be judge so bad.”
“Exactly,” Alice said.
“You happy about riding that kind of luck?”
“No.”
“Neither am I.”
“Not morally, not practically,” Alice said. “Anything could happen here. Maybe Hack’s got a love child somewhere, and it’ll come out and he’ll have to withdraw anyway. Maybe he likes to have sex with armadillos. It’s a long time until November. Counting on him to stay electable no matter what would be foolish. So his tactical problem with Carmen could disappear at any time. So she needs a properly structured defense.”
Reacher smiled again. “You’re even smarter than I figured.”
“I thought you were going to say than I looked.”
“I think more lawyers should dress that way.”
“You need to stay off the stand,” she said. “Much safer for her. No deposition, either. Without you, the gun is the only thing that suggests premeditation. And we should be able to argue that buying the gun and actually using it weren’t necessarily closely connected. Maybe she bought it for another reason.”
Reacher said nothing.
“They’re testing it now,” she said. “Over at the lab. Ballistics and fingerprints. Two sets of prints, they say. Hers, I guess, maybe his, too. Maybe they struggled over it. Maybe the whole thing was an accident.”
Reacher shook his head. “The second set must be mine. She asked me to teach her how to shoot. We went up on the mesa and practiced.”
“When?”
“Saturday. The day before he got home.”
She stared at him.
“Christ, Reacher,” she said. “You definitely stay off the stand, O.K.?”
“I plan to.”
“What about if things change and they subpoena you?”
“Then I’ll lie, I guess.”
“Can you?”
“I was a cop of sorts for thirteen years. It wouldn’t be a totally radical concept.”
“What would you say about your prints on the gun?”
“I’d say I found it dumped somewhere. Innocently gave it back to her. Make it look like she had reconsidered after buying it.”
“You comfortable with saying stuff like that?”
“If the ends justify the means, I am. And I think they do here. She’s given herself a problem proving it, is all. You?”
She nodded. “A case like this, I guess so. I don’t care about the lies about her background. People do stuff like that, all the time, all kinds of reasons. So all that’s left is the premeditation thing. And most other states, premeditation wouldn’t be an issue. They recognize the reality. A battered woman can’t necessarily be effective on the spur of the moment. Sometimes she needs to wait until he’s drunk, or asleep. You know, bide her time. There are lots of cases like that in other jurisdictions.”
“So where do we start?”
“Where we’re forced to,” Alice said. “Which is a pretty bad place. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. Res ipsa loquitur, they call it. The thing speaks for itself. Her bedroom, her gun, her husband lying there dead on the floor. That’s murder one. We leave it like that, they’ll convict her on the first vote.”
“So?”
“So we back-pedal on the premeditation and then we prove the abuse
through the medical records. I already started the paperwork. We joined with the DA’s office for a common-cause subpoena. All Texas hospitals, and all neighboring states. Domestic violence, that’s standard procedure, because people sometimes drive all over to hide it. The hospitals generally react pretty fast, so we should get the records overnight. Then it’s res ipsa loquitur again. If the injuries were caused by violence, then the records will at least show they could have been. That’s just common sense. Then she takes the stand and she talks about the abuse. She’ll have to take it on the chin over the bullshit stories about her past. But if we present it right, she could even look quite good. No shame in being an ex-hooker trying to reform. We could build up some sympathy there.”
“You sound like a pretty good lawyer.”
She smiled. “For one so young?”
“Well, what are you, two years out of school?”
“Six months,” she said. “But you learn fast down here.”
“Evidently.”
“Whatever, with careful jury selection, we’ll get at least half and half don’t-knows and not-guiltys. The not-guiltys will wear down the don’t-knows within a couple of days. Especially if it’s this hot.”
Reacher pulled the soaked fabric of his shirt off his skin. “Can’t stay this hot much longer, can it?”
“Hey, I’m talking about next summer,” Alice said. “That’s if she’s lucky. Could be the summer after that.”
He stared at her. “You’re kidding.”
She shook her head. “The record around here is four years in jail between arrest and trial.”
“What about Ellie?”
She shrugged. “Just pray the medical records look real good. If they do, we’ve got a shot at getting Hack to drop the charges altogether. He’s got a lot of latitude.”
“He wouldn’t need much pushing,” Reacher said. “The mood he’s in.”
“So look on the bright side. This whole thing could be over in a couple of days.”
“When are you going to go see her?”
“Later this afternoon. First I’m going to the bank to cash a twenty-thousand-dollar check. Then I’m going to put the money in a grocery bag and drive out and deliver it to some very happy people.”