Echo Burning jr-5

by Lee Child

  * * *

  The Sun set far away in the west an hour into his drive back and it was full dark when he turned in under the ranch gate. But every light in the Red House was burning. And there were two cars parked in the yard. One was the sheriff's secondhand cruiser. The other was a lime green Lincoln. The sheriff's car was flashing red and blue. The Lincoln was lit by the spill from the porch and the hot yellow light made it look the color of a dead man's skin. There were clouds of moths everywhere, big papery insects crowding the bulbs above the porch like tiny individual snowstorms, forming and re-forming as they fluttered from one to the next. Behind them the chant of the night insects was already rhythmic and insistent.

  The front door of the house was standing open and there was noise in the foyer. Loud excited conversation, from a small crowd of people. Reacher stepped up and looked into the room and saw the sheriff, and Rusty Greer, and Bobby, and then Carmen standing alone near the rack of rifles. She had changed out of her jeans and shirt. She was wearing a dress. It was red and black and had no sleeves. It finished at the knee. She looked numb. Conflicting emotions in her face made it blank and expressionless. There was a man in a suit at the opposite end of the room, standing near the red-framed mirror so Reacher could see the front and back of him at the same time. The Lincoln driver, obviously. He was sleek and slightly overweight, not short, not tall, dressed in pressed seersucker. Maybe thirty years old, with light-colored hair carefully combed and receding from a domed brow. He had a pale indoor face, red with sunburn on the upward-facing planes like he played golf in the early afternoon. The face was split into a huge politician's smile. He looked like he had been receiving fulsome accolades and pretending they were completely unnecessary.

  Reacher paused on the porch and decided not to enter. But his weight put a loud creak into the boards and Bobby heard it. He glanced out into the night and did a perfect double-take. Stood completely still for a second and then came hurrying through the door. Took Reacher's elbow and pulled him into the lee of the wall, alongside the entrance, out of sight of the foyer.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked.

  "I work here," Reacher said. "Remember?"

  "Where are Josh and Billy?"

  "They quit."

  Bobby stared at him. "They what?"

  "They quit," Reacher said again.

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means they decided they didn't want to work here anymore."

  "Why would they do that?"

  Reacher shrugged. "How would I know? Maybe they were just exercising their prerogative inside a free labor market."

  "What?"

  Reacher said nothing. Bobby's absence and the voices on the porch had pulled people to the door. Rusty Greer was first out, followed by the sheriff and the guy in the seersucker suit. Carmen stayed inside, near the rifles, still looking numb. They all fell silent, looking at Reacher, Rusty like she had a social difficulty to deal with, the sheriff puzzled, the new guy in the suit wondering who the hell this stranger was.

  "What's going on?" Rusty asked.

  "This guy says Josh and Billy quit on us," Bobby said.

  "They wouldn't do that," Rusty said. "Why would they do that?" The guy in the suit was looming forward, like he expected to be introduced. "Did they give a reason?" Rusty asked.

  The sheriff was looking straight at Reacher, nothing in his face. Reacher made no reply. Just stood there, waiting.

  "Well, I'm Hack Walker," the guy in the suit said, in a big honest voice, holding out his hand. "I'm the DA up in Pecos, and I'm a friend of the family."

  "Sloop's oldest friend," Rusty said, absently.

  Reacher nodded and took the guy's hand. "Jack Reacher," he said. "I work here."

  The guy held on to his hand in both of his own and beamed a subtle little smile that was partly genuine, partly you-know-how-it-is ironic. A perfect politician's smile.

  "You registered to vote here yet?" he asked. "Because if so, I just want to point out I'm running for judge in November, and I'd surely like to count on your support."

  Then he started up with a self-deprecating chuckle, a man secure among friends, amused about how the demands of democracy can intrude on good manners. You know how it is. Reacher took his hand back and nodded without speaking.

  "Hack's worked so hard for us," Rusty said. "And now he's brought us the most delightful news."

  "Al Eugene showed up?" Reacher asked.

  "No, not yet," Rusty said. "Something else entirely."

  "And nothing to do with the election," Hack said. "You folks all understand that, don't you? I agree, November time makes us want to do something for everybody, but you know I'd have done this for you anyhow."

  "And you know we'd all vote for you anyhow, Hack," Rusty said.

  Then everybody started beaming at everybody else. Reacher glanced beyond them at Carmen standing alone in the foyer. She wasn't beaming.

  "You're getting Sloop out early," he said. "Tomorrow, I guess."

  Hack Walker ducked his head, like Reacher had offered him a compliment.

  "That's for sure," he said. "All along they claimed they couldn't do administration on the weekend, but I managed to change their minds. They said it would be the first Sunday release in the history of the system, but I just said hey, there's a first time for everything."

  "Hack's going to drive us up there," Rusty said. "We're leaving soon. We're going to drive all night."

  "We're going to be waiting on the sidewalk," Hack said. "Right outside the prison gate, seven o'clock in the morning. Old Sloop's going to get a big welcome."

  "You all going?" Reacher asked.

  "I'm not," Carmen said.

  She had come out onto the porch, quietly, like a wraith. She was standing with her feet together, both hands on the railing, leaning forward from the waist, elbows locked, staring north at the black horizon.

  "I have to stay and see to Ellie," she said.

  "Plenty of room in the car," Hack said. "Ellie can come too."

  Carmen shook her head. "I don't want her to see her father walking out of a prison door."

  "Well, please yourself," Rusty said. "He's only your husband, after all."

  Carmen made no reply. Just shivered slightly, like the night air was thirty degrees instead of ninety.

  "Then I guess I'll stay too," Bobby said. "Keep an eye on things. Sloop will understand."

  Reacher glanced at him. Carmen turned abruptly and walked back into the house. Rusty and Hack Walker drifted after her. The sheriff and Bobby stayed on the porch, each taking a half-step toward the other, to put a subliminal human barrier between Reacher and the door.

  "So why did they quit?" Bobby asked.

  Reacher glanced at them both and shrugged.

  "Well, they didn't exactly quit," he said. "I was trying to sugar the pill, for the family, was all. Truth is we were in a bar, and they picked a fight with some guy... You saw us in the bar, right, Sheriff?"

  The sheriff nodded, cautiously.

  "It was after you left," Reacher said. "They picked a fight and lost."

  "Who with?" Bobby asked. "What guy?"

  "The wrong guy."

  "But who was he?"

  "Some big guy," Reacher said. "He smacked them around for a minute or two. I think somebody called the ambulance for them. They're probably in the hospital now. Maybe they're dead, for all I know. They lost, and they lost real bad."

  Bobby stared. "Who was the guy?"

  "Just some guy, minding his own business."

  "Who?"

  "Some stranger, I guess."

  Bobby paused. "Was it you?"

  "Me?" Reacher said. "Why would they pick a fight with me?"

  Bobby said nothing.

  "Why would they pick a fight with me, Bobby?" Reacher asked again. "What possible kind of a reason would they have for that?"

  Bobby made no reply. Just stared and then turned and stalked into the house. Slammed the door loudly behind him. The sheriff stayed
where he was. "So they got hurt bad," he said.

  Reacher nodded. "Seems that way. You should make some calls, check it out. Then start spreading the news. Tell people that's what happens, if they start picking fights with the wrong strangers."

  The sheriff nodded again, still cautious.

  "Maybe it's something you should bear in mind, too," Reacher said. "Bobby told me down here folks sort out their own differences. He told me they're reluctant to involve law enforcement people. He implied cops stay out of private disputes. He said it's some kind of a big old West Texas tradition."

  The sheriff was quiet for a moment. "I guess it might be," he said.

  "Bobby said it definitely was. A definite tradition."

  The sheriff turned away. "Well, you could put it that way," he said. "And I'm a very traditional guy."

  Reacher nodded.

  "I'm very glad to hear it," he said.

  The sheriff paused on the porch steps, and then moved on again without looking back. He slid into his car and killed the flashing lights and started the engine. Maneuvered carefully past the lime green Lincoln and headed out down the driveway and under the gate. His engine was running rich. Reacher could smell unburned gasoline in the air, and he could hear the muffler popping with tiny explosions. Then the car accelerated into the distance and he could hear nothing at all except the grasshoppers clicking and chattering.

  He came down off the porch and walked around to the kitchen door. It was standing open, either for ventilation or so the maid could eavesdrop on the excitement. She was standing just inside the room, close to an insect screen made of plastic strips hanging down in the doorway.

  "Hey," Reacher said. He had learned long ago to be friendly with the cookhouse detail. That way, you eat better.

  But she didn't answer him. She just stood there, warily.

  "Let me guess," he said. "You only made two suppers for the bunkhouse."

  She said nothing, which was as good as a yes.

  "You were misinformed," he said. "Was it Bobby?"

  She nodded. "He told me you weren't coming back."

  "He was mistaken," he said. "It was Josh and Billy who didn't come back. So I guess I'll eat their dinners. Both of them. I'm hungry."

  She paused. Then she shrugged.

  "I'll bring them down," she said. "In a minute."

  He shook his head.

  "I'll eat them here," he said. "Save you the walk."

  He parted the plastic strips with the backs of his hands and stepped inside the kitchen. It smelled of chili, left over from lunchtime.

  "What did you make?" he asked.

  "Steaks," she said.

  "Good," he said. "I like bovines better than edentates."

  "What?"

  "I like beef better than I like armadillo."

  "So do I," she said.

  She used pot holders and took two plates out of a warming oven. Each held a medium-sized rib-eye steak, and a large mound of mashed potato and a smaller mound of fried onions. She put them side by side on the kitchen table, with a fork on the left of the left-hand plate and a knife all the way to the right, it looked like a double-barreled meal.

  "Billy was my cousin," she said.

  "He probably still is," Reacher said. "Josh got it worse."

  "Josh was my cousin, too."

  "Well, I'm sorry to hear that."

  "Different branch of the family," she said. "More distant. And they were both fools."

  Reacher nodded. "Not the sharpest chisels in the box."

  "But the Greers are sharp," she said. "Whatever it is you're doing with the Mexican woman, you should remember that."

  Then she left him alone to eat.

  He rinsed both plates when he finished and left them stacked in the sink. Walked down to the horse barn and sat down to wait in the foul heat inside because he wanted to stay close to the house. He sat on a hay bale and kept his back to the horses. They were restless for a spell, and then they got used to his presence. He heard them fall asleep, one by one. The shuffling hooves stopped moving and he heard lazy huffs of breath.

  Then he heard feet over on the boards of the porch, and then on the steps, and then the crunch of dry dust under them as they crossed the yard. He heard the Lincoln's doors open, then shut again. He heard the engine start, and the transmission engage. He stood up and stepped to the barn door and saw the Lincoln turning around in front of the house. It was lit from behind by the porch lights, and he could see Hack Walker silhouetted at the wheel, with Rusty Greer beside him. The porch lights turned her teased-up hair to cotton candy. He could see the shape of her skull underneath it.

  The big car drove straight out under the gate and swooped right without pausing and accelerated away down the road. He watched the bright cone of its headlights through the picket fence, bouncing left to right through the darkness. Then it was gone and the sounds of the night insects came back and the big moths around the lights were all that was moving.

  He waited just inside the barn door, trying to guess who would come for him first. Carmen, probably, he thought, but it was Bobby who stepped out on the porch, maybe five minutes after his mother had left to bring his brother home. He came straight down the steps and headed across the yard, down toward the path to the bunkhouse. He had his ball cap on again, reversed on his head. Reacher stepped out of the barn and cut him off.

  "Horses need watering," Bobby said. "And I want their stalls cleaned out."

  "You do it," Reacher said.

  "What?"

  "You heard."

  Bobby stood still. "I'm not doing it," he said.

  "Then I'll make you do it."

  "What the hell is this?"

  "A change, is what," Reacher said. "Things just changed for you, Bobby, big time, believe me. Soon as you decided to set Josh and Billy on me, you crossed a line. Put yourself in a whole different situation. One where you do exactly what I tell you."

  Bobby said nothing.

  Reacher looked straight at him. "I tell you jump, you don't even ask how high. You just start jumping. That clear? I own you now."

  Bobby stood still. Reacher swung his right hand, aiming a big slow roundhouse slap. Bobby ducked away from it, straight into Reacher's left, which pulled the ball cap off his head.

  "So go look after the horses," Reacher said. "Then you can sleep in there with them. I see you again before breakfast time, I'll break your legs."

  Bobby stood still.

  "Who are you going to call, little brother?" Reacher asked him. "The maid, or the sheriff?"

  Bobby said nothing. The vastness of the night closed in. Echo County, a hundred and fifty souls, most of them at least sixty or a hundred miles beyond the black horizons. The absolute definition of isolation.

  "O.K.," Bobby said quietly.

  He walked slowly toward the barn. Reacher dropped the ball cap in the dirt and strolled up to the house, with the porch lights shining in his eyes and the big papery moths swarming out to greet him.

  * * *

  Two thirds of the killing crew saw him stroll. They were doing it better than the watchers had. The woman had checked the map and rejected the tactic of driving in from the west. For one thing, the Crown Vic wouldn't make it over the desert terrain. For another, to hide a mile away made no sense at all. Especially during the hours of darkness. Far better to drive straight down the road and stop a hundred yards shy of the house, long enough for two of the team to jump out, then turn the car and head back north while the two on foot ducked behind the nearest line of rocks and worked south toward the red gate and holed up in the small craters ten yards from the blacktop.

  It was the two men on foot. They had night-vision devices. Nothing fancy, nothing military, just commercial equipment bought from a sporting goods catalog and carried along with everything else in the black nylon valise. They were binoculars, with some kind of electronic enhancement inside. Some kind of infrared capability. It picked up the night heat rising off the ground, and made Reacher look li
ke he was wobbling and shimmering as he walked.

  Chapter 8

  Reacher found Carmen in the parlor. The light was dim and the air was hot and thick. She was sitting alone at the red-painted table. Her back was perfectly straight and her forearms were resting lightly on the wooden surface and her gaze was blank and absolutely level, focused on a spot on the wall where there was nothing to see.

  "Twice over," she said. "I feel cheated, twice over. First it was a year, and then it was nothing. Then it was forty-eight hours, but really it was only twenty-four."

  "You can still get out," he said.

  "Now it's less than twenty-four," she said. "It's sixteen hours, maybe. I'll have breakfast by myself, but he'll be back for lunch."

  "Sixteen hours is enough," he said. "Sixteen hours, you could be anywhere."

  "Ellie's fast asleep," she said. "I can't wake her up and bundle her in a car and run away and be chased by the cops forever."

  Reacher said nothing.

  "I'm going to try to face it," she said. "A fresh start. I'm planning to tell him, enough is enough. I'm planning to tell him, he lays a hand on me again, I'll divorce him. Whatever it takes. However long."

  "Way to go," he said.

  "Do you believe I can?" she asked.

  "I believe anybody can do anything," he said. "If they want it enough."

  "I want it," she said. "Believe me, I want it." She went quiet.

  Reacher glanced around the silent room. "Why did they paint everything red?" he asked.

  "Because it was cheap," she said. "During the fifties, nobody down here wanted red anything, because of the Communists. So it was the cheapest color at the paint store."

  "I thought they were rich, back then. With the oil."

  "They were rich. They still are rich. Richer than you could ever imagine.

  "But they're also mean."

  He looked at the places where the fifty-year-old paint was worn back to the wood.