Echo Burning

he’s got is a highly subjective opinion here. He’s guessing, basically. And his guess is based on what, exactly? It’s based on an impression she chose to give him beforehand, that she couldn’t shoot, and we already know every other impression she chose to give him beforehand was total bullshit from beginning to end. But let’s say he’s right, just for the sake of argument. What does that give us?”
    “What?”
    “A conspiracy, is what. We know she tried to rope Reacher in. Now you’ve got her roping somebody else in. She gets ahold of somebody else, she tells them to come to the house, she tells them where and when, she tells them where her gun is concealed, they show up, get the gun, do the deed. If it happened that way, she’s instigated a conspiracy to commit murder for remuneration. Hired a killer, cold-blooded as hell. We go down that road, she’s headed for the lethal injection again. Because that looks a whole lot worse than a solo shot, believe me. In comparison, a solo shot looks almost benign. It looks like a crime of the moment, you know? We leave it exactly the way we got it, along with the guilty plea, I’m happy asking for a life sentence. But we start talking conspiracy, that’s real evil, and we’re back on track for death row.”
    Alice said nothing.
    “So you see what I mean?” Walker said. “There’s no net benefit. Absolutely the opposite effect. It makes things much worse for her. Plus, she already said she did it herself. WhichI think is true. But if it isn’t, then her confession was a calculated lie, designed to cover her ass, because she knew a conspiracy would look worse. And we’d have to react to that. We couldn’t let that go. It would make us look like fools.”
    Alice said nothing. Reacher just shrugged.
    “So leave it alone,” Walker said. “That’s my suggestion. If it would help her, I’d look at it. But it won’t. So we should leave it alone. For her sake.”
    “And for your judgeship’s sake,” Reacher said.
    Walker nodded. “I’m not hiding that from you.”
    “You happy to leave it alone?” Alice asked. “As a prosecutor? Somebody could be getting clean away with something.”
    Walker shook his head. “If it happened the way Reacher thinks. If, if, if. If is a very big word. I got to say I think it’s highly unlikely. Believe me, I’m a real enthusiastic prosecutor, but I wouldn’t build a case and waste a jury’s time on one person’s purely subjective opinion about how well another person could shoot. Especially when that other person is as accomplished a liar as Carmen is. All we know, she’s been shooting every day since she was a kid. A rough kid from some barrio in L.A., certainly a rural Texas jury wouldn’t see any problem in swallowing that.”
    Reacher said nothing. Alice nodded again.
    “O.K.,” she said. “I’m not her lawyer, anyway.”
    “What would you do if you were?”
    She shrugged. “I’d leave it, probably. Like you say, blundering into a conspiracy rap wouldn’t help her any.”
    She stood up, slowly, like it was an effort in the heat. She tapped Reacher on the shoulder. Gave him a what can we do? look and headed for the door. He stood up and followed her. Walker said nothing. Just watched them partway out of the room and then dropped his eyes to the old photograph of the three boys leaning on the pick-up’s fender.

    They crossed the street together and walked as far as the bus depot. It was fifty yards from the courthouse, fifty yards from the legal mission. It was a small, sleepy depot. No buses in it. Just an expanse of diesel-stained blacktop ringed withbenches shaded from the afternoon sun by small white fiberglass roofs. There was a tiny office hut papered on the outside with schedules. It had a through-the-wall air conditioner running hard. There was a woman in it, sitting on a high stool, reading a magazine.
    “Walker’s right, you know,” Alice said. “He’s doing her a favor. It’s a lost cause.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “So where will you head?” she asked.
    “First bus out,” he said. “That’s my rule.”
    They stood together and read the schedules. Next departure was to Topeka, Kansas, via Oklahoma City. It was due in from Phoenix, Arizona, in a half hour. It was making a long slow counterclockwise loop.
    “Been to Topeka before?” Alice asked.
    “I’ve been to Leavenworth,” he said. “It’s not far.”
    He tapped on the glass and the woman sold him a one-way