Echo Burning jr-5

by Lee Child

"O.K.," he said out loud. "Ballgame over."

  He put Alice's gun back in his pocket and walked away north, back to the Jeep. It was so dark and he had so much rain in his eyes he thumped right into the side of it before he knew he was there. He tracked around it with a hand on the hood and found the driver's door. Opened it and closed it and opened it again, just for the thrill of making the dome light come on inside, illumination he could control for himself.

  It wasn't easy driving back up onto the limestone. The grit that should have been under the wheels and aiding traction was now slick mud. He put the headlights on bright and started the wipers beating fast and selected four-wheel drive and slid around for a while before the front tires caught and dragged the car up the slope. Then he hooked a wide curve ahead and left, all the way across to the seven o'clock position. He hit the horn twice and Alice walked out of the mesquite into the headlight beams. She was soaked to the skin. Water was pouring off her. Her hair was plastered flat. Her ears stuck out a little. She stepped to her left and ran around to the passenger door.

  "I guess this is the storm people were expecting," he said.

  Lightning flared again outside. A ragged bolt far to their left, accompanied by an explosion of thunder. The weather was moving north, and fast.

  She shook her head. "This little shower? This is just a taste. Wait until tomorrow."

  "I'll be gone tomorrow."

  "You will?"

  He nodded.

  "You O.K.?" he asked.

  "I didn't know when to fire."

  "You did fine."

  "What happened?"

  He drove off again, turning south, zigzagging the Jeep to fan the headlight beams back and forth across the mesa. Thirty feet in front of the wrecked VW, he found the first guy's body. It was humped and inert. He dipped the lights so they would shine directly on it and jumped out into the rain. The guy was dead. He had taken the Winchester's bullet in the stomach. He hadn't died instantaneously. His hat was missing and he had torn open his jacket to clutch his wound. He had crawled quite a distance. He was tall and heavily built. Reacher closed his eyes and scanned back to the scene in the diner. By the register. The woman, two men. One big and fair, one small and dark. Then he walked back to the Jeep and slid inside. The seat was soaked.

  "Two dead," he said. "That's what happened. But the driver escaped. Did you ID him?"

  "They came to kill us, didn't they?"

  "That was the plan. Did you ID the driver?"

  She said nothing.

  "It's very important, Alice," he said. "For Ellie's sake. We don't have a tongue. That part didn't work out. They're both dead."

  She said nothing.

  "Did you see him?"

  She shook her head.

  "No, not really," she said. "I'm very sorry. I was running, the lights were only on a second or two."

  It had seemed longer than that to Reacher. Much longer. But in reality, she was probably right. She was maybe even overestimating. It might have been only three quarters of a second. They had been very quick with the triggers.

  "I've seen these people before," he said. "On Friday, up at the crossroads. Must have been after they got Eugene. They must have been scouting the area. Three of them. A woman, a big guy, a small dark guy. I can account for the woman and the big guy. So was it the small dark guy driving tonight?"

  "I didn't really see."

  "Gut feeling?" Reacher said. "First impression? You must have gotten a glimpse. Or seen a silhouette."

  "Didn't you?"

  He nodded. "He was facing away from me, looking down to where you fired from. There was a lot of glare. Some rain on his windshield. Then I was shooting, and then he took off. But I don't think he was small."

  She nodded, too. "Gut feeling, he wasn't small. Or dark. It was just a blur, but I'd say he was big enough. Maybe fair-haired."

  "Makes sense," Reacher said. "They left one of the team behind to guard Ellie."

  "So who was driving?"

  "Their client. The guy who hired them. That's my guess. Because they were short-handed, and because they needed local knowledge."

  "He got away."

  Reacher smiled. "He can run, but he can't hide."

  * * *

  They went to take a look at the wrecked VW. It was beyond help. Alice didn't seem too concerned about it. She just shrugged and turned away. Reacher took the maps from the glove compartment and turned the Jeep around and headed north. The drive back to the Red House was a nightmare. Crossing the mesa was O.K. But beyond the end of it the desert track was baked so hard that it wasn't absorbing any water at all. The rain was flooding all over the surface. The part that had felt like a riverbed was a riverbed. It was pouring with a fast torrent that boiled up over the tires. Mesquite bushes had been torn off their deep taproots and washed out of their shallow toeholds and whole trees were racing south on the swirl. They dammed against the front of the Jeep and rode with it until cross-currents tore them loose. Sinkholes were concealed by the tide. But the rain was easing fast. It was dying back to drizzle. The eye of the storm had blown away to the north.

  They were right next to the motor barn before they saw it. It was in total darkness. Reacher braked hard and swerved around it and saw pale lights flickering behind some of the windows in the house.

  "Candles," he said.

  "Power must be out," Alice said. "The lightning must have hit the lines."

  He braked again and slid in the mud and turned the car so the headlights washed deep into the barn.

  "Recognize anything?" he asked.

  Bobby's pick-up was back in its place, but it was wet and streaked with mud. Water was dripping out of the load bed and pooling on the ground.

  "O.K.," Alice said. "So what now?"

  Reacher stared into the mirror. Then he turned his head and watched the road from the north.

  "Somebody's coming," he said.

  There was a faint glow of headlights behind them, rising and falling, many miles distant, breaking into a thousand pieces in the raindrops on the Jeep's windows.

  "Let's go say howdy to the Greets," he said.

  He pulled Alice's gun out of his pocket and checked it. Never assume. But it was O.K. Cocked and locked. Seven left. He put it back in his pocket and drove across the soaking yard to the foot of the porch steps. The rain was almost gone. The ground was beginning to steam. The vapor rose gently and swirled in the headlight beams. They got out into the humidity. The temperature was coming back. So was the insect noise. There was a faint whirring chant all around. It sounded wary and very distant.

  He led her up the porch steps and pushed open the door. The hallway had candles burning in holders placed here and there on all the available horizontal surfaces. They gave a soft orange glow and made the foyer warm and inviting. He ushered Alice through to the parlor. Stepped in behind her. More candles were burning in there. Dozens of them. They were glued to saucers with melted wax. There was a Coleman lantern standing on a credenza against the end wall. It was hissing softly and burning bright.

  Bobby and his mother were sitting together at the red-painted table. Shadows were dancing and flickering all around them. The candlelight was kind to Rusty. It took twenty years off her. She was fully dressed, in jeans and a shirt. Bobby sat beside her, looking at nothing in particular. The tiny flames lit his face and made it mobile.

  "Isn't this romantic," Reacher said.

  Rusty moved, awkwardly.

  "I'm scared of the dark," she said. "Can't help it. Always have been."

  "You should be," Reacher said. "Bad things can happen in the dark."

  She made no reply to that.

  "Towel?" Reacher asked. He was dripping water all over the floor. So was Alice.

  "In the kitchen," Rusty said.

  There was a thin striped towel on a wooden roller. Alice blotted her face and hair and patted her shirt. Reacher did the same, and then he stepped back into the parlor.

  "Why are you both up?" he asked. "It's t
hree o'clock in the morning."

  Neither of them answered.

  "Your truck was out tonight," Reacher said.

  "But we weren't," Bobby said. "We stayed inside, like you told us to."

  Rusty nodded. "Both of us, together."

  Reacher smiled.

  "Each other's alibi," he said. "That would get them rolling in the aisles, down in the jury room."

  "We didn't do anything," Bobby said.

  Reacher heard a car on the road. Just the faint subliminal sound of tires slowing on soaked blacktop. The faint whistle of drive belts turning under a hood. Then there was a slow wet crunch as it turned under the gate. Grit and pebbles popped under the wheels as it drove up to the porch. There was a tiny squeal from a brake rotor and then silence as the engine died. The clunk of a door closing. Feet on the porch steps. The house door opening, footsteps crossing the foyer. Then the parlor door opened. The candle flames swayed and flickered. Hack Walker stepped into the room.

  "Good," Reacher said. "We don't have much time."

  "Did you rob my office?" Walker replied.

  Reacher nodded. "I was curious."

  "About what?"

  "About details," Reacher said. "I'm a details guy."

  "You didn't need to break in. I'd have shown you the files."

  "You weren't there."

  "Whatever, you shouldn't have broken in. You're in trouble for it. You can understand that, right? Big trouble."

  Reacher smiled. Bad luck and trouble, been my only friends.

  "Sit down, Hack," he said.

  Walker paused a second. Then he threaded his way around all the chairs and sat down next to Rusty Greer. Candlelight lit his face. The lantern glowed to his left.

  "You got something for me?" he asked.

  Reacher sat opposite. Laid his hands palm-down on the wood.

  "I was a cop of sorts for thirteen years," he said.

  "So?"

  "I learned a lot of stuff."

  "Like?"

  "Like, lies are messy. They get out of control. But the truth is messy, too. So any situation you're in, you expect rough edges. Anytime I see anything that's all buttoned up, I get real suspicious. And Carmen's situation was messy enough to be real."

  "But?"

  "I came to see there were a couple of edges that were just too rough."

  "Like what?"

  "Like, she had no money with her. I know that. Two million in the bank, and she travels three hundred miles with a single dollar in her purse? Sleeps in the car, doesn't eat? Leapfrogs from one Mobil station to the next, just to keep going? That didn't tie up for me."

  "She was playacting. That's who she is."

  "You know who Nicolaus Copernicus is?"

  "Was," Walker said. "Some old astronomer. Polish, I think. Proved the earth goes around the sun."

  Reacher nodded. "And much more than that, by implication. He asked us all to consider how likely is it that we're at the absolute center of things? What are the odds? That what we're seeing is somehow exceptional? The very best or the very worst? It's an important philosophical point."

  "So?"

  "So if Carmen had two million bucks in the bank but traveled with a single dollar just in case she bumped into a guy as suspicious as me, then she is undoubtedly the number-one best-prepared con artist in the history of the world. And old Copernicus asks me, how likely is that? That I should by chance happen to bump into the best con artist in the history of the world? His answer is, not very likely, really. He says the likelihood is, if I bump into a con artist at all, it'll be a very average and mediocre one."

  "So what are you saying?"

  "I'm saying it didn't tie up for me. So it got me thinking about the money. And then something else didn't tie up."

  "What?"

  "Al Eugene's people messengered Sloops financial stuff over, right?"

  "This morning. Feels like a long time ago."

  "Thing is, I saw Al's office. When I went to the museum. It's literally within sight of the courthouse. It's a one-minute walk. So how likely is it they would messenger something over? Wouldn't they just walk it over? For a friend of Al's? Especially if it was urgent? It would take them ten times as long just to dial the phone for the courier service."

  The candlelight danced and flickered. The red room glowed.

  "People messenger things all the time," Walker said. "It's routine. And it was too hot for walking."

  Reacher nodded. "Maybe. It didn't mean much at the time. But then something else didn't tie up. The collarbone."

  "What about it?"

  Reacher turned to face Alice. "When you fell off your inline skates, did you break your collarbone?"

  "No," Alice said.

  "Any injuries at all?"

  "I tore up my hand. A lot of road rash."

  "You put your hand out to break your fall?"

  "Reflex," she said. "It's impossible not to."

  Reacher nodded. Turned back through the candlelit gloom to Walker.

  "I rode with Carmen on Saturday," he said. "My first time ever. My ass got sore, but the thing I really remember is how high I was. It's scary up there. So the thing is, if Carmen fell off, from that height, onto rocky dirt, hard enough to bust her collarbone, how is it that she didn't get road rash, too? On her hand?"

  "Maybe she did."

  "The hospital didn't write it up."

  "Maybe they forgot."

  "It was a very detailed report. New staff, working hard. I noticed that, and Cowan Black did, too. He said they were very thorough. They wouldn't have neglected lacerations to the palm."

  "She must have worn riding gloves."

  Reacher shook his head. "She told me nobody wears gloves down here. Too hot. And she definitely wouldn't have said that if gloves had once saved her from serious road rash. She'd have been a big fan of gloves, in that case. She'd have certainly made me wear them, being new to it."

  "So?"

  "So I started to wonder if the collarbone thing could have been from Sloop hitting her. I figured it was possible. Maybe she's on her knees, a big clubbing fist from above, she moves her head. Only she also claimed he had broken her arm and her jaw and knocked her teeth loose, too, and there was no mention of all that stuff, so I stopped wondering. Especially when I found out the ring was real."

  A candle on the left end of the table died. It burned out and smoke rose from it in a thin plume that ran absolutely straight for a second and then spiraled crazily.

  "She's a liar," Walker said. "That's all."

  "She sure is," Bobby said.

  "Sloop never hit her," Rusty said. "A son of mine would never hit a woman, whoever she was."

  "One at a time, O.K.?" Reacher said, quietly.

  He could feel the impatience in the room. Elbows shifting on the table, feet moving on the floor. He turned to Bobby first.

  "You claim she's a liar," he said. "And I know why. It's because you don't like her, because you're a racist piece of shit, and because she had an affair with the schoolteacher. So among other things you took it on yourself to try and turn me off of her. Some kind of loyalty to your brother."

  Then he turned to Rusty. "We'll get to what Sloop did and didn't do real soon. But right now, you keep quiet, O.K.? Hack and I have business."

  "What business?" Walker said.

  "This business," Reacher said, and propped Alice's gun on the tabletop, the butt resting on the wood and the muzzle pointing straight at Walker's chest.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Walker said.

  Reacher clicked the safety off with his thumb. The snick sounded loud in the room. Candles flickered and the lantern hissed softly.

  "I figured out the thing with the diamond," he said. "Then everything else made sense. Especially with you giving us the badges and sending us down here to speak with Rusty."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "It was like a conjuring trick. The whole thing. You knew Carmen pretty well. So you knew what she must have told me
. Which was the absolute truth, always. The truth about herself, and about what Sloop was doing to her. So you just exactly reversed everything. It was simple. A very neat and convincing trick. Like she told me she was from Napa, and you said, hey, I bet she told you she's from Napa, but she isn't, you know. Like she told me she'd called the IRS, and you said, hey, I bet she told you she called the IRS, but she didn't, really. It was like you knew the real truth and were reluctantly exposing commonplace lies she had told before. But it was you who was lying. All along. It was very, very effective. Like a conjuring trick. And you dressed it all up behind pretending you wanted to save her. You fooled me for a long time."

  "I did want to save her. I am saving her."

  "Bullshit, Hack. Your only aim all along was to coerce a confession out of her for something she didn't do. It was a straightforward plan. Your hired guns kidnapped Ellie today so you could force Carmen to confess. I was your only problem. I stuck around, I recruited Alice. We were in your face from Monday morning onward. So you misled us for twenty-seven straight hours. You let us down slowly and regretfully, point by point. It was beautifully done. Well, almost. To really make it work, you'd have to be the best con artist in the world. And like old Copernicus says, what are the odds that the best con artist in the world would happen to be up there in Pecos?"

  There was silence. Just sputtering wax, the hissing of the lantern, five people breathing. The old air conditioner wasn't running. No power.

  "You're crazy," Walker said.

  "No, I'm not. You decoyed me by being all regretful about what a liar Carmen was and how desperate you were to save her. You were even smart enough to reveal a cynical reason for wanting to save her. About wanting to be a judge, so I wouldn't think you were too good to be true. That was a great touch, Hack. But all the time you were talking to her on the phone, muffling your voice to get past the desk clerk, telling him you were her lawyer, telling her if she ever spoke to a real lawyer, you'd hurt Ellie. Which is why she refused to speak with Alice. Then you wrote out a bunch of phony financial statements on your own computer right there at your desk. One printout looks much the same as any other. And you drafted the phony trust deeds. And the phony Family Services papers. You knew what real ones looked like, I guess. Then as soon as you heard your people had picked up the kid you got back on the phone and coached Carmen through the phony confession, feeding back to her all the lies you'd told to me. Then you sent your assistant downstairs to listen to them."