Echo Burning

back to his motel room. The heat felt worse than ever after being cold and dry for an hour. He took a long shower in tepid water and rinsed his clothes in the sink. Shook them hard to eliminate the wrinkles and arranged them on a chair to dry. Then he turned the room air to high and lay down on the bed to wait for Alice. Checked his watch. He figured if she got there anytime after eight o’clock it would be a good sign, because if Carmen decided to get serious they would need to talk for at least an hour. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

13
    She got there at seven-twenty. He woke from a feverish overheated doze and heard a tentative knock at his door. Rolled off the bed and wrapped a damp towel around his waist and padded barefoot across the dirty carpet and opened up. Alice was standing there. He looked at her. She just shook her head. He stared out at the dusk light for a second. Her yellow car was parked in the lot. He turned and stepped back into the room. She followed him inside.
    “I tried everything,” she said.
    She had changed back into her lawyer outfit. The black pants and the jacket. The pants had a very high waistband, so high it almost met the bottom edge of the sports bra. There was an inch of tanned midriff showing. Apart from that, she looked exactly like the real deal. And he couldn’t see how an inch of skin would be significant to a woman in Carmen’s position.
    “I asked her, was it me?” Alice said. “Did she want somebody different? Older? A man? A Hispanic person?”
    “What did she say?”
    “She said she didn’t want anybody at all.”
    “That’s crazy.”
    “Yes, it is,” Alice said. “I described her predicament. You know, in case she wasn’t seeing it clearly. It made no difference.”
    “Tell me everything she said.”
    “I already have.”
    Reacher was uncomfortable in the towel. It was too small.
    “Let me put my pants on,” he said.
    He scooped them off the chair and ducked into the bathroom. The pants were wet and clammy. He pulled them on and zipped them up. Came back out. Alice had taken her jacket off and laid it on the chair, next to his wet shirt. She was sitting on the bed with her elbows on her knees.
    “I tried everything,” she said again. “I said, show me your arm. She said, what for? I said, I want to see how good your veins are. Because that’s where the lethal injection will go. I told her she’d be strapped down on the gurney, I described the drugs she’d get. I told her about the people behind the glass, there to watch her die.”
    “And?”
    “It made no difference at all. Like talking to the wall.”
    “How hard did you push?”
    “I shouted a little. But she waited me out and just repeated herself. She’s refusing representation, Reacher. We better face it.”
    “Is that kosher?”
    “Of course it is. No law says you have to have counsel. Just that you have to be offered counsel.”
    “Isn’t it evidence of insanity or something?”
    She shook her head.
    “Not in itself,” she said. “Otherwise every murderer would just refuse to have a lawyer and automatically get off with an incapacity defense.”
    “She’s not a murderer.”
    “She doesn’t seem very anxious to prove it.”
    “Did anybody hear her?”
    “Not yet. But I’m worried. Logically her next move is to put it in writing. Then I can’t even get in the door. Nor can anybody else.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “We have to finesse her. That’s all we can do. We just have to ignore her completely and keep on dealing with Walker behind her back. On her behalf. If we can get him to drop the charges, then we’ve set her free whether she wants us to or not.”
    He shrugged. “Then that’s what we’ll do. But it’s completely bizarre, isn’t it?”
    “It sure is,” Alice said. “I never heard of such a thing before.”

    A hundred miles away, the two male members of the killing crew returned to their motel after eating dinner. They had chosen pizza, too, but with pitchers of cold beer instead of water and coffee. They found their woman partner waiting for them inside their room. She was alert and pacing, which they recognized as a sign of news.
    “What?” the tall man asked.
    “A supplementary job,” she said.
    “Where?”
    “Pecos.”
    “Is that smart?”
    She nodded. “Pecos is still safe enough.”
    “You think?” the dark man asked.
    “Wait until you hear what he’s paying.”
    “When?”
    “Depends on the prior