Chapter 3
"What happened a year and a half ago?" Reacher asked.
She didn't answer. They were on a long straight deserted road, with the sun just about dead-center above them. Heading south and near noon, he figured. The road was made of patched blacktop, smooth enough, but the shoulders were ragged. There were lonely billboards at random intervals, advertising gas and accommodations and markets many miles ahead. Either side of the road the landscape was flat and parched and featureless, dotted here and there with still windmills in the middle distance. There were automobile engines mounted on concrete pads, closer to the road. Big V-8s, like you would see under the hood of an ancient Chevrolet or Chrysler, painted yellow and streaked with rust, with stubby black exhaust pipes standing vertically.
"Water pumps," Carmen said. "For irrigating the fields. There was agriculture here, in the old days. Back then, gasoline was cheaper than water, so those things ran all day and all night. Now there's no water left, and gas has gotten too expensive. "
The land fell away on every side, covered with dry brush. On the far horizon southwest of the endless road, there might have been mountains a hundred miles away. Or it might have been a trick of the heat.
"Are you hungry?" she asked. "If we don't stop we could pick Ellie up from school, and I'd really like to do that. I haven't seen her since yesterday. "
"Whatever you want," Reacher said.
She accelerated until the big Cadillac was doing eighty and wallowing heavily over the undulations in the road. He straightened in his seat and tightened his belt against the reel. She glanced across at him.
"Do you believe me yet?" she asked.
He glanced back at her. He had spent thirteen years as an investigator, and his natural instinct was to believe nothing at all.
"What happened a year and a half ago?" he asked. "Why did he stop?"
She adjusted her grip on the wheel. Opened her palms, stretched her fingers, closed them tight again on the rim.
"He went to prison," she said.
"For beating up on you?"
"In Texas?" she said. She laughed, just a yelp, like a short cry of pain. "Now I know you're new here. "
He said nothing. Just watched Texas reel in through the windshield ahead of him, hot and brassy and yellow.
"It just doesn't happen," she said. "In Texas a gentleman would never raise his hand to a woman. Everybody knows that. Especially not a white gentleman whose family has been here over a hundred years. So if a greaseball whore wife dared to claim a thing like that, they'd lock her up, probably in a rubber room. "
The day her life changed forever.
"So what did he do?"
"He evaded federal taxes," she said. "He made a lot of money trading oil leases and selling drilling equipment down in Mexico. He neglected to tell the IRS about it. In fact, he neglected to tell the IRS about anything. One day they caught him. "
"They put you in jail for that?"
She made a face. "Actually, they try hard not to. A first-time thing like that, they were willing to let him pay, you know, make proposals and so forth. A clean breast and a payback plan is what they're looking for. But Sloop was way too stubborn for that. He made them dig everything out for themselves. He was hiding things right up to the trial. He refused to pay anything. He even disputed that he owed them anything, which was ridiculous. And all the money was hidden behind family trusts, so they couldn't just take it. It made them mad, I think. "
"So they prosecuted?"
She nodded at the wheel.
"With a vengeance," she said. "A federal case. You know that expression? Making a federal case out of something? Now I see why people say that. Biggest fuss you ever saw. A real contest, the local good old boys against the Treasury Department. Sloop's lawyer is his best friend from high school, and his other best friend from high school is the DA in Pecos County, and he was advising them on strategy and stuff like that, but the IRS just rolled right over all of them. It was a massacre. He got three-to-five years. The judge set the minimum at thirty months in jail. And cut me a break. "
Reacher said nothing. She accelerated past a truck, the first vehicle they had seen in more than twenty miles.
"I was so happy," she said. "I'll never forget it. A white-collar thing like that, after the verdict came in they just told him to present himself at the federal prison the next morning. They didn't drag him away in handcuffs or anything. He came home and packed a little suitcase. We had a big family meal, stayed up kind of late. Went upstairs, and that was the last time he hit me. Next morning, his friends drove him up to the jail, someplace near Abilene. A Club Fed is what they call it. Minimum security. It's supposed to be comfortable. I heard you can play tennis there. "
"Do you visit him?"
She shook her head.
"I pretend he's dead," she said.
She went quiet, and the car sped on toward the haze on the horizon. There were mountains visible to the southwest, unimaginably distant.
"The Trans-Pecos," she said. "Watch for the light to change color. It's very beautiful. "
He looked ahead, but the light was so bright it had no color at all.
"Minimum thirty months is two and a half years," she said. "I thought it safest to bet on the minimum. He's probably behaving himself in there. "
Reacher nodded. "Probably. "
"So, two and a half years," she said. "I wasted the first one and a half. "
"You've still got twelve months. That's plenty of time for anything. "
She was quiet again.
"Talk me through it," she said. "We have to agree on what needs to be done. That's important. That way, you're seeing it exactly the same way I am. "
He said nothing.
"Help me," she said. "Please. Just theoretically for now, if you want. "
He shrugged. Then he thought about it, from her point of view. From his, it was too easy. Disappearing and living invisibly was second nature to him.
"You need to get away," he said. "An abusive marriage, that's all a person can do, I guess. So, a place to live, and an income. That's what you need. "
"Doesn't sound much, when you say it. "
"Any big city," he said. They have shelters. All kinds of organizations. "
"What about Ellie?"
"The shelters have baby-sitters," he said. "They'll look after her while you're working. There are lots of kids in those places. She'd have friends. And after a little while you could get a place of your own. "
"What job could I get?"
"Anything," he said. "You can read and write. You went to college. "
"How do I get there?"
"On a plane, on a train, in a bus. Two one-way tickets. "
"I don't have any money. "
"None at all?"
She shook her head. "What little I had ran out a week ago. "
He looked away.
"What?" she said.
"You dress pretty sharp for a person with no money. "
"Mail order," she said. "I have to get approval from Sloops lawyer. He signs the checks. So I've got clothes. But what I haven't got is cash. "
"You could sell the diamond. "
"I tried to," she said. "It's a fake. He told me it was real, but it's stainless steel and cubic zirconium. The jeweler laughed at me. It's worth maybe thirty bucks. "
He paused a beat.
"There must be money in the house," he said. "You could steal some. "
She went quiet again, another fast mile south.
"Then I'm a double fugitive," she said. "You're forgetting about Ellie's legal status. And that's the whole problem. Always has been. Because she's Sloop's child, too. If I transport her across a state line without his consent, then I'm a kidnapper. They'll put her picture on milk cartons, and they'll find me, and they'll take her away from me, and I'll go to jail. They're very strict about it. Taking children out of a failed marriage is the number one reaso
n for kidnapping today. The lawyers all warned me. They all say I need Sloop's agreement. And I'm not going to get it, am I? How can I even go up there and ask him if he'd consent to me disappearing forever with his baby? Someplace he'll never find either of us?"
"So don't cross the state line. Stay in Texas. Go to Dallas. "
"I'm not staying in Texas," she said.
She said it with finality. Reacher said nothing back.
"It's not easy," she said. "His mother watches me, on his behalf. That's why I didn't go ahead and sell the ring, even though I could have used the thirty bucks. She'd notice, and it would put her on her guard. She'd know what I'm planning. She's smart. So if one day money is missing and Ellie is missing, I might get a few hours start before she calls the sheriff and the sheriff calls the FBI. But a few hours isn't too much help, because Texas is real big, and buses are real slow. I wouldn't make it out. "
"Got to be some way," he said.
She glanced back at her briefcase on the rear seat. The legal paperwork.
"There are lots of ways," she said. "Procedures, provisions, wards of the court, all kinds of things. But lawyers are slow, and very expensive, and I don't have any money. There are pro-bono people who do it for free, but they're always very busy. It's a mess. A big, complicated mess. "
"I guess it is," he said.
"But it should be possible in a year," she said. "A year's a long time, right?"
"So?"
"So I need you to forgive me for wasting the first year and a half. I need you to understand why. It was all so daunting, I kept putting it off. I was safe. I said to myself, plenty of time to go. You just agreed, twelve months is plenty of time for anything. So even if I was starting cold, right now, I could be excused for that, right? Nobody could say I'd left it too late, could they?"
There was a polite beep from somewhere deep inside the dashboard. A little orange light started flashing in the stylized shape of a gas pump, right next to the speedometer.