Echo Burning

ballistics are back from the lab. Hack Walker wants to see you about them. Sounds like he’s got a problem.”
    “I’m sure he has,” Reacher said.
    They walked to the door and paused a second before braving the sidewalk again. Then they split up in front of the courthouse. Alice walked on toward the jailhouse entrance and Reacher went up the front steps and inside. The public areas and the staircase had no air-conditioning. Making it up just one floor soaked him in sweat. The intern at the desk pointed silently to Hack Walker’s door. Reacher went straight in and found Walker studying a technical report. He had the look of a man who thinks if he reads a thing often enough, maybe it will change what it says.
    “She killed him,” he said. “Everything matches. The ballistics are perfect.”
    Reacher sat down in front of the desk.
    “Your prints were on the gun, too,” Walker said.
    Reacher made no reply. If he was going to lie, he was going to save it for when it would count for something.
    “You’re in the national fingerprint database,” Walker said. “You know that?”
    Reacher nodded. “All military personnel are.”
    “So maybe you found the gun discarded,” Walker said. “Maybe you handled it because you were worried about a family with a kid having a stray firearm around. Maybe you picked it up and put it away in a place of safety.”
    “Maybe,” Reacher said.
    Walker turned a page in the file.
    “But it’s worse than that, isn’t it?” he said.
    “Is it?”
    “You a praying man?”
    “No,” Reacher said.
    “You damn well should be. You should get on your knees and thank somebody.”
    “Like who?”
    “Maybe the state cops. Maybe old Sloop himself for calling the sheriff.”
    “Why?”
    “Because they just saved your life.”
    “How?”
    “Because you were on the road in a squad car when this went down. If they’d left you in the bunkhouse, you’d be our number-one suspect.”
    “Why?”
    Walker turned another page.
    “Your prints were on the gun,” he said again. “And on every one of the shell cases. And on the magazine. And on the ammunition box. You loaded that gun, Reacher. Probably test-fired it too, they think, then reloaded it ready for action. She bought it, so it was technically her possession, but it looks from the fingerprint evidence that it was effectively your weapon.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “So you see?” Walker asked. “You should set up a little shrine to the state police and give thanks every morning you wake up alive and free. Because the obvious thing for me to do would be come right after you . You could have crept up from the bunkhouse to the bedroom, easy as anything. Because you knew where the bedroom was, didn’t you? I talked to Bobby. He told me you spent the previous night in there. Did you really think he’d just sit quiet in the barn? He probably watched you two going at it, through the window.”
    “I didn’t sleep with her,” Reacher said. “I was on the sofa.”
    Walker smiled. “Think a jury would believe you? Or an ex-whore? I don’t. So we could easily prove some kind of a sexual jealousy motive. The next night you could have crept up there and got the gun out of the drawer and shot Sloop dead, and then crept back again. Only you couldn’t have, because you were in the back of a police car at the time. So you’re a lucky man, Reacher. Because right now a white male shooter would be worth his weight in gold to me. You could go integrate death row single-handed. A big WASP like you, in among all the blacks and the Hispanics, I’d look like the fairest prosecutor in Texas. The election would be over before it started.”
    Reacher said nothing. Walker sighed.
    “But you didn’t do it, unfortunately,” he said. “She did it. So now what have I got? The premeditation thing is going from bad to worse. It’s just about shot to hell now. Clearly she thought, and she thought, even to the extent of hooking up with some ex-army guy to give her weapons training. We got your record, after we got your prints. You were a pistol-shooting champ two straight years. You did a spell as an instructor, for Christ’s sake. You loaded her gun for her. What the hell am I going to do?”
    “What you planned,” Reacher said. “Wait for the medical reports.”
    Walker went quiet. Then he sighed again. Then he nodded.
    “We’ll have them tomorrow,” he said. “And you know what I did? I hired a defense expert to take a look at them.