Rusty shrugged. "He went out. He isn't back yet. "
Reacher glanced back at the motor barn.
"All the cars are here," he said.
"Somebody picked him up," Rusty said. "I was upstairs. Didn't see them. Just heard them. "
Reacher said nothing.
"Anyway," Rusty said. "I didn't expect to see you again, ever. "
"T
his is Carmen's lawyer," Reacher said.
Rusty turned and glanced at Alice. "This is the best she could do?"
"We need to see Ellie. "
"What for?"
"We're interviewing witnesses. "
"A child can't be a witness. "
"I'll decide that," Alice said.
Rusty just smiled at her.
"Ellie's not here," she said.
"Well, where is she?" Reacher said. "She's not in school. "
Rusty said nothing.
"Mrs. Greer, we need to know where Ellie is," Alice said.
Rusty smiled again. "I don't know where she is, lawyer girl. "
"Why not?" Alice asked.
"Because Family Services took her, that's why not. "
"When?"
"This morning. They came for her. "
"And you let them take her?" Reacher said.
"Why wouldn't I? I don't want her. Now that Sloop is gone. "
Reacher stared at her. "But she's your granddaughter. "
Rusty made a dismissive gesture. The rifle moved in her hand.
"That's a fact I was never thrilled about," she said.
"Where did they take her?"
"An orphanage, I guess," Rusty said. "And then she'll get adopted, if anybody wants her. Which they probably won't. I understand half-breeds are very difficult to place. Decent folk generally don't want beaner trash. "
There was silence. Just the tiny sounds of dry earth baking in the heat.
"I hope you get a tumor," Reacher said.
He turned around and walked back to the car without waiting for Alice. Got in and slammed the door and sat staring forward with his face burning and his massive hands clenching and unclenching. She got in beside him and fired up the motor.
"Get me out of here," he said. She took off in a cloud of dust. Neither of them spoke a single word, all the way north to Pecos.
* * *
It was three in the afternoon when they got back, and the legal mission was half empty because of the heat. There was the usual thicket of messages on Alice's desk. Five of them were from Hack Walker. They made a neat little sequence, each of them more urgent than the last.
"Shall we go?" Alice asked.
"Don't tell him about the diamond," Reacher said.
"It's over now, don't you see?"
And it was. Reacher saw it right away in Walker's face. There was relaxation there. Some kind of finality. Closure. Some kind of peace. He was sitting behind his desk. His desk was all covered with papers. They were arranged in two piles. One was taller than the other.
"What?" Reacher asked.
Walker ignored him and handed a single sheet to Alice.
"Waiver of her Miranda rights," he said. "Read it carefully. She's declining legal representation, and she's declaring that it's entirely voluntary. And she adds that she refused your representation from the very start. "
"I doubted her competence," Alice said.
Walker nodded. "I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But there's no doubt now. So you're here purely as a courtesy, O. K. ? Both of you. "
Then he handed over the smaller pile of papers. Alice took them and fanned them out and Reacher leaned to his right to look at them. They were computer printouts. They were all covered in figures and dates. They were bank records. Balance statements and transaction listings. Credits and debits. There seemed to be five separate accounts. Two were regular checking accounts. Three were money-market deposits. They were titled Greer Non-Discretionary Trust, numbers one through five. The balances were healthy. Very healthy. There was a composite total somewhere near two million dollars.
"Al Eugene's people messengered them over," Walker said. "Now look at the bottom sheets. "
Alice riffed through. The bottom sheets were paper-clipped together. Reacher read over her shoulder. There was a lot of legal text. It added up to the formal minutes of a trust agreement. There was a notarized deed attached. It stated in relatively straightforward language that for the time being a single trustee was in absolute sole control of all Sloop Greets funds. That single trustee was identified as Sloop Greer's legal wife, Carmen.
"She had two million bucks in the bank," Walker said. "All hers, effectively. "
Reacher glanced at Alice. She nodded.
"He's right," she said.
"Now look at the last clause of the minutes," Walker said.
Alice turned the page. The last clause concerned reversion. The trusts would become discretionary once again and return the funds to Sloop's own control at a future date to be specified by him. Unless he first became irreversibly mentally incapacitated. Or died. Whereupon all existing balances would become Carmen's sole property, in the first instance as a matter of prior agreement, and in the second, as a matter of inheritance.
"Is all of that clear?" Walker asked.
Reacher said nothing, but Alice nodded.
Then Walker passed her the taller pile.
"Now read this," he said.
"What is it?" she asked.
"A transcript," Walker said. "Of her confession. "
There was silence.
"She confessed?" Alice said.
"We videotaped it," Walker said.
"When?"
"Noon today. My assistant went to see her as soon as the financial stuff came in. We tried to find you first, but we couldn't. Then she told us she didn't want a lawyer anyway. So we had her sign the waiver. Then she spilled her guts. We brought her up here and videotaped the whole thing over again. It's not pretty. "
Reacher was half-listening, half-reading. It wasn't pretty. That was for damn sure. It started out with all the usual assurances about free will and absolute absence of coercion. She stated her name. Went all the way back to her L. A. days. She had been an illegitimate child. She had been a hooker. Street stroller, she called it. Some odd barrio expression, Reacher assumed. Then she came off the streets and started stripping, and changed her title to sex worker. She had latched onto Sloop, just like Walker had claimed. My meal ticket, she called him. Then it became a story of impatience. She was bored witless in Texas. She wanted out, but she wanted money in her pocket. The more money the better. Sloop's IRS trouble was a godsend. The trusts were tempting. She tried to have him killed in prison, which she knew from her peers was possible, but she found out that a federal minimum-security facility wasn't that sort of a place. So she waited. As soon as she heard he was getting out, she bought the gun and went recruiting. She planned to leverage her marks with invented stories about domestic violence. Reacher's name was mentioned as the last pick. He had refused, so she did it herself. Having already fabricated the abuse claims, she intended to use them to get off with self-defense, or diminished responsibility, or whatever else she could manage. But then she realized her hospital records would come up blank, so she was confessing and throwing herself on the mercy of the prosecutor. Her signature was scrawled on the bottom of every page.
Alice was a slow reader. She came to the end a full minute after him.
"I'm sorry, Reacher," she said.
There was silence for a moment.
"What about the election?" Reacher asked. The last hope.
Walker shrugged. "Texas code says it's a capital crime. Murder for remuneration. We've got enough evidence to choke a pig. And I can't ignore a voluntary confession, can I? So, couple hours ago I was pretty down. But then I got to thinking about it. Fact is, a voluntary confession helps me out. A confession and a guilty plea, saves the taxpayer the cost of a trial. Justifies me asking for a life sentence instead. The way I see it, with a story like that, she's going to look very, very bad, whoever you are. So if I back off the death penalty, I'll look magnanimous in comparison. Generous, even. The whites will fret a little, but the Mexicans will eat it up with a spoon. See what I mean? The whole thing is reversed now. She was the good guy, I was the heavy hand. But now she's the heavy ha
nd, and I'm the good guy. So I think I'm O. K. "
Nobody spoke for another minute. There was just the omnipresent roar of the air conditioners.
"I've got her property," Alice said. "A belt and a ring. "
"Take them to storage," Walker said. "We'll be moving her, later. "
"Where?"
"The penitentiary. We can't keep her here anymore. "
"No, where's storage?"
"Same building as the morgue. Make sure you get a receipt. "
* * *
Reacher walked with her over to the morgue. He wasn't aware of taking a single step. Wasn't aware of the heat, or the dust, or the noise, or the traffic, or the smells of the street. He felt like he was floating an inch above the sidewalk, insulated inside some kind of sensory-deprivation suit. Alice was talking to him, time to time, but he was hearing nothing that she said. All he could hear was a small voice inside his head that was saying you were wrong. Completely wrong. It was a voice he had heard before, but that didn't make it any easier to hear again, because he had built his whole career on hearing it fewer times than the next guy. It was like a box score in his mind, and his average had just taken some serious damage. Which upset him. Not because of vanity. It upset him because he was a professional who was supposed to get things right.
"Reacher?" Alice was saying. "You're not listening, are you?"
"What?" he said.
"I asked you, do you want to get a meal?"
"No," he said. "I want to get a ride. "
She stopped walking. "What now? Quadruple-check?"
"No, I mean out of here. I want to go somewhere else. A long way away. I hear Antarctica is nice, this time of year. "
"The bus depot is on the way back to the office. "
"Good. I'll take a bus. Because I'm all done hitchhiking. You never know who's going to pick you up. "
The morgue was a low industrial shed in a paved yard behind the street. It could have been a brake shop or a tire depot. It had metal siding and a roll-up vehicle door. There was a personnel entrance at the far end of the building. It had two steps up to it, framed by handrails fabricated from steel pipe. Inside, it was very cold. There were industrial-strength air conditioners running full blast. It felt like a meat store. Which it was, in a way. To the left of the foyer was a double door that gave directly onto the morgue operation. It was standing open, and Reacher could see the autopsy tables. There was plenty of stainless steel and white tile and fluorescent light in there.
Alice put the lizard skin belt on the reception counter and dug in her pocketbook for the ring. She told the attendant they were for Texas vs. Carmen Greer. He went away and came back with the evidence box.
"No, it's personal property," she said. "Not evidence. I'm sorry. "
The guy gave her a why didn't you say so look and turned around.
"Wait," Reacher called. "Let me see that. "
The guy paused, and then he turned back and slid the box across the counter. It had no lid, so it was really just a cardboard tray maybe three inches deep. Somebody had written Greer on the front edge with a marker pen. The Lorcin was in a plastic bag with an evidence number. Two brass shell cases were in a separate bag. Two tiny . 22 bullets were in a bag each. They were gray and very slightly distorted. One bag was marked Intercranial #1 and the other was marked Intercranial #2. They had reference numbers, and signatures.
"Is the pathologist here?" Reacher asked.
"Sure," the counter guy said. "He's always here. "
"I need to see him," Reacher said. "Right now. "
He was expecting objections, but the guy just pointed to the double doors.
"In there," he said.
Alice hung back, but Reacher went through. At first he thought the room was empty, but then he saw a glass door in the far corner. Behind it was an office, with a man in green scrubs at a desk. He was doing paperwork. Reacher knocked on the glass. The man looked up. Mouthed come in. Reacher went in.
"Help you?" the guy said.
"Only two bullets in Sloop Greer?" Reacher said.
"Who are you?"
"I'm with the perp's lawyer," Reacher said. "She's outside. "
"The perp?"
"No, the lawyer. "
"O. K. ," the guy said. "What about the bullets?"
"How many were there?"
"Two," the guy said. "Hell of a time getting them out. "
"Can I see the body?"
"Why?"
"I'm worried about a miscarriage of justice. "
It's a line that usually works with pathologists. They figure there's going to be a trial, they figure they'll be called on for evidence, the last thing they want is to be humiliated by the defense on cross-examination. It's bad for their scientific image. And their egos. So they prefer to get any doubts squared away beforehand.
"O. K. ," he said. "It's in the freezer. "
He had another door in back of his office which led to a dim corridor. At the end of the corridor was an insulated steel door, like a meat locker.
"Cold in there," he said.
Reacher nodded. "I'm glad somewhere is. "
The guy operated the handle and they went inside. The light was bright. There were fluorescent tubes all over the ceiling. There was a bank of twenty-seven stainless steel drawers on the far wall, nine across, three high. Eight of them were occupied. They had tags slipped into little receptacles on the front, the sort of thing you see on office filing cabinets. The air in the room was frosty. Reacher's breath clouded in front of him. The pathologist checked the tags and slid a drawer. It came out easily, on cantilevered runners.
"Had to take the back of his head off," he said. "Practically had to scoop his brains out with a soup ladle, before I found them. "
Sloop Greer was on his back and naked. He looked small and collapsed in death. His skin was gray, like unfired clay. It was hard with cold. His eyes were open, blank and staring. He had two bullet holes in his forehead, about three inches apart. They were neat holes, blue and ridged at the edges, like they had been carefully drilled there by a craftsman.
"Classic . 22 gunshot wounds," the pathologist said. "The bullets go in O. K. , but they don't come out again. Too slow. Not enough power. They just rattle around in there. But they get the job done. "
Reacher closed his eyes. Then he smiled. A big, broad grin.
"That's for sure," he said. "They get the job done. "
There was a knock at the open door. A low sound, like soft knuckles against hard steel. Reacher opened his eyes again. Alice was standing there, shivering.
"What are you doing?" she called to him.
"What comes after quadruple-check?" he called back.
His breath hung in the air in front of him, like a shaped cloud.
"Quintuple-check," she said. "Why?"
"And after that?"
"Sextuple," she said. "Why?"
"Because we're going to be doing a whole lot of checking now. "
"Why?"
"Because there's something seriously wrong here, Alice. Come take a look. "