Echo Burning

Bobby.”
    “You lost him?” Reacher said.
    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.”
    “This 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 wasthe 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 SloopGreer’s funds. That single trustee was identified as Sloop Greer’s legal wife, Carmen.
    “She had